Goren and Eames were alone. Eames knew her partner, knew he was troubled. "What is it, Bobby?"

"You said you felt it was your fault I got shot. But it wasn't. It was my fault you got shot."

She sat on the edge of the bed and was quiet for a long moment. Then she looked into her partner's troubled face. "Bobby, it's part of the job, and it's a part we all accept knowingly. There's always a risk someone with a grudge is going to come gunning for us. But we set those thoughts aside and we do our job. Everything else is out of our hands. Don't beat yourself up about it. I'm fine. It could have turned out a lot differently, but it didn't. So we don't beat ourselves up over 'what ifs' and 'coulda beens.' You know?" She moved closer to him and slid her hand onto his abdomen. "Your mom 'could have' been healthy. My husband 'could have' lived. My nephew 'could have' been my child and your dad 'could have' stayed. We'd go crazy if we thought of all the ways life 'could' be different. We just need to accept it as it is, for what it is, and do the best we can with what we have to deal with. We can't change what was. We can just do our best to enjoy what is and hope that what comes will be enough to make us happy."

He slid his arm alongside her, his hand coming to rest on her hip. "And are you, Eames? Are you happy?"

"For now? Yes, Bobby. I am happy. Are you?"

For him, that was a loaded question, and he wasn't sure what the answer was. So he changed the subject. "What are you looking for?"

The question caught her off guard. "What do you mean?"

"Out of life…what are you looking for out of life?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure I'm looking for anything specific. Maybe I won't know until I'm old and look back. Then I'll be able to decide if I got everything I wanted out of life."

"Were you happy when you were married?"

He had her entirely off balance now, which was a rarity. She was always very careful to avoid that. It made her feel…vulnerable, weak…and she hated feeling that way. "Yes, Bobby," she answered sadly. "We were both happy."

The sadness in her voice disturbed him. He studied her face, absently caressing her side as a measure of comfort. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's…ok. I still can't think about him and not feel sad. I loved him, and I always will. Losing him was very hard…and I miss him. I try to go out to visit his grave once a month, you know, make sure it's well tended to and he has fresh flowers. When I feel really lonely, and I can't talk to you, I still talk to him. That's my…quirk. But when I reach out to touch him, all I can ever feel is grass and dirt, or a piece of marble that tells the world he was a beloved husband and son." He reached out and touched her cheek, where a single tear rolled onto his finger. She had never told him any of this before, and he didn't want to discourage her. If he could help excise some of her demons, he was glad to do it. Lord knew she'd sent many of his packing.

She placed her hand over his. She'd never shared this with anyone, how much she missed her husband, how lonely her life had been since then. And again the fears and uncertainties she had been dealing with since the shooting surfaced. Her body shivered as she thought about how close she had come to losing him…and there it was again…her mind comparing the loss of her husband to the near loss of her partner. She took a deep breath, surprised that it sounded…shaky.

"Hey, you ok?" he asked. "Come on, Eames. Talk to me."

She kept her eyes cast downward, letting her hand lightly stroke his arm. "There's nothing to say I haven't already said. I just keep thinking about you…getting hurt. I can't get it out of my mind. And I can't forget how much this whole thing has reminded me of what I went through seven years ago." She straightened up and looked at him. "I'll be ok, Bobby. I just need time. There's a difference here."

He was well aware of that difference. "I'm not your husband."

She frowned, noticing an odd tone in his voice, searching for something in his face that would explain it. There was nothing. That was just Bobby, stating the flipping obvious. "The difference isn't that you are not my husband, Bobby. The difference is that you lived. And thank God you lived. I could not take another loss like that again. Ever."

"Another…loss like that?"

"Yes, Bobby. Another loss like that." How could she explain this to him? How could she tell him how much he meant to her when she hadn't fully figured it out? She laughed softly. "Get a bunch of cops together and they gossip like old ladies at bingo. Do you think I haven't heard what they say about us, Bobby? They say I mitigate your intensity, that I ground you into the world, into life. We are more than partners, and you have to feel that, too. I can't lose you. Damn it, Goren, I would never recover."

He leaned back and closed his eyes, struggling to get a hold on his emotions. She didn't know quite what to make of that and she was starting to worry she'd said too much when he opened his eyes again. He laid a hand on her cheek. "You do that, Eames, what they say. You do ground me; you help me keep a grasp on my…sanity. You have stuck with me all this time, and I can't tell you what that means to me. Sometimes…I even think you…understand me. I don't even understand me," he laughed, again wincing at the pain that flared with his laughter. "Eames," he said softly. "I don't know the words to tell you how much you mean to me. The closest I can come is to tell you I love you, and even that falls short. But I do love you, and I guess that will have to do."

She smiled, looking down at her hands for a minute. Finally she looked up at him, at those soft brown eyes she had always felt drawn to. "It'll do, Bobby. I love you, too, so it will have to do, for both of us."

Leaning forward, she gently kissed him. Resting her head against his she said, "I think that as long as I don't retire to a lonely apartment filled with cats, I'll be happy."

He laughed again. "Ok, Alex. No cats."