Author's Note: Don't ask me how it happened, but I somehow saved a draft of this and then forgot about it for six months or so. Oops. Anyway, it's finished now. Sorry it's so depressing – I must be going through my winter funk.
Mandatory Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, nor do I own Evanescence, their lyrics, or much of anything else (except my horse; but if you ask him, he'll say that he owns me.)
She hears the whispers. She's familiar with the rumors that circulate around the department behind her back. She's even seen her fellow detectives stop talking when she enters a room and look up with embarrassed eyes as she passes them at their desks. She knows what they say when they think she's out of earshot; they say that she's slipped up, that she's crossed the line between brilliance and madness and become a crackpot - good at her job, but a crackpot nonetheless.
She hears what other detectives say about her and she laughs inwardly at the irony of their words, words they used to direct to someone else but that now fall upon her. Funny how the tables can turn so quickly.
Perhaps most ironically, her fellow detectives are not wrong. She does feel as though she's crossed some invisible line. She even hears voices - or rather one voice, one very persistent voice. It's familiar and sometimes distracting and she often wills it to be quiet so that she can concentrate, but the voice just laughs at her and speaks more loudly as though for spite. At this, she rolls her eyes and continues on with her day and the investigation at hand, tuning it out as much as possible.
Alex Eames has seen so much and yet still finds herself understanding so little when it comes to the criminal mind. Nothing surprises her anymore, though - this close to retirement, she's seen and heard just about everything. Two months and counting (or so her husband reminds her every morning before she goes to work). Two months and she'll pack up her desk, turn in her badge, and draw her pension. After that, she plans to take a few tropical vacations and learn yoga and do some volunteer work - maybe something with kids so she can help them learn to do things the right way and save wear and tear on those cops who will follow in her footsteps.
And maybe - just maybe - when she retires, the voice inside her head will retire as well, retreating to a far corner of her memory where it will stay unless invited back (perhaps for major holidays and the occasional Super Bowl party).
Still, she must take one step at a time. After all, there are those pesky two months ahead of her and a crime scene that needs to be dealt with on this particular morning. The victims and crime scenes have continued to change over the years, she has observed, but the motives stay the same. Love. Hate. Money. Power. One person wronged by another wreaks vengeance in the most primitive way possible. The victim in this case lays sprawled facedown on the floor of the apartment, apparently the victim of a rape gone bad. SVU would usually handle such a case, save the fact that this young woman was under investigation as part of an identity theft ring and her murder is too coincidental for the chief of detectives to let it go down in the records just as it appears. Thus, he's called in the big guns of the Major Case squad to make sure that nothing is missed.
"Eames." The voice worms its way smoothly into her mind, breaking into her brief moment of introspection. Its tones are soft - hypnotic almost - with pauses thrown in awkwardly, as though the voice has thoughts of its own and is mulling them over, mixing them in with hers so that the mixture is homogeneous. "Get a little closer. Do you smell that? It's... it's shampoo. Lavender shampoo. Look at her hair - it's not even dry. And her skin... Her skin is soft - she smells of soap. She showered recently."
Alex instantly sees the paradox. Certainly rape victims have been known to shower following their attacks (with the unfortunate result of getting rid of crucial evidence necessary for an investigation), but what kind of rapist and murderer allows his victim the kind of leisurely shower that leaves a woman smelling of lavender shampoo and floral body wash between attacking and killing her?
"It was consensual," she says aloud suddenly in the quiet room, causing the CSU team members to turn and look at her quizzically, awaiting an explanation for her outburst. Her partner also turns, though the expression on his face is not one of surprise, but one of listening. He is waiting for what she will say next; he expects it to be insightful.
Then the voice races off again and she strains to keep up, repeating the words out loud for the benefit of those around her.
"She knew her killer - trusted him. He made it look like a rape afterwards to throw us off his trail. She worked out - she was fit. In order for him to strangle her, he'd have to be pretty fit himself. Judging from the angle of the ligature marks, he's about three or four inches taller than her - looks like he used his belt..."
The words continue to tumble over and over like socks in a dryer, never ceasing all while she closes her eyes and tries to make a mental picture out of the scene described in the rapidly flowing words that fall from her lips - words that aren't her own. Then she falls silent for a moment, exhausted from the strain of making herself heard over the top of the voice that's usurped control of the investigation, the voice in her head.
