Thank you for all your reviews. For some reason I'm having trouble getting any emails from and I don't know the cause. So I hope that this actually posts.

Everyday Is A Winding Road

Chapter 4: The Service Station

So here she was. In a place she had never dared to enter. Never.

Of course, this was all starting to spin out of control for her. She didn't know how to handle it and she guessed that was why she had finally ended up here late at night, out of the blue.

"So, how did you get my number?" The woman asked, sitting in a very comfortable looking chair whilst Alex stood next to her bookshelf, looking at what she owned. That wasn't normally her thing, that was his. The thought of what she'd done to hm made her tear herself away from the books and look at the woman dead on.

"Mike Logan gave me your number." she replied, simply, she didn't want to explain why he had given the number out and apparently she didn't have to.

"Well, if Mike sent you then it must be important." Doctor Elizabeth Olivet said, motioning for her to take a seat. "He generally doesn't like physcologists."

"He didn't send me." She said, offended. Olivet held up her hands to appologise. Alex finally took the seat that was being offered to her.

"I was surprised by your call, I usually only get requests from the NYPD on behalf of the officer involved and it's usually under orders. What brings you here, Alex?" Alex suddenly felt small by the way the woman had spoken her name. She hated it when she actually felt as small as she truly was.

"He was right." she said, quietly and Olivet looked at her as she clasped her hands together and refused to give her any eye contact.

"Who was right?" Olivet asked, needing some clarification before they continued.

"Bobby was. I should never have talked to him about it. I should have just left it." She was almost whispering. "He - he wanted me to come to you first... well a shrink anyway but I ..." Alex never finished, she just sat there, looking up from her hands she began to watch Olivet who was watching her.

"It's alright, Alex, please, say what you want to say. I'm not going to judge you. Why don't you tell me what it was that you wanted to talk about with Bobby?" Olivet asked before simply waiting for Alex to respond.

Alex nodded. "Okay, well, I wanted to talk to him about what happened to me." she never offered any kind of explanation, she never clarified any more, she just shivered a little. Alex couldn't tell if she was shivering physically because she was cold or emotionally because of the battering she'd been subjected to recently.

"What happened to you?" Olivet asked, when she realised Alex was stuck in her own thoughts.

"I was... kidnapped by a - serial killer." Olivet simply nodded as Alex spluttered the words, almost spitting them, hating the awful taste the words left in her mouth. Olivet didn't react emotionally to that news, Alex figured she either heard all the time or she was trying to be professional, whichever it was annoying to her that this woman didn't seem to react either way. "She kept - She kept me tied up..."

"She?" Olivet asked, finally Alex had gotton a reaction from her.

Alex nodded. "Yes, she." Alex closed her eyes at her abruptness, she did not want to repeat what had just happened to her with Bobby. The last thing she wanted to do was storm out of the shrinks office in tears. That wouldn't do her or Bobby any good. She was here because she wanted to fix what she had done. "Jo, her name was Jo Gage. She and Bobby were friends I guess. They... had a common father figure." Olivet nodded, just letting her talk about it. "He mentored Bobby...he... they didn't know about her."

Alex looked tired and Olivet felt somewhat tired herself but she felt this was important and if she pushed Alex away or tried to get her to come back tomorrow she knew that Alex wouldn't come back at all. "That she was serial killer?" Olivet asked, and Alex nodded. "How do you feel about the fact they didn't know?"

"I..." Alex stopped and looked at her. "I don't know."

"You don't know? Okay." Olivet looked at her and smiled. "Okay, who is Bobby to you?"

Alex smiled. "My partner and best friend."

"And you're both police officers?" She asked, just for clarification and to get Alex to talk about him in a different way.

"Detectives. Major Case." Alex replied and Olivet nodded.

"What's Bobby's role in the partnership that you have?" Olivet asked, trying to get Alex to remember what she thought of Bobby and who he was, without thinking of what had happened to her for a moment.

"Uh, he's a profiler and... he understands human nature and he's very good at putting the smallest clues together. He's a great detective." Olivet smiled at how Alex spoke about her partner, she could see the respect Alex had for him.

"Okay, so now that you've reminded yourself who Bobby is to you, let me ask you again. How do you feel about the fact that Bobby didn't know?" Olivet asked, watching as emotions fluttered across Alex's face as she struggled with finding the answer.

"I guess a little hurt." she finally replied.

"Why?"

"He didn't know. He's so good at putting together evidence and he - he didn't find me."

"Who did find you?" Olivet asked her, a part of her was curious to know what had happened to her but she knew she had to wait for Alex to tell her.

Alex looked at her, tears glistening her eyes as she whispered. "No one." The pain Alex felt stabbed at her, like the shears that had smoothly moved across her skin that night in that torture chamber. She felt alone, alone and she'd made it worse by being stubborn about it.

"Would you rather someone had found you? Do you wish Bobby had found you?" Olivet asked her to get her out of her reverie, again.

Alex shook her head. "No, because he never would've found me."

"Why not?" Olivet asked, with some confusion, Alex was beginning to make a little less sense than she perhaps should.

