lizzi

But Daisy lasted no more than a minute in the quiet of her own four walls before she grabbed her keys from the bowl where she'd barely dropped them, and she left without ever turning on the lights, because the quiet bred an echo chamber of deafening thoughts that ran rampant faster than she could outrun them.

She got into her car, drove back over the bridge, all the way from Brooklyn to Manhattan, as the colorful mosaic of the city's many lights danced across her face, and she clutched the steering wheel tightly enough for her knuckles to turn white. She didn't even glance at the time when she finally put her car in park; she knew it was late. 

She made herself known to the officers outside the apartment complex. They nodded upon noticing the shield on her belt, and she made her way inside, up the stairs to the second floor. It was in no way a particularly large building, so she reached the apartment she was looking for in no time, knocking twice against the wooden door. 

A second passed, then two. Daisy was about to raise her hand to knock again when she heard the slide of the deadbolt, and the door opened.

"Detective?" Danielle frowned.

"You're home," Daisy said, as if she hadn't checked twice with her security detail where she was.

The girl looked around the hallway behind her, but Daisy was the only one standing there. "I was just gonna take a shower, grab some more clothes…" She trailed off. "Did something happen?"

"No. No." Daisy lifted the paper bag in her right hand. "I, uh, brought burgers."

"You didn't have to–"

"No, I know, but after the day you had, I thought you could use some comfort food."

"I'm fine."

"You said that earlier, too. Doesn't mean I'll stop worrying." She smiled. "C'mon. You can't say no to veggie burgers and onion rings. That would be a crime against fast food."

Danielle glanced between the bag and the detective before finally stepping aside to let her in.

"Thank you," Daisy said.

The couple's apartment was a cozy two-bedroom with an open living room and kitchen, and a wall of large windows facing the neighboring building. Since they were on the third floor, though, the view was mostly obscured by the trees that had been planted in the alley between. Still, Daisy had to admit that there were worse views to live with. 

"I really don't plan on staying long," Danielle told her as she tried to straighten the throw pillows on the burgundy sofa.

Daisy dropped the takeout bag on the kitchen island, not daring to step further inside until she was offered. "I get it," she said. "The nurses truly are saints for letting you stay in the hospital with him."

"Part of it's because he's been stable since they put that shunt in, but I also think part of it's because they pity me."

"Sometimes, you have to use that to your advantage." She slid off her jacket. "Where do you keep your plates?"

"Top shelf on the left."

She walked over to it. "Just for the record," Daisy said, "I don't pity you."

"Then why are you here?" Danielle asked.

"I just don't want you to think that you have to go through this alone."

She went quiet after that.

Daisy placed two plates on the island between them. "You want some onion rings with your fries?" she asked.

Danielle nodded, tracing one of the oil stains on the outside of the takeout bag. 

"Alright."

She stayed quiet until the plate slid across the marble toward her, and she grasped the first French fry between her thumb and index finger. 

"My parents," she said suddenly, "they, uh… they care about me; I'm not denying that. I mean, they drove here in the middle of the night to make sure I was fine. It's just… they're always so busy with work, you know? And they offered to let me come back home with them until this is over, which… I appreciate that, I really do, but they don't seem to understand that I love Liam, and going back to Jersey while he's in a coma, I just can't." She pushed her plate a few inches back. "And now, with the trial, they're suddenly the center of everyone's attention because I am, because everyone wants a piece of the girl who survived, so I told them that they don't have to be here. They don't need to sit in that courtroom with me if it's too much for them. I'm 24 years old. I'm an adult. I get it."

"But you still wish they were here."

"I still wish they were here," she said, and her voice cracked on that last syllable, so soft it hovered barely above a whisper.

"They're your parents. You shouldn't have to make excuses for why they chose to leave," Daisy told her. "They should be here."

"They're not bad people."

"Maybe not, but what they're doing isn't exactly good for you."

She scoffed, not maliciously, just… tired. "Next, you're gonna tell me that you have experience with complicated parents," she said. 

Daisy chuckled around a mouthful of onion rings. "You want the truth?" she asked. 

"Please."

"I don't have much experience with any kind of parents, complicated or otherwise."

"Because yours were absent?"

"Because I didn't have any," Daisy said.

"What?"

She picked a sesame seed off the top bun of her burger. "I was dropped off at a fire station when I was only a few hours old. Tested positive for fentanyl. Spent several days in the hospital because I was in withdrawal, and then I just–" She tossed the seed aside, "–went into the system until I aged out of it."

Danielle stared at her. "So you're not gonna tell me you understand what I'm going through?" she asked.

"No," Daisy said, "I'm just talking out of my ass here."

That, for once, made her laugh—actually laugh. It was morbid, but humor tends to shift when someone has been through something horrible, and there was not much of a need to dramatize her confession; Daisy had been brutally honest, and the last thing she expected was the kind of pity she'd already promised not to give Danielle, because pity hardly ever fixed anything, as human as it might be.

Daisy popped another French fry into her mouth, trying to keep her mouth occupied. It was dry, her cheek was burning from where she'd sunk her teeth into the sensitive flesh, and if she didn't keep it occupied, she was sure she would cry.

"I'm sorry," Danielle said then, just because she felt like she had to. "For what you went through."

She shrugged. "What doesn't kill me gives me attachment issues, or whatever they say."

"It's why family law's so important. There's too many kids that fall through the cracks."

Daisy slid the leather-bound book Danielle had left on the kitchen island closer to her. "I think your future clients will be lucky to have you."

Danielle placed her own hand on the cover, and her eyes grew distant again. 

"I'm serious," Daisy said. "I want you to hold onto your aspirations because they give you something to look forward to."

She traced the letters engraved in the leather. "I don't know if I can go back," she confessed. 

"You don't have to know anything right now," Daisy said. "Once this is over, I'll help you find someone to talk to—a therapist, a social worker, whatever you need—and you can figure out what you want at your own pace. You just have to promise that you won't give up."

Danielle blinked the tears from her eyes. "Is that why Mr. Barba gave me this? So I won't give up?" 

"Truthfully, I don't know what he was thinking, but I think it might help."

"I told you before, I'm not suicidal," she said.

"Maybe not, but you're in pain. You just went through hell, and this trial's probably gonna take a lot out of you, too, so it can't hurt for you to have something to hold onto." Daisy gently shoved her plate closer. "Now, how about we table this conversation and actually eat our burgers? 'Cause I'm starving," she said. 

As far as Danielle was concerned, that sounded like a worthy compromise. She pushed the Family Law book a few inches to the side, far away from the grease that surrounded them, before she picked another French fry off her plate, and she finally began to eat. 

When Daisy got home again that night, it was well after midnight. She'd driven with her window open this time, listening to the noise of the city that, even in the middle of the night, never seemed to dissipate. She'd taken a second, breathing in the salt of the Hudson River as it mixed with the scent of rusted metal and the diesel exhaust radiating off the other cars on the bridge. For a split second, the world and her thoughts had quieted, and her eyes had closed. One split second, but that was often all it took. She would've driven for hours if she could have, but falling asleep at the wheel was something she'd once told herself she would never do, so she'd accelerated and made her way home. 

But then the door closed behind her, leaving her once again alone with her scrambled yet screaming thoughts, and suddenly, she was wide awake again. 

She tore the jacket off her body—too tight—popped open the first two buttons of her dress shirt, and tossed her shoes aside. Though the oxygen in the room remained scarce. 

In the kitchen, Daisy cracked open a half-empty bottle of tequila. She wasn't sure how old it was or how cheap, nor did she care. She just poured herself a glass, and she drank. She drank until the warmth flooded her body. She drank until her esophagus started burning, her knees buckled, and the noise in her head finally dulled into a black, empty void. Only then could she close her eyes, curled into a ball on her worn-out, second-hand couch, with her gun resting where it always lay, on the coffee table and within her reach. 

At 6.30, then, her phone rang. The sound tore through the quiet of her apartment and the blank darkness that consumed her. Daisy was horizontal within a second, reaching blindly for her phone, though in her panic, she knocked over what little was left of that now quarter-empty bottle of tequila.

"Shit!" she cursed. Her phone appeared unharmed, but her floor did not. "Fuck!" She tossed a few tissues into the puddle; they soaked through instantly. For now, though, it had to do. 

Daisy wiped the stray droplets on her cracked phone screen on her jeans, which, in her drunken haze, she hadn't taken off, and she picked up. 

"Evans," she answered. 

"Daisy, it's Melinda," the ME said. 

"Melinda, hi!" Her head was pounding. "What– what's up?"

"Well, I got the report you asked for." A pause. "As I suspected, there was no contamination. The DNA in both rape kits is still a match to Anthony Russo," Melinda said. "Whatever Buchanan's trying to argue, the only way to prove any wrongdoing on my part is if he presents the judge with false results. And I'd say that again, under oath, if you need me to."

Daisy exhaled a breath of relief—big mistake. The not-yet-digested tequila churned wildly in her stomach when the scent of the spilled liquor hit her nose. She swallowed. Fucking fantastic, she thought. The Aspirin was hiding somewhere in her kitchen, but she'd forgotten where. Her place was a mess.

"I'll be right there," she choked out. 

"I mean, I could just fax it to you," Melinda said. "You don't have to–"

But Daisy cut her off, "No, I do. I'm not at work yet. The hearing starts at nine, and I need to make sure Barba gets it before that."

"Right."

"I'll be there in, like, an hour," she said. "Thanks."

"Drive safe."

"I will. See you there."

"See ya," Melinda echoed, and Daisy hung up. 

In God We Trust. 

The words were carved in the Mahagoni that decorated the walls, right behind the judge's bench. The sun reflected off it, and it was warmer that day—warmer than the past few days, but not unusual for September, which, without the AC blasting, turned the air a little stuffy. 

Save for the court officers by the door, the gallery was empty. Motion hearings hardly generated the same kind of crowds a public trial did, though Judge Barth did warn the press that they would have to wait until the trial to partake in any proceedings related to this case. Rafael was grateful for that. He was even more grateful that she'd ruled in his favor the day before, denying the defense's previous motions, but grateful did not equal optimistic; he couldn't allow himself to be.

He hadn't slept again that night. He must have forgotten how, or perhaps his mind knew something his body didn't, and that was why it wouldn't let him rest. He didn't know, and he hated it. His hands were trembling again, his head hurting. The lights in Part 32 were a little too bright, but he had to push through, because if he didn't, if he wasn't at his very best, Buchanan would win the motion to dismiss the DNA evidence, and then he would be fucked. The other motions, he could have survived because he still had forensics. Without the DNA, though, the Grand Jury would have to rely on circumstantial evidence, and he would lose.

Rafael took another sip from the latte he got at the courthouse café. He'd asked for two additional espresso shots, but that might have been a mistake; his heart was about to break—not beat or jump, but quite literally break—out of his chest. Buchanan wasn't there yet, thank God, so he had a few more minutes to himself before he would have to face what he morbidly liked to compare to a shooting squad. He was far too early, anyway. 

The door to the gallery behind him opened, followed by the sound of heels on marble floors. He glanced over his shoulder, and he promptly did a double-take.

"Detective?" he asked.

She was wearing a suit today, consisting of a pair of matching slacks and a matching blazer that was checkered and gray with burgundy highlights. Her heels, though, were still the same pair of godforsaken leather boots she always wore. They were so worn-out, Rafael couldn't help but wonder how she could comfortably walk in them, and why on earth she didn't just get herself a new pair. Though he supposed he shouldn't judge because frankly, it did not matter what she was wearing, as long as she appeared put together enough for the Grand Jury to trust her.

He cleared his throat; he was getting carried away. "Either your watch is broken, you forgot how to tell the time, or you have bad news," he said, "which… frankly, I'd prefer either of the first two options."

Daisy made her way down the aisle toward him. "I know I'm early," she said. 

"Bad news then?"

"I have something you might want to see."

That wasn't a no. His brows furrowed. "For the Grand Jury?" 

"For the motion hearing," she said.

"What is it?" he sounded deeply suspicious now.

"Well, Buchanan filed that motion to suppress because he believes we contaminated the DNA samples, right?" 

"Uh-huh."

"And if I were a competent defense attorney, and I knew a thing or two about DNA testing, I'd argue that the risk of contamination is significantly higher when a rush is put on a sample. Warner told me, and she probably told you, that she would never let that happen, but she also told me that a small chance is still a chance."

His heart did another rather painful somersault in his chest. "So you're saying the DNA sample was contaminated?"

"If you'd let me finish…" She finally handed him the file. "A small chance is still a chance, and a lot can go wrong without us ever realizing it, so I had Warner test it again. She wrote up a whole new report."

Rafael took the folder from her rather roughly, fingers trembling, still, when he opened it. "The results are the same," he observed.

Daisy nodded. "The sample was never contaminated, but if Buchanan's unhappy with how Warner handled the first set of tests, you can use this instead. Might be easier than bringing in a gazillion experts to argue science."

He skimmed over the first few lines again, then looked back at her. The crimson vessels in his eyes appeared more prominent when he was sleep-deprived, she noticed, the green of his irises a little darker. But he didn't seem to be mad at her, which was a start.

"You did all this?" Rafael asked.

"Well, Warner did," she said. 

"But you ordered it?"

"Yes."

A soft hum of huh vibrated in the back of his throat. 

"Huh?" she asked. 

Faintly, Rafael could hear footsteps approaching, though not from the hallway outside the gallery; they sounded closer to the door on the left side of the courtroom, expensive leather dress shoes paired with the trampling of steel boots, and the clanking of metal. 

He put the file down and told her, "Sit down."

"What?"

"Just… sit down."

Daisy didn't, at least not until the door opened about half a second later, and she instinctively lowered herself onto the bench behind her. 

"Mr. Barba!" Buchanan greeted him as he stepped into the courtroom.

Rafael gave him a sideways glance, reaching for his half-empty coffee; he had to keep his hands occupied. "Counselor," he said.

"Rough night?"

He took a sip, shaking his head as he pursed his lips at the bitter aftertaste.

Buchanan put his briefcase down. "I, for one, slept like a baby," he said.

"Oh, please!" Rafael scoffed. "Spare me."

The other man only laughed as he stole a glance over his shoulder, where Daisy was seated in the gallery. "I see you brought company."

Rafael followed his line of sight. "Detective Evans is here as a courtesy," he said.

"To you, or to herself?" Buchanan asked. "Considering she has a vendetta against my client."

Daisy supposed a plea for her to shut up had been heavily implied in Barba's command for her to sit down, but shutting up had never been her strong suit.

"Your client has a vendetta against women," she blurted out. "He's open about it, and yet, you don't seem to care about that at all."

