"You're going to reap, just what you sow..."

That song was playing again. It was a new tape of background music – he'd realised that when he noticed an unfamiliar song from last's week top ten playing when he walked in – but whoever was responsible for background music in his local grocery store was just as much of a Lou Reed fan as ever. He wandered the aisles of the grocery store, not really seeing what he was looking at, operating on auto-pilot, occasionally checking the crumpled list in his right hand and trying to tune out the sounds in the background. Could have ordered online, of course, but sometimes it was good to get out of the apartment. Then again, he'd hardly spent any time in there this past week or so.

As he hunted for orange juice, Bobby Goren found himself reflecting on the events of the past week. Work at least was going well, he thought. He and Eames were working well together again, and once again he reflected on how much he'd hate to be parted from her, her instinctive knowledge of exactly what to say and when and how, her ability to anticipate where he was going, clarify his thoughts, add her own insights... He'd depended on that a lot over the past few days, when he'd been sunk deep in his work, single-mindedly focussing on it with an intensity unusual even for him. But then, he thought, it had been an extremely complex case involving three murders and a contested will. Due to her being first on the scene at the first murder, he and Eames had been working a lot with another detective, Lynn Bishop.

He smiled wryly at the memory. Had he ever been quite that nervous, quite that scared stiff, quite that earnest? Maybe once, a long time ago, but not for years. Bishop was undoubtedly bright and capable – definitely showed promise as a Major Case detective – but working with her for the past week had been an excellent reminder of exactly why Alex Eames was his perfect partner. Funny how she seemed keen that he and Bishop got along well. He hoped to God that didn't mean Eames was planning to move on somewhere else and was lining up her replacement. Nah, he'd know. He'd spot it, surely?

Anyway, he thought with a sigh of relief, that case was nearly concluded. No more having to work with Bishop, whose red hair and elegant figure reminded him of... no. They were both young and keen and red-headed, but there the similarities between Lynn Bishop and Sienna Tovitz ended. Where Bishop was earnest, Sienna was humorous. Where Bishop was pale, beautiful and elegant, Sienna was freckled, pleasant-faced and enticingly curvy and rounded beneath the suits she favoured for work. Where Bishop's professional insecurities showed, Sienna masked hers with an outward show of confidence and good cheer, except when they were alone together and she needed him...

He reminded himself firmly that that was in the past. The best solution had happened for both of them. As he passed the publications aisle, he stopped to scan a couple of the newspapers in search of distraction. It never hurt to be up on current affairs. Unfortunately, a quick scan of the first few pages reminded him of a cartoon he'd once seen of a newspaper front page with the headlines "Oil prices rises," "Trouble in Middle East," "Doctors warn of new health risk," "Famine in Africa," "Dull political controversy rumbles on," and the caption "Generic News for sale: you'll never need to buy another newspaper again!"

Bored, he folded it prior to putting it back on the stand, then stopped as his eye was caught by a headline at the bottom of the fourth page: "Mystery Illness Baffles Doctors." A short news article, it described a woman with minor connections to one of the big players on the New York art scene (who was blond and with model-quality looks, hence the inclusion of the item and photograph, he suspected), who had been sick in hospital for days with baffling symptoms, apparently from a rare animal virus. He shrugged and folded the paper. Odd case, but nothing that fell under his field of responsibility.

"I made a point to burn all of the photographs..."

The background music played on, getting into his mind despite his best attempts to block it out. It was a new song he'd heard once before, called "Whatsername," couldn't quite remember the artist, a sad tune of loss and regret...

"She went away and then I took a different path..."

He tried desperately to ignore it, but trying to block out the song brought another voice into his head, a female voice, pleasant, light, with a very slight Russian inflection.

"There are two things I need to talk to you about."

For the first time since she'd left, he suddenly remembered Sienna saying that on that fateful evening, her voice floating persistently through his head despite his good intentions to put the past behind him and move on. What had been the other thing, he thought? The first had been her new job offer, but what was the other?

