The doctor noticed Detective Stabler's facial expression change drastically as the statement hit his ears. "Why is she automatically the first subject that comes to your mind?"

"A little defensive, are we?" Dr. Taylor mused with a puckish grin. "Is there a matter at hand you would like to address regarding your partner?"

Elliot shrugged nonchalantly. "We're just partners."

Dr. Taylor rolled his eyes. "That is quite an understatement, Detective," he said. "What you do for each other does not constitute partners."

"We're just partners, Dr. Taylor," Elliot reiterated with eyebrows raised. "I don't know what exactly you're looking for from me, but that's all I can give you."

"There's a reason your pairing is the best the precinct has ever seen," Dr. Taylor said. "Care to elaborate on exactly why that is?"

Elliot swallowed the large lump in his throat. This was exactly why he despised psychology. Not only did the clever doctor twist his words into a knot he couldn't untie, but he insisted on discussing subjects Elliot would rather avoid. "I don't know how to answer that."

The doctor smiled softly at Elliot. Now we're getting somewhere. "How long have you two been partners?"

"A decade," Elliot answered without hesitation. "This coming year it will be eleven years."

"Isn't it quite rare for a partnership to last that long? Particularly a man woman pairing?"

"I guess so," he said with little conviction. "But why does it matter?"

"It matters because you're the sole evidence to the contrary. You've disproved a longstanding statistic and I'm curious as to why."

"We work well together."

"Obviously," the doctor rolled his eyes. "But why?"

"We compliment each other," Elliot paused to consider his answer. "It's almost as if we're complete opposites but somehow we fit together. I don't know how to explain it. I've never analyzed our relationship in depth enough to understand why."

"So we've gone from a partnership to a relationship?" the doctor mused. "And maybe it's time you try to understand why, Detective."

"Isn't that what you're here for?" Elliot asked, ignoring Dr. Taylor's initial statement. "To help me sort it all out?"

"In a sense," Dr. Taylor said. "But I can only do so much. It's a two way street, Detective."

"It's not like there's anything to tell," Elliot replied. "We work together."

"I gathered from your determined avoidance of the subject of Olivia Benson that there was something to tell."

"I just don't like when someone asks me about Liv. If you really want to know about her, ask her yourself." Elliot said, leaning back into his chair as if he had nothing more to say. But this was only just the beginning.

Dr. Taylor chuckled into the back of his hand. "Detective, why don't you call your partner Detective Benson?"

Elliot was taken aback for a moment. "Everyone calls her Liv."

"But you told me you're strictly professional with this woman, am I correct?" Dr. Taylor asked and when Elliot nodded, he continued. "Then the fact that you call her a popular nickname shows that you are at ease with one another. So much so that you have disregarded a professional courtesy. I find it hard to believe it's just professional."

"She calls me a nickname too. But it doesn't mean I take offense for her not calling me by my professional name. She rarely ever calls me Detective Stabler or Elliot anymore, and I don't have a problem with that and more importantly neither does she." Elliot replied with the infamous Stabler smirk. Then again every face this man made was a trademark all his own.

He didn't know if Detective Stabler realized it or not, but he gave away far more than he might have intended to. Judging by his posture, he was defensive when it came to his partner. He crossed his arms over his chest and grit his teeth, a sign he was protective and did not want anyone threatening his territory when it came to the woman he spent the majority of his time with. Which meant there was more to the story than the doctor had initially anticipated. It almost made him giddy that he would be the one to push these two unrequited lovers in the right direction.

"Nonetheless," Dr. Taylor began. "I find that beneath the surface there's a much stronger foundation to your partnership."

Elliot looked at him blankly. "I don't follow."

"I've read this file from front to back too many times for my liking. For a mere professional acquaintance, you seem to regard this woman very highly. Unbeknownst to her, you took her mother's rape case file home with you and on your own time decided to have a crack at it. When you found she was keeping the secret of a long lost brother from you, you immediately insisted on being involved in her family. You spend more time with her than your own family. You've come to her aid more times than I can count on one hand. You've saved her life more than once with no qualms about it. And yet the basis of your partnership is simply professional?"

