A/N: Hmm. This fic is getting interesting to write. I spent most of the day writing a chapter centering on Bobby, then sat down tonight and realized that I needed to have a chapter about Alex's feelings first. So now I've got a chapter that I don't know where to put . . .

He'd been gone for a week. She hadn't tried to stop him - after all, she didn't want to deny his mother treatment no matter what she wanted from Bobby himself - and he'd really done it. For a few days she'd allowed herself to think that maybe he'd change his mind once he was had gotten his mother was well-settled in LA, but the time for that to have happened was past.

She didn't know what to feel. At first it had been shock, then anger at his secret-keeping. Pity next, at how he must have felt struggling with the decision for so long, then resentment for the shabby way he'd treated her in lieu of telling her the truth. The resentment was followed by a feeling of surreality - was this really her life that had suddenly been turned into a soap opera gone wrong? - and then a dull depression as she realized that it was real, that he was gone and she was here and there was no more "Goren and Eames."

"Alex, come on."

Pulled from her thoughts, she hugged the pillow she was holding tighter to her chest and looked up at her younger sister, Maggie, who was curled up at the other end of the couch. "What?"

"I said 'come on'! You need to snap out of this. Let's get drunk and go bar-hopping or something." When that got no response, Maggie leaned closer, getting into her sister's face. "Alex, he treated you like shit for months! Stop being sorry he's gone, damn it."

Alex shook her head tiredly. "Not going to happen, sorry. Just let me mope, would you?"

"No." She abruptly jumped to her feet and headed for Alex's kitchen. "At the very least, you and me are going to sit here, together, and mope with ice cream."

That got a weak smile out of her. "I never say no to ice cream." She watched Maggie dig through the freezer for a few seconds, then sighed. "He's not a bad person, Mags. He just . . . didn't know how to handle the problem, and he did it wrong."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better . . . why?" Maggie said, turning around with a carton of double-fudge brownie ice cream in her hands. "As far as I'm concerned, 'bad' and 'hurting my sister for no good reason whatsoever' are the same thing. Spoons?"

"Second drawer on the left. I didn't talk to him, you know, after he told he. I threw him out and then screened my calls until the day he left."

"Sounds reasonable to me. I'm surprised you didn't kick the shit out of him before you threw him out."

Alex shrugged and accepted the ice cream carton from her sister, prying off the lid. "I was too busy being completely stunned and speechless."

They ate in silence for a few minutes before Maggie made her next attempt: "You think he's going to try to call you or anything?"

"I . . . probably. Eventually."

"Are you going to talk to him if he does?"

She shook her head. "No. At least, not for the time being. Not until I can carry on a conversation with him without yelling at him or crying."

Maggie hastily swallowed a bite of ice cream and waved her spoon emphatically at her sister as she said, "I swear to god, Alex, you've cried more tears over this guy in the past . . . what, five months? than you did in your entire life before that. Take it from me: don't get into the habit. Crying doesn't fix anything, but it sure makes you look dumb to the person you're crying over."

"I know. Believe me, I know. I just . . . don't know what else to do, you know? It's either cry or scream, and crying's less likely to get me evicted."

"How about you do neither," Maggie said forcefully as she dug her spoon into the carton for more ice cream. "Stop being hurt and start being angry. Better yet, stop caring about him and what he did in the first place."

"Yeah, well, you got an instruction manual for that? Because I'm kind of having a hard time turning 'I love Bobby' into 'Bobby who?' even though I would love to get it all out of my head."

"I'm guessing a rebound boyfriend isn't the way you want to go?" Maggie teased. "Because I have more than one male friend who'd love to get your number."

Alex shook her head. "Ugh, no. Nothing against your friends or anything, but just . . . no. I'm . . . not interested. Come on, Mags, help me think of stuff that's constructive, stuff that I can actually do!"

"You could give me your gun and tell me where to find him."

"Maggie."

Maggie held up her hands in surrender. "Ok, ok. Sorry. Although I would like nothing better than to do just that. What kind of 'constructive' are you looking for? You want me to tell you to take up a new hobby or something?"

"I don't know. Just . . . get him out of my head, however you can."

"Ok . . ." She pursed her lips and thought for a few seconds. "Well, you could focus on work. I mean, you're getting a new partner and everything now, right? That's going to take up a lot of your energy."

Sighing, Alex shook her head. "I'm getting paired up with an old warhorse named Webster. With Bobby gone, I'm not at the top of the pecking order anymore; I don't think work's going to be that challenging in the near future."

"There you go again! 'Bobby' this, 'Bobby' that . . . did you miss the memo about how you're a damn good cop, completely independent of him? God," she said, shaking her head wonderingly, "I can't believe how much he got to you."

