And I'm back baby! After almost six months without writing, my Muse finally woke up! At 3am at night, by the way… haha :D I barely got any sleep last night but it was so worth it! I missed writing so much! Once the Muse woke up this basically wrote itself, the labour was so long and painful but the delivery very very fast ;) I've had this idea in my mind for quite a long time, but without the dear Muse I couldn't do anything about it!
As always my thanks go to the great Shin for her super fast beta reading! And she came up with the title too :D This fic is dedicated to all my fantastic twitter friends, who heard me complaining about my writer's block for months! Love you all tweople, this is for you! :)
It's set just before "Boy with the Answer". As always I don't own anything, Bones belongs to Hart Hanson. It would be nice if Booth belonged to me though :)
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Fighting Monsters
Temperance Brennan woke up with a jolt. Nightmares. Again. She couldn't remember the last night she didn't have nightmares. She sat up on the bed, pushing away the sheets that stuck to her sweaty body. Silent tears were flowing down her cheeks, her heart was beating furiously and she closed her eyes trying to get it to slow down. After a few seconds she got up the bed, her breathing still hitched. Nervously she crossed the room and opened first the blinds, then the window, hoping that some fresh air would help her relax. Closing her eyes to the night she tried to forget about her dream, at least for a while. But she knew way too well that she wouldn't forget it. Those nightmares were forged in her heart and every time she closed her eyes she would see everything all over again. The result was that she never wanted to go to sleep at night, like a little girl she always tried to stay awake as long as she could, reading or writing or even laying in bed with the eyes wide open, afraid to fall asleep and go back into that painful world of nightmares. She eventually crashed and got a couple of hours of sleep, but most of the times her sleep wasn't restful at all. She was always so tired and she couldn't even sleep to rest. She just wanted one night without nightmares.
She has always had nightmares, she was used to having them; first the usual ones she had as a little girl, about monsters hiding under the bed or in her closet that came out during the night to eat her or take her away. She would cry and her parents would be at her bedside in no time, holding her and telling her that nothing had happened and that it was only a bad dream. She would calm down and they would go back to their room, but not before checking her closets and bed to make sure that there were no monsters.
She would have loved to have them there now, holding her and telling her that everything was going to be ok. But they weren't. There hasn't been anyone for her since she was 15. And the nightmares of course didn't stop after 15. If anything they had gotten worse. Much worse. And she realized that her parents had been lying when they told her that monsters didn't exist or existed only in children's nightmares. Maybe closet monsters didn't exist, but other kinds of monsters definitely did. Temperance Brennan now was very much aware that monsters existed, both in nightmares and in real life. Many of them still haunted her, permanent scars on her heart.
But for a few years her nightmares had changed shape. Of course her usual nightmares didn't disappear, but they stepped aside to leave space to other topics. One in particular. The one that was the cause of her current anxiety. The one that she couldn't ever forget and it haunted her nights and days.
When she met Seeley Booth she knew that her life was going to change irreparably. Well, she didn't know know, but at some level she felt that that man was something different and that he was going to affect her. What she didn't expect was just how deeply he ended up affecting her, changing her. And how deeply she ended up caring about him and, dared she say it? Falling in love with him.
She was used to keep people at arm's length, even her few friends, because she was of the strong opinion that if people got too close either they would find out that they didn't like the "real" her and leave or they would just disappear like her parents. In either case she would end up hurting. So she kept saying to herself that she didn't care, that love and affection were just chemical reactions of the brain and nothing more. Deep down she cared, a lot, but she learned to never show anything and that no one was supposed to know about it. So she forgot about it herself.
That was until Seeley Booth came into her life. Day after day, month after month, year after year he changed her, so slowly that she didn't even notice it, but relentlessly. He changed her so much that sometimes she couldn't even recognize herself. She started to care again, to show her feelings and open up to him. She felt free with him, free and safe. The world, her world, started to be a good place again. Some of the monsters in her nightmares disappeared, he made them go away. But another thing happened. The more he got closer, the more her nightmares changed. And she realized, too late, that he had gotten too close. That she now cared too much. She realized that her life was so attached to his, that she depended on him so much that if he left, voluntarily or not, she would not recover from it, not in a million years. This realization carried the nightmares with it. Nightmares that involved him dying or leaving her forever in all the possible ways. Usually they were about things that never happened, but could happen so very easily seeing their very dangerous job. Like suspects shooting and killing him. Some of them didn't have anything to do with the job, just unfortunate events that could happen to anyone. Car crashes for example. Other times she dreamed about things that actually happened, but with different outcomes. The bomb in her refrigerator killing him. Gallagher killing him before she could save him. The ship where he was kept prisoner by the Gravedigger exploding before she could get to him. Him dying in surgery before her own eyes and she couldn't do anything about it. Pam Nunan not missing his vital organs when she shot.
