Title: Thaw
Rating: T for cursing
Categories: Angst and general. Mostly Friendship between our dynamic duo, but I totally see it as what we in the X-File fandom of yester-year called UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension, as in, there's nothing overt in this fic, but you know that if there was ever a sequel, there so totally would be.)

A/N: "Purgatory" killed me. I was so happy for Bobby and then so angry at him, and so sad for Alex, and so bummed about it totally ruining his re-instatement, and the fact that their relationship (on all levels) looks pretty much fucked now. So I had to try and fix it, at least a little. This story never would've gotten done without the invaluable advice and help of Sipman, my livejournal pal. She saved this fic from over-clichéd doom, irrevocable randomness, and kept it from being deleted completely. I basically owe this piece to her. Any and all mistakes in the work are mine and mine alone.

Summary: Because a cop is no cop without his partner. And even though Eames shows up to work, and Ross is satisfied, and technically they still work together, Alex has stopped being his partner.

I.

On the first day, there is mostly silence. Deep-water silence, the kind that comes when all you can hear is your heartbeat thudding in your ears. There is coldness too, with a sort of stinging burn like dry ice, to the point where, if you looked up, you'd be surprised that it was June and not January. In Antarctica.

Well, that is to say, she, Alex, is mostly silent. And completely cold. No thaw in sight, and what little noise she does make is like snow blowing over scuffed ice.

Bobby, on the other hand, is thrilled. Grinning and goofy in a way he hasn't been for years. Perfectly happy to be sitting at his desk shuffling papers and slurping bad coffee, looking up occasionally to make some wry comment to his partner so she will--

Only she doesn't. Laugh, or smile, that is. Or anything at all, really, other than a tight-lipped-raised-brow 'Hmm.' And then more quiet.

Slowly, but very surely, the thrill disappears, and he is baffled. Tapping on his leather notebook with a broken pen, and watching his hand as if it will have all the answers, he wonders, because, well, yes, she's been angry before, but this time…it feels a little different. Like the ice and the silence is going to last a very very very long time.

Bobby suddenly remembers his mother reading The Chronicles of Narnia with him in the autumn, and smiles. Alex sees, and gives him a flat look like 'Do you know what? I don't even care what's going on inside your brain.' Then looks back down at her papers. Silent.

This has never happened before. He stops smiling.

Ross is being nicer than he's ever been, which is still no picnic, but now it's obvious he considers the irreverent Goren his detective, and that changes things a little. He doesn't hover quite so much today, and even compliments Bobby. Twice. He compliments Alex, too, three times, but it only makes her quieter and colder, and she sips her water (she's gone off caffeine, for some reason), and doesn't so much as nod. Baffled himself, Ross finally retreats completely, and Bobby watches Alex intently as she drinks again from the bottle.

No, I get it. You're the genius, and I just carry your water.

At six o'clock, she rises to leave. He'd planned on taking her out for drinks-- a few of those margaritas she's embarrassed to admit she likes-- but when he opens his mouth, she lifts her chin, and dares him, with flat eyes, her fingers white-knuckled on the files she's holding. Holding his tongue and his offer, he watches across the frozen wasteland of their desks as she gathers up her things and leaves without a word.

II.

In the first week, Bobby makes a very big mistake.

They're given a case, low profile of course, but he still couldn't be more excited. He's got his job with his department, with a new case that is his, and he is with his partner. His Eames.

He's so caught up in the rush, that his brain is going a million miles a minute as he combs over the body and the scene, and his thoughts are coming out in half-formed stammers, but he doesn't worry because Alex always knows what he's thinking and helps connect the dots. So he gibbers on, delighted in the peculiar way that only a fresh crime scene can bring forth, waiting for her to interrupt and help solidify his garbled stream of consciousness.

Thing is, though, she doesn't. He goes on talking for two breaths too long before he notices. Waits through another stammered paragraph before he's sure. Glances up, finds her searching through a desk drawer, brows drawn in concentration, but her mouth is still in a tight line and she is just ignoring him.

His engine stalls, and he drifts off, mid-word, staring at her as she rifles through some letters, looking somehow queenly in the yellow glow of the desk lamp. No, I get it. You're the genius.

A flame of panic lights under him suddenly, and he wants to apologize, better than he did that day in the observation room, but there are people everywhere, and Eames has never appreciated a public spectacle of any sort. So instead his mind grapples for the next best thing, seizes hold of a question, and tosses it brazenly into the air.

