Forgotten Memories, Remembered
By: dharmamonkey
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Someone else owns Bones, but I am interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.
A/N: In early 2012, I wrote a story called Killing Two Birds, which is my retelling of the gap between Seasons 5 and 6.
This story is a follow-up of sorts to Killing Two Birds. Forgotten Memories, Remembered is a collection of sketches and vignettes fleshing out some of Booth's experiences in the Army, from the time he first reports for duty until he receives his medical discharge, with particular focus on the months he spent in Afghanistan prior to Brennan's arrival after the helicopter crash. The gravity and significance of these moments will be apparent if you have read Killing Two Birds. If you have not read Killing Two Birds, I recommend that you do before proceeding so that you can better understand the significance of these moments and the men like Swann and Bastone who appear in them.
The scenes that will comprise Forgotten Memories, Remembered will not necessarily be presented in chronological order, but rather will be posted as they come to me, sometimes in random dribs and drabs, much as Booth's memories of the weeks and months prior to the helicopter crash returned to him as his injuries healed during the course of Killing Two Birds.
And with that, let's begin.
Chapter 1: The First Day at Bragg
The Army didn't make it easy for Sergeant Major Seeley Booth. Fortunately for him, Booth knew all about the Army and knew full well that in the Army, nothing is ever easy. That's why he was only mildly surprised that even though the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group knew he was reporting for duty that day, when he arrived at the offices of the Fort Bragg Reception Company for in-processing, he discovered that he had no place to live. Somehow, the arrangements for his housing had slipped through the cracks.
Fucking figures, he thought with a scowl. Welcome back to the U.S. Army.
It was a strange ending to a strange day that began with a flight from Dulles to Fayetteville Regional Airport aboard a commuter jet full of men and women bound for Fort Bragg, located fifteen miles to the northwest of the tiny airport. Booth spent the flight trying to ignore the unshakable feeling of strangeness that had been crackling through him for days.
It began the moment he walked into his neighborhood barber shop. The old-school establishment with its striped pole sat on a cozy if somewhat ramshackle street in the Adams Morgan section of northwest Washington. He'd been going to the same barber, Joe, ever since he moved to D.C. in 2002 to take a post as a Special Agent in the Violent Crimes Section of the FBI's field office. Joe had been with him the whole way as his career took off, and Booth had spent many Saturday mornings in Joe's chair, telling him about his work, his son, his Flyers and, of course, his amazing partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan.
Booth sat in his usual chair on the Saturday before his induction, grinning as Joe twirled him around so he was facing the mirror, and it was then—as he stared at his own face in the barber's mirror and saw himself with a civilian haircut that he knew he wouldn't wear again for a year—that the full weight of what he was about to do finally sank in.
He remembered the stunned, wide-eyed look on Joe's face when he asked for a high-and-tight (with the clippers set to #1 on the sides, no sideburns, and #3 on top) instead of the usual #2 on the sides and #7 on top. As soon as Joe finished, Booth's hand flew up and he rubbed the back of his head, where the clippers had left barely an eighth of an inch of hair.
Nothing—not the signing of his enlistment papers at the MEPS station, or the pre-enlistment medical exam, or even the bumpy flight from Dulles to Fayetteville—made his gut churn with the undeniable gravity of it all like it did when he felt the fuzz on the back of his head and realized that he didn't have enough hair left on top to rake his fingers through.
As the taxi wound its way from the south side of Fayetteville north to Fort Bragg, Booth found himself thinking of a similar day many years before when he passed through another sleepy southern town—Columbus, Georgia—on his way to another large Army installation. Booth spent most of his ten years in the Army at Fort Benning, where he attended Infantry School, Sniper School, Airborne ("jump") School, Ranger School and Pathfinder School, and where he was stationed while serving with the 75th Ranger Regiment. An eerie wave of déjà vu washed over him when the taxi drove past the sign at the entrance: "Fort Bragg: Home of the Airborne and Special Operations Forces."
