The beginning of the end | A Bensler FanFic

Fear

When I walked inside I didn't know that I was about to see the most terrifying things I had ever seen. 8 teenager girls dead, shot to the head, naked from the waist down and mutilated. Blood was all over the walls and floor. Then, the rapist shouted, saying that he had two hostages alive and they would stay that way if we didn't move. As a proof, he made them scream. I will forever remember their screams, cutting me inside like knifes. Their panic, the desperation of 2 girls who only wanted to go home, took over me in ways that I would have never expected. And all I had to do was not move. We stopped, frozen by the screams and waited. Everything felt dark, the panic was engraved in those walls. Both me and Fin were studying the space around us as I realized that there was a male body in the floor. Covered in blood, eyes shut, there was a body that I knew way to well. Handcuffed to a broken chair, also filled with blood, layed my last hope.

Elliot was laying on the floor. Fin saw him as well and looked at me, lack of words marking his expression. But then, I saw what would change my life. A move. Elliot had moved. As I realized it, I heard the guy say that we should hold 3 more minutes as he closed his deal with hostage negotiation and the girls would be let go, alive. I knew that, if I moved, the girls he had with him would die but it was Elliot who was laying there. I considered everything in my mind but the worst-case scenario kept on being staying alive without him in this world. So, I ran, I ran to him letting my mind trust that it was not too late, knowing that everything both of us had gotten through ended with him. If he died, all the unsaid words would be unsaid forever. All the chemistry, the tension, would be buried with his soul. Us would become me if I was too late. And I was scared. Fin tried to grab my arm but I kept running. He yelled. At the time I assumed it was at me, everything happened slowly and more quietly in my head but, as I learned later, he was calling the SWAT team to try to save the girls. Shots were fired but all I saw was him. My mind was lost in thoughts, but the day he had left was the thought that my head couldn't leave alone. I should've hated him, with all my heart, I should have hated the person who broke me inside, but I couldn't. It was lost in the past that I threw myself at the floor and held him, desperate. Every cell of my body despised him for all he had put me through and hated the son of a bitch but I hated more the idea of the world without him.

When I reached him, my eyes were filled with tears. His blue eyes were painted red by the blood and his body was filled with it. But he was breathing and that was it mattered. I tried to find the gunshot, in his chest and pressed. I was trying to remain calm but all the blood was saying to me that he didn't have much time left. I asked for the medical team and hugged him, crying. There was too much blood, he was bleeding to death in my arms and all I could do was cry. I cried as I felt him slip away. That was when my heart felt emptier than ever, I couldn't live in a world where he wasn't. That was the moment I realized that everything I had felt in 12 years of partnership, of friendship, had made it for this moment and everything I had felt since he was gone as well. He was my support and, even when far away, the idea of him kept me from giving up. I owed him myself, and that was a debt that I could never pay. In the moment his eyes seemed to lose it, I knew I loved him. He was the one. He made me smile at times no one else could, he made my eyes sparkle. So, I hugged him tighter and whispered that I forgave him, told him that I could never let him go without telling him that. I realized that our chemistry was always different, that the unspoken feeling were always there, building our relationship, closer than partners, more connected then friends, way to passionate to be lovers, arguing more than best friends. We were each other's person. That was all I could think about, seeing him vanishing in my arms, along with my hope, I thought that, even after all, we would choose the other over almost anything. And I whispered to him that I loved him. Those words, who took 19 years to be built, left me easily, naturally, almost as if they were made to be said. And they made me feel good, they sounded meant for him to hear. The blood was all over me when I heard the paramedics coming. I kept mumbling "I can't lose you, not again" until they dragged me away from him, the fear of losing him was threatening to kill me if I let him go. Then it all turned a blur.

I woke up in a hospital bed, worried, tired and confused. Then I saw my bloody clothes in a chair and I remembered. I was jumping out of bed when Fin came to me. Words were something I didn't have, I was in panic and I felt like I had to leave, I had to move. I said "Elliot", letting that name ask what my mouth couldn't pronounce, and I cried, fearing the answer.