"Because he was too focused on Declan than me." Alex's anger was slowly bubbling it's way back up to the surface. She was trying her hardest to control her sarcasm, not wanting to offend the shrink in one of the worst ways possible but she knew that if she got angry sarcastic comments would be flying out of her mouth a mile a minute.

"Declan?"

"The mentor." Alex replied, quickly. Closing her eyes, trying to control her anger.

"That makes you angry at him. Why?"

Alex stared at her, "Because Declan was accused of being the... killer and they... he ... it..." Alex stammered into a halt. "I'm not angry at him. I'm angry at myself. I guess that's the real crux here, isn't it?" Alex's anger was spilling out and she wasn't really talking to anyone in particular, Olivet just happened to be there and in her tired state, Alex was finally realising what her problem was. "Maybe a little at him, but I'm angry that I got kidnapped because I happened to be in the way... just some stupid pawn in a scheme from a girl who wanted her fathers' attention."

Alex stood up and walked over to the window, watching the rain fall outside. "I'm a cop and she managed to take me from my house, I couldn't even stop her. Bobby didn't even know it was happening."

"You escaped from her though, didn't you?" Olivet offered to try to relieve some of her anger.

"Yeah." She whispered. "But they didn't."

"They? The other victims?" Olivet reasoned that there may have been others the moment Alex had mentioned that a serial killer was involved.

Alex nodded "She was there. I heard her. Screaming. I couldn't save her. I couldn't help her." Alex didn't dare turn around as the tears fell from her eyes and stung her cheeks. "I blamed him and I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have hurt him. I didn't mean to, I didn't want to." Alex wiped her eyes and turned back to Olivet who had not moved from her seat but she did have a concerned look on her face. Alex could hear that sarcastic part of her thinking Well yeah, now I've got a reaction. But her sarcasm didn't calm her, it didn't help. Alex looked at the cream walls and wanted to scream. She hated Olivet's wall for some reason.

"Alex, what did you do to Bobby that hurt him?" Olivet asked, returning her attention back to her and not the wall.

"I told him it was his fault, that I blamed him. That he was only thinking of himself." Alex angrily wiped away a stray tear that was threatening to fall again. "That's not true and I know that. He probably thinks that I hate him and I don't."

"Didn't you tell me that Bobby was a profiler? A good one?" Olivet asked and Alex nodded. "He probably knows that you don't hate him. That you're just transferring your anger onto him because you have no one else to direct it towards." Alex was about to argue that there were plenty of other people to be angry towards when Olivet stopped her. "When we go through something traumatic, we feel different and we as a people don't like that so instead of allowing ourselves to express the anger at it's core we simply sit on it until we lash out at the closest person possible. In your case, that was your partner because he was the one who was closest to Jo, to Declan and to you."

Alex couldn't help but see sense in that. "What I'm going to advise you to do is go home, sleep on this. Get some rest because it is late and then tomorrow try apologising to Bobby and letting him know what you are really mad at and why." Olivet smiled. "I'm going to schedule some more sessions with you because I'm afraid Rome wasn't built in a day." Alex smiled at the gesture of a joke, she couldn't tell if this woman was usually funny or had picked up on her need for a little light relief.

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Although she had been told to go home and rest, Alex had found herself sitting outside of his apartment block. She, never being one to do as she was told, really wanting to see him since she had driven all the way here without thinking but now was regretting that action simply because she was afraid of what he would say. Would he hate her for being so angry towards him? She wouldn't be able to live anymore if he told her to leave and that he hated her.

She was surprised by the knock on the window of her car, she looked up to see it was her partner, standing in his shirt and pants. She opened the car door and stepped out into the rain. "Bobby?" he didn't respond he just watched her close the door to the car. He looked different to her somehow, he looked withdrawn but he also looked guilty. She felt herself crumble when she realised that she'd convinced him that it was his fault. "I, Bobby, I came to say that I'm sorry. I didn't mean what I said..." he put his hand up to stop her and she did. Feeling herself becoming increasingly soaked. Rain drops that had clung to her hair were also dripping down her face as it began to be a torrential downpour.

"Eames, I know and I'm sorry too." After he said those words, he watched her as she felt herself relax as she realised that he was okay and that he didn't hate her and that all of her irrational thinking had been for nothing. She allowed him to pull her into a hug and he held her close and she felt her tears mix with the rain as she finally felt herself begin to come to terms with what had happened to her. And so was he.

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Bobby was leaning against the SUV as he heard the door opened, he stood up straight and watched as his partner walked down the steps and gave a small nod of greeting. "How'd it go?" he asked, not wanting to push her for an answer but wanting to help her.

"Just three more sessions." She replied, not letting any details of her sessions with Olivet be revealed.

He pointed towards the car, "I can drop you off but I got a call..."

"Then let's go." She said, wanting and needing to return to work. He looked ready to protest and he was with his eyes but she stopped him. "I told her I wasn't getting any better by myself." She really wanted to convince him that she was okay now. He looked at her for a moment and than passed her the keys to the SUV, she took them and he held up his hands in defeat as he walked to the passenger side of the car.

Finally, things were starting to look better for them...

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Finished.

Please let me know what you guys thought. This one was quite hard to write, the only reference for a counselling session I've got is my own experience and I should imagine that the two were probably be different. That said, I gave it my best shot.