Disclaimer: They aren't mine, if they were i would be on a yacht right now instead of writing fanfiction.

A/N: this is in Cragen's POV. if you didn't realize.


The Domino Effect

Chapter 1

Hiding in the Shadows -

"Elliot, why don't you go home and get some rest!" I stared down at my best detective. On the outside, he was the same as always. Same sharp, blue eyes, same close-cropped hair, and same determination to land every perp on the New York Streets in jail. Only inside he wasn't the same and he hadn't been okay for about a year now.

No one at the 1-6 precinct really knows what happened to her. She'd been a key witness towards a dangerous guy and we all feared she'd go the same way as Alex Cabot, but Olivia refused protection. Her exact words were,

"Getting a detail lets him know I'm scared. If I'm scared, he wins!"

God we all wish we could make her take those words back.

I got the first call, since her mother was dead a couple of years and she had no family besides the unit, I was written as next of kin. Elliot got the second, only I called him, not the hospital. I don't remember much of my conversation with the doctors, simply the words, 'GSW, critical, surgery, and goodbye.' The last word could have meant that we should come say goodbye to her, or that he was hanging up the phone to dig through her stomach for the bullet.

When I talked to Elliot, I don't believe he said a single word to me, and I don't blame him. Telling someone that their partner is severely injured when they can do nothing about it is enough to rattle even the least emotional person. As soon as I had choked out the name of the hospital, I was talking to the dial tone.

Sitting in the hospital for four and a half hours was torture. Olivia is like my daughter and if something ever happened to her I would never forgive myself. Munch and Fin brought coffee for Elliot and I but neither of us could touch our cups. It was like a broken down record where it just keeps repeating the same few bars of music over and over again.

All I could wonder was if there was some way that I could have prevented this. That maybe somehow the situation we were in was my entire fault. As Captain, my job is to protect my detectives, not let them get attacked and killed. Of course she wasn't dead…yet.

She was moved to ICU and we were each allowed five minutes with her. I went first. I remember how pale her normally tanned skin looked, how it practically blended in with the white hospital sheets. Her dark hair was tousled and her eyes were shut tight, she looked peaceful and angelic dispite all the machines she was hooked up to. I sent a fervent prayer to the God I didn't believe in anymore to keep her safe and help her recover. I guess that wasn't good enough, even though I know that Elliot was sobbing and praying for her all night along with practically the entire staff of the hospital who had met her at some point in time.

I don't know how I did it, but I managed to fall asleep, worried thoughts, hospital chair, bad back and all. Munch and Fin had fallen asleep about an hour before I did, it wasn't that they didn't care about Olivia; I just threatened them with their jobs if they didn't stop arguing about why she was shot. With nothing else to appease the heavy silence they conked out. Elliot had vanished, probably standing in front of her room door and still praying.

When I woke it was to the sound of soft sobbing and the low voice of a doctor repeating his apologies over and over and offering condolences. My eyes snapped open, trying to adjust to the bright, yellowish light. Elliot was hunched against the wall, an arm thrown across his eyes, the doctor squatting in front of him. My mind started shouting profanities at everything and I raced towards my detective as fast as I could manage after a night in metal chairs.

The doctor turned to me, I couldn't finger his name. He had worked countless rape cases for us, helped Fin, Munch, Monique, hell, he had patched together nearly everyone in the unit. Elliot was still shuddering; I knelt beside him as well and pulled him into a fatherly hug, sensing bad news.

"Captain Cragen?" the doctor asked, I simply nodded.

"I'm so sorry." He placed a comforting arm on my shoulder; I found it odd considering that this man could be my son. I held back my tears, not allowing myself to cry. Elliot was her partner; partners were like blood, only their bond ran even deeper although they would never admit it.

"She's gone, isn't she?" I couldn't tell if I was talking or not, but the doctor nodded in response and I felt Elliot slump lower towards the ground, tears still coursing down his face through the light stubble on his cheeks.

It's odd that I can barely recall anything about the phone call from the hospital yet my conversation with the doctor is still as clear as though it were yesterday. I remember the burn behind my eyes as I fought back the tears, memories of Olivia both on and off the job flooded my mind. Elliot's body had started to shake of its own accord, he was gasping for breath and his pupils were dilating. The doctor jumped in to grab hold of him and told me to find a nurse. Elliot was having a seizure.

I found a blonde nurse wearing scrubs and she grabbed a pair of gloves and a long needle. When we returned to the waiting room, Elliot was lying on the floor. My chest clenched painfully, I had just lost one detective and I didn't need to lose her partner too. His body had stopped convulsing but his breathing was still coming in short, uneven gasps. The nurse's eyes widened when she saw my detective on the floor she handed the doctor the needle and knelt beside him, taking his hand in her own.

I was about to make some comment on inappropriate behavior towards a patient, but stopped when I took another look at the nurse. Damn it all to hell, of all the people I could have grabbed, it had to be the ex-Mrs. Stabler. Once he had gotten the shot, the doctor helped Elliot to a chair where he sat down and held his face in his hands. His eyes were bloodshot and I knew Kathy wanted to beat the story out of him. Munch and Fin had disappeared during the commotion so Elliot's ex had no way to know that everything had to do with Olivia, her arch-rival.

