Disclaimer: Unfortunately I don't own nor am I involved with the production of Bones, if Hart Hanson and Company are reading this - call me.
Synopsis: It's been weeks since Booth's birthday party and Brennan's speech, and yet things are not going well for our favorite pair. Booth and Brennan are finding it harder and harder to get along. Booth can't seem to let go of what happened in the observation room, and Brennan is getting tired of trying to fix everything herself. Is this the end of the best team in the Bureau?
A/N: This was originally written as a pure angst Brennan POV one-shot. I received some feedback and not a few PMs that appreciated the depth of the angst but also clamored for a satisfactory resolution. Normally I let the story stand or fall as it's written but in this one case I believe the Angst Monkey in my closet may be tolerant enough for me to 're-imagine' this story with a less bleak ending. Of course this will now be a triple shot, and the original story shall remain in it's entirety since I find that ending; tragic, ambiguous, utterly bereft of hope as it is, to be most appropriate for the original concept. Sometimes we can't fix things just because we want to, sometimes there are no happy endings.
A/N Addendum: Adult language and situations apply.
A Pivotal Moment - Things Better Left Unsaid
I don't know what started this fight, I know it was something I said but it's become difficult to tell what it is that I say that will set him off these days. It's been a month since his birthday and every day I can feel us drifting further apart. It's as if there is something off about us and I don't know what it is, but somehow I know it is my fault. As the fight gathers momentum I am given pause to think about what has gone wrong and as always I come back to Jared and that moment outside the interrogation room. Why didn't I just tell him no, no I don't think you're a loser? Why did I hesitate? Why did I lapse into squint speak when he pushed me to reply?
Booth's ranting has stopped temporarily, whether he's done arguing right now or just tired of the current argument I don't know. I do know that even if this particular episode is over it doesn't matter because another one will soon replace it. I sigh perhaps a bit too loudly, I can see him glare at me. I hoped my apology, heartfelt as it was, would have been enough to repair the damage caused from my listening to Jared, and for a few days it looked like it was just enough. But only for a few days. Since then things are worse, every day they are worse. His laughter is less enthusiastic and more forced with every car ride. His humors darker, more melancholy with each shared meal. His eyes have lost their sparkle, his smile has lost its luster, and he no longer looks at me as he once did, with fondness and amusement. The worst part though has been the change in our bickering. Our bickering used to be the lubricant in our relationship, a method of establishing and maintaining that easy rapport that seemed to leave so many observers confused or assuming that we're more than just partners. But in the last few weeks it's been anything but. The rapport has faded, the bickering invariably devolves to shouting, cold stares, and hurt feelings. Just as it has today.
It is late in the evening and we are in my office discussing suspects in a case. A husband and wife have both been accused of murdering their children's nanny. We each took turns making the case for whom we believe the prime suspect to be. I favor the wife initially, he favors the husband. Somehow our discussion devolves from a discussion of the case into an argument about the nature of trust. As has become the norm for these situations he becomes agitated and spiteful, and the conversation degenerates further until meaningful argumentation is no longer possible. Then things change. I'm not sure what it is but suddenly the air seems charged between us. Booth stands at one point and begins pacing abound my office like a caged lion. When he finally turns his attention toward me I can feel his eyes challenging me, searching for my own. I try to avoid his gaze but eventually I turn to look at him and my heart breaks at the pain within them.
"How long Bones? How long have we known each other? Friends and Partners going on four years and the first time someone says I'm a loser, calls me a coward, you just accept it at face value."
"I said I was sorry Booth. I've tried to explain if you'd just make the effort to understand…" He's not even listening now. "Anyway it wasn't just anyone, it was Jared." I say that in a voice so soft and low I'm sure he hasn't heard me. I'm wrong. He's a former army sniper, Ranger trained and his senses are as sharp as ever, including his hearing.
Booth's tone is as accusatory as it is questioning, his anger is so focused, his manner so determined that right now Caroline Julian herself would blanch if she was on the receiving end of his stare.
"So Jared says it and it must be true? Did Jared tell you about how I'm such a disappointment to our Dad because I settled for Master Sergeant? Did he give you that 'running the ridge-line' bullshit too?"
I can't contain my shock to hear Jared's words thrown back at me from Booth. I knew Jared had lied to me, but for some reason it is only now that I realize the depth of his deception. All done to build himself up at the expense of his brother. I can feel Booth's appraising look and he too easily reads the truth on my face.
"Jesus he did didn't he? He gave you that line of shit and you just ate it up with a spoon." He shook his head in disbelief. "Who the fuck are you and what did you do with Temperance Brennan?"
Anger I'm used to by now, even disappointment, but this is new. Even I can tell he's disgusted with my naiveté.
"I don't know what that means." The words are out before I can stop myself and I cringe even as he explains it to me with bitter condescension.
