WARNING: Spoilers for Blind Spot and Siren Call. If you don't want to know, I believe you can skip this chapter and go on to read the next (when it's published) without missing anything.

Chapter 4 – Retrograde

As impossible as it seemed, Alex thought that perhaps her father was more excited about her Saturday afternoon with Bobby than she was. Her biggest fear was that he would do something totally embarrassing, like ask Bobby what his intentions were. If that happened, she just might have to move back to Chicago.

Her parents had found out about her relationship with Bobby during the aftermath of the whole Jo Gage ordeal. It wasn't anything she or Bobby told them. It became obvious in the way he cared for her in the days and weeks after – in the fact that almost every time they came to her house to check on her, Bobby was there, often times with an overnight bag sitting by the door. When he thought she was strong enough, her father spoke with her about it, hitting on every one of the dangers of becoming involved with your partner. But once he realized there was no changing his daughter's stubborn mind or heart, his best advice was to be discreet – and be careful.

They might have survived – gotten past her nightmares and his guilt – if the Wisnesky case hadn't come right on the heels of the violence of her kidnap. Nights when she was feeling particularly bitter, Alex couldn't help but blame him for pushing them further into their downward spiral. Bobby's inbred tendency to believe he should save the weak, and his instincts to internalize everything, came roaring ferociously to life. He was already blaming himself for not seeing Declan Gage's psychological abuse of his daughter, and beating himself up over her subsequent physical abuse of Alex. He now added Wisnesky's suicide to the mix.

For her part, Alex was hurt and angry that Bobby hadn't told her about his mother's illness. She only found out about it because he used it as a possible way to gain an alliance with Wisnesky. Even after she knew, he rarely discussed anything with her, saying only that his mother was a fighter and everything was fine. In her head, Alex knew he was trying to protect her. In her heart she felt he didn't trust her enough to take her into his confidence – didn't trust her to be strong enough to try and help him in the way he'd tried to help her. Alex bit down on her resentment and anger until Bobby finally couldn't take it any more and, in his frustration, shouted at her that she needed to 'Get over it!' Almost immediately, he was apologetic – agonized that he could lash out at her in that way. His remorse and her pain combined for their last night of true lovemaking.

It all went downhill from there. After that, there were a few sexual encounters, nothing more than physical releases used mainly as distractions from mental anguish.

As his mother's cancer progressed, Bobby withdrew further into himself. Worse, Alex let him. When they weren't arguing, they were indifferent – each allowing the other to lick their own wounds in undisturbed isolation.

Working together had become impossible – that was obvious not only to them, but to everyone around them. Bobby asked for an extended leave of absence to care for his mother in the final stages of her illness and Alex was assigned desk duty.

Frances Goren passed away three months after Wisnesky's suicide. Alex's relationship with Bobby had died a month earlier. When he returned to Major Case, Alex was already gone.

A friend of hers who had moved to Chicago years earlier had heard about Alex and Jo Gage. She called to tell her about an opening she knew of at the Chicago police academy and spoke excitedly about new beginnings and a change of scenery. Sometimes timing truly is everything and Alex thought perhaps there was a reason this came to her when it did. In the years after she moved to Chicago, during the nights she lay awake in the dark questioning her decision, she wondered if the true reason had been a test of her love for Bobby. If so, she had failed miserably.

And now, with their first meeting in five years behind them, Alex worried that in their eagerness to get reacquainted and put the pain aside, they had tried to gloss over their history. Bobby seemed willing to step right back into their old, familiar patterns – calling her at least once a day, even if just to say hello or tell her that he'd told 'Jimmy' she was back in town. Although she thrilled to hear his voice and anxiously anticipated his daily calls, in the back of her mind a small warning was whispering that they needed to go slowly – they needed to rebuild, not revert.

The whisper didn't stop her from going out and buying a new outfit for Saturday. It didn't stop her from taking extra care with her hair and make-up, or from using what she knew used to be Bobby's favorite perfume. And it didn't stop her heart from soaring when she heard her father answer the door at 11:55 a.m.

TBC…

A/N – I couldn't resist further examining their history. Why pass up an opportunity for some good angst? And…this story really didn't start out to be a post-ep for Blind Spot and Siren Call. It's what happens when you bog yourself down in a storyline with no way out.