AN: Wow, i haven't put anything up for ages. For anyone who's been reading 'The Right Reason' i promise i'll get the last few chapters up soon. This is just my post finale fic... well not really post... but it's finale related. Anyway hope you enjoy and look out for some other finale fics from me. And don't forget to leave some reviews.
Like All Good Stories
The first night she went home. Hodgins and Angela had insisted. The operation had taken an hour longer than the doctors estimated, but Brennan didn't mind much since it had gone quite well. The doctor's doubted Booth would wake before the morning and if he did she had promises from both Hodgins and Angela to call her immediately. She hadn't wanted to leave, she felt somehow like she was betraying Booth, yet the rational argument proposed to her did make sense. She was tired and it had been a long day, if he was asleep he'd hardly know she was there anyway, so she might as well go home and get some proper rest and then come back fresh in the morning.
When Booth had finally been brought back to his room, Brennan in her scrubs with her hand twined with his on the bed the others had been waiting. Even Jared had been there, apparently Cam had called him as soon as they'd found out what was going on. Brennan nodded and promised that things had gone well without leaving Booth's side before everyone was ushered out of the room by a nurse. Brennan had insisted on staying. Sweets had appeared in the doorway five minutes after that with a hot mug of coffee, a blueberry muffin and a banana. It didn't really count as a proper meal but she hadn't eaten since breakfast so she'd take what she could get. For once he didn't try to analyse her emotions, at least he didn't make any comments about them so as far as Brennan was concerned it was the same.
Angela had turned up five minutes after that leaving Hodgins lingering at the door his eyes darting between Booth lying motionless on the bed and Angela. Brennan thought about how lucky they were, and how stupid, they obviously loved each other, what had gone wrong between them? Surely it wasn't worth giving up a shot at happiness.
It had taken Angela almost an hour to convince her to go home but finally she'd yielded and after squeezing Booth's hand tightly in hers for a few moments and promising to be back if he needed her and if not she'd be there in the morning she'd changed out of her scrubs and collected her purse. Angela had opened her mouth as if there was something she wanted to say before shutting it again and dismissing the anthropologist before she could change her mind.
Her apartment was unfamiliar and unusually empty when she got there and it only took her a few moments to realise why, she hardly spent any time there anymore, except to sleep and sometimes not even then. Too many nights recently she'd spent on the couch in her office despite Booth's attempts to avoid that eventuality and too many nights sleeping in Parker's child sized bed at Booth's after they'd ended up at his place after work and not noticed the time getting away from them. Her wardrobe was divided three different ways, although the bulk of it remained in her apartment she always had at least a few work appropriate outfits in her office, in case she fell asleep there or something happened to the first one. She had both work appropriate and casual outfits at Booth's stashed in his closet alongside his suits and leather jacket and a spare toothbrush nestled next to his in the bathroom.
She tried to think of the last time she'd driven her own car and couldn't, she was always in the SUV, even when she didn't stay at Booth's he'd be at her door to pick her up and drop her at work even though it was slightly out of his way. When had he started doing that. Her scientific brain began to crunch the numbers as she tried to figure out how many hours she spent with Booth in the average day. She tallied up the previous week as best as she could remember. He'd picked her up early on Monday for breakfast at the diner, his treat and then they'd had lunch together in her office before spending the afternoon on paperwork. The paperwork continued until almost seven before they'd grabbed Chinese on the way back to his place where they did some more paperwork while Booth tried to explain Family Guy to her and all of a sudden it had been midnight and according to Booth way too late to go home. So she'd stayed. A total of sixteen hours just for Monday. They'd landed a case on Tuesday and she figured out that the only time they'd been apart was for bathroom breaks. Wednesday was similar as was the rest of the week, they'd wrapped up the case late Saturday afternoon and ended up at her place and he'd stayed the night. They'd both slept in on Sunday morning before she made them breakfast before heading over to Booth's. It wasn't Booth's weekend with Parker but apparently he had a science project and wanted Doctor Bones' help, she'd agreed easily, unable to resist the Booth charm smile. So they'd spent most of Sunday together too, first doing Parker's assignment and then Booth had taken them out for ice cream in celebration of the finished project which according to Parker would 'kick butt'.
