before i knew
"My life was black and white before I met her. Cecilia Kwan was the colour."
Rafael Barba had never put much faith in love.
He trusted evidence. Facts. Things that could be argued until there was nothing left but the truth.
People were harder.
People lied. They left. They disappointed you. And in Rafael's line of work, he had seen enough versions of love twisted into something cruel to know better than to romanticise it.
Then Cecilia Kwan arrived at Manhattan SVU.
She was warm without being naïve, stubborn without knowing when to quit, and far too observant for Rafael's liking. She remembered the things he forgot he had told her. Noticed when his coffee went untouched. Knew the difference between his silence when he was angry and his silence when something had followed him home.
Somewhere between late nights at the precinct, courthouse corridors, impossible cases, arguments neither of them ever truly won, and all the small moments that should have meant nothing, Cecilia became familiar.
Then important.
Then terrifyingly difficult to imagine losing.
Rafael could never say exactly when it happened.
There had been no single moment. No grand confession. No sudden flash of certainty.
Just a thousand ordinary things accumulating quietly until one day he looked at her and realised the world had not been black and white for a very long time.
Cecilia had been there, colouring in the edges before he had even noticed they were changing.
And perhaps that was the dangerous thing about love.
By the time Rafael understood how much she mattered, she had already become part of everything.
"Baby, if your love is in trouble
Baby, if your love is in trouble
When you know, you know
When you know, you know
It kinda makes me laugh, runnin' down that path
When you're good as gold
'Cause when you know, you know."