A/N #1: Some fluffy post-Loss sadness, for whoever needs their daily dose of angst. This is more of an experiment that haunted my mind for the last couple of days, I don't even know... I'd very much appreciate some opinions though:)

A/N #2: This story contains references to intimate acts between women. If you don't like that, get the hell outta here!

Disclaimer: Law and Order: SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. I'm just borrowing them for some profitless fun.

Letting Go

Olivia?

Nobody could make your name sound like her. The way she said it, tasting at first, letting it unfold on her tongue like some well nuanced sort of wine, always guaranteed her your full attention. Sometimes it became an accusation, sometimes a praise, and then the time came when it was either an invitation breathed hotly into your ear or an exclamation causing your downstairs neighbour to leave more than one angry note in your letter box. But no matter how she said it, no matter how angry, how amazed, how sad, how lusty or how cold, hearing that alto voice of hers appeal to you never ceased to send delicious shivers down your spine.

Dr Morris? Look, I don't see the purpose of this. I'm fine.

Your Captain doesn't think so. And frankly, I see why he's concerned. You've just lost someone very dear to your heart, haven't you?

No. I've lost someone I loved.

You didn't plan for it to be this way. You wanted to stay in control, because that's what you've always done and that's what's gotten you through all the shit going on in your life from day one. You couldn't allow yourself to let go of the one thing that holds everything together. But the moment she walked into your precinct for the first time, you knew it was going to be harder than everything you'd ever done so far. Those piercing blue eyes behind edgy dark frames, that smart mouth with its full lips, the endless legs and the long elegant fingers, all that and more haunted you from day one. The guys were quick to set up a never ending list of names with some reference to all things one can find in the polar regions, but you couldn't bring yourself to tag along. Women should stick together, you excused yourself lamely again and again, but really you just couldn't pretend not to have seen, even felt the fire blazing inside of her, that passion wrapping you up more and more until all you could do was admit your defeat.

Tell me about her, Olivia. It's important that you can talk about it.

It happened one night when you shared a cab home. Not that your places were even roughly on the same route, but you could pretend. It had worked so well so far, the pretending. She wasn't drunk and neither were you, but there was something in her eyes when she told the driver her address that you hadn't seen before and maybe it was indeed brought out by the last round of booze. Maybe it was brought out by the shameless way you looked at her, the way you put your hand on hers while you were both still laughing at Munch's favourite theory of the week he'd shared with you earlier. Maybe everything just came together. But when she bit down ever so slightly on her bottom lip, her shoulders still shaking with the remains of laughter, her eyes a sparkling pure indigo, you couldn't help it any more.

I can't. It's too hard.

Never will you forget how warm and soft her cheek felt when your fingers brushed over it for the first time, how hot that last breath she took waved against your lips before you locked them with hers. Or how your heart jumped when she smiled against your mouth. From that moment it was on, and you both knew it. Your wildest imaginations didn't even come close to the sensation of having her inside of you or the way her desire tasted on your tongue. You fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, like a lock and its key, and after the first few nights you finally understood that what you had is what most people never find.

You have to. Take all the time you need, but you will have to talk about it. I can't let you back to work in this condition.

She had so many rules and you broke each and every one. You broke her out, set her free in a way she hadn't thought possible, hell, you hadn't thought possible either. You kissed in the park, made love in her office, and you gave up your control for the sake of her. She was afraid for your jobs when really getting all those feelings out there only made you a better team, even improved the professional arguments that made you want to press her up against the next wall until you were completely in sync again, until her impressively magniloquent vocabulary was reduced to your name.

Maybe I don't want to go back.

In a way it was torture. The sweetest pain there is. Before her there was no one who had ever made you feel more vulnerable and dependent. No one could aggravate you enough to shatter plates and smash doors like a defiant, frustrated little kid. No one could pin you to bed all weekend, light-headed, and so full of love and desire you felt as though you might just spend your whole life only ever doing this, doing her. Your job had always been bigger than life, but, even though you could never admit that to her or anyone else, she trumped that too.

Do you think she would want that? For you to give up your job too?

