It was the dream that everyone in the world wakes up from with a jerk, cold sweat dampening their bedsheets as they slowly come to the realization that they're safe in their own bed, not falling, flailing, from some great height into the black, never-ending abyss. There was just one minor difference: Temperance Brennan wasn't waking up, and she hoped she never would.
The dream had started as they all inevitably had for the past few weeks; Booth, staggering backwards. Booth, falling. Booth, bleeding. Booth, panting, his breathing ragged. Booth, staring blankly past her at nothing. Booth, murmuring her name. Booth, dying. An unthinkable pain splitting open her chest as the pulsing life source in his own ceased to beat. Her world, burning. Paramedics arriving, pushing her away, refusing to let her ride in the ambulance. Sitting alone on the front steps at the J. Edgar Hoover building, the driving rain chilling her to the bone and plastering her hair to her face.
That was all a remembered reality; the actual, numbing events in the aftermath of Booth's death. The next part was an imagined course, the path of which she thought herself to cowardly to follow. She was stood on her own balcony, in the same spot that Howard Epps had vaulted to his death, in the same drenched clothes she had, in actuality, peeled off and discarded upon arriving home for the first time since her life shattered. The rest happened as a series of consecutive images; a slideshow rather than a film. First, she found herself seated upon the railing, her hands desperately holding onto the flaking banister, her legs dangling into nothing. Next, she was kicking her shoes off into oblivion. Crouching precariously on the thin bar. Her toes curling around the wet, slippery metal. Standing, swaying in the wind, her hair fanning out behind her. Clutching at the tall, upright balustrade for support. Looking out over DC with an undeniable longing in her eyes. At last, she looks peaceful.
Suddenly, things are back in real time as she steps into the gaping emptiness before her. She's falling fast, and things such as terminal velocity and air resistance mean nothing to her as she plummets towards the ground. She's free; on-top-of-the-world, devil-may-care, free, falling forever into nothing as the cold air rushes past her face, blowing away the hot tears of earlier that fateful night. She's seen enough movies to know this is the part where some divine force steps in to catch her, hold her, carry her to safety, but nothing comes.
Her fall is inordinately long, as if falling from space instead of a mere 50ft balcony, and just as she thinks she will never hit the ground, she does. She's pretty sure that every bone in her skeleton is shattered; a broken body to match a broken heart, at long last. Despite this, she's still alive. Hopelessly, undeniably alive, with adrenaline pumping through her and horror clouding her mind as she registers the fact that she still lives on, despite her broken bones and agonized heart. Burning tears fill her eyes as she lies, paralysed, on the wet ground, gazing upwards at the star-filled sky. For a moment, she is too preoccupied with seeking comfort in finding Delphinus to notice the all too familiar face hanging over her balcony, its features contorted in horror, arms outstretched towards her.
She tries to reach up to him, like a child begging to be held, but she cannot move, can barely breathe. She's sobbing in earnest now, her face frozen in a mask of serenity with tears flowing thickly and freely down the soft slope of her cheeks, puddling slowly on the ground beneath her. The harsh glow of the streetlamp above her feels like a spotlight, illuminating her every flaw as she lies hollow and empty in the road, watched from above by someone who shouldn't even exist. Never before has she felt so utterly helpless, like a shattered Juliet in the dirt. She watches in horror as her Romeo disappears from the balcony back into her apartment, tears spilling down his face. No, she wants to shout. Don't go. But he can't hear her, and wouldn't be able to even if she had the life left in her to open her mouth and form a sentence.
Moments later, he's beside her again. She feels that the scenario is a mockery of Booth's own death; he kneels over her, his hands on her shoulders and his mouth firing out her name as if it will help. To him, she is cold and stiff, her cheeks waxen and the tears already dry on her face. Inside, her heart is pounding like some haphazard drum beat and she's bursting with everything from grief to excitement. Clumsily, he lays on the ground beside her and shifts his body to lie facing her, eye to eye, nose to nose. His arms are around her and she wonders how it can possibly feel so good. Slowly, gently, he tilts his heads upwards and presses a light kiss to her forehead, his tears mingling with the grey drizzle filling the air.
Temperance Brennan awoke with a jerk, cold sweat dampening her bedsheets as she came to the realization that she was safe in her own bed. The usual sadness hit her like a ton of bricks after the routine split-second of normality, the flash-feeling of how things were before. Falling back onto her pillows, she closed her eyes and cried herself back to sleep.
Angsty, overly-dramatic and horribly stylistic - yup, sounds about right for me. ;) Save an author, leave a review.