Note: This is set after Wannabe in the weeds and has spoilers if you haven't seen that ep. This is my first fanfiction, though I've been reading them for awhile. I know it's an old episode, but I was watching it the other day and felt inspired =). Please feel free to comment I'd love feedback! Also, none of the characters are mine, if they were they'd already be together on TV.
The day after her partner died Temperance Brennan did not get out of bed. She had never previously understood how anyone could possibly stay in bed all day, how anyone could stand doing nothing for any extended period of time. Then again, she had never believed that it was possible to feel like there was a hole in her stomach while she was obviously completely intact either. Today she couldn't seem to muster the energy she needed to sit up, never mind to do anything else. She really couldn't fathom ever leaving her bed again, but some small voice in her head told her not to be ridiculous. For one day only could she allow herself to mope around, compartmentalize, get her head back on straight. One day.
As she lay in bed watching the sun slowly progress across her room she fought the images from last night that were crawling, unwelcome, into her head. They were all blurry, as though part of a half-forgotten nightmare, but she knew they were completely, cruelly, real. She saw Booth smiling at her while she sang, Booth jumping up only to fall over, a dark red stain spreading across his chest, herself picking up his gun and shooting Pam, her own strident cries begging him to hold on. Then there was holding his hand in the ambulance, being left in the ER as he was whisked away, her friends' comforting hands and arms that she didn't really feel, the doctor telling them there was nothing more to do, sorry. Angela drove her home, offered to stay but Temperance had wanted nothing but to be alone. As soon as Angela left, after one long, meant to be comforting, hug that Brennan barely felt, she had climbed into the shower, throwing her now blood-stained clothes into the trash bin without a second thought, and sat in the hot stream of water until it ran cold and she climbed out shivering. She took a few sleeping pills and curled up on her bed, she wore some soft sweatpants and a tee shirt that Booth had left at her place once. It smelled like him and she curled into a ball and cried until the pills kicked in and she drifted off to a thankfully dreamless sleep.
She didn't cry that day, though, she couldn't seem to find the emotion for it. She just felt empty, as though she had died and not Booth. For most of the day she could barely seem to form a single coherent thought so she stopped thinking at all, something else she had never thought possible.
As the sun began to go down she heard knocking at her door, "Bren, sweetie, please come let me in. I'm worried, I've tried calling you so many times today but your phone's off. Brennan, your phone's never off." She realized that Angela had a key and could easily let herself in, she didn't really care, she just couldn't find the strength to drag herself out of bed. She heard the key turn in the lock, Angela's quiet footsteps seemed to echo in the silent apartment. When she heard Angela pause in the doorway to her bedroom, she rolled over to face her, to spare Angela the worry that she might be catatonic or something. "Oh, sweetie," her friend breathed, immediately sitting down next to her, wrapping her into a hug. "Have you been laying here all day?" Brennan nodded, and Angela hugged her tighter before getting up and coming back a few minutes later with a bowl of soup, which Brennan ate. She wasn't hungry, but Angela had been crying since she'd arrived and Temperance didn't want to upset her friend further. After eating, Brennan finally got up to use the bathroom and brush her teeth, then she sat on the bed and allowed Angela to brush her hair. She hated to admit it, but it was nice to have company and this time she didn't refuse when Angela offered to stay over.
The next morning, despite Angela's protests, she went to work. She couldn't take another day of meaninglessness. For the first time ever, working didn't seem to help her focus. She went through the motions but never really connected with any of the remains the way she normally did. She knew that everyone was worried about her, but she played "fine" at work. She only allowed the overwhelming emptiness to crush her into a small fragile ball, laying on her bed, and she wanted nothing more than to be able to cry, to have a cathartic release of tears so that she might be able to move on, but the tears refused to come. She spent her nights staring dry eyed at the ceiling, not wanting to fall asleep because she knew what dream she would have. It was like that for five days before she broke.
It happened when she was working in Limbo. The radio was on in the background. She didn't usually need music to concentrate but ever since she spent the day in bed she couldn't stand silence of any length, it was too ominous. It was while she was poring over the bones of Jane Doe 316 that it came on. She froze as she heard the first few upbeat notes, and as the lyrics began she could feel bile rise in her throat.
"I come home in the morning light, my mother says when you gonna live your life right..."
She ran out of the room, towards the bathroom and she knocked past Angela who was heading down the hallway with a completed sketch of Jane Doe 316.
"Sweetie?" Angela said, confused, then she heard the music seeping softly down the hall, "Oh no."
Angela ran after her friend, and she heard her retching in the bathroom. In her rush Brennan had left the door unlocked and Angela was suddenly kneeling next to her, holding her hair, rubbing soothing circles on her back. When the nausea passed Temperance couldn't believe that a song had caused her to become physically sick. She realized then that she was crying.
"What's happening to me Ange?" She asked through a sob.
"You're grieving sweetie, it's okay, it's good actually, not to keep it all inside." Angela answered, pulling her into a hug.
"I feel like I'm dying, Ange. I know it's not possible but it feels like there's a part of my chest missing and I don't know how to fix it..." Angela hugged her tighter, softly stroking her best friend's hair as she sobbed, "Let it out sweetie, let it out." Temperance cried for almost a full fifteen minutes before allowing Angela to drive her home for the rest of the day, she was beyond caring about what anyone else would think about her breakdown. She took another day off the following day, Cam was completely understanding when she called out and had even sounded relieved enough not to care that Angela wouldn't be in either. Brennan spent the day crying on the couch while eating fattening foods with Angela, who let her cry on her shoulder again and periodically offered her tissues and words of comfort. Wallowing was Angela's word for it. Temperance thought that "breaking" described it better.
