AN: This story will be my attempt to save the character of Nick Amaro. It starts at Amaro's One-Eighty, which, as the title of the episode suggests, is when Nick's trajectory starts to go off the rails. My plan is to write my own version of the season sixteen finale, but we still have a long way to go (and lots of Nick angst) before we get there.

It chronicles the regret and guilt that he struggles with after the shooting and his endless pursuit of the normalcy and stability he once had in his life. Seeking comfort in those who haven't abandoned him, he deepens his friendship with Olivia Benson, and explores a new kind of relationship with Amanda Rollins.

So expect rollaro (but be prepared for slow build-ups and actual payoffs); you can also expect some bensaro friendship (if he helped her to grow and vice versa, then damn right I'm going to show it).

I chose to write this in second person perspective because I've been inspired and influenced by the works of lucyspencer and cheertennis12, who do justice to Olivia and Amanda's voices respectively. I hope I can do the same for Nick.

Please read and review.

Ruined Beyond Redemption

1. Ruined

All it takes is one moment to change the course of your life forever. One choice – stay or go – creates a ripple effect that intensifies into a tidal wave. You can see the swell of the tide from the distance, but you don't move. You can't. Not when your feet are cemented to the ground and your eyes are forced open to watch every stone thrown, every bullet fired, every lie hurled in your direction.

Your entire life has been this game of dominoes, where you carefully construct and arrange a series of monochrome blocks. Since you were compelled to 'man up' at 15, it became your self-appointed duty to do right by your family. And although, there were moments you slipped - moments you showed you were only human – you thought, for the most part, you had done them proud. But those missteps still nagged you. Whether it was disappointing your mother or having your sister blame you for being the driving force of your father's departure, your failures orbited around this natural predisposition to protect women.

The night of the shooting was no different. The female officer rushed the suspect and sustained a gunshot wound to her leg. Had it been a male officer, would you have covered him? No question. But there exists this mystery of whether or not you would have done anything differently had you followed a male officer. Anything could have made the difference. Trying to figure that out has been tormenting your every waking thought since the shooting.

You had done what you thought was right. Everything that happened from the second you entered the hallway and heard Officer McKenna's outcry, to the second you pulled the trigger. There was no hesitation when it came to trusting the instructions of your department. You followed your training.

"And yet God didn't give you the results you expected or deserved."

Two and a half years in Special Victims, eight years before that in Narcotics and Warrants – your entire career has always been about dotting your Is and crossing your Ts. Yet, when you turned the corner and found a 14-year-old kid on the ground, your gut turned and your conscience started doubting everything you've ever learned. Something was out of tune, but you had no time to waver. Quick thinking prevailed when you grabbed a card from your wallet and applied it to the boy's chest wound.

The small voice in the back of your head implored you to apologize; after all, it had been your bullet fired from your gun that had caused his injuries. But you knew by opening your mouth it meant opening the floodgates to legal ramifications you were not prepared to face then, and you certainly aren't prepared to battle now. It was your training that kicked your ass and reminded you to keep your mouth shut. So, instead, you looked down at Yusef Barre's eyes and silently begged him to stay alive.

"Nice triage. You saved his life."

After speaking with your delegate and having the nurse complete your workup and blood alcohol test, you rode shotgun as your partner drove back to the 1-6. Liv tried to put your mind at rest when she told you that spinal injuries aren't always so grim. You almost made a joke about how she's been watching too much Grey's Anatomy. But you stopped yourself when you realized your partner probably wouldn't be spending her rare downtime watching doctors contend with one natural disaster after another. Liv has had enough emotional trauma to endure. She didn't need to be watching the only other thing that could bring your ex-wife to tears besides, well, you.

Between wrapping up Lewis' trial and getting promoted to sergeant, Liv didn't need your problems dragging her into your personal hell. Pull up a chair, Liv, we'll be here a while. On the drive back, you thought about the joke you never fired. You wondered if the cast on that show still had jobs, considering Maria once told you the executive producer had a habit of axing any actor she disagreed with. If you didn't think about some dumb, medical soap opera, then you'd have to think about the doctors probing around Yusef's spine, trying to dislodge a bullet that would have taken the kid's life either way.

