He'd broken his fucking phone.

Broken his phone.

Then he'd wasted useful minutes scrounging for it, bending to pat the ground only to find it had slipped between the station wall and the concrete footing of a bench. Then he spent more precious time tap tap tapping away at the face and buttons trying to get something, a glow, a blink, a sound - with no result. Now he was flying blind. He couldn't call Alex (please Alex be okay) or the precinct or anyone for that matter. Work. Oh God. Work. Robert Goren had never (in his entire life) been paralyzed by anything. Even in fear he moved. He hoisted his shoulders up around his ears, ruffled his hair, let his fingers grip and pulse and he paced maniacally. Today, here, on a rail platform he was immobile. People scowled, and grunted and shook their heads at his still form, smacking into him with backpacks and purses and jostling him in annoyance. He wasn't a small man and he was occupying valuable commuter real estate on this walkway, but he couldn't move.

And then sense returned. Nicole. She was the master of games. Her phone call in itself didn't mean anything he told himself. Nicole is a manipulator. Nicole is a liar. He chanted because if he stood here and thought about the worst he would petrify right in this spot inside this station. Then the building would decay and one day they would have to scrape away the moss and the excrement to find him. No what he needed was to move forward with positivity.

"Can I use your phone?" He asked the next body that nudged him. A teen gave him a look like he was insane then stuck in her earbuds and kept walking.

"Please, please can I use your phone?" He held up his own cracked one to make more of a sympathetic case.

"Sorry buddy, late." A short blue collar looking guy in coveralls waved him off. Strangely he never once considered the prospect of a landline or a payphone so gone from the scope of his reality were they. He felt like he'd fallen into an abyss without his technology. Convenience had stripped his ability to think creatively.

He lurched toward the waiting area and away from the frantic movers. He found an older black woman seated there, her shocking white hair was like a beacon calling him home. Her posture and the array of luggage and reusable bags at her feet told him she was in it for the long haul, waiting for a trans-national maybe? Her large body was wedged neatly between the reflective metal handles of the public chair. Bobby didn't know if she was the demographic that carried a phone but he held his wrecked one up anyway, his eyes imploring. "Please can I use your phone?"

"Sure honey you just sit down here beside me." And with that she pulled a state of the art device from her one of her bags. He collapsed gratefully into a chair. He figured that twitching above her was bound to make her reconsider. He was still coursing with nervous energy in that seat. "You take a deep breath now." she said reading him in an instant. And he did. Sucking in boldly, theatrically, to let her know she mattered, and because he had been listening to Paula Gyson's tutorial to Alex. Breathing. It was so important.

After a brief learning curve on this foreign device he was calling. And she, his matronly benefactor, was watching intently from one seat away.

First work. "Something has happened to my wife. I can't come in…."

Then the 34th. "No Captain Goren isn't in yet this morning. Let me check…"

Then Alex. "Hello you have reached…"

Then Alex again. "Hello you have reached…"

Then Alex frantically one more time. "Hello you have reached…"

"Alex please Alex" he muttered the recorded message was heartbreaking.

His audience looked on solemnly. At last he just stared at his loaner phone, forlorn. Then, on a burst - no petrifaction! - he courteously wiped the screen on his trousers and gave it back to his good samaritan. And in a surprising, but not unwelcome move, she held the phone and his hand briefly in hers. The warm soft pads of her fingers sweeping, once, twice, three times over his defeated knuckles. Her eyes were soft, her mouth a downturned parabola of sympathy.

"Oh sweetie. It's just not your day."

He tried to smile. He felt like tears. He stood.

"I have a sixth sense about these things." she told him. "She is going to be just fine. Just fine. And then you can both cut that cancer out of your lives, together."

His eyes widened. Was she some Haitian witch doctor? Some harbinger? Some angel of mercy? A goodwill talisman he'd conjured with his frantic mind?

"I have 5 kids of my own." She explained "I've seen every dark day there is. Even lost one of them last year. It is going to be fine."

Bobby didn't know what to do or say. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet, the shuffle of the unsure. All those years pounding the pavement, talking to men and women of every age, race, walk and station and suddenly today he was rookie, green and untried without a word or a clue.

