A.N. What can I say, it's a cold, grey, rainy day in Ohio, and I'm bored. They still aren't mine, they belong to Dick, Vincent and Kathryn, and rightfully so.
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Bobby made his way down to the SUV from Shill's condominum. He was still seething and shaking from their confrontation.
He knew Eames didn't know what to make of his behavior. Well, that made them even, because he had absolutely no idea what to make of hers anymore. Every time he thought they had made some kind of progress into talking out their issues, mending their fractured friendship and partnership, she said something that raised his uncertainties all over again.
They had talked about her "it's too late" statement regarding her career being tainted by her association with him. She had assured him she didn't know why she said it, it was just something that popped out in the stress of the situation they found themselves in with Leslie LeZard, and she truly didn't feel that way about him. He wanted to believe her; he tried to believe her; but her actions and other remarks she made were at odds with her assurances. He no longer knew where he stood with her; she seemed to be both pulling him closer and pushing him away.
Her remark about his mentor tore at his heart and soul. God knows, he felt so agonizingly guilty over what Jo and Declan had done to Eames, and in the process, to him. Eames told him numerous times, beginning while he sat at her hospital bedside, that she didn't blame him. But the profiler in him knew better. She might not consciously be aware of it, but blame him she did. And he couldn't honestly hold that against her. He shouldn't have been so blind, so anxious to show Declan how far his protégé had come in the years since they'd last seen one another. He should have considered the possibility that if the killer wasn't Sebastian, it had to have been someone with access to every detail of Sebastian's crimes – and that possibility was limited to Declan and Jo. Because he'd been so busy trying to impress Declan and defending him to Ross, he'd almost lost the one thing in his life that mattered the most to him – his partner. Fortunately, due to her own strength and resourcefulness, and certainly not to anything he'd been able to do, Eames had managed to rescue herself. Kira Danforth hadn't been so lucky. Shill was lucky a bruised hand was all he'd gotten.
Before his mother died, he'd almost worked up enough courage to talk to Eames about the Gages, and his feelings. Almost. Then came Mark Ford Brady, and his mother's revelation about who his father may or may not be. He had been horrified then, not only by what his mother must have suffered at Brady's hands during that long-ago weekend upstate -- a weekend so important to her, she left two small children alone to fend for themselves. He was horrified now, and frightened, by the capacity for physical violence that seemed to be gradually manifesting itself in him, and he could hear Brady's words playing over and over in his head – You have it in you – you have it in you ---
He could never tell Eames now ------
