Author's Note: Thank you to everyone for your reviews! I so appreciate you taking the time to read and to write to me. And so we continue...

He hangs up with Liv and listens to the sound of the water running in the bathroom. One of his children is out of bed and he will bet ten dollars it's Eli. He hears it then, the sound of his son's little feet scampering across the old wooden floorboards and back into his bedroom.

He will go and check on his little guy in a minute, maybe two. Elliot doesn't want Eli to know that he is still awake, otherwise the kid will make a case for a midnight treat and Elliot is pretty sure that Kathy is gonna kill him if their son returns to her home with a nocturnal snacking habit.

He grins to himself in the dim light of his bedroom. At five, Eli soaks up every moment with him and though Elliot is so thankful that his son wants to be with him, he worries he has messed up Kathy's perfect bedtime routine. Eli has been hanging out with him until at least 10:00 every night. Elliot has attempted to put the kid to bed on time, but he can't fight city hall. In truth, he hasn't tried all that hard because he does not want to miss a minute with his youngest.

He breathes for a moment and allows himself to drift forward in time...to July. The kids will be out of school and the house will be full. Warm air will waft through the open windows on the summer breeze. He can hear Olivia's laughter as Eli races through the house, giggling madly as he chases the dog.

He has a dog now.
When he had moved in last fall, the old house had felt cavernous. It didn't yet hold memories of his family and it felt utterly empty. It had been Maureen's idea. Everyday for three weeks, she had sent him email postings of dogs in local shelters until his inbox looked like the results of the Westminster Dog Show.

He had given in after a particularly quiet night and driven to the shelter first thing in the morning. He walked the aisle more than once, his heart going out to every one of the dogs inside the pens. He reasoned to himself that they were well taken care of, safe and warm, and much better off here than they were on the streets. Still, he saw what Maureen had meant about not being able to leave without one.

At first he felt overwhelmed and wondered if this had been the right thing to do. For an instant, the dogs reminded him of the job he had left behind and how each one of them needed him in a unique way. He didn't feel like he had a whole lot more in him to give. To anyone. What the hell was he doing here anyway? He didn't know a damn thing about dogs - he had never had one of his own...He walked up and down the row three times.

He crossed the small dogs off his list immediately. He couldn't take one of those little yappy things, no matter how adorable the girls thought they were. He knew he couldn't have a puppy because they chewed everything and had to go out to the bathroom all the time. Elliot knew he didn't own anything valuable, so the chewing part didn't really bother him, but he wanted to keep the house looking half-decent and his new job wouldn't allow him to spend the necessary time at home training a puppy.

A light colored hound mix sat in the second to last cage. Her big brown eyes had stared up at him for a long moment and before he knew it she was sitting beside him in the adoption room as he signed the papers to bring her home. She was a seven year old stray from West Virginia - scruffy, ruffled, and in Elliot's eyes - perfect.
She had sniffed him thoroughly, licked his hand twice, and propelled by the force of her wagging tail, jumped into the truck without hesitation. She had made him laugh and he thought that that alone was reason enough for her to become his friend.

Heidi is stretched out at the foot of his bed.

Her $40.00 plush dog couch from Maureen lays six feet from her on the floor. Her head is resting on his shin and her eyes are drooping as he watches her. She looks at him once and cocks her head as if to say, "Come on, old man. Go to sleep."
He runs his hand over the soft fur on the top of her head and she sighs contentedly, closing her eyes.
She puts him to sleep.
The dog has been a God-send and she has taught him a lot about relaxation. He is relaxed now and he thinks it is a miracle because he hd felt so differently this time one year ago.

Back then, he would have over-analyzed his conversation with Olivia. He would have been worried that he had said too much or not enough.
Now, he knows.
He is more sure of things now. He is sure that the timing is right. He is sure because she has finally made the decision for herself that he didn't have the chance to. She will walk away from the job and God willing, walk towards him.

She wants to come, he thinks. It is incomprehensible how just by practicing patience, he is being given a chance to spend time with her. Elliot doesn't let himself think further ahead than that.
Sure, he's got plans that stretch beyond just inviting her here. Plans that include dinners, and bonfires, and trail rides through the open fields. Plans that include "I love you" and "stay with me" and "please don't ever leave."
Longer down the road he's got other plans, too. Plans for their future. Theirs. If she'll let him. If she'll have him.

For right now he focuses on the concrete facts of what he has in front of him.
Olivia.
She is quitting the job. Not quitting, resigning. There is grace in the way that she's leaving and he thinks that's right because it is just like everything else she does.
He will offer her every piece of his life for her to share in. He knows it will take time, but he also knows that by some miracle she trusts him. He wants to make sure she knows that this new part of their lives won't hurt them. It will make them better and stronger.
It will bring them back together, and that's what has always mattered most.