"You go on to Alex now." she dismissed him. But first he pressed a business card into her hand.

"If there were any charges… long distance… "

"Go. Go. She needs you."

And he did.

Transcendence in a train station.

He went straight to the 34th. He felt a buzz while walking up from the subway, a twitter, a murmurer. He followed his wife's well worn tread along the busy street she walked every morning. Bobby had only been here with Alex once. They had walked this path together before she'd taken the captain's job. Alex had been heavily pregnant at the time.

"Whew all this walking. You want to be born in Inwood like your mama." She'd joked to the tummy.

They'd held hands that day, ducked into some local shops, sat a spell with drinks (a coffee and fruit smoothie respectively) at a place called 'The Delightful Bean' and Bobby had speculated that it might be her new favourite coffee place (when, of course, she could drink coffee again). That day they'd casually met some residents and scouted out her walking route to the precinct and just soaked up the neighbourhood. Alex knew Inwood but she'd needed a street level refresher.

Today Bobby flew past 'their' coffee shop without even a hint of recognition. Today he couldn't think of anything besides the pounding fear. He rounded the corner onto a 182nd and his heart beat faster. Police tape. On the ground was the congealed dirty red of spent blood, now cooking in the sun.

"What happened here?" He asked generally from the back of a medium sized group of bystanders. Again he was relying on the kindness of strangers.

"Cop shot some kid." A woman tossed over her shoulder.

He flagged a cop, a uniform.

"Robert Goren." he said hoping for some surname recognition in this district. "Who got shot here?"

"Keep moving buddy."

"Go - ren." he annunciated rudely, "My wife is Captain Goren." he hated this civilian bullshit, he longed for his badge so that he could tear this stupid flatfoot a new one.

"Uh." the officer's brow furrowed "Uh sorry." And the uniform made an executive decision, a rare treat in his world of abject subordination "The Cap shot a kid."

Bobby cursed the idiot that had answered his earlier phone call to the precinct. That dumbass could have told him all this on the phone. Instead of finding Alex, now he was stumbling through the timeline of her morning. Now he was creating horrible scenarios, each ring concentrically worse then the one before. He felt anxiety accost him, he was wasting valuable time. He wanted to throw something.

"Was the captain hurt?"

"I'm not sure." The officer admitted a bit sheepishly.

"Well where was she now?" he demanded with only the authority of his anger. And it worked, his obvious comfort at a crime scene, his imposing figure, his expensive suit and dark overcoat all conspired to get Bobby more information.

"I don't know." he shrugged a little " but they took this guy" he thumbed the bloodstain, "to the hospital, The Allen…"

Bobby didn't even wait for the rest of the sentence. It was a straight shot 10 minutes away on the M train.

He didn't know what to expect when he tore through the doors of The Allen Hospital. And then he was waylaid at the front desk because he found out that Alex wasn't a patient. Not a patient? The lightness of relief was quickly tainted by more dark thoughts. So she hadn't been shot on scene. But had she been poisoned? Or maybe sedated and taken? Oh God. Immy. He was shaking and his stomach was tossing and ….

"Sir are you okay." He wasn't. He was grey and green. The receptionist with the fuzzy pink cardigan leaned in concerned.

And as she did Bobby remembered the other victim. The kid. And in the fanciest bit of talking he'd ever done (he didn't have a name and he wasn't the boys relative after all) Bobby managed to get the floor and room number of the shooting victim from 182nd Street.

As he raced toward the elevator he didn't know what he hoped for. Maybe somebody knew something about Alex. Maybe there were eyewitnesses caught in the crossfire. Maybe there were other officers who he could work for information. After jabbing the button impatiently at least 10 times, he headed for the stairwell. He sprinted up the stairs to the second floor his long stride taking steps two at a time. He made his way to intensive care. Flying past rooms. Flying past the waiting area, moving toward the nurses station, then he froze. He heard the low tones of familiar voices. He whirled abruptly and moved back the way he came.

The waiting room.

And he couldn't even get his head around what he saw there.

What?

What the fuck?

And then it flew past his lips.

