When he saw her again, she was different. He was different, they were all different; the whole fucking world was different. But she was different than the woman he'd known before. She was...more real. And yet she was different than the woman he had expected to see, different than the woman he had spoken to in the middle of the night in September. She was beautiful, and hard, and seemed to glow with an inner fire he didn't dare to touch.
She coughed, deep and dry, in the breakroom when she thought no one could hear her.
They each had their own traumas, he knew. Everyone did. But now she was a woman apart. He didn't know how to reach her. He didn't dare to try.
Eames. Oh god, Eames.
His first thought, when the towers fell. He was asking routine questions in a crowded electronics store in the Bronx, when the store fell silent and the little boy clutching the remote behind the counter mashed down the volume button and the news blared louder and louder and the smoking tower was all any of them could look at on the TV above the door.
One Police Plaza was only fifteen minutes from the WTC, ten if you ran. And he knew her, he knew his partner. She'd be running.
He must have called her fifty, a hundred times in the last week. Most of the time he got a busy signal, once he got through to the voicemail on her cell but the inbox was full; sometimes there was no sound on the line at all. He asked for news of her every chance he got: who had seen her, was she okay. He needed to know she wasn't among the missing; he needed to know she wasn't among the dead. Each little scrap he received kept him going, a touch of calm to dampen a galaxy of panic inside of him. She was among the first on the scene; she didn't go in the towers; she hadn't left the staging areas; she was organizing the recovery effort. No matter where he went or who he asked, she was always a block away, on a different shift, exact whereabouts currently unknown.
2:13 am. He didn't even know why he kept trying anymore. It was almost a security tic by now, calling Eames' cell number. His brain seemed to have decided that as long as her number still worked it meant she was still out there. He wouldn't sleep-he hadn't slept in days. But he might doze for a few hours on the couch, convinced a bit longer that his partner was alive.
A click, a rasp, a breath. "Hello."
He sat up.
"A-Alex? Eames?"
"Yeah."
"Oh fuck, it's good to hear you."
Her voice was raw. "You, too."
"Are you okay? Where are you? I've-I've been looking for you and asking...Eames?"
He wasn't sure, he couldn't tell, but he thought she was crying on the other end of the line. He had never seen her cry.
"Eames." A whisper, a prayer against the dark, a comfort.
"Bobby." She was whispering too, a name she'd never called him before. "Bobby, I'm so scared."
He closed his eyes and let the gathering tears spill over in empathetic grace. "Me too. Me too, Eames."
She was a woman of fire, broken and built up again. She scared him, but not nearly as much as the thought of losing her did.