Le thanks to Lori for her exquisite beta... and to other people... for doing other equally important things. And to YOU, my friends, for reading.

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The sound of the blood rushing in her ears wasn't a pounding. There wasn't a thudding or a pulsing... The sound in her head was akin to what eyelashes fluttering against rice paper might sound like, light and wispy. She could feel blood pounding hard behind her eyes; she wouldn't blink, wouldn't blink.

Her skin hummed with the vibrations of energy passing through the air; his mouth moved so fast, words coming so loud, but she couldn't hear any of them. The only sound that registered in her head was wind through willows and eyelashes on rice paper.

Her vision was skewed. From the position on her side she should have been able to feel the cold concrete, should have been able to feel her bruised hip. But she couldn't; she could only feel her own skin, her own bones, listen only to his voice in her head, begging. Time took its bony hands and dug them into the mud, crawling along slower than it should have. Olivia waited for the moment to catch up, but it never did.

How could things happen so fast, yet seem so purposefully sluggish? Boulders in tapioca or rain through gauze, obstruction.

Synapses fired inside her skull, reading his lips, reminding her what his voice sounded like when his eyes looked like that. There was an eye color that only a thin sheer of tears produced; it multiplied the hue, made it sing and stand out.

His eyes were singing to her, they were speaking in that soothing shade of blue. They were willing her shaking bones to press the millimeter between flesh and blood and steel to send hot metal into Gitano's twisted skull.

The swishing slowed even more and she realized slowly at that moment, that she couldn't stop his words in her head.

She couldn't hear them, but she knew what they were.

Maybe he was wishing she was stronger than he was; maybe he was hoping she didn't have it in her to love him so he could stop, and everything could stay the same. Then again, maybe it was something else. And maybe, and maybe, and then maybe some more. The only thing he knew for certain, the only thing he knew for sure, was that if he died in that moment he wouldn't have to pretend to be sorry for wanting to save her, for wanting to keep her, for wanting her.

"You think about me, Rebecca is dead," but there was something in his eyes, those fucking insane eyes, that triggered something inside of her. It was an understanding that for five years, maybe more, she'd never done anything on the job without thinking of him; how he looked, how he felt, how he acted...

The madman, he was shouting again. But her mouth was dry and her arms were tired, riddled with concrete and guilt and her entire body shook with the need to save Elliot's life that she couldn't hear. It was as though she could feel the cool, painful barrel of the gun pressed to her own skull, as if she could see the bullet with her name on it. Ten times worse; it was ten, twenty, a million times worse because Gitano was holding it to her partner's head. It was so much worse.

A thick stream of saliva poured down her throat and she swallowed-mucus that the tears had created before her tongue stuck back to the roof of her mouth. If only some of the moisture that had beaded up on her palms had made its way to her palette.

Her mouth moved to the dialogue she'd concocted in her head, but still she was watching it from outside her body, listening to someone else say it; only feeling the movement of her desert tongue and still, the slight pressure from the trigger. "...never get out of here alive."

If he fell, if Elliot... she didn't care how anyone got anywhere if Elliot...

Tunnel vision had her trained more on the white's of Elliot's eyes (what white was left, he was so fucking lucid) and the flash of shotgun behind him. And still he was reassuring her, talking to her, wanting to make it right, help her do the right thing; but she couldn't move, couldn't hear...

Her hands bobbed up and down and she wondered how long she could keep it up, keep the sight trained right on him.

As long as Elliot stood, that was how long... that voice inside her called and she wanted to badly to call back, "Just. Help. Me."

How was her neck? If he could kiss it, kiss her, hold her, take the entire fucking day back, well then... the day would be perfect. It wasn't the same thing; no, not this time as his voice in her head repeated over and over "You need me, need me, you need me right now and after this and, and, and..." God, she wanted to drop the gun, drop it all and kiss the wound on his head. She wanted to tell him that none of this was his fault and she was sorry and she hoped he was sorry and she'd never cried like this before; so dark inside and couldn't breathe and burning up her arms, metal, blood, tears.

Concrete beneath her feet and the cold from before, when she was on the floor, seeping into the marrow beneath the bone and stung.

She sucked in a breath. It was quiet for a moment and she swore he heard his actual voice, the one that wasn't permanently embedded in her psyche say, "Look at me." It didn't matter what the man behind Elliot was saying, it mattered what her partner was saying, what he needed her to hear; that it was a mistake choosing her, that he shouldn't have, that if she was lying there dying it was the right thing to help the boy, and now it was the right thing to disregard the gun to his head and take out the perp and she was shaking and she was cold and he was rock solid, willing her, asking with his eyes, voice, body soul...

Shoot. Him.

"-the same thing," Shit it came out wrong, the exact words, but the wrong ones and if he'd been lying as she had been, then they'd both be lying, and would come up even. Break even… just break.

Olivia knew she would have dropped her gun, cradled his head in her lap even as he shouted her to leave. They were both that weak, and it wasn't their fault.

Hollow gaze, the blue still bright but she swore it was fading, that he was fading... ready to give up.

And as his jaw clenched hard and the tears came she realized that he had realized that he'd never loved her more than in that second... for the sole reason that he didn't know if there would be another second to love her, or to love her more.

Red rimmed around the blue iris and she hadn't yet blinked and her world went purple and she mirrored him, crying for what might not be, the words they might not say, the implications never to be implied or the actual emotions never to be expressed.

World stood still, the entire world stood still and she wondered how to conjugate etre properly in the formal tense, what Paris looked like at noon, and how his shoulder would taste when she bit down on it.

As gray crowded in on the purple they were partners again, on the same page, knowing exactly what to do; in tandem, in sync, in everything.

"He's lying."

"I know."

God, he only wanted her to believe, wanted her to shoot but not because if she did it meant something and he'd probably never get to figure out exactly what and if she didn't shoot him it meant something he wasn't sure he could handle and she might not be able to handle or want to handle and she saw it all in his eyes, god she saw every fucking thing in his eyes... "It's alright..."

"I'm sorry," and no, she failed just as he had, felt her insides crumble at the fear in his gaze, at the finality. How they both had to accept something larger than the moment in that moment.

Couldn't swallow, couldn't move, couldn't tell him that this was it for her, that she knew, that she felt she'd always known because she wanted it to be that way-

And it all rushed back up to her with a gunshot.