A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I feel so loved 3 I took the SAT's earlier, so I'm still not fully up t coming up with an update idea for the other story (*is lazy*) but next week I have PSSA's, so I'll definitely be able to work on it (half-days at school) Anyway, my brain is fried but in between SAT sections I got an intense desire to update this story, so here you go! Read & review, please =)

Also-for clarity, Bas is Death. I invented him, he's sort of like the head ghost or whatever you want to think of him as

August:

The months went by agonizingly slow and Elliot found himself in a bit of depressed rut. He got up bright and early each morning, went to work, stayed until Cragen kicked him out, and then ate whatever dinner Rose left out for him. Then, he did it all again the next day. He worked more overtime than he ever had in his life—he did anything to get his mind off of her during the day, and at night, he dreamed about her. He'd even tried to call Kathy several times over the past few weeks just to talk to his kids, but she never answered his calls. Finally, after two and a half months of not having seen the kids, Elliot got fed up.

"Cap, is it alright if I head out a little early?" he stuck his head around Cragen's door to see his response. Cragen's eyes widened—Elliot had been staying after 11 every night since Olivia died.

"umm…sure Elliot, I don't see why not, give your paperwork to Rose to finish and I'll see you tomorrow—do you have plans or something?" he replied with slightly raised eyebrows. In the old days, he never would have questioned Elliot's sudden desire to leave early, but now, given the circumstances, he worried. Where is there to go when you have nowhere to go?

"I just have something I need to take care of—don't worry, I'll be in tomorrow morning, bye captain!" Captain Cragen waved his hand briskly to send Elliot off, hoping that he wasn't about to do anything that would get him in trouble of any kind.

Rose looked up from the report she was typing up when she saw Elliot approaching her with a stack of paperwork in one hand and his car keys in the other.

"Are you leaving?" she asked and then glanced at the clock, thinking time had escaped her. She always left at least five hours before Elliot did.

"Yeah, I'm going home early, I'm going to go visit with the kids—can you finish this up?"

Rose smiled warmly at him, seeing his children would cheer him up—even if only for a little bit. "Of course, hand it over," she replied softly.

"Thanks, you're the best—I'll see you later for dinner—I'll cook tonight," he promised, for he felt bad that she always cooked him such delicious meals and then ate alone every night.

Elliot slowly climbed up the front steps to Kathy's mother's house, with a strange sense of foreboding—like he knew something bad was going to happen. He shifted uncomfortably as he stood on the stoop and he nervously knocked twice. Kathy's 70-year-old mother pulled open the door with a crooked grin , which fell when she saw who was at the door.

"What do you want?" she barked, causing Elliot to wonder what Kathy told her mother he did. He could only imagine.

"To see my children," he snapped back. He wanted to prove to this woman that when you play with fire, you get burned.

"Mother, who is it?" he heard Kathy murmur as she approached the door.

"Oh, no one dear," her mother said, and, smiling wickedly, she slammed the door in his face. Kathy wrenched it open immediately afterwards, her curiosity having bested her.

"Elliot? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Why haven't you answered any of my phone calls?" he demanded.

"Maybe because I didn't want to talk to you."

"I don't particularly want to talk to you, either, but you had no right to keep the kids from me," he growled in reply.

"Of course—because they must mean so much to you since you haven't thought about them in…what? Almost three months? You've been lost in Livvy land, haven't you? I never wanted her to die, but for god's sake, the newspaper articles about her are still being printed. They're painting her up like she's some god damn saint and I'm getting sick of it!" she hissed.

"I think about them everyday—I want them back, or at least partial custody, and Kathy, don't you dare say anything bad about Olivia. She was a much better woman than you ever were, and since we're no longer married I can say that without feeling a shred of guilt!"

"Oh? So we're divorced?"

"Just give me the papers and I'll sign them, but not without getting my parental right to have the kids," Elliot snapped as he felt his face grow hot with rising anger.

"And if I say no?" she was testing the water, and he wasn't going to let her get away with it.

"Do you want to take this to court?"

"I already have a lawyer ready."

When Elliot returned to his apartment that night it was almost nine o'clock. He didn't feel much like coking, so he'd stopped on the way home and gotten Chinese takeout. He and Kathy had scheduled their first meeting with attorney's present for the following Tuesday morning, which meant that Elliot had a week to brood before he had to see her again.

Rose had fallen asleep laying on the couch, and she looked so peaceful that Elliot didn't want to disturb her. He gently slid her shoes off of her feet and left her dinner on the coffee table before going to get a shower.

Olivia felt horrible. If there were an award to be given to people whose lives weren't kind to them, Elliot would be the poster child. She tried desperately to think of a new place to take him tonight in his dream to make him feel better. Suddenly, she felt Jack's hand on her shoulder.

"You can't keep doing this," he said somberly. "It's been three months, don't you think it would be better to let him move on?"

"That's a hypocritical statement, if you ask me," Olivia snapped back.

"I don't go into Rose's dreams anymore, just check on her to make sure she's okay, and she's faring much better than Elliot is, at least in my opinion," Jack said, treading carefully as not to offend Olivia, who, he knew, really did think she was doing what was best for the man she'd always loved.

"The best thing you could do for him is let him go, it'd be better for both of you," he assured her.

"No….NO! I can't…he'll think I've abandoned him, he won't be able to take it!" Olivia exclaimed incredulously .

"Yeah…it would hurt, I'm not saying it wouldn't, but a…clean break so to speak would let him move on, so that maybe one day he can be happy with someone else."

"But he-"

"He, or you, Olivia?"

Olivia put her head in her hands as she began to sob uncontrollably on the pristine, Rose-maintained floor in Elliot's kitchen. Jack knelt down beside her and pulled her wracking frame into his arm and laid a hand on her back.

"I know it hurts, but sshhh…you're okay, and so am I, and so are they," he whispered gently to her as she cried. She said nothing, just pulled him closer, because now, neither one of them had anything but each other in this lonely in-between world, and nothing to do but watch the ones they love slowly start to sadly move on without them.

A/N: Hmm…Let's say for the purpose of this story that El and Liv are in their early forties, Jack is forty, and Rose is like 37 or 38 to make the entire thing less awkward, mk? Does El get custody of the kids or does Kathy? Do they go to court? Does Olivia start to let go? If so, how will Elliot fare? Leave me a review if you want to find out =)