The defending counsel shrugged. "Everyone's entitled to a defense, Ms. Evans."

"It's Detective Evans, and if anything, the route you're taking with this case says more about the kind of person you are than your client's innocence."

"You have quite the mouth on you, Detective," he said. 

"Would you say the same if I were a man, or is the fact I'm speaking my mind only offensive to you because I don't have a penis?"

Rafael concealed the sudden laugh bubbling in his throat through another mouthful of coffee. 

"I beg your pardon?" Buchanan stared at her, dumbfounded. Sweat glistened at his temple; it only did that when he was getting ready to argue, the sheer effort it took effectively draining him, but he never got to hear what else Daisy had to say.

The door he'd come through opened again, and a court officer led Anthony into the courtroom by his elbow, clad in an orange jumpsuit and cuffs around his wrists and ankles. The bruise on his jaw had gotten darker, no doubt exacerbated by the welcome his fellow inmates at Rikers had given him, and his dark eyes had lost their edge—the obvious one, anyway. Though he was still somewhere in there, Daisy could tell. Evil like that didn't just vanish in prison. If anything, evil like that flourished in such a secluded, violent environment because evil like that could not be rehabilitated. Perhaps that was why he could no longer move freely, chained by all his limbs like an animal.

As he walked in, his eyes found her instantly. The endless pits of darkness were no longer amused in their ruthlessness; the anger he carried in them ran so much deeper now, so much more terrifying than it had ever been before. His mouth twitched, and then he was grinning at her with only his teeth as his tongue traced over them, polishing, warning. 

Daisy held her breath. 

"Detective," he asked, "you miss me?" 

Rafael glowered, shoulders now squared as he turned toward him, toward Buchanan. "Tell your client to keep his mouth shut!" he snapped. 

But even after that warning, his eyes remained glued to her, and her skin started prickling again. 

Rafael knew he shouldn't have asked her to stay. Anthony wasn't impartial to her. During the interrogation, he'd already looked at her in ways that had almost made Amaro break through the glass, and Cragen considered pulling her out. She didn't know that. She'd been in it. She'd seen and felt it, but what had happened on the other side of that glass, the looks they'd given each other, remained unbeknownst to her. It was better that way.

He'd asked her to stay, and he'd unintentionally rewarded Anthony with it, because now he could look at her. He could look at her, and behind those soulless eyes, Rafael could see the thoughts running rampant in his mind. They were offensive, degrading, and they were out there for other men like him to read, just because their blatant misogyny did not appeal to women, and they felt the need to punish them for that. 

The Bailiff announcing Judge Barth's arrival forced Rafael to move back to his seat at the prosecution's table, while Daisy instantly made herself smaller behind him. He should never have asked her to stay for this. He should have just said thank you. Why was that so hard? 

He forced himself to snap out of it when Buchanan began to argue just what Daisy had suspected he would, and faster than he would have liked, it was his turn.

"Mr. Barba?" Judge Barth asked. 

"Your Honor," he said, "approach?"

She looked between him and the defending counsel, then nodded.

Buchanan followed him toward the bench. 

"What is it?" she inquired.

He placed the file Daisy had handed him in front of her. "Given that Mr. Buchanan is accusing the NYPD, more specifically, Dr. Warner, of contaminating a crucial piece of evidence by putting a rush on the results—which, by the way, any attorney should be aware is common practice—Detective Evans asked her to run the samples again prior to this hearing," he told her. 

"Did she now?" Buchanan cut in. "Your Honor, if the first sample was contaminated, which we have proof that it was, there is a chance that these results are also false," he said. 

"I did not order this test, and I was not made aware of it. In fact, up until ten minutes ago, I was prepared to argue my case with only expert testimony. However, Dr. Warner has produced a far more meticulous report than the one previously entered into evidence, and they both have the same results. So, if Mr. Buchanan really believes that the first set of tests was contaminated," Rafael said, "I'd be willing to proceed with this version of the ME's report."

Judge Barth turned to the other attorney. "Mr. Buchanan?" she asked. 

He was sweating more profusely now. "I had no chance to verify these results, Your Honor."

Rafael only pointed to the bottom of the page. "The report's been signed by the Chief Medical Examiner," he said.

"Who works for the State of New York! Your Honor–"

"Mr. Buchanan," she interrupted him. "I hope you're not seriously suggesting that the ME's office fabricated these results."

"That is exactly what I'm suggesting, Your Honor," Buchanan said. "Given the NYPD's vendetta against my client, if Detective Evans ordered these tests without being asked to, who's to say the results weren't fabricated?"

"So now it's not just Detective Evans or the NYPD who has a vendetta, but the entire New York ME's office?" Rafael scoffed. "All due respect, Your Honor, but this is ridiculous."

Her brows furrowed, and she nodded. "I agree," she said. "While I do agree that the first set of tests was conducted under less than ideal circumstances, and the defense has provided evidence that would hint at potential contamination, this new report appears to be solid, and since the results are identical, I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be admitted. In fact, I believe this is a worthy compromise." 

Elena was a sensible woman. Rafael didn't know her that well; before requesting his lateral to Manhattan, he'd only met her once at a fundraiser, but her reputation preceded her. She offered that perfect balance between heart and rationality, which, in a legal system as flawed as theirs, was a virtue. As weary as he was, he would have been far more concerned if this case had ended on literally anyone else's docket.

"Thank you," he told her.

The judge gave them both a silent nod, a sign that she was ready to formally announce her ruling, and both attorneys made their way back to their seats. 

She lifted her gavel then. "I'm denying the defense's motion," she declared. "Court is adjourned!" And she brought it back down against the wooden bench with a bang that, albeit brief, still bounced off the walls of the mostly empty courtroom like the piercing echo of a gunshot.

His tongue poked the inside of his cheek so Buchanan wouldn't see the grin threatening to split his face apart, but the glimmer in Rafael's eyes gave him away. He'd told himself he wouldn't be optimistic until he got that guilty verdict, but it was hard not to be a little smug after watching Buchanan's plan fail so miserably. Actually, Rafael thought, he was allowed to be smug. 

The bench underneath her creaked when Daisy rose to her feet. She hadn't heard much of what had been argued up there by the judge's bench, mostly because, acoustically, she couldn't understand them, but she also hadn't really tried. Throughout the entire hearing, Anthony had been staring at her. He hadn't spoken; the judge would certainly have shushed him the moment he'd dared to make a sound, but that had not and still did not stop his wandering eyes from finding her over and over again, like fucking clockwork. 

The court officer dragged him to his feet then, and somewhere along the way, he seemed to find his voice again. "You know," he said to no one but her, "I was hoping you'd visit me in prison. I had so much fun talking to you."

Daisy swallowed thickly. "You sure you didn't just enjoy fantasizing about raping and killing people?" she asked.

"I think you enjoyed it, the way you were begging me to keep going." His mouth twitched. "Even got on your knees for me."

"Counselor," Rafael warned. 

Buchanan leaned closer to his client. "You need to stop talking," he said.

But Anthony ignored him. "You were looking at me with those eyes… don't act like you weren't thinking about me doing it to you."

"That's enough!" Barba was covering her now. "Get him out of here," he told the court officer. "Now, before I charge him with sexual harassment."

Buchanan didn't argue when his client was dragged out of the room, laughing. He simply grabbed his briefcase and followed, and this time, the sweat at his temple was born from something more resembling dread than the attorney-typical desire to argue.

Rafael turned around, his eyes now softer around the edges. "You okay?" he asked.

She glanced at his hand where it hovered helplessly between them, but she didn't look at him. "Yeah," she breathed. No. Her throat tightened. Nonono. She touched the shield on her belt; the cold barely seeped through her fingertips, and when she touched her skin, it burned.

His frown deepened. "You, uh… You want some coffee?"

"I just need some air," she said.

"You–"

"Excuse me." 

He watched her walk past him, back up the aisle, and out the door, and the only thing he could do in that moment was grasp the hair at the nape of his neck with that helpless hand that had been hovering between them and say, "Okay." 

The hallway outside the courtroom was crowded with attorneys and reporters, blocking the direct path to the elevator at the end of it. So, Daisy turned right, toward the stairwell instead. The crowd began to dissipate there, and she managed to slide through the door unnoticed. She'd been inside the New York Supreme Court enough times to know her way around, and enough to know that the stairwell was much less frequented because the elevator, on most days, was faster. But fastdid not matter to her.

She climbed down only one flight of stairs before the first sob tore from her throat, a desperate attempt to force the air back into her lungs that failed miserably, and she sank to the cold, dirty floor.

The skin around her sternum had long turned red from how hard she was clawing at it. If only she could reach inside her ribcage and stop her heart from racing; if only she could bleed herself dry, break all of her bones, and exorcize the entirety of her fragile brain, then replace them all with parts from someone who'd never known such agony, and whose mind had never turned their own body against them.

Her nails dug into the already raw skin through which she could still feel her racing heartbeat, the ragged breaths she was taking, but the pain was nothing compared to the one burning her from the inside out. Anthony had pressed his greedy fingers, his words, into a spot that hurt, and he'd reopened a wound that would probably never stop bleeding.

In, out. 

In, out. 

Daisy sat with her head between her legs for a time unbeknownst to her, the knot in her chest easing slowly as she focused on breathing in deeper, and breathing out for longer than she'd inhaled. Her ragged breaths turned into something softer then.

She'd lost count of how many of these episodes she'd been having this past year. Too many, surely. But it had been easier in the beginning, she remembered, after she'd first walked into the squad room, and Nick had been the first to talk to her. She'd been scared, but she'd handled those first few weeks well. She couldn't remember exactly when it started to change, but something had changed—was changing and steadily derailing, like a freight train heading straight for a dead end.

Daisy wiped underneath her eyes, fixing some of the mascara smudged there. She could not face a jury like this. She pinched the skin above her cheekbones a few times; it wasn't nearly as effective as blush, and it didn't fill out the flesh that had once been where her complexion was now slightly more hollow, but it brought back some color in her face. It had to do for now.

The rest of the squad was probably already upstairs, waiting for their turn to testify. Barba was about to give his opening statement to the Grand Jury, and she was here, curled into a ball in some stairwell only a few feet away.

"Fuck," Daisy muttered under her breath. She reached into her pocket for the orange capsule; it was almost empty. "Fuck!" she said again, louder this time. 

She shouldn't even be taking it. She knew that even in their ability to get her through the day without panicking, those pills made her drowsy, and she couldn't be drowsy when she was supposed to convince 12 out of 23 people that Anthony Russo should be indicted for the crimes he'd definitely committed.

Still, she popped one lone tablet into her mouth because functioning while a little drowsy sounded more tolerable than allowing her brain to continue tricking her so cruelly, and she swallowed it dry. A cup of coffee and it would all work out fine, she thought. She'd built up quite the tolerance. Anything to tell herself that what she was doing, without disclosure of a medication she was no longer supposed to take, or at least not without medical supervision, was okay. That it was for the greater good. Because she would have fallen apart without it, and that? That would have washed the past couple of weeks down the drain and freed Anthony Russo from the shackles that were finally keeping him contained.

"What can I get you, Detective?"

She snapped out of it when she heard the question, suddenly finding herself on Foley Square across from the courthouse. She couldn't remember the steps she'd taken to get there.

"Um," she blinked at the menu, "I'll just take a latte with two extra shots. And oat milk, if you have it," she said.

The guy inside the coffee cart nodded. "One latte with two extra shots and oat milk," he repeated back to her. "Anything else?"

"Thank you."

She caught the familiar scent of expensive sandalwood and citrus before she even saw him.

"Actually," Barba said, "I'll take a double espresso."

Daisy stared at him. "What're you–"

"On me," he added.

Rafael placed a few loose dollar bills on the counter, then slid his wallet back into the pocket of his suit jacket. He hadn't even bothered to bring his coat or briefcase; he was supposed to be upstairs, not here, and certainly not paying for her coffee.

Daisy was still staring—no, glowering—at him when he finally faced her.

"Aren't you supposed to be giving an opening statement?" she asked.

"In fifteen minutes, yes," he said, and the faint lines at the corners of his eyes deepened as he squinted against the morning sun.

"And how many coffees have you had?"

"Four." He side-eyed her. "Not that it's any of your business."

"Are you trying to have a heart attack?"

"Are you?"

The barista placed both a large and a smaller cup on the counter. He reached for them before she could, handing her the bigger one. Their fingers brushed. His hands were warmer than hers, she noticed. Bigger, too. 

Daisy sighed into her latte. "Fair point," she said.

With the world dulled around its sharp edges, it didn't bother her as much as it should have.

"How much do I owe you?" she asked him then.

Rafael shrugged as he brushed past her. "Nothing," he said. "See it as a thank you for what you did in there."

"But–"

"I have to get back upstairs."

She glanced down at the coffee in her hands, then back up at him. He was already several steps ahead of her.

"Barba!" she called. 

He stopped, paused, then turned around. 

"Thank you," she said.

A gush of wind brushed the hair out of her face and over her shoulder. The skin around her sternum was red, angry. She tried to hide it, but the hand she rested there only made him look more. He glanced down. She pulled her jacket tighter around herself, and he glanced back up again. His mouth twitched open, eyes softening even as his brows furrowed, trying to make sense of what he'd just seen, but she only looked away from him.

"Finish your coffee," he told her, though just saying it felt wrong. "I'll see you in there."

The wind brushed her hair forward again.

"Okay," Daisy said.

He'd never met anyone quite as guarded. Though instead of digging for a sore spot so he could satisfy his curiosity, he turned on his heel, and he went back to work. It was the one thing he could understand.

She traced a washcloth along her arms, her shoulders, her torso, all the way down to her thighs. Her fingers brushed over the scars on the left one first, the ones that were straight and parallel, not palpable but visible even among the faded stretch marks along her hips that, in the right light, glistened almost golden.

The water washed away the soap, down her body, down the drain, and she traced her fingers over the scars again. She hardly looked at them anymore, hardly felt them. She'd been so young back then, young enough for them to fuse with her complexion over the years, as if she'd been born with them. It was times like these that reminded her of how many times she'd reached rock bottom, only to grow a few years older and realize, contrary to popular figures of speech, it could always get worse. 

"Let me guess," the 14-year-old looked up at the social worker standing by her bedside, "you couldn't find anyone else to take me in?"

"At your age, with your history of conflict and previously failed placements, a lot of our available foster parents are worried about drugs or gang affiliations," the social worker told her. "Just like the Johnsons were."

"I don't do drugs. I wasn't even trying to pick a fight, I just… I had to defend myself!"