"I loved him, Mags," Alex said softly. "I still do, even after this. When you love someone, you let them get to you. It's part of the process."

Maggie rolled her eyes. "With lines like that, maybe you should give up police work and start writing romance novels. Fine, ok, you loved him. That doesn't mean you should let yourself be devalued because he's gone." She sighed. "Are you sure you don't want to give me his address?"

Alex just gave her sister a tired look. "What pisses me off is that I let him see how much the thought of him leaving messed me up."

"Pride took a hit, huh?"

"In a big way."

"Good. Use it."

"I beg your pardon?" Alex said blankly. "How do I use something like that?"

"You let him see you weak once, and now - oops, wait," Maggie broke off. "The ice cream's melting. I'll put it back." Taking the container back from her sister, she stood up and walked to the kitchen, saying over her shoulder, "You let him see you weak once. Now what you're going to do is make sure he doesn't get to see it again. Be ready for any stunts he might pull, like calling you, or whatever it is nutjobs like him do - sending you a card written in blood . . . whatever."

"He's not a 'nutjob.' I've told you that a million times," she protested weakly as she followed Maggie into the kitchen.

"Not my point." She shoved the ice cream back into the freezer. "I'm saying that if you don't know what's going to happen if you have to deal with him again, you need to do some contingency planning."

"Contingency planning?" Alex echoed, dropping both spoons into the sink. "Ok, I'm listening."

"Good girl. Now, the you have two goals here: first, to not give him the satisfaction of seeing you're hurting, and second, to get rid of the hurt for real. For obvious reasons, we're going to start with the first one."

Alex didn't comment on that as they returned to the couch and settled down; she just picked up her pillow and hugged it again.

Maggie raised her eyebrows pointedly at the pillow, but didn't try to take it away from her. "Now, he's not a stupid guy, right? Unfortunately?"

" 'Stupid' is definitely not a word anyone in their right mind would apply to Bobby Goren," Alex agreed.

"Right, that's what I'm saying." Looking pointedly at the cell phone clipped to her sister's belt, she went on, "He knows you carry that phone. He knows it's always on you, and he knows that if you don't answer, odds are that it's because you're avoiding whoever's calling, not because you didn't hear the phone ring. So if he calls, you're going to answer."

"Maggie -"

"Let me finish," Maggie insisted, holding up a hand to cut off Alex's protest. "Now, as I said, you're going to answer the phone. You're going to talk to him. That does not mean that you have to let him control the conversation, though, ok? You make small talk, ask how he's been, all that stuff, so it's clear that you're not afraid of talking to him. And then, if he tries to turn the conversation somewhere you don't want to go, or if you just can't put up with him any longer, you make an excuse. Say . . . I don't know, that your partner needs you or something."

Alex, looking unsatisfied, shrugged. "And this helps me . . . how?"

"Well it makes you feel like you're getting back at him, for one thing. I don't know about you, but that always makes me feel better - especially when you're doing it in a way he can't point to and say, 'oh, she's overcompensating.'"

" 'Overcompensating'?" she repeated dubiously. "If you say so."

"Just work with me on this, Al, ok?"

"Whatever you say, Mags."

Maggie stopped to stick out her tongue before continuing, "Believe it or not, if you pretend you're not upset long enough, it kind of becomes second nature, and then you wake up one day and realize that hey . . . you're not really that upset anymore. And that point's a lot easier to get to when you know you're keeping your dignity while you do it."

"Hmm." Alex sighed and looked away. "Maggie?"

Concerned by her sister's sudden change in tone, Maggie looked closely at her as she said, "What?"

"What do you think would have happened if, instead of yelling at him, I had offered to go with him?"

She let out a troubled breath and moved to the other end of the couch to hug Alex. "Oh, honey, don't think about that. You can't change what's done."

Alex shook her head againsther shoulder. "Tell me anyway. I . . . I can't figure out if it would have made things better or worse."

"You really want to know my opinion? Even if it's not what you want to hear?"

"Yes."

She sighed. "I think if you had done that, you wouldn't have needed to kick him out, because he would have gotten the hell out of there as soon as he heard you say it. Alex, come on, it doesn't do any good to play the 'what if?' game."

She pulled away from Maggie's hug to bury her face in the pillow and mumble something unintelligible.

"What?" Maggie asked, leaning over to get her ear closer. "I didn't hear you."

She turned her head slightly so her mouth wasn't covered. "I said . . ." She paused to swallow as a tear ran down her cheek to soak into the pillowcase. "I said that . . . I should have learned years ago that 'happily ever after' wasn't going to happen for me."

"Oh, Alex . . . Don't blame yourself for something he ruined. If he were really as smart as people think he is, he would have done whatever he could to keep you with him." And with that, Maggie wrapped her arms around her sister, pillow and all, and held her as she cried.