That's right. He asks her a question. An absurdly, insultingly easy question, because it's the first thing that comes to mind, and he wants her to know that it's not true, because Alex Eames does not carry anybody's water. But oh God, it's a ridiculous question, and when she looks up from the letters, stiffly, her expression isn't blank anymore. It's sort of…twisted and snarled.

Her teeth are gritted so hard, he can barely understand what she says to him, but then he does.

"Don't. you. fucking. dare."

He almost falls over, that's how surprised he is. "I--"

But she speaks again, and her teeth even open this time. "Don't patronize me." A level look, calculating like he's seen her do with suspects right before she rips them apart. "Detective." One word, final and foreign, and suddenly Bobby's all alone.

Torn into a million pieces, he finishes going over the scene, awash in ice and silence.

III.

In the first month, Bobby barely sleeps. Three more rats have been slipped into his desk, as well as several even less-pleasant things. Two files have been mysteriously trashed overnight. He's taken to taking all his work home, which is fine because at least it gives him something to do at four in the morning, but still. He hasn't told Ross, because he's tired of people thinking he's paranoid and crazy, and he's tired of causing trouble, and mostly he's just tired, but after eighteen years, he's learning to keep his mouth shut, and pretend like nothing's happening.

It's harder than he expected, though, because he needs to tell Eames, and he can't. Well, he could, but he thinks-- no, knows that she wouldn't care. Might scoff at him, even.

Yeah, and whose fault is that?

Well, it's his own fault, of course, and he knows it. Knows he deserves the ridiculously huge piles of paperwork, rodent carcasses shoved into his desk drawers, chilly silence every time he walks into the Evidence Station. He even knows he deserves every single thing Alex has done to him, or not done for him in the past month. He deserves all that and more, first because he's her partner, which is bad enough, but second, there's a big ugly black mark on her record now, beside a bunch of shorthand jargon and the words Tates and Unsanctioned undercover assignment.

And because he never called her.

It seems so stupid now. So blindingly, appallingly idiotic that it damn near knocks the wind out of him when he thinks about it. Not calling her? Not calling Eames? His partner, the woman who has covered for him, lied for him, believed him, and believed in him, when no one else in the entire world thought he was worth the shield he'd had taken away from him? And he hadn't even had the decency to call her and let her know he was still alright. They were still alright.

There were rules. (He'd never heard her laugh like that, all mocking and ugly.)

He really had been thinking of her. Thinking of the black mark on her record, of him telling her to 'back off' and watching an elevator door slide shut in her face. Remembering the way he dared Ross to fire him, and tossed everything off his desk like a too-tall five-year old, mid tantrum, who'd missed his nap.

Are we alright?

Let's hope so.

Remembering the tight expression on her face when she said 'It's too late now.'

He didn't want that to be how she thought of him. Didn't want to make her life that miserable and dead-end-able and regrettable. So with five months to clear his head (and stop waking up every night shaking with thirst and certain he was tied down), he'd decided to try his damnedest not to drag her into this one.

No, I get it. You're the genius, and I just carry your water.

He sits awake at night on his couch, and wonders how to fix it. Considers getting drunk, but worries he would only call her, and oh God what a mess that would be. He wants to find his nephew. Wants to (maybe) find his brother. Wants to hear is mother's voice, because even when she was talking to shadows, her voice made him remember what he wasn't.

He wants to get drunk, so he considers going to a bar. He considers going, specifically, to a cop bar near the six-four, because he deserves to have the hell knocked out of him, to bleed a little, or a lot. He wants that more than he wants to get drunk, almost needs it, because he can hear the list of his sins inside his own head, but Alex isn't saying it out loud because she isn't saying anything out loud, and he needs to hear it over and over again until he finds a way to make it better.

That's how he's always solved his puzzles: by hearing them out loud. Which is why he's so stuck now, why he can't sleep, and why their solve rate is going down. All he's gotten, for a month, is silence and 'Hmm's when he tries to talk through his theories and thoughts, to the point where he might as well be talking to himself. And Bobby promised himself a long damn time ago that he would never get to that point. Ever.

He deserves her silence, though. He does. And he would deserve to get the crap beaten out of him by a bunch of angry, betrayed cops. He would go and let it happen, till they broke a rib or knocked him out, except, except--

She's the first name on the emergency contact list. His medical power of attorney. He wonders if he should change that, then realizes he doesn't know who he'd change it to. Can't believe it's gotten the point where he would even consider it, but she's not forgiving him, and he doesn't know how to fix it. He just…doesn't.