Their normal, their routine has changed so many times over the last year and he has to show her that this is just another step that they'll take with each other.

It has been too long since he has been beside her. Thanksgiving. A month, he thinks. An entire month. For two people who spent nearly every waking moment of twelve years side by side, her absence from his side still jars him and he's sure it prickles on her skin, too.

He has been back to the city nine times. Nine times in a year and a half. The first three times he returned with remorse coursing through his veins like a monsoon. He thought he would never be able to stop apologizing for what he did. He would never be able to stop apologizing to her. Rationally, he knows. He knows it is what the job required of him. He knows Cragen doesn't blame him.

Rationally, he knows that he saved more lives that day than he took, but that had not helped to ease the growing panic inside of him. He killed a child. A young girl. No older than his own daughters. Her life ended that day on the floor of the squad room and he was the one who had pulled the trigger. That is something he has to live with for the rest of his life and he isn't sure that he will ever be able to forgive himself fully. Olivia has tried to release him from every ounce of guilt she could, trying to take on responsibility for it herself.

Olivia's arms covered in blood.
Her dark eyes stark with fear.
Scrubbing his hands for hours after IAB arrived...until his skin broke open and his own blood mixed with the stain of the girl's.

He had turned in his resignation three days after the investigation ended. He remembers grasping her light jacket at the elbow and pulling her into the elevator with him, careful not to touch her bare skin. The fault was his and his alone. He wouldn't allow her flesh to crawl with the same guilt that his carried. She said two words. "I know," and with that her image had dissolved before him. "I know."

She knew he had to go.
Did she know he didn't want to go without her?
Did she know he didn't want to leave her?
Did she know that the guilt and the grief ate him alive, night after night?
How he'd finalize his divorce less than two months later?
How he'd question his mental state some thousand odd times?
Did she know he'd contemplate his own death more often than he'd like to admit?
How he'd wondered if his children would be better off without him in their lives?
How his nightmares seeped into his skin and stayed there for weeks on end...

Chaos.
The floor slick with bright red blood. Screams. Screaming.
She's right behind him and then- and then she's not.
He pulls the trigger as Olivia lunges forward, falling into Jenna's body. A final beat. His heart. Silence. Stopped. Her heart continues to beat, beating as her life's blood drains from a wound in her chest, right above her heart. A kill shot.
Liv.
Screaming himself hoarse and fighting mercilessly as hands clutch at him, holding him back, keeping him from her.
Her gaze is on him. He falls beside her.
Liv.
Olivia.
God, no. No.
His white shirt is soaked through, her blood is everywhere. He can't hold her. He can't keep her here with him.
Stay with me, Liv. Goddamnit, Olivia. Don't leave me.
He's pleading, screaming, praying, cursing...
El, she says his name. The same way she's said it thousands and thousands of times.
It's okay, she whispers and her voice is resolute as if she's made a decision. She uses her last ounce of strength to push his hand away.
I know, she says, faintly.
The hands grab at him again and he's screaming her name. Her head falls from his thigh, back onto the tile, her blood spreading through her hair...

He would wake up gasping for breath and pressing his palms into his eyes until he could see stars. He told himself over and over. That's not the way it happened. You didn't shoot Liv, he told himself. She's not gone. She's not dead. She's not. He kept Heidi awake for nights on end as she paced the room, patrolling for an enemy that lived only inside his head.

The dreams were horrific. He didn't think anything could be worse than losing her night after night, but during the long hours awake in the dark, he realized his terror wasn't born from watching her die at his hand. He couldn't shake the creeping concept in the dream that it wasn't her death that affected him so desperately. It was the eerily calm way that she accepted that he'd let her down. That he'd been the one to end her life. That he hadn't been able to save her.

The anxiety and desperation piled up inside of him and before he knew it he needed help. A call to a buddy in the service got him an appointment with one of the best psychologists in D.C. The guy was a combat vet - that's all Elliot knew.
His throat had been tight as hell and his hands had shaken so badly that he couldn't hold the pen to sign himself in at the office. He had gone back outside and thrown up in the parking lot just as his cell phone rang in his pocket. He thought he had silenced the damn thing before getting out of the car, but he was wrong.

Liv.

His screen lit up with her name and he sent her call immediately to voicemail. He couldn't let her hear from him like this. Not when he felt so afraid, so vulnerable, so out of control. He had tossed his phone into his car before pulling himself together enough to walk back into the building. Swallowing hard, he took a seat in front of an ex-Marine and started to shake uncontrollably. Hot waves of embarrassment and shame, denial and pain wracked his body. Years of battling his own mind assaulted him.