"I know, but to a lot of potential parents, unfortunately, that doesn't matter."

The girl shook her head. 

"I am so sorry, Daisy. I wish I could–"

"No, I get it." The tears burned a little when she wiped and swallowed them. "Nobody wants a kid like me," she said. 

The social worker placed her hand on hers, but it was only a small reprieve before she straightened up again, and she was back to business as usual. "Your best shot, right now, would be finding another group home with other girls your age," she told her. "I should have a spot for you by morning."

A sudden splash of cold amidst the hot water reminded her to breathe, and Daisy moved the washcloth to her other thigh. The skin was mostly smooth there, save for the thick, round amalgamation of tissue mere millimeters away from where her femoral artery was hiding. If she pressed hard enough, she could feel her pulse there. Even after almost a decade, the muscles underneath still remembered the pain. 

The heat in the desert was different, drier. Sand scratched at the sunburn on her skin, and every inhale caused an influx of sand to rattle in her lungs. It wasn't the sun burning her skin that day, though; fire torched the hairs on her arms, and the sand mingled with dust and gunpowder in her lungs.

She remembered shouting, "Get down!" as she dragged him to the ground with her, but one of the bullets had pierced her leg regardless—pierced her flesh, nerves, and muscles, and the searing pain threatening to tear her leg apart was unlike anything that had ever consumed her. 

Someone, she couldn't see who, dragged her behind a Humvee and forced her to sit up. "Hey," he said. "Hey, Squirrel, you gotta stay with me, alright? There you go. Keep your eyes on me."

The sand underneath her was burning hot, but the rest of her turned cold, suddenly.

"What happened?" It wasn't him, this time. 

"Bullet went straight through."

"Looks femoral," the other man said. She couldn't make out voices or faces; the world was fading fast, and she kept falling, falling, falling, through the clouds. 

He—the other one, not the man she'd tried to save, she was sure—tore off his belt then, wrapped it around her thigh, and without warning, he tightened it. She remembered crying out. She remembered that the sound of gunshots grew louder, closer, before everything suddenly went quiet, and she thought, how bad could it be to close her eyes? 

So, she closed her eyes. 

They later told her that she'd gotten lucky. The bullet may have nicked the femoral artery, but she would not lose her leg. They told her she would be walking again in no time, and perhaps they would give her a medal for saving the life of her commanding officer. 

She closed her eyes after that, too, the anesthesia having worn off just enough for her to register that the news was supposed to be good. And she went right back to sleep. 

The water washed away her tears, even as new ones started to fall, and the echo of it hitting the tiled floor drowned out her sobs. 

Part of her wished she'd died that day in the desert. Part of her wished the insurgents had killed her, or that she at least would not have had the guts to jump in front of a flying bullet for a man she'd barely known. Yes, for almost a decade, she'd spent every day wishing she had been more of a coward back then. Maybe then he would never have remembered that she existed, and she would have been useless to him.

When the water eventually ran cold, she turned it off; she turned it all off, the faucet and her tears, droplets following in her wake as she left the cubicle behind. She'd wallowed enough, anyway. 

She dried and forced herself into fresh underwear, jeans, and a shirt underneath a blazer. She brushed her teeth twice, scraped her tongue, and blow-dried her hair until only the ends remained damp. It was muscle memory. Her physical scars no longer served as a reminder once they were covered, and she could do the same with the ones ingrained so deeply in her soul. So, she pushed them away, away and through, because other than falling apart, there was little else she could do.

Staring into the darkness inside her locker as she stuffed her old clothes in, she was met with her reflection in the small handheld mirror she kept there. 

"She wanted it rough, so I gave it to her rough."

She slid the bottle of deodorant underneath her shirt and beneath her arms.

"Should've seen her. She was asking for it."

She switched to the other side, applying a good amount there, too, even though she was unlikely to sweat much.

"She just couldn't keep her legs closed."

She tried her best to apply some of the concealer she kept in her overnight bag, using only her fingers; it only offered a stark contrast between her natural complexion and the dark scarlet of the blood pooling underneath her skin.

"Should've stuffed that pretty mouth when I had the chance."

One pill found its way out of the small orange capsule, into her palm, before she swallowed it dry. 

"Lieutenant Evans, you are hereby honorably discharged. The United States Army thanks you for your service, and we wish you the best of luck."

Daisy shot a quick text to one of only two contacts she'd saved under the letter B. 

Be there at 8.

Sent

And she slammed her locker shut. 

For the third time that morning, Rafael glanced down at the watch on his wrist. One of his professors at Harvard had told him once that if he wasn't five minutes early to every meeting, he was late, and those who were always late had little hope of getting very far in life. 

It was five minutes to eight, and Daisy was still nowhere to be found. It made him wonder if she'd made it her life's mission specifically to exhaust him with her total disregard for his schedule. He supposed that theory wasn't so far-fetched, given that she'd ignored him for the better part of the previous day, sitting crammed at her little desk without talking much to anyone—except for Cragen, who'd given her a surprisingly gentle good job with a pat on the back—just because what? She didn't want to sit next to him? Needless to say, he'd been fast to take that personally.

At eight o'clock sharp, then, there was a knock on his closed office door. 

Carmen poked her head in. "Mr. Barba," she said, "Detective Evans is here."

Finally. He pushed his chair back and stood. "Send her in," he said. 

"Ms. Walker's with her."

"Thank you, Carmen."

Daisy was the first one inside. She appeared a little more put together, he noticed, still wearing the same worn-out, three-inch-heel, faux leather boots she always wore. Her jeans, however, were a shade darker, and the burgundy dress shirt that hugged her frame was a little more fitted than the last. 

Rafael was about to tell her that she was late—that he had a tight schedule, and she couldn't just come and go as she damn well pleased—but then his eyes fell on the young woman trailing in behind her, and he realized how stupidly petty his time concerns were in the greater scope of things.

He rounded his desk. "You must be Ms. Walker," he said, offering his hand without ever advancing into her personal space. She took it; he barely squeezed. 

"Danielle," she corrected him. 

"Danielle. Well, thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I know you'd rather not be here." He smiled, and he tried his hardest to assure it would be disarming. "I'm ADA Rafael Barba. I will be prosecuting the case."

"I know," she said. "Detective Evans told me."

"Really?" He glanced at Daisy. "What else did she tell you?"

"That if anyone can put this guy away, it's you."

Rafael did a double-take, brows furrowed tightly enough to deepen the crease between them, but Daisy refused to acknowledge him. 

"I'll, uh–" He cleared his throat, and he hoped to God that Danielle wouldn't notice the slight waver in his voice when he told her, "I'll certainly try my best."

Daisy adjusted her belt, anything to keep her occupied. "I need some coffee," she said. "You want some coffee?"

Danielle nodded. "Thanks," she said. 

She brushed past him on her way to the small coffee station by the window, close enough for him to lean in just a little and tell her, "High praise."

Daisy looked up at him then. For a second, anyway, before her eyes slipped somewhere further away. "I was just trying to lift her spirits," she said. 

"Just hers?"

"Yes." A pause. She glanced up again. "I don't know. Maybe mine, too."

It was honest, more honest than he would have expected from her. 

Rafael turned back to Danielle before he could dwell too much on it. "Please," he said, pointing to the table in the middle of the room, "have a seat. Can I get you anything else?"

She shook her head. "Coffee's fine," she said.

"Okay." He reached for the first Manila folder on the stack he kept on his desk. "You're a law student, right?"

"I am." 

"What year?"

"Second."

He took a seat across from her. "Back in my day, Harvard only offered the interesting electives to second and third-year students," he said. "I can imagine Columbia's the same."

Danielle fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. "Something like that, yeah."

"You interested in criminal law?"

"Family law, actually."

"Family law," he echoed. "That's… admirable." 

There was no change in pitch to his voice, not even a crack; all signs of his usual sarcasm had dissipated. Daisy glanced over her shoulder, and the man she saw sitting in that chair was not nearly the man she'd been working with these past couple of weeks. He was not the man whose best weapon of defense was his mouth, and not the man who'd made it his mission to drive her mad. She saw it again then, a glimpse of a different Rafael Barba, the same man who'd told her, just a day after they'd met, that she'd gotten the wrong impression of him. Who'd called her by her name and acted like someone she might have gotten along with—in another life, anyway.

For weeks, he'd done nothing but convince her that she had, after all, been right about his pompous ass, and that he'd just been trying to protect his stellar reputation when he'd told her otherwise, so seeing that glimpse of him again made her wonder. She wondered if she'd been wrong about him, or if the kind of attitude she'd been getting was solely reserved for her, and he really was just a dick. The latter was certainly the easier, more satisfying answer, because if Daisy hated one thing, it was being wrong. 

"I could never be a prosecutor," Danielle confessed. "No offense."

But Rafael just chuckled. "None taken," he said. 

Daisy slid a mug across the table. She was merely a spectator now, taking a seat next to Danielle at the round table. Neither of them paid much mind to her, but she didn't care. It would have been different if her presence had been void; it wasn't. Danielle had asked her in the car if she would stay, no matter what, and she'd told her yes. This was her job, after all. Daisy was her advocate, and she would not dare go anywhere if she didn't want her to. 

"Listen, Ms. Walker. Danielle," Rafael corrected himself, and he was no longer smiling the way he had before. "I read the statement you gave Detective Evans after you were attacked. What you went through is… It's horrific, and I know it's a lot to ask for you to relive that again in a room full of strangers—"

"—but you need my testimony to put this guy away," she finished for him. 

"Yes," he said. With him, there was no time or space for nonsense, but Danielle seemed to appreciate how direct he was. "I tried to offer him a deal, but despite all the evidence against him, Mr. Russo has decided to enter a plea of not guilty. So, as you probably know, I will have to get a formal indictment from a Grand Jury before we can take this to trial."

"I'm aware, yes."

"And you're still willing to testify?"

She nodded. "I am."

"Okay, that's… that's good." Barba pulled a legal pad from the Manila folder before him. "I'd like to just go over your story today, give you a sense of what Grand Jury's gonna be like. That's the easy part. Trial's gonna be a lot harder on you, especially since he's put together a really strong defense team."

He noticed her curl in more on herself. 

"Hey." He leaned on his forearm, not closing the distance between them but making her look at him, regardless. "I'm gonna be right here, okay? In your corner, every step of the way," he said. "And if, at any point, you need a break, you just say the word, and we'll stop."

If Daisy's cup had been made of paper, it would have crumbled under how tightly she was clenching it. Her knuckles were already turning white around the porcelain. But his words, the way he said them, and the way he meant them, were not meant for her. They were meant for the girl beside her who'd been through hell; she was the one who needed to hear them, and it would have been selfish to pretend otherwise. Yet, the knowledge that these words—these godforsaken words—were not meant for her, for Daisy, and that words like that had never been meant for her, tugged at the strings of her heart a little more than she liked to admit. She could feel it in her stomach, that yearning pit of darkness, cutting with the force of a dull knife. 

They were words, yes. Words Danielle needed, words Daisy had never heard, but words that, when stripped down, were just words. She told herself they weren't supposed to mean this much, anyway.

"If you'd be more comfortable talking to a female prosecutor," Rafael said then, "I could make that happen."

But Danielle cut him off, "I trust you," she said. 

"You sure?"

"I want to get this over with so I can get back to the hospital."

"Are you feeling unwell?"

She shook her head. "No. I, uh, just need to be with my boyfriend."

"Right. Well, that's fair." He opened the file on the first page. "Let's go back to the night of September 10th…"

She told him everything, every detail of what had been done to her, done to Liam, down to the last second of that night. Neither Daisy nor Barba had expected her to be so thorough; after a trauma like hers, details tended to become hazy, so it wouldn't have come as much of a surprise to either of them if her statement had somehow wavered from her first, but she had a stellar memory. It was a blessing to their case, and a curse to her. 

Softly, Rafael closed the file before him with his legal pad inside. He would go over her answers again later. For now, he was done, and he could tell from her bouncing leg and the faint sheen of unshed tears glistening in her Bambi eyes that Danielle was, too. He'd pushed her far enough as it was. 

"I think I've got all I need," he murmured. "You did great, Danielle. Thank you."

She nodded. Her palms were red from how hard she'd been rubbing her thumbs along them. "When, uh–" Her voice cracked, and she had to clear it before she could even think about finishing, "When do I have to testify?"

"Thursday afternoon, most likely. I'd like to reserve your testimony until the end. It'll tie all the evidence together and, hopefully, appeal to the jury's emotions."

"Okay."

Daisy gently squeezed her shoulder. "C'mon, I'll take you back," she said. 

"Before you go…" Rafael got up, circling back to his desk, or rather, the shelf behind it. He opened the glass case that held his extensive book collection carefully, one hand splayed over it to hold it securely in place, the other reaching inside. "I got this over twenty years ago, when I was studying for the bar," he said. "Haven't touched it since."

When he returned, he was holding a book. Twenty years was a long time, and the leather it had been bound with, the way it looked in the rays of sunlight streaming in through the window, was undoubtedly authentic; Daisy couldn't help but wonder how much it must have cost.

Rafael handed it to her. "Maybe it can be of more use to you. And if it's not, you can just… sell it."

Danielle looked down at it, then back up at him, as she probably pondered the same thing: why?

"You have any questions about your testimony or the trial—" He slid a card between the leather and her thumb, "—call me," he said.

"I–" She traced the numbers and letters on the paper. I can't accept this, she wanted to say, but he didn't seem like the kind of man who would accept a return of such a gift, or any gift, really. He'd given it to her perhaps because he cared, perhaps because he pitied her; either way, it was hers now. So, she took the book and his card, and she clutched them both a little tighter to her chest. 

"I don't know what to say," she told him instead. "Thank you, Mr. Barba."

He smiled—again, a genuine one. "You're welcome," he said.

All the while, Daisy couldn't stop staring at him. Her heart was pounding. It had been before, racing against an invisible clock only the organ itself seemed to be aware of, but she only noticed it now as the blood started rushing in her ears, and she found herself infuriated by the fact that for once, she had no reason to be. 

"Would you mind waiting outside for a moment?" he asked Danielle then. "I need to talk to Detective Evans."

She glanced between the two, but she knew better than to question it, so she nodded. "Sure," she said. 

"I'll be right with you," Daisy told her. 

The blinds clattered when Danielle closed the door behind her.

"Detective." Barba's voice only slowly returned to her consciousness. "Evans," he said again. 

She turned to him. "Why'd you give her that book?"

He stopped rummaging through the documents on his desk. "I'm sorry?"

"The book," she asked again, "why'd you give it to her?" 

"I was being nice."

