PROLOGUE

The first week at narcotics, all Cassidy can think of is how much he misses SVU. Not the victims and the perps and the pain of it all, he doesn't think he'll ever miss that no matter what happens. But the people, his co-workers and his boss. Them, he misses. Well, he only sort of misses Olivia, but not really, or at least not as much as he misses the others, because he's sick of mooning after her while she thinks he's an idiot. He even misses Jeffries and Kenny Briscoe, and his total conversations with both of them over the course of the past of a year would fill maybe a page – two if double spaced. But mostly he misses Munch. Munch, who actually respected him and trusted him to do his job without a babysitter or dictionary. Munch, who was a friend, a teacher, a father figure, the older brother he'd never had, was everything.

At the end of the first month at narcotics, he doesn't miss his old co-workers and friends so much. At narcotics, he's one of the smarter guys, and he knows tons more about drugs than he had known about the weird and creepy sexual deviances (and their stupid, confusing, foreign names). He stops missing SVU and starts wondering instead why he'd ever asked to be assigned to the sex crimes unit in the first place – he knew about drugs, and he was good with the ones who did them (his high school had been ninety percent junkies, so learning how to deal with them sympathetically had pretty much been a survival tactic).

At the end of the first year, Cassidy is undercover and helps make a major bust, helps take down one of the top drug dealers in Manhattan. He gets a commendation, and only wishes that Munch could see him now once, before he gets swept up in the slaps on the back (and some a little lower than that, but by the time he turns around whoever it was had disappeared into the crowd). His new partner, a blonde haired chain smoker who drinks probably a little more than is healthy, flings an arm around his shoulders, and Cassidy buries the rest of his thoughts and just grins and makes some stupid comment and everyone laughs like it was the best joke they'd ever heard.

Four years in, and Brian Cassidy is a department legend. "He can get the most hardcore junkie to flip on their dealer," the rumor goes, whispered in the halls to the rookies, who take it with a side of skepticism. "Yeah, right," they say. Then they see him work and they start looking at him like he remembers looking at Munch or Cragen, and he's suddenly gained his own little group of puppy-dog followers. He tries to teach him what he knows, but he sucks as a teacher, because none of his knowledge comes from books, it comes naturally and from experience and maybe from somewhere else entirely, he's not sure. And he tries to think about how Munch would teach them, but he can't do that because he's not Munch so he tries to stop thinking about it at all.

And after six years in narcotics, he's finally quit thinking "What would Munch do?" or "What would Cragen say to that?" And that's when one of his witnesses winds up dead and sodomized, and the captain tells him to play nice with the sex police because it was either work together or narcotics was getting the boot (he remembers back when he was on the other side, and had forgotten how special victims – and homicide – get preferential treatment when it comes to investigations) on the case. So he keeps his mouth shut, and makes his partner keep his mouth shut, and he's really not surprised when he finds out who's assigned to the case on the SVU side. Because fate has a weird sense of humor.

Author's Note: From here on out, it will be written in normal past tense storybook form. I don't know what came over me with this.