Au note: I didn't originally intend a chapter 2 but tattered rose's thoughtful review of chapter 1 (which I really appreciated by the way) set me to thinking about how to justify Bobby's distress.
This is what I came up with.
If it tumbles into overblown angst as my attempts at dramatic prose usually do, I apologize in advance.
And thanks to everyone who commented on chapter 1.
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Once again, he played the scene over in his head.
Damn it, but he HAD been grateful it was Bishop and not Eames he had watched fall. After mulling the matter over, off and on for several days, he still believed his response was perfectly natural. After all, it was very human in such a situation to make bargains with fate, and while they had both been his partners, Eames was his friend. Still, as a police officer whose empathy often confused the distinction between the guilty and their victims, it was not in his nature to be deliberately callous. Why had he allowed Bishop to see his less than noble reaction to her fate?
Bobby's pride in his professional training demanded that he analyze his own motivations with the same brutal honesty that he applied to analyzing those of others. In the process, he found himself examining the very different reasons he had for calling each of his two partners by their last names.
Referring to Eames as Eames was a deliberate act of will; the thin, impersonal coating that he had assiduously applied to and now sought to maintain over their relationship. That fragile patina provided the only barrier that protected him from slipping into a situation he feared might easily become so emotionally chaotic that it would shatter their friendship, their partnership and ultimately himself. He had long suspected that Eames both understood and respected his panicked reticence; he had seen it in her eyes during the few brief moments of almost intimacy they shared from time to time.
Lynn Bishop, on the other hand, had remained Bishop because it was inconceivable to afford anything more than the most superficial awareness and consideration to a woman who was but an unwelcome reminder of Eames' absence. For reasons he had never before tried to articulate, he had found Bishop's very presence in his life offensive!
He and Bishop were two people held together by a totally artificial bond; by the ultimately unimportant similarity of possessing a badge. Her brief overtures at friendship he had quickly dismissed as a ploy to flatter him; a transparent attempt to advance her career. Eames was his true partner; the one who understood him, supported him and whose skills so thoroughly complemented his own.
In hindsight, it was probably inevitable that he would blunder awkwardly through their brief relationship; convinced from the beginning that his temporary partner had lacked that unique quality he shared with Eames' and no other. He treasured that finely honed, preternatural awareness-of-the-other that enabled Eames to see where his mind was taking him, almost before he was aware of it himself. Her prescience often saved him from the necessity of a convoluted explanation that his impatience prevented him from easily articulating.
With Bishop, everything was different.
He had lost track of the number of times he'd been forced to slow the tumbling progression of his thoughts in order to formulate an answer to that look of blank inquiry he would catch in her eyes. He had grown to hate that look. And so he had seen no need to hide either his growing disdain or his conviction that Bishop was an inferior partner in every way. No need because there was zero chance she would ever intercept the messages that Eames would have effortlessly extracted from his every glance and gesture.
Was there?
In the quiet of his apartment, he remembered again the expression he had read in her dying eyes; the expression that had shattered his illusions.
Not just puzzled hurt, but regret.
For not having earned his respect.
For not being for him what he so obviously needed in a partner.
For not being Eames.
That look had left him with the shameful realization that his attitude towards Bishop had been, from beginning to end, an act of hubris he could never make right.