Disclaimer: I don't own Bones.
Summary: Booth's father has a heart attack. Brennan talks about her past. Booth reconciles with his. Set during Brennan's pregnancy.
Rewind, Scared Little Boy
By Potterworm
"My father had a heart attack," Booth says, his voice snapping back like a rubber band pulled too far.
Brennan takes a physical step back. "Oh." Her voice is more emotional than she's used to, despite having had over two months to adjust to the change in hormones that her pregnancy has brought. She feels badly now for pestering him about his poor demeanor at the diner; she hadn't expected what was bothering him to be something like this.
At her expression, Booth leans in a bit, steadying her. They move, as one, to her couch and sit down. "I - sorry," he murmurs.
She neutralizes her expression. Booth has been oddly protective of her since learning of her pregnancy. Now is not the time to make him feel guilty; he had every reason to snap at her. "It is fine, Booth. Was your father's heart attack fatal?" she asks succinctly. A moment later, she winces. "I did not mean for that to appear insensitive; I simply -"
She is interrupted by an oddly contorted expression on Booth's face. A laugh escapes him. Brennan is taken aback. Booth reads something in her face and says simply, "I know you didn't, Bones." His face twists then, into something uglier than she is used to. "Nah, he's still alive." His tone is casual, and yet Brennan feels instant concern.
"Shall we visit him at the hospital? I believe it is customary to bring balloons or Teddy Bears with cheery sentiments written on them," she says. Internally, she is trying to remember everything she knows about Booth's father. He is – she knows – not a nice man. Booth was raised by his grandfather, and his mother wasn't in the picture, and his father was not a nice man. She doesn't want to visit this man, but if Booth wants to, she will.
Booth laughs. "No, I don't think so. My grandfather just called me to let me know. I don't know why he thought I'd care, but …" Booth shrugged.
"He thought you would care because it is customary for children to worry when their parents fall ill," she spouts off. She closes her eyes after a second, recognizing that that was the wrong thing to say.
Being in a relationship is something new to her, and she doesn't always (ever) know the right thing to say. Luckily, oddly, that seems to have been it.
Booth leans in to her and rests with his head against her. "You're right, Bones."
After a minute, she shifts and he does too. She looks at him. His eyes are pinched tight, and he is flexing the muscles in his hands. His spine is taut with fights from his past.
"When I was fifteen, in one of my foster homes, one of the families had a biological son," she says.
Brennan has told Booth things before, about foster care. She told him about dropping a dish and being locked in a trunk for three days. She told him about having no friends in school. She hasn't told him everything though, hasn't told him this.
"He was very kind to me, one of my first true friends, I believed," she said, hand on her stomach. She scoffed so loudly that he flinched and looked at her in concern.
"He didn't…?" Booth said, head cocked to the side in concern and confusion.
They work in the same business. She knows the question he isn't asking. "Not to me," she said. She closed her eyes, remembered being fifteen. Remembered the feeling of having a friend again. Remembered watching TV with his arm around her. Remembered feeling happy for the first time since her parents had disappeared.
"When I was fifteen and a half, the day after his senior prom, the police showed up and took him to juvenile detention. He had, quite brutally, sexually assaulted his prom date the night before." Brennan remembers this too. Remembers her foster mother's scream. Remembers hiding in the room with her other foster siblings, and she remembers the week where they weren't sure if they would be allowed to stay anyway. (They weren't. Their foster parents had devoted all of their resources to their son's trial.)
"He wrote me while he was in juvenile detention and asked me to visit him," Brennan says. Booth looks at her, hard. "I never went."
That's the story. That's all there is. There isn't a reunion years later, never a happy ending. But Booth is clearly waiting for a longer story, waiting for something else to happen, for some other reason why she had opened up and shared this. He opens his mouth and shuts it.
"I'm telling you this because," she pauses. She feels inarticulate now, with her pregnancy, like she has forgotten how to use her words – her one power of expression. "Because my foster brother was in a terrifying situation. He didn't know what was going to happen or how long he would be there. And he didn't hurt me; he never laid a hand on me. But he had hurt someone else so badly that I never spoke to him or that family ever again." She closes her eyes, feels fifteen again, and doesn't feel regret.
Booth reaches out to her, puts a hand on her belly.
"I can't imagine what I would have done had he actually hurt me too, Booth."
Booth says, "I…" and then pauses because his throat is somehow scratchy. "Thank you for telling me this, Bones."
They go upstairs, and she does not mention his father, and neither does he. But he remembers having a broken arm and a broken body and being saved. He thinks about his father lying in the hospital, broken. He thinks about how much he should care about that and thinks about how much he really, truly doesn't.
He wraps an arm around Bones in bed and thinks about their baby. He'll do it better.
Author's Note: Found this old, half-started story on my computer today. Decided to finish it. Legitimately couldn't remember where I had been planning on going with it, but like where I took it now – nearly three years after the story idea had popped in my head. Hope you enjoyed.