He considers flowers. A card. Talking to her. That last one, he's actually tried, several times. But the look in her eyes makes the words wither in his throat, till they get so dry and brown that he chokes on them. And he's left with silence.

He won't say this is the worst he's ever felt. Even six months ago was not the worst he'd ever felt, although that's when it all absolutely fell apart. He's still got his job. Back under a shield and gun. He's still got his job, the thing that steadies him and keeps him interested in his own life.

Except, maybe it really isn't. Because a cop is no cop without his partner. And even though Eames shows up to work, and Ross is satisfied, and technically they still work together,

Alex has stopped being his partner.

IV.

In the second month, Alex spends a lot of time with her family. It's not something she really enjoys, because although she loves them, with the exception of her nephew and his parents, she doesn't really like them.

Still, what else has she got to do? She's not working overtime these days, and (surprise surprise) she's been pretty much blacklisted from all the precinct pubs. And all her working hours are filled with silence, so thick that when she goes to her parents' house for dinner, she's startled that her mouth and ears aren't full of cotton. That she does still have a voice box, and a smile.

And yes, yes, fine, she misses talking to Bobby. But Bobby disappeared more than six months ago, and she's stuck back with Detective Goren, and they never really talked much anyway.

You're not gettin' it.

Oh, she got it well enough. But mostly, she'd just had it. She was sick of playing second fiddle, sick of standing in the shadows, sick of being the lesser half of Goren-and-Eames. It wasn't so much that, after eight years, this babysitting job had gotten old and she'd finally gotten tired of it, really.

It was that he'd stopped appreciating it.

She wasn't looking for a parade, or him groveling prone before her. She wasn't even asking for flowers and a thank-you card once a year. But he used to appreciate her. Way back in the beginning, right after she'd withdrawn her letter of resignation (she always wondered if, somehow, he'd known), he'd look at her with grateful eyes, give her credit anywhere it was due and then some.

Alex doesn't think for a minute that she's begun to doubt her own self-worth. She knows damn well that's not her problem. Her problem, put quite simply, is that he's forgotten her worth. And that's not the kind of partnership she wants. It's not any kind of partnership at all.

And Bobby just seems…baffled. Not sorry, really. Not struggling. Just…confused, and off his game. But so ridiculously happy to be back on the job that Alex doubts he's even really noticed.

Wonders if he ever noticed at all.

"Oh, no, not doubting your own self-worth at all, Lex," her sister snorts into her wine late one night, after everyone else has gone to bed or left, and Alex has finally said some of it out loud, if only to shut up the deafening silence for a moment.

"Fuck you," she answers, and knows she's very drunk, and that she must must must not call Bobby, because he didn't even call her, and yes Alex is pissed, is furious, but more than that, she can't do it anymore.

And oh God, he'd treated her like such a child. Asked her that simple question, like she wouldn't think he knew already knew the answer, like she wouldn't know exactly what he was doing. Was that the way he saw her? As some petulant child to be appeased? To be patronized? Spoken down to, as if a pat on the head could right all wrongs?

Self-centered arrogant son-of-a-bitch.

"He hurt your feelings, Lex. That's your real problem." And then her sister staggers off to the couch amid inebriated giggles and falls asleep.

Long after, Alex sits at the kitchen table in the quiet, nursing her drink and, yes, her hurt feelings. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees herself, pointing the gun at Bobby, sees Bobby, Bobby pointing one right back at her. Plays it over and over again in her head, and thinks about how close she'd been to pulling that trigger before she even recognized him. How fucking close she'd been to blowing him away.

Her hands are shaking by the time she swallows the last drop from the glass, and she wonders if any of it well ever be fixed at all.

V.

At the beginning of the third month, Alex suddenly realizes something is wrong. Bobby's starting to look scruffy again and he's popping antacids like they're going out of style. Their last case is at a miserable standstill, and she doesn't know why, because he never says anything anymore, so she has no idea where his mind is.

She wonders if its Donny, or Frank, and spends three days scouring the obituaries before the tight band of panic finally eases up from around her heart. Both, perhaps, would be better off dead, but that's not her call, and she can't wrap her mind around what it would do to Bobby.

