Close Calls

Summary: See ch1

Disclaimer: Not mine

A/N: YES for Mariska finally winning an Emmy, she totally deserved it, yet BOO for Chris not winning one! He totally should have!

This chapter is like twice the length of the others, so that should make you all happy! And guess what, I'm still working on this story, and its almost 30 chapters and counting! so there is still more twists to come, and I have an idea for a sequal, so enjoy everyone!

Broken Heart

Olivia didn't know what had happened until she saw the blood seeping into Elliot's shirt.

"Oh my God!" She exclaimed out loud. "Elliot, no!"

She immediately left her victim to run to Elliot's aid. "Elliot, El, where are you hit?" She asked immediately as she rolled him over to his back.

"I'm fine… really." He winced, lying.

Olivia quickly noticed where the blood seemed to be pooling, and ripped open his shirt. Her heart sank when she saw the amount of blood that was gushing from his chest.

"If I had known… this was all it took… to get you to get me… out of my shirt… I would have gotten shot… a lot sooner." He attempted to joke, but failed to be funny when he coughed, and blood trickled from his mouth.

Olivia quickly removed the scarf she had around her neck, balled it up, and pressed it against the wound.

"I need help in here!" She yelled over her shoulder.

Elliot could see the fear in Olivia's eyes.

"Liv I'm… it's fine." He said, although it was getting increasingly harder for him to speak, and he was having trouble getting deep breaths. "I'm just… I'm tired."

"No El, no. You can't go to sleep. Not now." She ordered. "I need help in here now!" She screamed again, wondering if anyone could hear her.

Elliot began to worry when his peripheral vision began to fail. He found himself getting increasingly more tired, and the world around him becoming dark. He had to strain to hear Olivia.

"El, Elliot, I need you to keep your eyes opened Elliot. I need you to keep talking to me." Olivia begged as she pressed harder on the wound that seemed like it would never stop bleeding.

"I…" Elliot began. "I… I'm sorry Liv." He managed.

"Sorry for what? You have nothing to be sorry for." Olivia said as tears began falling slowly. "Help!" She yelled again.

It wasn't that they hadn't heard her outside; it was just that the backup were busy with a standoff outside the room.

"I… I should have said something sooner." He coughed. He was beginning to become delusional, and suddenly moved from one thought to another. "I need you to… tell my kids… tell them I'm sorry. Tell them… tell them I love them."

"No Elliot. No. You're gonna tell them, because you're not going anywhere." She said using all her strength to push her scarf into his chest.

"I'm so sorry." He said again as he began loosing feeling in his legs.

"Elliot, no. You can't. You can't leave me." She began crying. "I need you. I can't do this without you. Please." She begged.

"I'm sorry Liv." Elliot said, using the last of his strength to lift his bloodied hand, and touch her face.

As his eyes drifted shut visions of his life flashed in his head. He saw his children; heard them crying as they were born, felt them as he held each of them in his arms for the first time. He saw Kathy, remembered his wedding, and divorce. Felt the love he could only feel for the woman who gave him his children. He saw his family as they were now. Heard how they each sounded when they told him they loved him. Felt them hugging him. He saw them crying at the loss of their father. Felt deeper guilt than he ever had before when he realized it would be him who caused them that pain.

He saw images of his daughters in their wedding gowns, and felt the most intense pain he had ever felt when he realized he wouldn't be their to walk them down the isle. Images of grandchildren he would never meet flooded his thoughts, and then, she came in.

He saw Olivia as he had the day he first met her. He felt the intense love he had for her, that he had never felt for anyone else before, even Kathy. His heart ached at the moment he realized he would never be able to tell her how he felt. Ached because he would never be able to kiss her, never hold her in his arms, never be able to love her.

His life was over, and it felt like he had never really gotten a chance to live it.

"I'm sorry." He thought one last time before his world went black.

Olivia felt her heart shatter when her partner went limp in her arms. "No. Elliot. No!" She yelled through tears. "You can't do this to me! You can't leave me!" She cried. "I need you. I love you." She said in a whisper. "Please."

As Elliot's body went limp in Olivia's arms the door opened behind her. Two armed officers looked in. When they discovered a man handcuffed in the corner, the victim sitting, curled up in another, and one of their brothers lying lifeless in his partner's arms, they finally called for help.

"We need paramedics in here! Officer down!" One of the men yelled into the hall.

Within seconds a team of paramedics rushed in to the room. They pulled Olivia off of Elliot, and immediately began working on him.

Olivia just stood, the shock of what had just happened still gripping her. Her hand covered her mouth as tears silently streamed from her eyes. She stood their, silently praying to a God she wasn't even sure if she believed in.

"If we want to have any chance of saving his life, we need to get him to a hospital now." One of the paramedics said.

They loaded him onto the gurney, and began rushing him out of the room. Olivia followed behind them.

"I'm riding along." She said, almost inaudibly as they loaded Elliot's lifeless body into the ambulance.

The paramedics allowed Olivia to climb into the ambulance with them as they rushed to the hospital.

As Olivia stared at her partner, and watched as the paramedics worked to keep him alive her mind raced. She had spent her entire life looking for someone she wouldn't be able to live without, but never thought she'd find him because she had been able to get by alone for so long. It was at that moment she realized she might loose Elliot, that she understood she had wasted her time looking, because she had had someone she couldn't live without all along. Elliot Stabler was that person.

When she was sitting their, watching as paramedics shocked his heart back to life, and shoved tubes down his throat to keep him breathing she first thought about what she would do if she lost him. The thing that terrified her, was that she couldn't imagine what her life would be like without him. She had told him that she loved him, and she finally realized that she had meant it.