Shrinks were for other people.
He and Olivia - God, did it hurt to think of her - never needed help. They never asked for help with anything. They were better than that, faster than that, stronger than that. They'd never asked a single thing of another person. Never shared the demons inside their heads, even with each other. The years piled up, his childhood, his family, his failed marriage, his children, his partner, the cases, the victims...he found himself retching into the trash can without knowing how he had wound up on his knees.

Once he collected himself, he sat back in the chair across from the therapist. The man had been silent the whole time, letting Elliot take the necessary seconds to breathe. When Elliot sat back in the chair, he eyed the man opposite him checking his wrist watch.
"Not bad, Stabler. Seven minutes in. Most guys wait till second session to puke on my floor, but I can see you're not one for hesitation." The therapist had cracked through his veneer and Elliot gave a hint of a smile.

"Cody Allen," the shrink introduced himself, extending his big hand toward Elliot and shaking his firmly. Irish. Catholic. It all sounded familiar except for the slight southern accent that tinted his words. Elliot knew he was wounded in combat. A veteran.

"Kabul," Cody said, flexing his left leg in Elliot's direction and lifting the leg of his khakis just enough. "I was doing my third tour. Last one," he gave a grim shake of his head. "Wednesday afternoon patrol. Broad day light. Six of us were out there. I remember the neighborhood kids were kicking a soccer ball around and laughing."

Elliot held his breath because he was sure he knew what came next.

"The car bomb exploded before we knew what was happening. Somewhere behind me and to my left. Lost four of my best guys that day. Good men. Dying right there. Watched three kids bleed out in the street from metal piercing their skin and I couldn't move. I couldn't help. I couldn't get to them. I couldn't feel anything." Cody paused for a moment and swallowed hard. "Spent the next two years going through eight surgeries before becoming bionic," he said, motioning toward his prosthesis with a slight smile. "At least that's what my boys call it."

Elliot made to open his mouth, but Cody continued on.

"I had to relearn everything. How to sit, how to stand, how to balance, to walk - to hold myself up for God's sake. I needed help. I needed to be taught how to move on my own again. I was an otherwise healthy 34 year old guy who moved like a drunk toddler." Cody allowed himself a soft laugh, eliciting a minuscule grin from Elliot, who listened with rapt attention.

He knew about the kind of guys who served on patrol. It took a special brand of bravery to know that every beat of your heart could be your very last. Snipers, suicide bombers, IEDs, and car bombs lurked around every corner of that God-forsaken desert and just because the last patrol came back safe and sound didn't mean you would.

"You married?" The question fell from Elliot's lips before he could stop himself. He had to know that this man who had battled so hard for so long got a denouement worthy of his service.

Cody turned to face Elliot and grinned, "Hey, I'm supposed to be Socrates." He took a step toward his desk and handed Elliot a framed photo.
"That's my Meg. My wife. I proposed to her the night before I left for my last tour and she stayed by me every minute after I got home. I tried to tell her hundreds of times to find somebody else, somebody whole." Elliot found himself shaking his head in disagreement, but Cody ignored him.

"Thankfully, Meg agreed with you. She's stubborn as all get out," Cody gave a laugh. "One of the things I love the most about her. We're going on six years in October." Cody stood by the window, "She's my heart." He paused for a moment before turning back to meet Elliot's gaze.

"Before I give you my life story, I wanna make a point here. The thing is, Stabler, you've got a choice. Just like the one I had. I had to decide whether I was gonna sit on my ass and feel sorry for myself or was I gonna find some way to help myself and eventually other people. I spent fourteen months learning how to walk again, but more time learning how to live. Thing is, Stabler, I think you already know all the answers."

Elliot pressed his hands down hard onto the arms of his chair. He felt out of control for a moment. He didn't have any answers. He didn't know shit from Shinola. Cody read his expression correctly, "I'm just saying we're on even footing. I'm here to guide you. To be an ear." His expression turned serious for a moment, "There's nothing I haven't heard, all right?"

At first, sitting across from the battle-scarred veteran with the stubborn beautiful wife and sons felt more intimidating than chasing down a perp with loaded weapon. But something in the candid way that the man conversed with him made Elliot comply. He surprised himself when he realized that once he began talking the words kept tumbling from his mouth.

He told the truth. About everything. He had wanted to start with the job since that seemed to be the catalyst of all, but Cody had pushed him further. He'd asked about before the job, before Olivia, before the kids, before the Marines, before Kathy.
He wanted to know about Elliot's childhood. Elliot had shrugged it off, unsure if there was even much to remember.

