Title: Lilly and the Jack of Hearts
Author: Lostakasha
Pairing: Jack/Angela, OC (primary), m/m, f/f implied
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Character death, future fic
Reviews are craved and cherished.
A/N: This is future fic that takes place about 30 years from now. Oh, and it's not strictly het.
Lilly and the Jack of Hearts
Cherry blossoms drift on the afternoon breeze and fall around their feet as they cross the parking lot hand in hand. Father and daughter, diametrically opposed, perfectly aligned, a constellation all of their own.
Her mother's mouth blooms on her face, wide and sensual beneath the almond slope of her pale eyes. Lilly's laugh -- light and quiet – is nothing like her father's nasal bray or her mother's throaty chuckle. It suits her.
"You were always too alike," she says. "I never understood how you got along at all."
It's Jack's turn to laugh as he glances up at her face, to the piles of wheaten curls arranged neatly at the crown of her head.
"We never understood it. We always had that spark, that connection. Always will." You're proof of that, my darling, he thinks. He's said those words to her too often and fears she'll think they're a cliché, so they stay in his head. He's better at keeping his thoughts to himself after all these years.
Lilly Angelica Hodgins stops and steps out of the sun.
"Please don't be angry with her for not coming, Daddy."
Jack is forty years beyond being an angry young man but he still burns and shivers in the heat of his expectations. "I'm not."
"You're livid."
"When your mother found out she was carrying you she disappeared for a week. She and Brennan were hiding out in a condo in Jackson Hole and only texted me because Booth threatened them. That was my definition of livid for a very long time."
It's easier to walk than revisit his past so he drops Lilly's hand and keeps moving. She's beside him in two steps, her long legs easily closing the distance.
"I know," she confesses quietly, gesturing to the sprawling white Victorian surrounded by a riot of pink and white trees. She pulls his sleeve, forcing him to stop. "I'm so sorry."
It could be Angela standing there in the bright sunlight and the pain is as sharp and bright as the light impairing his vision. It rings through him, stealing his breath and trapping him without words to say. He waits mutely for the world to catch up.
Lilly waits, too.
Proof of the spark that electrified their lives and that will burn long after their turn is done.
As cars begin to collect in the blossom-strewn lot, he takes her hand and propels her forward.
"Thank you."
It's all he has in him. All he can say.
II
Parker is taller than his father.
There's more of Rebecca in him than Booth, but his stance, his walk, and set of his shoulders could be his.
He clasps Jack close in muscular arms and kisses his cheek. Lilly curves around them both, her face pressed to the back of Jack's head.
"He asked for you," Parker croaks. "Said he'd see you again soon."
It was a tease. They were, as they were every year on the first weekend in March, at Jack's beach house in Kill Devil Hills. Booth was a month into retirement, messing around with a bathroom renovation that would take longer than three days to finish. One morning he'd been in such a hurry to get back to the project he'd left his St. Michael's medal hanging from the bedpost.
Jack slipped the chain over his head and presented himself amid the stripped walls and bare pipes. "If this cat's the patron saint of plumbers you'd better have him with you," he said. Booth picked at a roll of Teflon tape. "Not plumbers, you idiot. Police officers." Smiling, he tapped a plaster-dusted fingertip on the gold disk. "You need protection more than me these days," he said. Eleven years have passed and Jack still wears the medal.
"It was so fast," Parker whispers brokenly. "We thought it would be longer or we wouldn't have let you go back to Seattle. Even hospice didn't know he was going so fast."
"S' okay. It doesn't matter." He'd rather prolong the conversation, chat about flights and traffic -- do anything but what Booth would demand that he do -- but he makes himself break from his son-in-law's grip and moves past.
A dozen years inspecting the ruined leavings of human bodies, accustomed to the smell of decomposition and decay, and Jack still refuses to accept the barbarism of open-casket wakes. Every argument he's ever had about the subject fades in comparison to the last, quietest one as he stands in front of the polished mahogany box. He'd let Booth win that argument, too.