Olivia was so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn't even noticed the ambulance had stopped, and the paramedics had rushed Elliot out and into the emergency room until a nurse climbed into the ambulance to tend to her.

"Detective, are you alright?" The young woman asked.

"He… my partner. Is he alright?" Olivia choked hoarsely.

"They're taking care of him." The woman offered. "Why don't you let me check you out though." She added, moving closer to Olivia.

"No, no I'm fine. I need to get to Elliot. I need to make sure he's alright." She said, clearly out of it. Olivia pushed past the nurse, and climbed out of the bus.

"Detective." The nurse said, following her. "They're working on him as we speak. Just lemme take a look at you. Then you can go."

Olivia realized that there was nothing to do but wait; so she agreed to let the nurse give her a once over.

When she was cleared, Olivia took a seat in the waiting room. She felt completely numb. Her mind was racing, and for the first time in a while, she was scared.

One of the backup officers had called Cragen to let him know what had happened. He, Fin, Munch, Huang, and Casey all rushed into the waiting room. They froze when they Olivia sitting in one of the plastic chairs with her head in her hands; silent tears running down her face. Her eyes were fixed on the ground.

"Olivia?" Munch called, thinking the worst.

She slowly turned her head to face the group; her eyes were still glazed over from the tears.

"He took the bullet." She simply breathed. It was clear that the shock of the situation hadn't completely worn off yet.

"What are you talkin about sweetheart?" Fin asked.

Olivia slowly raised herself out of her chair. "The bullet; it was for me." She stammered. "Elliot, he… he took a bullet, that was meant for me." She explained, looking past everyone as if she were in her own world.

"Olivia, it's gonna be alright." Cragen tried to comfort, placing a hand on her shoulder to attempt to calm her down, He could see she was clearly upset.

"I should have seen it. I should have seen the gun." She stammered as more tears began flowing from her face.

"This isn't your fault baby." Fin said, not expecting her to believe him. He took a step over to Olivia, and put his hand out in an attempt to comfort her.

She responded by swatting his hand away. "Don't." She almost begged, stepping away from the people trying to comfort her. She blamed herself for the position her partner was in right now, and she didn't feel she deserved their compassion at the moment.

It was Casey who first noticed the blood staining Olivia's shirt.

"Oh my God." She gasped when she saw the stain covering almost her entire shirt. "Liv, were you hit too?"

"What? No why?" Olivia asked.

"Your shirt." Casey breathed, relieved that both of her friends hadn't been wounded.

Olivia looked down at herself for the first time and noticed the blood; Elliot's blood covering her shirt and hands. She gasped for air as her head started spinning.

Munch noticed her face turn pale, and her pupils dilate. "Benson, you okay?" He asked

"I, uh, excuse me." She breathed, pushing past her friends and rushing into the closest woman's room.

She ran over to one of the sinks and ran the water on full speed. She thrusted her bloodied hands under the steady rush of water and scrubbed her hands violently.

She couldn't bare the thought of Elliot's blood staining her hands, both in a figurative and actual sense.

When the blood wouldn't come off immediately, she began to grow frantic. As she scrubbed her hands she again noticed her blood stained shirt. In her momentary madness, she splashed water onto her shirt, and began scrubbing at it.

When Cragen finally pushed open the door he discovered one of his strongest detectives violently scrubbing at both her hands and shirt while openly sobbing. She was rubbing at her hands so rough that she was making them raw, causing her own blood to mesh with that of Elliot's.

Cragen went to her, and grabbed her hands, stopping her from her fit. "Liv, Liv, you have to stop this." He said in a gentle whisper. "He's going to be alright. Everything's going to be fine." He tried to sooth.

Normally, Olivia would have rather died that have her Captain see her in this broken state, but at this moment, she knew that she needed him to. She needed someone who cared about her; as a father would love a daughter, to hold her, and tell her that everything would be alright; and Donald Cragen was as close to a father as Olivia Benson would ever get.

"I can't have this." She cried. "I can't have his blood on me." She tried to explain.

"It's gone." Cragen told her as he shut the water off, and pulled her away from the sink.

"It's my fault. It's all my fault. Why did he do this? Why did he take that bullet? It was meant for me. Why the hell would that son-of-a-bitch do something that stupid?" She questioned, looking into her Captain's eyes.

"This is not your fault Olivia." Cragen said more forcefully. "Elliot just did what any partner would do for another. He did his job. He took that bullet for you because that's what partners are supposed to do for one another. They have their partners back." He tried to comfort her.

"And what about me Don?" Olivia cried. "Did I do my job? Because I'm pretty sure it was my job to make sure he got out of that warehouse alive too!" She said, shouting, unable to control how her pain was coming out. "I should have seen that shooter. I should have had his back. How could I have failed him like this?" She questioned, her voice lowering to a mere whisper.

"Olivia." Cragen soothed, placing his hands on her arms. "You did do your job. You found Anne, and you got her out of there alive."

"Yeah, but at what expense?" Olivia breathed as tears again began pooling in her eyes. The more she thought about the possibility of loosing Elliot because of her actions the harder it was for her to control her tears.

"He'll be okay Olivia. We just need to have faith." Cragen whispered.

Olivia lost it. As her sobs came violently, Cragen pulled her into his fatherly embrace, and let her cry into his chest; uncaring of the fact that he was her boss. The only thing he cared about was the fact that one of his children were hurting, and he knew that was nothing he could to help her. He knew that many wounds could be healed, but a broken heart was a different story.

TBC... tell me what you think, reviews are always welcome!

Like I said, this is a long story, so be ready for anything!