Author's Note: I know that the idea for this fic is very delayed, but I was hoping that perhaps there would be some mention about what happened to Sweets in those missing seven months between the season five finale and the season six premiere in canon. Sadly, it appears that HH and Co. are not going to talk about what drove Sweets to leave his practice at the Bureau and play piano in bars during that time. Thus, I decided to write this fic which will explore what might have happened during that time.

I do not own Bones or any of its characters.

Thank you to everyone who reads/follows/reviews this. It is always appreciated.

The Season in the Shadows

Farewell—part 1

Doctor Lance Sweets could not stop staring at the sky.

It was a bright, clear day outside with no clouds to obscure a single inch of the expansive blue that stretched out in front of him. The sun hung overhead, sending warm, but blinding rays out which made Sweets have to blink and squint in order for him to keep looking upward.

At that moment, the psychologist was standing near the windows in an airport. People were milling around him; the squeak of suitcase wheels, the clicks of shoe heels, and bored voices making announcements over the intercom were all present. But none of it really registered with the therapist as he continued to search in vain for the airplane which was presently taking its passengers on the first leg of a journey to Maluku.

When he was a child, Sweets had enjoyed watching the sky. His mind would make animals and supernatural beings out of amorphous clouds. At night, he would stare at the stars and wonder about their mysteries. The sky had symbolized freedom and endless possibilities to him.

But now all it meant to Sweets was a broken heart and an empty existence because less than a week ago the life that he had grown to love and feel secure in had been turned upside down and gutted.

His gaze still on the window, the psychologist remembered his recent lunch with Cam. She had mentioned that Brennan had been feeling less than satisfied with her work at the Medico-Legal lab of late. Sweets had not been surprised at this. He knew that Taffet's recent trial had taken a toll on her and had made her question herself and her work even though they had succeeded in putting the Gravedigger away. Sweets had been thinking about suggesting a informal meeting between him and Brennan so that they could at least touch on a couple of things that she might want to consider on her own in order to help her gain some needed perspective.

Then came their most recent case, a hoarder who had died in his apartment and then had his corpse fall through the floor to the apartment below. Sweets had witnessed the Army's attempts to lure Booth back into service. The psychologist had experienced a brief, instinctive twinge of fear and apprehension at the idea that the military might draw Booth back in, but Sweets pushed it aside. Part of him had managed to chalk up his concerns to the natural response any person would have at the thought that his friend could head off to a war zone. The rest of him simply reasoned away any lingering worries by reminding himself about all of the attachments and obligations that held the agent here like his job at the Bureau, his family and the close knit group of people he worked and spent time with almost every day.

But as the case wore on, the cracks were beginning to show in Booth's and Brennan's partnership. Both of them seemed to long for something that was missing in their personal and professional lives. Something that neither one of them were able to find in each other or in the lives that they currently had.

Sweets walked over closer to the window and was tempted to place his hand onto the glass as a way to touch the sky that was separating him from the people he loved. He had heard about the Maluku project from Angela and had not put much thought into at first other than wondering if Brennan regretted not participating in such a venture.

Nothing had prepared him for the moment that Daisy walked into his office and announced that she had been accepted to take part in said Maluku project and that she would be gone for about a year.

His first response had been confusion at how this revelation seemed to come from nowhere. Having spent plenty of time in grad school himself, Sweets knew that something like this would not have been a split second decision. There would have been applications, requests for recommendation letters, and most of all, waiting. It was the kind of thing that a person would have had to spend weeks if not months planning. Yet, despite all of that, Sweets had been shocked and surprised by the whole thing.

'I thought I knew about Daisy and what her long-range plans were. But apparently I had no idea,' he mused bitterly. 'Who knows what else I didn't bother to figure out about her and our relationship. What else I might have missed. Perhaps...perhaps I never really knew anything about her or what she wanted out of life.'

As Daisy explained more about where she was going and what she was doing, all Sweets could focus on was what all of this meant for their engagement.

