Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with Fox TV.
A/N: This is a sequel to Dying a Little Bit. After helping Booth with his nightmares, Brennan explores a new facet of analysis – Angela Montenegro style.
Spoilers for Season 1 and 2.
And Dying A Little Bit More
Dr. Temperance Brennan rarely dreamed.
At least, she amended the thought quickly, she rarely remembered her dreams. She acknowledged the scientific veracity of rapid eye movement sleep, cycling in 90-minute intervals and its possible involvement in what people reported as "seeing movies in their heads." After all, several studies had been done since the 1950s on the phenomenon; it was no longer solely the purview of psychoanalysts following the entertaining but mostly intuitive theories of Carl Jung or Freud. Who was she to argue with the objective recording of physical stimuli through electro-encephalogram, electro-oculogram, and electro-myogram machines? Not to mention some very interesting work being done with MRI and CAT scans…
Angela sighed. Loudly. When that did not snap Brennan out of her musings, she stood up and shook out her skirt, preparing to go find Hodgins and try for a moment of normal conversation. Even if it was about bugs. Or slime. Or sex.
Preferably sex.
"Sorry, Ange. I was thinking."
"I can see that, Bren. Let me make this simple for you. Dreams can have meaning. Many cultures have developed whole methods of discerning activity, even religions, from dreams. Or they can just be a collection of random moments from our day, a way for the brain to dump some sensory input." Angela watched her friend carefully, and saw her muscles ease, more comfortable with the scientific language than the mystical.
Brennan nodded, "The Mayans …"
Angela sighed impatiently and shook her head. "You can't tell meanything I don't know about the Mayans, sweetie. Or Joseph in the Bible story, reading Pharaoh's dreams, or Mohammed, who taught that true dreams came from Allah. I've studied this for years. But I've studied youfor a few years, too, you know, and I want to know what is going on?"
Brennan looked away, a little shame-facedly. "I had a dream."
Angela sat down again. "Yes?" she said encouragingly.
"And when I woke up in the morning, it was still all there, in my mind. Like a … well, yes, like a movie." Brennan looked at Angela with a hint of desperation in her eyes.
"Yes?"
"Well, that seemed weird to me." By now Brennan's arms were crossed over her chest and Angela was struggling with impatience again.
"Bren, that's normal for most people. Some of us remember all of our dreams. I write mine down in a journal I keep by my bed. As soon as I wake up, I record what I can remember."
Angela had to swallow a laugh at Brennan's horrified face, and could not help but add, "I use those images in my art too – they add depth and psychological veracity to my work."
She could not hide the snort as true pain flickered over her friend's face.
"Please, Angela, I am begging you. Those are two words that do not go together: psychological and veracity."
Angela stood up again. "I'm going to go and kiss Hodgins now," she said firmly. "Or – what is it the British call it? Snog. I'm going to go and snog Hodgins until he can't see straight…"
"I dreamed about Epps. And about killing Lappin." Brennan's voice was matter-of-fact, although a little louder than normal.
Angela sat down and leaned forward. "That must have been terrible. Have you talked to Booth about this?"
Brennan shook her head swiftly. "I can't talk to Booth about this, Angela! Killing Epps – letting Epps fall," she corrected herself, "Was what put him in such a bad way in the first place." She shuddered at the memory of watching Booth lose his balance all those months before; she had been terrified he would tumble and take her with him.
Angela nodded reflectively, "What about Dr. Sweets?"
Brennan stared at her friend in horror, "I couldn't tell Dr. Sweets about my dreams, Ange. That would be … I don't know … awfully intimate, don't you think?"
"Sweetie, he's your therapist. You're supposed to be able to tell him things." Angela swallowed a giggle at the look on Brennan's face; she couldn't have looked more disgusted if Angela had offered to serve up braised baby on salad greens.
"No. I definitely can't tell Dr. Sweets. And I won't tell Booth." Brennan's jaw was set at her most stubborn. "I want to tell you. You'll listen and tell me what it means and then it will go away. Isn't that what psychology is supposed to do?"