I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone
It's been this way for so long now that she almost can't remember what it was like to work a case before. She's tried to go back to the old way, of course, but without success. The voice is so firmly entrenched in her mind that some days she can't even tell the difference between it and her own. They blend together into a cacophony of sound and ideas and she just wishes for silence, for a moment of peace.
Yet those are the moments when she finds herself missing Bobby the most, for his voice is the only thing she has left of him.
These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me
Her husband Richard doesn't understand the weekly visits and the extra care she takes on holidays and birthdays, but he doesn't say anything. He instinctively knows that even if she explained it to him he wouldn't get it - and how can he? He wasn't there when she and Bobby were together, when they were GorenandEames, two people forming one word and the pride of the Major Case Squad. Richard wasn't there when they faced down Nicole Wallace on cases that threatened Bobby's very sanity. Richard didn't witness Bobby's gentle treatment of Alex as she recovered from the rigors of serving as a surrogate mother for her sister's child, the way he cared for her and watched to make sure that she felt sure of her decision. Richard didn't see that with every gesture of friendship, with every inside joke that was just between them, and with every minute they spent side by side, they gave pieces of themselves away until "his" and "hers" became "ours." Our thoughts. Our case. Ours. How can he now be expected to understand that they were so in tune with each other that they could each finish sentences out loud that the other had begun as merely a thought in their head?
Alex has to give her husband credit, though; the man is a saint. He doesn't pry and doesn't push her to expound on what she can really only describe to herself as her second personality, an extension of herself that happens to sound exactly like Bobby Goren when it enters her mind. And if that Goren-esque side of her takes over on occasion, Richard doesn't even bat an eyelash - he lets her tilt her head to the left to get a better view of something and he doesn't indicate that he notices the awkward pauses that occasionally pepper her sentences. He seems to understand that this behavior is separate from what they have together and, in return, Alex makes sure to remind him every day that he's part of her present and future and she's grateful for all that he does.
"So what's our next move?"
This voice isn't in her head - it belongs to Blake Casler, Alex's current partner. Young - in his early thirties - he's just made detective first grade and seems to be well on his way to police chief one day. He's bright, well-dressed, charming, and works tirelessly with terrific attention to detail - all qualities that Bobby Goren himself would admire. What's more, he doesn't treat Alex as though he's heard any of the departmental rumors about her teetering on the edge of sanity. As long as she continues to work with him and provide brilliant insight into their caseload, he doesn't seem to mind her quirks. Like Richard, Blake seems to realize that there are some things he simply will never understand.
"We need to find out if our victim had a boyfriend and bring him in for questioning," Alex tells Blake.
"Neighbors report that she does," he supplies. "He works at the Starbucks around the corner. Are you up for coffee?"
"Only if you're buying," she offers a smile.
"Of course," he grins and gestures grandly for her to lead the way out the door.
"Her boyfriend is probably in on the identity theft ring to," the internal voice reminds her as she and Casler ride down in the elevator. "This whole thing is probably bigger than it appears – keep your eyes open."
Alex rolls her eyes because her own instincts have already told her the exact same thing and then she leans against the wall of the elevator, already exhausted from the morning's mental exertions. Bobby always used to make it look so easy.
You used to captivate me
By your resonating life
Now I'm bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me
In the end, however, the victim's boyfriend has an ironclad alibi – from his other girlfriend and at least fifty club-goers who saw them together during the time of the murder. Thanks to this unexpected twist, Alex and Casler don't make any more headway on the case and they ultimately pack it in and depart the office at 5:00, weary but vowing to pick up where they left off in the morning.
"See you," he says over his shoulder as he hails a cab and heads uptown for a date with one of the clerks from the DA's office, another similar habit of Bobby's that Alex has noticed but doesn't comment on.
"Right," she mutters, giving a wave of farewell as she hails her own cab and gives an address out of the city. It's that time of the week and she's off to pay a visit to a friend. She's been making these visits for almost two years now and, while they don't get any easier, she still finds some comfort in them, some wisps of an old connection that grant a bit of peace to her chaotic thoughts.
Upon her arrival, she pays the driver and walks through now-familiar doors and down a sterile hallway to the end. She enters the last room on the right and sees that its occupant is staring out the window, contemplating the tree outside with the posture of one who sees the shape of the tree but doesn't truly comprehend its existence.
Quietly, Alex delivers a greeting: "Hello, Mrs. Goren."
The old woman turns and gives her a smile. "Alex. How are you, dear?"
"I'm okay," Alex offers a smile.
