an: I wanted to thank you guys for all of the reviews! They're greatly appreciated. I know the last chapter was a bummer, but you gotta take the bad to get to the good, right? Anyway, here is chapter 9. Remember folks, this one takes place in present time, which is around 2008 for this story. The past chapters are like the 90's through the early 00's. Confused yet? Just read...

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. And I know nothing when it comes to psychology. In fact, I hate psychology. I'm a hard science kind of girl.

"I often feel as if I'm not in control of my emotions. There are times where I break down over the smallest things, sometimes over nothing at all. I get incredibly frustrated, and I just..."

"You just what?"

"I don't know. I don't know how to react. I feel as if my emotions – the anger, the sadness – I feel as if I can't tell the difference anymore. Everything blurs together. I don't know if my feelings are appropriate for the situations at hand. And when I realize I'm crying over what is essentially nothing, I'm embarrassed. I'm so embarrassed that I can't stop thinking about it, and when I get home I become angry with myself. I feel so childish, particularly when I lose it around other people."

"Can you give me an example?"

"There's this man I've been seeing... He had set up a little dinner for us, and that had been unnerving for me."

"What happened?"

"He looked at me, and he knew. He could see it on my face. And he left. He's a good man, you know. A very good man. And all I seem to do is hurt him."

"What about the ordeal had upset you?"

"Isn't this what I pay you for? To figure these things out?"

"Casey, it isn't necessary to constantly pick fights with me. You come here for a reason, and you know you have to try, too."

The lawyer sighs. "I'm not sure why it bothered me. Sometimes I think we're moving too fast. Other times, I'm simply uncomfortable in my own skin and I want him to go away."

That is, perhaps, the most alarming thing Dr. Goodwin has heard from her patient. She's had her suspicions since their first session, but Casey has yet to reveal anything black and white. While she can be a bit snappy, she is often calm and thoughtful. She truly tries to understand herself, but she is always in shades of gray.

"Casey, were you ever assaulted or abused? Sexually, or in any other manner?" The ADA's wandering attention span shot back to Goodwin faster than expected. And boy, is she ever quick to defend herself.

"What? You think just because I push a man away I'm suddenly a victim? Isn't that a little sexist, doctor?"

"I never asked if you were a victim."

The room grows silent as Casey realizes she's said more than she ever wanted to. It feels absolutely awful to be questioned this way, and she understands why most choose to keep quiet. She understands why she has always chosen to stay quiet. She has every intention of excusing herself, until Goodwin speaks.

"Look at you. You're successful, you've built a life for yourself. You have friends and family who are there for you... You're alive, Casey. You are not a victim. You are, however, human. It's okay to need help, it's okay to ask for it. You will not move forward and get better until you face whatever it is you're afraid of, whatever it is that happened to you." When Casey doesn't respond, Goodwin sighs. "Ben Okri told us that the most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering. I don't think anyone has ever been so right."

"TARU found nearly a dozen web users Kayleigh had been talking to. They're weeding through them now." Olivia informs as she makes her way through the bullpen. "A lonely girl using the anonymity of the internet as a mask, just so she can be herself, in a world of masked perversions and identities, intentions..." She muses. "It's just too easy."

"I hear that." Elliot adds, thinking of his own children and how often they rely on technology for entertainment.

"I just got a call from the one-three." Cragen speaks loudly as he appears from his office doorway. "A couple of beat-cops found a girl lying in an alleyway just outside Queens. Raped, strangulation marks, and the same star-shaped cut... EMS is taking her to Mercy General now."

"She's alive?" Olivia asks in a sort of horror.

"Barely."

As detectives Benson and Stabler hurry out of the squad room, Captain Cragen turns toward the remaining detectives in the room. "Run the MO through CODIS – we have a serial killer on our hands."

It has taken three girls, two dead and one close to it, for them to realize they're dealing with a serial killer. It drives her mad that this is the way the world works, that their system is a slow one and there isn't a damn thing they can do about it.

Knowing what she does, Alex can't shake her own guilt. She wonders if what she did had been the right thing, or the selfish thing. She ultimately decides it had been a selfish move. Fifteen years ago, she had been too scared, too embarrassed, to go to the police. And now she deals with the aftermath of her own rapist.

Her head is held high despite her growing anxiety as she makes her way to ADA Novak's office. Her history with the woman leaves this to be a poor choice, but she believes it is her only one. She prepares her thoughts as if she were striving for a solid argument, but quickly stops herself. She's only here to talk.

The shades are drawn and no one responds to Alex's knocking, which she finds odd. She is always able to find Casey. Out of curiosity, she opens the door to find the room is dimly lit and that she is the only living thing there. She slips inside, shutting the door behind her after deciding to wait.

Alex eyes her colleague's personal items strewn about her office. A few framed photographs of her softball team and various awards she's received over the years – nothing too personal. It's always been a rare thing for Casey to get too personal.

Her fingertips trace the dusty law books on the shelve, admiring the effort her friend has put into decorating. The surface of one book suddenly becomes smooth and she doubles back. It's a small cluster of photos lying on a slanted book, and she is able to put names to all of the faces in them. In one, a group of college kids pose together with wide, drunken grins. She smiles to herself when she spots twenty-two year old Casey and her own twenty-five year old self hanging on to each other for what she can only assume is balance.

While those days had their own issues, she finds them to be the good days in comparison. There was good peppered in the bad. Things used to be okay. And she isn't so far gone that she can't say she doesn't miss that.