Almost Too Much
Just a post-finale drabble. I'm thinking about doing another chapter from Booth's perspective, and maybe a reunion scene. Not sure yet... Let me know what you think?
Perhaps it was hormones. She tried to count back to her last period, tried to focus on the dates and not the tears. But no, it was only two weeks ago. There was no logical explanation for this.
Temperance Brennan sat down on the lid of the airplane toilet and rested her forehead against the edge of the sink a foot in front of her. She closed her eyes hard and another tear streaked down her cheek.
She'd had two days to pack, and while she knew that Booth had already reported for duty, she'd also hoped he could come to her. Brennan didn't know what she thought would happen if he did, but somehow her apartment didn't feel like home without him. Last night, laying in bed, she tried to tell herself it was excitement for Maluku that was keeping her awake, even as she listened for the faintest sound in the hall that might signal a midnight visitor. Twice she got out of bed, tiptoed to the peep-hole, checked just in case she wasn't imagining the creek of the floorboards. She was.
But after all that, she still expected him to come to the airport. She told herself it was more rational to expect him there than at her home; it was customary to see one's friends off, and Sweets and Cam had come even though they weren't flying off anywhere. Yet when she looked up across the room and saw Booth, Brennan didn't feel relief. Instead a sudden physical ache tightened her chest. She moved toward him.
They stopped a foot apart, but for them it was a gulf as serious as the thousand miles that would divide them in a matter of hours. She pleaded with him to come back to her, because it was too late to ask him not to go. Brennan could see in his eyes the same emotion he'd tried to express months earlier: the same love, the same pain at whatever kept them apart. In the instant before he could lean in and kiss her, she dropped her eyes.
Booth clutched her hand instead, but they both knew what they'd lost. And she imagined they both knew that it was her fault. That if she had only been a bit more loving, a bit warmer, they could have avoided this pain. Just as she had done, he made her promise that this wasn't the end. That they'd see each other in a year. And then he walked away. Because she couldn't ask him not to.
As she turned back to Daisy, the weight of separation, of responsibility, sank down on her chest so heavily that Brennan stopped, turned to catch one last glimpse of him. He was already watching her, and the first tears sprang to her eyes. How had she come to this, to be this cold person walking away from the only man in the world whom she had ever believed when he professed his love?
Then he was gone.
She waited until Daisy's sedative had kicked in to go to the bathroom. In private the tears had begun to slip out, beyond her control, beyond any kind of reason. She was good at crying silently, had been since she was fifteen. Today she couldn't seem to stop.
For years she had relied on Booth to recognize her weakest moments, to prop her up before she could fall apart like this. Now she was alone again; for the next 364 days she would have to go back to surviving on her own. It was almost too much.