Midnight in My Mind
Brennan left behind her happy in love friends; her pissed off boss and her newly returned from a war zone whatever he was now, descended into the dark cavern of the Jeffersonian parking lot, climbed into her car and closed the door, cutting herself off from the world outside. She sat, pensive, staring straight ahead.
This reunion hadn't gone exactly as she had imagined or dare say planned. She had spent her time in Maluku doing exactly what she had promised herself she would do; get back to her love of pure science, ensconce herself in anthropology and get some perspective on her relationship with Booth. The clarity she was convinced she was seeking, the result she was convinced she would discover, wasn't exactly what she had found.
Before she had left, she worried that she may not be able to be there to save him if need be. Now, she knew she wouldn't be. Never before had Temperance Brennan felt like a coward, until that moment. She bailed. She bailed on him, on them. She had done the one thing she had convinced herself he would do to her. Left. For what? To protect him? No. She left to protect herself from the pain that was destined to come anyway it seemed. She couldn't protect him now from where she had run. She couldn't even talk to him, hell she couldn't even allow herself to love him and be loved by him when she had had the chance.
It was only a year. Surely, the type of love Booth offered didn't disappear. He had never lied to her, why would he at that moment? He certainly didn't disappear from her every waking thought, her every daydream and even her subconscious as she closed her eyes and drifted. She dreamt of them together as a real couple, as real parents, as real and true partners in every sense of the word. Then came the call from Caroline and all that needed to be said wouldn't have to wait another five months. Her self-imposed exile, both real and metaphoric, was over.
She waited for him at their spot. She knew he would come. He always did. She felt his presence and turned, unable to stem the tears from blurring her vision. She was unable to stop the surge of love; regret the time lost and her hopes from barreling its way through the depths of her soul. She went to him and he wrapped her up in his arms and she took comfort and strength from that all too short embrace.
They sat and talked. He asked her about Maluku. She asked him about Afghanistan. Then he asked her if she had found anyone. Her heart rate picked up as her head, or was it her heart, told her this was it. The moment. She told him no, that she had neither the inclination nor the desire. She returned his question. He then reached into his pocket, flipped through the menus on his blackberry and showed her a picture of a beautiful blonde. "Is it serious?" she heard herself asking, knowing desperately what she wanted his answer to be. "As a heart attack" he had replied. This was it. The moment she realized that the time she had spent catching up to her reality was the same amount of time everyone around her had gotten ahead of her again. He had moved on, as he said he would. The prospect of living the life she thought she would settled in the spot that had once been inhabited by hope.
Brennan shook herself from her thoughts and started the car. She drove through the now foreign, yet familiar streets of D.C., not quite settled on her destination. Everything was just wrong.
She pulled into her parking spot, climbed the stairs to her apartment, inserted the key, turned it and entered. She hadn't been home since she had landed. She had gone right to him. Everything she had accumulated over the years and through her travels was covered with drop cloths. Her home looked as desolate on the outside as she felt on the inside.
She locked the door and walked down the hall to her bedroom. She entered her room, dropped her bag on her bed, unzipped it and pulled out a long t-shirt to change into. She would shower in the morning. She just didn't have it in her tonight. She turned on the lamp next to her bed and glanced down at the photo of a teenaged Temperance Brennan with her mom.
She sat down on her bed and lifted the frame gently in her hands, running her fingers over the smooth glass, which encased memories of a simpler time, a happier a time, a time when she knew how to be human. Her mind flickered back to a conversation she had had with her mother when she was roughly fourteen years old. She had asked her mother how she knew her father was "the one". Her mother had smiled softly at her, shrugged her shoulders and said, "I just knew". "Will it happen that way for me?" a young Temperance had asked her. "I promise you honey, when you find him, you will know", her mother had replied.
That was before they had left, before she had decided that love didn't exist, before she had decided she needed no one for companionship and happiness. After, well after, she hadn't realized when that love she asked her mother of, walked into a lecture hall, when love saved her from rogue agents and serial killers, when love helped her open her heart to her family, her friends, to a cute little boy with a head full of curls, to building bridges to revitalize cities or when love took bullets meant for her and absorbed her tears. She didn't "just know". The walls she had built around herself robbed her of her ability to see and she had no one to blame for this darkness but herself. She placed the photo frame back on her nightstand, turned off the light, laid herself down and succumbed to the night.