Title: Long Trip Alone
Summary: She'd tried to make it his fault. She'd really tried.
Rating: PG
Pairings/Characters: Booth/Brennan est. relationship
Series: Long Trip Alone, part 7/11 (Only need to have read part 6: Trying to Stop Your Leaving)
Length: 1,300 words
Genres: angst, romance
A/N: Unlike most of the other Long Trip Alone (series) fics, this should not be read as a stand-alone. You should definitely read "Trying to Stop Your Leaving" first. But only that.
Well, this has gotten written SO much faster than the other parts. YAY. And I got so much good feedback on the last part, and I know I got so many of you crying. I'm sorry! Angst is definitely what I'm good at, even if it's horribly depressing angst. This part is also angsty, but not as depressing (or so I hope) and it ends on hopeful notes. It also explains Brennan's reasons that were lacking in the previous fic (for the purpose of bringing them out in this fic). This is also un-betaed, so all mistakes are mine.
Long Trip Alone
(Long Trip Alone series, part 7)
Walking into her lonely, quiet hotel room, Brennan flipped on the light switch to banish the late-night darkness. With a sigh, she dropped her bag onto a short table against the wall and closed the door behind her. It closed with a click and a thump that practically echoed in the silence.
It'd been two weeks since she'd left Booth in DC. Two long and lonely weeks. She'd spent several of the first days in a very remote village out on the savanna, enduring the stifling heat and other deplorable conditions while identifying mutilated bodies. Out there, it was pretty easy to throw herself into the difficult work and forget about him. But since she'd been moved to a proper city with an actual morgue and this nice hotel, it'd become much harder to forget.
She kicked off her shoes, throwing a glance at the room's king-sized bed.
The nights when she laid there, sleepless and lonely, were the hardest. The bed felt big, empty, and cold without him there. She would wake up sometimes in the middle of the night—on those rare nights when she managed to fall asleep—to be wrapped tightly in the covers because he wasn't there to try and pull them back and maintain the balance. And some mornings, she would roll over, eager to tell him something, only to be harshly reminded that he wasn't there.
And it hurt.
Everything though, she reminded herself, was her own damn fault.
She was the one who had left, even after he'd tried and tried to stop her. After he'd pleaded and begged, she'd still gone anyway. She was the one who had turned her back on him and ended the relationship. She was the one who had turned and ran away. It was in every way her fault.
Sighing, she dropped into the room's only chair: a small one that sat at a similarly small desk.
She'd tried to make sure it wasn't her fault. Oh, she'd tried her hardest. For a week, she'd tried to make it his fault. She'd poked and prodded and pushed him as far as she could. But he'd stayed strong and hadn't given in. Reluctantly, she'd ever so slowly began to accept that her plan wasn't working and wasn't going to work. It was going to have to be her fault. The day she'd firmly resolved that, the request letter had come in, and she'd seen her way out.
She'd taken it.
Underneath the mask of indifference she wore when she'd told her partner, it'd felt terrible. Like she was tearing out his heart—and her own—with her bare hands. She'd only been able to hide the pain she felt for a short time before she'd had to lock herself away in their bedroom, putting some space and a wall between them.
And what he didn't know was that there, alone in the bedroom, Brennan had backed against a wall and slid to the floor. Sitting on the floor, she had cried her heart out for him.
For the second time in a week.
Because exactly seven days before that, Booth had gotten shot on the job. Of course a bullet-proof vest had stopped it from being fatal or from even touching him at all, but that didn't change the fact that he'd been shot. Brennan had been stunned speechless when she'd found out. He hadn't been in a scrape that close without her by his side in a while…Especially not one that dangerous.
And it had scared her to death. He'd just shrugged it off—after all, the bullet hadn't even touched him—but Brennan had been so scared she'd cried long and hard when he left her alone. She'd made sure he didn't see any hint of it, though. Not even a single tear's residual wetness was left on her cheeks by the time she was home alone with him that night. He never even suspected a thing.
That night, she'd had a terrible dream where the bullet-proof vest hadn't saved him. Instead, she'd gotten the call that he was being rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Rushing there, she'd arrived in his room just in time to watch his heart monitor flat-line. The very life of the man she loved had slipped away right in front of her eyes.
She'd woken up from that nightmare in a cold sweat and with similarly cold tears wetting her eyes and cheeks. Careful not to wake her lover, who was sleeping soundly beside her, Brennan had slipped out of bed. She'd sat in the dark kitchen with a steaming cup of coffee, trying to still her jittery nerves. Minutes turned to hours and her nerves never calmed down.
It was then that she realized she was in too close—too near and attached to him now. If this was how she reacted to a dream about his death, how would she ever even hope to cope with the real thing? Because in his line of work, it was extremely likely. His recent brush with death had proved that.
So, that night, when she'd silently slipped back into bed, she'd made a resolution. She couldn't let it go any farther; she couldn't get any closer. She couldn't take that risk, the odds were too great.
Instead, she'd decided to break her heart and his by running away.
On these lonely nights when she was completely sleepless, she regretted making that choice. But then, come morning, she remembered that dream, and she tried to shove the doubts back down.
Shaking her head, she attempted to clear it.
She couldn't stand to do that anymore—she couldn't question her decision. Because then her resolve would begin to crumble, and eventually it would collapse completely. She wasn't going to let that happen. Because when it did, she knew she would run right back to him, disregarding the risks, and she would inevitably wind up hurt.
Closing her eyes, she sighed again.
It was going to be difficult. Forgetting about him was going to be very hard in the weeks to come, like it had been in the past two weeks. Sleeping was still going to be difficult without being able to rest beneath his smile. Going on without him, she knew her life was going to be a long trip alone.
But, given time, she thought that she could forget, she could sleep, she could move on. She was Temperance Brennan, and she always did what they said she couldn't. She would just do it again.
Or so she hoped.
There was a sharp knock on her hotel room's door that broke through her thoughts. Tired and numb, Brennan didn't even stop to wonder why someone would be knocking on her door at eleven o'clock at night. She didn't even stop to look through the door's peek hole and see who it was.
She just blindly opened the door.
And her eyes bulged when she saw who was standing there.
"Seeley!" she exclaimed, more stunned than excited.
A million questions flashed through her mind all at once in a single blur. How had he tracked her down? How had he gotten here? Why was he here? Did he have something important to say—something he couldn't have said over a telephone? Did he want to take her back to DC?
He smiled sheepishly, and her thoughts stilled. "Hey, Tempe. Can I come in?"
TBC in part 8, Can't Live it Down
I know I left you with a HUGE cliffhanger there. Don't throw rotten veggies at me, please!