AN: Thanks for being patient, guys! Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend (if you're in the States/were lucky enough to have one).
Amanda left her Sunday evening meeting feeling lighter. Sometimes she wasn't even sure what she was carrying that was so heavy, but she was grateful when the burden was alleviated anyway. Her mind wandered as she walked, wondering if Sonny's parents had dropped Jesse and Luca off yet, if she would have time to get a little more studying done, if there was ice cream in the freezer...
She felt somebody looking at her.
She stopped. There he was again: standing outside a convenience store a block away, dark eyes watching her. This time, their gazes met. Amanda began to quicken her stride toward him, determined, but he wasn't going to wait around to chat. He began to run.
"Hey! Stop!" she shouted, sprinting after him at full speed.
The sidewalk was nearly empty, affording Amanda a clear path toward her target, her feet pounding the concrete. The stranger was fast, but not faster than she was. She ran until she could reach out and grab a handful of his jacket, tripping him up, using all of her strength and body weight to shove him into the side of a residential building. She kept him pinned there, his cheek pressed against the bricks. He squirmed, but another hard thrust of her shoulder stilled him.
With one hand, she held his wrists together behind his back. With her other, she pulled her badge from her pocket and stuck it in his face. "Can I help you with something?" she snarled breathlessly.
He didn't say anything, just gulped for air.
"I know you've been followin' me," Amanda continued, putting her shield away and using both hands to hold onto him again. "You aren't very discreet."
Nothing. His mouth was pressed into a hard line.
"Who are you UC for, huh? Lieutenant Murphy?" she demanded.
The man's eyes squeezed shut.
"Show me your license or I'm arresting you," Amanda promised him angrily, getting increasingly more frustrated with his silence.
"For what?" the man finally sputtered, eyes flying open.
"Don't you worry about that, I'll figure something out," she assured him, the acid in her tone a stark contrast to the tight smile she was wearing.
"My wallet is in my back pocket," he eventually conceded.
One hand still holding his wrists behind his back, she used the other to roughly dig into his jeans to grab a black leather wallet. She flipped it open and scanned the contents anxiously. In one of the windowed pockets, she read:
PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR LICENSE
STATE OF NEW YORK
LICENSE NUMBER 987643
WARNER, CHRISTOPHER
"Son of a bitch," Amanda whispered, snapping the wallet closed again. She had been right.
"Uh, can you let me go now? You're hurting me," he pleaded.
She released her grip and handed back his wallet with an icy glare. "How long have you been following me?"
Slowly, Private Investigator Christopher Warner turned around, brushing dust from the wall off of his shirt and jacket. "I can't tell you that, Detective."
Amanda ran her fingers through her hair before settling her hands on her hips. "What are you after? What have you..."
He shook his head. "I can't tell you that either."
Amanda chewed on her lower lip, the fight siphoned out of her, replaced with dread. "I'm not a bad person."
"I know," he told her quietly, meeting her eyes.
"You're not gonna tell them that though, are you." It wasn't meant to be a question.
"I'm going to tell them what I saw."
"I know that I messed up-"
Christopher put up his hands. "You don't have to explain anything to me."
"You're gonna screw up my entire life," Amanda whispered weakly.
"Look, I'm just doing my job. It isn't personal," he told her levelly, seemingly unaffected by her vulnerability.
Her features turned to stone again. "Not to you, it isn't. You must not have kids."
"I-"
"You obviously don't. If you did, you would understand that they change everything," Amanda told him sharply, blood running hot with emotion. "They are these... these little humans who depend on you for everything, who look at you to teach them how the world works, and as much as they rely on you, you rely on them. Their happiness is yours and yours is theirs. Because they are you."
She took a step closer to him, blue eyes locked onto his dark gaze. "Jesse came from me. From my body. She is a piece of me; everything good about me is in her. And the shitty things? Those things I keep, and I deal with them. One day I'll be proud to teach her that you aren't defined by your mistakes. I'm tired of being faulted for being a human being, for bein' somebody... somebody who fucked up, like that somehow negates all the other stuff I've done."
