"The Only Place Outside of Heaven"
Summary: A note, but not the one from the car. Hodgins/Angela
What happens in between the gaps of 2x09 "Aliens in the Spaceship"
Disclaimer: My favorite show, but not mine. Also not my poetry. Dialog is from the actual episode. Not written for any profit. No infringment intended.
-----
Lovers and thinkers into the Earth with you
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust
- Edna St. Vincent Milay, Dirge without Music
Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab
Time Remaining 05:09:33
Cam paces as she tried to make sense of Dr. Jack Hodgins' tangled and cryptic notes. Scribbles of ink looking more like something a bored student would doodle during an unending lecture than a standard laboratory notebook, she looks completely perplexed.
Angela walks up, pain and worry clearly shown on her normally cheerful face.
"Did you find Russ?," Cam asks her.
"He's on a fishing trip with friends in the White Mountains. No phones, no cell service. You?"
"Hodgins seems to write everything in some kind of code. I might have to get Zach over here to break it."
Angela steps forward, taking the book in her hands. She scans the page. "It says that the traces of aluminium found on the clothing were almost certainly from the kidnapper's vehicle... like a box in the back of a trunk or a van."
"You can read that?"
"Yeah, uh, Hodgins sends me a lot of notes..." Head down, Angela's voice trails off and she nods blindly.
Cam takes one look at her, taking the depth of her distress.
Angela looks up, eyes filled with tears. "Why bother? With all of this? We don't need evidence, we need millions of dollars."
She turns, hurrying off before Cam can see her cry. She can't seem to breathe, to find some solid ground to stand on. Down the hall, she turns off into the quiet of her office.
Ever since that streak of blood in the garage, it's been like a waking nightmare. She sees evidence all the time, bits and pieces of other lives cut short. Ranging from the horror that people inflict on each other, to the accidents that leave little to be identified, to brief glimpses into the past, the lives of long ago. In each image, each reconstruction that she had made, she tried to find some semblence of who these people were, to give them life once again. She had a purpose, a place in each of those cases. Here, she can only sit and wait.
She leaned over the desk, head in hands and closed her eyes. It seemed too much to bear. Too much to lose at once. Bren had been her best friend for years, perhaps not the best for personal advice, but a loyal and true center in her life. Like a sister, she had shared with her the ups and downs of life for years.
And Jack... knowing that there was so much unsaid, so much lying in the spaces in between them. She had been afraid, so afraid of taking a chance with him, but the consequences of a failed relationship suddenly paled compared to a life without him at all.
To Angela, the risks had always seemed so high when it came to love. Since Kirk's death, she had wondered if Bren had been right, if she would ever have another chance at love. Or if that had been her only shot and there would always just be something empty in her heart that would never quite be filled.
But, this... whatever it was... with Jack had been like finding herself suddenly on the edge of a cliff. It made her heart feel like leaping into the unknown, but the logical part of her, the part that had built the walls sheltering her heart as high and as thick as possible, had told her the price of admission was too steep.
And in many ways, Jack had touched a nerve in her. She felt guilty, for living and going on without Kirk, for feeling the excitement of the first blush of love again so relatively soon after his death. The grief she had felt after the murder had torn her heart apart, leaving deep scars she wasn't sure would ever heal.
So, in the end, she had panicked and once again protected herself, refusing to let go of the safety of their friendship. But even that had been damaged by her refusal to move forward with him. God, the look of pain on his face when she told him that they should return to the way it was. She almost couldn't bear the memory.
She wasn't stupid, she had known she couldn't just jump in the way-back machine and reset everything to the way it was before their date. But, somehow she had figured she could ride out the awkwardness until Hodgins was able to joke it off; the way he had always bounced from date to date before, it hadn't seemed like it would take too long. The fact that it had taken him this long was both fascinating and terrifying to her. Maybe he had been right... maybe she had made a mistake. She had just found herself paralyzed at the edge, unable to leap.
She slowly pulled the desk drawer open. Inside, lay slips of paper. Some whole, others scraps torn and covered with coffee cup rings or stains of dye or faint smudges of God-only-knows-what kind of slime. Each a note from Hodgins. The ones nearer to the bottom were shorter and more case-related. There's a sketch of what could be the watery shaft to a pirate's lair, a dispersion scatter-pattern for a woodchipper, the dimensions of a storm drain. Sometimes, there are quips penciled in, or innuendo. Things that made her laugh out loud, or simply smile quietly.
Lately, lines of poetry had popped up on her desk.
Before her date, a line of "But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight and knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart" with a scribbled "Can't wait, Jack" below it.
The morning after the swings, he had left one that read:
"wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world
my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom."
A couple of dried rose petals fell out between the slips of paper, and she held one briefly in the palm of her hand before she let it drift back into the drawer.
She swept everything back into the drawer and closed it. She put her head down on the desktop and began to weep quietly, her shoulders shaking with each sob. She had never felt so alone and helpless in all her life.
---
The art of losing isn't hard to master,
then practice losing farther, losing faster
- Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab
Time Remaining 00:00:27
6 7 16 M1.4
Booth is frantic, at the end of his rope. Angela has never seen him like this before. He's out of options, with nowhere to go next. He looks vaguely like a caged wild animal, liable to lunge at anything that moves.
