Title: Push, Pull

Author: Alamo Girl

Disclaimer: Same as before with L&O:CI. I also don't own anything related to the movie "The Cell"

Chapter 2

Fear was not an emotion that suited Alex Eames. She hated it. It seemed to crawl across her skin, thick, slimy, and cold like bathing in black tar. It was a dangerous emotion, one that could make a detective freeze up at the wrong time and cost them the life of their partner. Eames had been afraid plenty of times, but she'd always controlled it, beat it back down so she could do her job. She owed her partner that strength, God knows, he'd saved her ass plenty of times.

"I'm fine, it just got a little… close in there." Alex said as she pulled herself away from Bobby's grasp. "At least he won't be able to play 'Bad Doctor' with anyone else, unless he picks himself up a 'girl friend' on the inside. Then he'll probably be on the "receiving end" of the doctoring." 'There,…' she thought, 'just take in my usual smart-ass comments, realize I'm OK, and keep on moving Bobby. Please, for the love of God … don't make me look in your eyes. Damn you and your eyes!'

Bobby twitched a small smile at her comment. Alex's sardonic wit even in the gravest situations was a grounding element to Bobby. He's come to expect it. But this time, he wasn't comforted by her comment.

"Yeah,…wouldn't want him to be lonely on Death Row," Bobby replied. He bent slightly, cocking his head to the side, his typical stance when he wanted to catch her eyes. Alex however, has slipped away from him to her desk, and was quickly gathering files to take to Deakins' office. He sighed as he moved to his desk, across from Alex, still watching her…studying her actually. 'Something's really wrong here,' he thought, 'She usually smiles at me when she makes one of her witty remarks. She's dodging me, avoiding my gaze… and now…now she looks like she's about to bolt out of here like her ass is on fire.' Bobby's concern was growing by leaps and bounds now. Was she mad at him? Did he over-step his bounds in the interrogation, should he have let her handle herself? 'Hell No!' Alex twitched her head toward Bobby, he gulped. 'Shit, did I say that out loud?' he thought. There was no way in hell he would have left her alone with Verger. He'd seen it in her eyes…at the crime scenes…the pain, sympathy for the victims. Actually, Bobby had never seen Alex feel so much for the victims. And it tore at his heart to see the anguish in her eyes every time a call came in that another of Verger's victims had been found.

"I'm taking these to Deakins, then I'm calling it a night." He voice was soft, but it still jolted Bobby from his own thoughts.

He stood, "Alex…I…Do you…"

"See you tomorrow Bobby," she cut him off as she strode to Deakins' office. There was no way she was going to hang around to get analyzed by Goren. She had enough people inside her mind without Goren seeping in.

Bobby watched her leave. She'd already grabbed her coat and purse with the files, and he hadn't even gotten the chance to help her on with her coat. He ALWAYS did that.

'Damn it Bobby, you can be such a stuttering dumb-ass sometimes,' he berated himself. Helping Alex on with her coat was a ritual Bobby had come to relish. It was about the only time in the day, when they weren't bent over files together, that he could savor being close to her.

'Almost putting my arms around her, her back up against me…so close… breathing her in,…God she smells so good in the morning… Stop it! Snap out of it Goren!' He shook his head and sighed. His body was starting to react to the rant his mind went off on, and walking out of the office with a hard-on would be hard to explain.

'Now is not the time for those thoughts…which by the way genius, you should not be having anyway. She's your partner, o-"frustrated"-one.' Bobby frowned. Sometimes he really, REALLY hated his little voice of reason chirping on his shoulder.

'Man, you need to get laid in the worst way,' chortled the little voice.

'Blow me,' Bobby thought to the voice. He ran his large hand over his face and glanced back to the door. "What's going on Eames, talk to me," he muttered.

The wind whipped around Alex's coat, sending the fall chill right to her bones. God, New York can be one cold, you-may-want-comfort-but-shit-on-you kind of city sometimes. Alex made her way up to her apartment, feeling the kind of exhaustion, physical and mental, that she hadn't felt since giving birth to her nephew.

Once inside, she checked her messages, only a couple from her family wondering how she was doing, nothing new. She peeled her clothes off, and stood gazing at herself in the mirror. Staring at herself, naked in the mirror, was not something Alex usually did. She ran a hand over her face, letter her eyes fall over her body. She looked haggard. No sleep, little food, and an emotionally raping case had caused her to loose weight and make her face look drawn. The circles under eyes may have well been bruises, they were so dark.

"You look like shit, Alex," she said to herself. She pulled on some sweats and an oversized sweat shirt and headed into her living room, flipping the TV on. She rummaged around in the kitchen, maybe some hot tea would settle her. The case was over, Verger was on his way to the needle, maybe she could finally sleep.

She walked back to her couch, picking up the remote. "There's got to be something on," Alex muttered as she flipped the channels. Her mind wandered back to the interrogation room. She'd never seen Bobby snap like that in the precinct. Animated - yes. In-your-face - definitely. But, snapped to the point of physically growing into a frightening behemoth? Something in Alex warmed a little, as she knew he was protecting her. He's always been her protector, even when he tried so hard not to make it obvious to her, for fear she would resent him for thinking she couldn't take care of herself.

'Chivalry is definitely not dead in Bobby Goren,' Alex thought. Suddenly, a vaguely familiar voice came from the TV. Jennifer Lopez was on the screen, in some kind of weird Matrix-like reality. Alex was never a huge J-Lo fan, but she became intrigued as she watched the character's talk about entering a person's mind and dreams.

