Chapter Text
This is the prologue to "Bulletproof Armour", and will contain a short summary (in chapter three) of everything that's happened in the Bobby and Sienna series so far.
Huge thanks to brynna for her beta reading!
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and acknowledge the legal rights of those who do. I will make no profit from this story.
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"Like my father's come to pass,
Seven years has gone so fast,
Wake me up when September ends.
Here comes the rain again, falling from the stars,
Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are.
As my memory rests, it never forgets what I lost,
Wake me up, when September ends."
Green Day, "Wake Me Up When September Ends".
New York, summer 2005
Dr Fritz Hoffman sighed, and looked across at his friend. The question, he thought, was whether Robert would notice if he judiciously allowed a little spring water to fall into the whiskey they were both drinking. Specifically, into the whiskey Robert was drinking. This would be his third of the evening in Hoffman's apartment, and he guessed that the big man had had at least one other drink before coming here. He was now slumped in an armchair, slacks and shirt loose and rumpled, watching the world go past outside the window, several floors below. The summer evening was fading, light turning from gold to dim, and people were hurrying home. So far, the summer of 2005 had been a good one for him - he had published another book - but, apparently, not for his friend.
He sighed again. The man has a nose like a bloodhound, even drunk, he remembered, shrugged, and poured another neat drink, passing it across. Some men would consider it a nuisance, having a friend show up unexpectedly on a Saturday evening to drink their whiskey and stare morosely out of the window.
Hoffman, however, considered it a compliment that Robert had evidently decided that he trusted him enough to go to his apartment to get drunk, rather than hanging around in a bar somewhere. He knew only too well how assiduously the other man guarded his privacy, and this letting of his guard down in company indicated a rare trust, he thought. Also a strong sense of self-preservation; for a member of New York's Major Case Squad, getting drunk alone in the city was not a good idea.
Pausing before walking across to hand his friend the drink, he sipped his own whiskey, and mused wryly that he would have to consider to a little scientific nosiness about what the man might let slip with his guard down. He wondered to himself whether he should try to avoid giving in to his curiosity, but he felt in this case, he had a good motive for it. He was seeing less and less of Robert Goren, now... not that they had ever spent much time together, but both appreciated the chance to speak to another intelligent person in German; Hoffman's mother tongue, and Goren's best language apart from English. They were both that rare type of person who can form genuine friendships across a generation gap. That, and Goren's visits sometimes preceded some interesting translation work coming his way. Hoffman had been retired from his work as a pathologist for some years now, but working as an NYPD translator was an enjoyable element of his retirement.
Now, though, he rarely saw Goren, and when he did, his friend seemed increasingly tired and worn. Police work could do that to a person, as he had seen happen many a time.
He would have to admit that he was, frankly, worried about Robert. He sighed. There was no way he could broach the topic without intruding on the other man's privacy, but given the time of year, he could hazard a guess at what was preying on the big detective's mind.
"You seem thoughtful, Doc." Goren's deep voice was low, very slightly slurred, but he seemed to still be in reasonable command of his faculties.
"Yes." Hoffman pondered his reply for a second, then mentally took a deep breath and went on. "I don't like this time of year."
"Too hot?"
He sounds so... bored. As if after years and years of getting into other people's heads has finally surpassed even his capacity to find other people interesting.
"No." Hoffman turned away and stared out of the window. He almost never spoke of what he was about to mention, and it was not easy to do so. "It was around this time of year that I last spoke to my father."
Goren's head had dropped. He didn't look up. Indeed, Hoffman thought, he seemed frozen in the chair. "I think I mentioned to you before, my mother took me to England when I was very young... she and my father... they didn't agree about what was happening in Germany at the time, what it would mean for us. I still wonder how she managed it... a young woman and a child, travelling alone, to a country where she didn't speak the language. We arrived there only to find that my mother's brother had died whilst we were travelling, so we had nowhere to stay... we eventually managed to find someone who would take us in, but it was incredibly hard, I didn't speak English either." He abruptly found that he could not say any more.
"So you spoke to your father by telephone?" Goren's voice was unexpectedly gentle, compassionate, understanding. Hoffman recognised it as a tool of his trade, but appreciated the emotion, which was genuine.
He smiled sadly. "Yes. Once. I was about seven, and I think I said 'I hate it here and it's all your fault!'. I never spoke to him again. Not long after that..."
"The war broke out?"
"No. It was before that... Kristallnacht...my mother was interned as an enemy alien the year after..." He could not say any more. Even to a trusted friend, the memory was too old, and too painful. He strove for rationality. "I have been trying to write about this, but I don't think I ever will succeed."
"So don't write about it."
Goren's voice was flat, heavy, almost brutal. He was rolling the glass between his long fingers, and staring heavily at the ground. "There's no reason why you should lay out your pain for everyone to gawp at." He turned his head, staring out of the window again.
