Okay, guys, here we go. It's the last chapter before "the talk" follows. Bobby's in his study and tries to gather the nerve to go down and finally answer all questions Alex might have ever had.

It can take a little longer for the update because college starts soon and I have so many muses bouncing in my head that I first must let them out before I can return to this one.

Thank you all for reading and reviewing. :)

CHAPTER 4 ~ COUNTDOWN

He'd thought he hallucinated when he came out of the bathroom and saw Eames leaning against the banister, obviously waiting for him. Never in his life would he have expected that she'd follow him.

Bobby sat in the old brown leather chair; his feet rested on the desktop. He stared through the round window facing the promenade, Manhattan and New Jersey in the distance. But he didn't really see it as little as the fierce red glow of the fireball slowly disappearing beyond the horizon and illuminating the sky in all shades of red, orange, pink, golden and yellow.

He'd felt so many emotions rushing through him that moment. He was thrilled, delighted, scared, frightened, confused, hopeful, sad and felt guilty as hell. It began to piss him off. Why couldn't he be just normal? Why did he always hurt her when he actually wanted nothing more than… what? What did he actually want?

He loved her. At least he thought it was love. He had never felt something like that before he met her. She'd gotten through to him in a way he'd rarely allowed people to. He didn't want to bond with her. He'd thought it wouldn't last, that she soon would leave again, tired, grossed out and scared away by the department's whack job number one. He'd given her a week, maximum. Now they neared their seventh year.

He never wanted to let her near him, feared her rejection. His previous partners had reacted like that. Not letting them in at all had indeed helped because it upheld the illusion that it wouldn't hurt. That was bull! Of course it hurt, denying it or not.

Involuntarily his mind wandered back to the Garrett case. The judge and his perverted teenager son had had a faible for school girls, raped murdered them and hidden behind the power of his position. He had despised the man like nothing before because he had tramped on everything he believed in.

No one symbolizes the law as much as a judge… and Garrett was a shame! He'd sent a PI to Carmel Ridge to interrogate his dying mother. Frances had worked herself up into a hysterical fit and had to be sedated. After learning that he'd gone straight to Garrett's office. He'd almost punched that triumphant, smug smile off his face.

During a hearing at court later during the investigation it turned up that Alex had written a notice after about four months into their then still rocky partnership. Something in him had cracked then. He'd felt so betrayed and it had felt as if she ripped his heart out again and again while he'd sat in the audience and listened to a teary Eames who was forced to read it aloud by Garrett's attorney.

It had hurt so badly because he'd let her in, even let out a few snippets of his past to her. The whole time she'd sought his eyes but he'd refused to look at her. She'd tramped on the trust he had in her. Carver had given her the occasion to explain it. She'd even come after him, begging him to listen to her and letting her explain it. It had reached his mind but he had refused himself to her after this episode for a long time.

After they just began to grow closer again hell literally had broken lose.

First Jo Gage had kidnapped Alex. The hairs on the back of his neck and on his forearms stood up and a chill crept down his spine at the sheer idea. He thought he'd lost her for good after he found the blood in her house. It had almost horrified him into immobility that sometime he'd find her, tied up and tortured to death somewhere. He almost broke down with relief after he'd entered her hospital room and seen her with his own eyes.

Then in rapid succession Mark Ford Brady and his mother's reluctant revelation about her changing affairs with men during her marriage, her agonizing death and like the icing on the cake of mental hell called his life the Quinn case. He as well as their partnership had barely had time to recover from the vicious blows they were confronted with, had been and still were in inner uproar.

It amazed him to no end that she was there, had followed him and wanted to talk. He wondered about the sudden change. He'd tried so often in the last few weeks and also earlier to talk to her. He'd worried about her. Quinn had brought up some straining truths, especially for her. The life after Joe she'd built blew up right into her face and he had initiated it. She'd just shut down and shoved him away and it had hurt. He'd wanted to be there for her, comfort her, protect her...

