A/N: So sorry it has taken so very long to finish this. I knew what I wanted to achieve, and it has taken this long to find the right words to express it. Many thanks to blucougar57 and The Confused One for their input and encouragement.
She felt warm, very warm. She struggled to move, to call out to Logan, to keep at bay the pain that filled every part of her body. She heard voices, but they were distant. And she sought out the comforting presence of her deceased partner. He was close, she knew, but she could not connect with him. Terrified that he was finally slipping away from her for good, she panicked and managed to force out a single word. "Bobby!"
The first thing he became aware of was intense heat. Then the pain came in overwhelming waves. It was everywhere, permeating every part of his body. He couldn't make a sound. The acrid smell of gasoline filled his nostrils. Gasoline and heat...oh, shit...He tried to move and the pain intensified to a white hot light and he felt no more.
The back doors of the last ambulance closed and Jimmy Deakins rubbed his hand over his head. "Captain?"
He looked at the uniformed officer who approached him from the direction of the wrecked SUV. "Yes?"
"Do you want a ride to the hospital?"
"I, um, I have my car..."
"I can have one of my buddies take it to 1 PP for you. Let me give you a ride."
In no mood to argue, Deakins nodded. "Okay, fine."
He handed his keys to the man and waited for him to return. Then he let the officer drive him to NYU Medical Center, where two of his detectives were fighting for their lives.
Even when he was alive, he always hated seeing a frantic emergency room. Frantic activity meant someone was not doing well. In this case there were two lives struggling to be saved, fighting to remain in their mortal form. He watched, and he waited. And he knew...he was not going to be alone any more.
The pain was overwhelming, and then it was gone. Where the hell was he? He looked around at the open fields that surrounded him, at the mountains in the distance. The breeze that blew around him was refreshing and cool. For the first time that he could remember, he felt...at peace. He spun around at the sound of a familiar laugh. "Holy shit...look at you," he said with a wide smile, embracing the friend he'd lost a year before.
"Hi, Mike."
"Where the hell are we?"
Goren shrugged. "Just...here."
"So I..." The question trailed off.
"Yeah. You were really messed up, man. The flames got to the car before the guys got to you. You really don't want to know any more."
"Alex?"
"Alex is stubborn. She's still fighting."
"Did they...get her out?"
"Before the flames got there, yeah. She wasn't trapped like you were. But she was badly hurt."
"And?"
"And what? She's critical."
"Can't you talk to her?"
He shook his head. "I can't reach her. She's in a deep coma, kind of suspended between existences but not fully a part of either. They can't reach her from that end, and I can't reach her from here. She doesn't understand what's going on and so she's fighting."
"So what do we do?"
Another shrug. "We just wait."
Deakins drifted between wakefulness and sleep, sitting in a chair beside her bed. A hand clamped onto his shoulder, a gentle touch followed by a firm squeeze. He looked up into a familiar face, one he had not seen in the last year, but one he knew. She had her father's eyes. "Hello, John."
John Eames looked world-weary, infinitely sad. "How are you, Jimmy?"
"I don't know. I haven't had a good answer to that question for more than a year."
"I just talked to the doctor. She's weakening."
"She's a fighter."
John nodded. "Stubborn, like her old man."
"When were you here?"
"I guess I left right before you got back."
"I had...had to talk to the funeral director over at Hansen's. Same guy we talked to last year. Another cop with no family to speak of but us."
"I'm sorry, Jimmy. Mike was good to Alex. She loved him a great deal...but she never got over losing Bobby."
"I know."
The captain turned back to her and studied her still, deeply bruised face. Part of him was clinging desperately to hope, not wanting to lose another officer he had come to deeply care for. But part of him willed her to let go of her stubbornness and her grief, and follow her heart.
John Eames had buried his wife six months earlier. He never expected to bury a child, but he had long ago prepared himself for the possibility. Four of his children were cops. The closest he had ever come to burying one of his own was when Bobby had been killed last year. Since then, he had watched his daughter grieve. She tried to move on, but it wasn't working. She put up a brave front, and her siblings had been convinced of the act, certain she had moved on with Logan, and that was all right with them. They just wanted Alex to be happy. But John knew his little girl better than that. He knew the passion that had driven her all her life. When Joe had died, she had been devastated. She had loved him, of that he had no doubt. But it was a young love. She met and married him young, just out of the Academy, and they never had the chance to develop their relationship past youthful passion. He wondered what would have happened if Goren had come into her life during her marriage. He doubted it would have survived that partnership.
Over the years, he had become a firm believer in fate. During almost fifty years of marriage, he figured out that in each person's existence, there was just one other person they were meant to be with forever. He had learned that there really was such a thing as soulmates. He knew that when he finally died, his wife would be there, waiting with open arms and a loving smile to spend eternity with him. Alex had found that, too, in Bobby Goren, and there was no doubt in his mind that Bobby lingered near her bed, just waiting. When Alex was ready, he would be there. And it was that knowledge more than anything that gave John Eames peace.
Lewis stood by the bed, looking down at her as he held her hand. He had come to say good-bye. Captain Deakins had been kind enough to call him, to tell him that her final hours were approaching. Her brain had finally shut down; she wasn't really with them any more. Her father had made the decision no parent should ever have to make. Her brothers and sister and their families had already been there. All the paperwork had been signed. Deakins was waiting with John for the last of her friends to say their good-byes. He was the only one left. And it was time to go.
"I'm really gonna miss you, Detective Alex. I always looked forward to seeing you, but I guess you know that. I never was very good at hiding my feelings. Look...you tell Bobby hi for me. Let him know I miss him, too. It sure won't be the same without either of you."
Leaning down, he gave her a soft kiss. Laying her hand on the bed, he drew the sheet up and gently tucked her in. "Good-bye, Detective Alex."
Thirty minutes later, John and Deakins stood by as the doctors turned off the machines that kept her alive. They didn't have long to wait. Eight minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, at five fifty-two p.m. on a breezy spring evening, Alex Eames went home.
He was leaning against a tree, waiting for her. She was wandering across the field, stopping to smell the flowers, and he was content to watch her, as he always had been. She had not yet realized what had happened to her, but he knew exactly when it had. His connection to the mortal realm severed when she was no longer part of it. His existence continued with and for her alone. And he waited...
She didn't remember how she got there, but it was nice. She was comfortable, at peace in a way she had not been before, not since the last time she'd slept in Bobby's arms. Something had changed, and she struggled to identify what. Halfway across the meadow, she looked around to get her bearings, and she saw the figure on the hillock, leaning against a tree, a familiar figure...tears of joy filled her eyes. "Bobby..." she whispered.
He caught her in his arms, kissing her deeply as he held her close. "I missed you," she murmured against his mouth.
He pulled back to look at her, brushing stray hair back from her face with a smile that radiated pure love. She studied him closely. Every shadow that had haunted his life was gone. Every ghost that had clouded his existence had vanished. All that remained was his love for her and the joy of being reunited, never to be parted again.
Her eyes glistened. "Oh, Bobby..."
His fingers caressed her face and she reveled in his touch once again. She didn't care to contemplate the hows of this existence...how his breath once again warmed her skin...how just being with him set her body on fire. She just accepted it and responded to him with abandon. They were together, and this time, it truly was forever.
fin.