He thought very briefly about proposing some kind of immediate marriage arrangement, but swiftly discarded that idea. The decision to marry Daisy had been a monumentally important one to Sweets and he did not want to cheapen it with some kind of 'quickie' ceremony. Besides, it was clear that marriage was the last thing on Daisy's mind at that moment.

Instead he was faced with a choice: either stay and wait patiently for her to return or leave behind everything that he had worked for and cherished and follow her to Maluku.

Back in the terminal, Sweets clenched his hands and backed away from the window. He spotted some chairs some chairs nearby and settled into one of them, shifting his gaze from the world outside to the human traffic that was bustling all around him.

It had hurt him when the subject of their engagement had been treated in what he perceived to be a cavalier manner by Daisy. It was also a blow to his pride and his self-esteem when he realized that he had no say in whether or not she would go. He had been given a set of options and that was that. That sense of helplessness and lack of control over his fate reminded him too much of his time with his biological father and then of his time in the foster care system. During those times, his needs and feeling were rarely considered and security and happiness were ripped from him on a regular basis with no thought as to how it affected him.

The hurt quickly swallowed him up from the inside; cementing in his mind the course he would end up taking.

He had tried to escape it at first by ignoring it or pushing it aside. He focused on the case that he was working on, he tried to think of the best ways to advise Booth and Brennan on their dilemmas, and he even decided to join Hodgins on his insane quest to steal back a car as a favor to Angela's father. But none of it had been enough to ease the pain that he felt. He knew that he could not go, but that he could not wait either. There was only one path that he could see in front of him, and it meant walking away from the woman he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with.

The psychologist bowed his head, choosing to ignore the fact that he had not come to this airport alone and that Cam, Angela and Hodgins might be looking for him right now. As far as he was concerned, he was a non-entity to the rest of the team, and he felt that it was probably just as well that he was alone right now anyway.

He thought back to a conversation he had had with Booth a couple of days ago when he mentioned that Brennan had decided to head up the Maluku project after all, the very same Maluku project that Daisy had applied for. That was immediately followed by the agent's own announcement that he had decided to accept the Army's request to have him return for a time to help train soldiers.

Sweets had not wanted to believe any of it at the time. After all, he had believed in and invested himself in Booth's and Brennan's partnership, even going as far as trying to write an entire book about it.

Looking back on it now though, Sweets couldn't believe that he had been so willfully blind to what was happening around him. Angela had seen it. Cam had seen it. Even Caroline had seen what was coming and its inevitability.

'Caroline was right to tell me to grow up,' he thought darkly. 'Instead of facing reality I was holding onto some kind of fantasy. A fantasy that all was well in Brennan's and Booth's worlds. And only children cling blindly to fantasies.'

Sweets swallowed hard. Deep down he knew that it was a mistake to attribute the decisions the two of them made about their careers and their long-term plans to anything that he did or did not do, but right now he couldn't help but think that if he had been a more attentive and thoughtful therapist that this might have been avoided.

'Taking such a drastic step like this…walking away from lives that held so much for an entire year….There is far more at play here than mere professional malaise. But why didn't I see that earlier? What kind of a psychologist am I anyway? I couldn't see the signs that Daisy needed more than I could give her, and now I ignored my friends' issues and problems instead of trying to help them work through them.'

The therapist slumped down in his chair. When Angela and Hodgins made their own happy announcement about leaving DC for a year-long honeymoon in Paris, the news barely penetrated the overwhelming numbness that had overtaken him. All of the upheaval and loss that he was already grappling with had made him unable to feel much of anything, but Sweets knew that it was only a matter of time before feeling nothing would give way to feeling a crushing amount of grief over all that he had lost.

Now that he had just said goodbye to Brennan and Daisy along with Booth a day earlier, the impending departure of Angela and Hodgins from his life became even more real to him somehow.

As he pondered all of this, Sweets suddenly became angry at himself.