"So you can tell Murphy whatever you want, but I'm not backing down," she hissed, nose-to-nose with him, seething. "I'm never gonna be less of a mother to Jesse just because he decided he's in the mood to be her father. I will do whatever it takes to give her the best life possible, no matter what it costs me. And trust me, it's already cost me a lot, but I get to go home every night to a sweet little girl who is happy and healthy and safe, and it's worth it. It will always be worth it."
He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing nervously in his throat.
Amanda wanted to shove him again because he was an easy target for her anger, even though he was just some poor sap doing what he was told. Instead, she stepped back, tucked her blonde hair behind her ears and eyed him coldly. "See you in court," she snapped before she walked away.
She couldn't get home fast enough.
The moment Amanda was through her apartment door, she found Sonny wandering around the living room, Jesse in his arms against his side. Her little body clad in Hello Kitty pajamas, her cheeks were red and her thumb was in her mouth, her light brown hair adorably disheveled.
"Hey, guys," she greeted them, dropping her purse off on the kitchen counter.
"I don't feel good," Jesse whined. She rubbed her runny nose against Sonny's shoulder.
"My mother said she started gettin' congested a little before they left to come here," Sonny explained. "Baby's fine. He's been asleep for two hours."
Amanda frowned. She reached out a hand, grazing the backs of her fingers against her daughter's soft cheek. Her skin was hot. "You're pretty warm."
Jesse coughed and squirmed in confirmation.
"Let's get you some medicine, huh? Then tuck you into bed," she suggested.
The toddler shook her head against Sonny's shoulder.
"She's been like a barnacle ever since she got back," Sonny murmured.
She sighed. "Mm. Luckily you're cuter than one," she teased her daughter gently, giving her belly a playful poke.
Amanda walked into the bathroom and started digging through the medicine cabinet. Once Jesse was settled, she would talk to Sonny about what had happened on her way home. Until they were asleep, a sick kid tended to be all-consuming. Jesse often became more needy and clingy, but nothing was worse than knowing your child was hurting and you could only do so much to alleviate it, so Amanda and Sonny always indulged her. Finally locating the children's cold medicine, Amanda poured the sticky sweet liquid into a small measuring cup, holding it up to eye level to assess the quantity. Sonny met her in the doorway, still holding the little girl.
She offered Jesse the cup. "Take this."
Jesse scrunched up her red, runny nose. "Ew."
"It tastes like orange soda, remember?" Amanda reminded her. In order to keep Jesse from wiping her nose on Sonny's shirt again, she grabbed a tissue from the counter and cleaned it up for her. Ah, the glamorous life of a mother. "And it'll make you feel better."
After a moment of pouting and dramatic whimpering, she reached out and took the medicine, taking little sips until all of it was gone. "Atta girl," Sonny said approvingly.
"Can I lay with you?" Jesse asked neither of them in particular.
Amanda had been prepared for that question. Jesse was becoming a good negotiator, much like her mother and grandma Beth. She did what she was asked then tried to see if she could be rewarded for it somehow, a tactic which would undoubtedly become less cute as she got older. "Y'all had a long weekend and I want you to get some rest so you feel better. So you can - until you fall asleep," her mother bargained with her.
All three of them eventually relaxed on the big bed, Jesse curled up at Sonny's side while they all pretended to watch some flowery cartoon on television. It was when Jesse's breathing became a regular series of soft, congested snores that they changed the channel from Disney to the evening news. Sonny kept a hand on the four-year-old's back, moving up and down even after she had fallen asleep, eyes flickering over the headlines scrolling across the screen.
Amanda crossed her arms over her chest. "I was right," she finally said quietly.
Sonny looked over at her, confused. "About what?"
"Declan's having me followed," she stated bluntly.
His brows knitted together. The motion of his palm on Jesse's back stopped. "What?"
"I was walking home tonight and I saw him. That guy I told you about. I confronted him," Amanda explained.