Still, something is very wrong, and she doesn't know what. It's not until she comes in early one morning, desperately wanting a coffee (but she's given up caffeine since Tates, because she's having enough trouble sleeping with the image of that table in the boiler room and Bobby strapped down on it, to add caffeine to the mix), that she finds out even a piece of it.

Bobby is already there, totally alone in the bullpen, looking tired, his shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his tie already loosened. He's digging in a desk drawer, and Alex wonders what on earth he could be doing, with a box of latex gloves on his desk, and a trash bag slumped empty beside him.

It is then he pulls out the rat. Face tight and empty, he dumps it, quickly, into the bag, discards the gloves as well, and ties the whole thing up with practiced ease. Like he's…

Like he's done this before.

Alex can feel her bagel rise back up in her throat. A rat. She can't think of a clearer message, and finds herself looking around the empty bullpen wildly, wondering who, wondering which one--

She wants to say something to him. He doesn't even know she's there, doesn't even know she's seen, and she wants desperately to say something. Words of comfort, shock, anger, everything to a calm greeting of 'good morning' floats through her brain, but none of comes so close as to ghost across the back of her teeth. She hasn't said so much as 'hello' to him in three months. Nothing but reluctant, stilted words, about this case or that case, about work and work only has left her mouth in all that time. Now there is a three-month old brick in her throat, and Alex, wanting to break the silence for the first time since her partner came back, finds herself rendered mute.

Frozen, she watches him stuff the bag and its contents down inside the small trashcan under his desk. Watches him rub at his tired face with his tired hands, his features screwed up in a grimace, before he stares down at his desk, or maybe he's looking at hers, and there's an emotion on his face she's never seen before, but it's so raw it makes her stomach clench.

She wonders if he's gone to Ross, then knows he hasn't. He's been keeping his nose clean with a determination she's never seen before. He wouldn't want to stir this up, and so she knows he hasn't. She wonders if she should, but can't go behind his back like that (even if he did, time and time again), and her throat is still closed tight over the aching hollow in her chest, and she feels helpless, which she hates, but which, somehow, he always manages to make her do.

So, in doubt, confused, uncertain, she does nothing. She waits, silent, for thirty seconds, until his face is clear, before walking over to her desk and settling in for the day. She doesn't meet his eyes once before noon.

VI.

In the middle of the third month, they are starting a new case. The cases are coming to them slower now, but then, so are their solves. Bobby is still looking haggard, but thinner, and he's been trying to watch his health, which Alex knows because she actually saw him eating a salad for lunch yesterday. He's drinking water, too, instead of coffee, which is just bizarre, but she hopes it means he's starting to take care of himself again.

They're at the crime scene, and he's doing one of his weird things now, that makes her anxious instead of amusing her like they used to, because he's so quiet when he does them now. He used to babble all the time when they were canvassing a scene, but now everything is full of silence, and coldness, and Alex isn't even sure where it's coming from anymore, but she thinks it's her.

The weird thing, to be specific, is that he's climbed up on the railing of a stair to examine…well, she doesn't know, because he hasn't spoken. But the whole thing is a wobbly affair, because he's holding his notebook in one hand and a water bottle in the other, balanced on the rail and trying his hardest, as far as she can tell, to break his neck. She watches this for a full ninety seconds, while the crime scene photographers gape on in bewilderment, before finally walking over and snatching the bottle from his hand. His head whips round, his feet shift precariously on the polished wood of the banister, and he stares at her, startled, because it is most voluntary interaction they've had in three months, and he doesn't know what to make of it.

"Don't fall," is all she says, and it comes out full of irritation even though that isn't how she'd meant it.

" 'Kay," he breathes, and she's not even sure he really spoke, but then he's back to looking at something, and she moves on her own quest throughout the room, his water bottle in hand, without another word.

She's engrossed in going through the victim's bills, standing over a dead man's desk, her mental gears turning as fast as they can, and a picture is starting to form, like a shadowy movie playing on a grainy screen. Her concentration is so focused on the papers, on the story-line of this grisly scene that's slowly solidifying in her head, that she doesn't even know he's come towards her until his shadow falls across the files, and his big paw is pulling the water bottle back from her hand with nimble fingers.

