She's been at the hospital for over an hour when Angela approaches, pointy shoes stopping tentatively in front of her lowered gaze.
"Brennan," Then again, louder, when she does not move, "Bren!"
Azure eyes sweep up from the floor, unfocused. Her chest feels constricted and she's having trouble breathing. Her mind is so foggy, all she knows is that the doctor stopped her here, told her to wait.
"I'm waiting." She tells Angela.
"Yes, you are. We all are." She waits a beat, taking a breath. "Maybe—you'd like to wash your hands while we wait?"
"My hands?" She repeats, holding them up. Red-brown streaks of dried blood stain her fingers, running down across the backs of her hands.
She scrubs her skin under hot water, wetting the sleeves of her shirt in the process. She almost gags when Angela pumps soap into her open palm, it feels like Booth's blood, running so thick over her fingers. Wincing, she tells herself to be calm, willing the rational part of herself to assume control before yanking her hands from the sink and announcing "They're clean," before half-running back to the waiting room.
All she can see when the doctors tell her he's gone is the blood caught under her fingernails.
--
It's been two days and she hasn't cried. The guard wouldn't let her enter the lab the next day, telling her Dr. Saroyan had not come in, but she had left orders. Go home and rest, he advised.
She can only sit in her apartment and stare at the wall. The television she'd ordered the previous week arrived. Leaving the box in the hall, she moves around it, unsure of how to proceed.
She sneaks into the lab, heading to limbo and randomly pulling boxes off shelves. Inhaling the steady, clean scent of stainless steel and Clorox, she loses herself in fragments and chips of bone.
--
She's lying on her bed, not sleeping, not thinking, not feeling when she's suddenly and completely furious. Letting out a half-scream, she storms through her apartment, gathering everything that reminds her of him. The pile on her living room floor multiplies strangely, shifting its amorphous form as she hurls CDs, clothes, and books onto it wildly.
When her adrenaline runs out, she finds herself coolly piling her former belongings in an organized pattern inside her fireplace.
The doorbell rings. She ignores it. The sound of the lock sliding echoes in the silence and Max enters, appearing concerned. She ignores him.
He watches as she lights a match and tenders the spark against her own novels, making sure the pages catch fire and smolder into ash. When she reaches for the CDs, moving to place them atop the blaze, he catches her wrist. Striking another match, he holds his beloved Poco above the tiny flame, mesmerizing her as the plastic warps. She follows suit, strangely satisfied as the material doubles over on itself, twisting out of shape.
She would feed Jasper and Brainy Smurf to the fire, but a tiny part of her stays her hand, whispering that it's all she has left of him now.
--
At two in the morning, she bakes a peach pie. She cannot bring herself to go to the diner, cannot make it past the doors, she's tried. It feels wrong, knowing that she'll sit alone. If she wants fries, she'll have to order them herself, stealing from his plate isn't an option anymore.
She assembles the ingredients she bought on her counter, methodically blending, measuring, mixing. Cooking, she reminds herself, is a science.
The pie smells delicious, its fragrance wafting through the rooms. She takes three bites and gags, running to her bathroom to choke over her toilet, hurling bile. Tears stream down her face, and the sounds she's making barely qualify as human.
She's finding that losing someone means you lose a part of yourself, too.
--
Partner. She spits the word at Sweets, knowing that it never really defined what they were to one another. Even at the beginning, competitor or annoyance worked better. More than a poor stand-in for associate, a ridiculously clinical way to define human interaction. Still, she pretends, retreating behind her now-bulletproofed heart and a mask of indifference that's fooling no one.
--
Her hand hurts after slamming her fist into his jaw, but as she leans against the door in her office, she cannot stop grinning. Flexing her fingers, she notices her bloody knuckles and thinks, I should really wash my hands, before laughing out loud.
She's giddy, because everything has changed and yet nothing has. The last fourteen days seem unreal, but meaningful in some way. Her actions resonate with significance, but she does not yet know what they signify. All she can concentrate on is the wonderfully infuriating man currently pounding on the door behind her, demanding the right to speak.