"Even when we win, we don't." You can still hear those words and the frustration in her tone. She'd become such a fighter, proven all those wrong who said she wouldn't last a year in the real world. But to hear these words come out of her mouth crushed a little part of you that needed her idealism more than you'd like to think. The way she believed in the system, the law and the justice that could come from it... it made you feel less alone, less pointless in this never ending circle of crime, less stupid to think that you could actually change something. She thought about it then, just like you have a thousand times before, but you knew she would have never gone through with it. And then the choice was made for her.

I would never give up my job, doctor.

Then tell me what happened.

What happened is what always happens. You have something good, something real in all this insanity; you lose it. Sometimes, just like that, without any warning, you feel the warmth, the stickiness of her blood on your hands again, feel it seeping through your fingers in time with the ever slowing pulse underneath. You can barely hear your own voice and the knot in your throat makes it almost impossible to breathe. You want to scream, but you can't lose focus. So you whisper her name over and over again, telling her to look, to stay, even though you know she can't hear you any more, her eyes icy blue and empty. There are also times when you wake up in the middle of the night, thinking you've heard her voice, caught the scent of her perfume, felt her hands on you. You still haven't decided what's worse.

She got shot. And I couldn't do anything to help her.

How does that make you feel?

You could have reacted better, faster, jumped backward instead of letting yourself being shielded by your partner. You should have taken that bullet instead of her. You're stronger; she bruises so easily. When she didn't want a cab, you should have insisted. You should have known that they wouldn't let her get away like that. You should have -

It makes me feel guilty. Angry. I should have protected her. I failed at my job.

It wasn't your job to protect her, Olivia.

Yes. It was.

And now you can't do it any more. Now she's alone, in a new place, with a new name, learning a new story. Without you. Sure, they're gonna do everything they can to keep her safe, but who's gonna protect her from herself? They don't know about the pills she takes to get some sleep, they don't know how she sometimes wakes up at night, crying, because bad things happen to rich people too. They don't know what you know, all the things she hasn't told anybody else, all the things she keeps safely tucked away in a corner of her soul because they make her weak, and she could only be weak for you.

Did she think so?

"It's not your job to protect me, Olivia! And I won't let this bastard get away with what he did... I'm sorry if that hurts you, but I can't just let it go. You of all people should understand that."

No, she didn't.

Oh, how you fought her that night after the car bomb! It was a vain effort and in your gut you knew that too, but you had to try and you did. With words kind and demanding, lips and fingers, teeth and nails until finally your tears, something you hadn't planned, shut her up, but they didn't change her mind. It was your last night together and you spent it half in rage, half in tears. And if you could have convinced her to drop the case, would that have changed anything? Probably not. But you didn't know then. You were so afraid for her, but you didn't realize that it would get even worse.

But she's gone now, isn't she? And maybe, if I – if I had acted more rationally, more like a cop and less like a girlfriend, she would still be here.

It broke your heart, when the doctors came out. You were never closer to throwing that badge away for good. You were never more of a mess in front of your partner. He could take it, but it hurt him too. They had actually tried to get along for you, stopped that rivalry nonsense, and he genuinely liked her, you could tell. She started to smile when she rolled her eyes because of something he did; he tried to play by the rules most of the time. For a day, the longest of your life, she was dead. And then she wasn't.

Where do you think she's now?

Wha- I'm not religious.

You don't have to be. But when it comes down to it we all believe in something to give us comfort.

No matter where she is, she's even more miserable than you. You saw it in her eyes when you stood by that van and cried again just when you thought you were positively out of tears from the night before. You wanted to hug her, take her in your arms, tell her everything was gonna be okay, kiss her one last time – but you were frozen and part of you knew that if you did any of these things you could have never let her go. So you were silent and so was she and you just looked into her eyes, slate-blue like a sky foreboding rain, and she nodded because she understood. It was all so fast and surreal and you will be eternally grateful for your partner's presence at the scene because without a second pair of eyes seeing what you saw you would have labelled everything as a stress-related hallucination. But you cannot, maybe never, tell anyone, so you repeat the words you've already told her mother:

Wherever she is, I just hope she's safe.