Thanks for reading. I feared it would be hard to write over the holiday season and I was right. Parties and travel and distractions oh my. I hope the quality doesn't suffer. As always I am enjoying your reviews. There were a few questions in them so I'll answer whether they were rhetorical or not. First, Carver and Eames, I'll use them as a plot device for as long as I need to. Sorry to those who dislike the pairing but it isn't my objective to make all of the characters likeable just layered. "Rampaging" someone took issue with it in relation to feminism. All I can say is that if the word sounded judgey it probably was, though not intentionally. I can't promise impartiality. I'm not a journalist everything I write is proudly biased. And yes, to someone else, I am going to keep writing for as long as I have the stamina, hopefully it takes me to season 10.

Season 2

ANTI-THESIS

This wasn't like the 23 odd other cases they'd worked together.

It was a good thing Alex had withdrawn her request because this debacle at Hudson University might have spooked her into running it through.

Two words: creepy, blonde.

Alex watched Bobby and Elizabeth move around each other in disgusting mating ritual. Phase one: fascination.

Okay relax he's just lulling her, he's reeling her in.

In the last 12 and a half months Alex had unclenched around Goren. The quirks were even becoming less annoying, but this devious blonde had gotten her back (and everything else) right up. Maybe it took an impartial woman to see through another woman, because the moment she'd shaken hands with Elizabeth Hitchens, Alex had smelled the stink of manipulation. How glamorous she was, how cultured, how cultivated. It's all a dog and pony show. Like the rich, Hitchens reeked of image and like the over-educated she oozed condescension. But there was something more. Alex squinted and tried to remember where she had seen it before.

Then she had it.

The alligator enclosure at the Bronx Zoo. That was where she'd seen the same dark shiny gaze perfectly mirroring humanity. That was how Alex saw this untenured visiting professor. There was nothing behind those eyes. The reptilian brain run amok.

In the livingroom of that highrise with a skyline that went on for miles Alex had tried to get into her partner's line of sight. She'd tried to grab Bobby's focus time and again, she'd tried to share their 'what a lot of bullshit' glance because they had loaded glances now, glances that contained complete conversations. She'd gotten goose egg for her efforts.

Her partner was intrigued, that was plain as day.

And since this was new territory and since Alex had never seen him fascinated by a perp before, she thought it best to broach the thing head on.

"You like her." She head butted him with her truth as Wallace's sublet receded in their rearview mirror. "Watch yourself."

He didn't say a word, he just sat there staring out the window.

"Did you hear me?" She demanded because timid, Alexandra Eames was not.

"I can handle myself." He barked.

"Yes you can. Just don't let yourself be handled."

It was the oddest thing. For some reason this woman made Alex feel like dishwater. This criminal had charisma. This criminal had a certain je ne sais quoi. Why was evil always so successful in it's presentation? In it's pursuits? Because it needs to coax the little children to eat the poisoned sweets, because it needs a host of starry eyed idiots to plant the bomb.

Bobby was different on this case. He was distracted, he was preoccupied, he was riddling and puzzling his mensa guts out. He was back to old habits, running off again. Alex would turn to find he had wandered off in her direction. Elizabeth Hitchens. His desertion fit like a familiar pair of woollen socks. Alex was finally used to being an afterthought to her partner's passions. Bobby had never shielded her from the full scope of his personality. From day one he had been in full effect. Alex couldn't say the same was true for herself. This was their first case with complete reciprocal honesty.

"Bit old to be auditing a course aren't you." She walked the rope of intensity and humour so effortlessly. He had caught up with her in the 1PP cafeteria sitting on an orange plastic chair sipping a coffee.

"It was good. Hitchens likes to play. She likes to match wits."

"What did you get?" Alex demanded.

"She hates men."

"How do you figure?"

"Moby Dick is man's pursuit of his own potency." His lips twitched. "A valid assessment but somehow I don't think she meant humankind in the broader sense. She was digging at me at all of us unfortunate Y chromosomes."

"Get anything more relevant to the Dean's murder and less about her beautiful mind?" Alex's voice was laced with venom.

"She hates Mark Bailey even more. It's clear she has nothing but disdain for his weaknesses."

"Well he is the poster boy for insipid and she likes her men nice and exploitable." In fact she'd love a cop in her pocket.

He turned and zeroed in on her for the first time in days. He had neglected her for days while selfishly relishing the hunt. He heard her unspoken meaning but like most with a strong IQ and a thready EQ he said exactly the wrong thing.

"Jealous?"

Alex felt red all over. "Jealous of what? Her face? Her mind? Her station?"

"I was thinking you were jealous of my fascination."

"Don't flatter yourself." She looked like she'd drunk some bad milk. "If that's where this is going, if you're romantically interested in a suspect, this suspect, then you need your head checked. Maybe your mind and body aren't all that sound." When she was vicious she was vicious. They would be finding little chunks of him scattered all over New York when she was through.

"Is that where this is going to go? Everytime I do something you don't like you're going to insinuate that I'm as crazy as my mother? That's beneath you."

"No this is beneath you." She gestured broadly. Then immediately lowered her voice and glanced around.

"What? Solving a case?" And his own faux innocence weighed heavy on him.

"Just remember you have a partner." It was an epic warning that would resonate with him long beyond that moment.