"Good," the old woman nods, content. "And how's Bobby?"
Alex winces from reflex, though she was prepared for those words nonetheless. It's always the same exchange every time she visits; it's stayed the same since the very first time, the day they met under the very worst of circumstances. On that day, Alex was forced to deliver the news that no mother ever wants to hear; that day, Alex spoke the words that caught in her throat and nearly refused to come. In fact, she had been fearful that Mrs. Goren wouldn't even comprehend what she was being told through her state of created reality, but in the end the older woman understood; she understood deeply. Alex could see it in her eyes – dark eyes that were so like Bobby's Alex felt her throat close off with hot tears that she couldn't choke back. And they cried together after Alex told her that her youngest son Bobby – tall, charismatic Bobby with the infectious smile and tender spirit – had died of a heart attack the night before. Subsequent visits have revealed to Alex that Mrs. Goren has retreated back into her own world, a world where Bobby is apparently taking a long and much-needed vacation. Still, the inauspicious introduction between the two women who made up so much of Bobby's life has led them to an understanding. They speak of him in the present tense while exchanging stories recycled from the past, stories from his boyhood and military years to his days in Narcotics and the last years of his life, the ones he spent with Alex. The stories keep him alive in the cluttered mind of his mother, while for Alex, he is constantly alive as the voice in her head.
These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me
On the way home from her visit with Mrs. Goren, Alex remembers the last conversation she had with her partner. They'd just completed an investigation and were heading out the door for the evening, Alex for a date with Richard and Bobby off to meet his friend Lewis for a beer.
They'd waited for the elevator in comfortable silence until Bobby had off-handedly asked, "The Mexican food we had for lunch isn't getting to you, is it?"
Alex shook her head. "No. Why?"
He shrugged casually. "Just a bit of indigestion."
"I keep telling you to change your diet," she chided him like a parent. "You can't eat like a twenty-year-old anymore. All of that spicy food – to say nothing of the pastrami on rye sandwiches! It's going to catch up with you one of these days."
"Are you saying that I'm getting old?" Bobby feigned offense but she could tell he was trying to get a rise out of her for fun.
"We're both getting old," she told him evenly, pausing before she added, "You just happen to look older."
"That's harsh, Eames," he held a hand over his heart as though pierced. "That's really harsh."
She chuckled. "Hey, you're the one with gray hair."
"At least I still have my hair," he pointed out as they stepped into the elevator.
"True," she agreed and they shared a smile.
"And I'm not that old," he added. "I mean, I'm only…"
He drifted off mid-sentence and Alex raised her eyebrows. "Yeah. We're both only."
"Hmm," he said softly, almost to himself. "Where did the time go?"
"Beats me," she gave him another smile. "But if you find it, let me know."
"Will do," he agreed, then winced as another wave of indigestion hit him.
Concerned, Alex told him, "Bobby, maybe you should just go home and get some rest."
"Maybe I will," he frowned thoughtfully and it struck Alex that he must have been feeling rather poorly to agree with her on the matter. Usually in such an instance he would brush off any idea of taking it easy; it wasn't Bobby's way to let up on anyone, especially himself. It was not surprising to see that his body might be feeling the effects of being pushed so hard for so long. In fact, in all of the years Alex had known him, he had always beaten her in to work in the morning and she'd practically had to drag him out the door at the end of the day if he didn't have plans. Further, she knew he didn't sleep as much as he probably should and, as was the case for a lot of detectives, his diet often consisted of food grabbed in haste on his way to the next crime scene and washed down with copious amounts of scalding coffee. It was one thing for a twenty year old to do it and quite another for someone of her partner's age. That sort of thing tended to catch up with a person after a while and she was half surprised that it had taken so long to find Bobby.
Still, even as he spoke in agreement with her assessment of his condition, there was never a part of her that ever thought for a moment that this would be the last conversation they would have, that the hours and lack of sleep and other extraneous factors would be enough to take down the man whom she always viewed as strong and unwavering to the point of seeming nearly invincible. His size alone was enough to convey this - especially compared to her own diminutive stature - and she'd once told him (in a fit of annoyance) to: "Move over, you big tree!"
Yet bigger than Bobby's body was his heart. Alex had never met anyone who felt things quite as deeply as her partner and, had he not developed the ability to hide behind a protective veneer of humor, dazzling brilliance, and disconcerting quirks, she knew he would have been far too sensitive and gentle to last long in the world. To hear that it was his heart that ultimately gave out, then, was a shock to her, if only because she would have told anyone who asked that his heart was the strongest part of him. In the end, however, she simply concluded that he had given so many pieces of it away over the years that he had nothing left with which to sustain himself.