Then the plot shifted, to a scene with a woman floating in a glass tank. Alex's muscles began to spasm, as she looked at the woman's eyes. They held the same haunting gaze Verger's victims had, and Alex's hands gripped her blanket at her knees so tight her knuckles where white. She stared, unblinking, at the screen as a man entered the chamber, watching the woman in the tank and placing a large, long fingered hand on the glass.

'There's something familiar about those fingers,' the thought flashed through Alex's mind. But it quickly left, and she sucked in a breath of repulsion, as the man ran from the glass, bent over. Obviously the scene aroused him to the point of orgasm, and Alex had to swallow down the bile in her throat.

The scenes then changed, and she saw that the police were processing a body dump scene. Another woman, with those same dead eyes, and Alex had to close her eyes for a moment. 'This may be a movie, but it's becoming very fucking real,' she thought. She continued to watch, as if changing the channel would cut some kind of life line. She was completely riveted to the screen, hardly breathing, as another woman was shown sitting with her boyfriend. The camera backed out to show a man in a truck, stalking her.

Alex's lungs constricted, heart seemed to stop, sweat beads formed on her upper lip and forehead. The camera angle changed to show the face of the stalker, the man who was at the water tank, the one who dumped the girl off the bridge like so much garbage. Alex Eames looked into the face of the killer, and started to shake, violently.

'Same dark brown eyes. Same nose, lips. Same head movements, somewhat erratic yet thoughtful. The hands… oh God… those hands… I know those hands,' Alex's mind kicked into overdrive, even as her body was frozen in time. Although the figure had longer, straight light brown hair, and no stubble on his cheeks, the figure looking back at her from the screen was Bobby Goren.

She continued to watch, breathing erratically. The serial killer, who kidnapped young woman, tortured them, and then wanted to turn them into a doll, had her partner's face! The movie continued on, as the Bobby look-alike, Carl Starter, went into a coma and apparently J-Lo's character would have to get into his mind to find his last victim. If she wasn't horrified at the things Starter had in his head, Alex might have thought the special effects were cool.

She saw the boy, the terrible childhood, abusive father, tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

'Could that have been what Bobby's childhood was like?' she thought, but she knew Bobby wasn't exposed to the depravity young Starter had seen. Still she wondered.

By the time she saw adult Starter again, he was flaying a woman in a tub full of blood. Alex had curled into the fetal position on her couch, knees to her chest as she trembled. As he spoke, looked out of the screen, blood all over his arms, it was Bobby sitting there. Talking drags off a cigarette, just like she remembered, Bobby's voice talking about what his father did to him. Alex had started to sob silently, her eyes never leaving the screen.

When started transformed into the terrifying monster, grinning, slithering, powerful as he took control of J-Lo's character, Alex let a scream escape her lips. She buried her head in her knees and hugged herself desperately. Each scene, with Starter as the twisted king in his brain-fucked kingdom, masochistically disemboweling the young male detective, all Alex saw was Bobby doing those things.

"My God..," she breathed as she watched the monster, who had taken the place of her partner in her mind. 'This must be what its like to be in Verger's mind, and what he did to his victims,' she thought. The show wore on, and Alex slowly descended into a darkness created by the horror she was allowing her imagination to inflict on her. Bobby had long since taken Carl Starter's place at the Devil in the movie, all the physical differences between the two men had melded into one person in her mind.

A quote, Alex had heard somewhere ran through her head, "You think you can look into the face of pure evil, and then you find yourself paralyzed by it."

Verger's words whispered in her ears, "I can see it in your partner's eyes…" See what? Loneliness, fear, need? Alex knew if he could see those things in her, and use them to make her feel raped, Bobby could see them too. She saw Bobby, as the monster on her screen, slinking over her. His muscles rippled under a sheen of blood that was spattered all over his torso. Alex sobbed harder, here eyes squeezed tightly shut and the vision took over her body. Somehow, she had shuffled off the couch and scuttled to a corner near her bookshelf, an attempt to escape the TV screen.

Alex opened her eyes, to see the monster with Bobby's face crouching over her. He was broad chest was bare, but for the sheen of blood. His eyes, seemed to glow with a golden light, the pupils were slits like cat's eyes, his head bald like from the movie. His teeth had been sharpened to a fine point, as his lips spread into a feral yet seductive smile. Alex tried to move, punch him, scratch, get away … but her hands were cuffed above her head with spiked manacles. She tore her eyes from his long enough to notice she was naked, and his pants here made of something that looked like liquid silk, blood red. The fabric seemed to flow around him, not touching his skin yet obeying the movement of his body. He lowered his body to hers, and she gasped as she felt his manhood pressing into her leg.

'NO,' she screamed in her mind, but it didn't help. He bent his face down to hers. His eyes seemed to have some kind of hypnotic hold on hers, she couldn't even close them to escape the terror she was feeling. 'This is Not Happening! You can't be HIM!' she yelled in her mind, her voice had left her long ago. Alex managed to glance down at herself, and saw that her entire lower abdomen had been opened up savagely. It looked as if an animal had attacked her abdomen, leaving it open exposing organs and gore. Her heart stopped.

A large, bloody hand grabbed her face, bringing her eyes to his again. His lips were so close to her cheek, his breath was cold on her skin.

"I see your need," the monster Goren purred, "You're.Mine."

An ear piercing scream finally left Alex's lungs. But she was now curled up on her living room floor, in the fetal position, covered in sweat and tears. She was shaking so hard, her muscles were actually in spasms.

"Help me…please." Alex kept muttering this as she cried herself to an exhausted sleep, on her floor, not yet realizing what she would have to face tomorrow.

TBC…

Yea the quote was from one of my favorite X-Files, did you catch it?