"Elliot, you are going to kill yourself over this, I'm going to grab you a glass of water!"

He started to shake his head at me but stopped when he felt a searing pain. Our eyes met and I tried to convey the need to get Kathy to follow me out of the waiting room. He waved me off with a couple words and a motioned for Kathy to follow me. She reluctantly did.

Thankfully she made sure we were out of earshot before she turned on my, beating answers from my brain and mouth. I tried to be careful about my answers knowing that part of the reason she left Elliot was because she was jealous of his partner.

"What happened?" she nailed the words through my ears.

"Elliot had a seizure," what is it about women that make you feel like a witness being cross-referenced?

"Why was he here in the first place?" she wasn't going to let me go with a short answer.

"We had a detective down, the whole unit came to she if our coworker was fine,"

Kathy's eyes looked sad, "I'm so sorry." She droned, "Is it Munch? Fin? Ms. Novak?" she hit every target but not the bulls eye.

"No Kathy," I made sure that my voice was calm, "It was Olivia." She caught my words before I even realized I had used the past tense.

She stared at me silently for a moment then slowly echoed my word, "was?"

I nodded.

"Olivia just died and Elliot had a break down." I felt a single tear slip and I clawed the others back.

"Oh" was all she said.

Elliot refused to take a new partner. He worked with either Munch or Fin, when they aren't together, or he does paperwork. Her desk is still exactly the same as it used to be, her coffee mug from the day before her shooting is still standing next to her phone. Her files, have all been copied so that the originals can stay where they were. None of us want to let go.

Elliot propped his feet up on his desk and closed the file he had been working on. It was an old one from about two months ago. It was Olivia's. I took it in my hands and opened it to the page Elliot had been reading. Jose Alvarez stared back at me and I felt the anger start deep inside my toes and work to my finger tips. Thank God he had been killed in a shoot out a couple months ago or I would have had to kill him myself, except that would involve beating Elliot to him.

"You know Cap," Elliot started, leaning his head back into his hands and narrowing his eyes into the infamous 'Stabler' look I had grown to respect. "I always held on to a shred of hope that she was alive. That she was in Witness Protection Program with Alex, and would come back when we caught the bastard who shot her. It's been a couple of months though and that little candle has all but burned out."

He sighed and hoisted himself out of his chair and offered me a half smile.

"I used to tell myself the same thing." I'm trying to comfort him but I can tell it's not working. "Meet me at O'Malley's for drinks at 8" I knew we both need some time to unwind, a couple of drinks and some loud music used to do the trick, hopefully it still works.

"Is that an order Captain?" Elliot is smiling at me, but it doesn't reach his eyes. His smiles never do anymore, not even when he's with his children. When Olivia left, his heart was ripped from his chest and the color drained from his world.

I smile back weakly, thankful that he is a good enough actor to create a realistic façade. "You bet your ass it is." He grabs his coat and checks his watch.

"It's five, I'll see you in three." I wave goodbye and walk back to my office, reveling in the quiet atmosphere today. Nothing has happened in the past few days and Munch and Fin spent the day in court. I told them to debrief me in the morning.

I spent about a half an hour flipping through the scrap book I keep hidden away inside the bottom drawer of my desk. It's filled with pictures of the whole gang. While I'm looking through it, I realize that I haven't added a single picture since Olivia left. Probably because I don't want to admit to myself that she's gone. New Year's Eve is just around the corner, and everything is slightly chilly but I feel a small trickle of warmth filter through my body while I look at the pictures from all the times our unit had little parties.

I try to bite back a smile when I notice that the first picture in the book was from our welcome-to-the-squad party for Olivia.

I barely heard the bull-pen door screech open. I really should thank Munch and Fin for oiling the hinges someday. A tall, thin woman wrapped in a black pea-coat stepped into the squad room. She has a hat pulled down to cover most of her face in shadows, the only color on her was a bright red scarf slung around her neck. It reminded me of something Olivia might wear and I stood from my desk.

"Can I help you?" I asked, sincerely hoping that this woman was lost and not here to report anything.

She glanced up at me and smiled. "Does a detective Elliot Stabler work here?"

I nodded, "Yes," she let out a light breath and bit her bottom lip, "He's not here now though, he's got the afternoon off. Do you need to report a rape? Or are you a girlfriend that he never told me about?"

She let out a light laugh and for some reason a felt the urge to chuckle with her.

"Oh God no, I wasn't raped. My Mom was though, but that was a long time ago. As for being Detective Stabler's girlfriend, let's just say that my situation at home doesn't really allow for boyfriends not to mention my job doesn't either."

"Oh really," it was easy to talk to this woman. I found myself ushering her into my office and offering her a seat. "What do you do for a living?"

She shrugged, "I'm kind of between jobs right now," she admitted, "I used to be a cop. I worked with the best group of guys ever, then some stuff came up and I became a kindergarten teacher because the real one was on maternity leave for a few months."

