Note: I really don't have time to be starting this story, but I should be able to write more frequently again in a week or so. I'm dying to respond to the Season 5 finale! I plan to start after Daisy tells Lance she's leaving for Indonesia and to go into the year they are apart and conclude sometime after she returns. While I've always been a big supporter of Swaisy, I have to say, her behavior in the finale displeased me greatly! My true sympathies will always be with Sweets. *pinches his cheek*
Spoilers are for Bones Season 5 up through the finale.
The Window in the Door
Lance watched the attractive figure of his petite girlfriend recede through the doorway of his office and tried to determine what the hell had just happened. Somehow in the course of one thirty-minute conversation, Daisy had upended all of his dreams and plans for the future…not just the near future, but the rest of his life. She was going to Indonesia for a year. She had sort of invited him to come but without any realistic plans. Leave my job, my friends, to what…elope and become a pearl diver?
Lance laughed out loud bitterly. It was clear—she didn't care if he came with her or not. She had told him bluntly that her first priority was her job. Now he wished she had never said yes to his marriage proposal, because she obviously did not love him like he loved her. Saying yes and then pulling this was just cruel. He thought of his parents' long marriage—they had never been apart for more than a few days. Such was the intensity of their feelings for one another.
For the past weeks, Lance had been imagining his and Daisy's future home together, their dogs, their children. He craved children. He knew he was young in his career to have kids, but part of him desperately wanted to experience fatherhood. He wanted to prove that he was like his adopted father and not his biological father. Curious about the outcome of his genetic combination with Daisy's, he wanted at least one or two biological kids and then to adopt one or two more. He had mentioned this to Daisy, who had balked. She didn't want children anytime soon since she was serious about her career, and she certainly did not want more than two. Nor was she very interested in the fiasco of adoption. She had told Lance that if he could find a way to bear the children himself, then he was welcome to have them.
Lance sighed. At the end of his conversation with Daisy this evening, she had given him back his mother's ring. He was gripping it tightly in his right hand—so tightly, in fact, that the diamond setting was boring into his skin uncomfortably. He released his hand and put it on the table in front of him. The ring left deep, painful marks on his palm.
Lance thought to himself, 'Mom, I really need you right now. I don't think I can bear this.' This struck him as silly—talking to the piece of his mom that remained in his heart—but then he addressed himself. 'Am I strong enough to get through this?' Lance did not know how to answer this question.
He had withstood torture at the hands of his biological father. He had survived jeering, bullying, and taunts from fellow humans his whole life. He had stoically endured the twin deaths of his two most beloved people on earth, his parents. But Daisy, she was supposed to be the person he could count on, and she had betrayed him. He had given her his whole heart, become entirely vulnerable, and now he would pay the price of his naïve openness to love. Maybe Dr. Brennan was right—it was simply not worth the pain. He felt like his entire body was cracking along a fault line.
Lance wept silently, his shoulders heaving.
Nearly two hours later, Lance was standing outside his apartment door. The problem was Daisy was in there. Since they had gotten engaged, Daisy had moved into his apartment temporarily until they could get a place together. After their earlier conversation, she had gone back to the Jeffersonian to finish up her work for the day, but she was most certainly home by now. Lance had stalled, trying to will away the redness in his eyes, an obvious sign that he had been crying. For some reason he did not want Daisy to know that she was breaking his heart.
The part of Lance that was curious about human behavior asked himself, why? And the part of Lance that was himself answered, because was it just me, or did Daisy not seem torn up at all to be leaving me?
Lance felt a sudden surge of nausea as he turned the key to his apartment.
"Lancelot?" came a way voice from inside. For the first time in his relationship with Daisy, this nickname infuriated him.
He threw his keys down on the table, as she timidly approached him. He put his hands up to block her from hugging him, since he knew this would break him down.
"Daisy, I need some time to myself," he said, not looking at her.
She nodded, and he couldn't help but notice that shallow beneath her veneer of concern for him was ecstatic excitement for her own good fortune.
Lance pushed by her, grabbed his gray cat Knox who was slinking toward him, and went to his room, shutting the door. He began stripping off his suit violently. Knox pawed boredly at each piece of clothing Lance threw on the bed. Now in his boxers, Lance flicked on his iPod and shoved it into his ears, lying face down on the bed. Knox curled up on his owner's scarred back and purred—a sound Lance couldn't hear but rather felt. The familiar fury of Death Metal blasted his ear drums and reached that place deep in his soul that needed empathy. Probably only a very small proportion of the world could discern the words that were being screamed in Lance's ear, but he knew this song like he knew his name. The voice raged,
Deep in the blackness of my hollow mind
Your soul has slunk and swallows what it finds.
Desperate pain eclipses all the love
As you shred my heart, you smile: smug.
Damn—he was crying again.