"Let me see your cell phone," Morgan said during lunch. She stuffed a large mouthful of her salad in her mouth and hastily wiped Caesar dressing off her chin. If watching her eat like a pig didn't get this guy to relax, nothing would.

"Why?"

"Morbid curiousity." When he still didn't move, she said, "It's a surprise. What, you have nine-hundred numbers in it?"

He handed it to her warily. She flipped it open and scrolled through his contacts until she found the one she was looking for.

"Hello, the one-six please. Thank you." Elliot cocked an eyebrow at her accent, which was suddenly much thicker and smoother, which she returned. He laughed- not many people had his trick of only raising one.

"Yes, may I speak to the Captain please? Hello, I'm Miss McDonnel, the assistant director of Mountain Laurel where Detective Stabler is thinking of placing his daughter. I was hoping to see what date would be approriate for him to take some time to see our facility and work with us a bit with his daughter." She paused, and reached into her bag for a small notebook and pen. "That would be lovely. Thank you so much, sir. You too." She flipped the phone shut and handed it back to him.

"You are evil," he informed her, crossing his arms. Morgan laughed and batted her eyes innocently.

"Why? For your information, I got you the rest of today and tomorrow of. Consider yourself officially kidnapped." Another forkful of lettuce made it into her mouth. "Is your daughter home?"

"Yes," he replied, taking a bite of his own salad, which was much smaller than hers. "Why?"

"I'd like to meet her. She's the one I'll be dealing with for the next six months, not you."

"Six months!" Elliot exclaimed. He had expected six weeks, at most. He couldn't begin to imagine what Elizabeth needed six months of therapy for.

"Unless she wants to leave before then. Your daughter hasn't even begun to feel the full effects of her rape. Neither have you, for that matter. I won't do her the disservice of telling her she's fine, adios, goodnight and goodluck before she knows how bad it can be."

His blue eyes went from crystal to cobalt in an insant, closing to slits with intensity. She continued without giving him a chance to ask. "You'll find out what I mean. It's not anything I can tell you, or her. Nothing prepares you for it. What I went through won't be what she did; what anyone else experiences won't be the same. It's all relative. The worst thing that happened to her hurts her as badly as the worst thing that happened to me hurts me."

"Hurts," he said, laying his fork down for emphasis, steel ringing on the porcelain. Her eyes never left his throughout the conversation, sapphire to emerald. "Present tense."

Morgan unconciously jutted her chin outstubbornly. "I will always live with what happened to me. But it will not control me. There is no forgetting. There is no putting it behind you. Maybe other victims kid themselves into thinking they're not held by it-"

"Maybe some of them don't feel the need to have it define their lives."

"Take care to remember which one of us has more personal experience with this, Detective Stabler," she hissed, lowering her voice. Her jaw was clenched, and her eyes became as dark as his. "I'm trying to help you. I realize that's difficult, but I'd rather not have this turn into a pissing match over who knows what's best. You know your daughter better than I ever could. I know what it's like to be a rape victim. Both of us can help her. Don't think I can help her better than you can just because I know what it's like."

"And what is it like?" he asked softly. His anger had faded as her passion rose, and he had to give her credit for how much she seemed to care about his daughter, a girl she had never met.

Morgan knew what had pissed him off- he didn't want to think his daughter would always carry this burden for the rest of her life. He wanted his daughter to be innocent again, to not know what it's like for the world to be so hideously unfair. She let it go, but even then... she wasn't about to tell him what her life was like. Somehow, even though she shared it with hundreds of people on a stage twice a year for her job, it seemed too personal to tell him, just him.

She looked aside, her gaze following the cars on the street outside the window. Elliot recognized the look on her face- the look of someone trying to put into words what they wished they didn't even know. He suddenly felt like he was taking a victim's statement, and he felt the familiar surge of anger for whoever had hurt her.

The arrival of their food spared her having to answer. She accepted her plate with a nod of thanks, as did Elliot.

"I can't believe you got fish. At a steakhouse. Dead Texans should haunt you in your sleep."

"Pot calling kettle black," he said, crossing his arms.

"What?"

"Nice subject change."

"Oh, bite me," she said with her mouth full. "Eat your fish before I smack you." She sliced another piece of her steak off, and dipped it in sauce before putting it daintily in her mouth. "I've been shrinked by better men than you, my dear."

"Same to you," he said, taking an exordinate amount of care in cutting his fish.

"So what do you think of me, then?" she asked unexpectedly after a moment of silence.

Her question caught him off-guard, and he quickly swallowed. "You're strong."

"Thank you." She was still looking at him expectantly. "And?"

"You obviously know what to do..."

"How do you think I'll be for your daughter? For you?"

This gave him pause, and he rested his chin on his hand. "I think she'll like you. She likes Olivia, and you remind me of her."

Morgan snorted. "God I hope not." He raised his eyebrows in surprise, and she answered with a laugh, "The last thing I need is for someone with as much repressed sexual tenstion as you to decide I'll do as a subtistute." She raised her drink and downed the last of the syrupy ice at the bottom in one long tilt. She smacked her lips and sat it down, thenburst out laughing when shesaw the look on his face. It was somewhere between amusement and horror- which told her she'd been right on the money.