His gut flip-flopped and he swallowed thickly as the sign slipped out of his peripheral vision. Glancing down at his hands, Booth rubbed his fingers over the dark blue denim of his Levi's and experienced a strange feeling of incipient nostalgia when he realized he would be pulling on a pair of digital camo trousers in the morning and virtually every morning thereafter for the next year. Dark dread settled over him as he cursed himself for letting it come to this.
A couple of hours later, after completing in-processing paperwork at the Reception Company building, Booth made his way to his temporary quarters and changed into the Army Combat Uniform which he'd secured before he left Washington so he would have something to wear upon arrival at Bragg. The uniform was brand new: the ripstop fabric felt crisp, almost crunchy, and his boots were immaculate, without a single scuff or snagged bootlace. He remembered how he had always hated the feeling of a brand new uniform, and how he used to wash and rewash and re-rewash the shit out of a new set of BDUs until they felt soft and lived-in like a pair of old pajamas.
But it wasn't just the crisp newness of the uniform that unsettled him.
This uniform was dramatically different than the one he wore the last time he stepped into camouflage trousers. Gone was the mottled four-color woodland pattern he wore in Kosovo and the jungles of Central America and Africa, the six-color sand and pebble motif he wore in Iraq in 1991, and the modified three-color desert camouflage he wore when he returned there on a covert mission in 1995. The new uniform was a digitized and supposedly more versatile scheme of gray, tan and sage green that the Army called the "Universal Camouflage Pattern." After seeing it up close for the first time, Booth couldn't help but roll his eyes, quickly deciding that the pattern was an equally stupid idea in any operational environment.
Most of the buttons he recalled from his old Army days had been replaced by zippers, elastic drawstrings and Velcro. What dumb asshole decided that Velcro was a good idea on a combat uniform? he wondered when he bought his ACUs from the base exchange at Fort Meade. Obviously some paper-pushing moron at the Pentagon who's never actually been in fucking combat. He grumbled as he realized that the 100% cotton fabric he'd favored in the past (the kind that got softer and more comfortable each time it was washed) had been replaced by a longer-lasting but less comfortable cotton-nylon blend.
He stood at the counter and muttered to himself about how much cheaper the old BDUs used to be than the new ACU as he forked over $650 for four combat uniforms and a pair of tan Gore-Tex combat boots. The cost of the new uniform shocked him. At least the socks are better now, he sighed as he watched the cashier package up his purchases and hoped that his annual uniform allowance would be paid in his first check.
The whole experience had been so surreal it seemed at the time as if it were all happening in slow-motion.
By the time Booth finished in-processing, changed into his uniform and stowed the rest of his things in his quarters, it was nearly six o'clock. His growling stomach stubbornly reminded him that all it had been fed that day was a couple of old-fashioned donuts at Dulles, and a package of cheese and crackers he'd bought out of a vending machine in the Reception Company building. Although he wasn't due to formally meet his new unit until 0700 the next morning, he was hopeful he'd find them at the dining facility (DFAC) nearest the complex of buildings that housed the 3rd Special Forces Group.
The niggling sense of déjà vu began to swirl again in the pit of his belly as he walked into the dining hall. He was struck at once by the bright white walls and row upon row of tables with mottled blue formica tabletops, each one full of men and women in fatigues, all of them talking and laughing, leaning over their trays and gesturing as the sound of a hundred conversations filled the room with a swelling warble of activity. It felt at once familiar and yet strangely alien to be there, a soldier again, surrounded by other soldiers. The fact that he didn't feel at home suddenly made Booth feel very far away from both who he was and who he was supposed to be.
The bright, institutional sterility of the whitewashed walls made him think of the last meal he shared with his partner at the diner and the sad, shimmering look in her gray-green eyes as they sat in their usual table in the corner. The memory made his chest ache and he wondered where she was and whether she felt as unsettled and out of place as he did. His stomach growled again and he couldn't help but smile to think how, had she been there with him, she would have made some sort of comment about his appetite and poor nutritional choices.