"It means that I don't understand you. If I'd had that discussion with you about Jared you'd have argued with me, dissected what I said and critically analyzed it according to some anthropological something or other, then you'd have fought me on it until I either wore you down and convinced you otherwise or just walked away from it altogether. My little brother, however, he can just swoop in and spoon feed you that ego boosting crap and you suck it up like a high school girl looking to lose her panties on prom night."
"You're inferring that I don't generally believe you, and hold you to a higher standard of evidence than your brother. That's not true Booth. While in this instance I may have given undue credence to your brother's insight into your character, I do trust you. If I argue with you it's because I fail to understand your reasoning, not that I doubt your veracity. Anyway, what occurred with Jared's will never happen again...and I didn't lose my panties, we didn't even have sex. We only kissed..."
Just then I know I said the wrong thing, but I can't take it back.
"Right. You just kissed. Tell me the truth for once Temperance, what really did it for you? Was it all his bullshit about running that ridgeline, about taking risks that I wouldn't? Is that what worked for you? Did it get you wet hearing that hero crap from someone who's never seen combat? Did it make you want him? If someone had asked me before all this I'd have said no way in hell Temperance Brennan falls for something like that, but now? I don't even know who you are anymore so I gotta ask. Is that what did it for you?"
He's calling me a whore. Not in so many words but this is Booth, and Booth has never treated me with anything but the utmost respect, never been anything other than a perfect gentleman, never told me I am anything other than special. So with these words, this…he is calling me a whore. I've wronged him, yes, that's true, but as upset as I am with myself there are limits to what I'll take, even from him. Three weeks of walking on eggshells around him and now this, this self pitying bullshit? I tired of this, and I'm tired of him acting like this. I wronged him but I'm no man's whore, and I won't take this from anyone, not even him.
"Enough Booth. I've taken about all the bullshit from you I plan on taking today. You're not my boyfriend, I don't owe you any explanations about what we did or didn't do so get over yourself. Jesus knows I don't have to listen to this accusatory crap anymore, I mean if you'd wanted to make a move you would have done so by now so acting like a spurned lover is really getting old. And another thing Booth, I thought you knew me by now - I'm not some whore who swoons when someone tries to sweet talk me, even if the man's last name happens to be Booth."
I'm flushed with anger, seething, my hands balled up into fists pounding my hips as I speak. I swear if he doesn't watch his mouth I'm going to close it for him. The look on his face, I've seen that before. It's the look reserved for criminals and suspects, the look he uses in the interrogation room. I don't like being on the receiving end of that look.
"I had to ask Temperance." The words aren't spoken so much as spat. "I had to ask what worked because God knows what I've been doing for the last three years sure has shit didn't make any impression on you. I might as well be a dickless wonder the way you act around me, but Jared waltzes in and you can't wait to jump him."
"Really? That's what you think? Tell me Booth, exactly what was it you were trying to do to make an impression on me? Was it acting like a jealous child, scaring off any men that were interested in me but never making your interests known yourself? Was it putting that Goddamned line down and then constantly trying to pull me across it but never following through on your own desires? Jared isn't half the man you are Booth, he's not even close, but at least he had the guts to try something, anything, without acting like it was the biggest fucking mistake he'd ever made ten seconds later."
My eyes are burning and I can feel hot tears running down my cheeks. Booth's eyes fall from mine to the ground. When he speaks his voice is low and soft, but the pain it holds might as well be a cacophony of anguished screams.
"What I tried Temperance...what I tried to do, to be for you...I-I tried to be the best man I could be, for you." He looks at me and I can see only his sincerity and his pain. "For you Bones. I guess my best just wasn't good enough."
He stops and waits for me to comment, but nothing comes out. Anything I can think to say is a poor substitute for the abject surrender that would be required to pull us back from the brink of disaster and some part of me refuses to accept that I must capitulate to win him back. Some part of my brain insists that I can win this, as if this was a contest where someone could walk away a winner, I just need to remain rational. It is a small part of me but it is stubborn and my heart is already so broken that it cannot muster the strength to overrule my brain. When he sees I will say nothing, can say nothing, he continues.
"I'm sorry about before. I shouldn't have said those things, talked to you like that. I was out of line and I had no right to act like some jealous child or to interfere in your personal life. Don't worry though, I can guarantee that won't happen again. Ever."
He guarantees it won't ever happen again? Then it's over? He's throwing away everything now over a stupid date, one stupid moment of weakness and we're through? That is what it took finally, for my brain to be silenced, for reason to be vanquished. Until that moment I had never really thought he would leave me, never thought I would be the one to force him to abandon me. In a panic I reach after him, call out to him...
"Booth!"
He stops and looks at me, I can see it in his eyes. Defeated, broken. He's no longer my Booth.