You thought you had every right to be paranoid and to reject Liv's blind faith in medical miracles. Still, even if you disagreed you had no right to snap at her, so you just kept your mouth shut. Besides, nothing you said was privileged, and staying quiet was just another bullet point in the training manual that you had embedded into your brain.

"I paralyzed a child, father."

Retracing each step has been your mind's go-to preoccupation. It's just something you've always done. Call it paranoid; call it obsessive. From a very young age, you knew you could never really trust anyone to have your back. Not even family. So you made certain to work hard for what you got, and arrange your life in such a way that you never had to ask anybody for help. Your crosses have always been your own to bear. It was this lone wolf mentality that had allowed you to quickly move up the ranks in Narcotics. You were always independent but you were dependable to the department that you almost believed advocated for you.

You always went to great lengths to show you were disciplined – not some 15-year-old kid from El Barrio who could easily be persuaded to peddle drugs. No, you kept your head in the books. You climbed out of bed before sunup to fill metal boxes with scandal sheets. After eight hours of school and another three hours throwing a ball around the field, you washed dishes and got paid under the table. This wasn't just a 'since-I-became-a-cop' thing. This was your discipline. This was your life.

So, for the last couple of days you replay the night's events like game footage. Every single mistake must have taken root somewhere, must have been triggered by something. And once you found that glitch in the system or that one misaligned domino; you could begin to fix it. You could figure this out and everyone could surrender their pitchforks – IAB, the mayor's office, the media. You just needed to find that one moment when the tracks switched and the train came straight for you.

Your mind flashes back to the precinct basement. There was no ventilation, no fancy gym equipment; just a punching bag and you were good. After Fin told you about the possibility of your partner being transferred out, you threw in a few more sets of aggressive punches. But then, the announcement that she was going to be the squad's new sergeant quelled those hostile thoughts, and you were back to being happy for her. Technically, this meant losing your partner; but Liv was staying and that was all that mattered.

Not long after the congratulatory remarks, the last drops of wine poured into the glasses and Michael Bublé started crooning through the stereo. That was Fin's cue to peace out. Slowly, you veered off from the conversation that shifted from shop talk to brussel sprouts. Liv was so excited when Eileen tipped her off about this garden co-op that delivered a crate of local, organic produce to her doorstep every week. You weren't particularly cut out for trading recipes or discussing the negative aspects of GMOs. Neither was your Captain, but he was clearly too smitten with his date to care about the conversation topic. So, you excused yourself from their circle and found yourself sat on the couch with a certain blonde-haired detective.

"Don't you get tired of being the choirboy?"

She said the nickname was a nice change from Saint Nick. It would be your little inside joke, she spoke with doe-eyes and her head lowered and tilted sideways. You aren't oblivious to whatever it is that's been going on between you and Rollins. Ever since you took it upon yourself to sweep into her life – Superman cape and all – to prove that her thirteenth-stepping boyfriend was, indeed, a jackass, the professional became personal.

The two of you were forced to make nice for Liv's sake during the trial. But, ultimately, it was the stress from Lewis' trial and the effect it was having on everyone, especially your partner, which had driven you and Amanda to each other. With every round of beer, things between you two turned from sour to sweet. The lack of communication from Liv during the trial drove you on edge; but you couldn't let her see that; not when you had to be there at a moment's notice to be her dependable partner. If she wanted to depend on you.

It was an Irish bar a few blocks from the precinct. The first time, it was a way to erase the memories of taking the stand and having Lewis cast doubt on your testimonies. The second time, you both ran down a list of excuses until you finally settled on the mutual guilt of failing Liv those four days she was kidnapped. You and Amanda shared a bottle to cloak the bleak reality that Lewis was still alive and still mentally torturing your partner. For the most part, the alcohol worked. Because, looking back, all you could remember from those hazy nights was how Amanda smiled at you from across the booth. And how that smile made you feel normal again.

