Author's Note: I'm going to be in trouble with my professor for putting off my master's paper on public communication to write this and I pretty much don't care. "Endgame" rocked my world (and apparently that of Bobby Goren too!) I couldn't help it – I had to write the meeting between the two women in his life. Spoilers for a few older episodes included (bonus points if you catch them all) and it's shippy if you squint, but don't do that or you'll ruin your eyesight. Just read it, let me know what you think, and don't sue me because the only thing you'll win is a large student loan debt and a 1,500 lb horse with a 3,000 lb attitude.

It wasn't as though she hadn't occasionally pictured this day in her head, turning the imagined scenario over and over again like a worry stone to be held and pondered and smoothed around the edges until its surface was polished and cool to the touch. The thought never materialized on its own, but rather had to be prompted – usually by a comment from her partner, Bobby Goren – but once it was, it never stayed very long. A few quick sweeps over it in her mind and it would retreat from whence it came, only to emerge when bidden again later.

Yet in these ruminations that occasionally took over the mind of Major Case detective Alex Eames, there was never a genuine belief that this would happen. In fact, the possibility of this event taking place was so slim that a piece of tissue paper couldn't fit between its edges. (Actually, the chances had been slimmer than that.)

Yet here she was.

It was a Saturday, it was sunny, and she was with her partner. Not an out of the ordinary day in most cases, as the pair often found themselves called out at all hours and on all days of the week. What made it different was the "where" of the situation. This time there was no crime scene, no CSU on the scene taking pictures and fingerprint evidence, and no crowd of gawkers and press teeming from behind bright yellow crime scene tape. This time, Alex Eames found herself feeling much more nervous and she wasn't even very sure why.

Perhaps it was because today she was standing in the room of Mrs. Frances Goren – the Frances Goren – mother of Frank and Bobby, retired librarian, and diagnosed schizophrenic. More than that, she was standing in the room of Frances Goren and extending her right hand to handshake and uttering the words, "It's very nice to meet you, Mrs. Goren. I've heard a lot about you."

The moment she did it, she fought the urge to peak out the window into the sunlit sky and see if perhaps a pig or two were flying by.

The improbability of this exact scenario didn't stem from the fact that Frances Goren lived in a mental health facility or that she suffered the effects of a schizophrenic mind, a life now further compounded now by the ravages of leukemia. Nor did it have anything to do with any part of Alex's life – a life that included a large, Irish Catholic family that took up many of her off hours and a sometimes strained, but usually loving relationship with her own mother. Rather, the very same thing that had just brought the two formidable women together was that which had also kept them apart for the past seven some odd years. That reason was standing just behind Alex, trying to be as unobtrusive as a six-foot four inch bear of a man can be.

His name was Bobby Goren.

Alex had long considered herself privileged to be someone whom her intensely private and standoffish partner trusted and it wasn't with any amount of ego that she also thought of herself occasionally as being his touchstone, his translator between the outside world and his feverishly overworked mind. Yet for all of their closeness – for they were very close in that way that is unique to those behind the blue wall - and for all of the shorthand dialogue, inside jokes, and genuine loyalty they shared, she had never once been invited into any part of his life that included his family. It went unspoken between them that the Goren family was off-limits, only to be mentioned in conversation under circumstances of Bobby's own choosing (and then only rarely and in passing). Still, this was understandable the more Alex learned about her partner's rocky childhood – one that consisted of a mother possessed by her own demons, a father rarely there and abrasive when he was, and a brother once idolized and now fallen into ruin.

If ever there was a recipe for creating a tormented soul, those three ingredients would most definitely be included and Bobby Goren would be the result.

Alex couldn't say that she blamed him for wanting to keep his family secrets locked away; she felt the same way whenever anyone pressed her to speak about her deceased husband. To a certain degree, memories were all she had left of him and talking about them seemed to reduce them in size, as though she were giving pieces of their life together with the very mention of his name – a life that got further and further away from her present existence with each passing day. So if Bobby wanted to hold his family memories – the good and the bad – close to him because they were his and because he wanted to preserve them if only to preserve a sense of himself, then who was she to judge?

Lately, though, more of that Goren family lore had been rising to the surface and Alex had seen the change in her partner's attitude towards it. In fact, if she had to establish the chain of events that led to this event (the way every good detective should), she would have to think back a bit until she reached a day a few weeks ago when a conversation with their captain took an unexpected turn. On that day, her partner had asked a loaded question and she hadn't answered him.