Angela looked at her best friend and sighed. "Bren, it's not like putting a band-aid on a papercut. The mind doesn't just heal up like that, without scars or pain." She tried to say it gently, but she could tell that Brennan wasn't listening.
"So, I dreamed about Howard Epps. He was in my bedroom, sitting beside me on the bed. He kept whispering, and I couldn't move. It felt like I was paralysed."
"What was he saying? Could you hear?" Resigned, and not a little fascinated, Angela sat back down on the couch.
"He said, 'You killed him because you wanted to. You killed him because you couldn't kill me. And now he's in your head. And so am I.'" Brennan recited this in even tones, then sat back and looked at Angela expectantly.
Trust Brennan to have absolutely transparent dreams, Angela thought with a tinge of amusement under the ripple of horror that the flat recitation had engendered. A baby could work out what this dream means.
Out loud, she said, "What did you do then? When were you able to move?"
"I couldn't. He just sat there on the end of my bed, whispering. And then I thought I was awake, and it was Booth on the end of my bed. But I thought I was awake, Ange."
Angela nodded, "That happens in dreams hon, both the sense of paralysis and the thinking you have woken up. Both are perfectly normal. What happened when you thought you were awake?" She was hoping for a mild PG rating at least, what with Booth sitting on the end of Brennan's bed and all, but when she looked into Brennan's eyes, she leaned forward and grasped her friend's hands.
"Bren? Bren. It's okay, sweetie. Tell me the rest of it."
Brennan's eyes were blank and cold, as if she were trapped in terror. Her hands gripped Angela's. "When I thought I was awake, and it was Booth on my bed …" her breath shuddered in and out once, then she continued in a harsh undertone, "He was whispering, Ange. He was saying 'You liked it. You liked the killing. Just like I did. That's what we do. We're killers.'"
"Oh, Tempe. Okay. Okay, honey." Angela sat beside Brennan and put an arm around her until the stiff body relaxed against her and Brennan dropped her head into her hands.
She turned to Angela, outwardly composed again. "So? Tell me what it means."
Angela thought for a moment, then got up and wandered over to Brennan's desk, grabbing a sketch pad and pencil. She curled up in a chair opposite to Brennan and began to sketch as she talked, shooting sharp short glances at her subject as she did.
"Okay. Well, the Epps thing is pretty simple, really. He did get into your head, and then he tried to kill you. Booth saved the day and killed Epps – sorry, dropped Epps – which twisted him into knots. So none of that really surprises me." She bit her lip for a minute, rubbing at the picture with a practiced thumb, smudging and blending lines.
"Have you and Booth had a fight recently?"
"No." Brennan sounded almost shocked at the idea. "In fact," she said slowly, "We … I … I had to help him. A few weeks ago. He was … having some problems."
Angela kept her eye on her paper, carefully not reacting to the idea of Brennan helping Booth. "Can you tell me about it?"
Brennan shook her head firmly, "I don't think I can, Ange. It was very difficult for Booth. I don't think he'd want anyone else to know."
Angela nodded. She had expected that. "Would it be fair to say he was having trouble dealing with the people he's had to kill?"
"Yes. Yes, that was definitely at the bottom of it." Brennan sighed. She had forgotten how easily Angela read minds.
"Okay. So you had to deal with Booth's trauma. How did things end up?"
Brennan thought back to that night in Booth's living room: her tears at his distress, the way his voice had deepened and roughened just before he reached for her, the kiss that had lifted them outside of themselves and seemed to last a lifetime.
"Nowhere."
Angela looked up pityingly, her sure hand sweeping a line across the page. "Oh, sweetie. Your face is flushed, your breathing is heavy, and you are playing with the necklace Booth gave you. Talk about empirical evidence!"
Brennan snatched her hand away from the tiny dolphin, which always felt warm against her skin. "Okay. We kissed."
"And?" Angela remained perfectly still and calm on the couch, although her inner yente was doing a quick horah around the room.
