"I'm sorry Liv," was his last thought. "I'm so sorry."

And then everything went dark.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Olivia and Fin looked desperate at the victim sleeping in the hospital bed, who had fallen asleep during the interrogation. The nurses had forbidden them to wake her, for she was in a weak condition because of her injuries and needed rest. According to the victim's account, the suspect was the same as in the murder/rape case near the factory, but she hadn't had time to answer all the essential questions Fin and Olivia were supposed to ask her.

"You can come back when she wakes up, and after we've made sure she's strong enough to talk," the nurse announced as she shooed them out the door.

"Tell us immediately when she wakes up!" Fin exclaimed as the nurse closed the door in front of their noses. They stared at the closed door for a couple of seconds, then glared at each other in frustration.

"Food?" Fin asked and Olivia nodded.

"Sounds like a plan."

They started to walk towards the hospital cafe with their hands in their pockets, and Olivia watched the people sitting in the hallways. She had never liked hospitals, because she felt like they were places where people waited to hear their judgement. Fin seemed to read her mind.

"I couldn't think of any better way to spend my evening than in the hospital cafe," he huffed, and Olivia nodded.

"You said it. I'm glad that Elliot had time to take Violet to a ballet class, she…"

But suddenly her sentence was interrupted because she stopped to listen. Fin turned to look at her questioningly.

"Liv?"

"Wait," she listened intently, and suddenly her heart skipped a beat. It can't be.

"What's wrong?"

"Listen," she lifted her hand. "Is that… Violet?"

Farther down the hallway, there was a little girl's panicked screaming and crying, and Fin frowned.

"No… It can't be… Wasn't she at ballet class?"

However, Olivia no longer answered and began to leap in the direction of the voice. The closer she got, the more the voice sounded like her daughter, and the more she felt the strength disappear from her feet. Finally she arrived in an almost empty waiting room, and then her heart felt to stop.

It was Violet.

The girl seemed to be completely in panic, and the nurses were trying to to calm her down, while they were holding her. However, she tried to struggle, and reassurance seemed to have only the opposite effect. For a few seconds, Olivia felt paralyzed.

Blood.

Where's Elliot?

"Violet?" Her stifled voice made her daughter freeze and turn her gaze to her mother.

"MOM!"

The nurses let her go, and she crashed into Olivia with full speed. Her whole body was trembling with the force of crying, and Olivia felt like she wasn't able to gather her thoughts to form one sensible sentence. Fin had also entered the waiting room, looking at Violet with concern. As Olivia felt frozen, he lifted his gaze to the nurses:

"What's happening? Why's she here?"

The nurses glanced at each other uncertainly, and suddenly Fin wasn't sure if he wanted to hear the answer.

"There's… There's been a shooting, and…"

"The police officers brought her here," the other nurse continued. "She… She says he was her father and…"

No.

The weight of Violet hanging from her shirt made her stagger forward, and Fin grabbed her arm. She felt as if her brain had stopped working.

"Where's El?" She asked hoarsely, and Fin glanced at her, pursing his lips. Violet's crying became even more intense.

"Are you a close relative?" The other nurse asked uncertainly, and Fin looked at them in frustration:

"They have a child and a house together."

"Mr. Stabler has been taken for surgery; he was shot in the chest on the left side. He is in critical condition because the bullet hit his lungs, and we do not know how close to the heart…"

Olivia felt like she wasn't able to stay on her feet anymore, and Violet hanging in her wasn't helping, so Fin interrupted the nurse and helped his friend to sit down on the chair. Her daughter jumped onto a chair next to her and squeezed her mother tightly, half on her lap.

You have to pull yourself together for your daughter, a voice in the back of her head told her, and with her last strength, she managed to gather herself so that she could communicate with the nurses.

"Will he survive?" Her voice was a mere fizzle.

"We don't know yet, because we can't say what his real condition is. However, he has lost a lot of blood and…"

Olivia wanted to scream, and she closed her eyes. Her whole body was trembling, and then she opened her eyes and lowered her gaze to Violet, who was clearly in shock. And no wonder, she thought. Her father was shot in front of her.