"Do I seem angry to you?"

He'd asked it innocently and in passing, almost as if it was meant to be a joke, but questions like that were never jokes with Bobby; they always had a certain weight behind them no matter how light the tone in which they were asked.

So, with a million thoughts and possible responses and false denials tumbling over and over in her mind, she hadn't answered. (After all, she'd always told her nieces and nephews that if they couldn't say something nice, they shouldn't say anything at all and Alex Eames is all for setting a good example - even when the kids aren't present to see it.) Instead, she'd walked back to their desks with him in her wake and the subject had dropped to the floor, where it languished still.

It was an act of kindness, really, her not telling Bobby that yes, in fact, he had been angrier lately. It still is, actually, and falls easily into the category of "Things Better Left Unsaid." After all, they're only just getting back into their comfortable rhythm and rapport after the strain of the late summer and the fall, a time when not only had Bobby's former mentor (a man like a father to him) fallen apart before his eyes, but his mother had been diagnosed with the terminal case of leukemia that was now numbering her days. Life had taken its toll on Bobby Goren in swift fashion and it's only lately that things have been really good between the two partners again. Now there are even days when she can tease him a bit like she used to and Alex doesn't want to jeopardize things. She cares about him too much for that.

And she supposes that's why she's come with him to Carmel Ridge today – not because she's long pictured what this moment might be like and is curious to find out, but because she cares deeply for her partner and wants him to know that she is willing to be a part of his present and future family in whatever way he needs her to be – even if it's only someone to talk to over coffee.

This visit is the only way she knows to tell him that makes any sense.

"I wish I could say the same about you… Alex, did you say your name was?" Frances responds, her handshake a bit weak from the chemo and but her gaze still sharp and honed despite the dark circles that surround them. It's a librarian's gaze that could instill silence with nary a blink.

Cancel the DNA tests, Alex thinks dryly. No one pauses mid-sentence like a Goren.

The older woman glances sideways at her son who stands awkwardly off to the side, hands held behind his back, and adds, "Bobby doesn't always like to share the details with his life with me, particularly where women are concerned."

"Mom, I've told you about my work and about my partner," he says.

His voice is apologetic and Alex suddenly realizes that she's never heard it take on that particular timbre before. Nearly eight years as partners and she's seeing him in a new way today – a frustrating thought more than a startling one. The man has been a puzzle for as long as she has known him but what really gets to her is the fact that every time she learns new information about him, it somehow manages to complicate her knowledge of him rather than clarify it. It's a unique gift – and subsequently annoying to her logical and methodical mind.

"No, you told me about a man called Eames," Frances protests, her hand waving in his direction. "You never mentioned an Alex and that's because you never tell me about the women in your life."

"I'm Eames," Alex puts in softly, lips curling into the barest of amused smiles. "That is, Detective Alex Eames."

Behind her, she can feel her partner rise onto the balls of his feet for the barest of seconds, then settle back onto his heels, no doubt blushing and glancing to the floor, embarrassed by the confusion. Since they entered the room, Bobby has attempted to make himself seem much smaller than he is and, while Alex doesn't even begin to fancy herself an amateur psychologist, she wonders if it isn't somehow her partner's way of regressing to childhood in the presence of his mother. He is, after all, very much his mother's son.

Still, for someone who usually uses his size to his advantage, it's a turn that's completely unexpected.

"But you're his girlfriend," Frances's eyes narrow in disagreement and she points a bony finger at Alex. To Bobby, she says, "Your brother Frank said you had a girlfriend – a very petite, cute girl like this one."

Bobby shook his head slowly and Alex half-expected to see him vehemently respond to her protest the way that he always did with suspects. That was, however, before she remembered where they were and whom they were speaking with.

"No, Mom," he began, voice patient and kind, "I told you that Frank misunderstood. He saw Eames and I on the street – working - and he thought… He thought we were a couple. We aren't. We… we're just friends."

Alex feels her heart break just a little bit when he explains the situation to his mother and she isn't quite sure why. Is it because she resents the fact that they're "just friends" – and if so, when did that happen? Moreover, if they're more than "just friends" (which she very sincerely believes that they are – after all, he's just brought her here today), then what, specifically should they be classified as? Or maybe they just "are" and that's all there is to it.

