A/N: Still don't own anything. Muse is back to balancing three different fandoms at once, and now it's stuck on SVU. For clarification on a timeline for this, everything from the prologue on is set from around August 17th of this year and going forward. There will probably be various hints of season nine canon in early parts, and season ten in later parts, and there you have it.

All of the lights in the house were off when she got there. It wasn't really as surprising as it was somewhat disturbing, because she knew exactly what her partner was doing. It was the same thing she'd done after they had closed the case at Sealview: sit in the dark, stare at nothing, and hope that everything would be all right. But it wasn't really that easy. She knew even without really knowing that nothing was going to convince her partner that everything would be fine, because his entire world had been turned upside down a month ago. And at the moment, it didn't look like anything would be able to put it right side up again.

Olivia knocked once on the front door of the Stabler family home, but no answer came, and so she tried the knob, only to find that it was unlocked. A low sigh escaped her as she pushed the door open, stepped inside and took off her shoes. The television was on in the living room, and it was there that she knew she would find Elliot. Sure enough, he was there, staring blankly at the screen. She had the feeling that he didn't even know what he was watching, but didn't say anything.

"I know you're there, Liv," Elliot said finally. "And I did try to sleep. It just didn't work."

"I didn't think it would. It was still worth a shot. You're going to run yourself into the ground like this," Olivia replied, and came to sit beside him on the couch. "How're you holding up?"

"Let's see," said Elliot, half-sarcastically. "I'm sitting here in the dark with nothing but the television on, and I don't even know what the hell I'm watching. How do you think I'm holding up?"

"Fair enough." Olivia trailed off and glanced towards the television for a brief moment before turning on the lamp sitting on the end table. "CSU finished running through that rowhouse."

"Did they find anything for us to go on?" Elliot asked, and when she looked away, he sighed. "I didn't think so."

"They're going to come up with something. They'll run through that place a hundred times if we ask them to. We're not giving up on this."

Hearing this was less of a comfort than it had been two weeks ago. Elliot cast an exasperated sigh at the television and reached for the remote so that he could turn it off before looking back at her.

"We were so damn close," he said, unable to keep his voice from shaking. "What the hell are we missing, Liv? How could we have let them slip through our fingers like that?"

"We did the best we could with what we had," said Olivia, slowly. She waited briefly for a reaction, but when there was none, she continued. "They know what they're doing, Elliot. They led us there knowing that they wouldn't be there when we showed up. It's not anyone's fault, and it's sure as hell not yours."

Elliot sighed again and got to his feet, wandering off towards the kitchen. Olivia got up and followed after him, turning on the lights as she did.

"Cragen pulled a lot of strings with the brass to keep you on this case," she said, quietly. "Don't tell me you're going to give up now."

Elliot glared at her. "I'm not giving anything up," he told her, bluntly. "I know how many strings Cragen had to pull. The brass don't like me. I've known that for a while, it doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the fact that we can't get anywhere with this. Most crimes are solved within the first 48, Liv. It's now been exactly seven hundred and forty-four hours. So what is that supposed to tell me?"

"You know they're alive, Elliot. You saw the pictures."

"But I don't know what these people have done to them. Those pictures don't tell us anything, they don't give us anything, we're flying blindly into a storm here, Liv, and there's nothing to get us to where we should be!"

Water flowed out of the tea kettle he'd put in the sink to fill; distracted by this, he turned the water off and lifted the kettle out, wiping it off with a dishtowel before putting it on the stove and turning on the burner. Olivia sat down at the counter, and watched this for a moment before picking up where he'd left off.

"So we take a look at what we have. You said it yourself, you think we're missing something. If we take a look at it, odds are we'll probably pick up on it," she said. "It's all we've got now, Elliot, so don't look at me like that. We might as well run with it."

Elliot looked over at her with raised eyebrows. "I don't suppose you brought it all with you," he said. Olivia held up the messenger bag that she'd carried inside with her.

"I told the captain I was going home to take a look at it," she said, without looking her partner in the eye. "I didn't necessarily tell him which home I was going to. Figured you might work better outside the squad room."

Elliot laughed. "You're real creative when you want to be, Liv," he said. "We can set up in here; the table should give us enough room."

He glanced over at the aforementioned table and cut himself off before could go on again. There on the flat, polished surface was a geometry book, a pencil case and various folders, all of which contained homework of some sort.

"I'll clean that up," he said, finally. "Just...watch the kettle for me, will you?"

Olivia nodded, mutely, and turned to watch as her partner quickly gathered up the things that Dickie and Elizabeth had left across the table, before disappearing into the entryway to go upstairs. As the sound of his footsteps faded, she pulled the case files out of the messenger bag and put them out across the counter instead. The kettle started to whistle after another moment, and she got up, just as Elliot came sliding back into the kitchen.

"Forgot that was there," he said, without looking at her as he went towards the stove. "I...haven't really been home much."

"Where've you been, then?" Olivia asked, startled by this. "All those times Cragen told you to come back home, where'd you go?"

"My aunt's house, on Staten Island," said Elliot, still without looking at her. "You want a cup of tea?"

"That sounds great," Olivia replied, and then, "So, what made you come back here if you know you could go there?"

Elliot shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Part of it was that I didn't feel like imposing on her anymore, which is stupid, because I know she doesn't mind, but...I just wanted to be home."

It made enough sense. Olivia decided not to pry any further and instead took the cup he held out to her as he came to sit beside her at the counter.

"So what's all this?" he asked. "Is this all we've got?"

"Copies of it," said Olivia. "I got Munch to do it for me; couldn't risk taking the original files in case anything happened. I figured if we looked a little bit harder, we might come across something that might at least tell us who these people are."

"Assuming there's more than one of them, but then...There's gotta be. If there was one person, my kids would have been able to take him if Kathy couldn't, and they would have at least tried."

