A/N I have written this chapter and the one preceding it, together. At first glance they don't seem to be inexorably linked, but I couldn't finish the previous one until this was written... I couldn't stop Liv's words. It has been hard, I've struggled to keep my tears at bay...I would love to hear your thoughts as always but there is a lot woven into these words. I will borrow some words from Yeats to try and communicate better than I ever could, what these words are for me...

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

"He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven"

I have no idea how I feel.

All these emotions are inside me but I have no idea how I feel.

I don't think I'm numb...I think I'm feeling too much.

I've just put Noah to bed. Lucy has just left.

Why am I sitting on the floor beside a perfectly comfortable sofa?

I almost feel drunk.

I don't know how else to explain it.

I know I'm feeling...the tears plunging down my face, that I have absolutely no control over, show that, but I can't identify even one emotion. It's as if two different tracks have been sewn together, a video track of tears and a blank emotional track...

I feel blank.

I can't feel why I'm crying...

Is it relief? Nick is going to be ok. He's going to spend a lot of time in PT but he's alive...Johnny D is gone, there is no one left to keep Noah from me...we lost an officer and had a few people injured, but my team are safe...

Is this what a nervous breakdown feels like?

I've never felt anything like this before...except I have, ...this empty, odd silence...I have felt this before...

I desperately don't want to remember it, but I have felt this before. When the gun went off...when I tried to squeeze my eyes closed, frantic to not have his face be the last thing I ever saw...

It must be shock...

I was told then, that I was in deep shock.

I've never understood why I was in shock then...he was gone,... the danger was passed,... And why not the first time he took me? Surely what happened then was more worthy of shock?

Why would I be in shock now?

I was fine...I'd jumped into action immediately, as the situation escalated.. exactly as I'd been trained to. Ariel had been testifying, courageously telling a courtroom full of people how Johnny D had beaten her, raped her...women, led by Pilar, had started to heckle her, we tried to remove them from the courtroom when Judge Barth ordered the gallery cleared, ... Johnny D grabbed the court officer and took her gun.

I know I had my gun out as fast as everyone else... I saw him shoot the court officer beside me, then the judge...I tried to stop Nick from following him into the hallway, where he had dragged the stunned female court officer, his unwilling hostage, her brown eyes pleading for help from us, as her mouth hysterically tried to form words...

I couldn't be in shock now. If I went into shock it would have been when I thought Nick was dead, when the shots rang out behind the closed doors, flashes popping through the opaque, crosshatched, glass, ...When I heard bodies falling as people scrambled frantically for safety...When I was covered in Nick's blood, as I tried to stop the red stickiness pooling beneath him ...Or when he was taken away to an ambulance, Amanda running to ride with him, as I continued to take inventory...Running into a desolate courtroom, strewn with shoes and blood soaked clothing, to find Rafael calmly tending to the Judge, his hands soaked in red, before she too was wheeled away on an ambulance gurney.

Ariel was in shock.

Her pale face frozen as she looked blankly ahead of her, her arms wrapped tightly across her hunched body, as if she couldn't even consider moving from the chair I can only assume Rafael sat her into...

Surely if I was going to go into shock it would have been when I realized how this incredibly traumatised, young woman had just been through even more trauma...

Or when I went back into the hallway to find Carisi crouched down beside the body of the fatally wounded court officer who Johnny D had pulled out of the courtroom as his human shield...

Or when I saw Fin, kneeling gingerly beside a huge streaked bloodstain, confirming that Johnny D was dead, that Amaro had gotten him. He had asked the dread laced question, was Nick gonna make it?, a question I couldn't answer...

Or even, when we stood for an eternity as doctors performed surgery on Nick, and we waited hopefully, in a hospital waiting room crowded with police officers, all uselessly standing around with agonized looks on their pasty, shock filled, faces.

Why would I be in shock now? Now, when I'm safely home, in my own apartment, my son sleeping safely, in his bed a few feet away from me...?

Why don't I feel anything?

The images of all these events continue playing in a mixed up, out-of-order jumble, but still, I don't feel anything.

I should feel worry. Relief. Fear at what could have been. I'm crying so I should feel some sort of upset...or frustration, I more often cry from frustration.

Why am I so calm?

If I'm in shock why am I so calm?

Again, I can't help remembering the emptiness that filled me as my team came running up the stairs, freeing me from the table I was secured to, but being unable to free me from my own mind... my blood spattered face frozen in disbelief that the gunshot hadn't killed me. I can't forget how my empty head bobbled along to the Amaro-aided motion of my body, the muscles struggling to control its random movement. That feeling of being disconnected, like a puppet who has ripples and tugs of strings rather than thought, controlling jerky, uncoordinated motions.

I am in shock, that's the word, that's how I feel...disconnected.

I still don't understand why I'm in shock now. As before, when his body and blood littered the floor by my feet, the danger is passed...

I sit silently in my disconnected state, blissfully unaware of how much time has passed until the numbness starts to fade and the feelings I wanted so desperately to be able to feel, start to batter me.

I immediately regret my wish. Preferring the serenity of numbness to this tumultuous storm.