No use in thinking about that now, he thought sternly. She'd made her decision, and he ought to respect that, so whatever it was, she must have thought better of it. Involuntarily, an image of her face floated into his face; Sienna, wearing the expression he'd come to know so well over the past couple of months, that horrible neutral expression that meant she was desperately upset and confused, but doing her best to stay rational.

He winced, unable to shake the crushing feeling of guilt that expression always caused in him, the knowledge that he had put that unhappiness there. When she'd announced she'd been offered a job in London, his first feeling had been of relief, that he'd never see that expression again, never make her unhappy again. Throughout the whole of that awful evening less than three weeks ago, and the two short weeks that had followed until she had caught her flight to London and left New York for good, he'd done his best to be calm, supportive, rational when, if he was being honest, all he'd wanted to do was plead with her to stay, not to leave him.

But he couldn't help being who he was, he thought unhappily. Couldn't change his past or who it had made him, any more than Sienna could change who she was. He couldn't change himself, but he could at least not be selfish, let her go, move on to a better man, someone her own age who could make her happy.

That was her choice to make, not yours, a voice at the back of his head whispered.

She applied for a job in London. What else could that mean?

A last-ditch desperate effort to make you think about how much you wanted her, about how you had to do something about the situation instead of letting it drag on? the voice continued.

He shook his head, angrily. Pointless to speculate in that way now. Sienna had made her decision, and he supported it. It had been a happy few months with her, and eventually they'd both look back on it, smile fondly, and then forget about it.

As he neared the end of his shopping trip, he veered towards the canned fruit section on autopilot, thinking of dessert at the end of the week. It was a shame, he thought, the recipe he was thinking of tasted a lot better if you used real oranges, not canned segments, but Sienna for some reason didn't like real oranges. She would eat them – like him, she'd acquired the traveller's knack of eating whatever was in front of her and smiling – but she didn't really like them, and he didn't see the point in making something she didn't like.

Then it hit him. He could. He could use real oranges.

She wouldn't be there to object.

He closed his eyes briefly, gripping the grocery cart's handle firmly to hold himself steady. The future stretched out before him, and for the first time he really realised what that meant; no more Sienna. No more mornings in bed waking up to her snuggling up to him with that wicked smile, no more nights staying out later exploring the city than either of them should really stop out when they had work to do tomorrow, no more evenings when he'd come home to find her there. Not having the comfort of knowing that she would be there at the end of his day, a warm breathing body curled close against him.

Not even having the odd comfort of comforting her, of helping her through her learning curve and the struggles she was having to adapt to her new career, and the private joy he felt as he saw her grow into it before his eyes, turning into the woman he knew she could be. Not having the satisfaction, after days spent wrangling with difficult cases, to have a simple problem – Sienna in need of him – with a simple solution – be there for her and hold her.

Life had battered at him – those cases that had dragged all his personal demons to the fore – and he'd sunk back into his old ways of dealing with it, unwilling to risk letting Sienna help him. Worse still, he'd inflicted the worst side of his personality on her, for fear she might actually see that underneath, her rock, her loving strong Bobby, was just as scared and unhappy as she herself. How had that made her feel? The thought was like a knife twisting slowly in his flesh, torturing him now that it was too late to make amends. He knew only too well how that had made her feel; young, inexperienced and foolish, the last way he would ever want her to think of herself.

Agonisingly, the truth of her accusation in their last fight hit him. Truly, he had judged her. Had judged her too young, too inexperienced, to deal with him at his worst. He'd never thought of himself as a coward... but he'd acted like one. Decided that he'd prefer the martyr's choice of keeping it to himself, pretending he was sparing her, but if he dug deeper into his motivations, he had to admit that really, he'd done that because he couldn't face having her fail to help him and leave.

Better never to give her that chance, than to give it to her and know that she couldn't cope, if, indeed, she had proven unable to deal with him in his blackest, worst moods. Perhaps she would have been able to. He'd not know now, because he'd never given her the chance to prove it.