After filling his tray with a burger and fries, a Saran-wrapped bowl of chocolate pudding, and two cartons of whole milk, he made his way through the dining hall, his eyes carefully scanning the shoulder patches to find a table of Special Forces men. He saw a half-dozen different shoulder patches—the dragon insignia of the XVIII Airborne Corps, the double-A patch of the 82nd Airborne Division, the sword and lighting shield representing the Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, the red diamond-shaped rook insignia of the 20th Engineer Brigade and, he noted with narrow-eyed skepticism, the spear and star patch of the 16th Military Police Brigade—among the hundred-odd soldiers in the cafeteria. Finally, as he made his way to the far corner of the DFAC, his gaze settled on a table of men ranging in age from their early twenties through their late thirties whose patches identified them as Special Forces.
Grumbling at the change in the Army's uniform which made it impossible to discern a soldier's rank unless one could see the tiny Velcro rank patch affixed to the middle of his chest, Booth took a deep breath and approached the table.
"This seat taken?" he asked the master sergeant seated at the end of the group of seven. His eyes swept downwards and read the nametape, Kennedy, as he waited for a response. Kennedy raised his brows lazily and frowned as he gave Booth a slow once-over, then turned to another master sergeant across the table to his left and shrugged.
A first sergeant, a swarthy, hairy-knuckled Italian, grunted out a laugh and elbowed Kennedy in the arm, revealing his own nametape in the process. Huffing out a laugh, Bastone told him, "Don't be a fuck. Let him sit down."
Kennedy grunted, then moved his chair a few inches to make room for Booth, acknowledging him with scarcely more than a lazy-lidded look of disdain and a quick upward jerk of his chin before digging his fork into the plate of ziti in front of him.
The tips of Booth's ears burned hot as the table fell silent and seven pairs of eyes surveyed him, cataloguing him by noting the rank insignia in the middle of his chest, the Parachutist, Air Assault and Military Freefall qualification badges above the "U.S. ARMY" on his chest and above those, a Combat Infantryman Badge that signified he'd served in combat. He could feel their gazes on him as they read his shoulder patches: the "Screaming Eagle" insignia of the 101st Airborne that he wore on his right sleeve, and the "Ranger" and "Airborne" tabs he wore on his left between the spear-shaped patch of the Green Berets and the "Special Forces" qualification tab that proved he'd been through the same rigorous training they had.
He saw some of the furrowed brows around the table tick upwards as the men silently appraised him, but for several interminably long moments, no one spoke a word. Unwilling to let them see him unnerved, Booth cracked open one of his cartons of milk, took a swig, then took a bite of his cheeseburger, casually looking up from his tray to survey the group before taking another bite.
A minute passed before one of the men across the table from him finally looked up from his dinner tray and met Booth's eyes with his own. After a moment, the young, sandy-haired soldier gave a faint, knowing smile and said, "So you're the new NCOIC, huh?"
Booth couldn't help but laugh. In any other unit, the fact that he was a sergeant major with extensive training and substantial combat experience would have been enough to earn him deference from the other men in the unit. But here, among the Special Forces, none of that seemed to change the fact that he was a newcomer, an outsider and Johnny-come-lately foisted upon them by the brass at battalion headquarters to serve as their Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge.
At some level, Booth appreciated the raw honesty of it, and didn't mind having to prove himself to the men he would be spending the next year with. At another level, though, he couldn't help but wonder if he'd bitten off more than he could chew by jumping from civilian life back to serving with an elite unit like the Green Berets.
Pushing away the thought, he smiled vaguely at the young staff sergeant, Swann.
"Yup," he said, noting that several of their names were familiar to him from studying the company roster he received from the company commander after in-processing that afternoon. Not only had he stumbled on men from the 3rd Special Forces Group, but these were soldiers from the very same battalion and company to which he'd been assigned. A pleased grin split his face as he wondered if his luck was finally beginning to turn.
