The darkness receded, but slowly, much more slowly than it had come upon him. The fog, however, did not lift. He didn't feel badly, but he felt...odd. Even as a teenager, when he'd done some stupid things seeking an internal peace that still eluded him, he had never felt like he was feeling now. It was weird, but not in a troubling sort of way.

He opened his eyes slowly. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark and quiet, in spite of the fact that it was midday. His head was swimming and when he moved, his surroundings still tilted and spun, upsetting his stomach, so he stopped moving and softly groaned.

She jerked awake, not certain if anything beyond her throbbing head actually woke her. She sat up, gently sliding her hand from his so she could stretch. She heard a soft sigh and looked toward the bed. "Bobby?"

"Hey," he said softly.

She stood up and turned the light on over the bed, stepping to his side as he squinted against the sudden brightness. "How do you feel?"

"Pretty good," he answered. "How are you?"

"My head is killing me."

He reached up and lightly ran his fingers over the bandage on the side of her head. "I...I tried to get back."

"I know. But I am going to kick your ass for turning off your wire and facing her with no backup. You know better, dammit."

He was quiet for a minute, and she knew the look on his face. He was trying to put his thoughts into words. He had a reason for doing what he did, and he was trying to figure the best way to explain it to her. "I-it killed me to use you as bait, Eames. And the moment I found out it was her, I knew this was personal. I turned off the wire for the same reason I always have you leave the interrogation room. This was between her and me. I was not going to involve anyone else."

"It's not the same. In the interrogation room, you still have backup. I can still see and hear what's happening. When you turned off that wire, you cut yourself off entirely. That was a stupid move, Bobby."

He looked away. "It was bad enough she hurt you..."

She touched his chin and forced him to look back at her. "We're partners."

He opened his mouth to reply, but caught her eyes and fell silent. He wasn't going to argue with her. "I'm sorry...th-this should never have involved anyone else. Sh-she should never have done what she did."

"How many times have we said that? How many other lives has she taken? She's a psychopath, Goren. She doesn't care about anyone else. All she seems to care about is this power struggle with you."

"It's more than that...to her."

She frowned. "What does that mean?"

"Love and hate are the same thing to Nicole. She isn't capable of distinguishing between the two. She hates me, because she's more comfortable with hate. But on the other hand, she doesn't hate me. She can't mitigate that conflict, so she plays this game. Only her stakes keep rising."

"Do you know what she injected you with?"

He shook his head, instantly regretting the motion. "I have no idea," he answered, closing his eyes until the room stopped moving.

"They're running tests on the syringe and on your blood."

"Does it matter any more? I'm fine."

She studied him for a minute. "Sure. You look like you're fine. Now if I stand here and sway back and forth..."

"Don't...please..."

She smiled. "Yeah, you're fine."

"I will be. It's working its way out of my system." He sighed softly as he studied her. "You should go home, Eames. You need to rest, and that chair can't be comfortable."

"Bobby..."

"You're pregnant," he said softly. "It's more than just you now. Take care of your baby. Go home and get some sleep."

"Are you trying to get rid of me, Goren?"

God, no... He let his eyes close. Never. Forcing them open, he said, "You know better. I...I don't want you to go, but I know you have to. You don't need to babysit; I'm okay. Go home."

She studied him. It was about her taking care of herself and her baby. Ricky might not care about this child, but Bobby did, simply because the baby was hers. "Fine. But I'll be back in the morning." She took a deep breath. "Promise me you'll be okay."

"I promise,"he said with a nod.

That was the wrong thing to do. He closed his eyes as the room moved in odd directions again. When he felt steady again, he opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her at the same moment she chose to lean in to kiss his cheek. Instead of his cheek, her lips met his mouth. They both tensed, then slwoly relaxed. He left the kiss entirely to her, neither deepening it nor withdrawing from it. She raised her hand to his cheek and lingered longer than she should have, but at the moment she simply cared about him and letting him know that she did. When she withdrew, she left her hand on his cheek for a moment. "Listen to the doctors, Bobby. Don't cause any trouble."

