AN: Consider this the start of a "fast-forwarded" sequel to Strong at the Broken Places. I hope all of my fellow Rollisi fans (and anybody else who has been nice enough to read my stuff) enjoy!

"Mama!"

Amanda woke up to the familiar sound of Jesse calling for her from her crib. She was never distressed or crying, just anxious to get her mother's attention after a night's sleep had kept them apart. Warm beneath her sheets, Amanda blinked her eyes into focus. Shards of morning light were just beginning to stream through the blinds of her bedroom; the warmth of spring had finally coaxed out the last bit of winter. Frannie was a furry brown lump at the end of the bed, her ears relaxed and her limbs askew. Amanda lazily looked over her shoulder: Sonny was asleep on his stomach beside her. He looked as peaceful as she felt.

Carefully, Amanda maneuvered her way out from underneath the covers. Naked accept for underwear, she pulled on an oversized t-shirt that she picked up from off the floor and tied her hair up in a knot atop her head. Barefoot she padded into Jesse's room. Kim had moved to a sober house in Chelsea months earlier, meaning a hamper and a set of drawers replaced the space where a twin bed used to be.

Jesse was standing up in her crib, waiting for her mother. "Hi, mama."

"Hey, you. Good mornin'," Amanda said brightly, keeping her voice low as to not to wake Sonny. She pulled Jesse from her confines and rested her against her hip. Her little body was warm from sleep and she squeezed her close, inciting a giggle from the toddler. She swayed with Jesse gently, enjoying the goofy grin it brought to her daughter's face. Whenever she played with Jesse this way, it reminded Amanda of being a child with her grandmother, who used to dance with her in the kitchen while she cooked. It was a fleeting reprieve from the chaos going on in the Rollins household, but Amanda was certain that was how she learned what love was. What love felt like. The older woman would playfully sing a Doris Day tune that ended with wrapping the little girl up in a tight and reassuring hug, one that kept Amanda warm on the coldest of nights even long after her grandmother had passed.

"I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck!" she softly sung the old refrain with her forehead against Jesse's, giving her a little jostle in sync with the rhythm. Laughter bubbled up from Jesse again, her small fingers grabbing gleefully at loose strands of hair around Amanda's face.

"Mornin', ladies." Sonny appeared, leaning against the door frame of the small room. He was in a white t-shirt and sweatpants, his hair a little disheveled from sleep but swept away from his face.

Amanda moved toward him, her free arm snaking around his waist. "Sorry, did we wake you?"

"Nah. Frannie sneezed in my face," he explained.

She gave him a slow, lazy kiss. "Lucky you," she murmured.

His arm around her shoulders, he gave them a squeeze. "You guys want breakfast? I'll make scrambled eggs."

"Eggs!" Jesse repeated enthusiastically between them before demanding, "down!"

Amanda set the little girl on her two feet, allowing her to toddle into the living room. Jesse immediately retrieved a few plastic animal figures from the coffee table and began to amuse herself; the toy box had been obsolete for awhile, she left stuff everywhere. Amanda could smell coffee, thankful that she had remembered to set the timer on the pot before she went to bed the night before. She and Sonny moved around one another in the small kitchen as she filled their mugs and he opened the refrigerator. Eventually she leaned her back against the counter, knowing that it was best if she stayed out of the way while Sonny cooked.

She smiled into her cup, watching him through her blonde bangs. The past six months had been good. She and Sonny had cobbled together some non-traditional sense of normalcy that made Amanda feel a kind of wholeness she never had before. There were no labels, no heavy discussion about expectations - it just was. It had passed the point of casual a long time ago, both of them too enmeshed in each other's lives from the start to pretend like they were mere ships passing in the night. It was easy with Sonny, even when it was hard. There were challenges: they juggled their schedules, the intensity of their work, their separate worlds. Amanda's edges were still softening and sometimes their perspectives clashed so intensely that she could have sworn he was from another planet. But it was progress, not perfection, and Amanda found herself happy to muddle through it all as long as he was, too. Being alone had never been better than whatever she and Sonny were now.