Elliot looked down at his seat and started to pick off a corner where the fabric was frayed. He'd been caught and he felt like he was back in grade school, sitting in the principal's office being scolded for another childish act.

"What would you do for your partner?"

"I would do anything." The words left his lips before he had even given them an ounce of rational thought. His reply was quick and reflexive, almost unthinking.

"Even if it cost you your life?" the doctor challenged.

"I would do anything," he confirmed with a solemn look on his face.

"So you're telling me she's worth everything to you?"

"She's important to me," he said softly. "I care about her immensely."

"That much I can see," he returned the soft smile with one of his own.

"I told her before that she and the job were all I had left," Elliot admitted.

"Do you value Detective Benson or your job more?"

Elliot's eyes widened at his words. "I can't choose between the two of them."

"From what I gather, the job can never give you what she does. The job can never be what you need like she so clearly is. Because when it comes down to it, who is going to be there for you? Certainly not this position you've invested yourself in. It pales in comparison to the partnership you have with Olivia Benson."

"Without the job I wouldn't even know Olivia," Elliot countered.

"That's very true," the doctor agreed. "But as it stands now, if given the choice, what would you choose?"

Elliot sat back in his chair, pondering his answer. He'd never thought about this difficult question or what it meant to their relationship. But as he wrapped his mind around the seemingly harmless question, he realized it had implications he'd avoided all this time because he already knew the answer. He was just afraid of what would happen if he finally admitted it.

"I would choose her," he answered so quietly that Dr. Taylor thought he had imagined Elliot speaking altogether. "I would choose Olivia."

"Now that we've come to this conclusion, do you think it's wise to continue being partners when a situation might arise where you'd be faced with the task of choosing between your partner and your job?"

Elliot looked up at the doctor with wary eyes. "I don't know how to function as a police officer without her."

The doctor's eyebrows instantly furrowed at his patient's reasoning. "And what do you mean by that?"

"There was a point in our partnership we've never completely recovered from," Elliot began. "It was a few years back and we were almost at the point where we completely despised each other."

"Sparring words and your inability to see eye to eye?" Dr. Taylor tapped a finger against the file in his lap and smiled.

"I'm sure that you already know all about this," Elliot said. "Everything I've ever done is probably in that file."

"But I'd like to hear your side of the story. All I have is this measly file to go off of and I must say that IAB has quite a large grudge against you, Detective," Dr. Taylor said. "I'd like not to be biased or swayed by what a corrupt inner working they seem to have going on."

For the first time since he had entered the shrink's office he felt himself smile. "Seems like you have some unresolved issues, Doc. Care to share?" he asked playfully.

Dr. Taylor gave a hearty laugh in response. "You would not make it home in time for dinner."

"Touche," Elliot said with a small smile.

"If you will, please continue."

"We had fought before. Disagreements about a case and how to handle it. Taking sides with the victims and the suspects," Elliot shook his head vigorously. "But we were out of control. Everything that came out of our mouths turned into a battle. And then there was the Gitano case."

"I read up on this case a few years ago. It was thrust into the public limelight because it was extremely high profile. How did this specific case, unlike the many others you have worked, affect you so greatly?"

Elliot sighed deeply and scrubbed a hand across his face. He'd never confronted his emotions about the Gitano case. They'd been kept bottled up for far too long and he knew it was time to release the lid himself instead of waiting for the pressure to build and the glass to explode. Before he himself self-destructed because of what had happened on that fateful day.

"We were hunting Gitano in a public place. He already knew we were on to him and when he became fully aware, he was prone to succumb to irrational actions. He recognized Olivia in the throng of people and he pulled a knife. He threatened her so many times but Olivia's only concern was the child he was holding. I suppose he thought she was going to shoot him and so he slashed her throat. I could see her from where I was positioned and I panicked. I had to make a conscious decision on a split second time frame. I watched him tear off with a child in his arms and another at his side. I watched Olivia struggle on the floor as she clutched at her wound," he managed to choke out as a lump built in his throat.

