Timeline: Sometime right after Purgatory
POV: Alex
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Never will. Wouldn't want to. Too much pressure.
Resentment and Accpetance
Alexandra Eames never considered herself a resentful kind of person. She liked to think that she was instead an accepting type of person. Growing up, Alex never resented the fact that her father would spend hours talking to her brothers about cars and sports while relegating her in his mind as his "little lexie girl", a girly girl like her sisters to be treated as such. She learned to appreciate the time that her father would spend with her and knew, somehow, that one day she would show him she could be as tough as her brothers. She accepted that this was the way things were in her house and moved on.
In her marriage to Joe, she didn't resent it when he was promoted first (despite the equal time they spent on the force) and she didn't resent it when he chose to spend every Thursday night and Sunday with his buddies. Some of her friends couldn't understand it. But she did. She just accepted that this was the way it was. And it suited her just fine.
Believe it or not, she didn't even really resent it when Joe was killed and she became a widow at thirty-three. She cried, she was angry, she was million other things, but she wasn't resentful. He was a cop. She knew what that entailed, and she accepted it.
There was one time Alex came close to being resentful, she thought. When she carried her nephew within her for nine months, and then had to relinquish him immediately to her sister right away. She watched her sister and and brother-in-law carry him out of the hospital, back home, to their life, and she felt a twinge of resentment. But then. Not really resentment, more like, emptiness. But it was as it was meant to be, and even then, she accpeted her place as his Aunt, and moved on from there.
But now, now Alex felt nothing but resentment. And this was very new and disturbing feeling for her. She resented the way she continuously backed up her partner throughout the years, without so much as a "thank you". She resented his continued rebuffs to her inquiry's into his personal life. She resented that fact that he had come to expect her to be there for him, no matter what, without so much as an explanation. She resented having to be the go-between between Bobby and the Captain. All the time. Everyday. She resented the fact that Bobby Goren has shown little interest in her. As a person, and not just a partner. When she really thought about it, she resented that in all these years, it never once occurred to him to ask her what was going on her life, was she happy, did she have a bad day? Even when she was kidnapped, and almost killed, it was Alex who had to console Bobby. Really. She had to spend much of her time convincing him it wasn't his fault. Easing his guilt. No. It was all about him. Always. And she resented the hell out of it.
The Tate's thing, the suspension, and especially the aftermath, well , that's it. It had been five months of working with this temporary partner or that, having to do mounds of Bobby's unfinished paperwork, and basically being relegated to boring, bottom of the barrel cases. Then he comes back, all her worrying, all her hurt feelings, finding out he was undercover and the best he could muster up to say was "Eames, I'm sorry." Hell yeah, she was resentful.
But she came to a decision. She' done. Being resentful takes a lot out a person, and she can't take one more minute of this feeling. So the next morning she comes in before the sun rises and retypes that letter she wrote so many years ago and places it on Ross's desk. Then she walked away waiting for some kind of peace to come upon her.
But even after, she worries. In the end, what will Bobby say? What will he do? Will anyone else be able to stabalize him, keep him check? And she laughed at the irony within herself. Because she thought this decision would make her feel better. Make her resentment go away. But it hasn't. And now she resents having made that decision at all. He'll move on, work with a new partner, (or many) and she'll be stuck trying to build a brand new partnership with someone else, work hard at getting to know them. She's not up for that kind of work, again. And she can feel that feeling start to grow again...and she resents it.