Spoiler for "The Saint"
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Alex waits until his breath evens out before she turns over to watch him sleep. It's a rare thing, watching him sleep. Usually his energy runs so high that he seems like he doesn't need sleep, but not tonight. She aches pleasantly from their coupling, knowing that he had poured himself into her tonight for safekeeping and she would protect him.
She wonders if he understands why he was so intense tonight, why he held her so close and why there was a sense of desperation in his kisses. Perhaps, not yet.
They had ended a relatively easy file: the forger and his elaborate revenge scenario. Bobby had been more intrigued than traumatized by the whole case. She had heard the touch of admiration for James Bennett and his unique talent in Bobby's voice and in his manner. A unique talent that had no real legitimate market for, but still a master in his own right.
To Alex's thinking Bennett was more than a criminal, more than a murder, more even than a gifted forger, he was the opening of a window. When she heard Bobby break him, pointing out that while James' mother had tormented and destroyed his childhood with her compulsions, she had been the catalyst for his gift, it had opened a window on her understanding of Bobby.
Bobby learned to think 'outside the box' to deal with his mother. He learned how to slip into a delusion in order to keep his mother from hurting herself or him. It made him a brilliant profiler. It also put his very soul in danger of being lost in the land of illusion. She knew he worried about it, slipping away from reality, becoming lost to the world. That's why he would occasionally cling to her as a touchstone. She understood this and never resented it. When you love someone, you love all of them, not just the parts that make you feel good or happy.
Still, she wondered if he understood yet. Bennett, once free of his denial of guilt, had flooded out years of bitterness and betrayal, but never against his mother. No matter what else he said, he never condemned his mother and Bobby hadn't pushed for it. Perhaps because neither of them could face the fact that they were both hated their mothers in some dark corner of themselves. Hated the abuse they were subjected to, whether she could help it or not. Mothers were to care for their children, not the other way around.
She wondered if Bobby was ready to face that fact yet, but she doubted it.