"We're running out of time," he snaps.
"Minor correction, Dr. Brennan and Dr. Hodgins will run out of air in four seconds... we are out of time," Zach says with a dull, certain finality.
Angela feels for a second as if it's her lungs that are empty, and tries desparately not to think of Brennan and Hodgins gasping, choking. Her mind is reeling. If they even figure it out now, they couldn't possibly reach them in time. The very dim light at the end of the tunnel is flickering out.
Cam and Booth try to steer the focus back to the little information that has been discovered, but Zach isn't having any of it.
"You're forgetting something! Brennan and Hodgins are out of air."
Booth steps away from the computer monitor he's been taking his frustrations out on and instead turns them toward Zach.
"Great, you want to give up, huh?! This is Bones we're talking about here... and Hodgins. You really think that they didn't find a way to extend their air supply? Hell, they found a way to send us a message, ask us for help! And you want to give up because of math??"
Zach looks at the floor. After a long moment, he looks back up at Booth with a new determination in his eyes. "It's not a numerical alphabetical code or an equation."
Her heart lurches with renewed hope, determined to answer the challenge Booth has thrown down. If he won't give up on their chances, neither will she. Memories, dates, notations; she thinks as hard as she can to try to find a connection to the screen. "It's not GPS coordinates or indications of topography," she says.
Booth senses the tide is turning, but it's not getting him the results he wants. "Then what is it?" he demands.
Cam jumps in. "Can I make a suggestion? See, this is exactly why I was sent here. You guys are brilliant but you won't make intuitive leaps."
"You mean jump to conclusions?" Zach says.
"That's exactly what I mean. This is a message from one of them to one of us. Specific focus. Who was it meant to get to?"
"Easy, Brennan's cell to mine. Right, the message was for me. We have an understanding, we work together." Booth concludes.
Suddenly, his statement cuts her to the quick. How dare he, she's known Brennan longer than anyone here. "We all work together. She's my best friend. And, Hodgins..." Her heart is in her throat, and Booth's eyes dare her to compare her feelings to those for his partner. "Hodgins..." she trails off.
Her mind flashes back to the house in the desert, as she sat with Bren on the couch at the end of the day. 'Maybe I don't have a generous enough heart.' She feels like the grinch, with her heart two sizes to small as she sees Booth measure her feelings and find them wanting. There's nothing she can say, no words that she can find that are right...
It doesn't matter though, as Cam's mind has clicked into focus. "She's right, we should assume the message is from Hodgins, not from Brennan."
"Why?" Booth demands.
"Because they're buried alive," Cam retorts.
"And Hodgins is all about dirt," Angela manages.
"Ok, the message is about dirt. But who is it to?" Booth counters.
"Angela. Hodgins is all about dirt and Angela." Zach offers, with a tenative sideways glance at her.
There's small part of her heart that warms a little at that, but she shakes her head sadly. "But it's numbers Zach, it's for you. Hodgins would have written me a line of poetry, or something." She's at a loss. If it's for her, she's lost. She can't see any sense in it.
Still, she's grasping at straws, determined not to fail them, when Zach's excited shout breaks the silence.
"Six, seven, sixteen... Carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur on the periodic table of elements! They are buried in coal-rich soil."
"You gotta narrow it down, Zach." Booth is chomping at the bit to move, to react instead of standing here helpless. He glowers down, momentarily freezing Zach.
Angela ignores him, and in her calmest voice she encourages, "Keep going, Zach." She knows this is right, knows it with a certainty down to the tips of her toes. Maybe, just maybe, there's still a chance to save them.
"Uh, mineral components in coal are all the same, it's the organic components that provide a unique fingerprint. They're called macerelles. They fluoresce at different levels. A reflectance of 1.4 is quite rare, suggesting a high concentration of inertnite."
Booth looks like he might pick Zach up and shake it out of him. "Zach, tell me what that means."
"It means that he knows where they are," she states with conviction.
"Zach?" Booth asks with increasing hope.
"I know where they are."
----
No heart can leap, no soul can breathe, but by the sizeless truth of a dream,
whose sleep is the sky and the earth and sea
-e.e. cummings
Southern Star Strip Mining Operation
Franklin County, VA
Remaining Time -02:12:45
Booth shouts, "Ok, people. They've gotta to be here. Just look for anything, any tire tracks, recent digging, mounds, depressions, anything..."
She is standing at the edge of a cliff. A real one. The land is barren, flat. It has been stripped of everything, the remains of ash and sulfur spread down to fill the gap. There is no trace of them. To come so close, and yet feel so far from their location is horrifying. She looks down, desparate for any small sign of hope. Maybe a smudge of a tire track or a small dip in the ground.
She is so intent on scanning the landscape, that Booth's mad dash down the hill is only a blur in her peripheral vision. In that split second that she realizes he has moved, a flood of hope hits her. She can't stay still. She takes the leap, and follows down the hill.
