Disclaimer: I do not own NBC's incredible characters. Hopefully I've borrowed and returned them in good condition.

Notes: I'm all about constructive criticism/feedback, so if you have the time, I'd greatly appreciate your thoughts!

Takes place: Sometime towards the end of season 8. I think I wrote it immediately after watching 'Burned.'

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We were memories; mere memories in the vast expanse of time often referred to as life. We were perfect, we were faulted, we were partners. We lived, breathed, loved and suffered together. We learned and grew together, and then we grew apart.

It wasn’t so long ago that the term ‘partners’ was what I considered our lifeline in the chaotic world we are forced to witness every day. I used to think we were but ghosts who watched over the world, trying to silently comfort the victims of its cruelty, vainly trying to comfort ourselves when it seemed that nobody else could understand. We slept when we found the time, which was rare; we ate breakfast at eleven at night; we could tell the time based on how many cups of coffee we’d had. We were but memories to our loved ones. We were invisible.

Eight years. We were partners for eight years, but it seemed like a lifetime. We had connected on a level that no one else understood. We spoke without using words, comforted each other without touching. We had instinct, we had conscience, we had friendship. I had never known anyone the way I knew him. He was, what he had once called, “my longest relationship with a man,” which held some merit. In my lifetime I’d been involved with three men, and none had lasted longer than a third date. As soon as they found out I was a cop who dealt with pedophiles and child abusers they went running as far as they could in the opposite direction. I can’t say that I blame them.

But Elliot understood. He knew me. Kathy could never understand why he wouldn’t talk about his work at home. She wanted to know what sort of cases he was working on, if he’d caught the bad guy. But what she didn’t understand was that Elliot was protecting her; he was saving her from the sleepless nights due to nightmares and the haunting eyes of abused children. There are some things cops just don’t bring home with them, and memories of haunted children are one of them.

I used to think that was the reason Kathy had decided to file for divorce. Or maybe that’s just what I tried to tell myself. I had convinced myself that she was just fed up with having to raise so many children on her own, that she was angry with Elliot for not sharing the most time-consuming part of his life with her; the part that had kept them separated day in and day out. Because even when the two of them were together, they were miles apart. Elliot had placed a barrier between the two of them, and Kathy was powerless to break through.

Maybe that’s why she seemed so wary of me, because that barrier didn’t exist between Elliot and I. But when you’ve known someone that long, have seen them go through hell, have watched them be held at gun point on multiple occasions, maybe then that barrier shouldn’t exist. We were partners. We had gone through more than any married couple I knew, at least. Maybe not childbirth, but I had seen Elliot at his worst. I had silently watched him pummel his locker in frustration, had seen him held at gunpoint, had fought for him when accused of murder. No, we weren’t married, but I have a feeling our connection ran deeper than any married couple I had ever known.

But those were memories. That connection is now only a blip in a long line of failed relationships. After he was accused of murder, he went back to her. Or, at the very least, tried to. Kathy knew it was a bad idea, but in her defense, I give her credit for trying. She still loved him, I had always known that. And while she had always been jealous of Elliot and I’s partnership, she still tried to be friends with me. She even called me the night Elliot showed up, asking to come home. She asked me what she should do, but I didn’t have an answer. Well, I did, but it wasn’t my place to tell her what I thought. I wanted to tell her it would be an awful mistake, that she would end up asking for another divorce, because no matter how much Elliot loved his family, he took his job to heart. He would always put a child with a ticking clock above his own child’s birthday; that’s just the way he was. Kathy didn’t need any more disappointments, and neither did Elliot. Neither did I.

As much as I loved Elliot, he had disappointed me on more than one occasion. When I’d felt the need to cross the line on a case, he’d sometimes refused to cross it with me, making it nearly impossible to do my job, because I’d always assumed he’d back me up no matter what I did. And when he’d made the mistake of choosing me over the job, he’d blamed it on me. As if I had willingly let a pedophile slice my throat and kill a child.

But we’re all human, we’re all flawed. It had taken a fair amount of time, but we had started to work through our issues just as I was forced to leave on a covert FBI mission. I knew he’d be angry with me for not saying goodbye, but Star had explained the rules to me very clearly. And so I went to Oregon with every intention of returning. And eventually I did, but by a mistake of my own. I was flawed, too. But he couldn’t get over the fact that I hadn’t told him where I was going. The tension was unbearable. We sat across from each other all day, every day, but were unable to hold a decent conversation, let alone make small talk. We would stare at our computer screens, at our case files, at anything but each other. In the car we argued over suspects or where to get lunch; the hotdog stand on 5th street, or the one at the intersection of 1st and Lexington.

We fought like a couple going through divorce, which is how it felt to me. I remember wondering if this is what it was like between Elliot and Kathy. Where you wanted so badly to be near someone, but it was even more painful when you were with them than without. At work I wanted nothing more than to talk to him in that already-know-what-you’re-going-to-say kind of way that we used to have, but when I couldn’t even settle for a polite “Good morning,” heading home was all I wanted. And when I got home, I felt like I was missing a part of myself, which is odd because the idea of Elliot being a part of me had never really crossed my mind.

When you’ve been partners as long as we have, you learn to suppress any feelings towards the other person that may be beyond the scope of the job. You train your mind to think that he’s your brother, that looking at him in any other way would be sinful, incestual and just plain wrong. Elliot was a complete non-sexual entity in my eyes. So why was it so hard for me to focus when we weren’t on speaking terms? I would have rather been arguing about where to get lunch than to have not been speaking at all.

However, unlike a lot of divorced couples, we eventually resolved our differences and came to an accord. We didn’t have to argue about lunch, and we didn’t have to ignore each other to get through the day. My stomach didn’t fold every time he glanced at me over his coffee cup, and I didn’t feel the need to put the distance of a city block between us. There’s an understanding that keeps us together; we have, after all, been partners longer than anyone else in our precinct. We knew how to speak without words. We knew what it was like to be invisible. We were both but mere memories. And we understood that.