It takes a long time for Robert Goren to leave New York (Alex kind of believes that a part of him never does, is still lingering in the cracked linoleum and wood paneling of his mother's long-dim house), but she finds him, in the NYPL, holed up like some hound-dog grad student near the psych books.

"Come on."

He looks at her like light actually hurts his eyes, or maybe just because seeing her means remembering how things went down, that day, but a desk anywhere other than One PP makes her ache with resentment and longing, and babysitting her nephew, somehow, just makes her think even more of Bobby. She can't quit him. Just like those damn cigarettes, the scent that lingers in his lapels, torn to memory by the wind.

He packs surprisingly few boxes and she packs too much in luggage she's had as long as Joe's been dead, and they drive in the Mustang with the windows down, with her hair whipping around her face. She wonders if any little town will have enough room for him and his damn logic, weathered by Declan and Brady until he almost twists when he's trying to think something through, trying to find his way through that pale gift without swallowing the razorblades that came along with it. She wants to imagine him in that life, sheriff of a place too small to find on a map, in one of his fuckall lumberjack shirts and a ballcap, his beard coming in gray on his cheeks, serene eyes as he sips his first mug of coffee and some flustered mother hen takes his calls and shuffles his untidy paperwork, but that life is not his and that life doesn't include her, and nowhere else in this world is New York.

For a narrow little ribbon of time she never hated anything so much in her life as she hated the fact that their orbits were never going to loose. She had seen things for herself (commendation, a squad, her own corner office that never saw any peace) but so many years with him mean she snarls at it, too, the politics it's never been in her to play. She wanted to be free of him, wanted to salvage something, watching his mother's sickness poison him just as deeply.

So she takes him to the sea.

(The case with the physicist, the four forces, she remembers him holding a pen in his hand and saying they always say it's the weakest, gravity, but you can't fight it forever.

They will crash eventually, into each other, and maybe she'll be obliterated, and maybe that's okay.)

They leave it all in the Mustang parked by the shore and she grabs his hand without letting herself think about it, and the water is so cold that it would swallow her in one wasted fight. The wind howls into him and they are sitting too close on the cold sand, too close for partners.

"What now?"

He didn't always sound like that, she thinks, and she closes her eyes.

A big yellow house with a room for his books and a garden and a fence to keep the world out. A house Jo Gage never saw, a house Frances Goren never criticized. At least for a little while.

Crash. Maybe they already have.

She opens her eyes and his fingers tighten against hers. He can explain everything she sees in front of her, save his own heart. His own useless broken heart. And he's asking her.

"Whatever we want."

His lips quirk up, briefly. He has always and never had what he wants, especially not in this freefall, but that narrow little band of their universe is open now. With their solve rate, they could consult. Open a private firm and charge by the hour. Margaritas every Friday night and Bobby making friends with every nutjob in town. They can do anything, together.

He puts his arm around her shoulders and leans in to her.

What Gage never understood is only now, without him, can Bobby be free.