She startles at the sudden invasion of her space, the unannounced contact of his skin on hers. Before she has the barest chance to recover, he flinches back apologetically, backpedaling until he's well out of her bubble, to stand awkwardly with his hand out, a silent request for the return of his bottle. But there, too, is the anxious rocking he's doing on the balls of his feet, the slight twitch in his fingers, the distracted set of his mouth, and she knows, in the way she's always known these things about him, that he isn't finished with his investigation yet. A glance around at all the unstable surfaces he's yet to clamber on and over, and all the valuables he's yet to almost-break, and she decides there's no point in him having his hands full while he does it. "You done?" Is what she asks, and he blinks his brown eyes twice in answer, uncertain.

"Uh, I-- uhm, n-no."

She shakes the bottle at him. "I've got it 'till you're finished." It still doesn't come out kindly, and she sighs, because she's still not ready to forgive him, but she's not this angry with him, either.

She's distracted from the trail of her thoughts when his eyes suddenly widen, almost comically, but decidedly not. He shakes his head side to side, emphatic --about what, she doesn't know-- rocks purposefully forward, reaches out with his long fingers, and yanks the bottle from her hand.

The response is instantaneous. Fury bubbles up inside her, alongside a thick, sick rush of bewilderment, and she imagines, in his gaze and countenance, that she can feel his judgment washing over her like ice-water, a trumpet-call of her incompetence. Water carrier, right. She hears, amid the roaring in her ears. Don't even trust you with that. And she knows he hasn't spoken, but in that moment, sees the words there, inside his brain, thinks he might as well have, and what right has he got to think that of her, ever? "What the hell are you doing?" She spits the words like daggers, her tone a frozen branch breaking in the dead of winter, and she hasn't been this angry in three months, but it's all back again now like it never left, because it's been three months, but apparently, it's meant nothing. "You--"

"You shouldn't have to carry anybody's water. Ever."

He blurts this in a rush, voice trembling with a certain desperate passion she's never heard before, a million other words, a billion other apologies swimming in his gaze and hovering on his lips, and just like that, all is silence again. In the following quiet, she watches, slack-jawed, as he flinches back, slow-motion, against what he's just said; cringing, like he used to in the beginning, when he thought she would mock everything he said, cringing like he had that day he'd asked her that idiotic, patronizing question.

No, I get it. You're the genius, and I just carry your water.

Right then and there, she forgives him. Because what he's just said is ridiculous and not at all what she'd meant, but it's also exactly what she'd meant. Exactly what she wanted, needed to hear. For all his eloquent theorizing on a case, his mesmerizing story-telling in an interrogation room, Bobby Goren has never been one for personal words, and sometimes the only way he could do any of it was like a little boy, expressing the big picture in the tiniest way possible.

She wants, in that instant, to smile at him, laugh with him, hug him as hard as she possibly can, and maybe never let him go again. To let him that know it is going to be okay-- they are going to be okay. But again, the three month silence is a barrier thicker and thornier than her tired heart can break through, and instead she says: "Someone's been causing trouble over you being a rat." And almost groans at how guarded and wary and not-at-all-caring it sounds, but figures, well, at least it's a starting point, and isn't that something?

In response, she expects him to duck his head and brush it off. To stare at her across the non-sequitur like she's lost her mind. She imagines a dozen of Bobby-ish responses, wondering which one he will pick and where they will go from here, and waits.

But he does none of them. His response is a categorical refusal of all the options she'd mentally arranged. Instead, his face darkens like a thundercloud, his big hands clench in on themselves in fists, he steps towards her, and for the first time in years she realizes how big he is. "Has someone been giving you a hard time?"

And he looks perfectly ready to punch someone out.

"No, I just--"

"Look, Ea--" He stops himself suddenly, takes a deep breath, and she can physically see him rein himself in. "Detective Eames, if you're being given trouble in the squad because of me, we-- you can go to the Captain and ask for a… for a t-transfer, or leave, or any action you, you feel is appropriate. I didn't know this issue was affecting you, or I would have reported it before this."

He stands in front of her then, waiting respectfully for her answer, but her brain is frozen, scrabbling at inches of slick ice on a jagged cliffside, the words playing over and over again on loop, beating mercilessly against her eardrums in the form of the ensuing silence. 'Detective Eames.'

All traces of Bobby have disappeared. Detective Goren is back in front of her, professional and aloof, and she suddenly wonders how she could have let this get so far out of hand. She was furious, and he'd hurt her and terrified her, yes, but this is also Bobby. He's an idiot, and brash, and self-centered, yes, but also selfless, and usually uncertain and nearly backwards when it comes to the things so close to his heart that it hurts to even think about them. She had known that, knows that, and still, somehow, managed to reduce their relationship to Detective Eames.