He felt his pulse accelerate. Did she do it on purpose? Did she pay him back by reflecting his own behavior, by letting him feel how she felt when he refuse to talk to her? It dawned on him how often he must have refused himself to her. But he hadn't done it to hurt her purposely. On the contrary, he'd remained silent to protect her.

It was enough that he had to live with his past and the scars it had left. He didn't want to burden her with it as well.

Over and over again in the last seven years Eames had tried to include him in her family activities, holidays and such and when he'd backed away at least shared these experiences with him. He'd both craved and feared it. Alex had been his strongest connection to the normal life he'd known he'd never have. He'd wanted nothing more than to be normal, to be normal for her so that she probably once would…

Even more he'd feared it however because it made him even more aware of the broken home he grew up in and that had shape him into the man he was now. He began to question himself. Had it been right to do so? Alex had often accused him of lacking trust in her in the last years. He sensed that she was right. He'd patronized her by shutting her out and justifying it with protecting her peace of mind. He'd only sought the easy way out, trying to protect himself by forbidding himself any emotional nearness to others out of fear to get hurt. He was a damn coward!

His stomach twisted.

No, it wasn't right that way. Beneath the adult façade he wasn't a genius many claimed him to be or the profiler or the decorated Major Case Detective. He was a child, a hurt child. A neglected and suppressed child. He swallowed hard. Yes, an abused child. He felt bile rise behind his sternum after finally allowing the obvious to sink into his consciousness and swallowed hard and repeatedly to keep it down.

That was what he wanted to keep from her. He felt ashamed for what he was, for where he came from. Even death he feared less than Eames probably letting him fall like a hot potato when she found out about it. He wasn't so presumptuous to believe that her childhood had been all rosy but it couldn't have been such a living hell as his. Could she understand it? Could he make it clear to her? He could live with it… because he must, that is. But her, could she?

What did she say? That he could entrust himself to her about everything? That she wouldn't judge him and most of all wouldn't leave him. That she wanted to help him. That this was what friends, partners would do for each other. He wanted it so badly, wanted to free himself from these shackles which had held him back all his life, from this overwhelming burden that crushed him agonizing slow.

But how could Alex say this with such conviction when she had no idea what was lurking deep in him? His gaze wandered to the desktop… to the thin red folder lying on the scratched old oak wood; the only thing that was on the obsessively neat desktop besides a lamp, the ever-present leather binder and his laptop. He'd long banished any photographs from it. It hurt too much to look at them, being reminded of… then.

He quickly tore off his gaze and shook his head. He knew that she'd meant every word she'd said. He knew that she cared and worried about him. He did, too, about her, but hell, he wasn't even capable of showing her appropriately. No one had ever taught him how!

His eyes wandered back to this damn red thing that had sealed his fate for good. Why should he put himself through tearing off all the scabs from his mental wounds and her as well by causing her nightmares as well? He just must show her that damn thing. Then she'd know everything necessary. It was the essence of his very being, summarized in sober, heartless numbers and words. There was no being mistaken, no lies or disguise of the truth, just the same, cruel and merciless. When she was smart she'd ran as fast as she could after reading it.

No, you're seeking the easy way out again. The truth was that he was simply scared shitless. Most of his childhood he'd fought hard for getting what every child deserved in his eyes: love, affection, protection, acknowledgement and respect. He never got it, on the contrary. He'd been open and susceptible for any kind of emotion. Sometime he'd just admitted defeat. He'd taken so many blows, little and big ones, physically but even more emotionally that he'd finally shut down to protect what little was left of him.

He hadn't cared anymore what anyone thought of him or how his own nature would affect people. He'd hidden himself behind a thick armor of numbness so emotions wouldn't get through to him, what he craved and feared most because they'd on the one hand had only caused him harm but he knew on the other that they were essentially for bonding with someone.

And that he wanted like nothing else. The loneliness and isolation he'd forced on himself to protect himself from harm was slowly killing him inside. He wanted to get rid of it, wanted to free himself. His greatest chance was only two stories below, waiting for him (and hopefully still there).

