Title: The Turning of the LeavesAuthor: Mercaque
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Three years after the events of "Loss," Alex Cabot is told it's safe to return to New York City. But is she ready for the tremendous changes that await her?
Author's Notes: Just to be clear – despite my earlier stories, this is NOT a CabotHuang fic. More notes at the end of the chapter. Also, this chapter was reposted to fix a silly grammar error.
Disclaimer: SVU characters belong to Dick Wolf. Original characters, such as they are, belong to me.

CHAPTER 4

Bellevue's Old Administration Building is a red-brick monolith rising into the desolate, slate-gray sky.

I arrive late in the afternoon. The air is thick, cold and moist – as though the dark clouds above are ready to burst with freezing rain. I rub my gloved hands together, trying futilely to warm my stiff fingers as I hurry inside.

The interior of the building contrasts sharply with the outside. Bellevue's mazelike corridors are cramped and bright, their sterile white floors flooded with fluorescent light.

Huang's office is tucked away on the third floor, and finding it is a challenge. The receptionist gives me the office number and little more than a sympathetic smile as she wishes me luck. I look down at the piece of paper in my hand; Huang's office number is scribbled just below where Karen Fong wrote Fin's address earlier this morning. Was I really at the precinct just this morning? It already feels like ten years ago.

345...349...350...

The extra walking gives me time to mull over what I've heard from Fin and Munch. My memories of George Huang are of an unflappably gentle man with rock-solid ethics. I'd always enjoyed a certain intellectual rapport with him – even when he challenged me, I had to respect his reason and impartiality. It felt like a real meeting of the minds, and I'd eventually come to think of him as one of my better work friends. The idea of him being involved in a crime is frankly unimaginable.

352... 353... 355...

But thinking about it further, I'm forced to admit that I knew nothing of Huang's life outside work. I don't know a thing about his home or family, I have little concept of his extracurricular interests, and for that matter, I have no idea if he's married, divorced, or simply a confirmed bachelor. With a prick of remorse, I almost have to wonder now if I ever truly knew him – if I'd ever truly bothered to know him.

358. I'm here.

I suppose there's no time like the present to find out.

The door – a thick, brown slab of metal – is slightly ajar. I knock hesitantly, and it lurches open. I bite my lip in anticipation. Anxiety is once again pounding in my ears. I push my way in further, wincing as a loud creak announces my presence.

Huang's thin frame is hunched over a thick dark desk. He's talking intently on the phone, cradling the receiver in the crook of one shoulder while the other hand goes scrawling across an official-looking document. He's studiously engrossed in what he's doing, and he doesn't seem to have noticed me. His voice is as even and gentle as I remember, and my heart warms at the familiarity.

"Mmm hmm. Yes, the Thompson case should be ready to go. She made great progress. You're saying the family's resistant? I guess we can set up a conference..."

I glance briefly around the room, astonished at the changes. When I visited him in his office three years ago, his surroundings were clean, bright and metallic, with a great wide window looking over the city.

This room, by contrast, is dim and cluttered. The ceiling is low; the floor is covered in a worn burgundy carpet. Wall-to-wall bookshelves – close to overflowing with hardback books and hastily stuffed in papers – just add to the claustrophobic feel. The air feels somehow thicker in here – with the dust from his books, the buzzing of his old computer, and the muted golden light of his desk lamp.

"Well, did you check with the pharmacy? Sometimes they need to be jogged a little. No, I know, it's just the typical bureaucracy. Nothing we can really do about it..."

It takes Huang a second to notice my presence; still listening intently to the person on the phone, he holds up a placating finger, beckoning me to wait.

With a startled laugh, I realize he doesn't recognize me yet. I sink down into the chair across from his desk, trying to repress a grin of anticipation.

After a few seconds, Huang's eyes flicker up toward me distractedly – and then recognition hits him full force. He does an astonished double take, his mouth dropping open to form a perfect O of surprise. His pen falls out of his limp fingers and clatters to the desk.

For a long, awkward moment, the only sound is the woman chattering obliviously on the other end of the phone.

