Law and Order: SVU and Law and Order: Organized Crime are both amazing shows and the characters do not belong to me, they both belong to Dick Wolf and to NBC.

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He could feel her body trembling. He could hear that her breathing had increased even more, she drew in sharp, jagged breaths. She was hyperventilating. He had to get her to calm down. Fuck. He had laughed at her in her car when she said he had PTSD. She knew what she was talking about. He could feel her trying to move down towards the floor. She didn't loosen her grip on him, but still tried to slip down. Him sensing that was what she wanted he loosened his hold on her so he could put one hand to the wall to support him as he brought them both down to the floor.

He could feel her leaning heavily on him, his shirt still held tight in her hands. "Liv, I got you" he said holding on to her.

He moved her so she was turned against him between his legs. Her face was turned in against his chest with her eyes still squeezed tightly shut.

"Elliot" she gasped out "please… don't… don't… be mad… sorry."

"oh Liv, I am not mad" he said rubbing her back.

"Elliot I can't… I can't…". she cried

It broke his heart to see and to hear her struggle. The guilt he felt earlier had doubled, maybe even tripled.

"I got you, Liv. I'm right here, you need to slow your breathing. Take slow deep breaths. Breath in and out. In and out" He rubbed her back with one hand and used the other to tilt her head so he could look at her face. "Come on Liv, look at me, open your eyes. Let me look at you. I'm right here I'm not going anywhere." Her eyes focused on his. He could see her breathing slow. She shut her eyes and leaned into him. He tightened his arms around her. "you ok?" he asked

"Yes, I will be, I'm getting there, it's passing." She said quietly.

He could feel that she was starting to calm down, starting to regain control. He made no attempts to move he figured she would let him know when she wanted to move. He remained sitting with his back against the wall with her sideways between his bent knees. His arms loosely wrapped around her. He felt her fingers tracing the tattoo on his forearm.

"Does that happen frequently?" he asked

"Well, sometimes If I don't stop I can chase it away, if that makes any sense. I can use diversion tactics to force it off. It only works for so long before it catches up and I have to let it run it's course" she replied

"Does it feel like building tension, or anxiety?" he asked

"Sometimes it does, but then other times anger, lots of anger, sometimes sadness, resentment, bitterness, and more often than not an emptiness, an all encompassing emptiness" she says softly

"Like fighting a war within yourself that never goes away, one that you can't win" he said

"Sometimes I can tell it's coming and sometimes I can hide it and it comes off as me being bitch or cold even. On a bad day or if a trigger sends me spiraling and I can't pull out of it, it comes as a shock every time. It's like you're standing on solid ground and then suddenly you're not" she said

"Like you have no control" he said softly

She stopped her movements on his forearm and moved her hand down to grasp his hand. "I can see your pain, your sadness. It just reminds me how I was. I was so angry, all the time for the longest time. I made stupid decisions, I was impulsive, careless. Honestly, finding Noah saved me" she said

"He saved you and you saved him. It was meant to be" he said squeezing her hand.

"He's a great kid. I would love for you to get to know him more. I've been telling him all about you" she whispered softly.

"I would love to get to know him more" he replied squeezing her hand again.

"It still feels so good to talk to you. It still feels the same as it did" she said in a shaken voice. "I would play your voicemails over and over. They would save me on the worst days. When this happened my phone was never damaged beyond repair and I couldn't get them back. I avoided getting a new phone just to hold on those voicemails so I could still hear your voice. I was afraid of forgetting it"

Her voice had dropped even lower. He moved his ear closer to her mouth to ensure he heard what she was saying.

"Losing that phone and losing the only connection I had left to you was so much worse than anything he'd done to me" she said.

He tightened his hold around her.

"damn" she cursed softly "this didn't go the way I thought it would" she said quietly

"How did you think it would go?" he asked

"Well for one I didn't foresee me ending up on the floor like this when you haven't even gotten to the worst of it yet" she sighed in frustration "that's only a picture of my old apartment" she said shaking her head

"Have you seen it before?" he asked softly "have you seen any of them?"

She shook her head. "No. I don't need to look at the photos in the file because I see them display in my head"

Realization hit him. She did this for him. She potentially put herself in a bad situation that would no doubt cause her flashbacks and nightmares. "You didn't have to put yourself in this position Liv"

"I'm seeing in you what I used to see in me Elliot, and I don't want you to get to the point I did before you understand it. I did a lot of things I regret, and I hurt a lot of people, maybe I over stepped and should stay out of your business but it's so hard for me to not try and help you, I'm much better at helping other people than I am at helping myself, and you're the same way. I think I was just thinking I could help you and you could help me" she said

Elliot sighed deeply, waiting before he responded. Trying to find the right words for his response.

Olivia tensed in his arms. "I'm sorry if.. I don't mean to say that… I'm sorry if I am overstepping…. Fuck" she said unable to find the words, nervous she may have pushed to far.

His arms tightened around her. "No, Liv don't worry. I'm just trying to find the right way to respond to you. I'm not as good with words as you are. Yes. I can't really put the right words to it exactly, this is what comes to mind we are essentially fighting a similar battle, because I do feel like I am trapped. Like I am being held hostage in the night of the bombing the and the few days after. I feel like I just couldn't put a definition on what I'm feeling. Things were a little bit more complicated with Kathy and I, the dynamic of our relationship was complicated, maybe even difficult you might say. It's kind of ironic. We were back in New York to stay regardless. Yes, we would've had to make several trips to Rome and back to sort things out but us coming back on this trip was a stepping stone to us being back here completely by summer, things were going to change for us regardless but I still wasn't prepared for how it changed" he said.

"So, you're definitely staying in New York for good?" she asked hopefully.

"Yes. I'm here to stay, Liv" The hopefulness in her voice was not lost on him.

"Do you want me to tell you more?" she asked

"That's all up to you Liv, this is your story to tell" he said.

"It occurred to me that Fin and Amanda can probably tell you more. All I can really tell you about is what I remember. There's so much that's still foggy" she said softly. "We can get up off the floor if you want. Believe it or not the floor is what helps me sometimes. When I can't pull myself out of panicking if I sink down to the floor and just put my palms against the floor it helps me come back. When Noah is here and I'm afraid I'll wake him or am afraid I'll scare him the bathroom floor helps. If I put my face on tile the cold tile also helps."

"Working out, helps me sometimes" he whispers.

"Yeah, early on I used to run seven miles before work in the mornings. I don't know why seven was the magic number, it seemed the days I didn't run the seven miles were always the worst. It probably all was in my head" she replied.

She began to trace her fingers on his arm again. Dancing over the tattoo. "I missed you being in my life so much" she said. "There's so much I want to tell you, so much I want you to know, things I need you to know, and there's some things I don't want you to know too"

"You mean about you and Tucker?" he asked quietly.

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I know this one is short. More to come very soon I promise! Thank you for all the reviews!