These weren't based on a prompt anywhere, they have just been hovering in my mind for a while and I thought I'd get them down on paper finally.

Title: Contrast Author: usteady Set after "Revolution"

He had returned to find that they had become friends of a sort. They talked casually when they met in the lounge, and he realized Nichols and Eames knew quite a lot more about each other then they had before he'd left. He tried to tell himself it was only natural for them to get a little more acquainted with each other over their brief partnership, that it would all calm down after Wheeler returned. Then one day, Nichols knew a bit of psychology minutia that he'd never learned. Eames rolled her eyes. "Great. They're at least as smart as each other. Hard to tell them apart sometimes." Bobby looked away.

Later he began drafting a letter. He knew it would hurt her, but at least she would come out of it looking good; if she had faults as a detective, either she'd lost them along the way or he'd forgotten them.

He then tore up that letter. She might be happier, but he would never want another partner again. He began a longer series of letters: to Declan, to Lewis, to the distant family he'd reconnected with, to Eames herself. He started thinking of ways to reconcile his debts.

He started enjoying their time as partners with a heady euphoria that he'd heard comes at this stage. He never minded Eames's and Nichols's friendly talks now. On the last day, as Zack was walking off to his desk, Eames turned to him and shook her head at him. "Bobby, I never told you this but he'd gotten so involved in that case that he'd forgotten about Wheeler having a baby. Completely forgotten about it! I thought of how you called me first thing after Nathan was born, and I almost felt sorry for Megan. He likes to interrogate alone too. Rather lone-wolf type really. I think Megan will do all right with him but . . ." She shrugged her shoulders.

Ten years on the job together, it was the first time one of them had saved the other's life.

Title: Second Language Author: unsteady

As he was recovering in the hospital, he found he could not concentrate as people went in and out of his room. The nurses who attended him and his physical therapist when she finally came were all blurs, as were his fellow officers. The one moment he really focused was when Logan showed up, to his surprise, and sat by his bed and could not look him directly in the face. He knew, vaguely, that Ross was frantic to connect with him, worried for him, but his mind just wouldn't focus on any of it. It was all memories, and they returned again and again to that moment when he'd been lying there on the floor. The firecracker-like pops rang in his ears, and he had not heard Eames scream at all, though he knew he had.

He heard the two voices, speaking over his body and about his partner in words she would not have understood but he did, all too well.

"Pity, she was a pretty one. Too bad she'd been a cop."

"Job's a job. Don't tell me you've never killed a woman before."

Robert Goren never spoke German again.

I like these. Very well done.

~kerli~