Now the feelings assault me viciously, each one hammering me a few times, in turn, the next one taking its place before I can properly identify the one that preceded it.

I feel the fear, the unrelenting terror that Nick was dead. That I wouldn't be able to stop the flow of blood pumping out non-stop between my white fingers...

The panicked alarm that more than just Nick was down...as I ran around slowly counting everyone safely off...

The dread that cut off my breathing momentarily as I saw Rafael's blood covered hands...

The agony that Ariel had been subjected to a further horror, that she would likely carry for the rest of her days...

The relief that every one of my team, except Nick is ok, and he is in the hands of doctors, and will be ok in time...

I now, enviously long for my previous state, as emotions continue to slam me around mercilessly. I lumber excruciatingly between all the previously desired emotions, powerless now to rebuff them.

I can't refuse the increasingly agonizing mosaic of what-ifs that torture me with their possibilities.

I could have been killed, leaving Noah alone again...

The wound to Nick's torso could have penetrated his heart rather than his liver.

It could have been Amanda who was shot. Or Fin, or Carisi.

He could have turned the gun on Rafael instead of the judge...

I could have lost him. My friend. Rafael, the man who held me in almost this spot, gently comforting me, as I sobbed away my pain at Nadia's loss. The man who I have told secrets, I never intended to disclose. The man who I wish was here now...

This thought startles me. Where did that come from?

Well that's clearly a stupid thing to say. I know exactly where that came from...I kissed him only a few short weeks ago. I like him. He's the kindest, nicest man, I have probably ever met but it's never going to be anything more.

I kissed him in a moment of madness. His kiss was tender, delicious,... but it was enough.

Somehow this acknowledgment has lost the power to shock me. I used to really enjoy sex. I was never particularly promiscuous but I enjoyed it. I was never prudish; I always knew how to enjoy my partner...until Lewis.

It took a while to be willing to try sex again, after Harris. I was terrified that my partner would scare me, I would ask him to stop, and he wouldn't. I was afraid that when actually faced with a male member, I wouldn't be able to separate myself from the image of Harris stood in front of me, his pants around his ankles. I was anxious that in the terror of that moment in that Sealview basement, I had somehow lost the ability to be turned on enough to get past the associations it left in my mind. It took time, a lot of patience and humiliating failed attempts, before I re-found my sexuality. I may not have been the same as I was before, but I was capable of finding pleasure again, in the act that had terrified me.

After Lewis was finished with me, though, there was nothing left. He obliterated whatever I had slowly pieced back together after Harris. Brian was eternally patient, but there was no desire there.

I tried to speak to Doctor Lindstrom about it, and he told me that I would heal at my own pace, I couldn't rush it, that I needed to re-familiarize myself with my own body, with what I enjoyed... I'm an adult, an SVU detective, but I couldn't bring myself to tell him I was completely unsuccessful at pleasuring myself. Even after Harris, the basic urges were still there but those feelings seemed to be completely gone from my mind and body when Lewis was done with me.

My second time in his clutches, perhaps doing even more damage than I cared to admit. I put myself in that position, I expected to be raped and killed, I didn't care. I said that I had played dead because I knew he needed me to fight him for him to be able to take his pleasure, this was only partly true, I just couldn't do anything other than stand there. My fear completely overwhelmed me. I froze again.

My body has begun to recover, to heal, now that over a year has gone by since I stood covered in his blood, tied to a table, but my mind lags far behind.

I can't imagine sex anymore. Well that's not true, I can, as an abstract...

A few weeks ago when I found my lips on Rafael's, I thought, that maybe I had just needed more time. I enjoyed the feel of his lips against mine, his tongue against mine, but... I didn't want anymore. What was once a precursor to a myriad of pleasures, was now enough for me.

I'm sure that Rafael would be gentle, considerate of not pinning me down, not making me feel trapped if things were to progress, but what if I couldn't do it? What if I panicked? I couldn't allow him to worry for a second that he did something unwanted... He was so distraught at the worry that he could hurt a woman, after Rollins' heartbreaking disclosure, how could I be responsible for doing that to him? I already feel like I may have irrevocably damaged Brian's sexuality, that because of me, he has lost something of himself, how could I allow myself to ruin another man like that?

He deserves someone he can have a full relationship with.

Besides if Rafael really had any interest in me, I'm sure he wouldn't have been so happy to just kiss, like that. I believe a man like him would have gently, tried for more. I don't know why he kissed me back...

But yet at this moment I long to feel his arms wrapped tightly around my body, to feel my face snuggled against his strong chest, to smell his unique scent in my nose.

I try not to allow myself to imagine lying in his comforting embrace as his presence helps ward off the ghosts that still try to disturb my sleep.

I don't allow myself to consider how his skin would feel against my scarred body.

I'm not ready, but I thought I might be getting close, that I could maybe imagine trying again, with him,...

A sound enters my consciousness, I'm dimly aware it has been getting progressively louder for the past few seconds...

Shit someone is banging on my door...

A/N I'm sitting her delightedly, with a slightly maniacal grin on my face, I think I may have just written a mini-cliff-hanger...