In his head he knew that he wasn't alone in the world, that there were others who experienced the same as him in their childhood, many even worse. They managed somehow to get their lives together, to free themselves from the shackles by sharing the burden of the past with someone.

It was the child in him, that damn fearful child that opposed him. He knew he'd found his mate, that had already seven years ago. He knew that she was the strong part of their partnership. She was the rock and he was her greatest burden. He was even his own greatest burden.

The mind is a strange thing but just that moment he remembered the part of the Indiana Jones trilogy where Indy hunts after the Holy Grail and has to pass several tasks to get to the grail. One of those tasks is crossing an abyss without any aid like a bridge or a rope, just by sheer faith carrying the true believer from one end to the other. He'd found it by chance when zapping through the channels and stuck with it because otherwise only shit was on. Of course that was a fictional story but this image fit his situation pretty well. He was standing at the abyss right now that separated him from what could be, what he could be. Alex was the bridge. She was the faith that could carry him and help him over to the other side. She was willing to carry him. Her words only a short while ago had made it very clear.

She could carry him, she must. Otherwise he'd fall... All the crap that had piled up somewhere in the hindmost corner of his mind that only came out when he slept and couldn't defend himself would swallow him alive. He'd decompensate… mentally break down, disintegrate, dissolve. He'd lose his mind first and then himself. Robert Goren would simply stop to exist and only a biological cover would remain. That was his greatest fear. It even overpowered losing Eames. If he lost himself how should he keep her at all then?

His hand had come to rest next to the red folder. That's a lie, he thought. I already have stopped to exist. He'd done the moment he'd opened that damn thing and the info it contained, this simple, unmistakable sentence had burned itself into his mind and made his worst fear, then still diffuse and abstract reality.

Time was running short. Alex wouldn't wait forever, wouldn't do that to herself forever and how could he blame her for it? The joints of the old leather chair screeched with protest when he put his feet to the ground and rose.

He hesitated only for a brief moment before gripping the folder. He knew what he had to do, had known it the whole time. There's no right moment for something like this… and never would be! One couldn't prepare for something like this or even plan it. He knew what was at stake when he didn't take action now. He finally wanted to live, really live, not only exist. He didn't want to fight anymore. He was still scared to death about what he was to do but it no longer paralyzed him.

With long determined strides he crossed the hallway and climbed down the stairs. During his descent he wondered if Alex would appreciate his confession in any way, if she could. It would be the ultimate mark of confidence. He crossed the wardrobe in the hallway, stepped through the broad passage that led to the spacious living / dining area and turned to the right.

He didn't notice the fading light of the setting sun shining through the panorama window and the two smaller ones flanking the couch on the wall, filling it with its orange-reddish glow or the bookshelves integrated into the walls. He only saw her familiar slim silhouette in front of the panorama window, looking out, having something mystic about it provided by the aura the sun created around it. She appeared to him like a supernatural being. As strange as it was he didn't believe in God or angels – had stopped long ago – but in the supernatural. He liked to call it the things that weren't explainable by science or the five senses.

"You're here."

She hadn't even turned around, just known that he was there. After their partnership had settled it had been like that. They'd known each other's presence without even seeing the other. They could end each other's sentences, read each other's mind, knew each other's habits and tastes and adjusted to them without even consciously knowing. They'd worked as smooth as a well oiled machine as Lewis, one of his few true friends and mechanic, would call it.

"Yeah… are you ready?"

"Wow, that sounds really enthusiastic," she scoffed.

He felt his face twist into a crooked grin. He rounded the two-seater sitting in right ankle to the couch and slumped down on it, sticking the folder in the crack between cushion and armrest. She came to him and sat down next to him. She leaned against the armrest with her back and looked at him.

"Are you alright, Bobby? You don't look too well."

That was putting it mildly he was sure. He felt physically sick, like he was going to puke any moment. He heard the worry in her voice…

"It's okay. I just…"

… and the fear and insecurity in his own. He must do this and he must do it right. He only had this one chance. Now it was all or nothing.

"I just never talked about… myself like…"

He struggled for the right words.

"… I will with you."