"Uh – that's great, Julie," Huang finally interrupts her, his voice pleasant but forced, his wide eyes never leaving my face. "Listen, can I call you back? Thanks..."

It takes him a few tries to put the receiver correctly back in the cradle; he's staring at me all the while.

"This... can't be," Huang finally manages. "Alex Cabot?"

"Yes," I answer quietly. I glance at the phone. "Do you have time?"

"Ah – of course I have time," he answers with a stunned laugh. "I just don't understand..."

I look Huang over carefully, contemplating how to answer, and I suddenly realize what a toll the last three years have taken on him. The changes are subtle, but deep. He'd always been a compactly built man, but now his gray suit jacket hangs limply from his gaunt shoulders. Deep creases line his brow, crow's feet frame his eyes, and I'm startled to realize the jet-black hair at his temples is flecked with gray.

But it's perhaps his eyes that have changed the most. Gone is the lively intellectual spark I remember. Now, it's more like the tired glow of embers in the fireplace, as though his energy is somehow dissipated.

"Alex?" he prompts me gently.

Startled, I jolt back to attention and hope he doesn't realize what was going through my mind.

"I was in witness protection," I finally answer. The words sound strangely factual coming out of my mouth, as though I'm talking about someone else. "My last case – I don't know if you remember it. Colombian drug lords." I stop abruptly, realizing the scandal has probably taught him more about drug lords than he'd like to know.

"Ah- yes. I see," Huang replies, although the bewilderment on his face hasn't completely receded. If the mention of drug lords bothers him, it doesn't show. "I... I still can't believe it."

His reaction is so astonished, so heartfelt that I can't help but feel a swell of embarrassment. And again I find myself simply deciding not to acknowledge it. "It's good to see you again."

He nods eagerly. "I'm glad you came by. We all missed you..."

"I missed everyone too," I whisper, glancing down at my hands self-consciously. "Things are... pretty different now, though."

Huang's shoulders stiffen fractionally. "I take it I'm not the first person you've seen."

"I saw Munch and Fin earlier today." It's the best I can offer by way of explanation; I still haven't fully processed everything they told me.

Huang nods. "I suppose you heard quite a story."

"Yeah, I did." I give him a hard look, and the accusation is flying out of my mouth before I can stop it. "Something about using classified information to aid gang warfare."

Huang cringes, unconsciously pressing a hand to his midsection. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

I gape at him for a few moments. It was one thing to hear Fin and Munch tell me he did it; it's quite another to hear it directly from his lips. I can't completely keep the edge of frustration out of my voice. "What the hell were you thinking? What – why would you do such a thing?"

Huang ducks his head, misery plain on his face. "Well, I can't speak for anybody else." His voice is a strained murmur. "But as for me, well... I was just so damn arrogant."

"What?" Whatever I'd been expecting to hear, that wasn't it. "What does that mean?"

"It means I thought I could do everything," he answers with a bitter shake of his head. "I thought, hey, I'm a psychiatrist, I can predict exactly how people will act. I can be a friend and therapist to Olivia without losing my objectivity. I'm an FBI agent, I can just do whatever I want with classified information."

I flinch. Though I was the one who brought it up, the fierce self-recrimination that floods Huang's voice is difficult to hear. "But how did it even start?"

He sighs, pondering for a long moment. "I guess it started at your... funeral." A thoughtful smile crosses his face at the oddity of what he's just said. "Olivia was beside herself. She tried to hide it, but... I could tell she was really hit hard." His eyes meet mine with a hesitant warmth. "Like I said, we really missed you."

"Thanks," I mumble awkwardly, feeling like a jerk for bringing up the scandal so soon after seeing him.

"Anyway, I'd say that was my first mistake," Huang continues. "I told Olivia she should talk to a counselor – a real counselor, not just me. But she said she wanted a friend, not a therapist. And I was arrogant enough to think I could do both." Pure disgust crosses his face. "Just a little bit of prodding from the great Doctor Huang, and Olivia would be right as rain. What a fucking ego I had."

I stare at him in shock, astonished at the acrid tone of his voice – not to mention the profanity. "What... what went wrong?"