In fact, if she'd been asked to hazard a guess as to what one thing might be able to act as kryptonite to her partner's Superman, she most likely would have chosen his sanity. With his mother's history of schizophrenia, his own in-depth research on the disease, and his occasional but extremely disconcerting forays right up to the line between sane and otherwise, Alex would not have been nearly as surprised to have found herself visiting her partner at a mental institution as she was to find herself planning his funeral. And yet in the end, she supposed that it was better that way. If given the choice, she knew that Bobby would have elected to go suddenly and with very little suffering the way that he did rather than become a prisoner in his own mind, a fate he feared far more than death.
Sadly, that night as they rode down to the lobby of One Police Plaza, she had no idea that it would be their last conversation. She didn't know that it was the last time they would commiserate after work, that she'd never again feel the comforting presence of his bulk resting against her arm as they stood side by side or hear his soft sigh indicating relief at finding himself at the end of the day. So instead of pouring out all of the words she'd saved up in her mind while looking for the right time or the right moment to speak them - words she'd hoped to hold inside until they both retired together from the department - or simply turning to him and pulling him close so that she could hear the reassuring thud of his heart against her ear, she'd stuck to their normal bantering conversation – a conversation that only revealed its depth to her when it was too late.
"You really should rest up, you know - we've got court tomorrow," she told him.
He shrugged. "You could cover for me."
"Excuse me? Who already did all of the paperwork on this case?" she countered.
He smiled. "Touché. You're good to me."
"You can return the favor by being in court tomorrow," she told him.
"Have I ever let you down?" he wanted to know, cocking an eyebrow at her.
They stepped off the elevator and into the lobby.
"Never," she admitted. "But don't start tomorrow, okay? Carver will want you on the stand."
"I won't make you go to court alone," he assured her as they stepped out into the evening air. "After all, who else will you play tic tac toe with?"
She blushed slightly. "That was one time and even you have to admit that was the longest closing argument in the history of the American justice system."
"Actually..." he began, but she cut him off with a look.
He grinned again, always a wonderful contrast to his usually somber countenance. It made him look younger and lifted the weight of their job from him, if only briefly.
"Look, as long as I'm around, you can count on me to be your tic tac toe partner," he teased in conclusion, heading away from her to hail a cab.
"And after that I'm on my own?" she raised her eyebrows as she watched him step away from her.
"Oh I'll still be around. I'm a lot harder to get rid of than that," he told her wryly, giving a hapless wave with one long-fingered hand. "You'll never shake me." A pause and then over his shoulder: "I'll be the voice in your head for the rest of your life."
"Leave it to you to haunt me," she called, shaking her head and smiling.
"I'll see you tomorrow." He turned and gave her his gentlest smile, the one he used very rarely and that seemed reserved only for her. It was the smile that let her know that he cared deeply about her and that he treasured their friendship and witty rapport.
And now that smile is frozen in her memory. It's the last snapshot she has of him.
"Take care, Bobby," were the last words she said before he was gone.
Everything after that is a blur in Alex's mind – the 3:00 a.m. phone call from Lewis that rambled and wavered and ultimately delivered the terrible news, the long, slow walk through the bullpen to Deakins's office the next morning that led her past the drawn faces of her fellow detectives, and the formality of his funeral, the collar of her dress uniform cutting off her air supply and her palms sweating through her white gloves. There are images that stand out clearly if she beckons them (though mostly she prefers not to): a small wreath of flowers on her partner's empty chair that nearly caused her knees to buckle with grief, Bobby's cluttered apartment with its troves of books and magazines, and the paper-like cast of his skin as he lay in his casket at the funeral home. (Whoever said the dead look like they're sleeping had obviously never actually seen a dead body.) And in the end, she found herself at the end of that whirlwind of time with nothing more to remember Bobby by than the contents of his desk and locker and his faded and beaten brown leather notebook.
The whirlwind of Bobby's life and death was followed by silence.