"You don't do nice."

"I'm confused. Weren't you the one who wanted me to take a more empathetic approach?"

"Really? You want me to believe that you listened to me, voluntarily?"

There were a lot of things he could have said in response to that, but the words on his tongue melted into a scoff. He tore his eyes away from her and back toward the stack of files he'd been focused on before. 

"I want to put you and the rest of the squad on the stand tomorrow," he said, though his voice still had that slight edge it always did. 

Daisy crossed her arms over her chest. Good to know he hadn't fully changed, she thought. "Okay," she said. 

"Buchanan's also informed me that he has filed three more pretrial motions, which means I won't be able to prep all of you because I'll be stuck in court all day."

"Wh—Four?"

He bounced slightly on his heels as he nodded. "Most of them are a farce, anyway. He's just trying to make my life harder, which, unfortunately, seems to be working."

"But he's already filed two motions," Daisy said. "What else could there possibly be left to argue about?"

"Believe it or not, it's a lot. For one, he wants to suppress the restaurant's records because, apparently, the system responsible for the timestamps that refute his alibi is faulty. He's also arguing that Sara's testimony might be more prejudicial than probative because she's always held a grudge against him, and he's arguing that using the Reddit posts you found would be a violation of Russo's First Amendment rights if I were to use them as proof of premeditation."

"So condemning half of the population and wishing death upon them just because they don't want to sleep with you is considered free speech now?"

"It's disgusting," he said, "I know, but Buchanan's only filing them because he doesn't want this case to go to trial."

"You need this evidence to get an indictment. If it gets thrown out… he walks."

"I won't let that happen. And neither will you." Rafael grabbed one of the files from the stack and promptly tossed it in front of her, open. His teeth gritted then. "Your arrest report," he told her. "Study it. If you deviate even the tiniest bit from this version of the story tomorrow, the Grand Jury might question probable cause, and that will cost us an indictment more likely than Buchanan's motions will."

She glanced down, brows furrowed as the realization of what he was showing her set in. The arrest report. She'd been precise in her reasoning, clinical, because the version of reality she'd been forced to report was not the version she'd wanted to report. Perhaps that was why Buchanan had not yet, after undoubtedly talking to his client about the events of that night, filed a motion to dismiss based on Fourth Amendment violations; he was waiting for her to slip up, and Barba had seen right through it. How, though, she wasn't sure. 

Daisy bit her cheek, but she didn't flinch. "Why would I deviate?" she asked. "That's how it happened."

His mouth twitched. "I'd be more inclined to believe that if your report wasn't a carbon copy of Amaro's."

She'd changed some of the wording; she was sure she had. 

"I don't care how it happened. I should, but I don't want to waste any more of my time arguing with you about law and ethics," Barba said. "You're lucky only you and Amaro were there that night, and Russo's lied so many times that his credibility is shot, so… just make sure to use your own words tomorrow, and don't deviate!"

Her nostrils flared slightly when she closed the report on his desk again, positioning it nearly enough before sliding it back over to him. 

"That won't be a problem," she said. 

"Good."

Daisy turned around. He didn't have anything left to say, it seemed, and neither did she. The room was too small, too hot, despite one of the windows being open an inch, and the fresh September air caressing her nose every time she tried to inhale a breath larger than the minimum dose of oxygen needed to survive. She wanted to tear her clothes off, for they lay too tightly against every inch of her, then scrub her skin until it was raw and bleeding, before doing it all over again; it was prickling all over. 

"Hey," Rafael stopped her halfway out the door. She didn't turn around, but she did halt. "Don't lie to me again," he said. 

She tossed only a glance over her shoulder. "I didn't–"

He cut her off, "You're doing it again. Avoiding eye contact."

"Yeah, well, maybe I just don't like looking at you," she said. 

"You looked at me when you told me Russo's your guy, that you could tell just from looking at his eyes, and you looked at me when you told me you didn't like me. You're not looking at me now."

Regardless of what he was implying, she forced herself to meet his eyes. 

"I don't care how ugly the truth is or how scared you are of the consequences," he said, softer now, though not the gentle but the warning kind. "Just don't lie to me again."

And because she was who she was, and her eyes did what they did, glimmering with a sheen of liquid guilt, she grabbed the door handle, and she walked away without once looking back at him.

"Everything okay?" Danielle asked on their way out. 

Daisy forced a smile. "It's going to be," she said. 

But as they stepped out of the anteroom and into the cool marble hallway of the eighth floor of the District Attorney's Office, she realized that she was doing anything but looking at her.

Cameras flashed in rapid succession, voices overlapped as reporters rambled into their dictation devices, and the microphone by the podium in front of the gigantic NYPD emblem squealed before it was even touched.

Captain Cragen stepped in front of it then. He reached out to adjust the microphone to his height; again, it squealed, and the crowd was quick to quiet down when they noticed him standing there.

"Good afternoon, everybody," he said. "A couple of hours ago, during a routine search, SVU detectives arrested a man whom we believe to be responsible for the attacks on the two couples in the Riverside area this past week. In close contact with the mayor and the DA's office, we have decided to charge him with multiple counts of rape, aggravated assault, and murder. He is set to be arraigned later today, at which time the DA's office will issue its own statement."

As soon as he'd set his cue cards down, and before he could even thank the crowd for their (albeit exaggerated) attention, the room once again erupted in chaos.

"Captain Cragen!" a reporter shouted, and the floor was instantly yielded to her. "Suzie Trescot with the New York Ledger," she said. "Is it true that the DNA evidence you found at both crime scenes is a match to your suspect, confirming that he is, in fact, the Phantom of Manhattan?"

"We reserve the right to share any more details about this case at a later time," Cragen answered, controlled as ever. To make sure our potential pool of jurors remains untainted, he thought to himself, but that was all they were: thoughts. By now, any hope for an unbiased jury had already been lost, and no amount of denial would magically fix it.

The moment that his press conference went public, people started speculating. Social media exploded with an onslaught of wild theories about the identity of this mysterious suspect, and come noon, New York's Superior Court found itself swarmed with reporters and the most curious of the general public. They crowded Foley Square and the marble stairs leading up to the building where, soon enough, Anthony Russo—whose name had somehow landed in some last-minute online article—would be arraigned under the watchful eye of the same flashing lights that had successfully colonized the streets of Manhattan.

A reporter for Channel 4 News stood four steps up, a microphone clutched tightly in her perfectly manicured fist. She adjusted the earpiece that kept getting caught on her golden hoop earrings, and she brushed a loose, red curl out of her eyes just as the camera before her, too, started rolling.

"We are gathered here today in front of the courthouse, where the man suspected of being the Phantom of Manhattan is set to be arraigned in less than an hour," she stated. "After the NYPD press conference this morning, authorities are reserving their right to share any further details about this case, but sources close to the detectives have confirmed that clear forensic evidence against this suspect exists."

Three steps further, another reporter was giving a similarly detailed account, except that he added, "It is still unclear whether or not the surviving victim will be asked to testify against Anthony Russo."

Daisy stared at the crowd before her through her windshield, then back down at the lit-up screen of her iPhone. Not only was her Twitter feed full of posts about the Phantom of Manhattan—the fact that this ridiculous name had stuck still didn't sit right with her—and the upcoming arraignment, but every news outlet she could scour through on the World Wide Web reported on what felt like a million different angles of the same case.

She scrolled through what the official page of the New York Ledger had to offer. Not once did they reveal their confidential source. Not once did they consider an ounce of discretion in the way that they chose to report this million-dollar story. She scrolled and scrolled until the very end, where she found exactly one article that had little to do with the man they were about to arraign.

President Obama speaks at the Pentagon Memorial Service in Remembrance of 9/11.

September 11, 2012.

Her eyes flicked to the date at the top of her screen, right next to the 12-hour clock; September 19th. Somehow, early September had branched into mid-September, and what felt like the blink of an eye had actually been a week of chasing a man who'd caused nothing but chaos in the city she loved so dearly.

With far too good an aim, she tossed her phone across the dashboard. The thud sounded deafening. "Fuck!" she cried out.

There was a sudden knock on her window.

She snapped around. "What?!"

Amanda peeked inside. "It's just me," she said, muffled through the glass. "Hi."

Daisy swallowed the lump of pure stomach acid in her throat. "Oh."

She reached for her phone. The screen appeared slightly cracked in the top right corner, but all functions appeared intact, so she wiped the fiberglass off on her jeans, straightened her blazer, and reached for her door handle.

"Sorry," she said once she was out. "Thought you were a reporter."

Amanda eyed her. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah." That, again, was a lie. "Why?"

She pointed at her shirt. "Missed a button."

Looking down, Daisy noticed that indeed, one of the buttons around her midsection had popped open. She hastily closed it again. "Thanks," she said.

"No problem." Though she still glanced twice at her friend before she decided that it was probably best to let sleeping dogs lie.

They crossed the blocked street toward the courthouse. The closer they got, the denser the crowd grew, but neither reporters nor bystanders paid much attention to the two detectives as they made their way through.

"Hey," Olivia greeted them. "We were worried the media circus might've taken you."

"I don't think they're interested in us," Amanda said.

"Barba's a smart guy," Fin told her. "Went in through the back. They're not gonna hear from him until the bastard's been arraigned."

She nodded. "Good for him."

Coward, Daisy thought to herself. "Yeah," she said, anyway. "Good for him."

As the words left her mouth, though, she met Nick's eyes from across. It felt like a punch in the gut, except that the force she was hit with was invisible, hovering in the atmosphere between them with an iron fist ready to hit her again, again, and again. There was a storm raging in his hazel eyes when she dared to gaze into them, turning the beautiful brown of his irises nearly black, and that storm, too, threatened to take her down with it. She had to look away. He was only fueling the monster of guilt housed in the dark cavern of her soul. Whether it was because he, himself, felt guilty, or if he was strategically placing that guilt on her, she wasn't sure. This time, it was she who couldn't read him.

"Speaking of Barba," Olivia burst their bubble, glancing down at her phone. "He just texted," she said. "Anthony's up next."

Cameras weren't allowed inside the courtroom, thankfully, but the gallery was open to spectators. By the time they entered Part 26, several reporters had already colonized the seats in the front, notebooks and ball pens in hand. Olivia nodded toward a row of five chairs somewhere in the second-to-last row, and they wordlessly followed her. In a room this small, no seat was truly a bad seat.

Barba stood at the podium up front, Manila folder spread out before him as he scribbled something onto what Daisy assumed was a detailed overview of the kind of person Anthony Russo was, the charges presented against him, legal precedent for remand, and possible rebuttals. He'd probably spent the past twelve hours preparing for this very moment, likely opting against sleep, judging by the heavy bags under his eyes. She noticed a slight, probably caffeine-induced, tremor in his right hand as he wrote, too. And somewhere within that folder, Daisy was sure, he was already hiding a perfectly composed press statement.

Still, as he stood there in his charcoal suit with a floral-patterned tie that was entirely new to her, and his dark hair styled into a neat coif atop his head, the minuscule signs of exhaustion she'd noted paled in comparison; out of everyone in that room, he was still the most put together.

Daisy tried to squeeze herself between Olivia and Amanda, but Nick was faster, sliding into the empty seat beside her. She blinked at him. He blinked back at her. His mouth opened, then closed again, and her heart dropped only further into the pit of her stomach. For a moment there, she considered hiding underneath her chair, but then the door to the judge's chamber opened, and she quickly abandoned the idea again.

"All rise!" the Bailiff commanded.

Judge Serani entered without paying much attention to the crowd. "You may be seated," he said, adjusting his robe as he sank into his chair. "Next case… right. Anthony Russo."

An officer dragged him in. Yes, dragged. He barely lifted his feet off the marble floors, and not just because they were bound. The smugness that had once painted his face was gone, entirely replaced by cracked lips and sunken eyes. It might have just been an act, but the bruise on his jaw was not.

"John Buchanan for the defense, Your Honor," he declared.

Judge Serani nodded, opening the file before him. "Let's see," he said. "Two counts of murder in the first degree, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of rape in the first degree, one count of attempted rape and assault, four counts of assault in the first and second degree, and unlawful possession of an unregistered firearm." The judge glanced at Anthony. "Quite the list."

"That's because Mr. Barba and the DA's office are grossly overcharging this," Buchanan cut in. He let out a laugh that weighed heavily with feigned disbelief. He looked around the room, at Rafael, the reporters, and the detectives, as if he were looking for an answer but found none. It was all a game to him, anyway.

The judge glanced at him, then the prosecutor next to him, who remained thoroughly unimpressed at the opposing counsel's audacity, before he directed his attention back to the task at hand. "I take it your client's pleading not guilty then, Mr. Buchanan?" Judge Serani asked, though the answer was already painfully obvious.

"He is, Your Honor. The NYPD is simply using my client as a scapegoat because they can't find the man actually responsible for these horrific crimes."

"A scapegoat?" Barba's voice cracked slightly at the new octave it reached, and his mouth twitched into a rather unintended, irritated smirk. "Your client's semen was found inside the two rape victims," he said.

Buchanan turned to him fully now. "And the defense plans to file a motion to have these so-called results dismissed."

"Seriously?"

"Counselors!" Judge Serani interrupted them. "You may hash this out on your own time," he said, then returned his attention to Barba. "People on bail?"

"Given the severity of the charges against Mr. Russo, the People request remand."

"Mr. Barba's once again overreaching," Buchanan argued before he could even finish. "My client is not a flight risk. He has strong ties to the community. He lives with his mother, has a stable job and income—"

"Mr. Russo was found in possession of an unregistered firearm, which means he likely has ties to black market dealers, and we have reason to believe that all four of his victims visited the restaurant where he works before they were attacked."

"He's prepared to surrender his passport and wear an ankle bracelet."

Judge Serani shook his head. "Given the severity of the charges, I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Barba," he said, reaching for his gavel. "I'm granting the People's request for remand."

Red oak met white oak, bang! And the gallery erupted in chaos.

Rafael had seen that decision coming. Not because he was so sure of himself or because he was overly confident in his legal abilities—although in this line of work, he had to be somewhat overzealous—but because this was the easy part. He'd piled up charges that, statistically, would have gotten no defendant out on bail, not even a client of John Buchanan's.

He'd meticulously calculated the likelihood of a win while studying the legal definitions of the charges he already knew by heart. He'd reread them a million times before writing up the first draft, and then again before the second, third, fourth, and final one. He ended up shredding so much paper that around 4 am, the device had gotten jammed, and he'd kicked it until it almost broke.