"For the record Bones…just so you know my side of the story? My third year in the Rangers there was a Senator's son serving in my unit. Our squad was on a deep recon mission and we were ambushed. It was a near total wipeout, twelve men went in and only two came out alive, him and me. He was hit bad and it was all I could do…" He choked back a sob. "Long story short I saved his life, I got him back to his family in one piece. When his dad found out he offered to get me into West Point. West Point Bones. If I'd have gone in I would have come out an officer, maybe I'd be the one in the Pentagon right now instead of Jared. I don't know, it doesn't matter. Instead I asked him to recommend my brother to one of the academies, Jared chose Annapolis. I-I just wanted Jared out of there and away from our dad, you know? Anyway I didn't mind staying an enlisted man because I found honor among the men I served with, they…" His eyes bore into mine as these last words were spoken. "they were men I could trust, men who valued me and took me at my word. Men I never had to defend myself to and who never doubted me for a second. So I stayed and became Master Sergeant Seeley Booth, and my brother became who he is."
The weight of his words weigh so terribly upon me I nearly collapse under them. Everything about his brother is a lie. Everything I accepted was a lie. I doubted Booth, a true warrior, a true hero, a true friend. I doubted him and I failed to trust him, failed to honor our friendship. I couldn't even defend him against his brother's lies because he's right, the part of me that is the critical thinking forensic anthropologist who accepts nothing at face value wasn't there that night. In her place was the part of me that was a nervous fifteen year old girl who never got asked to a dance. She was in control that night and she wanted to believe Jared Booth because he was handsome and witty and paying attention to her.
I grasp at him, the fingers of one hand wrapped around his arm while my other hand has flown to my face, trying to hold back a sob and failing. I see it then, in his eyes, and I'm stricken. Immobilized by despair, struck dumb with fear. I'm not good with relationships, but that doesn't mean I don't learn from my mistakes and failures. I have learned that there are moments when relationships change, sometimes for the better, more often for the worse, but regardless they change and are changed forever in that moment. I know from looking at his eyes that this is one of those moments. Something is going to happen or will be said and we will either stand or fall based on what passes next.
I can feel Booth searching my face, my eyes for some sort of sign, some recognition or assurance that he hasn't failed me yet again and I can't give it to him because I don't know how. How can I tell him he hasn't failed me when I'm the failure? When the only reason he's hurting now is that I betrayed him?
"Sometimes..." Booth hesitates, the words are not coming easily to him now. What he wants to say, needs to tell me, how could it be so much more painful than what he's already said? What could make him hesitate now?
I find my voice, "Booth, please..." I begin, but the mere sound of my voice seems to spur him into action. The next words I hear hit me so hard the breath leaves my lungs and my heart contracts in pain. There are moments when a relationship changes, sometimes for better, more often for the worse, but they change forever in that moment. This was the moment. His words, what he said next, are etched indelibly on my heart and soul. Even if he absolves me of all my sins with his next breath I can never forgive myself. Our friendship, our partnership, our relationship dies with his words.
"Sometimes I wish I hadn't woken up after Pam Noonan shot me. Sometimes I think it would have been better to have died believing myself a hero, rather than live with the knowledge that I'm a failure."
There it was, what I'd been dreading. The one good man I have been privileged to know, the only man in my life who has always put my needs before his own, always been willing to sacrifice for me. The one man who has never given up on life, never surrendered or admitted failure no matter what life has thrown at him; an alcoholic and abusive father, a pathetic excuse for a brother, torture, pain, and guilt in amounts that would have crippled lesser men, that man stands before me now broken and defeated. Not at the hands of an enemy but from the betrayal of a putative friend. Me. He wishes he was dead. He'd rather be dead than standing here with me and as I search his eyes I realize for the first time that there is nothing behind them, not even sadness or pain. He is drawing breath but he is already dead inside.
My knees buckle and I fall backwards toward my couch landing heavily. I gasp for breath and I can't breathe. My eyes are flooded with hot, bitter tears and I can't see for their falling. I can't hear for the blood rushing in my ears. My world is spinning out of control and as I teeter on the edge of the abyss I want nothing more than to let it swallow me. I understand now what love is, all it took was losing the only man I've ever loved to find it. I think of him not being there for me and I know that my world will have no meaning without him in it. I'd rather he hate me, despise me, ignore me, as long as he is alive and near me, that's all that I need. Even that is too much to ask now. Booth is a warrior, above all else he fights and now that I have killed our love it is all he has left. I can see it in his eyes, through burning tears, the emptiness that lies within. He will seek his own death, a warrior's death, a legacy that Parker and his true friends can look at with pride. That is what he will do. I know that now because his eyes have shown it to me and for once I can read him like he has always been able to read me. There is nothing left for me to do but mourn the death of my beloved. My Booth. And so I cry.
A/N: Alright, this bit is the original story so it's still angsty, but the next bit is a tad fluffier, sort of, eventually. Anyway, you know the drill. Comments, thoughts, suggestions, all are welcome.
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