Strictly professional after-hours drinks was what you called it. But under the dim lights of the bar and under the influence of liquid amnesia, there were moments when your eyes lingered on each other, when her fingertips brushed up against your forearm, when you felt something you hadn't felt since the last time you were with Maria.

The night you celebrated Liv's sergeant exam, Amanda was treading dangerous territory by flirting with you under your superiors' noses. Sure, they were all on the other side of the room, discussing root vegetables and $400 juicers; but they'd have to be blind not to see the way Amanda's heavy gaze fixed on you. Under almost any other circumstance, you would have flirted back. But you were soberly aware of the other party guests. And your brain kept ticking, reminding you of that entire chapter in the NYPD manual dedicated to the dangers of sexual relations in the workplace.

So, you sat back and smiled politely as you took the empty glass from her hand and set it down on the coffee table. It wasn't your intention to keep track of Amanda's drinks, but it was one of those habits you had formed when you were a kid. There was always a particular number you had to watch out for, and it always depended on what he was drinking. Right before he reached that limit, that was your signal to lie to your mother and tell her your tia from down the street called and said she needed help with thepastelitos.

You counted her glasses of wine at four, which was two more than you had that night. Had Amanda been the one to back up Officer McKenna, as she initially asserted, she would have been in an even worse position than you. Her blood alcohol count would have made her unquestionably impaired. Aside from your naturalistic impulse to 'man up' and be the hero, the knowledge of how many drinks she'd had gave you that last extra push to join the hot pursuit.

"According to my training, I did everything the way I was supposed to."

Amanda ended up staying with Officer Dragin, using his radio to call in the 10-13. So, that wasn't where you went wrong. You would never have let her run to back up Officer McKenna, so there was no what-if scenario you could work with. It would have never been Amanda in your place.

When was it then? At what moment did the tracks turn? Who pushed the block that sent all the other dominoes crashing into this heap of guilt and self-pity? The game footage replays back in your head, from the first sprint in the direction of the chase to the very last pull of the trigger. And yet, you still can't find that one slip-up, or that one clue to give away the fact that there was no other gun. The kid never fired a shot.

It had taken CSU 24 hours to figure out what you were expected to know in the moment. You were also expected to know that the bullet in the officer's leg came from her own firearm; even after she made the outcry that she had been shot by the suspect. And in spite of the fact that your mind was clear and your reflexes were sharp as ever, your blood alcohol maintained that you were .01 away from being legally impaired.

"They'll say I shot him because I was impaired or because he's black."

You picked up the latest issue of the New York Post and flashed it to your partner. Your face was splashed on the front page with the headline, '0.49?! Drunk Cop Cripples Kid'. The longer you stared at the cover, the more reality seemed to sink in and the more you started to swallow libel down as your truth.

Liv tried to encourage you to keep your head above water, but that was rich coming from her considering it was her boyfriend leaking IA files and sandbagging you in the press. It wasn't fair to put her in this spot, where you were pitting yourself against Cassidy. But this wasn't on you. She could blame this one on Tucker.

Bullets sprayed into your house.

You ignored Liv's direction to stay inside; instead you picked up the baseball bat you kept by the front door and marched down the street. Two black teenagers called you out for police brutality; and this pissed you off even more than your current state, because reading about it didn't have quite the same effect as hearing it from the mouths of kids you supposedly despise. If there was any reason for you to hate them, it had nothing to do with the color of their skin, but everything to do with the fact that they nearly killed your mother and daughter.

The new administration hung you out to dry, the press was trying to pin this 'racist kid killer' moniker on you, but in that moment all you saw was blood and revenge. For a split second, you didn't care if you proved them all right. You were fueled by fear and anger over the fact that your seven-year-old daughter was crying in her abuelita's arms. So you egged them on to shoot you. Because, God, anything – even death – seemed more bearable than the awareness of what you were putting your family through.

