I don't own Bones.
A Year From Today
There had been no promise to call, to email, to stay in touch.
Just a promise to meet at the reflecting pool in the mall near the coffee cart.
Who were these people who were meeting today?
What had they discovered in the past year?
What had changed?
What hadn't?
...
She had spent her time with a younger version of herself.
Not that she had been incapable of controlling her excitement.
No, it was the part of her that was singularly driven by her career.
Or had been, at least, until Special Agent Seeley Booth with the FBI had entered her life.
Was it really possible for her to gain an objective perspective of her life here?
This question had pervaded her conscious and, more frustratingly, her unconscious thoughts.
And other thoughts, questions, worries tended from there.
What is Booth doing? Should I initiate contact with him? What if he was injured? Would they let me know? But he's only training soldiers in techniques for tracking and apprehending insurgents. Not in the front line. Not as a sniper. Not as a hero.
She thought back to that conversation with Angela. About being worried about Booth getting injured and her not being able to prevent it.
Only now it was worse. If she was inclined to use hyperboles, she would say that it was a million times worse. Thinking about Booth being injured in Afghanistan without her was worse than the dreams about the Gravedigger. The shortness of breath, the clenching pain in the chest, the need to fall to the ground and cry out to a God she didn't believe in.
At the beginning of the year long dig, she had been excited, about what her findings could mean. How it could answer questions about early humanity.
Six, seven years ago, her life had been consumed by this quest to learn more, to know what had led to the humanity she knew and was surrounded by.
But the sidetrack into murders had separated her from hard science, from what could be proved empirically, the how.
She had been introduced to motive, the psychology, the why. She no longer looked at humanity as a whole, but a particular segment: the desperate, the psychotic, the irredeemable.
...
He had spent time with younger versions of himself.
To escape the identity pressed upon them in their civilian life, and to redefine themselves through service.
He had been like that, once, keen to abandon his memories of abuse from an alcoholic father, and to distinguish himself in the only way he knew how.
At least until he met with a certain forensic anthropologist from the Jeffersonian Institute, a Doctor Temperance Brennan, had been introduced to his life.
His heart and his mind spent far too long lingering on Temperance, Bones, and instead of trying to put her from his mind, he indulged himself with memories of her. What endeared her to him. Her laugh, her smile, her intelligence.
Could he really find a way not to love her, to move on and find someone to spend the next thirty, forty, fifty years with.
His heart told him that a life without her by his side would be intolerable, and that anyone else would be a betrayal to himself. Why should he have to settle for second best?
But he had done the noble thing, and let her chase her dream.
And perhaps shake up her foundations that had begun to shift during their partnership.
The thought of his Bones, hunched over ancient bones in Maluku, in the rainforests, sticky from the humidity, doing what she did best. Trying to find a meaning to humanity from what had been long forgotten.
While he was in Afghanistan, not doing what he did best.
Instead of fighting in the war, he was training soldiers.
He was certain Sweets would have some psychological mumbo-jumbo that would explain why he was not satisfied at staying away from combat.
And Bones would probably have some anthropological explanation for the need of alpa males to assert themselves, particularly in war.
But she had asked him not to be himself, not to be a hero. He hadn't promised her, just made a non-committal reply.
And it was killing him.
...
Much hadn't changed.
She was still Bones.
He was still Booth.
Both had left with a resolution, but had come to no definite conclusion.
It was easy and hard to be together again.
It was right and wrong.
Things were said and not said.
One thing was certain.
Everything had changed.
...
She had arrived first, unsure of what she would say.
"Hello Booth" didn't seem enough, but she had never called him Seeley.
They weren't partners anymore. She was currently not acting as a consultant for the FBI. She had spent a year not being his partner, and while it had been fulfilling for her ambitions regarding her career, her personal ambitions were left incomplete. She had spent a year away from her family, ones that were blood related and her adopted family.
No spontaneous evenings of thai. No exasperation over another one of her father's harebrained schemes. No Cam reminding her that she was a curve or a loop. No Ange "Sweetie"-ing her and expounding the benefits of "glug-glug-woo-hoo" once in a while. No outrageous conspiracy theory from Jack.
Her time in the Maluku Islands had for once reminded her how small she was in the grand scheme of things. How she so disconnected from the humanity she was trying to understand through looking at the ancient remains. How annoying Miss Wick could be.
Miss Wick who had been so driven by her ambition that she had abandoned someone she had claimed to love and at one point was engaged to. Because she had never declared to be in love with anyone, she had never had to make a sacrifice to do her job. But having spent time with Booth, she could see how Miss Wick could be seen as heartless. She hadn't even consulted Sweets on her decision to go on the dig. She had declared her intention of going on this dig and expected him to follow like a puppy.
She hadn't been like that to Booth, had she?
If he had asked, she would have stayed, but he hadn't because he loved her, and knew her better than she knew herself.
From what she gleaned from Booth, love went both ways, and involved compromises.
But did she love Booth?
She struggled with understanding love, and more than that, she was scared of making herself vulnerable. She had told him that she hadn't had an open heart, but she was wrong. She just didn't want to open her heart to love, because love had disappointed her in the past.
The time away had shown her that perhaps she was almost ready to open her heart.
Knowing Booth, knowing Angela, knowing Hodgins had shown her what loving and opening her heart meant.
Now, what to say.
...
Booth had finally been discharged, having spent the last week in Georgia being debriefed and officially retired from active duty.
He had seen Parker, and was now eager to see Bones again.
The time, the year, had merely confirmed that his heart belonged to Bones.
She had told him she didn't have an open heart, but he knew better.
She was just scared of opening her heart.
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