TITLE: Living Ghost

AUTHOR: DramaLexy

SUMMARY: My ideas on how Alex came back to NYC and what's been going on with her lately. SVU/Conviction crossover. Starts after Conviction Ep 5 and speculates a bit on OE stuff for SVU.

DISCLAIMER: If I owned SVU, I'd be a happy person. If I owned Conviction...there's a long list of things I'd change. But alas, I don't own and I keep watching anyway...

AUTHORS NOTES: So I've been getting pretty annoyed lately with the lack of explanation for Alex's return. So I come up with an answer that got some SVU characters in the mix. (I loved the relationship with Alex & Elliot in "Ghost," so I played with that a bit.) Hope you enjoy!

Alex wasn't exactly sure why everything had been turning into an argument with Steele lately. When an innocent child's life is ended, someone has to pay. Shaking a baby to death isn't the kind of thing you can take back with an 'oops, sorry'. "Call me crazy," she told him, "But I like to go for murder when someone kills a five month old infant."

Steele nodded slightly in concession. "Me, too," he told her, "But it's my case and I'd prefer to win."

"You can always reduce the charge," she suggested. She liked winning, too, and wanted this argument to go in her own 'W' column.

Jim tossed his ball up in the air, catching it cleanly as he leaned forward in his seat. "Hey, let's talk about this over dinner. My place?"

Alex looked down. She'd been waiting for that. "I can't tonight; I'm sorry. I have plans."

He took the bait, like she'd wanted. "Plans?"

"Last night was a mistake," she began. He didn't argue with her, not yet. " Robert and I got engaged this morning." He looked away, rolling his eyes, unable to believe she was serious. People don't sleep with their ex, and then get engaged to their boyfriend the next morning.

There were a million questions he could have asked, and maybe one of them would have done some good. The look on her face as she stared at her desk told him that something was going on – something was wrong – but then she looked up, her eyes meeting his, and he lost his nerve. With another roll of his eyes, Steele got up and left.

Things were busy around the office all day, but Alex finally got a chance to think on the subway ride home. She wasn't sure what she'd wanted from Steele that morning. Maybe she just needed to find out if he still cared, and obviously he didn't. Caring had never been a part of their deal.

Alex had gotten back to Manhattan around Christmastime. She'd had some trouble believing that she was actually home to STAY. The witness protection program had ruined several good relationships for her solely because she couldn't stick around. She'd had to be so many people. Rachel. Sara. Heather. Emily. Nicole. Commitments usually left everyone hurt, so Jim's concept of a relationship had been appealing to her. Dinner at good restaurants, sex when they wanted it, but, most importantly, no strings attached. If she hadn't gotten the offer to be bureau chief a month or so after her return to the city, maybe they would have kept going down that road. But things changed, like they always did. Change was quickly becoming her only constant.

Getting off the train at her stop, she headed up the stairs and down the street toward the house where she lived. Even with the rock on her finger, she still couldn't call it her house; it was just where she lived, with Robert.

"Hey," Robert said as he came down the stairs, holding a file. "If I'd known you were going to be done at the office this early, sweetheart, I could have picked you up on my way back."

"That's okay."

"Dinner's not ready yet; you want to just go out somewhere?"

"Has Graciela already started cooking?" Alex loved his cook; the kindly older woman had been attempting to help her improve her skills in the kitchen.

"Probably, but it'll keep. Besides, you could wear that black dress of yours."

Alex smiled. "You mean the one that magically appeared in my closet one day and you hoped I wouldn't notice where it came from?"

Robert grinned. "Yeah, that's the one."

"We can go out tomorrow, honey," she promised.

"All right, fine…but will you still wear the dress tonight?"

Alex smiled. "You're incorrigible."

"I love beautiful women in beautiful things."

"Fine. But I'm taking a bubble bath first."

"Stressful day at the office?"

She considered that. "Aren't they all?"

Alex had her own room in Robert's house, although she hadn't been using the bed too often lately. She did, however, have an exquisite bathroom with a large tub that she now filled to the brim with water and bubbles. A few candles around the room made for a nice atmosphere. Sitting down in the bath, she held her breath, closed her eyes, and slipped under the surface.

Alex was used to everything in her life being under control. Two years ago, her control had slipped away along with the blood that had poured out of her shoulder. The sniper's bullet hadn't actually killed her, but some days she felt like it had.

She had almost grown accustomed to being a living ghost. ADA Cabot had been gone, but she still haunted the woman that was walking around in her body. Alex had always wanted to come back to New York. Now that she had, however, trying to pick everything up from where she'd left it wasn't going so well.

Her lungs were starting to feel like they were going to burst, so she sat back up and released the air that had been trapped in them. After she finished cleaning up and washing her hair, she got out of the tub and wrapped herself in a fluffy robe before going to find the dress that Robert wanted her to wear.

The garment was in the back, between a few other dresses that she'd bought since returning to New York. The dress had thin straps, but the front came up high enough that it covered the scar at the base of her shoulder. She wouldn't exactly say that she was self-conscious about the bullet hole, but it wasn't exactly something she liked to dwell on, and Robert knew that.

There were so many little things that he did for her; he really was a good man and along with the gifts he could buy her, there was one present he offered that didn't have a price – the stability that her life had so desperately lacked for the past two years. The thing he didn't realize, however, was that he had just become engaged to 'Sara', not to 'Alex'. Maybe a little of 'Nicole's personality was thrown in, too. The real her wasn't actually Robert's type at all. She'd perfected the art of being who others wanted her to be, burying her real self so well that she couldn't even figure out who she was anymore. It scared her. 'Alex' wasn't supposed to actually be dead, she was just hiding.

She was broken out of her thoughts by the sound of a knock on her door. "Alex?" Robert called to her. "Dinner should be done in five, honey."

"I'm getting dressed now," she replied. "I'll be right down."

TBC...