She calculated mentally adding up all the hours and converting them into a percentage. Eighty percent. Surely that was wrong, maybe she'd added up wrong, just to be sure she grabbed a calculator from her desk and typed in the numbers. Eighty percent. She spent eighty percent of her time with Booth? Surely not. She slipped onto her couch her legs laid across the sport where Booth always sat and she noticed that there seemed to be a slight permanent sag just left of the centre of the cushion. She knew why, it was because Booth always sat there and he always sat just a little closer to her than he should. She had to admit that maybe she did spend that much time with Booth.
The tears came without her thinking about it, it seemed as natural as breathing. She didn't notice the ache in her chest, the lump at the back of her throat or the way her tears soaked the couch. The only thing she was aware of was the tie Booth had left behind a couple of week earlier, the one she'd given him for his birthday, it was garish, a bright red with a white luminous skeleton that glowed green in the dark. Not very practical for chasing killers around in dark alleys, but he told her it was his favourite none the less. She'd been meaning to wash it and give it back to him, but she kept forgetting. Then she realised how close she'd come to not getting the chance. The tears came harder, and kept coming, she had no idea how long she cried. Finally she dragged herself off the couch and into the bathroom figuring that if she took a shower that night she'd be able to get back to the hospital faster in the morning, besides it seemed like the sterile hospital smell had seeped into her clothes and she wanted it gone.
The second day she was at the hospital early having slept fitfully, her thoughts constantly returning to Booth. Had she missed the signs? Could she have done anything if she'd seen them? What had he been about to say to her before he'd gone into the operating room? Even she could tell that he hadn't planned to tell her she could use his sperm even if he died. It was something else. She'd have to ask him when he woke up. She dropped a bag with her laptop and notes for her latest book onto ground next to his bed, after all he would be very groggy and probably sleep most of the day anyway, she might as well get something done. Angela wasn't in the room when she got there, just Hodgins lazing on one of the chairs his feet on the bed, his eyes drooping shut. She cleared her throat, half amused, half annoyed and he dropped his feet to the ground immediately. Angela had gone to get food, Hodgins assured her nothing had changed during the night, he hadn't woken up, the doctor was going to be around in a couple of hours to see how he was doing, he'd probably be awake by then. Brennan nodded and pulled the chair that had obviously been Angela's closer to the bed, she hated how pale he looked.
Hodgins and Angela both disappeared not long after and she slipped her laptop out to start working. But her thoughts kept straying to Booth, so after thirty fruitless minutes trying to write the chapter she found herself staring at Booth. Her eyes travelled over his bandaged head, lifeless face and down his body covered by a blanket and hospital gown, the only indication that he was still alive was the beeping from his heart monitor that continued at an even pace. That at least was a good thing.
Then she was typing again. Typing anything that came into her head. A different life, a perfect life, coming home from work to Booth, making love to him, he said he loved her and they made love. But no nothing was ever perfect. A murder, that's what she was used to, something she could process and deal with. A murder in their club, isn't that what Booth had told her he'd wanted to when he was younger? He'd wanted to buy a nightclub with his brother. She could see it all in vivid detail in her mind, the pink robe, she'd always thought pink would suit Booth. Cam and Jared at the door, they were cops, she could imagine Jared as a cop.
The doctor came in at that point so she shut the top of the laptop carefully giving him her full attention as he examined Booth. He should've been awake already, that was the doctor's biggest concern, maybe they should run some tests. He started explaining about the risks and the possibilities and she wished she couldn't understand what he meant, but years of working with bones and bodies had taught her enough about the human body, even soft tissue to know that his condition was potentially very serious.
It was the first time she'd ever wished that she'd never seen a dead body, never gone in to forensics and was just as oblivious to all the terms that the doctor was using as the average person on the street. She'd never wanted to be average, she'd always wanted to be special. Of course it had taken Booth to show her that being special had nothing to do with being intelligent. He was the only person who'd ever managed to make her feel special.