"What'd I tell ya?" Kennedy grumbled.
The other master sergeant, Parnell, snorted. "Retread," he said.
"A retread with a Freefall qualification," Bastone said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head at the two senior sergeants. "The closest either of you assholes ever got to military freefall is slipping off your bar-stools last weekend. If I was the sergeant major, I'd tell you douchebags to shut your pie-holes. He's the boss, though, so it's his call."
Booth smirked and saw Swann bite back a grin as his blue eyes swiveled among Bastone, Kennedy and Parnell.
Narrowing his own eye a little in what was almost a wink, Booth emptied his carton of milk in two swallows and clapped it down on his tray. Lazily glancing at the men to his left, he reached for a pair of French fries and dunked them into his ketchup, hesitating for a moment as he turned to Bastone, who held the same rank as Parnell but was clearly the de facto leader of the group. Booth could see the question welling up in the other man's gaze before he even opened his mouth.
"Ten years out and now you're back, huh?" Bastone asked, his words ringing with a thick Brooklyn accent as he arched a querying brow at his newly-anointed superior.
Booth grunted out a laugh. "Somebody's wife or girlfriend works in Human Resources Command, huh?" he retorted with an easy, confident grin. He let the comment hang in the air for a few moments as he gnawed on a fry, then flashed his brows at Swann. "Yeah," he admitted. "Ten in, ten out, and now I'm back."
Parnell crossed his arms and leaned over the table, his eyes hard and heavy-lidded with skepticism as he turned to glare at Booth. "Sure," he huffed. "How convenient, huh? Rolling back in now that things over there have been squared away by guys like us putting our balls on the line and trying not to get 'em shot off while civilian putzes like you were kickin' back in air-conditioned offices." He shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Where were you when your country needed you nine years ago?"
A tense silence settled over the group as they waited to see how their dark-eyed, dark-haired new sergeant major would respond to Parnell's bold challenge. After a second or two, Booth pushed his tray away from him and stared back at the cheeky, willful master sergeant with the raw, clipped South Boston accent.
"I was standing next to a bunch of New Jersey firefighters with blowtorches and circular saws watching 'em cut people out of what was left of the Twin Towers," he said grimly, his lower jaw shifting forward as the memory of those days sent a chill through him. "Sweating my balls off standing on a pile of smoldering rubble working twenty hours at a stretch, racing against the clock as we worked through the night, hoping with each passing hour that by some fucking miracle we'd find someone else left alive." He reached for his second carton of milk, suddenly realizing he'd lost his appetite as he cracked the cardboard open roughly and shook his head. "That's where I was. So, where were you?"
Parnell just sat there, wide-eyed with stunned surprise as the other six soldiers watched the pair.
The fair-eyed master sergeant drew a breath. "I, uhh…"
Booth shook his head and waved him off, took a large swig of milk and wiped the excess off his upper lip with the back of his hand. "Right," he grunted, choosing in that moment that it was best to appear a little aloof. He knew they were testing him and feeling him out, so with a vaguely sly grin he decided he'd return the favor, at least for the first few days. "See you boys at 0700," he said, standing up abruptly and rubbing the fuzz on the back of his head as he gave the seven men one last appraising look. "Later."
And with that, he picked up his tray, pushed his chair under the table with a shove of his knee and walked out.
A/N: And that's how it begins. This collection, Forgotten Memories, Remembered, is going to be a container of sorts for short sketches about moments that never made it into Killing Two Birds. I have no idea how many chapters there will be to this piece, or how frequently I will post them. Like my other collection, Age of Discovery, ideas will pop up, I will write them, and I will post them. Assuming, that is, that people are interested. Let me know what you thought of this first chapter and what you think of the idea as a whole. Consider leaving a review.
Acknowledgements: Props and effusive gratitude to FauxMaven for being a beta-reader for this chapter.