The images of that day flashed through his head and it sent him spinning. He closed his eyes and tried to shake them off, but they returned when his lids lifted and his eyes met Dr. Taylor's. "I've never been able to fully understand why I chose Olivia that day. I could have just as easily chosen to go after Gitano and the children, but I didn't. There was an entire crowd there who all would have stopped and helped Olivia and I knew that. It was what I should have done and when I got to Olivia it was immediately the first words she spoke to me. She told me that she would be okay and that I should go after them. And when I finally was able to tear myself away from her, I had lost them and Gitano had already killed the little boy."

"You were angry with yourself for choosing your partner over the innocent children?"

"Damn straight," Elliot said. "I could hear the paramedic a few feet away patching up Olivia after we had realized it was a lost cause to seek Gitano out because he was long gone. She told Olivia that it was so close that if had just been a slight more this way, she wouldn't have survived. It made my stomach churn knowing that I could have lost her but I couldn't get the image of that little boy in a pool of blood out of my head."

The doctor rested his chin on his hand in intrigue. "I take it your partnership became strained because of your decision to choose Olivia."

"I blamed Olivia for the death of that little boy. I placed all of my guilt on her and I acted as though I hated her for getting injured. But most of all, I was beyond angry that Gitano had hurt her. I was beyond angry that he had slaughtered an innocent child. I was beyond angry at myself for letting it all happen."

"None of what occurred could be prevented, Detective. You did everything in your power to make this case run smoothly and when it didn't you automatically assumed you were at fault."

Elliot scoffed. "Maybe it's the Catholic guilt."

"We all make choices in our lives. Whether they are the right ones or the wrong ones or if we regret them later or not, they were exactly what we wanted at the time we make them. The choice you made to come to your partner's aid instead of the little boy's was exactly what you wanted," Dr. Taylor stared at Elliot pointedly. "You followed your instincts and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that."

"I'm trained to put the victim's needs before my own or my partner's," Elliot said angrily. "I suppose you're going to tell me there's an underlying reason I disregarded all of my years of choosing the victims and subsequently chose Olivia?"

"For someone who loathes psychology with such a passion, you sure are taking to it quite easily," Dr. Taylor winked at Elliot. "But what happened after this incident?"

"We tracked down Gitano at some abandoned warehouse. Olivia went one way and I went the other to cover the room, and the next thing I knew, Gitano had a hold on me with a gun pressed to my temple. And then I saw Olivia pointing her gun at the two of us, trying to convince Gitano to let me go and telling him that he was making a mistake. He was talking endlessly in lies about what he had done to the little girl and I was yelling at Olivia to shoot Gitano. She kept looking back and forth between us, and I could see it in her eyes that she was so scared. Her voice was shaking and her eyes were watery. I was trying to tell her with my eyes that it was okay to pull the trigger. That if she hit me instead of Gitano because she didn't have a clear shot that I would understand. And I closed my eyes and waited for the bullet to hit me."

"But that bullet never came?" Dr. Taylor asked him slowly.

"We had called back up earlier and the sniper got Gitano at the last second," he ground out. "He hit the floor and I could hear everyone talking but I didn't even register what they were saying. I was staggering backwards and looking at the floor trying to piece it all together. I didn't even look at Olivia until I heard a noise in the distance and we both knew that it was the little girl."

"You rescued the little girl and then what happened?"

"After we took her to the hospital and were satisfied she was going to be okay, we sat down on the bench outside of the waiting room. I told her I knew she would have taken the shot had the sniper not beaten her to it and she told me that she didn't want to cause my death," he said. "But I could tell that wasn't the only reason she didn't want to shoot me."

"And what do you think the other reason might be?"

"I don't know," Elliot shook his head. "I just knew that she wasn't giving me a straight answer. It was an answer that made sense but it wasn't what she was actually feeling."

"And so you told her that she and the job were the only two things you had left anymore?" Dr. Taylor guessed.

"I told her that we both chose each other over the job and that we couldn't allow ourselves to do that again," he said softly. "Otherwise we couldn't remain partners because I didn't want to destroy the one thing I'd managed to keep alive."

"And what did Olivia do?"

"She requested a new partner."

I don't know what the hell happened but I just couldn't find a decent place to stop in this chapter so it ended up much longer than I had originally planned. However, I don't think you guys will be protesting much. :)