As they wheeled him off to do some tests she stayed in the room and continued typing letting her thoughts take her wherever they wanted to in the made up world she'd created. A Temperance Brennan who'd never seen a dead body and who'd never been abandoned by her family. A Temperance Brennan who valued monogamy, who was married to a man who cherished her.
Her mind shifted back to their conversation in the car on the way to the hospital allowing her to think about it properly for the first time, to analyse the whole thing. He'd told her off for babbling about the possible sources of his hallucinations and begged her to talk about something else. It was him who had brought up the baby thing again. He'd been going on about that when she dragged him out of the interrogation room but she'd been too focussed on his health to listen too closely. He'd asked why she'd prefer to not have a child than to be with him and he'd sounded hurt. Only then did she register what she'd said earlier. She hadn't meant it like that, because truthfully having him as a boyfriend wouldn't be so bad, she'd managed to admit that much to herself. However, she knew what he'd want from her in that situation and she wasn't sure she could give it, and she couldn't handle the thought of hurting and disappointing him like that, he deserved better. It didn't stop her from hoping. If she'd been a different person it might have worked out differently. She let her fingers continue dancing across the keyboard painting out that world for her and all she could think was how bittersweet it was.
So much had happened between them over the years, so many things had changed, and they always changed quickly. One thing she was sure of though. She could trust him and she did, completely. She had no idea when it had happened or how but she knew he'd never hurt her intentionally.
When Booth was wheeled back in the doctor explained that he'd suffered an adverse reaction to the anaesthetic, he should wake up given time but there was always a chance he wouldn't. They were very careful not to say that he was in a coma, but she knew anyway, they needn't have worried so much.
Fisher turned up with Daisy just after lunch promising that Sweets was busy with patients but he'd be by later. Brennan's mind flicked back a month or so, they'd seen Daisy in the bridal store and thought she was cheating on Sweets and she tried to find a way to work it into her story, with Fisher as her partner. In her mind the hypothetical nightclub seemed to be taking shape. When Fisher and Daisy left after far too long in her opinion as she listened to the pair discussing Sweets' favourite sexual techniques, something she'd never wanted to know about. She turned back to the laptop but something the doctor had mentioned flitted back to the foreground of her thoughts. Talking to him might help you know.
She'd talked to a slab of stone on Booth's urging, why not talk to an unconscious Booth? At least there was some scientific evidence that it would have an effect. Then she realised she didn't have a clue about what to say. He wasn't going to answer her, he was in a coma. Searching for some kind of inspiration her eyes landed on the laptop, maybe a little oral story telling. She began at the start of what she'd typed adding in bits and pieces as she went and was almost at the end of the document when Sweets appeared in the doorway, Zach trailing behind him in civilian clothes. She sprang off the chair and into the hallway wrapping her arms around Zach in a crushing hug, completely uncharacteristic of her.
What was he even doing at the hospital? He was supposed to be in a mental facility, he was a serial killer's apprentice, a killer himself for all intents and purposes. No, Sweets explained that wasn't strictly true, he had been Gormogon's apprentice but he'd never actually killed anyone. Sweets had apparently known the information for months but had kept it quiet on Zach's urging, only to finally decide it was his duty to inform the proper authorities and have him released. Zach hadn't been particularly grateful, he still believed that he deserved punishment for aiding the serial killing cannibal but Sweets had tried to explain that sometimes your punishment can adversely affect those around you. Also that Brennan and the rest of the team needed his support while Booth was in hospital and that sometimes friends need to come before personal demons. Zach hadn't really understood but objectively speaking Brennan had appeared quite happy to see him.
Zach and Sweets didn't stay long, but Brennan promised she'd go see Zach who was once again staying with Hodgins just as soon as Booth was better. She added that he was more than welcome to come visit Booth also. When she was once again left alone with her partner she continued her story weaving in as many details as she could alternating between typing and reading to him.
Her father visited later that night after she'd cancelled plans with him and Caroline Julian also turned up while he was there. The two talked mostly amicably and Brennan thought back to her father's murder trial. When had the two become such good friends?