"Where did you teach?" I briefly wondered if all my questions were unnerving her, but she answered good naturedly.

"I taught in a private school in New Jersey, up in Princeton, not ten minutes from the university." She clasped her hands and placed them under her chin, another habit that Olivia also had.

"Were you a cop in Princeton?" I wanted to know more about this woman, she was intriguing.

She shook her head, "Actually I was part of the NYPD, and I just pissed off some high and mighty people."

"Holy shit," I muttered under my breath as something in my head clicked. "You want to take your hat off Detective?"

I saw the smile dance across her face and I felt the urge to grab her and twirl her around,

"I was wondering when you would ask," she paused and put her hand to her hat to pull it off, "Captain,"

As much as I'd suspected it at first, there were no signs; with Alex it was almost obvious. When she came back to testify, it was one of those moments we all knew would come eventually. Olivia being in the Witness Protection Program was something I had told myself just because I didn't want to believe that she was dead.

"Are you back to stay?" I didn't really want to voice my thoughts, afraid of her answer but needing to hear her say yes.

She nodded, "I've already re-received my badge but I'm not sure which units have openings right now! I guess I'll see you around then Don,"

She pulled her hat back on and started for the door to my office but I jumped up to follow her, "Hey Olivia," I said, breathing her name aloud while talking to her felt so good. "How would you like your old job back?"

"You mean would I like to work with the 1-6 again?" she grinned jauntily, "You bet Mr. Boss Sir."

I couldn't help but laugh at her words and pointed to her old desk. "Not just back at the 1-6," I stated, "Back with Detective Stabler." Her jaw dropped considerably and I smiled at her expression.

"I'd love to Captain, but I don't want to put his partner out of a job." She always was to honest for her own good.

"He doesn't have a partner, Olivia," was all I said in response,

"But, the desk…its occupied" she was stumbling over her words, trying to figure everything out. I chuckled and pulled out her chair.

"Have a seat Liv," she slumped into it and I recognized the expression on her face. She was home.

Olivia slowly ran her fingers over the familiar indentations on the desk and found a thick layer of dust. She glanced up at me slowly and I just nodded in the direction of her files. She picked each one up carefully and read through her own handwriting, tears forming after she put each one down. For a moment, I was afraid she was remembering how tough this job was and was having second thoughts about returning.

When she spoke her voice was barely above a whisper, "It's all the same." She choked, picking up the green mug and cradling it against her body. Her eyes met mine and I realized that this must be what Elliot felt like. I could read her question without having to hear her ask it.

"It was Elliot's idea." I muttered to her, once she had put the mug down and realized that her old password still worked on the computer. "He went through eleven partners in the first month after you left and fourteen the second. After that, we gave up and he worked with Munch or Fin."

"Why did he go through so many?" she asked me and I feel a smile tugging at my mouth.

"Because none of them were you!" I said, as though stating the obvious, and I am.

I could see the tears behind her eyes that were threatening to spill over, and I damned the choked out sob in my voice. That was not the moment to have a break down even if Olivia would have gotten a good laugh out of it. I worked my jaw in slow circles to take my mind off of my emotions. Damn, I'm definitely not a soft guy and I was near tears. I briefly wonder how this will affect Elliot. I watch her slowly stand from the chair and push it in, before she trails her hand along the edge. Her fingers encountered the small split between her old desk and Elliot's and I heard her breath catch in her throat.

"I better go," she mumbled, pulling her hand away as though she were burned, or slapped.

I gave her a soft smile, "okay," I nodded. "I'm seeing Elliot later tonight; I'll tell him that he's got a new partner coming in."

Our eyes met and I could tell she knew I wouldn't tell him it was her. Some part of me wanted to invite her to join us boys while we talked shop, but the rest wanted to see Elliot's reaction when he came to work the next day grumbling about female rookies. I jotted down a mental note to bring in Krispy Kreme doughnuts to celebrate Olivia's return. I believe her favorite kind was Boston Crème, with chocolate covering. Same as Elliot. I had to admit that they aren't bad; I'm just more of an apple fritter kind of guy myself. Besides, I already know Alcoholics Anonymous, Chocoholics Anonymous doesn't need to be graced with my presence as well.

"Thanks Captain," she touches my knuckles with her long finger. "I'll be in early tomorrow."

She started to walk away but my hand instinctively grabbed her wrist and gently tugged her back to me. I felt the familiar paternal bond kick in as I pulled her into a loose hug, and hoped to dear God that she never leaves her detective family again. Olivia hugged me back tightly before she gave a light chuckle.

"If you don't let me go Don, Elliot will think you stood him up." The thought of Elliot pissed off, drunk, and emotionally unstable, was enough to get me to release her.

"It's good to have you back Benson!" I added a point to Elliot's column when she didn't correct the last name. I knew Elliot would hate having to share his partner with another man, even if Olivia were head over heels in love with him.

She turned to leave, but I had one more question. "How the hell did you not crack without seeing us?"

She laughed lightly but didn't face me again. "I did crack," her voice was muffled against her scarf. "So I came and hid in the shadows to watch my family." Then she was gone, the glass door softly thudding shut.


tbc.