By no means is he absolved. By no means is it suddenly like nothing ever happened, but Alex realizes in that instant that this has gone on much further than it ever should have. She thinks back on all the silence filling the past three months, but it is suddenly instead filled with his abortive attempts at talking, filled with the lost, sorry look in his gaze whenever their eyes met.

She knows, in that moment, that she has to say something, to fix this mess, because he's never been good at it, and he's always relied on her for it, and that, that right there is the proof of how much he values her, and it has been in front of her all along but she hasn't seen it.

"Don't be a fucking idiot." That's how she answers him, and then watches him turn into a deer in headlights, gawking at her like she's a semi headed straight towards him with her brakes out.

She knows it's not the best thing to have said. Knows it's not the nicest, nor the clearest answer she could have given him, and wonders, for a moment, if she shouldn't try again, extend a verbal olive branch or at least some small opening for him to take.

But this once, this one fucking time, would it kill him to make the first move? Beyond some oblique statement about water, beyond some silent plea with his hands and his eyes? Over and over and over again, she's let it slide, let him pass on the graces of what she knows he's thinking inside his tangled brain, on graces of what she knows he means, inside his quiet heart, even if he can't seem to find the damn words to tell her out loud. But all of that has led them to this, this ugly, fucked up mess of cold and quiet and pain, and just this once, Alex doesn't want to have to fix it all by herself.

So she waits. Waiting with Bobby is always a dangerous game. He is the master of waiting, and skilled in the art of walking away when his patience runs out. Theirs is now a standoff that could go on for hours, or weeks, or another three months, but this time, she refuses to be the one to give in.

Twenty seconds pass. Thirty. He shifts, watching her anxiously with his head tilted to left, just so. Forty five. His mouth opens. Shuts. Opens. He shuts it again, and sighs. Fifty five. One minute. A minute ten--

And Bobby caves.

"Look," He stammers, shrugging his shoulders. "Look--" Spreading his arms out wide, hands splayed up in a hopeless, helpless gesture. "Can I-- w-will you let me….Can we talk?" He rubs the back of his neck, and avoids her gaze. "Please? Eames, please?"

And, for the briefest moment, Alex struggles. She struggles with her pride and with her temper, with her hurt feelings and with all the feelings she has ever felt for the man in front of her. For a moment, it seems like it's too much. Because there is all of her, and there is all of him, and there is everything in between and everything that's between them, and it's all just toomuchtoofast, and maybe talking isn't the best idea, after all.

But he's watching her through his lashes, practically bleeding earnestness, and she suddenly thinks he needs another haircut, and he'll never get around to it if she doesn't scold him first, and, and--

And she misses the sound of his voice, and the look on his face when he makes her laugh. She misses him thinking out loud at crime scenes, and folding his paperwork up into origami for her just so she'll feel compelled to smooth it out again, and eating Chinese takeout with chopsticks just to prove to her that he can, and laughing at her when she can't, and the way there always used to be a fresh packet of Skittles in her top desk drawer on days when she was feeling low.

She misses all of that, and a million other little things about him, and it's enough, it's more than enough to quash the tiny little part of her that still wants to be cruel.

"Okay," She says to him. "Okay."

And he exhales so hard his whole body shakes with it, and his eyes close shut, and relief pours out of him in pulsing waves so strong it nearly knocks her back a step. "Okay," He answers back, and she believes, even if it isn't yet, it's going to be, and for now, that's enough.

The shrilling of a cell phone suddenly fills the air between them, and she realizes it's hers right before Bobby's begins chirping as well. Two seconds later, the radios clipped to uniforms' belts begin blaring to life, crackling with static and urgent voices, a melee of confusion and noise, and the message quickly becomes clear: Another victim.

"But this scene doesn't have any of the classic marks of a serial killer," Bobby murmurs, nearly to himself, but Alex almost, almost smiles anyway. "A spree killer, maybe, but…"

"Hmmm," She answers, but her tone is encouraging as they head to the SUV and on to the newest crime scene.

Balancing his notebook and his water bottle, he holds the door for her as they go. She nods her head in silent thanks. And just so, in that way they've always had, the ice between them shows signs of a thaw. Things are far from perfect, far from even being good again between them, and in all honesty, neither of them have any idea how long it will take to truly fix this mess that's been made of their relationship, of their partnership.

But it's a start.

Fin.