"We..." he sighs. "We became friends. I know that sounds terrible, doesn't it, to say that's what went wrong? But I totally lost my objectivity. What irony – I'm supposed to be the shrink, and she completely sucked me in."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean..." His face darkens. "How can I explain it? I guess I was vulnerable too."

I lean back, startled. Vulnerability is not something I would have expected the tranquil psychiatrist to have, much less admit. "How so?"

"I..." Huang flails one hand in a wordless gesture, struggling to articulate. When he finally speaks, his voice carries a raw edge. "Did you know I had to read about your death in the newspaper?"

"What?" For a brief moment, I'm startled that my death was in the newspaper at all. "What are you..."

"I mean, I know I wasn't involved with your last case," he continues. "But somebody could have called me, you know? Let me know. But they didn't. When I saw the paper that morning, it was... quite a shock. And it brought home to me how little I..." He shrugs limply. "And you know what was worse? When I showed up to your funeral, the way people looked at me – I think they were genuinely surprised to see me, surprised to learn that I... actually cared about something other than crazy people..."

"George," I cut in firmly. "Nobody thought that about you. The Zapata case had so much secrecy, we couldn't..."

He laughs. "Alex, yes they did. You don't have to be nice." The smile fades from his face. "Don't you see? It wasn't your fault, it was mine. I'm the one who closed myself off, who didn't let anyone get involved, who..." He shrugs weakly. "Well, you know."

His self-castigation is difficult to hear; I try to steer the conversation back to the story. "So you and Olivia..."

"So, yes. We became friends." His dark eyes flash. "And I'd like to pretend I had completely altruistic motives when I helped her, but who am I kidding? It was just as much about me as her. And so, when she'd lash out at the Cartel, and how they were getting away with murder, I just thought... if I could help her somehow, tell her something to make her feel better, just give her something to hang on to..." He purses his lips thoughtfully. "And actually, she was right. The FBI really had been sitting on Cartel information and doing nothing with it. Politics with the DEA..."

I tilt my head inquisitively. "Did you know that at the time?"

"Not until..." He bites his lip. "Not until I snuck in and read the files. At first, that's all it was. Curiosity. Just – wanting to know, wanting to give Olivia some hope." He fiddles absently with a pen. "As you probably know, it soon went far beyond that."

"When did you start stealing the information?"

"Pretty quickly, actually," he answers after a moment's consideration. "Again, arrogance. I thought I knew exactly what she was going to do with it – just read it and be consoled that the FBI was wiretapping Velez and his people. I was such an idiot."

"She didn't do what you expected."

Huang laughs bitterly. "That's putting it mildly. No, I'd say Olivia had exactly the opposite reaction. She was furious that we had all this information and we weren't doing anything with it. I completely failed to anticipate..."

"That she'd go to narcotics."

"That, for starters." He shrugs. "But you know, even if she'd only been giving the information to the guys in narcotics, I could have lived with that. It wasn't until..." Grief edges his features, and he rubs absently at his chest, as though trying to soothe a deeply buried wound. "There was a horrific shoot-out down at the docks. The Triads ambushed the Cartel, killed about 15 Colombians... plus an 18-year-old prostitute who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." He runs a hand through his hair, and the misery in his eyes suddenly makes him look ten years older. "I was suspicious that the Triads had been tipped off – the time and place were just too similar to something I'd talked about with Olivia. But when I confronted her, she denied everything. And I – I was so desperate to believe her, to believe that I hadn't been responsible for all that killing..."

"You couldn't have known," I cut in, although I can't deny a healthy sense of skepticism. Was he really so naïve?

"But I was at the start of the information chain. If I hadn't passed it along to Olivia, none of it would have..." Huang's voice is harsh, as though it's being scraped out of his throat. "For god's sake, that girl was pregnant."

"George," I murmur softly. No words I can think of will ease the desperate grief on his face, but I have to try, vaguely aware that I'm just repeating myself. "You didn't know."

"I didn't want to know." His voice is hollow. "But deep down, I did. As soon as I read it in the paper. It matched one of the shipments I talked to Olivia about. I just – I went into total denial. And you know, for a little while, it worked."