Cody gave him time - but not too much time - to think. He realized that he struggled with getting by the notion that there might be issues that came as a direct result of his upbringing.
He remembered about all the times that he'd goaded a suspect about events from their distant past to get a confession out of them. He'd resisted until his therapist had leaned back in his chair and sighed.

"Stabler, the past has sharp claws. It'll latch on to you in ways you don't even know about at the time. You want to help yourself in the future? You have to look at where you've been and face it head on."

Something in the straightforward way he spoke resounded in Elliot's mind and he started in. It was delicate and difficult at first as he brushed over events that he didn't even remember he'd lived through. He shared vague wisps of memory, tiny puzzle pieces that were part of a bigger picture.

His father's deafening voice, his mother's hysterical tears, his skin sheathed in black and blue marks in the shape of his old man's strong fingers. The deafening sound of his mother's car as it careened forward, stopping in a heap of broken glass and smoke, twisted around a lamp post, the searing pain in his bones as firemen pulled him from the wreckage...he hadn't realized when he'd begun to cry. Elliot called it quits then. How could he keep doing something that continually made him feel weaker and weaker? He thought therapy was supposed to help him, to make him feel better, more in control, more like himself again.

His daughter had saved him. Elizabeth. She had called seven times in two hours and left him voicemails to match.

Only after she threatened to make the drive to him did he call her back. He sat in the restaurant the following afternoon and waited for her. His daughter's blonde hair had skimmed her neck. She'd cut it shorter than he ever remembered it being and her bright eyes were full of a cautious optimism that gave him hope.

"Tell me what's going on, Dad..." Elizabeth had dived in without pretense and for a moment she reminded him of the way Olivia used to talk to him during their first days together.
He had shaken his head and told her he was fine, but the lie was brittle and his brilliant daughter saw right through.
"Try again, Dad. Might wanna tell me the truth this time," she said softly, taking a sip of her lemonade.

She sat utterly still while he fidgeted with the paper wrapper on his straw. When he hesitated again, she let him flounder for a few minutes, trying to decide what to tell her. He glanced up at her after a while to see her gaze fixed on something behind him.
She had moved to stand up and he had caught her hand in his.
"Liz, where you going?" He asked her and she had lowered herself back into her seat.

"Listen Dad, I get that you don't wanna talk to me. I'm your kid and even though I'm eighteen you're still going to try to trying to protect me from whatever you're fighting." She paused then, brushing her bangs from her eyes, "I just don't think this is something you can fight alone."

She arose from her seat again and squeezing his shoulder with her hand, she moved away from their table.
He was left bereft for only a moment, trying to decipher his daughter's departure when she started back towards him with someone in tow. He didn't look up as they stood beside the table.

Elizabeth's hand held the visitor's arm and she pressed them into the seat which she had just vacated. He found that he couldn't look across the table and so he fixed his gaze on his daughter as she fumbled with her bag.

"Lizzie-" he began, but found his voice wasn't working.
"I gotta get to class, Dad," she had said breezily, as if she hadn't just changed the tilt of the world on it's axis. "I love you," she said, pressing a swift kiss to his cheek. She was gone before he could pull her to him.

Olivia graced him with endless minutes to sit in silence before she stood up. The loss of her presence across from him was disorienting enough to make him look up at her. He saw her take a deep breath.
"You want to go for a walk with me?" She had asked, motioning toward the door. He hadn't trusted himself to speak so he had simply nodded, his jaw tight. He let her steer him outside with the feeling of her palm pressed against his back.

The late August sunlight dappled the sidewalk and made the trees' shadows dance in the light breeze. He had made a sound low in his throat and he felt her gaze was him.

"How many times you think we've been down this street?" He asked her. Olivia tilted her head and glanced at him. "I can't even count. What are you thinking?" She asked him, gently.
He had been silent for a full minute. "Never knew there were trees along here."

He heard her soft intake of breath and he knew he didn't have to explain himself. They had walked this street hundreds of times over the years on the job. The concrete had always been the focus, the blood, the evidence, the body that laid on the solid ground. He had never looked up before.

"I can't have my kid worrying about me, Liv. That's not her job," Elliot rasped, exhausted.
"You can't control that, El," Olivia interjected, her voice was gentle.
"Like hell, I can't..." he growled, lapsing into silence once more and sitting down next to her on a bench. His knee had bumped into hers exactly three times before God took mercy on him. He grit his teeth and spit the words to the ground, "I can go back."
Olivia sat quietly.
"I can go back to therapy. For her, for-" his voice cut out. He'd wanted to say: For you. "She won't have to worry about me, then. I can do it."

Olivia had looked over at him and her dark eyes, though the polar opposite of his daughter's, held onto the same tiny sliver of hope. He couldn't be sure what all these women in his life were waiting for, but their belief in him gave him enough buoyancy to move forward.