Upon more reflection, Alex ultimately concludes that her internal wincing is not so much concern for herself, but rather is caused by the feeling that she is standing in the middle of a very private conversation and unable to escape. Her partner sounds like he is confessing his sins and asking to do penance for them – he is unmarried, middle-aged, and alone in one of the largest cities in the world, certainly not his mother's long ago dream for him – and it hurts her to hear him say it. It's moments like this one that she wants nothing more than to pull him into her arms and protect him from the pains of the outside world – a move that would definitely put them outside of the realm of "just friends."

"This is the type of girl you choose to just be friends with? Did I not raise you right?" Frances Goren sounds appalled now and Alex fights back the chuckle that rises in her throat. The tone in the room has just lightened considerably and she doesn't even have to turn to look at Bobby to know that a relieved smile is slowly creeping its way across his weathered face.

"Mom, the department has rules about that sort of thing," he tells her in a voice that pretends to scold.

"Eh, rules!" she waves her hand to show how much she thinks of his explanation and returns her attention to Alex. "Next thing you know, he'll say that he can't go out with you because he's always dated tall blondes. My son and his million excuses for everything."

"He'll probably explain his reasoning with an entry from the encyclopedia too," Alex adds a bit snidely.

"You do know him!" Frances claps her hands together with glee. She points a finger at her son again: "See, Bobby – this one I like. She's sharp. Reminds me of me."

"She's sharp all right," Bobby agrees somewhat ruefully.

"Tall blondes, hmm?" Alex turns to survey her partner's face, which is slowly turning a shade of pink that she's never seen on him before.

This is an eye-opening experience indeed.

"You know, I worked with a girl in Vice who was blonde and five-ten…" she starts to say before Bobby gives her a full-on grin and cuts her off.

"No way," he protests. "I know all about Walsh and you can forget it."

"Don't say I didn't offer," Alex shrugs and returns the smile. They're at ease with one another again and it's refreshing.

Frances looks pensive and asks her son, "Bobby, what was the name of that blonde girl you dated right after you got out of the army? You know, the one with the cats."

"You mean Lola?" he asks by way of an answer, brow furrowed.

"Yes, Lola," she nods, remembering. To Alex, she says, "You know he's allergic to cats, right?"

"I had heard something about that," Alex replies, still smiling as she remembers a crime scene investigation from a few years prior. "He ate hairballs for her, didn't he?"
"It was a homeopathic remedy for cat allergies," Bobby interjects defensively.

Frances claps her hands together and chuckles. "Hairballs! That's a good one! He did, though. He really did." She pauses a moment, then adds, "He was crazy about that one. What ever happened to her, Bobby?"

"She's married to a guy who sells real estate in New Hampshire," he tells her. "Two kids, four cats. I get a Christmas card every year."

"Hmm," Frances looks pensive. "See? That could have been you."

"Mom, Lola and I weren't right for each other in the end," he tells her patiently. "That's why we broke up."

She ignores his explanation and turns back to Alex. "What about you, Alex? Are you married?"
"No," Alex draws the word out, as it's a question she's never been comfortable with since the first time she had to check "widow" on a form. Frances Goren's eyes probe her until she adds finally, "I was once… but not anymore."

She feels Bobby's sympathetic gaze on her and knows that those dark eyes have softened, that he's feeling a bit guilty for opening her up to this line of questioning. He has no reason to, but as her friend, she knows he feels responsible. Shouldering the burdens of the world is her partner's special weakness.

"He died, didn't he?" Frances must read it on her face to ask the question with such confidence.

"Mom," Bobby cuts in with a warning. "It's not…"

"Bobby, why don't you go get me some more water?" his mother turns a stern gaze to him but her words aren't a question.

"Look, I really…" he tries again before Frances stops him again.

"We'll be fine, Bobby," she says quickly. "Get the water."

His eyes search Alex's face helplessly and she gives an almost imperceptible nod to acquiescence. Something in the way that Frances Goren asked about the death of her husband was gentle – maternal even – and there was a thread of understanding running through it. She too is a widow – in fact, in many ways she was a widow long before Bobby's father had died – and so she and Alex both understand one another in that respect. Alex doesn't feel at all uncomfortable with her partner leaving the room, though she's curious as to the reasoning behind Frances's temporary banishment of her son.

