(Disclaimer: I do not own Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The show, the characters, etc., all belong to that creative genius, Dick Wolf and that big corporation called NBC. Don't sue me!)

(Summary: What happens when it's personal?)

(A/n: Just to throw this out, so I don't get a million angry reviews - this is a little bit on the AU - just slightly. But it's mostly canon. I think.)

8351 Jewel Street, Brooklyn.

8:15 A.M..

I slam the car door shut behind me, looking up at the house in Brooklyn where I'd been called to. Old and abandoned, it looks pretty damn scary. Like something out of a horror movie. The type of house kids sneak into for a thrill on some dark night.

I walk through a bunch of uniforms, around a squad car and under a barrier of yellow crime scene tape, before I get to the front door. I open the door and pull the flashlight from my belt, to see by. "Someone? What do we got?"

My partner comes down the stairs, and each one creaks. "I think this is one of the first times we've had a crime scene in the dark, huh?"

"Yeah. So why are we here?"

"Patrol had gotten reports from the neighbors of kids using this place as a party pad. This morning, they stopped in to check it out and found our vic in an upstairs bedroom."

I follow Elliot back up the stairs, ignoring something in my mutinous brain that's demanding I give up this madness and go back to sleep for the next few hours. We worked late three nights in a row this week. I had just started to fall asleep this morning, when Cragen woke me, told me we'd caught this case.

Instead of Warner, there's an assistant ME kneeling by the naked body of a woman in the said upstairs bedroom. "White female, mid or late thirties - strangulation would be my unofficial guess." He points to the heavy, dark, finger-shaped bruising on her throat. How many times have we seen that before?

"Time of death?" I rub my eyes, trying not to yawn.

"Within the last ten to twelve hours. And it's my guess that this is a dump job. There are marks on her side - she died, lying on her side, somewhere, but she was put here, on her back."

"Rape kit?" Elliot questions, as I look around the bedroom. It's icy cold and bare of all furniture, but something seems familiar. I don't hear the ME's answer, as I leave the room and go back down the stairs, slowly, convinced that I've been in this house before. The address is fixed in my brain - that seems familiar, too. I step out the front door and look around. The houses on the street look somewhat familiar. There are half-images, half-remembered things flashing through my brain too fast for me to focus on any particular one. I know I've been here.

"Liv? What the hell?" My partner's followed me outside.

"I've been here." I murmur. "I know this house." Something tells me I have to look at the backyard. I step around to the back of the old place. The same tall, mature trees have grown some, but I can remember climbing one, as a child and my grandmother yelling at me from the kitchen window. Oh, crap.

I go back inside, through the front door, and look at the banister on the stairs, remembering sliding down it, as my grandmother watched me in horror and my grandfather laughed. This was my grandparents' house.

"Elliot?"

He's right there, giving me a 'what-the-hell' look. "What?"

"Call the boss. This one's personal."

"Huh?"

"This was my grandparents' house. That upstairs room, where our vic is?"

"Yeah."

"I was conceived in that room."

He stares at me, almost not believing me. But then he must see the serious look on my face. "You're kidding."

"No."

Captain Donald Cragen looks at me, when he arrives. "So you just figured it out now that this was your grandparents' house?"

I sigh. "I haven't been here since - it had to be the '70's. My grandfather was unionized - a plant worker - and after the last of their kids left home, they sold this place and used his housing benefits to get an apartment. I was a kid, the last time I was here."

"Walk me through the house - the way it used to be."

I sigh and point to the first room past the stairs, down the hall, on the left. "That was the living room. Next to that, there's the kitchen and the dining room. Back door's in the kitchen." I show them the rooms, then lead my partner and boss back up the stairs. "This banister - I remember getting yelled at for sliding down this." I blink, at the upstairs of the house, trying to remember. "Okay - that's the bathroom." I indicate the room to the left of the stairs. "Master bedroom's here"- I point down, to the very end of the hall. "My mother had a brother and a sister - this was her sister, Sandy's room." I nod to one of the smaller bedrooms to the right of the bathroom.

"Her little brother Charlie - this was his room." I try the doorknob of the room opposite our crime scene. "And this was my mother's room." I nod to the crime scene.

"Did they ever switch rooms, move the kids around?" Cragen raises an eyebrow.

I shake my head. "I remember this, because Sandy was still at home, when I was little - she didn't move out, till she got married."

"Any ID on our vic?"

"No." I shake my head. "Now, this could be crazy coincidence, or it could be planned. What I don't get - why go through all the trouble of dragging a body up those stairs, if you just want to dump it somewhere?"

"Good point." Elliot gently steadies me, with a hand on my shoulder. "Your mother's brother and sister - where are they?"

"Charlie's gone. Sandy's out in Connecticut. I don't have her number - I'll give her a call when we get back to the house."