"Oh, please. Don't tell me you wouldn't if she was anyone but your partner."

"What- I- you- how-" he stammered, having no idea how to answer that. She stopped him as he started to repeat himself.

"Don't hurt yourself," she said, still chortling to herself. "I apologize for my lack of tact."

Elliot wisely chose not to dignify this with comment. Morgan laughed again, and polished off her steak.

"So, how about we go see this daughter of yours."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

"Kinda nice for a cop," Morgan said as she walked up the stairs to Elliot's apartment.

"Detective."

"Ah, right. 'Scuse me." Elliot unlocked the door and held it open for her.

"Lizzie?" No answer. "Elizabeth?" he called a bit more urgently

A head with tousled hair poked around the corner. "What are you doing home?"

"I live here," Elliot said jokingly. Elizabeth smiled, then saw Morgan.

"Hey. I'm Morgan." She smiled back and got a wave in return.

"Elizabeth."

"Captain gave me the rest of the day off," Elliot explained. "You hungry?"

"No, I just ate. What's up?"

"I'm a friend of your dad's," Morgan said. "I wanted to check if it was okay with you if I crashed here for awhile." Elliot tried to hide his surprise at both these lies- clearly, asking him to play along wasn't part of her plan.

"Yeah, sure. Fight you for the couch, though," Elizabeth said. "Where the heck are you from?"

"Lizzie," her dad said. She rolled her eyes at him as Morgan replied, "Texas, darlin'. Just a good ol' country girl." Elizabeth laughed, and they all sat down on the couch, Morgan in the middle.

"Why did you move here?"

"Jobs. More work for me up here."

"What do you do?"

"I have a degree in special ed," Morgan said smoothly. This is going perfectly, she thought to herself.

"Oh, okay."

"Morgan works with Dr. Huang sometimes. With disabled kids," Elliot said, providing her with an explanation for how they knew each other.

They made small chat for a little longer,drinking soda and flipping through the channels to find that nothing's on in the middle of the day, finallytalking about work and school and how much traffic sucked and how much better Morgan thought Texas was, to which both Elliot and Elizabeth vehemently disagreed with- when Morgan played her hand.

She peeled her long-sleeved shirt off, revealing the tank top she had on underneath.

"Sorry, I'm kinda hot," she said non-chalantly. She reached forward to grab her Coke can and in the process showed Elizabeth the numerous scars on her arm. Elizabeth stopped in the middle of her sentence.

"Where- how..." she started. She took a breath and asked, "What happened to you?"

Morgan gulped her soda then sighed. "Asked someone too many personal questions."

Elizabeth laughed, and Elliot flicked his eyes to his daughter's arms. He didn't see any scars, but then again, he hadn't noticied Morgan's until she had shown him. He wondered what secrets lay underher skin.

"Did you do that?" Elizabeth asked, knowing she was being rude but she had to know.

"Mmm-hm," Morgan said simply, nodding her head. "I was really fucked up when I was your age." Elizabeth looked at her sideways, and Morgan laughed. "Trust me. It gets better, I promise."

"Hey, Elliot, would you go out to the car and grab my purse? I left my cell in it." She had done no such thing- she in fact had brought it in with her and dropped it cleverly beside the chair so that her long jacket covered it. But she knew it would occupy him for a few minutes, at least.

As soon as Elliot left the room, Morgan leaned towards Elizabeth. "Your dad told me what happened to you." She saw her stiffen immediatly, and said quickly, "He told me because the same thing happened to me. That's why I'm here. I wanted to talk to you and see if maybe... talking to someone who'd been through it would help."

"Well it won't," Elizabeth snapped. "Nothing will help. Nothing will make this go away! God, what IS it with you people! Why do you expect everything to get better every time I rehash this fucking story, so you can pat me on the head and tell me it wasn't my fault! You don't even know what HAPPENED! How do you know I didn't throw myself stark naked at his feet and beg for it!"

"Because if you had," Morgan said quietly, "that still doesn't give anyone the right to hurt you. To make you bleed. If you had asked for it, if you had wanted it, it wouldn't give you nightmares. You wouldn't wake up sweating and screaming and your nails drawing blood in your own hand because your fist is clenched so tight."

Elizabeth wiped her face, just realizing there were tears running down it. Morgan moved a little closer and asked, "Does that make sense, Elizabeth? They don't call it assault for nothing." She paused, wondering how far to push her luck. "No one asks to be mugged, or to be stabbed, or to get hit by a car. And no one asks to be raped."

"What if I love him," Elizabeth whispered. "What if I wanted it at first, but then I didn't... and I didn't have the guts to tell him no?"

Morgan grabbed her hand. "How badly were you hurt?"

Elizabeth's voice dropped to a mere breeze. "He... put things... in me. I didn't know he would do that- I just thought-"

"What, honey?" Elliot said from the door, "Morgan, I couldn't find-" and then he saw his daughter's tear-streaked face, Morgan holding her hand and looking close to tears herself. He took his place beside her once again, and looked at Morgan with a million questions in his eyes.

She didn't have the answer to any of them.