One way to find out, she thinks as Bobby heads reluctantly into the hall, water pitcher in hand and shooting her one more apologetic glance over his shoulder on the way out the door.

"What was his name?" Frances asks her quietly when Bobby is gone.

"Joe," Alex answers without thinking and is surprised when the name doesn't clench her heart the way she's accustomed to. She was prepared for the question this time, she supposes – so prepared that, unprompted, she adds, "He was killed on the job."
"He was a police officer too," Frances nods, following the train of Alex's story and causing the petite detective to briefly wonder how a woman who supposedly lives much of the time in a world that exists only in her mind can be so sharp.

But then, getting knocked around by life is enough to make anyone sharp and Frances Goren certainly had been.

"Yes," Alex tells her.

"You must have loved him a great deal," the older woman continues.

"I did," Alex agrees, wondering again where the conversation is headed and shocked to hear the next question even though a large part of her subconscious has seen it coming all along:

"Do you love my son?"

Alex blinks twice, rapidly. It's with a measure of confusion and trepidation in her voice that she half-asks, half-states the words, "I'm sorry…?"

"My son, Bobby," Frances says patiently, the voice of a librarian explaining something to a young child, "Do you love him?"

"I really don't think…" Alex begins to tell her for the second time that the NYPD has distinct regulations about that sort of thing and that while she and Bobby are very good friends, et cetera, et cetera, but is cut off by a quick shake of the other woman's head, her sharp features quickly becoming no-nonsense.

"I'm not putting you on the spot," Frances tells her in a tone that isn't as reassuring as Alex would like for it to be. "I'm a dying woman here, Detective Alex Eames, and I just want to know if you love my son. It's a very simple question with a very simple answer – yes or no."

Alex takes a deep breath and isn't surprised when it does nothing to settle the butterflies that have taken her stomach hostage. "Mrs. Goren, I think it's actually a very complicated question; Bobby and I are complicated people…"

She's cut off again before she can fumble her way through an extemporaneous explanation with another wave of Frances Goren's hand. The older woman then briefly pinches the bridge of her nose – exasperated, Alex thinks – and sighs.

"Let me see if I can explain this just a little better," she says. "My son, he's made it a point to take very good care of me over the years – better care than I deserved sometimes even. He comes every Saturday to see me, he calls every night, he sends flowers and makes sure that I have nice things around me. I know he does it because he's trying to make up for his father not always being around to help me when he and his brother were young – he's done that sort of thing since he was about seven years old."

Seven years old – the year Bobby realized that something was wrong with his mother, Alex recalls. The year that young Bobby stopped being a child like other children and became an adult trapped in a small body. The year he began to shoulder the problems of the world – a weight that now seems close to crushing him these days.

"But now I'm dying, Detective Alex," Frances continues and Alex wonders momentarily if she'll get back to referring to her as just "Alex" at any point during their conversation. "I'm on my way out of this life and my son is about to become an orphan. It seems odd to put it that way, I know, what with him having all that gray hair on his head and shopping in the big and tall section of stores, but it's true. He's going to be an orphan. He won't have me to look after but he won't have me to talk to anymore either."

She glances quickly out the door – no doubt making sure Bobby isn't back – before going on to say, "He thinks that I don't always hear him when he talks about his life, but there's a lot I know – a lot that he doesn't have to tell me. And even though I didn't know you were a woman until today, I always liked hearing about his partner Eames; it always sounded like you two were best friends, like he actually trusts you. He doesn't trust people easily, you know."
"I know," Alex finds herself capable only of those two words. Her feet are rooted to the floor and she feels herself bound to Frances Goren's words as though anchored there.

"So when I asked if you love him, I didn't mean did you want to run away, marry him, and have two kids and four cats like that Lola," Frances smiles a bit. "It'd be nice if you did, but I'm smart enough to know that the closer my son gets to fifty, the further he is from all that nonsense. Always been a bit of a loner, my Bobby. What I meant instead was that, if you love him – and I have a hunch that you do – you'll look after him for me, you'll listen to him when he talks and make him feel not so much like an orphan. You'll help him after I'm gone so he can live the rest of his life the way that he should. Can you do that for an old, dying woman, Alex?"

