Comfort

A/N: This is Post-Loyalty. And yes, I understand that they're a bit OOC, but I thought that this needed to be said.

Bobby and I sat in the park, on opposite ends of a bench, watching the pigeons, drinking coffee. It was so quiet, this grey spring morning. Mist surrounded us for now, though I knew the sun would burn it off later. I could feel his eyes scan over me every few seconds, and I'm sure he could feel my eyes on him the same way.

I broke the silence. "You were so young."

"What?"

"When we were first partnered."

Bobby coughed. "You're younger than I am."

"I know, but I had just lost Joe and…" my voice trailed off.

"… and, well, I hadn't." He sighed. "My hair was still dark, too."

"And you wore those suits. I was always worried that you would ruin them."

"How would I ruin them?"

"By getting crime scene paraphernalia on them. Blood, brains –"

" – the works."

"Yes." I sipped my coffee. "You were so sure of yourself."

"Rightfully so, I thought."

"Yes."

Bobby smiled wanly. "I was happy. I had work I loved."

Had. That horrible past tense.

"You smiled more then."

I have to give Bobby credit, he really tried to smile. He really tried. As miserable as we both were right now, such an effort was… useless. He tried to get his unshaven face into some semblance of a grin, but… nope.

"You laughed in life's face."

He chuckled and swallowed coffee. "Life was funny."

Not anymore. I heard the words, unspoken. From the expression on his face, he heard them too.

Bobby used to smile. His face could break into a grin on a moment's notice, laughing in truth at some quip of mine or laughing to disconcert a suspect. The lines around his mouth and eyes were laugh lines more than frown lines.

Not anymore.

Silence.

Music shattered the silence between us. Bad pop or rock, I really couldn't tell, but it ended soon enough. The noise of a teenager protesting and a mother trying to enforce music quality restrictions commenced.

"Can you believe that people actually dance to music like that?"

"Bobby, you used to dance all the time. With suspects, with witnesses –"

He shrugged. "I liked to dance."

Again the past tense.

Damn it.

Bobby danced to the music heard only in his head, to music I wished I could hear. He could dance around a suspect, waiting for the suspect to make a move so Bobby could pounce and get exactly what he needed. He could dance with a witness to make them comfortable with him, to get them to talk. He could dance in and out of a suspect's personal space, in and out of his head.

He could get into any suspect's head and come out unscathed. He got into the head of that creep who murdered four of his mistresses – into the head of that priest who killed his own drug addict of a son – into the head of that plastic surgeon who made his wife disappear so thoroughly that even Bobby and I couldn't find her body –

But I blinked, sometime between those events and now, and suddenly that happy past is 10 years ago. What happened? Why does time always go faster when the times are good?

"Eames?"

"Bobby?"

"Why me?"

I wanted to ask, Why me, what?, but I looked into his dark eyes and I could see the entirety of his question. Why am I the world's punching bag? What did I do to make the Powers that Be so mad at me? Why did my life have to turn to crap before my eyes? Why can't I be happy?

"Bobby…" I tossed my now-mostly-empty coffee cup into the garbage can. I put a hand on his shoulder. He tensed, surprised, but then relaxed into the touch. I could feel the thump-thump-thump-thump of his heartbeat, faster than normal, out of stress, no doubt.

"I never thought I should ask, you know. Why me, I mean. Why did I have to have the schizophrenic mother? Why did I have to have the serial killer of a father? Why did I have to lose the job I loved? Why – " his voice cracked. "Why me?"

"Bobby…"

He leaned his head on one arm, and turned his face toward me. "Why me?"

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

I sighed. I knew why, at least partially why, but knowing it doesn't make it any easier to say. "Bobby, you're a fool."

He blinked. "I didn't expect to hear that."

"You are a fool in the oldest sense of the word. For all your seriousness, for all your genius, Bobby, you're still a king's jester, a village idiot, a person who can't help but tell truth to power. But emperors don't like to be told that they've got no clothes. The Powers that Be wanted a Bobby that could be a genius and yet wouldn't tell them that they were naked, wanted a Bobby that could be their servant."

He growled, "I am no one's servant."

"Exactly, Bobby. You're not a slave to the system. You know that, even something is legal, it may not be right or just or honest, and Bobby, dear Bobby, you won't shut up if the Powers that Be try to tell you otherwise."

"I think they've got me to stop annoying them now. They took my badge and my gun and my job, the job that I loved so much."

"But they didn't break you."

"No, they didn't."

Silence.

"Do you think we'll ever get our laugh lines back?"

"You actually want more wrinkles?"

The expression on his face made me laugh, and made him laugh, and in that split second I saw a glimpse of the old Bobby, the happy Bobby. That Bobby had all those old laugh lines and some new ones, and I knew then.

I knew that Bobby wasn't broken forever.

I knew that he and I could get up and walk on, find new crimes to solve. We would get old – he already had grey hair, and his weight gain – but Goren and Eames would come back.

Bobby could be happy again, smile again, laugh again. And that was a comfort.