"They could have killed my mother, my daughter."

The bat connected with the metal trashcan, even when all you really wanted was to smash some skulls. Still, in spite of your rage and that split second when you nearly lost it, you were lucid enough not to do anything too stupid that would require your partner to make a call to Homicide.

Liv didn't call Homicide but she did call Tucker; she said it was because she had to. You were surprised he hadn't shown up with Cassidy on a leash, seeing as those two had been pretty much inseparable since you made your case to IA. Still, Liv told you to stand back and let them investigate; even though the bullet holes in your window could tell the whole story. That alone wasn't enough to explain chasing after some lowlifes with a baseball bat. The fact that those boys nearly killed your mother and daughter wasn't enough to justify your rage; and you just couldn't see why everyone else around you was tiptoeing over every little detail and being controlled by the strings of this new administration. They shot at your fucking house with your daughter inside.

What made you want to swing the bat to your own skull was when Tucker had the audacity to tell you that he would've done the same thing or worse. You scoffed and shook your head because that sentiment meant jack shit to you. It didn't console you or restore any confidence in your actions, because you knew that if Tucker had been in your place and he had done the same thing, he wouldn't have suffered the same consequences. He would have been exercising his right to defend his home and family. The fucker would be receiving a medal for it tomorrow.

"They're making you the fall guy."

Your mother suggested you go to church and talk to Father Biobaku. It had been a while since you last attended Sunday mass. You used to attend the service without fail when Zara still lived with you, because she was signed up for that little lamb bible study. But ever since she moved to D.C. and you lived alone, you just couldn't be bothered to peel yourself off the bed on a Sunday morning and explain yourself to the parishioners.

For months you had to deal with questions and accusations about your separation. You had been the fall guy in their eyes – the guy who ripped apart your happy, little Catholic family. After all, it was you who apparently stepped out with that hooker that was murdered in your Captain's bed. You had an illegitimate son ten years ago with the sister of a drug kingpin. You broke the poor, little heart of your beautiful soon-to-be ex-wife who's fighting for this country's freedom. To your old parish, you were the modern-day Judas. The rest of the world is now just catching up to tune in for your crucifixion.

When you talked to Father, you were hoping that by some divine intervention God would speak through him and provide you with answers. Starting with where you went wrong that night. If God were punishing you for divorcing your wife, or thinking about Rollins in a way that would neither please Him nor 1PP, then you were prepared to do your penance.

You wonder if the mud Reverend Curtis and the DA are slinging at you, about this being a case of racial profiling and stopping to shoot, would land and stick. You know you didn't shoot Yusef because he's black. You know you weren't impaired. But the story was painted that way by people searching for a scapegoat. You almost regret sparing no effort on that Alex Muñoz case a few months back; maybe if he became mayor of the city, he wouldn't have turned on a fellow Cubano. Who are you kidding? Barba and Muñoz would have probably tag-teamed to watch you go down in flames.

"Maybe one lesson you can learn from this is why pride is a sin."

This isn't little lamb bible study though, and you don't need a moral and legal tornado to nosedive into your life just to teach you a lesson. You get it. Your pride is wounded, and now you know it's a sin. Hey, God, it's me, Nick, can we move the fuck on?

You can just picture Maria stabbing your eyes out with a fork for giving her no option but to drag her ass up to Sing Sing for prison visits. You, in an orange jumpsuit, getting visits from your kids every couple of months. You missing out on recitals, ball games, and graduations. And even if you take a plea, you know things will never be the same. You never had the free time to be a PTA parent, but at least you always made it a point to be there for your kids. Now, you just can't imagine going to their schools and not hearing the whispers, "he's a kid killer, a drunk, a racist…"

And there goes your fucking pride again.