"WHAT THE FUCK is this!?" he was becoming increasingly comfortable with his potty mouth since that stupid blond nutcase had entered their lives. Bobby was vibrating on the highest levels of worry and fear and loathing. Today alone, he'd begged people for assistance, he had been all over the city, he had talked his ass off for crumbs of information. And now he'd finally found Alex and she was alive and well and in the arms of Mike Logan.

Alex jumped about a foot and sprung away her PI admirer.

"Bobby." her voice was high and nervous. "Mike called me he has news and I told him what happened he came over and I couldn't reach you and I..." It was all one horrible run on sentence.

As he watched this smarmy piece of work, Mike Logan, taking liberties, his last coherent thought was: So this is seething.

His eyes narrowed on Logan.

And before Bobby could be rational or breathe or count to 10 he launched himself at the other man. Logan was strong and a little bit street and he had thrown enough punches in his life to know how to block them. But he had asked for every single one of those punches. He'd expected them. He'd even grinned and taunted the cretins that threw them. But Robert Goren? Robert Goren coming at him was out of left field. And because of that Bobby nailed him. He nailed him good.

Logan doubled over and spun. His body swiveling from one magnetic pole to the other, from due north to due south. He crouched there for a moment, then he stood slowly and turned, working the joint in his jaw unnaturally from side to side making sure it was still engaged. It was.

"You are going to pay for that." He growled and threw his body forward.

"No." Alex yelled "No." She flung herself into it. "What are you doing?" demanded of Bobby. But Mike had to get at least one in, they were the rules of engagement, the law of evening up. If he didn't swing he wouldn't be able to concentrate around the other man for wanting to smash his face. So he did, he lunged over Alex's small frame and sent one flailing arm (with very poor form) and hit Goren square in mouth. The thrust of his fist splitting the younger man's lip and snapping his head back.

Bobby had always preferred brains to brawn but not today. Today he was somebody else. Today he had reached his limit. Today weeks of misery came to head and Mike Logan looked a lot like the body bag at the gym. "You think you can touch my wife?" He smeared blood into his teeth and across his chin with the back of his hand "Stay the fuck away from my wife!" His rage was absolute and he lunged again.

"Bobby." Alex screamed, she had never actually screamed before, with that hallmark hysterical edge, but she was trying to slice into his calloused epidermis, through layers of biology. This was about so much more then this moment. This was about commitment but also strength and sperm and superiority. "Stop it! Stop it!"

But they didn't listen. Her sanity was unwelcome. And she couldn't shoot them, so she got out of the way. They were bent on brutalizing each other, mostly shoving and slamming but throwing the odd punch too. And it was foolish and it was scary. Alex had seen a lot of brutality in her life, but mostly the end result and never as a personally invested party. They were both very strong men and the clashing of flesh and fabric was intense. They knocked over a chair, then a small table. Like bucks in rut or rams they butt so forcefully that their flesh vibrated on the bone. And in the end Alex wasn't the voice of reason it was a pair of orderlies and pair of security guards that stopped the melee.

"You two have to leave." The guard said sternly. "Or we'll call the police."

A universal snicker went up from the group at that.

"We are the police." Logan couldn't resist that wiseass comment under his breath flinching at the pain in his face.

Goren and Logan moved as far from each other as two people could do and remain in the same room. Alex pulled her badge and that (and that alone) saved them the embarrassment of being escorted off the premises.

"They'll behave." She tried to smile reassuringly but it ended up a grimace.

"We won't write you up... this time." The head of security said surveying the room and sensing that the energy in had shifted and mellowed.

Once they were alone again Alex barked, "Logan out." And Mike looked at her face and then down at her gun and didn't argue.

"You're in trouble." he singsonged as he left. And Bobby looked like he was weighing up the consequences of another swing. Alex grabbed his chin hard and pressed her salty finger into his wound turning his face back to her.

"Owwww." he grabbed her hand "owww."

"What the hell was that Bobby?"

"Why the hell was he touching you?" he countered angrily.

"It was a platonic hug. I was upset."

"That is no excuse!"

"I couldn't reach you."