If he had done one thing right, he thought with a wince, it was that he had managed to let her go without inflicting more pain on her with useless protestations of love, of need. She had made her choice, and he'd respected it.

Would ever he see her again? Meet her again, perhaps in the line of work, and see that wonderful smile just for a few seconds, before their professionalism took over and she vanished again. (Would she take the new-found sexual confidence their relationship had given her and take full advantage of all the opportunities London offered? The thought of her with someone else... no, that was too painful, right now.)

He realised he'd been looking at the oranges for a long time, and decided he didn't really feel like dessert anyway. Decided, thinking If I have real oranges, I eat knowing she won't be back... if I have the canned ones, I eat wishing she was here... An automaton, he moved towards the checkout, blindly groping for his wallet, not seeing anything but Sienna's face in front of him, already receding, becoming a memory instead of a part of his life.

She'd have finished moving in and be just about to start her first week in her new job now, he thought painfully, as he paid for the goods and went in search of his car. Uselessly, he wished he had gone with her to the airport. Oh, they'd both agreed out loud that there was no point in him taking time off work to do that, not with the seriousness of the case he was working on (though Eames had said twice that she could manage without him, with an expression of concern he'd done his best to ignore), they could say their goodbyes perfectly well at home before she left...

He knew now that he'd been deceiving himself. He'd not gone with Sienna because he couldn't trust himself not to beg her to stay, and she didn't deserve having her life screwed up like that. After all he'd done to her, he owed her at least the chance to start over without complications.

As his vision blurred, he pulled over, recognising that he was not in any fit state to drive at present. Switching off the engine and lights, he rested his arm on the wheel, and dropped his head into his hands, rocking backwards and forwards. He recognised now that the pain had to be faced, had to be gone through before he could heal. Before he could stop it, the image he'd been fighting swam up before him, the one that he'd seen once in a dream filled with longing and which had heralded the end of his and Sienna's relationship.

...Sienna with a tiny red-haired bundle in her arms, glowing with happiness... nearby, he could hear Eames' voice murmuring softly "He's perfect, Bobby, just beautiful"... whilst the two of them, his family, looked up at him as he held them both, arms wrapped around her, his love, and their child...

No, he cried, a long silent wail inside his head. No. He could never have done that to her, risked giving her child the tendency towards the same illness that had destroyed his childhood and his mother's personality. Moreover, he could not have done it to himself, could not have lived with himself if they had risked it and he had been responsible for passing it on. The past couple of months had been both wonderful and agonising. Wonderful, because he and Sienna had come to love each other, and agonising, because he had increasingly seen it in her face. Seen her become increasingly fascinated by children, turning to look at them, watch them, cooing over babies, and then she would look at him, never saying anything, but it was so obvious what she was thinking. How could he possibly tell her that on the one hand, he would like nothing better for their future, and on the other, that they should never have children together? Better that she had gone, moved on with her life.

As he wiped his eyes and tried to compose himself, the song from the grocery store was still stuck in his head, the singer's regret in every word, "I remember the face, but I can't recall the name... now I wonder how whatsername has been."

He would never forget Sienna's name, or her face, the one woman he'd seriously thought of... no. He would not allow himself to think that, and he angrily wiped his hand across his eyes, thinking of her one last time, picturing her as he always liked to think of her when he needed cheering up; Sienna in army fatigues with that nervous, shy smile, the one that he and he alone could so easily cause to broaden into a glad smile of welcome and love. Wherever she was now, he hoped that she would find the happiness and fulfilment she deserved, and though he knew she'd not know it, he sent her his love and hope for her future.

FIN

Author's Note: I don't own the copyright to any of the songs or lyrics quoted here. For reference, they're: "Leaving New York" by REM, "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed and "Whatsername" by Green Day.

I'm now going on holiday, so there will be a long pause before I post any more fics, but don't worry, this isn't my last Criminal Intent fic, not by a long shot.