Title: Learning to Live
Author: Eyrianone
Disclaimer: If these characters belonged to me I would be a man. . .I am not a man.
Chapter One: Brennan
There is no denying that she is currently residing somewhere resembling most people's definition of 'Paradise'. Despite the dig being fairly localized on only three of the 1000 or so islands that made up the Maluku island area, she has found down time to do some extensive exploring by boat and plane. It is, she's decided, stunningly beautiful and one of the best places she's been.
So far the seven months of the dig have been rewarding, absorbing, challenging, and yet it has left her somehow dissatisfied. She'd thought it would remind her off all the reasons she'd become who she is, the foremost authority in her very specialized field. She thought she'd be completely happy with the work and it would allow her the time and space she'd felt compelled to find. Time away, from murder, suffering, pain and loss. Time away from Booth to push his presence in her life, and all that forced her to feel, back into the box she'd contained it in for so long.
She'd wanted to stop feeling so much for him, to have him be her best friend and her partner. Nothing complicated, nothing unsafe and beyond her frame of reference. She knows she's done a good job of convincing Booth that she doesn't want, and in fact isn't capable of anything more; but her time away has only reinforced to her that Booth, Booth and what he makes her feel, this is always with her - wherever she is.
No matter what she does, at some point in ever day, she sees his face in her mind's eye, hears his voice in her head, and misses his physical presence with an ache that seems to be causing her actual pain. For months she didn't understand what it meant, the truth hit her one day like she'd been slapped in the face.
'I love him, so much it hurts'. The words were Daisy Wicks', and it was Lance Sweets the annoying intern was crying over, but her choice of phrase hit Brennan right in the heart.
Brennan excused herself, and managed to get to her small hut before the sobs began. Once she started crying, she couldn't contain all she'd bottled up anymore.
Hours later, in the middle of the night when she was once again calm and rational she realized she'd discovered some things that she could no longer afford to ignore.
Seeley Booth has become so much a part of her life that the thought of a life without him is the single, most scary thing she can dream up. She's frightened, and she's been frightened a long time. But while fear of abandonment is acceptable in a child of fifteen, in a woman in her thirties it isn't. This is something damaging her and preventing her from having what she wants more than anything else. She wants to be the woman to give Booth the happy life he so richly deserves. To be the one he makes love to, has children with and grows old with.
As she shared with Jared and Padme not so very long ago, she accepts Booth's premise that love is more than brain chemistry and that maybe the chemistry part she can measure comes after the feeling, or as a result of the feeling. If she's being frank and honest with herself - she knew she wanted it ages ago, she'd written an entire deleted book around the fantasy of sharing her life with him, being with him that way. Her bullshit about being incapable of changing was entirely about her being frightened that once she let him in all the way, he'd finally find something unlovable about her, that he'd grow tired of her and leave.
Her lack of faith in him, appalls her. The fact that she knows, she truly knows she left him with a broken heart appalls her. Her rationalizations were just a mask for her deep-seated fears and she's allowed those fears to control her too long. She's allowed her fears to deeply hurt the lion-hearted FBI agent whose happiness means more to her than her own. Booth loved her, he accepted her – everything about her – and loved her anyway.
He'd wanted her, for life – and he'd meant it – and she ran away as far and as fast as she could.
Leaving him masking his crushed heart, and headed for a warzone.
"It's what's best for me right now."
She understands he couldn't remain in DC while she ran from him, she understands he knew he'd never move on if he remained there. The Army's offer was a convenient way out – so he took it.
Took it, to run away from all the painful memories of that night, on the steps of the Hoover building.
He is in a dangerous place because of her – because she allowed fear to control her.
If he dies in Afghanistan, dies because of her poor decision. . . she cannot finish the thought, it leaves her unable to breathe.
So many thoughts she cannot think these days.
What if he get's killed. . .– nope can't go there.
What is he goes missing. . .or there.
What if he's met someone. . . – can't go there either.
What if he's not going to forgive me. . ?
And this is a huge one. His forgiveness is everything now. On his forgiveness hinges his ability to continue to love her, his willingness to grant her a second chance. Can he, will he gamble his heart again with her? Will he let her change the outcome for the one she wants to give him now?
She doesn't know. And not knowing is killing her a little more every day. Not knowing is the price she needs to pay for all she's done and said to ruin them. And she has ruined them. She blamed him for dragging her into the murderer-catching life when she'd originally given him little choice but to allow her entry into his world if he wanted any assistance from her.
She dated his boss – his boss – like it was nothing strange. Like it was normal to do that after the person closest to you in the entire world tells you he's - 'THE GUY'. She can see the complete insensitivity of her actions now.
She crushed his heart, and then dragged him to her high-school reunion and allowed him to play the role of her husband – the cruelty of that – it cuts so deeply now.
She told him she was leaving and then told him nothing had to change – because she wanted to run, and she wanted him to wait, stagnant, still, forever unchanging – forever hers.
"I gotta move on. . . "
But she cannot let him, she knows this, she knows it. Because he is hers, this has been the cornerstone, the foundation of her entire life for the last five years – and she only sees this now. Booth is hers, her partner, her best friend, her confidant, her co-conspirator, her rock, her sounding board, her protector, her educator, her other. . .he is her other. . .he is, always will be, everything. . .he is everything.
Without Booth, she cannot be 'Bones'. . .and she has to be 'Bones'. . .more than Tempe, more than Brennan, more than Dr. Temperance Brennan, more than daughter, or sister, or scientist or author. . .more than any other version of herself, she needs to be 'Bones', and she is only that to Booth. So it follows that without Booth, she cannot be who she wants most to be. All the potential she sees now for her life, all the dreams she has, all of it hinges on Booth. For her, he is 'The Guy' – just as he said he was. She doesn't believe there could ever be anyone else to share ALL her life with. There could be dates, short-term relationships, sex. . .but not love. Not making love, or breaking of physics rules, or 'til death', for these, for her, there is only Booth.
How could she have done this to them?
How could she have taken them from closer than most married couples, to opposite corners of the globe and no communication. How did she voluntarily give up seeing him almost every day, and swap that for not seeing him for a year? How could she be SO stupid! She's a genius – but she's an emotional coward.
She misses everything they had SO much.
And she has no right to miss it – because she chose this. She chose this, and she has accepted that with her choice, there are consequences.
Five more months here will be hard, and while the work is rewarding she wants to return to the life she left behind, that life, the one catching murderers and dealing with death, and pain and suffering, that life, with Booth, is the one she needs to live. She knows there will be times when she's as exhausted of it all as she was when she left to come here, when she's as afraid of letting Booth love her as she was back then. But she will never blame him for dragging her into it again. She told Angela that coming to Maluku would help her gain some perspective on her life – and in this she was most definitely correct. Her path forward is clear, if she wants to be happy, and she knows now what that means to her, she has to fix the mess of things she's made with Booth.
Once, he offered her everything he had, and she was foolish when she turned him down.
She has to believe he will grant her a second chance, because she cannot comprehend a life without him.
Days later, Cam's urgent request for her to return home comes like a sudden and unexpected gift.