Fandom: Law and Order: Special Victims Unit Category: Pre-slash Archive: Sure, but ask first. Feedback: Yes, thanks Pairing: Casey/Olivia Rating: PG-13 Spoilers: Season 5 "Loss" et al. If you don't know who Casey Novak is there's not much in it for you. Disclaimers: Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and its characters belong to Dick Wolf et al. No infringement on any copyright is intended and no profit is being made. Notes: Sequel to "Those Who Hear Not the Music Think the Dancer's Mad"
Memory makes every winter longer and colder than the last. She was certain of this as she sat in the courtroom and tried to pay attention to the defendant's allocution. It was long, many crimes to confess to but her eyes kept darting to the window and saw the snow fall, collect on the ledge and get higher as the man continued to recite the details of his horrors.
As a girl she had been told that every flake of snow is different and believed it, but now she was no longer sure. She had grown used to patterns, the sick symmetry to the world she worked had taught her to link differences together and find patterns, sameness, that caught criminals even when events, circumstances were disparate. It was successful even if it left her so often with a hole in her middle. Most of the time she didn't think of it. But winter always made it easier for such thoughts to surface. The cold, the snow that kept people indoors, inside themselves, gave her too much time to think, to analyse her own life. It was easier to think of the snow, of criminals, to try and find patterns there instead.
The defendant was still speaking and she shifted her focus from the window to the woman at the desk in front of her. So different from what she had seen only a few weeks ago. Gone was the casual clothing and the melodramatic makeup. But most absent was movement. She sat absolutely still as the recitation from the other side of the room continued. She fought to remember the movement of arms and hips that turned the presently still woman into a body that moved as easily as smoke. She had never expected to see her there, in that bar where occasional conquests were found to fill her needs for a night, nor had she expected to be moved by it. Weeks later the images were caught behind her eyes and every time she saw her it was difficult to reconcile the two.
Lost in this split she failed to realise that the allocution was over, the judge had passed sentence and the defendant was being led away by the bailiffs. The courtroom emptied and she sat there until she felt the other woman's hand on her shoulder.
