Title: Push, Pull (1?)

Author: Alamo Girl

Disclaimer: Don't own them. Dick Wolf does, that lucky bastard!

Rating: R ( for now)

A/N: Well guys, I finally decided to get the plot bunnies off my butt and get them to talking to my muse. I've been wanting some Halloween/Spooky fic up, and of course I wanted it to be Bobby/Alex. I've also been watching "The Cell", and VDO scared, and just plain unsettled the Hell out of me!(Hey, that's his job, right? It's what he gets paid the big bucks for...) so,I just had to put it in my story.

Summary: After a particularly terrifying serial killer case, Alex is vulnerable to the horrors that can only come from the mind.

Chapter 1

"They were all so beautiful,…delicate…like flower petals."

Simon Verger sat in the interrogation room on the eleventh floor of One Police Plaza. His ice-blue eyes focused in front of him, never blinking, just focused. He was calm, his fingers never fidgeted, his weight never shifted in the chair. He never gave off any of the tell-tale signals of a guilty suspect squirming under the intense scrutiny of New York's most enigmatic detective. And that made her very uneasy.

Verger wasn't all that extraordinary in appearance. He was of average height, maybe six feet at most, she guessed. Taking into account his wiry lean musculature, thin craning neck, long spindly fingers, dark greasy hair and deathly cold eyes, Simon almost cut a comical image. The perfect countenance of an evil Icabod Crane. This might have even been a little funny to her, had she not seen what he'd done to his seven victims. Evil Icabod liked to capture young women, using chloroform, and take them back to his basement lab, in an abandoned building near the garment district. Once there, he tortured, raped, and mutilated his "little flowers". Verger seemed to have a particular fascination with the victim's reproductive organs, as he would begin to dissect them, while they were still alive. He kept his souvenirs, the women's genitalia and organs, in various jars in his apartment. The crime scenes had sent more than a few uniforms outside to vomit, some were hardened detectives who'd been on the force for years. Just goes to show ya, humans are capable of doing anything to anyone, no amount of training can prepare a soul for some things.

Detective Alex Eames had seen some of the horrible, most deplorable acts humans can inflict on each other in her years on the force. Since she had come to the Major Case squad three years ago, she had even been a witness into the minds of the killers, dissecting their motives. It could be quite a mind-fucking experience. Luckily for Eames' psyche, the brunt of the effects of these mind-trippin', soul-raping spelunking expeditions into the caverns of killer's minds was absorbed by her partner. Detective Robert Goren could see into the mind of a person like looking through a pane of glass. He never seemed to be afraid of what he'd find in those expeditions, even if the results were often at the expense of his own shredded and worn soul. Eames often ached for him, when she watched his gift of perception into the most horrible human minds, become his curse, leaving him ragged, battered and emotionally bludgeoned. But today, with Verger a foot from her, staring into her eyes and freezing her soul with fear, she welcomed the large shadow that loomed behind her. It moved up behind her, shadowing her entire figure.

"You dissected 7 women alive Simon, you…you took great care in your…work. Why.. uh… why these women Simon? What was it about them…" Goren asked, his voice was quiet, but it didn't belie the deadly seriousness of his questions. Sometimes the more quiet the voice, the scarier one could become. It often worked better than raising the voice to bully a point across. Goren's sheer size, soul-piercing stare, coupled with his quietly intense voice, was more than enough to make an impact. Verger never moved his gaze from Eames.

"They called to me, they wanted me. I had to 'know' them. They has such a loneliness in their eyes,… it called to me." Verger licked his lips. Eames couldn't tear her eyes from him, even as her breath slowed in her chest to a stop. "I see the same calling…in your partner's eyes. So beautiful, so sad…I've seen it for a while now… if only I could.." Verger was moving across the table, Eames saw it, but it was like watching the scene through thick tar. It was in slow motion, and she still hadn't taken a breath.

Suddenly, a huge hand slammed down between Verger and Eames, inches from his face. Verger instinctively jumped backward, landing hard back in his seat. Eames' breath came out, low and shuddering, and she gasped in the much-needed air as her partner's massive frame came between her and Verger, breaking their eye contact.