By morning, Rafael had been seven cups of coffee deep. By morning, he'd been a mess of swollen bags under his usually so bright green eyes, and Carmen had found him just like that, with shaky hands and papers strewn all around him.

He'd already shared two phone calls with the District Attorney, one prompted by the mayor's office and the other prompted by McCoy himself. He'd not berated him, thankfully; he'd only underlined the importance of closing this case without generating too much bad publicity, which meant stuffing the press's greedy mouths with a statement as soon as their suspect was arraigned. Rafael had to remain in the good graces of City Hall, and he was not, under any circumstances, supposed to embarrass or undermine the integrity of the DA's office. That was his job, and that was expected of him.

After the arraignment, he was supposed to assure the charges he'd chosen to bring held merit, and that a Grand Jury could see that. He was supposed to wade through mountains of evidence so that all holes would be closed before the defense could even dare to question them. And he was supposed to prepare every last witness he was planning to put on that stand, because the press would be watching his every move before and especially after the Grand Jury proceedings, and they could not let such a high-profile case go to waste.

Needless to say, Carmen's first order of business that morning had been to force him to shower, change into a fresh suit—the charcoal one with the flower-patterned burgundy tie would look best in front of the cameras, she'd said—and eat something that wasn't a full packet of plantain chips.

"Do you think I'm too… detached?" he'd asked when she'd turned to leave him to it. He'd glanced at the faces plastered to the whiteboard by the green-tinted fireplace across the room, the first rays of sunlight reflecting off the photographs there.  

Carmen had stopped in the doorway. "Sorry?" she'd asked.

"Well, McCoy wants me to win this case because losing would mean bad publicity for the entire office, and I know he's not… he's not an emotionless machine. He's not doing this because he doesn't care about the victims. That's not who he is. He's just acting on orders from the mayor, and consequently, I'm acting on both their orders, but…" No. He could only shake his head.

A pause. "You're not an emotionless machine, either," Carmen had told him, and she'd pointed at the whiteboard as if he'd somehow become blind to it. "I know you're doing it for them, not for the prospect of political gain. The real question is, do you?"

"Excuse me?"

"You wouldn't be asking me that if you didn't care, Mr. Barba. And you certainly wouldn't be feeling guilty if you somehow thought being detached is the right thing to be."

His eyes had been far too tired to widen, but he must have looked like a deer in headlights to her, or she would not have smiled at him quite like she had. "I don't feel guilty," he'd argued, voice just a little higher, just a little more biting than usual.

"Of course not," she'd said. "And your reason behind that question is definitely not five-foot-tall with a temper."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think you know."

He, in fact, had and still did not know what she'd meant by that, but she'd pulled the door closed before he could ask again.

Rafael snapped out of his brief moment of reminiscing when Buchanan slapped two envelopes onto the podium in front of him. He noticed only then that the man's upper lip was glistening with sweat.

"My motions to sever, and to suppress the DNA evidence," he told him. "Though I'm sure I will find more motions to file once all of your evidence has been made available to me."

Rafael pursed his lips, but he slid the motions into his leather briefcase without argument, grabbing the Manila folder he'd spent all night compiling off the podium and stuffing it into the empty slot next to them. Marianna Russo's exaggerated cry as her son was once again dragged away by the court officers did not go unnoticed, but other than an exaggerated sideways glance, he paid little mind to the woman or the reporters around him.

"Counselor," Olivia called.

He crossed into the gallery, toward the detectives.

"Well done," she said.

Rafael shook his weary head. "This was only the beginning," he told them. "Starting now, I have five days to convince a Grand Jury to indict him or his bail will automatically reduce to $1."

"What do you need from us?"

"You can start by helping me sift through all the evidence so I can build a case against this guy."

Olivia shared a look with her colleagues. "I think we can manage that."

People kept passing through the door, the relentless clicking of camera shutters audible through the gaps left behind, and the light broke against the milky glass that was set into the middle of it. Daisy seemed drawn to it; Rafael noted how unusual it was for her to be this quiet.

Fin was the first through the door. The others followed suit, into the press storm. But the cameras weren't interested in the ADA or the detectives. Buchanan was taking a stand by the elevators, giving an elaborate speech about injustice and corruption, none of which had much to do with reality. Though in the digital age, reality was whatever each party wanted it to be, and some news outlets only allowed so much truth before the weight of the entertainment factor tipped the scales in its favor. Buchanan was the perfect tool to expedite the process of the latter, which, in turn, worked in favor of the defense.

"God," Daisy muttered to herself, "that man just loves the sound of his own voice."

"He won't get away with it," Rafael said, more so to reassure himself than her, the usual fight and conviction in his voice almost entirely smoked out now.

She dared to look at him then, but he wasn't looking at her.

"Why?" she asked. "Because humans are so smart?"

He pouted. "Good point."

The way he was glued to the lips of the defending counsel on the other end of the hallway was probably the closest to uncertain or nervous or even terrified she would ever get to see him, and somewhere buried deep within the green of his irises was a silent kind of anger—the kind often born from desperation. Unlike Nick, Rafael did not usually wear those feelings on his perfectly put-together sleeve. Frustration, yes; annoyance, even more so, but this? No, not this. He had such an iron grip on his temper that most could only dream about.

"But," Rafael added, "given the evidence, I don't think a jury's gonna fall for his… delusions of grandeur."

Against her better judgment, Daisy snorted. "Delusions of grandeur? You mean, bullshit?" she asked.

"That would be inappropriate." A pause. "But yes."

"What, they don't teach profanities at boarding school?"

"I wouldn't know," he said. "I went to a Bronx Catholic school."

She took him in, all of him, the soft cadence of his voice that hovered just between a baritone and a tenor, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips, and the green of his eyes as they lingered on hers for just a second more before he stepped away. Her mouth remained slightly agape, but nothing would quite come out.

Bronx Catholic School. It was no secret that he was a Harvard alumnus; the credentials displayed neatly on the walls in his office suggested as much, and she knew well what was often said about Catholic schoolboys, so who was this man, really, underneath all that confident arrogance and irritating glory?

She watched with narrowed eyes—curiosity, mostly, and not nearly frustrated enough to be palpable—as he made his way through the small circle the detectives had formed, stopping once he'd reached the other side. Back to business, as usual. Given his usual demeanor, one could easily assume that he came from privilege and that he was still very much enjoying it.

Daisy had never met anyone who could shapeshift quite so well.

"This case is already a media circus," Rafael said. "I'd like to contain it before it spreads any further. That means watch your step, and whatever you do, do not talk to the press."

"You got it," Olivia said.

She was the kind of professional Daisy aspired to be, but someone with her temper couldn't have been farther from achieving such a dream.

Rafael typed something on his BlackBerry, probably a text, before he lifted his head again. "Where are we on the first victim?" he asked.

"I talked to her this morning," Daisy said.

"And?"

"She agreed to testify."

He nodded. "Good. Ask her if she'd be willing to come talk to me tomorrow."

Daisy was about to answer, okay, but his phone demanded his attention again.

"Press is waiting for me downstairs," he said. "I'll find you when I'm done."

Watching him strut down the hallway, though, Daisy could not help but wonder how truly fascinating this man could be when he wasn't driving her insane.

Since the evolution of the human race, there have always been individuals who craved the attention of others more than the general population. Some of those individuals followed their calling into the entertainment industry, either as actors or musicians, while others spent their lives fantasizing about crowds chanting their name without ever actually experiencing it.

Rafael had never thought of himself as part of either group of people, neither those living in the public eye nor those who lived to desire it. He hadn't even thought he would ever find himself in the public eye until he started climbing ranks, turning from an overly eager junior prosecutor to a (still overly eager) senior ADA, and the cameras quickly became a part of his life. He empathized with the public's need for information because some curiosity was far from unheard of, but the concept of understanding or at least tolerating the need for press conferences to satisfy the public did not equal his appreciation for such a tedious task. He could do it; he was good at it, and he was, most of the time, fairly confident in his ability to give the appropriate answers, given the context, but it was certainly not his favorite pastime. 

In the end, his statement about Anthony Russo was probably the most collected he'd given in his entire career. He should have been so endlessly proud of himself, and usually, he was. Usually, he rewarded himself with a nice glass of Scotch—not Whiskey, because Whiskey was for bad days—and got to working on whatever was left to work on, but this case was not like any other case. McCoy was not going to kiss his feet. He did not deserve a celebratory Scotch because, in an hour, everyone would have already forgotten about his excellent press statement, the rumor mill would have found another angle to spin at, the defense would have dropped another motion in his lap, and no amount of effort Rafael could put in was going to be enough until Anthony Russo was finally behind bars.

The men's bathroom on the eighth floor of the DA's office only had one window, facing away from any busy street. Save for the ventilation system, it was mostly quiet when unoccupied, and it certainly was soundproof. Though as Rafael stood hunched over the marble sink, he could feel the vibrations of the pipes behind the walls, feel the echoes of the footsteps outside that seemingly made the floor beneath his feet shake, and when he turned on the faucet, the rush of the cold water into the sink screamed at him like microphone feedback through line arrays.

He was sure someone had to be holding a power drill to his temples, piercing through skin, flesh, and bone, and the nerves attached to his fucking eyeballs. The fluorescent lights above his head grew even brighter when he dared to squeeze and reopen his eyes, to which the pain only expanded.

Rafael buried his face in the water pooling in his hands, taking a mouthful and swallowing it. For a second there, as he stood with his face submerged, the pain ebbed. The moment he pulled away, though, it flooded his senses again, and seemingly tenfold.

He turned off the faucet—one less stimulus to worry about. Yet, the walls were still vibrating, and his eyes threatened to bulge out of his skull with how tightly the pain had wrapped its iron grip around his optic nerves.

Carmen looked up when he entered the anteroom, brows furrowing at the sight of his narrowed eyes. She reached for the paperwork that had been dropped off for him while he was gone, but he barely looked at it when she handed it to him.

"These were left for you," she said, keeping her voice purposefully low. "Another stack of Ms. Novak's unfinished cases. She referred them to you."

He nodded. "Thank you, Carmen."

"I made it clear to the detectives that these are not a priority right now, and you will get back to them as soon as this case is closed."

God, he thought, he would wither away without her.

"I should get you a raise," he murmured.

"As lovely as that would be, that is also not a priority right now," she said.

He managed a small smile before he passed into his office, closing the door behind him with a lot less force than usual. The blinds were already closed, thank God, so he dropped the files, his briefcase, and his coat without much care, and promptly reached into the top drawer of his desk for the small bottle of Ibuprofen. He popped two into his hand, then into his mouth.

A few more minutes of torture, and he would be free. A few more minutes of torture, and the concept of migraines would once again become foreign to him, because when he wasn't in pain, he could pretend these episodes never happened.

And once the pain had passed, that was precisely what he did.

While everyone else was sifting through the boxes of evidence on the table by the whiteboard that they had accumulated, Daisy was hunting for something else. The trail of breadcrumbs she was following proved rather large with no end in sight, but it was far from tedious work. Where there had once been a serious lack of evidence was now a seemingly endless amount to sift through, and it was all terrifyingly beneficial.

Her laptop roared when she opened yet another tab, advancing further down the rabbit hole. Of course, it only took a second more for her cursor to stop reacting. She pressed it a little harder—still not responding. "$500 device acting like a fucking decoy from Toys R Us," she muttered. 

"You should write a letter to Steve Jobs," Amanda said. 

"Oh, yeah. Dear Mr. Jobs, please start making your Apple products as sturdy as my old Nokia, which, after ten years, still has a 40% battery. That oughta go well."

She chuckled. "Vive la révolution."

Daisy tried a few more times to get her cursor to respond. When it didn't, she slammed the screen shut. 

"Need a break?" Amanda asked.

"Yeah, before I murder someone," Daisy said. "I'm just gonna grab another coffee. Need a refill?"

Amanda wordlessly slid her mug across the table, which was answer enough for her. Daisy grabbed it alongside her own before she rose to her feet and made her way over to the kitchenette, where a freshly brewed batch of the caffeinated brown gold was just waiting to be poured.

She heard the fridge close behind her as she popped sugar and creamer into both mugs. Then, a can sizzled. 

"Hey," Nick said. Of course, he was nursing yet another overly sweetened energy drink. 

Daisy barely glanced at him. "Hi," she said.

"Can we talk?"

"I'm a little busy."

His hand wrapped around her bicep. "Please?" he said. 

She had no choice but to look up at him, back down at his hand, then up at him again. His fingers flexed slightly. She doubted he knew how tightly he was gripping her, or that the imprints of his fingertips were starting to burn into her skin. His hold tightened another fraction. She pulled against it, but there was no getting out of it. 

"Oh, so now saying no will get me the Nick Amaro Suspect Treatment?" she asked.

He glanced down at his own hand, fingers flexing slightly. Then, as fast as he'd grabbed her, he let go again. "Sorry."

She slipped out, took a step back. "Thank you," though it did not sound genuine. 

"I'm sorry," Nick said. "I just… can you at least give me a minute?"

Her tongue darted out to wet her cracked bottom lip. She wasn't getting out of this, she realized, not without causing a scene. Although on any other occasion, she wouldn't have been opposed to it, this was not the time to feed the squad room's hunger for gossip. 

Daisy abandoned the mugs of coffee she'd just poured, rounding the corner into the locker room, and he followed her blindly without another word. Once they were far enough away from the bullpen, she stopped between the rows of blue metal, next to the NYPD emblem painted on the brick wall, and crossed her arms. "One minute," she told him. "Talk."

Nick looked around the room as if the words he was looking for were hiding somewhere between these lockers and specks of dust. "Look, I… I owe you an apology," he said. 

The laugh she exhaled was a short one, bitter. "Oh, do you?"

"You told me you needed space, and I ignored it. The last thing I wanted was to back you into a corner or– or hurt you, so I'm… I'm sorry."

His shoulders dropped. He'd been holding that one in for far too long, which struck as odd; Nick wasn't prone to apologies. There was no doubt that his remorse was genuine, either, but to Daisy, it seemed rather ill-placed. 

"If you think that's the part that bothered me," she said, "you don't really know me at all."

His brows lifted. "What, you're still mad about what I said to Cragen?"

"You still don't get it."

"How am I supposed to get what you're so upset about if you won't talk to me?"

"I did tell you," she snapped back. "I gave you an out before I decided to approach Russo. You didn't take it."

"No, giving me an out would've been to tell me what you were planning before you got out of the car," he said. "You didn't say anything. You made a decision for yourself that could've gotten us both killed, and I had to step in to save your ass!"

"I'm sorry for putting you in that position, I truly am, but it was still my decision to approach him. I decided to arrest him, and it was supposed to be my decision whether or not to tell Cragen. I was prepared to face the consequences on my own until you decided it would be a better idea to completely change the narrative."

