A/N This story picks up where Blindsided left off; a tale of love and friendship between Bobby and Alex as they move through the events of the LOCI episodes. In case you didn't know, they aired the episodes out of order. In this story I will move through the eps in the order we think they were supposed to have been in, based on the production dates.

The Road to Emmaus

Chapter 1 - Faithfully

He'd come back too soon. She'd told him so. She'd told him he wasn't ready, but he insisted. Bobby just needed something in his life to feel normal again, and while his relationship with Alex was the best thing that had ever happened to him, it wasn't enough. He felt lost. He felt like he was marking time.

They'd argued over it, too. He'd raised his voice.

"There's nothing wrong with me! I can do the fucking job in my sleep, Alex!"

"I didn't say you can't do the job, Bobby. I didn't say that. I just think that maybe right now, you shouldn't."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Bobby, don't make me spell it out. You need some time. Time to heal."

"Forgive me, but I don't see how sitting around staring at a fucking wall is supposed to help me heal. I need to be… out there. I need to be… engaged."

"I wish you would see someone."

"Oh, don't start with that again. I saw Olivet. I did my time."

"That's just it. You did your time. You got your little doctor's note, but you didn't get any other damn thing out of it."

"Well what the hell was she supposed to tell me, Eames? That my whole family is gone and it's okay to feel bad about that? I don't see the point in going in there week after week after week to talk about how much it… hurts."

Alex frowned. He was so right, and he was so wrong. Olivet could help, she was sure of that, if he would only give it a chance. And he was hurting, and he was trying very hard not to buckle from all the pain. "Okay, all right," she said finally, lowering her voice. "But Bobby, promise me you'll think about it first. Just one more time, think about it."

And he'd thought about it that night, and he'd gone into 1PP the next morning. He worked beside her for five weeks and three days, and she saw the bags under his eyes growing and she saw how he was still relying on comfort food.

He was wearing himself out, and he had a very short fuse. She tried delicately to get him to take care of himself, and he snapped and snarled and she was forced to back away.

Then, all of a sudden as they were packing to go home for the night, Bobby announced, "I'm taking a vacation."

"Oh?" Alex asked, surprised.

"Yeah, uh… Ross, he, uh, he…" Bobby shrugged. "He told me to take a couple weeks or see Olivet again." He looked down as he spoke.

"Bobby, that's, well that's okay. Maybe it will help. Where're you going?" She knew he wasn't going to see Olivet.

"I, uh… I don't know yet. I've got a couple of ideas."

"Well, let me know, okay?" They hadn't been romantic in a while, but Alex still felt a connection to him. She still felt she deserved to know what went on in his life.

"Sure, yeah, of course." Bobby grinned. "Probably need you to take me to the airport or something, anyway."

He gave her a tiny grin, and Alex returned it. She hoped he would ask her. She would do anything for him.

Bobby felt gritty, like when you have a spot of house paint on your arm and you rub and it pinches and pulls until it breaks into a million tiny balls that cling to your skin until you finally give up and shower them off. And everybody and everything was pinching and pulling and rubbing at him. Especially Alex.

He loved Alex. He loved her dearly, and he knew… he KNEW… what she'd done for him. He was grateful. But he was so gritty it didn't come off that way.

She pinched, and he bit back. She pulled, and he jerked away. She rubbed, and he chafed. He couldn't keep it up anymore, so he backed away from her personally. He couldn't back away professionally, that would have undermined every effort he'd made toward normalcy. But personally, he drew back. He stayed home. He drank alone. His greatest pleasure was challenging himself to cook more and more complex meals. He was the only one who ate them, but he savored every bite.

He'd talked to them seven times. They were Brady's family, and so they were Bobby's family. His only family. Bobby hadn't told Alex about them.

Everything was rattling around in his brain. That was the problem, really. There were too many questions, too many unresolved issues, and too many things to think about. On a night when his brain was attacking the idea that his father was a serial killer, a new thought had come to him. He might still have family. Even though Frank was gone, and Mom was gone… someway, somewhere, there might be someone who had the same blood as he did.

So he had done some research. And he had found Kathy. And after days of telling himself they wouldn't want anything to do with the son of a serial killer, he remembered she was the daughter of a serial killer, and they were siblings. Bobby called her.

She knew all about Brady's final days. She'd attended his execution, not because she cared about Brady himself, but because she had to give closure to herself and to this idea she had of "father." She hadn't told her kids about him. He had never been a part of their lives. But they knew her father had been absent from her life, and so she told them about her half-brother Bobby. They wanted to meet him.

Bobby was going to meet them. He was going to make contact with the last people on Earth he could call his family.

Alex tossed and turned in bed. She couldn't stop thinking of Bobby. She thought back to their argument and she was reminded of herself in the days when she was still seeing Olivet, barely recovered from her traumatic abduction by Jo Gage.

They'd had almost the same argument back then, only it was Bobby who'd been trying to keep her from coming back too soon. And she finally got the okay from Olivet and Alex had told Bobby "I'm not getting any better by myself."

And now she thought maybe that was true for Bobby, too. Alex was doing everything she could for him, but he was in a steady decline. He wasn't sleeping, and he was valiantly fighting depression. And even before he'd pulled away from her, he'd been fluctuating between deep, draining meditation and trying to escape it all.

Mostly he drank. He'd come in hung over more times since his brother died than in all the years she'd known him. And in the early days after Frank's death he'd escaped by having sex. Alex had indulged him in that, thinking it would help him somehow, but it had only made their relationship more complicated. And he had disappeared a few times, as well, some kind of overnight excursion. He wouldn't talk about those nights, except to promise her that there were no other women in his life.

She believed him. After all they'd been through, though he might not be forthcoming, when asked a direct question Bobby was honest with her.

Now she wondered where he was going on this vacation. She wished wholeheartedly that she could go with him. Alex sighed heavily and did the only thing she could do for him. She said a prayer.