And Alex knows now that she never could have pictured this event – meeting Frances Goren, the Frances Goren – in a million years. Not even if someone had given her a script of the conversation would she have seen this coming; it is too unexpected, too real, and too…

Too much.

Alex Eames feels too much right now in this moment to extract a shred of anything tangible from the mix – not guilt, not amazement, not happiness, not any of the other swirling emotions within her. A torch has been passed just now; Frances Goren has just entrusted the care of her beloved son Bobby to Alex in the wake of her passing and she isn't exactly sure how to respond.

Listen to him when he talks, Frances had requested.

Alex ruefully remembers once telling her partner, "I only pretend not to listen when you talk" while they were poring over some information, teasing him for his often rambling explanations and seemingly bottomless stores of trivial information. But she also remembers the night she followed him into a darkened interrogation room after his confrontation with the nefarious Nicole Wallace and he quietly confessed to her that he'd been weakened by Nicole's plot against him because: "She picked a man I already didn't trust. She picked a man like my father."

Bobby Goren talks to her the way that he doesn't talk to anyone else and Alex knows it. She treasures it like the gift that it is, for someone's complete and total loyalty and trust is not a gift that can be given frivolously or treated thus. Just as Frances Goren's request cannot be taken lightly – and Alex can see that she's waiting rather impatiently for a reply.

"I can do that," Alex is surprised at the strength in her own voice.

"Thank you," Frances smiles. With a slight twinkle in her eye, she adds, "I knew that you loved him. I could tell – a mother knows these things."

"A mother knows what things?" Bobby is back now, water pitcher brimming, and his eyes dart back and forth between Alex and his mother nervously, afraid of what he's missed.

"Everything," Alex tells him simply, a smile curling her lips. "Didn't you know that?"

He looks at her a bit dubiously and says nothing. Still, it's to his credit that he doesn't probe Alex to elaborate further as they make their way back to the city following the visit. He lets the secret rest between his partner and his mother and they pass the time with idle chat and a good-natured argument about whether or not it's socially acceptable to acknowledge an appreciation for the music of Meatloaf.

The weight of the secret catches up to Alex Eames a week or so later, though, when a call from the nurse's station at Carmel Ridge catches her chasing her nephews and nieces through her parents' backyard on another rare Saturday off. The news of the passing of Bobby's mother is not a surprise, but the knowledge of what she must now do leaves her a bit nervous. Bobby, it seems, is still in his mother's now-packed and lifeless room. Someone will need to go and help him home.

Someone who loves him. Someone who will listen.

Alex isn't surprised to see the room darkened, nor is she surprised to see her partner's oversized figure sitting in a characteristic pose, eyes far away and blank. He doesn't hear her come in, doesn't acknowledge her presence until she speaks his name:

"Bobby."

As though startled from a deep sleep, he jerks, then rolls his eyes slowly to meet hers in the darkness.

"She's gone." The words are soft and simple but her partner seems to choke on them.

Alex peers down at him, heart breaking into a hundred pieces when she sees that his has shattered and lies in at least a million, and she wonders if she has the strength to put them both back together again.

"I know," she tells him quietly.

"They called you," he mumbles into a hand that is moving over his lips in what looks like an effort to make sure that he's still physically there.

"Yeah," Alex slides a chair up to his and sits down.

He nods silently.

"Bobby…" Alex starts to say but her partner shakes his head at her and his eyes glass over again.

"Not yet," he manages to hiss defensively. "Not yet."

"Okay," Alex nods slowly. She grabs his hand and holds it in both of hers, warming the cold fingers in her grasp. "You tell me when."

They continue to sit in silence in the dark room and Alex knows the answer to Frances Goren's question – the answer she didn't give, anyway. She can't not know it while tears stream down her face – tears that are not for the loss of a woman she came to admire though she knew her only briefly, but are instead for the broken heart of a man who can't bring himself to walk back into the light. She can't not know it when she realizes that, come hell or high water, she intends to be beside this man long after they're both retired from the NYPD and still arguing about Meatloaf (who may be socially accepted by then) over coffee in a rundown diner in Rockaway.

She has to know it because there is only one feeling that's absorbing her consciousness right now.

Do you love my son?

Yes I do.

Ruefully, Alex Eames admits to herself that, despite her protests, the answer really was simple after all.