"I told you, I was just trying to protect you." Nick closed the distance between them. "If you'd told Cragen that you didn't have probable cause when you decided to go after him, you wouldn't have just risked losing your job; you would've ruined every chance of Barba ever winning this case," he said.

"Barba would've found a way to win this case either way."

"Oh, so it's okay for him to twist the truth, but when I do it, it's a problem?"

"You–" Daisy broke off, her breathing a lot more shallow now. "Don't act like this is about Barba," she said. 

"No, you're right. It's not about Barba. This is about you, and the fact that you can't accept when someone's trying to help you 'cause God forbid people find out you're just human like the rest of us!"

"Trust me, I'm well aware that I'm only human, but not everyone wants to be saved, Nick! And when someone says they don't want your help, you need to accept that."

"You're not my rescue project. Yeah, no, I got that."

"I'm not," she said. "I am a grown woman, so instead of bursting in there like my fucking babysitter and railroading me, you could've just talked to me. That is why I'm upset. Not because I have some kind of double standard or because you said what you said. Hell, I'm not even upset about needing to perjure myself. I am upset because you decided what you thought was best for me, and I didn't even get a say!"

"Is that what you want me to apologize for?" Nick asked. 

Daisy choked on a scoff. "We both know that even if you did, it wouldn't be genuine."

"No, 'cause I'm not sorry for caring about you."

His eyes flicked down to her lips, then back to her eyes. He was so close that she had to tilt her head up to look at him. She could smell his cologne, the sweetness on his breath—a mixture of Axe body spray, sandalwood cologne, and gummy bears. His throat bopped when he swallowed. An invisible force only seemed to draw him closer, and closer, and…

She pressed her palm to his chest, right above his racing heart. Alarm bells, that was all she could hear, and the distance between them grew wide again.

"Well," Daisy said, "considering that you told me you still have hope of getting back with your wife, maybe you should care a little less about someone who's just your friend."

She might as well have slapped him with how hard it took him aback.

"My–" Nick faltered. "No," he said. "This is between us, you and me, not me and Maria."

The sound of her ringtone took away her answer. Daisy glanced down. Dr. Whylie, it read. 

He stared at her. "You're not actually gonna pick that up, are you?"

"I have to," she said. "It's my therapist."

"Your therapist, really? That's your excuse?"

"Again, not everything's about you." The door to the hallway almost broke off its hinges when she tore it open. "Therapy," she told him. "You should try it sometime."

"Daisy–"

But the glass set into the doorframe clattered when she slammed it shut behind her. 

Daisy walked until she found a quiet corner by the elevator, fingers shaking as she slid the green button across the screen. "Evans," she answered. 

"Daisy," Dr. Whylie said. "I'm so glad I finally caught you."

"Dr. Whylie, hi." She couldn't quite catch her breath. "Um, what can I do for you?"

"Well, it's been almost a week since you told me you'd call to reschedule that appointment you missed."

Pressing a hand against her sternum, she leaned back against the brick wall. Sweat was starting to collect at her temples, but all she could feel was cold—cold on the outside, and cold on the inside, curling its fist around the pit of her stomach, tugging, tugging, tugging, until it started tearing. 

"I'm sorry," she said, choked-up but still somehow steady enough to fool even Dr. Whylie's skilled ear through the unstable line. "I've just been so busy with this case..."

The woman seemed to understand what she was trying to say without much effort. "I know," she told her. "I saw it on the news. I can't even imagine the stress you're under."

She forced a smile, even as her eyes began to burn. "It's a lot," she said, "but nothing I can't handle." Lies, lies all around; if she wasn't careful, she thought, she would soon break out into hives, and those would surely give her away.

"Well, either way, it's even more important now that we stick to our weekly schedule. Are you free tomorrow?"

"I, uh–" Daisy looked up at the ceiling, the lights blurring before her eyes. "I'm sorry. We're in the midst of preparing for trial, and I can't… I just can't. They need me here."

Dr. Whylie paused, and she could only imagine the crease between her brows deepening. "Daisy," she asked, "are you okay?" 

She exhaled a brief pfft through closed lips. "Oh, yeah. I'm fine." She had to wipe her cheeks when the first drop of salt slid down her cheek. "Work's keeping me busy, y'know?"

The doctor said her name again, but she cut her off. 

"I'll try to be there on Friday, I swear. I just—" Daisy stumbled a few feet back, pushing backward through the door to the women's bathroom and, when she was sure no one else was inside, she slipped into the fourth and last stall, "—I really need to get back to work now," she said. "I'm sorry."

The line clicked. Her already cracked phone slid across the tiled floors as she fell to her knees, hunched over, and she emptied pure acid mixed with coffee and what felt like her entire stomach lining into the toilet bowl. 

Rafael tapped his foot impatiently against the elevator floor as it opened to let in two uniformed officers. They barely acknowledged his presence, but neither did he. 

He was only listening with half an ear, forwarding the details for the first motion hearing to Carmen so he would not, under any circumstances, forget about it, when he overheard one of the officers before him say, "…how much did they pay you?"

He stopped typing. 

The other one hesitated. He glanced back at the ADA, noticed that he had his face buried in his BlackBerry, and leaned in closer to his partner. Rafael couldn't hear what he was saying, but the other officer's reaction spoke for itself.

"For real?" he asked.

"Yeah," the first one said, grinning. "And there's more where that came from. Jimmy told me himself."

"You're one lucky son of a bitch, man." They bumped fists. "Congrats!"

Rafael was lacking context, of course, but whatever they were discussing did not sound favorable for either of them, and when the officers finally got off on the next floor, he stole a glance at the name tags on the front of their uniforms. Groverand Jackson, that was all he could gather before the doors slid closed again, and he traveled the remaining two floors upstairs in silence. He'd witnessed stranger things, sure, but he noted those names down, anyway, just in case. 

The next time the doors opened, he got off, too, strutting down the hall and around the corner into the SVU squad room. The officer at the front desk wordlessly slid the sign-in sheet across the counter. He put his name down, then signed next to it. More was no longer asked of him.

Rafael was about to turn toward where the detectives had set up when the sudden clanging of metal coming from the break room to his right made him pause. He peeked through the glass. Daisy delivered another fatal kick to the vending machine, and it promptly released what she must have been waiting for. The can sizzled when she opened it.

She did not notice him until she was already halfway in front of him. She stopped, looked up at him, then back down at the can in her hand. Rafael noticed that her mascara was slightly smudged. It looked as if she'd held her face under water for more than just a second, which, by itself, would not have struck him as particularly odd. But her usually so unwavering hand was shaking around her Ginger Ale, and she was slouching; she wasn't known for making herself smaller than she was—the contrary, in fact—so it took Rafael a moment longer to process what he was witnessing. 

Daisy's fists tightened around the can. "What?" she asked. 

He opened his mouth, but all that would come out was a pathetic stammer. 

"You're in my way."

Rafael didn't step aside, though.

She groaned, "Ugh!" and her shoulder rather purposefully bumped into his as she brushed past him. 

He smoothed the spot where his coat was wrinkled now. Whatever had crawled up her ass, he didn't even want to know; he had work to do, and with a sigh, he turned back to the other detectives. 

Daisy was too far gone to notice. By the time she reached the kitchen, she'd convinced herself that Barba knew somehow—knew that she felt sick to her stomach, and that her mascara was smudged because she'd cried. She'd convinced herself that he was still watching, even after she'd turned around, because no one had more of a reason to judge or scrutinize her than he. 

Perhaps it was time to add paranoia to her list of diagnoses. 

The cold of the Ginger Ale did little to soothe the revolt in her stomach. She bent over the counter; it didn't get better. Not even ten minutes ago, she'd fixed her clothes and smiled at herself in the dirty bathroom mirror, trying to trick her brain into believing that she was fine. She'd told herself that Nick would get over it, and somehow, once this case was over, things would go back to how they'd once been because they could not possibly keep this up forever. She'd tried to push it all away, push him away, but when she looked up and watched him walk past her with only one stolen glance, she realized how useless it had all been—because nothing really mattered except the case that was currently stuck to the board. 

"Counselor," Olivia greeted Rafael with the semblance of a smile.

He placed his briefcase on the empty chair by the head of the table. His version of hi was a mere nod. 

"Saw your press statement," she said. 

"You and approximately 200,000 other people," he countered. 

"It was a good statement." 

"Thank you." He glanced at the boxes on the table. "Where are we on the evidence?" 

Rollins sat up a little straighter. "We're still sorting through what CSU found in Anthony Russo's room," she told him, "but we've got the forensic report on his mother's car back. The soil stuck to the wheels matches the soil at the first crime scene, and they've found traces of our victims' blood on the driver's seat."

It was strange how something so sinister could sound like music to his ears. Rafael caught the file she passed to him with ease. "Go on," he said. 

Olivia pulled two evidence bags from one of the boxes. He recognized them—the gun, the mask, and the gloves. "Ballistics came back," she said, and she underlined her statement with yet another file placed in front of him. "Gun's a match."

"Warner also found traces of Liam Thomas' blood on the handle," Fin added. "Guy isn't as smart as he thinks he is. His DNA's all over it."

Rafael was more than inclined to agree with him, though he didn't say it out loud.

Slowly, he nodded. "Records from the restaurant connect him to the victims. DNA puts him at the scene," he recounted, eyes once again flicking between the folders and the boxes. "What about motive?" he asked then. "Anything to prove premeditation?"

Daisy quietly returned to her seat, placing a mug of no longer piping hot coffee in front of Rollins, then one next to her own unoccupied computer, before she, too, sat down. Rafael noted that she was chewing gum; the mint offered a stark contrast to her usually so sweet perfume and mango shampoo. 

"CSU didn't find anything that would suggest he planned it, but they did find this," Amaro said, and he pulled a hardcover book from one of the boxes. 

SON OF SAM: THE .44 CALIBER KILLER

"It's annotated."

Rafael took the book from him. 350 pages. "Of course, it is," he said. 

"Probably inspired his MO."

"I agree, but I need more than an annotated serial killer biography to prove premeditation."

"Well," Daisy cut in, "CSU didn't find any physical evidence."

He glanced down at her. "Care to elaborate on that emphasis, Detective?" he asked.

She pressed a button on her keyboard that mirrored her screen on the monitor attached to the wall across from them. 

"TARU found evidence that Anthony did have profiles on several internet sites. All under a fake name," she said. "Unfortunately, he irreversibly wiped the memory on all of his devices, so other than proving that he regularly spent several hours on Reddit and Twitter, their report won't do anything."

"And that is helpful how, exactly?"

"Well, I made an account. Tracked down his profiles."

He opened his mouth to object, but she cut him off, "Before you ask, yes, TARU traced them back to the IP address where they originated from," she said. "It's his computer."

And Rafael promptly swallowed his objection. 

"Anyway. I went through his profiles, his posts, the communities he frequented, and I found this." Daisy pressed another button, and within seconds, the screen before them was littered with seemingly a million postings from several sites. The most prominent, however, was the one with the little orange icon.

Amanda's eyes narrowed at a capture of text. "It's almost impossible to have a conversation with a woman of datable age without feeling internal hate and rage," she read aloud. "Wh– seriously?" 

"Gets better," but there was not a hint of humor in Daisy's words as she said them. 

Rafael leaned in closer. Perhaps she'd been onto something with that Ginger Ale, because when he read the next post she zoomed in on, his throat tightened until there was hardly any air left for him to breathe. 

"Just think about it," Olivia read, "every time you interact with one, you intrinsically know that she lives a life infinitely better than yours. And likely no matter where you are, she's later gonna indulge in sex and love, while you rot. It's just pure rage-fuel to interact with them and think about how good their lives are."

His nostrils flared. "Jesus," he said. 

"This post is dated April 4th."

"Some of these range back years," Daisy said. "But that one sounds tame in comparison to what he started posting two weeks ago."

She switched to the next thread. Reddit posts again, most of which had been buried so deep that it must have taken her hours to find—or perhaps, with how vocal these incels were about their hatred, it hardly took her any time at all. 

The words that were not even his own tasted rancid on Rafael's tongue as he read them. "The guys that come into my work with their perfect jobs and perfect lives," he said. "They date the most beautiful girls. Girls I've desired, girls I cannot have. They all look down on me. They are spoiled and heartless, but these guys are not men, and the girls are awful and wicked. Somebody should teach them a lesson."

Another click, another post. "A week before the first attack, another guy suggested he should try 'slitting their throats', to which he replied—" 

"—Or force these bitches to take me before I blow their brains out." He was nothing short of seething now. 

Olivia turned to Barba. "You wanted premeditation," she said. 

"And you've given me premeditation with an additional list of over 200 homicidal men who hate women," he said. "Fantastic!"

"Well, it's still proof of premeditation."

"It wasn't completely my idea," Daisy confessed. Her eyes flicked across the table. "Nick suggested it the night we arrested Russo. I just… ran with it," she said.

Amaro reminded Rafael more of a child who'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It was yet another thing that struck him as odd, and another thing he chose not to comment on. The temperature in the room was already cold enough; one degree more, and hell might as well have frozen over. 

"Well, either way," Rafael said, pulling his phone back out, "I believe that federal prosecutors are better equipped to deal with this."

He glanced at the screen on the wall, down at his phone, then back at Daisy. 

"Is that your personal laptop?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. 

"And you created an account to follow these… incels?"

"Yes."

"Did you use your personal email, too?"

"Why's that important?"

"Yes or no?" Rafael inquired.

"I used my work email," Daisy said, "but I made sure not to use my real name."

He cocked an eyebrow at the profile she was (almost proudly) displaying to him. "You are a 45-year-old bearded white man with a beer belly, and the username RageAgainstFemoids?"

"I had to blend it."

"And you did. The resemblance is uncanny."

She looked down at herself before she gaped at him. "Really?" she asked.

Barba rolled his eyes. "No," he said. "Delete it."

"What–"

"If someone finds out that you've been actively following or even engaging with this hate speech, you could be charged as an accessory the next time one of these delightful individuals decides to commit a crime that crosses state lines."

This time, when she looked at him, her frown resembled one of genuine confusion. "You're serious?" she asked again.

"Delete it. All of it," Rafael told her. "And make sure you send me a copy of these screenshots before you do."

With a sigh, she turned back around. "Yes, Sir."

He didn't comment on the rather derogatory enunciation of the honorific, or the fact that, while yes, it sounded like she far from meant it, she was still oddly compliant. There were worse things she could be.