Hoffman wondered if he should reply, but before he could speak, Robert continued. "I hate this time of year too. It was around this time my father left us."
He turned to Hoffman with a bitter, mirthless smile. "I didn't find out until two weeks after he left that he'd never be coming back. That was when Mom stopped pretending that he'd just gone away on business."
He abruptly fell silent, and for a heart-stopping second, Hoffman suspected his friend was about to cry. It would do him good... but Robert was still speaking, voice a little hoarse, raw, so quiet he had to strain to make out the words.
"We got some sympathy at first. Guess it was easier then... we were cute kids, my brother and I. Then it was all "be the man of the family"." He chuckled hollowly. "It got worse as I got older. Everyone thinks kids are resilient. Truth is, you need your parents more as you get older...How did you cope?"
Hoffman sighed. Perhaps Robert had not meant to say that aloud, and to judge by the man's face, he was wishing he hadn't, but it was the opportunity he'd been waiting for.
"I suppose I coped by building my own life. By promising myself that I would do good with my life. That I would be a good father myself, that my children would not suffer because of the past."
Goren's face darkened, the muscles along his jaw setting. Hoffman read the unspoken accusation, how dare you answer me like that? how dare you rub it in?
"Well, I guess you managed that. Reputed scientist, loyal husband, loving father..." Goren's voice was bitter, angry, even - Hoffman winced at the thought - petulant. Resentful. He would have taken offence, but there was no point. It was the whiskey talking, and he knew from long experience that in the morning they would both pretend those words have never been said.
"Yes, I was. I am."
"Guess that worked out well for you."
"Yes. It did."
Goren replied, in tones of self-loathing so deep it was painful to hear, "Wouldn't work for me. I would make a lousy husband, and a worse father."
"You don't mean that." He kept his tone neutral and politely interested, sensing that any attempt to offer compassion would result in Goren angrily turning on him. His friend had had to be strong for so long, Hoffman thought sadly, that he tended to interpret any attempt at offering understanding or sympathy as an imputation that he was weak, that the person offering it pitied him. Not for the first time, he wondered how she had managed it.
"If that's not true, then why did she leave?" Goren's voice nearly broke, and in a raw near-whisper, he repeated hopelessly, "Why did she leave me?"
It was around this time of year, Hoffman knew, and had known all along, that Bobby's ex-lover, Sienna Tovitz, had left him. Alex Eames had told him in subdued tones on a visit to his apartment to pick up a translation he'd done for the Major Case Squad, about a month after it had happened, and he had been saddened, but in many ways, not surprised.
Goren might seem outwardly charming, but his life experiences had taught him to seal off his inner feelings and thoughts behind an impenetrable wall. Difficult for any woman to get beyond that, especially one who was so much younger. Nevertheless, he had dared to hope that perhaps this might be different. She was, to the best of his knowledge, the only woman his friend had ever lived with. This was the first time he'd ever spoken of it to Hoffman, and the older man suspected that he had never really come to terms with what must have seemed like the latest in a long line of personal betrayals and disappointments.
"I'm being dumb, anyway," Goren continued in a self-deprecating, hollow voice. "I couldn't ever offer her that. I guess that was why she left." The words were said lightly, but Hoffman could hear the truth in them, and winced at the pain his friend was hardly concealing. Nevertheless... a tiny glimmer of light appeared as he processed what Goren had just said.
"You don't know why she left?"
"Better career opportunity." He shrugged, as if to say, that's how it goes, but one of his shoulders quivered slightly. Hoffman decided that the situation was grave enough to justify throwing caution to the wind, and plowed forwards.
"Robert Goren, you are one of the most intelligent men I have ever met, but it pains me to tell you now that that is one of the most stupid things I have ever heard anyone say."
"I'm sorry?" Goren's face had shifted from pained to pole axed. Hoffman continued, before he could lose the initiative.
"You were living with this woman. You asked her to move in with you, and she accepted. And yet you are telling me that you don't know why she left."
"I told you. Better career opportunity. She told me one day that she'd applied for a job in London and they'd offered it to her. Three weeks later she was gone. It was the best thing for her."
"Ridiculous! Even in this day and age, a woman does not move in with a man, share his bed and his house for nearly half a year, and then suddenly leave without once looking back, career opportunity or no career opportunity."
"That was what she said."
"You didn't ask her? Didn't tell her you wanted her to stay?" He was pushing hard here, but sensed that a more gentle approach would fail to get through.
"I had to let her go, all right?" Goren stood up suddenly, towering over Hoffman, who was briefly unnerved as he confronted six feet of drunk, angry detective. Suddenly, his shoulders slumped, and he muttered to himself: "I had to let her go. It was the only right thing to do."