Their year of kid gloves and secret dissatisfaction was over. He'd told Deakins that they couldn't be candid, how he longed for those halcyon days! This is all part of it he reminded himself. If he wanted her, he was going to have to take all of her. Including the part that made personal judgements, including the parts that tore him a new one.

He sighed deep and gusty, and then tried this novel honesty on for size. "Full disclosure. She's pretty. She's unbalanced. She's smart. That's what I think. That's all I think." He said looking straight into her eyes. "I'm not dumb or smitten enough to forget our objectives here."

Alex was surprised at how much his words stung.

What is it about them that stings?

She examined her own emotions very closely for the very first time, unbelievable as that was. For a year of partnership she had shunned any impulse to delve into Robert Goren's humanity. He was an aid, like a calculator or a search engine. But now the sheer volume of unleashed emotion threatened to swamp her. The door had been unbolted, and the barnyard animals were coming and going as they pleased.

Why the hell do I care?

For over 12 months she hadn't felt so much as a twinge at his behaviours. She knew of his dalliances at work. The grapevine had authenticated that he'd dated at least 4 women at 1PP. And Alex hadn't cared one iota. That's not true and you know it. A voice floated up and smacked her down. Okay, okay, it had annoyed her, but in the way of a fly that won't stop circling your head because his conquests seemed perfectly chosen for maximum nuisance. Goren's ladies filled out bail paperwork, they fetched evidence, they answered the Chief of D's office line, they processed payroll in HR. His conquests were everywhere.

"Pretty, smart" Alex reamed off, "Sounds like a good foundation for you."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You've gone a lot farther for a lot less." Her true feelings bled through. In Alex's opinion Denise Atkins, Bobby's latest fling, was a complete moron. Alex had butted heads with her many times. Denise was the gatekeeper of all the data in the CODs office, and she ran the place like a petty little fiefdom, revoking passwords and generating paper for no reason except to her inflate her importance. But still, Alex couldn't believe what she'd intimated. It was so out of bounds. It was so bitchy. It was the hallmark of too much emotional involvement. "I'm sorry." She apologized immediately. "Nothing you do off the job is any of my business. I'm sorry." She said again.

But he wasn't sorry. In fact it was the best thing she'd ever said to him. Instead of lashing out, he sat back like the cat that'd eaten the canary. She missed the look of supreme satisfaction that passed over his face. He was buoyed by an idea:

Alex cares.

She really cares.

"Nicole Wallace killed the real Elizabeth Hitchens, applied for a passport in her name and went off to Oxford."

"This woman's very very good." Goren pressed hands to his mouth. And Alex heard it in his tone, 2 parts horror and 1 part grudging admiration.

Deakins left them alone to strategize and Alex strode wordlessly into a one of the offices, her pace a little quicker her footfall heavier then need be. He followed.

"Tell me now." She demanded in their glass cubicle, "Are you going to take her down or ask her on a date?"

"Ask her on a…" He crowed spinning indelicately away. No spun, he was spun by the energy of her words, spun on some invisible axis.

"She's veeeeery very good." Alex mocked with a hint of lechery.

He guffawed.

"I heard it, and if I did then so did Deakins."

"This is a new side of you Eames." He sat on the edge of the metal table. "I think I like it."

She shook her head in annoyance. "This is the side that has your back. You know, your back? The thing that has gone uncovered for so long because you pissed off so many partners. But this," She gestured between them "this bond, is as important as getting the killers."

That made him pause.

Was he mistaking her duty and friendship for more? Eames had unwittingly hit his weakness. She unwittingly uncovered the spot where Robert Goren had many a crisis of confidence. His own relationships. He wondered often if he had an attachment disorder. So consumed by the abstract problems of strangers, but thoroughly confused about the real, invested parties all around him. He blamed his father. Walter hadn't given him the gift of ease, or comfort, or a healthy masculine version intimacy. He hadn't given him anything that a man owed to his son. And because Bobby had picked up his lessons on the mean streets (and from his ire-filled, deranged mother) he was never at ease with his own emotion.

The rolling hills and valleys on his brow were making her seasick. Alex softened.

"Look, let's just get her. Let's get her."

He nodded.

The lights were dim in the squad room. Security lighting and desk lamps cast shadows over the piles of files and general clutter. Bobby leaned back in his chair as deep as he dared go without toppling over.

"She knows me." He muttered. He was tortured but for the first time he shared it. He looked up and into the eyes of someone who understood.

"She doesn't know you." Alex scoffed "She knows your social security number. Don't give her more power then she has." Alex went back to writing. Scribbling post case summaries inside white text boxes. The end was in sight. The case was still open, no definitive resolution, tons of supposition but with Bailey dead and no confession, well… It was the first case they hadn't closed.

She looked at her partner. He was staring at a filing cabinet, at a picture of La Joya's kid to be exact. The boy held in permanent 7 year old stasis by a smiley face magnet. The whole side of the cabinet was a mess of personal sentiment. It made the days go easier.

Alex immediately knew it was the failure, as much as the psycho, that had him this way.

"Where do you think she is?" He asked.

"In a hotel on 5th eating caviar."

He flipped to look at her, "Really?"

"Yeah. She won't run. And she won't compromise her standards. She's nothing but shit rolled in diamonds."

He laughed. His partner had a way with words. Then he sobered,

"She'll be back." He said, and unfortunately Alex agreed.

"She'll be back."