"What did you do?" Sonny asked cautiously, looking as if he was bracing himself for her answer.
"I just told him that I noticed him. He showed me his PI license."
"So back at the casino..."
"That was him."
Sonny nodded slowly.
"It's not good," Amanda concluded lamely.
"Yeah, I didn't think so," he mumbled.
She rubbed near her collarbone anxiously, fingers encountering a tiny bump of scar tissue. "God. I really fucked up, Sonny," she whispered. "And I don't think there's anything I can do about it."
Sonny didn't say anything. Part of her wanted him to tell her it was going to be okay, that it wasn't that big of a deal. He had always been skilled at allaying her fears. Amanda took his silence to mean he agreed with her: she had fucked up, and there really was nothing to be done.
He lifted his hand from Jesse's back and extended that arm over to Amanda, gesturing for her to come closer. She leaned in, resting her head on Sonny's shoulder, Jesse's sleeping body undisturbed between them.
Monday morning came, hot and humid. Jesse was still sniffling and coughing, but thankfully Audrey was well-versed in caring for childhood colds. She swooped in with promises of cinnamon sugar oatmeal and movies, allowing Amanda and Sonny to leave for work on time.
They took the E train into Manhattan. It was crowded with commuters, so instead of holding on to a pole or a seat, Amanda hung loosely off of Sonny's arm to keep her balance.
"Today's the day," she reminded him as if he would forget, peering up at him through the sweep of her blonde bangs.
"I know." He looked uneasy.
She squeezed close to him, partly out of necessity in the bustling train car, partly because she wanted to. "You okay?"
He nodded, although it wasn't very convincing.
"You're having a great hair day," Amanda offered honestly with a grin.
Sonny looked down at her with a sly but appreciative smile.
The subway let them off a few blocks from the office and they walked hand-in-hand until they reached the elevators of the precinct. From that point forward, they were colleagues, not husband and wife. Sometimes Amanda wondered if other officers and staff judged them, looked down at them because they had allowed their professional relationship become personal. She had always been highly defensive of her role as a detective - first because she was a woman in a male-dominated field, now because she was married with children and for some reason that was considered a weakness. Amanda never wanted anybody to see her as anything less than capable.
In the squad room, they each hovered over their respective desks. Fin wasn't sitting across from her yet, but he insisted on driving every morning and occasionally got stuck in rush hour traffic.
"Guys, don't get too comfortable." Liv appeared from her office, looking frazzled.
"What's up, Lieu?" Sonny asked curiously, cracking open his laptop.
"Fin's got food poisoning and I have a CompStat meeting I'm already ten minutes late for," she explained, running a hand through her dark hair. Her eyes flitted down to her phone in her hand. "I just got a call that a seven-year-old girl randomly showed up on somebody's doorstep fifteen minutes ago, soaking wet and confused on the Upper East Side."
"Alone?" Amanda asked.
"Apparently. I don't have a lot of details," Liv admitted, already walking toward the elevator. "Head down there now, sounds like the 9-1-1 caller is a graduate student and easy enough to interview. I've gotta go. Rollins, I just texted you the address. Fill me in when you're there."
Liv turned around and tossed the keys to the squad car in the air for somebody to catch before she disappeared. Lunging forward, Amanda snatched at them a millisecond before Sonny and spun them around her fingers victoriously. He glared at her, defeated.
"Would it kill you to let me drive?" Sonny asked Amanda as they began to leave the precinct.
"Yeah, grandpa, it would," she quipped with a roguish grin.
The drive to the Upper East Side was quick. Amanda was grateful to be busy right away - she could use the distraction after what she had discovered last night. She could tell that Sonny wasn't himself, either: typically, he was talkative and curious. Now, he sat silent in the passenger's seat. She assumed his looming phone call with the D.A.'s office was to blame for his unusually quiet demeanor.
She pulled their vehicle up to the appropriate brownstone and parked outside next to a squad car. A familiar uniformed officer stood on the sidewalk, waiting for them.