The day after that she felt more composed than she had in weeks. The next four days were the same. She was doing better, sleeping more than an hour at a time, eating without Ange having to remind her. She could feel herself becoming stronger again, aside from some random bouts of tears brought on by the smallest things. A funny pair of socks she passed at the store. Smelling apple pie baking in the supermarket. "Hot Blooded" playing on the radio as she drove to work one morning. None of these was as drastic as the bout of sobbing the day at the lab, but she wondered if these random tears would ever disappear completely, or if she'd spend her entire life having her eyes water every time she heard a male voice say "bones." That one had to be the most embarrassing, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't help the sadness she felt when no one would ever use that stupid nickname she had so hated again.
Then it was Booth's funeral. She didn't want to go. She couldn't. His funeral would make it real, that he was really never coming back. She would never again look into his warm brown eyes. She would never again be enveloped into one of his comforting "guy hugs." She would never hear his laugh, or argue with him, or anything because there was no more Booth. Her chest felt tight every time she thought about it. In the end, tough, she went because Angela asked her to and Angela had helped her so much in the past two weeks that she couldn't say no.
Suddenly she was at the funeral. And there was chaos. A fight. And Booth was right there, standing in front of her. And she did the first thing she could think of. She punched him. Her anger filled her as fully as the emptiness had. She marched away because if she stayed another minute she would have began sobbing, again, and she wasn't willing to do that in front of anyone, especially him. He would never see how deeply he had hurt her.
"What was that for?" Booth asked, clutching his jaw. He looked up to see Brennan running away, and Angela was leaning over him.
"You had better explain what is going on right now or I might punch you myself," Angela said as he staggered to his feet.
"Why?" He asked, genuinely confused.
"What do you mean why?" Angela's voice was rising uncharacteristically quickly, "You are supposed to be dead. I mean I'm really glad you're not, but do you have any idea what you put her through?"
"What? No. Bones knew that I wasn't dead," he paused as he looked at Angela's disbelieving expression, "she didn't know? I gave a list to the FBI of people to inform. Sweets was supposed to contact everyone on the list." He paused again, his expression darkening, "No one told her? I need to go see her."
"Wait," Angela said, "let her come to you. She's hurt Booth, and angry at you. She's been living in hell the past two weeks, and she might not let onto it, she'll pretend it didn't affect her, but it did. She spent the entire day in bed after that night. Bren, my best friend with the work ethic of a robot, spent the entire day in bed. Last week Cyndi Lauper came on the radio and it made her literally sick and she spent the rest of the day and the entire next day crying on my shoulder. So remember that when she's yelling at you later. She's going to be really, really mad Booth, because it's her way of hiding her pain, and she's been in agony."
Booth nodded numbly, "I'll keep that in mind, Ange, thanks."
Angela finally smiled at him and threw her arms around his neck, "I'm glad you're alive, and I know Bren is too, more than she'll ever tell you. Now," she said stepping back, "you go to your apartment and wait for her to be ready to talk. I'm going to go have a few choice words with a certain twelve year old psychologist."
Dr. Sweets had left the funeral as quickly as Dr. Brennan had, afraid of what Agent Booth would do when he found out that Sweets hadn't informed his partner that his death was a fake. He jumped when the door to his office flew open, but it wasn't Agent Booth. It was Angela, and her face was full of anger. Sweets hadn't thought the effusive artist was even capable of such rage, but apparently he was wrong.
"What is wrong with you?" She demanded, crossing the room to stand menacingly in front of him.
"Angela, what do you mean?" He feigned curiosity.
"Shut it Sweets. Why did you not tell Brennan that Booth wasn't dead?"
"I believed that she would be able to compartmentalize his death, I was only supposed to inform as few people as possible."
"You thought she would what?"
"Compartmentalize, like she prides herself on. As I saw she was able to process his death and continue on with her normal life."
Tears began to well in Angela's eyes and her voice was unsteady, "You have no idea what you did to her. You are a child who thinks he is smarter than he is, and it ended up hurting my best friend. You're clueless, you have no idea what Temperance Brennan is really like. She isn't cold and calculating. She pretends to be. Me and Booth are two of the only people that she lets in, sometimes the squints see the real her, too, but very rarely. She cares about Booth more than you know. No," she said forcefully as Sweets began to interrupt, "You didn't have to watch her lay listlessly in bed for a full day afterward. You didn't have her sobbing on her shoulder because the radio reminded her of karaoke that night. You didn't hear her begging me to explain why she felt like there was a hole in her gut that none of her logic could explain away. So please do not try to tell me that my best friend deserved to suffer for two weeks just because she keeps her feelings private and separate from her work." Angela took a deep breath once her voice had reached such a high pitch it had began to crack. She spoke again, this time with cold precision, "And I'm not even going to bother to try to explain how much this will hurt Booth, because she's going to blame him. I don't know where you get off playing god, but if you ever do anything like this to my friends again I promise that I will turn you into a eunuch. You know what that is, right Sweets?" She growled menacingly before she stormed out, slamming the door, leaving a shell-shocked Sweets gaping after her.