"So you found a warm body stand in? Did it feel like old times pressing up against him?" He spat. He was batting a thousand today. She almost got in a swing of her own. Instead Alex took out her aggression on his chest. She put both hands and all her force into one ferocious push and he took a step back. Shove, step. Shove. step. Shove, step. Until he came up against the windowsill.

"Are you trying to push me out of the window?" He was joking but there was no laughter in his voice.

"Cheaper then a divorce." she said with the same weight. She shook her head. She couldn't believe him. In all their years together she had never seen him act this way. "Sit." she snapped and he did, balancing against the frame. She examined his face and he felt his lids grow heavy under her touch. She angled his cheekbone to the light this is going to bruise. "Stay." She bit out and moved away. Then came back and cleaned the blood away with a moistened napkin. "You are an idiot." Her smooth loving touch belied her words. "Is this how you want your daughter to see you behave?"

Immy! His eyes flew to her. Some father. He hadn't even realized his daughter was in the room. And she was riveted, sitting bolt upright eyes wide under the canopy of her violet coloured stroller clutching the roll bar in front of her. Her head flicking back and forth with an occasional wobble. Bobby sighed from his soul.

"That was really stupid." Alex laid into him "Mike has something for us. News. What if he takes his toys and goes home? Then what tough guy? You have to apologize."

"Nicole called me." He said suddenly.

"What? When?"

"She implied you were, you were…" he couldn't say it. Psychological warfare. Nicole had worked him so well.

Now Alex understood the scope of emotion. As the truth unfurled in her mind her mouth formed a wordless 'oh'. She stepped closer to his body and he scooped her in between his legs. He curved his back deeply to tuck his face into the crook of her neck, to just breathe her. Now he was coming down. Everything was okay. Relief personified.

"I shot Donny." Alex just had to get it out.

Paradise lost.

"What?"

Alex immediately felt her words wick away some of his warmth. "He came at me and Imogen. He and Nicole - at least I think it was her." she hated to think she'd been manipulated into shooting Donny. But anything was possible. A blonde of a certain height and build could have been paid to scare her into a panic reaction. And now in the aftermath it placed a wedge firmly between her and Bobby. And a bad shot could endanger her career. It might be genius.

"You had to shoot him?" Bobby asked with dismay but kept his hands on her, he couldn't let her go, not just yet.

"I had to." she explained how it happened, with a little dramatic license. Just the way she was going to play it for IA if it came to that.

"What was he going for?"

"A syringe." she told him grimly "They sent it to the lab."

"Why would he do that? On a busy street like that." It was baffling.

"She can make him do anything she wants. We know the effect she has on her subordinates."

"But…"

"But nothing, Bobby let's face it, you knew Donny for a grand total of about 3 hours 7 years ago. All we know is the stock he comes from, a drug addict father and a…"

"A what?" his eyes zoomed in on her "A crazy grandmother? Is that what you were going to say."

Alex had learned to stop being hurt at the sensitivity, the defensive posture Bobby struck against her. She couldn't imagine standing up for the likes of Frank or even Frances but, Alex reminded herself, that even deeply flawed they were all he had, and everybody had a right to come from somewhere. "No I wasn't going to say that at all, I was going to say an estranged mother." she cupped his jaw.

"Oh. So no punishment after all." A loaded languid voice came from the doorway. Logan was leaning there watching, taking their loving position at face value. "I'm still here if you care, but I think I'll just go."

"No, no!" Alex tried to spring away but Bobby grabbed her hips. His grip was clear it shouted MINE.

"This is not a pissing contest." She hissed quietly prying his fingers off, using her sharp squoval nails on his flesh. "Come tell us what you have" She sat at one of the clustered seating groups and no one followed. "Both of you get over it."

"I'm over it." Logan pressed a ice pack to his jaw. "As long as he knows that next time I won't hold back."

Bobby rolled his eyes (his whole face) heavenward, "I'm over it. As long as he knows that next time he won't get up."

"Is that the best you can do." Alex looked at them both with disgust. But then miraculously they came to the table (so to speak) and sat across from one another.

It was over.

Men were strangest mammals of all.

And then Logan began to spin a strange tale.