"What happened?" I ask quietly.

"A second, similar incident. The Triads ambushed a Cartel leader in the middle of traffic. This time three innocent bystanders were killed." His eyes are anguished, the pain as fresh as if it's just happened yesterday. "Four innocent people, dead because of me. And I could no longer pretend it wasn't my fault."

"Why didn't you stop?"

"I wanted to." He expels a fierce sigh. "But I was in too deep by that point."

"You mean you didn't want to get in trouble." I can't quite keep the accusation out of my voice.

Huang's eyes flicker up toward me guiltily. "Alex, if it had just been about the information, I would've been happy to take the fall."

"What?" I ask, bewildered. "What else was there besides the information?"

He sits back in his chair and favors me with a contemplative look. "Let me show you something."

Huang opens his top desk drawer and rifles briefly through its contents. After a moment, he draws out a photograph. He rises from his chair, and I momentarily notice that he truly is much thinner than when I last saw him.

Unaware of my scrutiny, he circles the desk and seats himself in the chair next to me. He wordlessly hands me the photograph, and as I look down at the photo, I'm dimly aware that he's watching me with nervous, expectant eyes.

My mouth drops open slightly as I take in the subject of the picture. It's Huang, all right, but his arms are wrapped possessively around a man with curly black hair, deep bronze skin and impossibly wide, coal-black eyes. A lively grin animates the other man's face.

I laugh inwardly; I guess that answers a few questions about his home life. "What's his name?"

Huang's face softens with relief. "Paul." A fond smile touches his features. "We were together for six years."

"Six years?!" I ask. That was well before I'd gone into the witness protection program. "I never knew..."

"That was the general idea," Huang chuckles. "Nobody was supposed to know. Paul was a fellow agent – a translator. The FBI generally doesn't approve of such relationships." He shakes his head bitterly. "We were in totally different departments. It wouldn't have been a problem if we'd been a straight couple."

"So you were being blackmailed," I realize.

Huang nods, sullenness briefly touching his face. "Olivia had me over a barrel."

"I can't see her doing that," I protest. "She wouldn't really tell anyone."

"Maybe not," he acknowledges, "but her buddies in narcotics let me know they had no such compunctions. Any of them could've gone to my boss at anytime, and my career would've been over."

"Wasn't it finished anyway when you stole the information?"

He snorts. "Yeah. And to be honest, I didn't care if she outed me. But it wasn't just my career I was gambling with; it was Paul's, too." He winces, and his hand again flies to his chest. "And Paul... he had no idea. I never breathed a word of what I was doing. At first, because it didn't seem like a big deal – but then, when I realized what I'd gotten myself involved in, I couldn't possibly tell him." He eyes me plaintively. "He'd hate me."

"Oh, god," I murmur sympathetically.

"I backed myself into a terrible corner," Huang bursts out, his eyes wild with shame. "If I confessed, Paul would find out what I was doing. If I stopped, the FBI would find out about Paul. If I kept passing the information, I was helping kill innocent people." He makes a desperate noise, somewhere between a sigh and a moan. "I was a wreck. I was throwing up blood from all the stress, but I couldn't get out. Every alternative I had was so much worse."

I place a hand on his shoulder, eyeing the psychiatrist with intense pity. "So what finally changed?"

He turns to me, lifting an eyebrow. "Psych test."

I nod, remembering what Fin told me earlier. "They said there was a rumor..." I pause guiltily, but Huang doesn't seem bothered. "A rumor that you failed one."

He laughs harshly. "That's putting it mildly."

"What happened?"

"Well, you know, we shrinks get tested regularly – you know, so it's not the blind leading the blind." He sits back in the chair with a bemused shake of his head. "I had a full-on panic attack during mine. Chest pains, couldn't breathe, passed out, the whole nine yards. When I woke up and saw the doctor standing over me... I knew it was over. The FBI was already looking for the informant. It was just a matter of time." He pauses meditatively. "Although in some ways, it's the best thing that could've happened to me. I finally had a reason to come clean."

"So you confessed."