"So," Cragen finally stepped forward, hands sliding back into the pockets of his slacks, "Daisy just found us a smoking gun," he said. "We have the restaurant's records that prove Russo doesn't have an alibi for either of the attacks. We have his gun, the victims' blood, and his DNA."

The ADA hummed. "Should be enough to convince a Grand Jury."

"You need us to testify?" Rollins asked him. 

"Probably. Jury's gonna be curious about chain of evidence."

He reached for his briefcase, though not to leave; he moved it from the chair to the table, shrugged off his jacket, and sat down—right next to Daisy. 

The detectives shared a look. 

"What," Amaro was first to ask, "you're gonna supervise us now?"

Rafael glowered at him. "No, you're gonna help me prep. So," he said, "what else do we have?"

Daisy shoved one of the evidence boxes in front of him, roughly so, before grabbing one of her own. "Take your pick," she said. 

He peeked into the box, then back at her. She was standing now. "Where are you going?"

"Anywhere but here." 

The tension only seemed to be suffocating her. Perhaps she was the only one actually feeling it, too, because this case wasn't the only fucked up thing digging its claws into her, and that noose around her neck might as well have been one of her own making. But humans could not survive without air; she couldn't breathe around Nick, and she couldn't breathe around Barba, so anywhere seemed better than here if she wanted to survive. 

That was why she ran, because while there was a thin line between self-destruction and self-preservation that she was prone to cross, running to protect what was left of her delicate heart was the only thing she was truly good at. 

She rose to her full height. Granted, it wasn't all that much in comparison to him, but she did not need to be six feet tall to stand her ground against a man she could only imagine was a naturally born bully. These types of men always had an aura about them, and it reeked; it reeked of expensive, biting Tom Ford cologne, sweat, and Whiskey.

"Mr. Russo didn't ask for a lawyer," she told him. 

But his smile didn't waver. "Mr. Russo didn't hire me," he said. "His mother did."

Daisy should have seen that coming, really. An hour into her son not coming home, Marianna must have figured that something had gone terribly wrong. From that point onward, it had probably not been all that difficult to locate him. 

"Wait," Anthony piped up behind her. "My mother's here?"

She glanced over her shoulder, but Buchanan cut her off. "Yes, and she's worried sick about you."

He could shove that feigned sweetness right up his hairy—

"You have the right to deny counsel," Daisy blurted.

"Detective, you're not seriously trying to bully my client out of exercising his Sixth Amendment right, are you?"

"Your client's not a minor, which means that his mother can't make this decision for him. I'm simply trying to educate him."

"And here I was, thinking the lawsuit I'm gonna file against the NYPD for false imprisonment would be harder to win."

She was about to respond with something far more colorful that, in and of itself, would have been enough to get her ass sued five ways to Sunday when, through the open door, Captain Cragen stepped into the room.

"Detective Evans," he said, "stand down."

"Captain–" she started.

"We're dropping the charges."

Her face fell further. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Well," Buchanan said, "that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Sir," Daisy started again, but the counselor did not care much for her objections. 

"Detective, would you mind uncuffing my client?" 

For a second there, she considered swallowing the key that was hiding somewhere on her belt, just to make sure Anthony would never get out of this godforsaken interrogation room. 

But at last, Cragen cut in. "Slow down, Counselor," he said, and she watched as Barba suddenly rounded the corner into the room, taking the captain's words as a cue to whatever perfectly choreographed act they had construed mere minutes before. 

"I believe that won't be necessary," Rafael said, fingers tightening around a set of blue, high-end envelopes. 

Buchanan gaped at him. "I beg your pardon?"

Barba stepped forward, right in front of him, and smacked the envelopes against his chest. Even standing a few inches shorter than the opposing counsel, he radiated the kind of energy that, in that very moment, made him appear over six feet tall, and perhaps even bigger than the man across from him. 

The counselor's mouth twitched. "What is this?" he asked.

"Warrants," Rafael stated matter-of-factly. "One for Mr. Russo's home, the other for his DNA." 

John Buchanan was a pest, yes, but in that moment, he and Daisy shared the same expression of complete and utter disbelief, though their motivations behind it drifted miles apart. 

"This is–" Buchanan clenched his fist so hard around the envelopes that they crinkled. "This is preposterous! I mean, your entire case against my client is completely unsubstantiated. You can't do this."

"Oh, really? Judge Catano seems to disagree with you." Rafael glanced past Daisy toward Cragen and nodded. "Do it," he said. 

Cragen unlocked the cuffs with his own key, only to pull the boy up and tighten the harsh metal back around his wrists in a far more uncomfortable position than they'd been before. "Anthony Russo," he said, "you're under arrest for the rape and attempted murder of Danielle Walker, the attempted murder of Liam Thomas, the rape and murder of Claire Newman, and the murder of Eric Walsh."

Anthony winced, and finally, his fucking smirk died where it rested. 

"You remember your rights?" 

"He does," Buchanan answered before his client could. "And he's not gonna say another word without me present. Isn't that right, Anthony?"

The boy shook his head. 

He turned back to Cragen. "Where are you taking him?"

"We're just gonna print him. After that, he's all yours, Counselor."

Barba didn't even try to hide the smirk pulling at his lips. 

"You're smiling now," Buchanan snarled as his client was dragged out of the room, "but I'm gonna bury you in so many motions that a judge will have no choice but to dismiss this case before it even goes to trial."

Still, his smirk did not fade. If anything, it only seemed to grow at his rival's apparent irritation. There was currently no central heating in Interrogation 2, which made the room several degrees colder than the rest of the precinct. Yet, the man was sweating, and his chest heaved as if this no more than sixty-second-long argument between him and the ADA was more of a marathon than an ego battle. Barba did, after all, have a way of keeping the people around him on their toes.

"Well, good luck with that," Rafael said, his tone as even as before. And, to drill the knife deeper into his back that was now turned to him, he added, "See you in court!"

Buchanan snarled, but he did not waste another word on him. His expensive dress shoes echoed against the floor, growing from deafening to barely audible until, finally, they vanished completely. 

Daisy was familiar with the rage-inducing nature of his unbotheredness, but right now, she was grateful for it. Rafael's being insufferable kept the pest that was John Buchanan from spreading uncontrollably and seeping into every crevice of their case. It took a particularly large ego to stand their ground against defense attorneys like him.

Buchanan's departure brought with it a kind of loaded silence, the kind that was both quiet and deafening, and somehow far from relieving. Drip, splash, drip—the pipe in the corner was still leaking without pause. Somewhere outside, a car honked, and someone shouted a series of profanities across the street that could not be fully made out. 

She had poured so much of herself into this case. She'd given far more than she'd had left to give, and while the hardest part was yet to come, the finality of what they'd done that night only seemed to hit her then. They'd finally gotten him. They'd arrested him, a judge had issued warrants for them because she believed them, and a Grand Jury would certainly charge him, too. The chaos that had been raging all around them these past couple of days had now come to a head, and there was only one thing left that truly mattered: proving that Anthony was guilty to a jury of his peers. In a way, the chase was over. And in a way, the next chapter of this absolute shit-show had just begun, and they would be chasing that verdict the same way they'd had to chase him, because that was the kind of man they were dealing with. Unpredictability in a suspect tended to breed unpredictability in a jury, and that, in itself, was a terrifying concept to consider. 

Daisy caught herself against the brick wall behind her, skillfully so, without Barba, who was still in the room with her, noticing that she was no longer in full control of her limbs. As she thought about it, she couldn't remember the last time she'd slept. 

"I almost had him," she breathed. She wasn't sure why she'd said it. Barba was the last person she wanted to confide in; she doubted he even cared, but her words tended to have a mind of their own, and she could not take them back now.

Still, he halted in the doorway. The words, no, you didn't, lay on his tongue. He knew they were false; she'd done an incredible job, and she did almost have him, but he couldn't admit that, could he? It would be like admitting that her recklessness had somehow been beneficial to their case, and that certainly did not line up with Rafael's ideal vision of how he would have wanted it to go. But then he turned around, saw the slight slouch of her shoulders and the way she was clinging to the bricks behind her, and he paused. For once, he paused, and he thought about what saying the wrong thing might do to her, even if it would have been easier for him.

Rafael turned around then, hands buried in the pockets of his slacks. "You arrested him," he told her. "It's over. Let it go."

Daisy shook her head again. "He didn't confess."

"He didn't," he agreed. "Everything he said was couched in a hypothetical, which means I can't use it."

"Wow." She scoffed. "Thanks." 

What a pathetic excuse of a pep talk that was. He was always so straight to the point, she'd noticed. His complete situational awareness left little space to spare anyone's feelings, and most of the time, yes, it was easier. Did she want him to coddle her? Certainly not. She didn't know what she wanted, or what she was hoping to get out of this rare moment of vulnerability she was allowing herself to have; all Daisy knew was that she didn't want this.

"I can't use it," Rafael said again, "but I can use his gun. I can use the mask you found, I can use forensics, I can use witness statements, and…" He inhaled deeply, "I can use you."

She looked up at him. "Excuse me?"

"You're gonna need to testify. About the arrest, about what he said to you, all of it." His hands wandered to his hips, and she caught another glimpse at the burgundy of his usually so funky suspenders. "Believe me, I hate the idea just as much as you do," he said, "but you're gonna have to get your shit together. 'Cause I need you."

He did not notice the way her knees buckled at his Freudian slip, or if he did, at least he wouldn't let it show. 

"You need me?" she asked.

A heavy sigh broke out of him. "I need you to testify. Can you do that?"

Her heart squeezed, yet she managed a faint nod. "Yeah."

"Thank you." Halfway out the door, though, he stopped again. His hand wrapped around the metal frame, and he turned just enough to look back at her. "Also," he said, and it sounded as though it was the last thing he wanted to say, "Amaro mentioned you have a connection with the first victim, Danielle…"

Daisy cut him off, "I'm not so sure she'll testify," she said. 

"Well, convince her."

"You do know I'm not your lapdog, right?"

Seeing him smile was a rare occasion, but the one he was wearing now could hardly have been classified as genuine. "You've made that perfectly clear, yes."

"So, what if I say no?"

"You won't."

"You sound awfully sure about that," she said. 

"That's because, while you and I are not and will never be friends, I know that the only person who wants me to win this case even more than myself is you. And that means you'll do whatever I tell you to do."

Her breath got caught in her throat. "I don't like you."

"Thankfully, I don't need you to like me," he said. "I just need you to do your job. Preferably without risking the integrity of this case any more than you already have."

Well, she thought, at least they had one thing in common. They could dislike each other; they could bicker, fight, and call each other names until they were burning red, but no amount of distaste they held against each other was ever supposed to overshadow the importance of the cases they were working. It was the last thing either of them wanted.

Her nails scraped against the brick behind her, clinging to it until the bone was almost gone, and the fragile skin of her fingertips started bleeding. Or, at least she'd convinced herself that it was bleeding. The dust stung like ethanol on a thousand papercuts. 

Rafael was still staring at her, eyeing her, scrutinizing her. She suddenly felt so naked under the poisonous green of his eyes. They were almost as piercing as his words. He could have chosen to leave. He could have chosen not to look at her, but she figured that was what he wanted. He wanted her to feel exactly the way she was feeling right now, like she'd been tied to a stake atop a pile of broken branches dosed in gasoline, and every second more that he bore his eyes through her, he was setting fire to it. She had nowhere to turn and nowhere to run.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he knocked his fist against the doorframe.

"Get it together," he said, as if the first time hadn't been enough.

This wasn't the first time she'd found herself wondering if he somehow saw her as incompetent or nothing more than a petulant child. The latter, perhaps, seemed a little too on the nose for how he carried himself around her. He might have indeed viewed her as a petulant child, an inconvenience to every aspect of his life, and a liability—and perhaps that wasn't so far removed from how she'd been viewing herself lately. She couldn't fault him for that, could she? Except that she did. She did fault him, because where the fuck did he get off to meet her with absolute indifference one second, and the next with such disrespect that she started questioning her place not only in this job but the whole, entire world? She'd learned early how to handle the disrespect of men, as most women did, due to a blatant need to survive, but his arrogance was truly unmatched.

The heels of his expensive Italian dress shoes clicked their distinctive rhythm on his way down the hall, and it all crashed into her at once. Anthony's words, what he'd said to her, what he'd meant, and what those empty eyes had told her he'd felt when he hurt all those people without needing to use any words—the way he'd played her like a fucking fiddle, the way he'd smiled when he thought he'd won, and the way he'd looked at her as if he'd already decided that her life would be the next he wanted to destroy. She realized then that during all of this—talking to him, talking to Barba—she'd barely been breathing.

"Hey." Nick appeared in the empty space left behind in the doorway, suddenly.

Daisy wasn't sure if she was screaming or whispering, or if she was making any sound at all when she said his name, "Nick."

He closed the door behind him. The world outside disappeared then, and the brick walls might as well have been metal bars, the way they caged her there. He'd blocked her only point of escape, and the air dissipated into something far thinner, much more unbreathable, than the one meant to sustain her.

She pressed a hand against her stomach. "I'm not really in the mood right now–" She wasn't sure if she'd cut herself off, or if it was him.

"I'm not trynna pick a fight," he said. She could feel his eyes on her, but his silhouette was turning blurry the longer she stood there, unmoving as she stared at him. He took another step forward. "You alright?"

"I'm fine!" her voice cracked. "Can you please just go away?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Please," she begged again, but by then, the first tear had already slipped. "Oh, fuck!"

"Hey. C'mere." He brushed a thumb over the streak down her cheek, barely enough to feel it. "Talk to me. What's going on?" 

She turned her head into his hand, the warmth of his palm. It burned with the force of a thousand suns, the way he touched her.

He was close enough for her to smell the sandalwood of his cologne glued to the cotton of his dress shirt. So close. So warm. So… unusually soft. The way he was standing there, towering over her as if he was just waiting to catch her, should have seemed safe—should have felt safe. But then she remembered the flickering of the fluorescent lights above their heads, the dripping of the pipes, and the tears down her cheeks, and she realized that pain did not mean safe. Pain was familiar, yes, but pain was not safe. This entire situation was not safe.

"I can't," she breathed.

"You can't?" he asked. 

Again, she shook her head. 

His thumb inched closer to the bags under her eyes. "I'm not trying to fix you. That's not what I'm doing. I just… I look at you, and I can see you're in pain—"

She grasped his wrist and pulled it away. "I just can't," she said. 

His face fell. "Daisy…"

She pushed away from the wall. "I'm sorry."

"So what," he said, "you're just gonna keep running away from me?"

"I'm not running."

"You sure about that?"