"It was … it …" Brennan stood up abruptly, and began pacing around the room, her eyes introspective and her arms wrapped around her waist.
Angela continued to sketch, wisely saying nothing.
"I don't know how to describe it. I don't think I want to."
"Because?"
"Because putting words to it would – flatten it." Brennan gesticulated in frustration. "Anything I call it … once I describe it … it becomes that. You know?"
"Like describing a butterfly as a Danaus plexippus," Angela nodded.
"No." Brennan looked at her in surprise. "That would be the proper way to identify a Monarch butterfly …" She stopped, confused, when Angela rolled her eyes and huffed in dismay.
"Sweetie. Trust me. Calling a butterfly in flight on a bright summer's day, with the sun glinting off its wings, a fine example of a Danaus plexippus is just … flattening."
Brennan frowned and thought about it for a minute, her scientific mind struggling with the idea that the proper name for something might not describe it perfectly accurately. Finally, she reluctantly agreed, "I suppose. Like that."
"Like what?" The voice at the door made them both jump a little, and Angela quickly flipped over the page she had been working on.
"Hi, Booth!" She smiled her special "too-good-looking-to-pass-up, too-complicated-to-sleep-with" smile, and quickly began sketching a new picture.
"Booth! Do we have a case?" The relief in Brennan's voice made Booth's eyebrows raise, but he merely nodded and said, "I need you to come and stir up some trouble with me, Bones."
She threw on her jacket, flipping her hair out from under the collar, and frowned in puzzlement, an expression Angela caught in a few strokes of her pencil on the corner of the page. "You mean we don't have a case?"
Booth grinned at her, "Well, if we stir things up in the right way, we could cause a case." He ushered her out the office, and Angela watched them through the glass walls.
The anthropologist's frown deepened. "I don't understand you."
"You know, Bones. Like that butterfly in the Himalayas who is always fluttering its wings and starting hurricanes in the Pacific?" Booth rolled his eyes as Brennan stopped dead in the middle of the lab to consider this idea.
"That makes no sense at all, Booth. I mean, hurricanes are complex meteorological phenomena, the multi-layered causes of which cannot be fully known, although certain mathematical algorithms can be created to …" She ran to catch up him. "Besides, there must be more than one butterfly flapping its wings in the Himalayas. There must be millions. How would one determine which butterfly was the cause? And why the Himalayas? There are butterflies everywhere…"
Booth opened the door of the SUV for her and when she had climbed in, gently put a finger over her mouth. "Okay. Forget the damn butterfly, would you? Have you ever dropped an actual stone about this big," he motioned with his hands, indicating a rock about the size of his fist, "Into a still pool of water … 10 yards across," he quickly added as she opened her mouth, "On a sunny day? In June?"
She nodded, her eyes beginning to shine with suppressed laughter at his pedantic delivery. "Let's say that yes, I have, although the day may have been a little overcast … would that make a difference?"
He shook his head, grinning, "It might make the results a little harder to determine, that is all." He was using his best 'squint' voice. "Now, in your experience, what happens when you drop a stone into a pool?"
Brennan looked up at him consideringly, "There's a splash?"
He nodded, trying to stay serious. "And once the water has settled down, what do you notice about the surface of the water?"
She gave up, and gave him the answer he was angling for. "There are ripples."
He patted her on the shoulder approvingly, as if for once she was the clever pupil at the feet of the master, "Exactly, Bones. We are going to make a few ripples."
She waited until he was in the driver's seat and was heading down the highway before saying in a meditative voice, "Booth? How many timeswould a butterfly have to flap its wings…?"
She smirked; the grinding of his teeth was perfectly audible in the close quarters.
Meanwhile, back in the lab, Angela flipped through the pages of her sketchbook she had filled with studies: Brennan's eyes, filled with fear, with joy; Booth's charm smile, his intent look just before he sprang into action; her cheekbones; his hands.
"One day. One day, Bren, this picture will say more than a thousand words." She said it out loud. "And then we'll see how Booth and you can be defined."