A/N: I'm sorry in advance. Thanks to my twitter gang for sticking by me during the hundreds of times I wanted to quit writing this because it was too emotional.

116 Lexington Avenue, NY

0900HRS

A young blonde man stands in the laundry's doorway, unsure of what to do. "Uh, I'm gonna go." Tommy adjusts the bag on his shoulder.

Patty turns towards him for a split second and then returns to her laundry. "Yep."

Tommy exhales. This wasn't his intention to make her hate him. But enough was enough. "I'm sorry Patty, we just bring out the worst in each other." It was the truth. He would miss her without a doubt, but she deserved better than constant fights.

"Thanks, Dr. Phil." Patty sniffles into her laundry basket, careful not to give him the gratitude of looking him square in the eye.

"I love you, but sometimes love is just not enough."

16th Precinct - Manhattan Special Victims Unit

1100HRS

His feelings for her ebbs and flows. Some days he is joyful; she fills his ears with the sound of her laughter. Other days he is full of rage; she pushes him to his limits, and he hates that he loves that about her. Today seems to be on the positive side. Although they directly deal with people who cannot be fixed, together they bring justice to survivors who have seen the worst of humanity.

Elliot watches her. He bites down on his lower lip, attempting to fight the smile that is pulling at the corners of his mouth. Her back is to him and she's pushing the magazine into her service weapon. "You put the rounds in the right way?" He's teasing her. Flirting with her.

It shouldn't be this easy. But it is.

"Shut up," He can almost hear she's rolled her eyes at him. She cocks the weapon and proceeds through her safety drills, pressing it into the weapon clearing trap. Her hair falls around her face when she holsters the pistol. He sees her smile beneath her bronze hair.

If he were being honest with himself he likes it better when it's darker. It matches her eyes perfectly. When they argue and things get heated, her eyes seem to get impossibly darker and the depths of her beauty still scare the shit out of him.

But he closes the distance between them. He halts just mere inches from her. A smile begins to form but he is captured by her scent, her closeness. The color drains from his face, he's been too cocky and now he's startled by the doe eyes she presents up at him through her bangs. His arm betrays him and he tangles his fingers in her hair, tucking the loose strands behind her ear.

Both of them have stopped breathing. He's crossed their invisible line. The line they drew in the sand years ago because he couldn't handle the temptation of her proximity, the feel of her skin against his.

In the early years of their partnership, he hadn't been afraid to get close. It was like a game of cat and mouse, who could go the farthest. They taunted, teased, sometimes he was so close he could almost taste her skin. Yet as their relationship progressed, they created boundaries. Their feelings had grown too deep, too close to the heart for their own comfort.

So they stopped touching unless it was necessary.

Now here he was, his hand fisted in her hair, inches away from her delectable lips. Olivia peers up at him with large doe eyes.

She's scared.

He is too.

She takes a half step forward. Her blouse brushes against his shirt and he shivers at her closeness.

"Guys, we caught a case."

He makes a mental note to kill Fin when he has the chance.

George Washington Bridge Bus Station, NY

1700HRS

The scene was gruesome.

The father, Simon, had been killed with a hunting knife. Beside him on the floor was his wife, Lyla. In the bedroom was their teenage daughter, Amy, who had been strangled and raped.

This wasn't even the worst part. The Clifford's son, Ryan, and their youngest child, Rebecca, were missing. Although they remained a constant in Elliot's mind, Olivia kept wandering into his thoughts. The way he had touched her earlier. The crimson in her cheeks. The way her eyes searched his as if looking for him to take the next step and finally lean in.

They had found their suspect, Victor Gitano. The squad searched his apartment high and low, listened to Huang give powerful reasoning why Gitano was an extreme risk to anyone that got in his way.

After putting out a BOLO for Gitano it wasn't long before he was spotted at the George Washing Bridge Bus Terminal. Olivia drove like a madman through the streets and parked out front.

She still spoke nothing to him about the morning, strictly focused on the case. It was a catch twenty-two for Elliot; he so badly wanted the distraction from the horrors of the case which they were so deeply embedded, but he wanted his head on straight when they eventually came face to face with Gitano. Every time his eyes caught her hair however, he remembered how he could have crossed the line.

The teller at the booth who had called the squad room with the tip had given them away. He can't blame the guy for being nervous - the media had a field day with Gitano's violence, his past, the kidnapping, and murders - the thought of facing him had scared the teller so badly that Gitano got spooked.

Elliot frantically runs through the tunnels, searching for Olivia, for Gitano, for the children. He's lost in the terminal's chaos. They had split up to try to find Gitano. He sprints through blockades of people on the escalator, pushing through the crowds below.

Twenty feet away, Elliot sees Olivia unholster her weapon just on the other side of the doorway. People run and scream. He fruitlessly fights back against the crowd, yelling for people to move out of his way. A blonde, curly-haired boy stands still amongst the blurred bodies of adults running away. His voice calls after Ryan, again and again, but the boy doesn't move.

A girl screaming takes his attention away from Ryan. Gitano stands, gripping Rebecca to his side roughly.

"Freeze!"

Olivia screams and points her weapon at Gitano, careful not to aim at the young girl. Gitano reaches for his belt and draws a knife.

Elliot stops breathing.

He can't move.

Gitano swings the knife wildly, slashing Olivia's throat. Immediately she falls and clasps at her throat, blood pouring from between her fingers. Elliot draws his gun, helplessly watching as Victor grabs both of the children and disappears up the escalator.

"Move! Olivia! Oh my God, no! No!" He's beside Olivia in an instant, grabbing her and holding her close. He tries to see her wound, but she tightly grasps at her throat, protecting the wound. His world is burning around him. All he can see is her perfect hair fanned out across the floor, the panic in her eyes, her lips parted to harshly suck in ragged breaths.

"It's okay," She says frantically. "I'm okay," Her voice cracks. His eyes are wide from the pure fear and adrenaline pumping through his veins. All of his years in the military and the NYPD combined have never prepared him for this moment.

He is unequivocally lost.

"Where's Gitano? Go, Elliot, go! I'm fine! Go!"

Elliot turns from her then. He runs up the stairs of the escalator as quickly as his shaking body will allow him. There is a crowd at the top, cowering and glancing over at another crowd. He looks west and sees Fin who amongst the crowd, looking down at the body. Slowly he feels the anger boil up in his blood. He can't keep it together for much longer.

"Fin,"

"Don't."

"What is it?"

"He killed him, Elliot. He cut his throat."

A/N: I'm going into hiding now...