All of these terrible nightmares always haunted her. All of them were terrible. All of them scared the hell out of her. But there was one to that she was especially vulnerable. The one she just woke up from. The last one of her list, the painful Pam Nunan experience.
The reason why that experience had affected her so much was easy to understand. He had died. Well, of course he ended up not being dead at all, but to her he had been dead. For two weeks. Two long, terrible, hell-like weeks and during that period she got a glimpse of a life without Booth. And it was so empty. He had become to be her whole life, and a life without him was no life.
When noise of a car braking suddenly pulled her out of her reverie, she opened her eyes and looked out of the window for the first time. It was so early that it was still dark, although the first lights of the dawn were starting to be seen at the horizon. Another day starting.
Sighing she slowly moved away from the window without closing it. She needed air. Like if she was in some kind of trance, in silent and smooth movements, she grabbed a chair, moved on the bed a jacket that was on it and she dragged it to one of her closets. She climbed on it and carefully reached up for the dusty white plastic bag that was laying on top of the closet. Setting foot again on the carpet she looked at the bag in her hands, unable to decide what to do with it. She didn't even know why she had taken it down. She hadn't opened it in almost two years. She couldn't bring herself to throw away the item inside so she just put it in a bag and hid it away. Out of sight, out of mind, right? No, not really. She may not have been able to see it, but she knew very well that it was still there. She should have thrown it away in the first place. But she just couldn't. And what now? She was still staring at the red bag, without even blinking, so much that it was now becoming a red blur in the dark room. Always slowly her hand drifted on it, wiping away two years of dust and denial. She knew she had to look at it once. She didn't know why but she knew that it was time. Her trembling fingers slowly removed the tape that prevented the item inside to get ruined. She laughed nervously at the thought. Ruined... it's not as it wasn't already ruined.
The bag was now open. She was sitting on the bed. She couldn't do it standing up because her whole body was shaking. One hand slipped inside and her whole body tensed as the fabric touched her skin. She knew that item by heart, even if she hadn't seen it in a very long time. She grabbed it and pulled it out, not all of it, just enough to let itself show to her eyes. Even in the darkness she could recognize the exact shade of green, even without seeing it she knew exactly how many buttons it had, how many pockets. She knew that it was indelibly stained. Her hand travelled unconsciously through the fabric. Right side. A little higher. There. Yeah, she knew exactly where the hole was too. She was touching it with the tip of her finger. It was little, she wouldn't even be able to pass through it with her pinky but it had been enough. It had been enough to give her the worst two weeks of her life, it had been enough to make her still have horrible nightmares even two years later…and it would have been enough to make much more damage if it had hit in any another place. A tiny little hole made by a tiny little bullet would have been able take him from her and destroy her whole life. And it did, she reminded herself. Yes, temporarily, but it did. How can a small little thing like that have all that power?
She painfully swallowed the big lump in her throat and looked back to her window. The sun was starting to rise, it was lighter. A soft breeze came into the room. The outside world seemed so peaceful at the moment, but inside her heart peace was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes were burning and, as she was passing her hand over her face, she realized that her cheeks were wet from tears. She didn't even know that she was crying.
After taking a deep breath to calm herself down her eyes rested once again on the jacket in her hands and her hands tightened on it, pulling it all out of the bag. In the lighter room she could now see well the green color of the jacket, as well as the big blood stain still on it. At the hospital they had given it to her when they told her he was dead. She had taken it home and washed it to make the blood go away. Three times. But it never went away.
A hole and a stain on a jacket to remind her of his frailty, of her frailty, of the frailty of life. He was the strongest person she knew but all it would take is a bullet in the right place and all his strength would mean nothing. He's a fighter, but some things just happen and no one can do anything about it. Not even her. And she would do anything for him. Anything. She already did and she would be ready to do much more. But one time she might not be able to save him. And she can't be there to watch it again. She can't lose him. Not again. Not after all they went through. Not imagining all that they would have to face. Plus, that night Pam Nunan wasn't even aiming to him, she wanted her and he stepped up to save her. That was what mostly tormented her during those two weeks. That he had died protecting her. That he had died because of her. And she couldn't let him do that again. She would never ever forgive herself if something happened to him because of her. She was a danger for him. She knew it. Another danger that could hurt him or worse. She clasped tightly the green jacket, her hands refusing to let go.