He was still overwhelmed by her. "Trouble?"

"Yes, trouble. That's quickly becoming your middle name, you know."

Trouble...she had no idea... "How are you getting home?"

Leave it to him to remember her car was parked by the midtown bar. "Mike said he'd take me home."

He nodded, then leaned back into the pillow. Her fingers played across his hand and she turned to leave. "Eames?" he softly called before she had a chance to step away.

She turned back to face him, her face questioning. For a change, he didn't analyze what he was about to say, although on some level, he knew he was going to regret saying it. His voice still soft, he said, "I love you."

She knew he did, but she was still surprised to hear him say it. She wondered how much the drugs coursing through his system had to do with the fact that he said it. After a moment, though, she decided it didn't matter. She was certain he wasn't expecting a reply, but she felt compelled to give one. "I love you, too, Bobby," she answered, and she meant it.

The words came from the heart of a friend but they were felt with the passion of a lover. Their circumstances held pain for her as well as they did for him, whether he chose to believe that or not. She was so used to his ability to read people, she failed to realize he wasn't able, or maybe he just wasn't willing, to read that part of her. So she buried her feelings, certain he knew what they were. Turning, she left the room. He sighed, a lonely, miserable sound. Rolling over, he closed his eyes against the nausea-inducing movement, and he went back to sleep.

Central Park, twenty months later...

Nicole Wallace returned to the Big Apple from time to time, contemplating new and different methods of torturing her most cunning adversary, but she had thus far remained hidden in obscurity. Bobby didn't own the city. She had every right to be there, as long as she avoided any involvement with law enforcement. She was still annoyed by the trap she had stepped into nearly two years ago, laid by Bobby and his partner. And she still had difficulty forgetting the image of their act in the bar... wondering just how much of it was truly an act. Very little, to her mind.

Now she walked through Central Park, watching lovers stroll hand-in-hand in the warm summer air, children playing their carefree games, mommies and daddies playing with their little ones...hello? What is this?

She couldn't believe her eyes. She knew that leaving Bobby in that alley wouldn't have been the end of him. The drug cocktail she'd given him might have caused some respiratory depression...anesthetic medications and narcotics tended to have that effect...but the ketamine in the dose would have countered that to an extent. The dosage wasn't meant to be lethal.

She smiled at some of what had transpired in that alley. But her smile faded when she thought about his partner. She didn't doubt for a second that they would have gone looking for him. She snorted in annoyance. It would have made her life easier if Bobby had died, but the challenge would have gone from it as well. And she didn't want him dead, not yet. She would prefer to take him to bed, for the simple satisfaction of knowing she could, but there was always the aura of someone else in the way of that, and that knowledge caused her endless frustration, jealousy and rage.

Now...she sat on a bench and watched the big man out on the grass, playing with a little girl not much more than a year old. She watched his interactions with her and the way she responded to him. She didn't miss the smiles or the adoring looks. She had never seen him happy and content before. It seemed out of place with him. And she felt herself once more in the grip of a familiar raging jealousy, although she wasn't quite sure who to direct it at. She had no idea who the child's mother was, but there was no doubt in her mind that Bobby had a daughter.

Don't count me out yet. He had been right. She had always gotten a sense that he wanted to be a father, but she never thought for a moment it would ever come to pass, especially after Eames got married. Somehow, sometime around their last encounter, he had fathered that little girl.

An evil smile touched her face, twisting her features as she narrowed her eyes. Daddy's little girl. She watched the child toddle at him as quickly as her unsteady little legs could carry her. When she pitched forward off her feet, he caught her, and they both laughed. There were many forms of weapons, many forms of pain, and more than one way to defeat a hated enemy. In that little girl with the smiling eyes and the dark curls she saw something that had been eluding her for many years. She saw a sure way to once and for all strike a mortal blow at Bobby Goren.