"Rollins, Carisi," Officer Nolan greeted them with a little nod once they joined him.
"What's up?" Amanda asked.
"Rachel Torres rents an apartment here. Says she woke up this morning to somebody banging on her door - turns out it was this little girl, soaking wet," Nolan explained. "I've got a bus on the way just in case, but she seems okay physically aside from some bruising on her neck and wrists. She hasn't said much."
"They inside?" Sonny looked to the front door of the building.
"Yeah, first floor, apartment 12B. I told her you were on your way," Nolan said.
Amanda nodded. "Thanks, Nolan."
The door to 12B was slightly ajar. Cautiously, they both stepped inside. A young woman was pacing the small living room anxiously, dressed in leggings and a t-shirt. A young girl sat on the couch, unmoving, wrapped in a fluffy white towel. Her brown eyes were wide but she wasn't crying; she appeared to be in shock. Wet blonde hair stuck to her forehead.
"Hi. Are you from SVU?" the young woman asked them anxiously.
"We are. I'm Detective Rollins, this is Detective Carisi," Amanda told her.
"I'm Rachel." The young woman stepped closer to them, appearing relieved. "I'm glad you're here."
"Can you tell us what happened?" Amanda asked, eyes flitting from Rachel to the little girl on the couch, then back to Rachel again.
"I was getting ready to go to class a half hour or so ago and heard a banging on the door," Rachel explained hurriedly. "I opened it up and she was standing there in the hallway, soaked from head to toe. She seemed totally shocked. I dried her off as best I could - thank God it isn't winter time, she would have froze to death. She's barely said a word to me and I didn't want to upset her, so I haven't asked her much..."
"That's okay," Amanda assured her. "Have you ever seen her before?"
Rachel shook her head. "No. But I, I'm getting my Ph.D in neurobiology, so I don't exactly hang around kids a lot..."
Amanda watched as Sonny took a seat on the couch next to the girl, careful not to get too close. Rachel bit her lip, worried, watching them.
"Hi. I'm Sonny. What's your name?" he said, offering the child a friendly smile.
The girl shifted in her seat, tightening the big towel around her. "Hayley Carlisle," she answered timidly.
"Hayley, that's a nice name," Sonny said lightly. "How'd you get here, Hayley?"
"I had to swim. And then I walked a bunch," Hayley answered.
Sonny's brows knitted together and his eyes grew wide. "Swim?"
Hayley nodded. "He threw me in the river."
His gaze flickered to Amanda's, then back to Hayley. "Who did?"
She shrugged her tiny shoulders. "I don't know. He was a man at the party."
"The same person who did that to your neck?" He gestured to the purple bruise standing out against Hayley's pale skin.
She nodded.
"Hayley, where's your mom and dad?"
The little girl's eyes started to well up. "I dunno."
"I need you to tell me everything that happened up until now, okay?" Sonny requested gently.
Hayley nodded. "I was at my grandma and grandpa's house at a party. We had hot dogs and hamburgers and stuff, but I wanted a grilled cheese so my grandpa made me one," she began meekly. "I fell asleep in a chair outside because I was real tired. When I woke up I was in a car and a man was driving around for a long time. I kept asking to go home but he got mad and said 'no' and a lot of bad words. Then he choked me real hard. He picked me up and threw me over the bridge. It was so tall. My dad taught me to swim at the Y so I'm real good at it. So I swam until I made it here."
"What bridge?"
"Um... it had a number 25 on it."
"State route 25. The 59th street bridge," Sonny murmured, appearing shocked. "Hayley, he threw you from that?"
She nodded quickly. "It was scary. He picked me up and just... pushed me. It was cold."
"I bet it was. D'you know your mom and dad's phone number?"
"No..."
"That's okay. What's mom or dad's name, huh? We'll find them. I'm sure they're missin' you."
"Jennifer and Michael. 99 Kingsland Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11222," Hayley recited, like her parents had drilled the information into her in preparation for some terrible but far-fetched emergency - the kind that was taking place right that very moment.