She has been thinking about it a lot lately. The fact that she is a danger for him. In more than one way. Both for their work and private lives. Every day more she spent with him made her realize just how much he meant to her. She knew she loved him. And she knew that he loved her. She knew. Just like he knew. In different ways though. She knew that she loved him and that he loved her too, he had proved that to her so many times that she would have had to be blind not to see it. And, although she may not have the best people skills, she wasn't blind. She saw. She knew. But she also knew that she wasn't good enough for him. She also knew that she wasn't what he was looking for. She knew what he wanted and it wasn't her. She couldn't change who she was. But the thing was that she already changed, he had already changed her. All she cared about was his happiness. And she still couldn't trust herself with him. And even if she tried to gamble, even if she tried to make herself better for him, her relationships never lasted long. Temperance Brennan wasn't relationship material, she had always known that. She wasn't able to let people in and trust them. But she had let Booth in and she trusted him blindly and more then she had ever trusted anyone else. Once Angela had told her that she and Booth were already a couple, only without the sex. Of course she would say something like that. They shared an emotional bond so deep that it scared her sometimes. Because, if they took it to the next level, sooner or later she would screw up and she would lose him, she would lose her best friend, she would lose everything. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Actually everything is already different. She would give everything she had to turn back the clock a few months… because in the last couple of months their weird but comfortable situation had shifted dramatically. And not really in a good way. Nothing was comfortable anymore. Every time she was with him she could barely breathe, conflicted between the urge to instantly pack and run and the unbearable need to touch him, kiss him… but she couldn't. She had turned him down one month ago. After one very revealing conversation with Sweets about his book and their first case, Booth had taken the gamble and he had lost. She had made him lose. He was so desperate, they both were, for different reasons, but it was basically the same. She couldn't gamble. Not with him, not about this, not about them. Because she wasn't a gambler. She was a scientist. She wouldn't take that step without being sure that she, they, would win and she wasn't. No, she didn't have doubts about him, she never had. She had doubts about her, about the possibility that she could end up hurting him, which was an unbearable thought.
And never had anything hurt her more than the little pause he made before answering that yes, they could still be partners. She knew he wanted to say no. She knew that she had already hurt him turning him down like that, but it was for his own good. He would move on eventually, and he would find someone better than her, someone that could give him what he wanted. Maybe not right now, seeing how it ended with Catherine… well, she didn't exactly know that it had ended but after a couple of dates he had stopped mentioning her so maybe she could assume that things didn't work out. She wasn't that surprised, things didn't work out with her and Andrew either. Andrew was a good man, nothing wrong with him, but she simply wasn't interested. She should have been, she hadn't had anyone in a very long time but she realized that at the moment there was a "him or nothing" situation. And, so far, even if it was so very painful to not jump in the first option, she was good with nothing. But she had started to realize that, even if he said that he would have to move on, as long as they stayed together he wouldn't be able to. Something had to change.
The true meaning of that thought invaded her and, her eyes filling again with tears for the umpteenth time in the past hour, she hugged the jacket even tighter, clutching it closer to her chest, her face sinking in the fabric that, even after two years and lots of washings, still held his scent. She closed her eyes, arms tightening even more around his old jacket, drowning in the scent that she knew so well and imagining that he was there with her, holding her close like he did so many other times. She had the feeling that there wouldn't be many others but she craved for one of his hugs so much, especially now when she was making the decision to let him go. For good. She needed him to hold her and whisper in her ear that everything was going to be ok, that she could do it, that she was going to be able to survive it. Eventually. And move on herself. Because everything happens eventually right? Well, apparently not everything.
The room was bright now, the sun was up and Temperance Brennan was still sitting on her bed clutching at that damn jacket that she definitely should have thrown away two years ago, legs and feet cold because she wasn't wearing anything other than a light nightgown, eyes red and puffy from all the crying, cheeks and jacket wet with tears and a stomachache that had nothing to do with the fact that it was almost breakfast time. In that moment she could really understand the term "heart burn".
The sound of her alarm clock going off startled her and she hurried to turn it off. A few seconds later another beeping sound in the other side of the room made her jump again. Brennan got up the bed once again and reached for her cell phone, that now showed a new text message from none other than Seeley Booth.
"Sending this now so that I don't wake you up. A date for the Gravedigger's trial has been set. Caroline wants to speak with us this morning. Coming to pick you up in one hour. With coffee."
Her heart sped up as she read. She didn't even have time to wonder how did he know when her alarm clock was set. The Gravedigger's trial. How could has she forgotten about that? She knew that they were trying to set a date. Which apparently now had been set. She had to get ready, she had one hour to recover and clean up before Booth would arrive to pick her up. But first she had to get rid of the jacket. After one last tender touch she pushed it back into the plastic bag and shoved it into her closet. She would deal with it later.
Now another day was starting. Another day of denial. Another day of controlled breathing not to break down. Another day of lying with all those "I'm fine" that no one even believed anymore but at least they ended the conversations about her and what she was going through. Another day and many other nights of fighting monsters in both her living and sleeping nightmares.
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What do you think about it? As always I'd love to hear from you all, reviews make me very happy :D