The doctor came back to check on Booth again before he left for the night and nurses wandered in and out of the room but she never left. Even when it came time for the hospital to wind down for the night and the lights were dimmed, the corridors falling silent Brennan remained the laptop lit up on her lap and Booth's heart machine beeping in the background.
She let her mind wander from past to present and to the future she'd thought was developing and one that was changed by Booth's illness. She let her mind weave what might have happened had her parents not abandoned her as a fifteen year old. Had they not shattered her allusions about family and love. But her thoughts always returned to Booth, the one man who had restored her faith in the world. The man who had taught her everything that textbooks never could.
He'd taught her that not everybody would leave her and that just because somebody left didn't mean they didn't love her. He taught her that sometimes she needed to use her heart, sometimes like then rational thought wasn't enough. Sometimes life defied rationality. He made her want something more from life, something more than a successful career. He made her want to have a child and to make personal connections even if she ended up getting hurt. He made her want to take some risks, she'd never be able to take stupid risks the way some people did but she would take calculated risks. Sometimes it worked out sometimes it didn't.
Of course she'd begun to wish she'd taken one particular risk earlier rather than later. She'd always believed in living life without regrets, mostly because she believed they were pointless, you couldn't live in the past because it could not be changed. What was the point in worrying about something you couldn't change? Nevertheless, there were things she wished she'd talked to Booth about before his surgery, things she should have said perhaps years earlier. But like everybody else, she'd always counted on more time, in the hospital she started counting on a second chance.
Sometime in the evening of the second day she mostly gave up on typing her story out, save for some particularly poignant thoughts that found themselves typed into a word document. Mostly though, she just talked. Relentlessly. She weaved the story of her and Booth's other life, adding in their friends and colleagues as she saw fit, even the many interns who had been appearing in the lab found their way into the story. Her father, Jared and Caroline were there, but there were many people from their lives who were absent. Rebecca and Parker, Parker especially did not fit with the night club scene and certainly didn't fit with her idea of the perfect marriage, because in her fantasy she was the only person Booth would father a child with. Perrotta, who she could not bear the thought of bringing in to it and Sully who as far as Brennan was concerned was a foolish mistake and just another of the men who'd walked away from her, he said he'd be gone a year it had been almost three and still no sign.
While she continued to speak hoping to pull Booth from his coma her mind recounted the last four years of their partnership. When had she first begun to consider him as her friend? He'd developed a grudging respect for her early in their partnership as she had for him. But at what point had her respect for him as an investigator spilled over to respect on a personal level? Was it the first time they went out of town together on an investigation? That first kid case? Their Christmas in isolation? Or was it later, when he save her from Kenton perhaps? She knew it was quite early in their partnership, but like a lot of things in her field it was difficult to pinpoint exactly. If asked she would probably have to conclude that the professional respect developed during her first case in the field with him and the personal respect had developed in a cumulative manner between then and her rescue from Kenton, when their friendship had truly begun. Or perhaps even then it was something more, she had after all cancelled a date to sit in the hospital with him. Even then she recognised his importance.
She also didn't know when she'd come to accept that her relationship with Booth was a constant, at least in the sense that he wouldn't leave as long as he could help it. They were family. She'd never had a relationship that had lasted so long with a man that she wasn't sexually involved with, except her brother. But Booth was different, he was not a biological relative, but he was certainly an attractive male and one that she would not think twice about sleeping with under normal circumstances. Her relationship with Booth wasn't typical though, nothing about it was typical.
As her story continued to unfold she tried to sort the jumbled thoughts in her mind, expressing them within the plot, twisted as they were. Her short-lived doubt about Booth's standing in the world coming across as a single line 'He wants me to be proud of him' and she was, in her story and in her reality. Her knowledge of his sometimes aggressive actions when her safety was threatened played a huge role, of course as far as he knew she didn't know about most of those. Her distrust of her father, and Booth's brother, her complete trust in him. The soft spot that they both held for Sweets, even if Booth wouldn't admit it and Zach's stupidity in working with Gormogon and then spending months in the mental hospital for a crime he didn't commit.