His expression darkens. "I told Paul first – I wanted to give him time to clear out." Huang's head droops despondently. "We're... not together anymore."

"I'm sorry," I offer. With a flash of pity, I realize Huang still has the picture of them together, and I wonder how much he's gotten over the breakup.

"I deserved it," Huang replies flatly. "I lied to him for a year straight."

"You didn't mean to," I answer firmly.

"I guess not, but it didn't really matter." He gives a tired shrug. "Anyway, the day after I talked to Paul, I went to the investigators and turned myself in. Worst day of my life, but also the best." He leans back in his chair, a small smile curving his mouth. "You know, I fully expected to go to jail, but I didn't care. I knew I deserved to face punishment." His face is suddenly somber. "I didn't realize I'd get off the luckiest..."

Judging from the haunted look in his eyes, the beaten-down slump of his shoulders and the haggard lines on his face, I'm skeptical at his claim that he's the lucky one. But I say none of that out loud. "People who confess usually do."

"Yeah." He looks down at his hands. "Olivia was furious."

I wince. "I guess I can see why."

"She took it personally." He purses his lips. "She thought I was getting my revenge on her, that I was trying to screw up her little crusade against the Cartel... the truth was that I just didn't care. I just wanted it all to stop." His face and his voice are distant. "She hates me now."

"I find that hard to believe..." I trail, remembering the friendly, vivacious Olivia I left behind.

"Well, I'd hate me too," Huang admits. "After all, she went to jail, and I just got this job."

"Is it..." I glance around the cramped office. "Do they treat you well here?"

"Sure. I mean, I now have plenty of time for research," he tells me, although if that prospect excites him, it's not apparent. "It's better this way. Even if the scandal hadn't happened, I still would've had to come out at some point. This way, I still get to help people, but my boss here doesn't care who I date. And my family gets to think I got fired for corruption instead of... that."

"They still don't know?" I ask incredulously.

He laughs. "No, they don't. They're very traditional. I succeeded for them in every other respect – medical school, the FBI, but..." His thin shoulders jerk in a tired shrug. "Sad, isn't it? I'm a 43-year-old man, and I still can't tell my parents."

"It's okay," I tell him gently. "At least you're... mostly out, I guess."

"Yeah," he nods. His voice is distant as he tries to repack the flood of memories. "I haven't talked about this in a long time."

"I-" I pause awkwardly. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." His gaze swings to mine. "You deserve to know. I can't imagine what it like – for us, it happened over a long period of time, but for you..." His dark eyes are gentle, inquisitive. "How long have you been back?"

I smile faintly, realizing Huang just switched into shrink mode – that tranquil, relaxing demeanor. "I've been out of the program for two weeks, but I only got back to the city today."

He nods. "What was it like? Witness protection, I mean."

I glumly recall a harbor filled with endless gray water. "Terrible."

"You didn't like where you were?"

"No, it was a nice town, it just..." I exhale a sharp sigh. I don't even know how to begin describing the flat, dull depression of the last three years.

"Pretending to be someone you're not?" Huang supplies quietly.

With a start, I realize he's not just trying to "shrink" me – he's speaking from personal experience. "I guess that was part of it. But what was worse, was just... not being able to go after what I wanted, always afraid I'd be found out if I stuck my head up too far, not being able to tell people around me what was going on..."

Huang nods, deep empathy in his voice. "Believe me, I know what that's like."

"I guess you would." I look up at him sharply, and in an instant, I feel a flash of our old complicity. It's not quite the same lively, intellectual rapport we used to have; it's a little wearier, but also deeper and more real, having been tempered by harsh experience. "Forty-three years, you said?"

He laughs. A serene smile ghosts across his face. "At least we're both out now."

-END CHAPTER 4-

Author's Notes: There really was an incident a few years back where the FBI fired a slew of gay agents – mostly translators. Way to go, guys.

I also freely admit I have no idea what the inside of Bellevue or its Old Administration Building – apparently two separate structures – look like. If anybody would like to pay for my plane ticket to New York so I can do some research, be my guest. ;)

Coming up next: Elliot Stabler. How's his life in Jersey? How is he coping without Kathy? Tune in next time...