A/N: Part 1 of 2. No sexy tiems in this one, and the angst factor is high.

She wonders if it's possible to ever unlove someone; to evict them from those permanent residences in your heart, to eradicate them from your memory bank like they never existed at all.

Then she contemplates even making that decision; if she would take away the years she felt whole to get rid of this throbbing ache in her chest.

The answer is usually no, especially on a night she's being honest, one where the sobs burst from her gut as real and hard as the day she watched him walk away.

She used to tell herself she would stop crying tomorrow…that she'd wake up and wouldn't feel maimed. Every time she said it, she knew she was lying. Sobs became trickles, tears puddled in her eyes at the sight of his mini badge hooked to her gun or in the smooth grooves of the Semper Fi medal that hung in her jewelry box.

It wasn't a conscious decision to love him. She had much more self-preservation than to choose falling in love with a man who was already someone else's. But, the love was always there, a slow hum at the beginning, a tragic concerto at the end.

There were spaces he had filled between each inhale and exhale, cracks in her that had been beyond repair. With him she was safe, protected, complete.

Now he was a phantom limb, and the pains from him leaving tingled at her senses. She had tried to bury it, move on. She found another, someone who made her comfortably numb for awhile…who had lessened the pain enough that she could breathe without feeling the boulder bearing down on her lungs.

He was gone now too, and she knew it should hurt more but she was already broken at the beginning, he was merely just another crack in her already shattered façade.

OoO

"Forgive me father for I have sinned"

It's a mantra he knows well, countless times he's been in that box confessing.. He doesn't go in there anymore, figures there's not much use, he's already on the fast track to hell.

So, the incomplete feeling of her absence, the way it lingers and creeps up his spine is just another thing to add to the list of things he's royally fucked up in his life.

They had never crossed the line of impropriety; instead they perched right against it, as tightly as they could without every stepping over. He can't say it was romantic in the traditional sense, their relationship was a quagmire like that…always teetering on the edge of everything: love, friendship, fidelity, honor.

All he does know is that without her, he's walking wounded because no matter how hard he tries to be a better husband, a full time father, he's no longer her partner…and it's the only place he ever felt like he belonged.

OoO

His name is Daniel.

It's been six dates, two months, and she likes him, really likes him. He's a firefighter, he understands the stress and demands of her job, admires her dedication to the vics, they laugh at the same jokes…and she thinks, for a moment, she could be happy with this. That she doesn't need vibrant intensity, her guts twisted in confusion, living in the muddled lines between black and white, wrong and right.

Amaro remarks that she looks happier, gives her a cheeky smile and teases her about her new beau, Finn seems to be more at ease dancing around the eggshells and her tiptoes. It's Rollins who she finds looking at her one day, her eyebrows quirked, studying.

"What?" she snaps.

The younger woman looks away, embarrassed, shrugging it off…and turns to file her paperwork but there's an understanding in the glance…a secret knowledge between them that every utterance of, "My old partner" is steeped in murky water and diamonds.

When Daniel is in her bed, she fights the urge to close her eyes, forces herself to look at him because she knows the moment her eyelashes touch her cheeks…it's going to be blue eyes instead of green, and she's afraid of the day his name tumbles off her lips.

OoO

Her hand slides up his chest, and he fights back the urge to grab her wrist, pull away. He had excuses before…the job getting to him, stress, the vics…now, he doesn't know how to explain why her touch sets him on edge.

To admit would be to accept that it's another woman's hand he pictures on his skin; one he's only known intimately in the darkest of his dreams and fantasies. So he closes his eyes, he lets her fingertips dance on his chest, and he promises this is the last time he's going to picture cappuccino colored eyes, iris' darker than night.

OoO

She should have known. She's been on edge all week, blamed the case, took it out on a perp's face, got sent home with another slip in her jacket. Her fingertips trace the rim of her wine glass as Daniel creates idle chit chat over dinner. She can't focus, lights too bright, colors swirled, the smell of the food making her stomach turn.

Then she feels it.

Feels him walk through the door.

The moment their eyes meet she fights back the bile that stings at her throat and she excuses herself, hands hitting the back exit, the cool rush of wind stinging her face, gasping for air, the intake burning her lungs.

It wasn't how she expected it to happen, that icy cool demeanor she hoped to envelope herself with had dissipated by one single look, by the way his cobalt eyes still pierced through her soul.

Her palms are on the brick wall, her eyes locked on the asphalt below, barely feeling the cold rain start to hit her back like rapid gunfire. She feels him before she hears him, the goosebumps creeping up her spine, "Liv"

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

OoO

He left Kathy standing in the doorway, his legs moving across the room, giving chase before he could think…that's how it was with her, all on instinct, without a second thought.

They are the same eyes he looked in for 13 years…the same mocha colored orbs with swirls of toffee…but there is a sadness, a resignation in them that there hadn't been before.

And it's because of him.

It's going to be a festering wound for awhile; strands of sadness he will pull apart to torture himself with on the nights he cannot sleep because every time he closes his eyes she's there.

"Don't" she whispers harshly, and he's numb and the rain is soaking through his shirt, and he needs her to know but there aren't words to say what he feels…and that's how it happens, without thought of consequence, without thought of anything but needing her to know.

In an instant her face is cupped in his hands, both their eyes shimmering with unshed tears, brimming, boiling, the rain staining their skin, cleansing them, washing all their sins away.

Their mouths crash together, lightning and thunder…satin and lace, suckling lips, gnashing of teeth, a raging storm, unbridled, healing and destroying.

Her back hits the brick wall, the expanse of him, his brilliant muscles melding into the softness of her curves, interlocked, connected, uncertain of where one began and the other ends.

The brilliant shock of light is what parts them, wide eyed, bruised lips, clothes sticking to their skin, "Liv" he whispers, hovering over her, breathing the warm hair that she exhales.

Shaking her head she pushes past him, away from the restaurant, out of the alleyway and he doesn't have the strength to chase her, his head landing onto the cold wet stone in front of him; knowing the wall they had carefully constructed was now torn asunder…to either be rebuilt or washed away forever.