People at SVU knew they were together, but nobody talked about it - at least, not to their faces. Fin liked to make the occasional joke and Liv scrutinized them a little bit more, but on the job Amanda and Sonny behaved as co-workers. Nothing more, nothing less. Amanda had been in this situation before, of course, with Nick and Declan. Those relationships were physical and fleeting, though, and now Amanda found herself quietly attached to Sonny in more ways than one.

"No cheese in mine," Amanda requested sweetly as he watched him begin to assemble ingredients.

Sonny looked over at her blankly as if to say, "are you kidding me?"

"You're tryin' to make me fat. Winter's over."

He rolled his eyes and opened up the package anyway. "Hey, Jesse, y'want some cheese?" he called.

"Yes, please!" the little girl's voice shouted.

"Then you better get in here before your mother makes me throw it all away," Sonny told her with an amused smirk.

Amanda made a noise into her mug as Jesse scrambled into the adjoining kitchen, fast as her little legs would carry her. With a piece of cheese in his hand, Sonny crouched down to Jesse's level to offer it to her. Watching the two of them together, a smile tugged at Amanda's mouth again.

"What d'we say?" Sonny asked Jesse, giving the little girl a pointed look.

She was already shoving the cheese into her mouth and walking away, like she had better things to do. "Thank you, dada."

Amanda choked on her sip of coffee.

Sonny stood up straight again and turned to Amanda, his expression alarmed. "You hear what she just said?"

"How does she even know that word?" she whispered in response.

"I don't know, 'Manda! From her little friends in that yuppy 'mommy and me' yoga class you take her to?"

"First of all, it's not yuppy. Second of all, they're two and three years old. It's not like they gossip!"

Shaking his head, Sonny started cracking eggs into a bowl. "You gotta tell her."

"I'm going to, one day."

He looked over at her.

"She's too young, Sonny. She's not gonna get it."

"She gets somethin', Amanda. She's a smart kid."

"I know, but she's little..." Amanda glanced over to the living room. Jesse was making two plastic horses talk to one another in gibberish on the couch. "You're the only guy she's ever known."

She expected him to argue with her, but all Sonny said was, "yeah, I know."

"Whoa-ho, Rollins! Lookin' good!"

"Yeah, yeah. Save it, Fin. You do this to get back at me?" Amanda asked briskly as she walked into the squad room Friday night. She wasn't exactly dressed for work: she was in a simple yet revealing black dress and heels, her blonde hair in loose, textured waves around her face.

"You told me to call if I needed you!" Fin exclaimed with a laugh.

Glaring at him, she dropped down into her desk chair with her arms crossed over her chest. "That's just something people say, Fin. I didn't actually want you to do it," she grumbled.

"I apologize to you and Carisi, from the bottom of my heart," he said dramatically, looking amused. "But with Liv on vacation till Monday, I need my partner."

She rolled her eyes. "Alright, Sarge. I'm listening."

"Jasmine Ortega, fifteen years old from Long Island. She went missing from Hudson University's Spring-Summer Preview program on her last day." He tossed a picture onto her desk. "It's one of those pre-college experience things for smart kids with money."

Amanda scrunched her nose as she studied the photo. "She looks like she's about twelve."

Fin continued, "I know, but she isn't. She hasn't been seen since last night. Her parents are on their way up to the city as we speak, they were at some kinda polo match in Rhode Island for the past week. Meanwhile, TARU got us access to her Facebook. Looks like she's been chatting hot n' heavy with some dude named Jasper Miller for about two months. They planned to meet up while she was in this program."

"Jasper's way too handsome. Definitely a catfish," she assessed easily as she clicked through the guy's bare-bones profile. "He also looks about twenty years older than her but says here he's seventeen." She leaned in closer so her eyes could continue to scan their chat log. "They were going to meet up at his place in Hell's Kitchen?"