The couch isn't your bed, but Liv wasn't misleading when she said it was comfortable enough for a night's rest. Hesitantly, you recline on the charcoal grey sofa and the only reason why you feel any discomfort has nothing to do with the furniture itself, but the fact that you are in Cassidy's apartment. Tucker's new pet had disappeared into the bedroom shortly after he bewildered your partner and came home. He calls for Liv through the crack of the bedroom door, but she dismisses him.

Liv isn't done trying to make you feel like a welcomed guest in your new surroundings. She supplies you with a blanket, some towels, and a basket of travel-sized toiletries she saved up from various hotel stays over the years. It's a lot coming from your partner, and all you can do is nod and say 'thank you'.

She crosses the room with a cup of chamomile tea in her hands. "You sure you don't want some? There's still hot water in the kettle."

You shake your head. "No thanks."

"Nick, you're going to be –" she starts to say it, but stops herself. "We're going to figure this out."

It sounds like she was going to tell you that you would be 'fine' and that things would return to normal. But she catches herself midway through her lie and changes her mind. Neither one of you are oblivious enough to believe you're getting out of this completely unscathed. The damage to your professional and personal reputation has landed and it stuck.

"If the blanket's not warm enough, the linen closet's down the hall. We got these wool throws from Pottery Barn that just don't match the sofa, but you're welcome to use –"

"Liv, I'm fine," you assure her with a forced smile. She can't say it, so you 'man up' and lie about being fine.

She purses her lips before she turns on her heel and heads down the hallway. "Good night."

"Night."

You lay awake, staring at the ceiling. It has nothing to do with the hushed bickering you can hear through the thin walls of the apartment. With an address on the Upper West Side, you figure developers would actually invest those exorbitant rent prices into some noise insulation. But, like a lot of things in this part of town, people seem to be more interested in the amenities of the building and the quality of stone on the countertops.

No, you lay awake because your mind and body won't allow for sleep. It's most likely the adrenaline from the evening's earlier events involving gunfire and baseball bats. But it's this alert state that grants you permission to inadvertently eavesdrop on your partner and her boyfriend's argument. Lights are off, so they probably assume you're dead to the world, or at least knocked out enough not to hear them talking about you.

"How long is he staying?"

"Until it's safe for him to return home."

"Yeah, well, CSU already combed through his living room and front yard. The window should be fixed tomorrow. That means Ricky Ricardo is out of here tomorrow morning."

"Brian," Liv says in a pleading tone that is rare to your ears. "He won't be safe in that neighborhood until after the trial is over… Maybe even weeks after that."

"Babe, you can't be serious?" Brian stops attempting to keep the volume of his voice dialed down. "We can't just be adopting strays left and right because you feel sorry for them." Tucker's pet has the gall to call you a stray; you're almost tempted to go in there and ask him if he's so bitter about this arrangement because his owner forgot to give him a treat.

"He's my partner."

"And I'm your boyfriend," Brian raises his voice. "My name is also on the renters' agreement. 'Sides, you never even ran this by me before you invited him for a fucking sleepover."

"Would you keep your voice down? You could wake him up."

"Hey! I don't care if I'm interruptin' his beauty sleep. This is my place too… and how am I supposed to explain to Tucker that the guy I'm investigating is living in my house?"

"He's staying," Liv responds firmly. There she is, that strong-willed partner you've always known; none of that pleading, whiny approach she just used on her jackass boyfriend. You really don't see what she sees in him. "Besides, you've been gone for the last six days. I didn't think you lived here anymore."

You chuckle and realize this is the first time you've smiled in days. Yes, it's due to a case of schadenfreude, because you're a gossip who was eavesdropping on their little lover's quarrel. But it's still a nice escape from the shitstorm that is your life. It gives you something else to think about that isn't going to be in tomorrow's paper, tearing down your character, calling into question your every move, and making you pick at the scabs of your wounded ego. Their fight keeps you entertained until the voices die down and the light peeking through the doorframe turns to darkness. Your heavy lids fold over your tired eyes as you finally accept the reprieve of sleep.