A/N: I don't own Flawless, I don't own L&O, you know the drill. If I owned Flawless, there woulda been a helluva lot more Cha-Cha, and Jackie Beat would have SUNGGG.

The next day, sure enough, Cha-cha was back at the hospital. Sure, Ivana was the reason she got raped, humiliated at the hands of three men she didn't even know. Yes, she was terrified for her life, her friends, and her dignity. Of course, the young drag queen was still visibly shaken from the whole incident. Still, cha-Cha drew a strange kind of comfort from being near the comatose body of the one person that knew her best.

She gazed at her friends from behind large, dark glasses. It was snowing hard outside, a heavy winter flurry of greyish snow. The room wasn't exactly brightly lit, either. No, the sunglasses were purely for her ego, so that nobody else could see her eyes- they'd become chocolate-brown pools of hurt, surrounded by a red puffy mass of swollen skin resulting from a night of crying and troubled sleep.

"Damn you, Ivana." She whispered, her hands trembling as she celnched them onto the armrests of the cheaply-upholstered chair she'd been sitting in. "If you knew what kind of hell I"m going through because of your drug-addicted ass..." Cha-cha covered her mouth and looked down at her lap.

"Vannie, I don't understand." She whispered, taking off the sunglasses and wiping her eyes, the mascara she didn't know why she was wearing running down her face and stinging her cheeks. "You bitch."

"Drugs, huh?" Ed wondered aloud from the other side of the room.

"Detective green?" Cha-cha asked shakily.

"Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to say that aloud." The detective said to the ceiling.

"It's...okay." The dancer whispered. "Sorry I woke you up."

Ed sat up, something that took a lot of effort with the bandage covering the bullet hole over his lower ribs.

"How'd you find out?" He asked the drag queen softly. Cha-cha was hesitant. "I can't make you say anything, but if it's..." he paused. "I can help you out." Ed said, suddenly in "detective mode" again.

"No..." The dancer shook her head. "You don't understand. you can't help me...you can't help either of us." Cha-cha choked back another sob.

"Cha-cha." The detective said firmly, raising her chin up with his hand so she should meet his eyes, even though hers were invisible. He wouldn't have called her by her first name, but she hadn't provided him with any other means of identification. "What happened to you? You weren't like this yesterday."

She shook her head violently away from his hands, loking back down at her lap. The whole scene from last night flashed through her mind over and over again. before she kenw what she was doing, her sunglasses were push up above her forehead and she ws sliding the cloth of her angora sweater off one arm to reveal the dark, finger shaped bruises marring her mocha-coloured skin.

Ed's expression did not change as he looked at these bruises. finally, he brought his eyes up to meet hers and asked, again,

"What happened to you?"

Cha-cha covered her shoulders back up and lowered her voice to a low whisper.

"Dr. Z. Dr. Z happened to me."

[DUN DUN

"Come on, Falco. how many drug dealers are there on Avenue B?"

"About a hundred..." The junior detective crossed his arms in annoyance. "What's your plan, question everyone that's ever dealt cocaine in Alphabet City? Good luck with that."

fontana rolled his eyes.

"Dont' exaggerate, Nick. The shooting happened on Crhis Gordon's tramping ground... you know, that guy that skulks around in the alleys and calls himself 'the Man' like some kind of martyr with a bone to pick?"

"Sorry, Joe. I don't exactly study the local drug dealers in my spare time." Nick Falco said sarcastically.

"Then you obviously haven't been working the city very long. Stop acting like a punk and come on. We're going to Avenue B."