"Yeah. Problem is, some unis went to that address and it was bogus. Some eighty five year old dude with dementia lives there. Thought he was gonna have a heart attack when the police started bustin' down the door."

"This Jasper guy... we know anything about him?" she sighed, already anticipating the answer.

"Nope, not even a parking ticket on record. TARU is figurin' out what they can from his profile. In the meantime, you and me are gonna take a trip to campus and ask around about Jasmine." He smirked as he added, "you may wanna change."

"Where the hell have you been? I almost turned on the scanner," Sonny asked her, opening his door for her at three in the morning.

"Talking to a bunch of drunk college students at Hudson," Amanda explained wearily. The second she was inside, she started peeling items off of her body: her purse, then her gun and badge. She was in a navy blue NYPD t-shirt that she had tossed on over the pair of jeans she always kept in her locker, her dress shoved into her handbag once it was evident that her Friday night was no longer her own.

"You hungry? You left right when dinner came," he offered.

"I'm starvin'." She kicked off her heels, which she had been walking around in all night. Gingerly, she set her sore, bare feet on the floor.

Sonny turned on the light in the kitchen and opened his fridge to pull out the to-go boxes he had brought home from the restaurant. He started transferring shrimp and vegetables into a real bowl before he put it in the microwave.

"We got some leads but we didn't find the girl. Fifteen, talking to some older guy online who said he was seventeen, you know the deal..." Amanda rubbed her forehead, thinking. "The parents are outta their minds. They had no idea she was talking to him. They didn't even know she had a Facebook, which seems kinda naive..." She continued to ramble, because as disgruntled as she had been earlier in the evening, she still loved the challenges her job presented. She hopped up onto the counter to sit on it, her legs dangling. "...hey, are you listening to me?"

"Nope," Sonny answered honestly, handing her the bowl and a fork. He gave her a tired smile and rested a warm palm on her knee. "Relax, Detective. It's three in the mornin'."

Admittedly hungry, Amanda took the food from him. He was right, but she wasn't going to say that out loud.

The sound of her phone ringing jerked her out of sleep. Bleary-eyed, Amanda felt around on the nightstand until her fingers found what she was looking for.

"If that's Fin again, I'm gonna kill him," she heard Sonny grumble into his pillow.

"It's not... it's 'unknown,'" Amanda said, eyeing the screen. It was eight o'clock in the morning, which meant she had gotten approximately three hours of rest.

"Don't pick it up."

She rolled onto her side, her back to Sonny, and propped herself up with her elbow. "It might be work. I'm picking it up."

"D'you purposefully always do the exact opposite of what I say?"

Rolling her eyes, she held the phone to her ear with her free hand. "Rollins."

The response was muffled and distant. She could hear what she thought was a man's voice somewhere within the static, and she was almost positive he said her name. Her brow furrowed as she tried her hardest to listen more closely.

"Hello?" she said, hoping to prompt a clearer response.

Whoever it was, they hung up abruptly. She glanced at the screen of her phone again before setting it back down on the bedside table and flopping onto her back, defeated.

"Well," Sonny sighed, rolling over to face her. He propped himself up on his side lazily, his free palm wandering to her bare stomach beneath the sheets. His smile was sly. "Now that we're both awake for no reason..."

His touch still gave her goosebumps. Like a moth drawn to a flame, she moved on to her side to face him, their bodies parallel. She tangled their legs. Arm outstretched against her pillow, she rested her cheek on her shoulder and let the fingers of her other hand push a stray strand of hair away from Sonny's forehead. There was stubble along his jaw line, making his young features appear just a bit rougher. She filled her lungs with air and exhaled, her muscles relaxing further into his lean, sturdy frame. She watched his eyes drift shut and used it as an opportunity to study his face.

"Sorry again, about last night," she said quietly, genuinely.

"Gotta do what you gotta do," he murmured, an arm snaking around her waist as if she could get any closer. He opened one eye to add with a little smirk, "you looked good in that dress, though."