Daisy stopped by the door, her hand wrapped around the cold metal of the handle. "I just spent half an hour trying to seduce a confession out of a murderous rapist. Excuse me for needing a fucking minute to process that!" she snapped. 

She'd cried in front of him, she'd let him touch her, and for once, she wasn't running away from him. For once, she wasn't trying to avoid confrontation because she was a coward; she was running because she could not breathe around him, or in this room. She was running from the blood-curdling sensation of their suspect getting under her skin. She was running from Buchanan and Barba, and this entire fucking case, because she had nothing left to give except for what she'd already given all of them. But Nick didn't understand that. He didn't even try. She could see it in his eyes, the way he was looking at her. If he'd truly cared about her, not some twisted version of the person he needed her to be, she thought, he would have at least tried. 

He opened his mouth, but his response died where it rested. 

Daisy almost tore the door off its hinges. "Not everything's about you," she said, and without looking back at the sheer horror in his eyes, she walked out. 

By morning, the visitor's parking lot outside Mercy General was already at full capacity. She'd tried calling, but Danielle wouldn't pick up. Daisy couldn't blame her; they hadn't parted on the best of terms the last time they'd met. 

"Detective," the uniformed officer standing by the doors to the ICU greeted her. "You're early," he said. 

"Too early?" Daisy asked.

"That depends on how you look at it."

"Touché."

He followed her gaze to the automatic double doors. She didn't need to say it out loud for him to know. "Doctor her boyfriend to CT about five minutes ago," he told her. "She asked for a moment alone."

She cocked an eyebrow. "And you gave it to her?"

"Lopez made sure she wouldn't leave the premises. Hard enough to get her to go home for a few hours, so we thought ten minutes couldn't hurt."

Daisy nodded. That was fair, she supposed. "You know where she is?" she asked.

"Try the cafeteria."

"Thanks."

The cafeteria surely was plausible, but a strange force was nagging at her not to follow in that direction. There were a lot of places she could have escaped to in unsupervised ten minutes, but she knew Danielle could not have strayed far. Her heart started beating just a little faster as she passed the elevator toward the door to the stairwell. It was the same path she had taken before when she'd tried to escape. Except that she wasn't the one trying to escape now, and the only map she was following was her gut. 

Daisy took two stairs at a time. She'd been neglecting her usual routine as of late, no longer running several miles a day, so by the time she reached the rooftop access door, which, for some reason, didn't need a keycard, she was decently out of breath. This high up, the air was a little thinner, and the wind felt a little cooler on her skin. 

She found Danielle lingering by the security railing that was installed to prevent just that—people trying to escape to the highest point and risking their lives by doing so, even though their lives probably mattered little to them if their idea of an escape was searching for the highest point of a very tall building, and standing on its ledge.

Daisy didn't panic, though. If she'd been behind that railing, perhaps she would have.

"I hope you're not trying to jump," Daisy said, only loud enough for her to hear her over the rushing of the wind. "I'd hate to cause a scene this early in the morning."

"Go away!" Danielle snapped. 

"I'm afraid I can't do that, 'cause that would constitute reckless endangerment."

"I'm not gonna jump."

"I want to believe you, but you are currently standing on the ledge of a very tall building, and–"

"Fuck!" she cried. "I'm not gonna kill myself, okay? I just wanna be alone!"

"Danielle," Daisy tried again. 

"What?!" She still didn't turn around, though. "What else do you fucking want from me, huh?"

"We got him," she said. 

That made her pause. A beat passed, then two, before, slowly, she turned around. One hand remained on the railing, but at least she was listening now. 

"We got him," she said again.

Her chest deflated. "Who?" 

"You remember the line-up I showed you the other day? The guy you picked out?"

"No," Danielle breathed.

"We're still waiting for the DNA results to come back," Daisy said, "but… we're positive he's gonna be a match."

"Oh."

Relief was a funny thing. Sometimes, it was merely a gentle wave crashing into shore, only enough to wet the sand. Other times, it was a boulder rolling downhill, and once that boulder was rolling, there was no stopping it. That kind of relief, however, albeit crushing, was incredibly cathartic, and it hit Danielle square in the chest.

The concrete beneath their feet was freezing, but she sank to her knees, anyway. 

"Hey." Daisy did not hesitate to close the distance between them. "You okay?" she asked.

Danielle opened her mouth to answer, but all that would come out was a strangled sob. "I'm sorry," she cried.

She stopped her, "Don't."

She reached out, not quite touching her, but her hand rested close enough to the thin fabric of her coat that Danielle could have leaned into it if she'd wanted to. She didn't. Still, the sudden rush of relief had cracked open the cage she'd locked herself in, and that openness was progress, even though relief, essentially, was nothing but a very potent drug. It was a mere interplay of feel-good hormones, and those—similar to adrenaline, although the fight-or-flight response was a different thing entirely—were natural protective mechanisms of the brain that could not simply dissipate the eye of the storm she had yet to face.

"It's over," Daisy said. "He can't hurt you anymore."

But Danielle shook her head. "I didn't think you'd find him."

"I don't blame you."

"But I blamed you," she said. "I just… I have so much anger inside me, and I didn't know where else to put it, so I put it on you, and I–" Another strangled sob wrecked through her, "I am so sorry!"

"Hey," Daisy cut her off. "Listen to me. If there is anyone who understands what it's like to be so consumed by anger that it blinds you, it's me. Besides," she said, "you've had a lot on your mind these past couple of days. You're allowed to be angry, and you're allowed to put it on me if that helps you feel a little less like your world is falling apart."

"That's the thing. It didn't fix anything. It just… made things so much worse."

"Yeah. Anger tends to do that."

The morning air whipped across their faces. Daisy stretched out her legs in front of her, but it did little to ease the ache that was starting to settle into her bones and muscles from the cold surrounding them. Danielle wasn't faring much better; her coat was far too thin, and the fresh change of clothes one of the uniformed officers assigned to keep the press away from her and the hospital had gotten for her was not made for the beginning of fall. Then again, September in New York had not been this cold in a while. Perhaps the city knew something they had yet to find out. 

"What are the chances it's not him?" Danielle dared to ask.

"Slim to none," Daisy answered without pause. "I can't tell you how I know, but I wouldn't have told you if I wasn't sure."

The girl hugged her arms tighter around herself. "I'm just scared that I'll wake up and realize this was all a dream, y'know? That this was all just one stupid, fucking nightmare, and he's still gonna be out there, hurting people, hurting me."

Daisy rubbed circles into her shivering shoulder blades, and she tried to do her best to smile at her in a way that did not feel forced. "It's not a dream," she reassured her. "We got him, Danielle. I wouldn't lie to you about that."

Again, she hesitated, but when she exhaled this time, the tense muscles in her shoulders felt a little lighter under her touch. "Thank you," she said. 

Daisy pushed herself off the concrete, her knees cracking slightly under the pressure. "How about you thank me by coming back inside?"

Danielle's mouth twitched, not quite a smile but close to it. "Okay."

The cafeteria was mostly empty when they got there, save for the cook and the janitor, who was mopping at a puddle of what looked like spilled soda on the linoleum floors in the far right corner of the room, carefully working behind the 'Attention! Wet Floor' sign. 

Daisy ordered both of them a cup of freshly brewed coffee, one with regular, one with oat milk, splitting a packet of sugar between both cups once the lady behind the counter handed them to her.

"Thanks," she said, paid, then slapped a lid on both cups.

Danielle had chosen one of the tables furthest away from the entrance. She couldn't blame her. It was the one place where she could see everything, but she was the last thing anyone would notice if they chose to enter. 

Daisy set the cup with the regular milk down in front of her before she sat down, too. Danielle only nodded in thanks. It seemed as though she did not trust her voice, because she didn't trust herself not to cry. Again, she couldn't blame her for that. 

"Listen," Daisy said as she swirled the liquid around in her cup, "there's something else I have to tell you, and you're probably gonna hate me for it, but I don't have much of a choice." She could feel Danielle's eyes on her, though she didn't dare look up to meet them. "Our ADA couldn't convince the defense to take a deal."

"No," it came out merely as a breath.

Daisy glanced at her then, and the disappointment in her eyes downright crushed her. Still, she felt like she had to add, "That means we'll have to take this case to trial."

"No," Danielle said again, louder this time, because she knew exactly what taking this case to trial meant for her. "You said this was over. You said–"

"I'm sorry."

"Why does he get to keep torturing me?"

"He doesn't," Daisy tried. "I told you, he can't hurt you anymore."

"No, you don't get it!" she said, and she rose from her chair so abruptly that it almost tipped over backwards. "A trial means I'll have to sit in a courtroom and see his face every day for weeks while 12 strangers judge me. That's torture! I can't–" The next breath she tried to take died on her tongue. "I can't do this!"

"I know. I know, and I really wouldn't be asking you this if we had any other choice, but if we want to put this guy away, we need you to testify."

Danielle shook her head even harder, tears once again glistening in her eyes, threatening to cascade down her cold-flushed cheeks. She wiped at them until the skin turned even redder, and until the salt burned in her pores. "No," she echoed. She was pacing now.

"You are the only person who can tell a jury exactly what he did to you. To Liam. To everyone else he hurt," Daisy said. "Trust me, the last thing I want is to put you in that position, but if you don't, you're gonna get subpoenaed, and I can't promise it's gonna be by our side. The defense will tear you to shreds if we don't get in front of this now, and then he might walk."

Her half-empty cup almost crumpled under how tightly she was clutching it, and the chair almost tipped over again when she sat back down. "Don't you think I know that?" she snapped. 

"Oh, I do know. Second-year law student, top of your class. It was one of the first things I found out about you. Hell, you probably know more about this whole thing than I do, but that's also how I know that you know I'm not exaggerating any part of this." Daisy clasped her palms together before her. "I know you don't want him to win. I know you don't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing you break. So, don't let him," she said. "Don't let him take your power again."

"This isn't fair," though Danielle's voice was barely above a whisper now. The fire was gone, burnt out now, and so was she. 

She nodded. "You're right. It's not. None of this is even remotely fair."

"Liam's in a coma. Everyone's talking about me. The press is on my ass. People I haven't talked to in years keep blowing up my phone, strangers are following my parents in the fucking grocery store just to ask about me, and I just got an email yesterday from the President of Columbia University, asking if I need to take some time off to focus on myself. Tell me," she said, "how am I supposed to take back my power when he's already taken everything?"

"I know it may not seem like much right now, but the fact you're still here is proof that he failed to take everything from you."

It was a bullshit argument, Daisy thought. If someone had told her the same thing eight years ago or even the other day, she would have laughed. The last thing on Danielle's mind was her own survival. She did not consider it a blessing as much as she considered it a curse. Because Liam was in a coma, and she was not. Liam could live, he could die, or he could remain in a vegetative state for as long as his parents desired; either way, Danielle would be left to remember every second of what was done to her. Still, it was the only thing Daisy could say, because everything else had already been said. 

"You're still here," she said. "And that may seem more like a consolation prize than something meaningful right now, but at least you can still make him pay for what he did to you. You have that power."

"Well, what if I don't want that?" Danielle retorted. 

Daisy shook her head. "I don't believe that's true."

"What if I can't?" And her voice broke again. 

She placed a careful hand on her forearm. "Revenge," she said, "is a powerful thing. You may feel like you can't right now, but if anyone can do this, it's you."

Again, it was a bullshit argument, and her request, in itself, was violating; a feeble attempt at convincing her to do something she did not want to do, and pushing her until she had no choice but to agree. Suddenly, Daisy found herself no better than the men she condemned, and she'd truly never felt dirtier.

As if she could read her mind, Danielle scoffed. "Easy for you to say," she said. 

"Excuse me?"

"You've already been through this, right? And if you did it, that means I can do it, too. Isn't that what you've been trying to tell me?"

"Okay," Daisy said, and her hand dropped back onto the table. "I think you got the wrong idea of me."

"Oh, do I?"

"Yeah. I'm not trying to tell you it's gonna be easy to testify. And I'm definitely not trying to tell you to make an example of me or, God forbid, measure yourself to me," she said. "The truth is, you're one of only a handful of people who know what happened to me. I don't usually tell people. Because officially, it never happened. Officially, it's just a story I made up. I never pressed charges. I never testified. I didn't have a choice; I didn't have much of anything back then, and that's something that has haunted me for the past eight years."

Danielle stared at her. "What?" 

"I'm not telling you that you can do it because I did it. I'm telling you that you can do this because I didn't, and you're not a coward."

She breathed a weak, oh. 

"I see so much of myself in you that it scares me to my core, but there's something you have that I don't: courage. You've reminded me of why I joined SVU in the first place instead of spending twenty years wasting away in Hostage Negotiations, and I want nothing more than to help you get through this, but comparing yourself to me? That's the last thing you should do," Daisy said. "Trust me."

She blinked up at her with her big, brown eyes. They glistened with a myriad of unshed tears, but she wouldn't let them fall this time. "I didn't know," she breathed.

"You weren't supposed to."

"I'm sorry."

"No." Daisy shook her head. "I told you because you moved something in me, not because I felt obligated."

Danielle searched her face for any sign of doubt, for a glint that would have suggested she was lying, but upon further inspection, she found none.

"Well," she said then, "your secret's safe with me."

"That's not–"

She cut her off, "I'll do it."

"What?" Daisy asked, so softly that it almost went unnoticed. 

"I'll testify," Danielle said. "Even if it's not really my choice."

"I never wanted to put you in that position."

"I know. You're just doing your job."

That was the problem, wasn't it? She was just doing her job, and that job involved doing things that were, most of the time, beyond uncomfortable. Just doing her job, in other words, was playing a losing game within a system that had long deemed justice for victims of violent crimes—unless they were rich, white, and, in the majority of cases, male—a rarity. God, how she loathed it. How could one person hate something with this much volition, and still somehow love it enough to make the decision to leave such a complicated one? She couldn't fathom what unique reasoning lay behind that phenomenon, and she wasn't quite sure if she wanted to know. 

Danielle shifted then. "I should get back upstairs," she said. "Liam will be back from CT soon."

"I get it," Daisy nodded. "Can you do me a favor, though?" 

She stopped on her way out. "What?"

"Go home," she said. "Get some rest, just for a few hours, and I promise to call you as soon as I know more."

A pause. Then, Danielle glanced over her shoulder. "I'll think about it," she said. 

Daisy couldn't tell if she meant it or if she was trying to appease her. Either way, she didn't get a chance to ask because by the time she'd finally found the words, Danielle had already walked out, leaving her alone in the empty cafeteria with two empty cups of coffee and a mountain of guilt she could not move.