'Angela and Hodgins are finally together and happy, and now they are spending a year in Paris. Daisy has just received an amazing opportunity. Brennan and Booth are getting the chance to throw themselves into their work and possibly make a huge impact in their fields. I should be happy for all of them. I should be supportive. Instead, all I am thinking about is how it affects me and my life.'

Deep down, Sweets knew why he felt anger and despair that moved beyond the expected response to their leaving. It was because he wished that they had not wanted to go.

He thought again about how excited Daisy was about the Maluku project and how it was a 'once-in-a-lifetime' event for her, and Sweets pined to have someone consider him and his love to be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for them.

He considered how most of his friends were taking off for destinations all over the globe in the pursuit of something more fulfilling than what they had now, and he wondered if he had been the only one who had been completely content with his life in DC.

'Was it all a fraud?' he asked himself. 'Was this ideal that I had about all of us working together and even being a family together just some kind of errant wish because I was missing Mom and Dad?...Because I still miss Mom and Dad? Was I the only person who was really happy with the way things were?'

Sweets swiped at his eyes furiously, determined not to break down in the middle of the airport. It soon occurred to him that a large part of how he currently felt was probably his own doing. He had let himself become very attached to the people that he worked with, the people that he spent a lot of his time with. He had concentrated most of his attention and care in this small circle of people instead of branching out and building relationships elsewhere, and now he was being forced to learn just how unstable those bonds proved to be in the end.

'I expected so much out of them…too much. But not anymore. I was stupid to cling to them like that. They were always their own people with their own lives. And how it's time that I accept that those lives don't necessarily include me.'

"Sweets?"

The psychologist lifted his head to see Cam, Hodgins, and Angela walking toward him. He stood up and took a deep breath in order to steady his voice.

"There you are," Angela said. "We've been looking for you."

"Sorry," Sweets mumbled. "I guess I just wandered off." Angela nodded her head in what Sweets knew was meant to be understanding, and he had to resist the urge to shake his head.

'She probably thinks that I'm just upset about Daisy,' he told himself. 'And I am. But that is not all. There is so much more….'

"Hey Sweets, the three of us were thinking about having lunch together," Hodgins said. "Why don't you come with us?"

Sweets hesitated. He wanted to go. Every fiber of his being begged him to go ahead and spend what time he could with the people he still cherished, but he also knew that his emotions were very fragile right now.

"Thank you, but I have a lot of work to do at the Bureau," he said, making sure to put a smile on his face. "I'm just going to grab a sandwich and work at my desk for the rest of the day. Could we have lunch tomorrow instead?"

There was a hint of disappointment on his friends' faces, but that soon passed and they made arrangements to meet up with Sweets at the Royal Diner to share a meal tomorrow before Angela and Hodgins had to finish packing for their trip.

The others then left to ride in Angela's van to the restaurant they had chosen, leaving Sweets to take his own car, the car he had just used to drive Daisy to the airport and out of his life,back to the office.

But instead of heading to the Hoover Building, Sweets ended up driving back to his apartment. Once he was there, he called his secretary and had her cancel all of his appointments for the day, saying that he would not be in. He then went into his place and changed out of his suit and into a pair of jeans and an old Columbia sweatshirt. He soon realized that he did not want to stay inside while he brooded, so he went out to wander the streets of DC.

After about two hours of walking, Sweets found a dingy, little bar on a side street and walked inside. It was sparse, non-descript, and somewhat dirtier than his usual haunt at the Founding Fathers, but right now none of that was really all that important to him.

He ordered a drink and derived a smug sense of satisfaction when the bartender did not card him. Whether he actually thought that Sweets looked old enough to drink or he just didn't care mattered little to Sweets.

Once he had his drink in his hand, the psychologist walked over to a rickety table against the back wall that was slightly sticky from old beer. There he sat down and began to drink, already making plans to order more than one refill.

Tomorrow he was going to have to begin a new life on his own, but today he was going to get drunk and let himself forget about his pain for a while.