"Jasmine has been missing for four days now," Liv announced to the squad room as she adjusted the wire snaking beneath the back of Amanda's shirt. The blonde detective stood still, twisting her hair up away from the nape of her neck as Liv worked. "But we finally have a lead: TARU figured out that this Jasper Miller's Facebook has been logged in several times from a nail salon in Chelsea."

"So I'm getting my nails done," Amanda added.

"Y'think Jasper's gonna be doing your manicure?" Fin asked skeptically from his desk.

"No. We think something shady is happenin' in that nail salon. Something bigger than just Jasmine," Amanda explained, letting her hair go and shaking it loose around her shoulders. "Neighbors have reported weird activity in the back alley, men coming and going even when the salon's closed. Jasper may just be the go-between for something."

"Fin, Carisi. Hang out in the van outside to keep eyes and ears out. I've gotta meet with Hudson and the parents again," Liv instructed before they dispersed.

Amanda wore a pair of glasses with a tiny, hidden camera in them, allowing Fin and Carisi to see what she did. Her outfit and hair were New York City cool; her understated look was intended to let people think she had so much money that she didn't need to flaunt it. If they were stumbling upon an illegal business, the key inside was almost always the illusion of assets.

Once inside the salon, Amanda drifted around the expansive wall of nail polish colors, fingers grazing the shelves discerningly.

"You're not really getting a manicure, 'Manda. Just pick a color," Sonny said in her ear.

She clenched her jaw to keep from saying something snarky in response - mostly because she would look crazy talking to herself. She took a bottle of natural pink polish in her hand and smirked when she read the name of the shade: Not Just a Pretty Face.

An older Asian woman waved Amanda over to her station. She dropped down into the seat, purposefully wearing what her mother used to describe as her 'pageant smile.' Without prompting, Amanda put her hands out for the woman to assess. "Hi... Lin," she said brightly, reading her name tag.

The woman looked at her blankly. "What shape?"

"Round, and could you make them shorter?"

She began filing in silence.

"So, I'm actually not just here for a manicure," Amanda finally said, her voice low. She leaned in a little closer over the table. "Y'all know a Jasper Miller?"

Lin looked up from Amanda's nails. Her gaze shifted around the salon which, given the time of day, was empty except for one elderly customer. "You do business with him?" she finally spoke.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"This about the girls?"

Amanda's heart leapt in her chest and she nodded.

Lin set the nail file down. "He isn't here."

"Y'know where he is? Or when he's coming back?"

She shook her head. "No. They don't tell me those things." She looked anxiously around the room again. "His... associate is here."

"Let it go, Rollins. We want Jasper. We don't know what kind of crazy fool this 'associate' is," Fin said.

She was beginning to buzz with anticipation; she and Liv had suspected something more than manicures and pedicures was happening in that salon and now she was about to find out that maybe they were right. Eager as always, she ignored Fin. "Can I talk to him?" Amanda asked Lin sweetly. "It'll only take a second."

"You police?"

"C'mon, do I look like police, Lin?" she whispered, feigning her best look of disbelief for her new friend.

"Come with me."

"Amanda, what the hell are you doin'?" Fin asked her.

Amanda obediently followed Lin through the salon, eyes scanning the interior as they walked. Lin pulled open a door by a row a sinks, leading them into a narrow, winding hallway. They passed a small room with the door open, empty except for a table, a microwave and shelves with what looked like the belongings of the other nail technicians. It all seemed suspiciously normal.

Lin stopped them outside of another door. "You stay here," she firmly instructed Amanda before disappearing behind it.

"Relax, guys. I think I'm on to something," she mumbled to Fin and Sonny as she waited.

The door eventually creaked open and Lin reappeared. "He'll see you," she murmured before shouldering past Amanda and disappearing back down the hallway.

Amanda's heartbeat began to quicken as she slipped into the room. It was clearly an old storage closet that had been turned into a makeshift office. A man had his feet up on the surface of the desk, appearing placid.

Then again, that was always how Declan Murphy looked.