While she was talking thoughts flashed through her mind, and memories. Some of them made it into the story, a night spend in her living room two years earlier, Dr Feelgood blasting from her stereo while they danced around the room like idiots burning off the residual adrenaline from their latest case, even the fact that neither had slept in over twenty four hours could keep them still. The two of them at a bar, dancing again, but to a slower song, their arms around each other, she could remember feeling safe and comforted, all thoughts of Sully forgotten despite his departure that morning. Their partnership was full of songs, all of their most important moments seemed to have a soundtrack. The fading notes of Hot Blooded joined by an exploding fridge, a carefree rendition of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun accompanied by a gunshot. An impromptu duet in the diner of Keep on Trying, a bickering match drowning out the melody of the Sweetest Thing in the SUV. She knew that when the moment finally came, when Booth finally woke up there would be a song to accompany that too, though she had no clue what it was, or when it would be.
She didn't leave the hospital that night falling into an exhausted, unrestful sleep at Booth's bedside out of words for the moment. Her only comforts were the soft sounds of Booth's breathing and the rhythmic beeping of his heart monitor, which only faltered when her head pressed against his chest at which point its frequency increased three fold before slowing back to a normal rate as Brennan settled against him.
When the third morning dawned and there was no change in Booth's condition she shutdown the part of her mind that controlled rational thought; Booth would be fine. She didn't let herself think about what would happen if Booth wasn't fine, because in her mind that was not a possibility. She wished she didn't know the statistics about his chances of recovery, because the chances weren't good, and Booth wasn't a statistic.
She continued to tell him a story of a different life, with them as stars, stopping only when the doctor or nurses came to check on him or when friends or family dropped by, hoping to see an improvement before leaving feeling disappointed. Angela dragged her down to the cafeteria at two thirty, convinced that the woman hadn't eaten in days, truthfully Brennan couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten. She forced down half a salad and an apple before returning to Booth's room and sighing when she saw no change.
Brennan slept at the hospital again that night before forcing herself out of its doors and into a perfect sunrise, the wind whipped her cheeks for the first time in two days. She needed a shower and if she was going to get to court on time then she needed to get back to her apartment. Normally she would have spent the evening before prepping for the court date which according to Caroline could not be changed, she promised she'd tried and Brennan believed her.
Her shower felt too hot, the air too cold. Her coffee didn't taste quite right and none of her suits seemed to work properly. In the end she pulled on black pants, boots, red top and grabbed her tan jacket. She was sure she'd be late to the court room but she couldn't bring herself to care. For once she couldn't feel pain for the victim who she'd carefully identified and examined for cause of death, and whose murderer was caught by her and Booth. Booth should have been sitting next to her in that courtroom, not lying in a hospital bed. The court barely acknowledged his pain, or hers, stating that due to unavoidable circumstances Booth couldn't be present. It wasn't right.
She barely let the judge dismiss her before she dashed from the courtroom and back to the hospital. It was while she was driving that the truth suddenly became clear, the thing she'd been dancing around for four days, the thought that was slightly out of reach, but an undertone to everything she said. It would have been obvious to anyone looking on and should have been obvious to her. She sped up, not caring how many laws she broke driving to the hospital.
Back in his room she pulled out her laptop and forced her story to a quick conclusion. She typed the last few lines admitting finally that Booth wasn't just her best friend, he wasn't like a brother, or a lover; he was everything all rolled in to one. Temperance Brennan had opened herself to love and in doing so accepted pain. She was in love with Seeley Booth. But it was hopeless, he would probably never wake up, she pressed delete, if he did wake up he deserved to hear it from her, not read it on a screen. She didn't noticed that his eyes popped open the moment she hit delete and didn't notice the way he sought her out like a beacon. All she heard were his haunting words, and all she saw was an end to everything she hoped for. But like all good stories, hers ended with a beginning, maybe not the bright future she'd written for their alter-egos but a future nonetheless.