"Do you know how arrogant you sound, Robert?" Hoffman tipped his head on one side and managed to meet Goren's angry glower with equanimity. "'You had to let her go.' 'It was the best thing for her'. Didn't she get a say in any of this?"
"She applied for a job in London. That was pretty obvious."
Goren's voice was sarcastic; he ignored it, asking, "Was it a permanent job?"
"Well... no. It was a one-year contract. She renewed it when it ended... stayed in London." Thank goodness for the fact that not only has he a brilliant memory, he can't resist showing it off, Hoffman observed dryly to himself, and continued.
"Did she offer to come visit at weekends? Return after the contract ended?"
"No."
"Did you give her the chance? Did you ask her to?"
"Why do you care?"
Hoffman sensed he had pushed as far as he could, and said gently: "Because I am your friend, Robert, and it pains me to see you like this. I can't help but wonder whether, if the two of you spoke again, you might find that there were things left unspoken that, said aloud, might perhaps open up new opportunities."
He did not miss the very brief flare of hope in his friend's eyes... then watched sadly as it died.
"I can't. She'll have someone else now... I just can't." He said, as if it were a mantra he'd repeated many times, "It was the best possible ending for both of us."
Before Hoffman could comment, a woman's voice called down from the upstairs floor of their apartment, "Fritz, you told me to tell you to go to bed if it got this late and you weren't up. We've got that young man from Las Vegas visiting tomorrow."
Both men stared at each other, then Goren asked "You're having a visitor?"
"A young pathologist from Las Vegas, here to visit the Crime Lab... I offered to give him a bed for the night."
"Speaking of bed..." Goren stretched, catlike, and gathered his jacket. "I should be going. Sorry, I've not been good company tonight. Should have listened more." He looked rueful, and Hoffman smiled, as if to say no offence taken.
"You are always welcome here, Robert, you and your partner - Alex is welcome to drop by any time too, you both are. Here, let me call you a cab."
"Thanks. By the way, I always meant to ask..." Goren suddenly looked sheepish "Did you have to do that translation for her?"
Hoffman started to ask What translation?, then grinned at the memory of how Goren had managed to leave a heated written conversation in German between himself and Sienna Tovitz lying around. Unfortunately, Alex Eames had mistaken it for some papers Goren himself had been going to translate for a colleague and taken it to him to spare her partner the time...
"I didn't have to, Robert, but it was fun." He grinned. "Besides, you should know better than to leave things like that lying around."
They smiled at each other, as if to say, No hard feelings after tonight's discussion. Hoffman called the cab, and it was a measure of how tired (and drunk) Goren was that he didn't protest, he thought fifteen minutes later, as he showed his friend out of the apartment, watching unobtrusively to see that he actually got in the cab. As he took the elevator back up to his apartment, he found himself reflecting on the night's conversation and shrugging hopelessly. What could he do?
As the last rays of the sun faded, and he tidied away the glasses, he reflected on the evening, and sighed, glancing towards the stairs in the apartment with a tired smile. (The original owner had created a two-floor apartment at the top of the building, which Hoffman had bought when he and his wife wanted a smaller home). His wife was waiting for him upstairs, and even after over forty years together, the thought still excited him.
It was not something either of them had expected, but the discovery that passion did not have to fade along with their youth had been a deep and abiding joy for both of them. Even after a long marriage, several jobs and new homes, their children and one period when they had lived apart for a short time, their bond was still strong, and she was as infinitely interesting and fascinating to him as she had been when he had rescued her from the unwanted attentions of a boorish fellow student, a long time ago at a college dance, and found himself captivated by the most beautiful and intelligent pair of blue eyes he had ever looked into...
Now, though, his anticipation was tempered by sadness. You cannot fix the problems of the world, Fritz, nor even the problems of your friends, he reminded himself. It was truly sad, though, he thought with some anger, that the same good fortune that had blessed him could not also bless his friend. If ever a man would try his utmost to be a good husband and father, it was Robert Goren, and it was one of life's small, everyday, tragedies that his background had made him incapable of seeing that fact for himself.
You've done your best to plant the seed, he thought unhappily. He could only hope that Robert might take his advice, but in many ways he doubted it.
One in New York, one in London. The odds that they'll ever meet again... He was not a religious man, but he had always believed that there were times in life when the only human response to a situation was to acknowledge that it was beyond your power to remedy, and express your sincere hope to whoever or whatever might be listening and inclined to assist. He bowed his head briefly, and for a brief moment, hoped as hard as he could.
Then he straightened his head, and went upstairs to his wife, regretfully putting the matter out of his head and turning towards his own life, with just one final thought; Robert, my friend, I hope you'll find what you're seeking, or perhaps it will find you. Either way, good luck.