-1Disclaimer: 'Law and Order: Criminal Intent' and all its characters belong to Dick Wolf. Not me. : (

A/N: Another idea for a story popped into my head while I was jotting down a little clip from an unknown CI fanfiction today at school. So, here it is. I know, I should be finishing my other three stories I have still open, but the monkeys are back.

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Twelve Years // Chapter One: Alexandra Eames

Alexandra Eames was a cop. She might've not looked it, but deep down in her core, everything screamed cop. She wore her gun as most women would have worn a precious diamond necklace and she was closer to her partner than most women were to their husbands. Everything around her, even if she didn't realize it, would be analyzed in her sharp honey-colored eyes. She accomplished more amazing feats in one day than many people would be able to complete in a life time. She had taken lives when it came to saving someone else's. She chewed up suspects daily and dreamed about murder nightly. Alexandra Eames lived and breathed cop.

Alex scribbled down the last of her report and chugged what was left of the cold, stale coffee in the paper cup on her desk. With a quick sigh of relief and a stretch to go with it, the woman rose to grab her coat from the wooden coat rack behind her. "Hey, Bobby, wanna go get a drink?" she asked the man who was sitting at the desk across from hers.

"On a Wednesday night?" he asked, peering up at her through amused brown eyes.

"It's just one drink," she sneered back, even though there was a smile on her face.

"That's what you said last time," Bobby told her, and stood to collect his things.

Alex shuddered at the memory of the last time the two went out for drinks as she and her partner headed for the elevator. "How about dinner instead?" Bobby suggested as he poked at the down button.

Being asked to dinner by a handsome man might have made most women blush, but Alex merely nodded and stepped into the elevator. She had been with Bobby for nearly seven years now. She had fallen asleep in his apartment over bad Chinese and murder, she had gotten so drunk that she couldn't remember the night before and had to be carried home by him, she had shrugged off the rumors that had been thrown around about them, and had climbed the obstacles that sometimes came between them. Most people would have called it love. Alex called it being a good partner.

"I'll drive," she said, even though Bobby knew he wasn't going to be able to get behind the wheel in the first place. "I'll follow you home, then we can go in mine. Does that sound good?"

"Yup," Bobby replied as the doors slipped open and the two stepped out.

"Where do you wanna go? It's your choice this time," Alex reminded him as the click of her heels echoed through the garage.

"Oh yeah, it is." He smiled, glad she remembered and stopped beside his car to think. "How about Inshoku?" he asked, referring to the fancy little Japanese restaurant a few blocks up from his apartment.

Alex nodded, grinned at him. "Sounds good. And a quick changes of plans; I'll meet you at your apartment in a few, I gotta drop by my house real quick."

"Okay. See you then." Bobby watched her walk to her car before he slipped into his own and backed out.

Alex cranked the heat once settled inside her vehicle, an action she hoped would fend off the cold of New York's brutal winter, and pulled out. She drove out of the garage and sped home, wanting to be brief about her side trip. Alex slipped into her driveway and jumped out of the car, kept it running. It was only a quick in and out thing, right?

It was the smell that hit her first. The smell of death. There was no way you could mistake it. Cautiously, Alex drew her gun as she peered up the steps to her building. Spread out at the top was a limp figure, and through the dull moonlight she saw the eerie sparkling of blood. Staring around to make sure the area was safe and secure, Alex pulled out her cell phone, dialed. When a voice at the other end rang out, she said, "This is Detective Alexandra Eames, badge number 3798. I have a homicide."