"They weren't calling you Simon! They were going about their business, and you were stalking them. You saw… what you wanted to see." Goren leaned down to mere inches from Verger's nose, searing into his thoughts, dark eyes meeting ice blue.

"Seven women, seven lives you stole. But you got sloppy Simon. You left some DNA on your last victim. I guess you couldn't hold it in your pants that time cause we found some semen. Maybe you should spank your monkey at home, like every other guy, and not with the bodies at a crime scene." Goren's voice was now only just above a whisper. Verger's eyes were rimmed with red, and he was shaking with rage.

Verger exploded out of the chair with a snarl. His eyes had shifted at the last moment to focus of Eames again. She was sucking in shuddering breaths, her eyes still on Verger as Goren taunted him. As he flew at her, she jumped backward toward the wall, stumbling over her chair, and desperately tried to muffle the scream that had started to escape her throat. But she needn't have bothered. Detective Goren's stature is almost as legendary as his skills at deduction. Six foot four, with massive shoulders and muscular arms, Goren towered over most suspects. But as Verger launched himself in a fury at his partner, Robert Goren, it seemed, grew an extra five inches--his shoulders seemed to swell an extra few inches wider. Verger rammed into one of Goren's now behemoth-sized shoulders with a little whimper.

"SIT DOWN!" Goren bellowed. With what seemed like little effort, Goren flung Verger against the wall with a satisfying smack. If Eames could have seen Goren's eyes, she as well as anyone else would have shrunk into the smallest hole somewhere and pissed all over themselves. Verger was seeing those eyes now, and they were having the same effect of him. Goren's eyes fairly seethed with fury, hatred, and above all possessive protectiveness. He was protective of the petite woman, who now was pressed up against the far wall, trying shield herself from the waves of blatant fury and strength that were rolling off her beast of a partner and consuming the room.

Verger was now creating a sickly-yellow pool of piss around himself as Goren leaned his muscular forearm into the back of Verger's neck, as he held him against the wall.

Before the uniforms burst into the room, Goren whispered in Verger's ear, "If you ever…even think about my partner again,…I'll save the state the cost of executing you. They won't be able to find enough pieces of you left to tell what happened."

Eames stumbled out of the interrogation room. Her chest ached from holding her breath, and her mind was reeling. Verger had some how, been able to get into her head, without her knowing it. This case had hit her hard from the start. The women were all found with their eyes open. Goren was always saying 'eyes are the windows to the soul', and Alex saw a pleading in those women's eyes. They were pleading, screaming for help, she could hear them even though their dead lips never moved. It was disconcerting to say the leased, to hear blood-curdling screams for help for a dead girl at a crime scene. Alex had been trying to chalk it up to lack of sleep, " I'll feel better after a good night's sleep," she'd said.

Yea, right,… bullshit. She hadn't slept through the night since the first victim, and now she'd been face to face with Verger. He was in her head, and Alex felt very violated. This was not a feeling she was used to, and it really pissed her off. She headed back to her desk to gather up the files Carver would need when a large solid hand came to rest on her shoulder. Her breath faltered again, heart rate sped up, and all she wanted to do was run like hell.

"Are you ok Alex?", came a soft question from a familiar place high over her right shoulder. Bobby had turned to Alex in the interrogation room after they had cuffed Verger, to make sure she was safe. Making sure she was safe was becoming an instinct to Bobby, he'd noticed. It was as natural as breathing, which he now saw Alex was having trouble doing. He felt it through her shoulder, trembling up through the fabric of her jacket, into his fingers, and heading straight for his heart.

Fear. Unbridled, breathe freezing, heart-stopping fear. Bobby's heart clenched in his chest, as the thought entered his famously intuitive brain, that perhaps he was the cause of her fear. Maybe he had finally gone too far in an interrogation, and really scared his partner. He slowly tried to turn her around; he had to see her eyes to know for sure.

Alex felt the fear in her subside somewhat when she realized who was behind her. But even though she had always trusted Bobby with her life, and she had never before feared to hold the gaze of the famous Detective Goren, she didn't want him to see what was in her eyes right now. She didn't want him to see what Verger had done to her inside.

TBC…

Stay Tuned, CH 2 to come! Please Read/Review!