"But they wouldn't have done anything that would have put themselves directly in harm's way."

"Unless someone was threatening their mother. I know my kids, Liv. They wouldn't take that sitting down."

"Ok, so..." Olivia got up and motioned towards the table. "We know the twins were here when these people came in, so where was everyone else?"

"I'm not following you," said Elliot, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"If there was more than one person, then they might have stormed the whole house looking for everyone who might be here," said Olivia. "If the twins were here, they wouldn't have been seen right away, and they would have been able to make it upstairs, wouldn't they?"

"That leaves four more people," said Elliot. "I don't...I don't think they were all downstairs. You can't see the stairs from the living room, and it explains why Elizabeth's door was kicked open."

"So they knew people were missing, then. Someone who knows your family or at least how many people are in it."

"I don't understand why the twins would have gone...Eli must have been upstairs."

The silence that fell after this was more than just a little bit unwelcome. Elliot shifted uncomfortably in his seat and cast a sideways look at Olivia.

"If these people pushed their way in, the twins would have heard. They would have gone upstairs so that Eli wouldn't be alone when they were found," he said. "That would leave Maureen and Kathleen down here with Kathy."

"Is there a phone upstairs?"

"Yeah. In the hall, between the twins' rooms. Whoever came through here broke it."

"Doesn't mean we can't still get the records and find out if they tried to call for help." Olivia pulled out her cell phone and flipped it open. "I'll talk to TARU and see if they can get it done."

Canvassing had never been a favorite part of an investigation for either one of them. It was necessary, of course, but one of those things that every now and then, they wished they could do without. In some cases, however, talking to people over and over again was completely unavoidable, and this was one of them.

"Are you saying you never heard anything from next door, at all?" John asked, and the person he and Fin were talking to, a woman by the name of Jen Matson, shook her head.

"Nothing," she replied. "They were really quiet. Didn't get out much. I only saw the wife that one time, right before they left."

"What'd she look like?" Fin asked, and Jen frowned slightly before picking up where she'd left off.

"She was about my height, blonde hair, blue eyes...Wearing an NYPD shirt that had the name Stabler on the back."

"Are you sure about that?" John asked. "You saw the name?"

"Yeah, I saw the name," Jen replied, "Why?"

"Just confirming," said Fin, before his partner could make any remarks that matched the incredulous look on his face. "Anything we can get helps out."

"I'll bet." Jen looked at her watch and sighed. "Listen, guys, I don't mean to rush you, but I've really got to get to work."

"We'll show ourselves out, but one last question," said John. "Do you have any idea where they were headed?"

Jen shook her head again. "All I heard was that they'd been visiting relatives and they were headed home. Normal neighborhood gossip, y'know? I don't know where they were going."

"Thanks. We'll let you know if we need you for anything else," said Fin, and he turned to leave, with John following after him.

"This means Kathy is alive," he said, once they were out on the sidewalk. "The picture was faked."

"Thank God," said Fin, sounding as relieved as he knew his partner felt. "But why would they bother?"

"Probably hoped Elliot would be the first to see it," said John. "The point is that we know it was a load of crap."

"Doesn't help us find out where they went." Fin trailed off for a moment and sighed. "We need to go ahead and find out who owns that rowhouse. Might get us somewhere."

"The place was completely empty besides the pictures, the mattresses, and the teddy bear," John pointed out. "Whoever owns the place was probably using it as a cover."

"My point exactly," Fin told him. "If it's a cover, it might be more extensive than we thought."

"So, more than one person," said John. "Isn't that what we've been thinking all along, though? Elliot's been in SVU for seventeen years, Fin. There are a lot of people who hate him."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It's supposed to mean that this wouldn't be the first time that a case or two has come back to bite a cop in the ass. I'm not trying to say that it serves him right, no one deserves this, but we're still grasping at straws here. This is the first time someone's seen any one of them besides what we've seen in the pictures."

"If Jen Matson saw Kathy the day before yesterday, then someone else probably did, too. It wouldn't surprise me if the kids had been seen, too."

John looked at his watch as Fin trailed off and frowned slightly. It was already seven o'clock at night, and the streetlights were starting to come on. There wouldn't be too many people willing to talk to them at this hour, and those who did would be more likely to say whatever it was they could to get them to go away.

"You're thinking what I'm thinking, aren't you?" he asked, finally, looking over at Fin. "No one's going to talk to us at this hour."

"I hate having to put it off," said Fin. "We need to be able to move forward, not come to another standstill. There's already been enough of those."

"I know. But talking to these people now isn't going to help if they're going to say whatever they can to get us to go away. You know that."

"So what the hell are we supposed to do, then? Just let it sit for another few hours and hope something falls into our laps? You know that ain't likely."

That was true. It was also something that neither one of them wanted to think about. John looked at his watch again and sighed.

"So we're out here again in the morning, as soon as the sun's up if we have to be," he said. "We're going to talk to everyone on this block and the next one. That's what we're going to do. There's nothing else we can do."

"Except go through that house again." Already, Fin was turning to do just that, looking up and down the street to make sure no one was coming before crossing. "You coming, or what?"

"CSU's already processed everything that we found in that house. It didn't give us anything," said John, crossing after him. "What the hell do you think we're going to find?"

"Elliot's family has been missin' for a month, " Fin replied, without looking back at him. "No one's seen any of them until now. What do you think the odds are that the family left something behind besides the baby's teddy bear without these people noticing?"

It was something that no one in the unit had thought of. Whether or not this theory would actually get them anywhere, neither of them knew, but at the moment, it was all they had. Ducking under the crime scene tape that had been strung along the front doorframe, John flipped one of the light switches, and the lights overhead and in the living room went on.

"Point taken," he said. "Where do you want to start?"