Unlike the person who had said dead people look like they're sleeping, whoever coined the phrase "thunderous silence" really did know what he or she was talking about. (Eames thinks it was Shakespeare but the one person she'd care to ask is gone now.) As she stepped into her apartment following the funeral and dropped her hat and gloves on the kitchen counter, she heard it for the first time: nothing. Sure the refrigerator hummed slightly and her neighbors moved about in their apartments, but those noises were inconsequential. What she wanted to hear was the even breathing of someone over her right shoulder coupled with the tap of a nervous finger on a desk and the rattle of a chair being moved to get a better view of something. She yearned for the pop of a vertebra as a neck tilts too suddenly to an angle, for the uneven phrasing of a stream of consciousness sentence and for the heavy sigh of a perplexed mind.
And she knew that she would never hear them again.
She lost it then. Right there in her kitchen wearing her dress blues and with her keys still in her hand she crumpled to the linoleum and sobbed until she nearly couldn't breathe. She cried until her entire face was wet and sticky with tears and makeup and until her ribs hurt from heaving out one sob after another. And when she was done, she realized that she was sitting in the dark and that she didn't actually care. Bobby was gone so what was the point of moving from this spot ever again?
Of course, she did move. She somehow pulled her body into a standing position and made it perform necessary day-to-day tasks and eventually she even returned to work, solving a few cases and getting a few pats on the back from Deakins and Carver. Life moved on – Richard proposed, Alex said yes and yet even as she found herself adjusting to this new life where Bobby lived in the past tense, she could never shake the silence. It surrounded her like a constant cloud of smoke and thwarted all attempts to banish it.
Ultimately, she was left to beg for its departure.
Rock bottom came on a warm day in the fall. While working a case involving a murdered jogger, Alex found herself perplexed by clues that didn't add up no matter how she looked at them. The position of the body, the time of day, and the nearby murder weapon didn't fit together somehow and, try as she might, she couldn't see what was missing.
Some people might have prayed in such a situation; Alex preferred to call in a professional.
"All right, Bobby," she muttered, trying to keep her voice down so that the CSU team wouldn't think she'd lost it. "What am I missing? What's here that you would see that I haven't?"
Silence was, for a time, her only answer, until: "Isn't it obvious?"
As clearly as though he were standing right beside her, Alex heard Bobby's voice in her mind. He instantly started rattling off facts and observations and she found herself discretely checking over her shoulder to make sure that he hadn't suddenly materialized.
"Are you paying attention to this?" he'd finally asked.
"Yes," she'd thought the word this time.
"Then stop looking for me and look in that bush," he'd chided. "The real murder weapon is in there."
And of course it was and Alex was a hero and a new layer of her partnership with Bobby had been formed.
Yet in two months, she won't need his crime-fighting abilities and, as she enters her apartment and greets Richard with a perfunctory kiss on this evening, she's suddenly worried about what will happen. Will Bobby vanish again? And if he does, will the silence be bearable?
"We're out of milk," Richard tells her, grabbing his keys and jacket as she hangs hers on the rack. "Dinner's almost done but I can't finish the mashed potatoes without it. Be back in ten minutes."
"Okay," she smiles and watches him go. Then, overwhelmed by her own confusing thoughts, she pours a glass of red wine and curls up on the couch, staring out the window in silent contemplation.
"You don't need me anymore, you know," Bobby says quietly, breaking into her revelry. "You're worried about what will happen to me when you retire, but you haven't realized that you're solving these cases on your own."
"What?" She's confused.
"It's probably my fault for promising to become the voice in your head," he chuckles, "but you did all of the work on that murder today on your own. You picked up each and every clue – all I had did was watch."
"But Bobby, I heard you."
"It may have sounded like me, but it was all you, Eames."
"But how…?"
Alex is suddenly chilled, as though that terrible silence is reaching out and touching the back ofher neck with cold, clammy fingers.
"Are you ready, Eames?"
"Ready for what?"
"To ask yourself that question that you've been hiding from."
"What question?"
"If you've been hearing my voice but you've been solving the crimes on your own, was I ever really here in the first place?"
She is frozen now. She isn't even breathing; the air is trapped in her throat.
I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me
"Bobby?" She speaks his name aloud and hears only the echo of that thunderous silence.
And then she realizes the truth: Bobby is gone and no amount of conversing with him will keep him alive, as much as she'd like that to be the case. He's gone and"ours" has become hers alone. She thinks she can accept that now.
When Richard comes home, she has finished the wine and is staring out the window, tears streaming down her face. When he asks her what's wrong, she can't answer but instead dries her eyes and helps him finish dinner. He doesn't question her again.
The next morning she leaves flowers on Bobby's grave and says her final good-bye. Then she heads to One Police Plaza and begins counting down the days until retirement.