Booth could be napping at Madame Tussaud's, drained, powdered, coiffed, and in full Army dress. Sparkling hematite rosary beads are threaded through perfectly bent fingers; Jack's composure holds until he reaches for them and realizes that to make that finishing touch the undertaker had to break Booth's beautiful hands.
III
If she was lovely in youth, Temperance Brennan is exquisite in late middle age. Slender and magnificent, only the tiniest lines framing her eyes, she is stunning even in the depths of grief. She stands out in the crowded room; several mourners have mistaken her for Booth's widow. Others have introduced themselves, awestruck.
She and Jack stand clutching each other's elbows, backs turned against the flower and flag-draped display at the front of the room. They talk about Lilly and Parker and the hairpin turns their lives have taken, but a certain name doesn't come up.
Zack's arrival brings fresh tears and laughter as the years between his first doctorate and first Nobel Prize melt to nothing; he is warmer now, and holds tight to Jack and Temperance as their conversation tumbles around them. They haven't been in the same room together in fifteen years.
"Where's Angela?"
Zack's natural question is met with unnatural silence.
"Did anyone tell her?"
"She's in Italy with Richard," Temperance offers.
"Husband number three – not counting Fiji fire circle guy," Jack adds.
Zack gestures toward the thick line of mourners threading in from the street. "I should pay my respects," he says, the ghost of panic fringing his wide eyes.
Old habits die hard. Temperance loops her arm in his. "We'll go together," she says.
IV
Dusk turns the fallen cherry blossoms to a pale lavender carpet against the asphalt of the parking lot.
"Getting chilly," Jack tells Lilly when she seeks him out, gripping her fingers hard in his. "How's Parker?"
"Being Booth. Stoic. Perfect. I made him swear not to put me or the twins through this. I'll cremate him while he's still breathing if he tries."
The evening quiet is broken by footsteps and the closing of car doors as visitors come and go.
"I'll love your mother until I'm dust," Jack says, eyes dark in the shifting light. "We ignited the world, once upon a time. Still might. If she ever forgives me."
"Didn't you always say we can't help who we love? That we shouldn't try?"
Jack laughs humorlessly. "She's not angry that I loved him, and I wasn't angry about Tempe," he admits. "She's angry that I lied. There's a difference, baby."
"Shit yes," Lilly sighs. "That's worse."
"Technically, it was a sin of omission."
Angela is as beautiful as she was the day he recognized for the first time, standing in her office, worried to distraction about Brennan. He'd never really seen her until then -- at least not with a lover's eyes.
In a half-turn they are tangled together, a family.
Flicking a tear from her cheek, Angela asks Lilly how she is, if Parker's okay, if Rebecca could be found. The answers are brief: fine, okay, and not yet, and with a wise child's intuition and a round of adoring kisses, Lilly leaves her parents to talk alone.
"We did, you know. Conspire to ignite the world," Angela sighs.
"Where's whathisname?"
"Tuscany, where I've told him to stay. I'm chalking that whole endeavor up to an extended hot flash." She waves the thought away as if it's smoke. "I'm sorry about Seeley, honey. That you weren't there at the end."
She's always had the power to bring his emotions to the fore, and he takes a hard breath before words come. "I saw him last week. We… had a chance to talk."
"We're two of the luckiest people in the world, Jack. Our lives have been filled with love, we made an amazing child who's made two amazing children…"
They could be standing in the lab, working a case, waiting for Booth and Brennan, waiting to fall into each other's arms. He pulls her close, and, breathing in the comfort of familiar roses and Chanel, purrs into her hair.
"Grandchildren, darling. Say it."
"G... g…Good as it gets," she sighs.
Jack's not letting go and neither is she. "Tempe and Zack are here."
"I don't want to do this." The tears spill again and Jack is helpless to do anything but join her. When they can, they stand slightly apart. "Not … not just this," she sniffs. "I don't want to live the rest of my life without you."
"I've never wanted to live without you," Jack says, and it's the truth. "Never saw the need for it."
A slender hand drums between Jack's shoulder blades. Lilly hands her mother a handkerchief and nods to the house.
"Parker's looking for you," she says apologetically.
Jack takes his daughter's hand, and curves his arm around Angela's waist.
"We can do this," he says.
And they can.
fin