She skids and stumbles the whole way. Her hands flail to help keep her balance. She slips and slides the last few feet to the floor of the valley. There's a rip in the knee of her pants, and no doubt a ton of bruises and scrapes. She can't feel any of them. She's on her feet again and running, flat out. She can almost reach Booth. He's digging frantically.
She is only a couple feet away when she sees Booth grab Brennan's hand. She watches in mingled horror and relief as he hauls her out of the ground. She hears Brennan's voice, hoarse but real and so much like a miracle, as she hits the ground on her knees.
She claws at the ground, digging with all of her might. Dirt slips through her hands, falling back into the hole she is trying to empty. Her hands are raw, nails broken, but she can't stop. She brushes something in the earth, just the tips of his fingers. She realizes that there are hands digging all around her; Zach, Booth, Cam. After what seems like an eternity to her, Booth gets a hold of Jack and pulls him out of the ground.
Angela crawls to his side.
"Jack, come on."
He is coughing and covered with dirt, but just the two of them, alive and breathing, are the most beautiful sight she has ever seen. Tears are running down her face, and she's laughing with the shock and joy of it all. She wants to make it real, to not wake up and find that she has dreamed this moment. She runs her hands over his face, wiping dirt away. She can't stop touching him, wanting to feel him alive and breathing.
He says something, but his voice is low and cracked and she can't hear it all. Something perhaps about an angel. She can't bear it any longer, and reaches down to cover his mouth with hers. It's a sweet, soft kiss. Full of an apology for how awkward things were before, and thanksgiving for his homecoming. It also holds an equal measure of hope for the future, of things she can't explain or put into words right now. But, as she raises her head, she can see it all mirrored in his eyes.
Things filter back into her from the rest of the world. Slowly at first, with the quiet murmurings of Zach and Cam, the whole circle of their little family as Booth and Brennan also turn their attention to the others. Sirens and voices from the outside, an ambulance pulling up next to them. Gentle, yet persistant voices telling her and Zach to step back, to let the paramedics do their jobs. With a last squeeze of Jack's hand, she allows herself to be moved aside to let them work. It almost rips her in half again to have them taken from her again, despite knowing that the ordeal is over.
---
He ruin'd me and I am rebegot
Of abscence, darkness, death,
Things which are not
- John Donne
Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab
9:12 pm
Angela walks into the lab, relieved to see Hodgins at his desk. She approaches the table, but he's so intent on his work that she's right next to him before he notices. "I went to visit you at the hospital. I brought you this." She places a small stuffed bear on the corner of the desk.
"They, they let me go home," he offers vaguely, barely looking up.
"No they didn't. You left without being discharged. You stole crutches, which I had to pay for," she scolds. God, she was so worried to find him missing again from the hospital, she had felt for a moment like it was starting all over again.
She looks at him, takes in the intensity of his work, the signs of fatigue and pain. He's trying to put up a brave front, but she can see it's a very thin facade.
"They packed me, pumped me full of antibiotics, stitched me up, and gave me painkillers, so I.. I'm good to go."
"Could you please look at me?" She waits until he looks up, meets her eyes with his own strikingly blue ones. She sees pain, fear, anger, and affection all mingled together. "You were buried alive. You were operated on without an anesthetic. You were pumped full of drugs. You really should be lying down."
As she catalogs each one, she flinches inside. She keeps it all in, locks it down to focus on Jack. If she breaks down now, she won't be any good to him.
"He's out there Angela. He buries people alive. I have to catch him. If I can figure out the exact alloy of aluminium, then maybe I could... maybe we could... Plus, the bit of bumper sticker that Brennan found in my leg..."
He's about to break. She can see it. The whole weight of everything he's been through is starting to come to bear upon him. He doesn't want her of all people to see how deeply this has hurt him. She tries to reassure him. "We're going to catch him, ok? I promise you. We're going to start tomorrow. All of us together."
He hesitates, "I can't sleep, Angela."
She's taken aback for a second, had thought he wouldn't want to share the rawness of his fears with her. "I, I thought that they gave you something for that."
"No, I mean... I'm afraid that if I close my eyes, when I open them I'll be back in that car...buried, running out of air."
It's clear that the nightmare is still with him, from the tears running down his face to the haunted look in his eyes. Her heart is breaking for him. Such a stark contrast to his usual cocky, self-assured manner.
She can't bear it, wants to heal it somehow, offers the only thing she can to help, her understanding and comfort. "Ok, then you should come home with me. "
"What?" he replies cautiously, barely believing his own ears.
"And when you open your eyes, I'll be there."
"Yeah?", he asks, looking for all the world like a lost little boy.
"Yeah," she replies with no room for doubt.
"Ok." he says almost shyly. He pauses for a second, "You know I'm good for that crutch money, right?"
She laughs at the thought, smiling broadly. She reaches out to hold his face in her hand.
As they sat in the stillness of the lab, she clung to the moment. The only thing that mattered was the warmth of his skin under her hand. It was as if the world stood still for both of them. She didn't know where this would lead them, or if she was strong enough to bear it, but she knew she couldn't just let go.
A/N: Title is from C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves: "The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." The two notes are both from poems by e.e. cummings.