"The cops are coming here, but we'll tell them your daughter can't be interviewed yet. They…"

But then the nurse's voice muffled again in Olivia's ears as she looked at Violet, whose shirt was bloody, and whose hair was glued to her face. Had Elliot been the only target? What if the shooter had aimed at both…

Get a grip of yourself, Liv, she told herself. You can't start panicking when Violet needs you more than ever.

"A-are you hurt?" She whispered, trying to push the girl a little further, so she could look at her more closely. However, Violet seemed absent-minded, and she heard nothing.

"The paramedics checked her, but she doesn't seem to be hurt. The blood in her clothes is his."

The nurse's words caused Olivia a flashback from the situation many years ago, when Dean Porter had shot a man, who had held a gun on her temple.

"Liv! Are you hit?"

"No. No, the blood is his."

The memory made a lump rise in her throat as she looked at her daughter's blood-stained clothes. Because this time the blood was Elliot's.

"Will he die?" Suddenly there was Violet's muffled voice against her chest, and Olivia closed her eyes, as she pressed the girl's head against herself.

"No, he's strong. And he's doing everything to stay with us."

But glancing at Fin, her face white as a ghost, she wasn't sure at all if her words were true.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Elliot's surgery had already taken many hours, and the day had changed to night. Olivia, Violet and Fin were waiting in the hospital, for even though Fin had offered to take Violet home to sleep, the girl had not agreed to leave her father. She was sleeping on her mother's lap, and Olivia's anxiety grew as the minutes passed, making her almost feeling sick. But suddenly she flinched.

"The older kids."

"W-what?" Fin woke up startled, because he had clearly snoozed.

"His older kids. I have to tell them their father's in the hospital."

"Oh, yeah," Fin raised his eyebrows, and then bit his lip hesitantly. "How about Kathy? What kind of relationship they have nowadays?"

Olivia shrugged: "They get along. She's their mother after all. Can you let them know? My phone ran out of battery."

"Okay, but I don't have their phone numbers. Can I…"

"You can call Kathy," Olivia sighed. For understandable reasons, they were no longer very close with Elliot's ex-wife, but the situation was exceptional. She rubbed her eyes and then glanced anxiously at the clock. "What's taking so long?"

Violet moved in her sleep on her lap, and tears clouded her eyes. This can't be possible, she thought sorrowful. The girl had had to go through so much more during the year than anyone should have experienced. She lightly stroked her daughter's brown hair, and then lifted her coat better over her. The police officers had taken her bloody clothes with them, and she had gotten new clothes from the hospital. Olivia had covered her under her coat when she had fallen asleep. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper as she turned her painful eyes to Fin.

"Why I'm not allowed to be happy?"

Fin had delved into writing a message to Kathy, and he turned his gaze to his friend, frowning.

"What do you mean?"

"I just…" Olivia's voice shattered. "You know, I've never been happier in my life. I…" Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she wiped them off with her hand. "I feel like reality is trying in every way to take it away from me. Everything that has happened to Violet, and now…" She had to bite her lip that she didn't start crying out loud. "W-what if he doesn't survive, Fin? I… I love Violet and him more than anything, what am I going to do if…"

"Liv," Fin's voice was gentle but firm. "Stop it. You, if anyone, has the right to be happy, this is just… This has been just bad luck. And you know that Stabler has more lives than we all have together," he grinned encouragingly. "If I got a dollar every time he has almost died, I would already be at least a millionaire…"

But then the waiting room door opened, and the doctor stepped into the room. Fin bounced up to his feet, but Olivia couldn't do it because of Violet sleeping on her lap. And even if the girl had been awake, she wasn't sure if her legs would have obeyed her.

"Miss Benson?" The doctor asked, and when he turned his gaze at Olivia, she felt as if her whole body had gone numb. The doctor's gaze was serious, and with the experience her job had given her, she would have recognized the look even in her dreams.

Everything wasn't okay.