Miss You

[A/N: Spoilers for the Season 9 finale. Not really up-to-date on other spoilers so I can't say whether there are additional spoilers or not. This is where my brain went trying to guess what might happen next (whether or not they actually showed it on TV)—just my rambling thoughts to pass the time missing Bones on TV. I don't own the show or its characters. This is purely for fun and not intended to infringe on the rightful owners' rights. They deserve all credit and payment (and adoration).

Like many of you, I am busy—too busy to keep writing fan-fiction; too busy even to read it except on rare occasions anymore. But it's September, and I'm eager for Bones to return. So, it probably shouldn't surprise me that when I found time to do a little long-overdue yard work and listen to my iPod, a favorite Alanis Morissette song leapt into my shuffled music. Presto! I was blindsided with an idea for a Bones story. How can one with a bent toward misery-making not be inspired by a song with lyrics about "raw despondence?"

The song "Torch" has always yanked hard on my angst-loving muse. I think it's great, soulful music, and many of the lyrics fit the situation Bones and Booth face as they start season 10 so well. It captures such raw pain and need and hopelessness in such vivid terms. What stood out to me as I listened to the song this time was that some of the lyrics are remarkably Booth-and-Bones-y. Eerily so. I highly recommend that you listen to it or read the lyrics.

It's not that I really think anyone on the show will be laying a Torch down and giving up, but I can certainly imagine two people both carrying a brilliant, beautiful Torch for one another through what appears to be a very dark time.

Thanks for stopping here and dusting off my part of this fan-fiction site. Eager to hear what you think. ~MiseryMaker]

Miss You

Chapter 1 – A Solitary Existence

"Prisoner 22705, stand up." The voice on the intercom crackled loudly, shattering the echoing silence. Yes, they had given him a prison ID using his FBI call sign. Yes, they had done it to irritate him. Yes, it worked.

The intercom for his cell didn't go off often. When it did, it usually brought bad news that another request for a visit had not been approved or last-minute notice about an occasional meeting with his lawyer. The guards didn't bother with the speaker to announce the delivery of meals. Those were just shoved through the tray at the bottom of his door designed for that purpose. No other voices or faces or visits greeted him. Most days and nights he was utterly alone.

Like only the worst of the criminals in the facility, he wasn't allowed outside for fresh air or exercise. He spent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week completely alone in this stark room. He had no visitors, nothing to read, no activity, nothing to help him pass the time in any constructive way. Within a few weeks, he had run through his mental repository of military ranks and maneuvers, FBI regulations, sniper checklists, all the poems he could recite from memory, anything to help the time pass more normally multiple times. He was even beginning to plan a host of ways to use the bed and walls and floor to start a specialized exercise program he could do daily but hadn't physically been up to starting it yet.

As he rolled over and stretched, he tried to keep calm and lower his expectations. He had learned the hard way that the worst thing he could do in here was to get his hopes up. All he had was time on his hands to think and pray and miss the people he loved. And while none of those were bad things in themselves, doing too much of each of those good things could be debilitating. It was almost worse than having no hope and not having anyone around to miss.

From the start, he and his attorney had made the case that he should not be in the general prison population because, once imprisoned, law enforcement officers often faced retribution from those they'd arrested or from their family members or other prisoners paid to exact revenge for those they'd put away. For that reason, it was protocol for FBI agents to be kept in higher security areas of the prison. Hell, even clueless TV crime show writers knew that cops in jail wouldn't last long. But they'd thrown him in with the wolves anyway.

The fact that he had originally been released from the hospital ward into the general prison population had been just one more malfunction in this long, sordid conspiracy. Whoever had put him in here had obviously hoped that he wouldn't survive long enough to be prosecuted. First it had been excuses about maximum security being overcrowded. Then they had made up some excuse that the highly secured areas housed prisoners he had put away recently. Red tape after red tape left him out and exposed on the general ward. They had conceded to give him a private cell, but that had only drawn more attention to him and angered the other prisoners around him. They had gossiped and asked questions until they figured out he was a cop—as if most of them hadn't known that fact from the first moment they'd seen him. As a result, he'd had to be hyper-vigilant every time he had stepped out of his cell. He'd had to watch his own back—nobody had gotten close enough even to offer to talk to him or help him out. He understood, but it was still painful. None of the prisoners would ever trust a cop. Even the dirty cops hated him. He'd always hated dirty cops himself, so he understood why the guards were less than sympathetic. They thought he was guilty and didn't go too far to protect him or cut him any slack. They thought he deserved to be hassled by the other prisoners. It wasn't fair, but nothing had seemed fair to him in a very long time.

He stood slowly in the cold, bare, sterile space and held his arms out in front of him as called for by the rules, wincing a bit from the pain he still felt. As he waited for the click of the door being unlocked, he closed his eyes and regulated his breathing. The last time he'd been out of his cell—back after his long medical recovery when he'd been in a lower-security part of the prison, he'd been attacked by two inmates he'd helped put behind bars. They'd blindsided him in the rec room—getting in more than a few solid blows before he'd fought them off and the guards had shown up to calm the situation. The other prisoners had circled tightly around the fracas, and guards had taken their time coming over to break things up. He'd known that they wouldn't rush to his rescue—that nobody would, and he'd been lucky he'd only had to fight off the two of them. Others could have joined in the ambush and caused him much more harm. Fortunately they hadn't. He had not been allowed to stick around after that to find out if he'd gained any respect or made any additional enemies. They'd moved him immediately to the infirmary and then sent him straight to solitary. He was alive, but the high price of his safety was that he was now more alone than ever.

His three broken ribs and many bruised ones were taking their time to heal. The superficial scrapes and cuts were hardly noticeable anymore—not that he had a mirror to see how they looked. He knew that he was getting better but had not been sent back for a checkup and nobody had come in to look at his bandages. He figured nobody would unless he passed out or something. He wasn't even sure how often they checked the constant video footage of his room. It might be days before they found him.

As the guards fastened the wide cuffs tightly to his wrists and ankles and deliberately connected the chains that confined him whenever he left his new cell, he considered asking them where he was going but decided against it. Cooperative, compliant, agreeable. He was being a soldier about this. For the things he could control (the very few things), he was going to do things by the book. He knew the fight was a black mark on his record. The other prisoners and the guards had lied and said he'd started it. So he had that strike already against him, but he would give them nothing else. He would be a model prisoner even if nobody saw him and appreciated the effort. Whatever would get him out of here the fastest. Hopefully this move to solitary would save his life. It was already nipping around the edges of his sanity.

As the two heavily armed guards escorted him out of the 7x7 concrete room that constituted his entire isolated world these days, he prepared himself mentally to see his boss or FBI investigators or some jerk from the Justice Department. They showed up at random and asked him questions designed to entrap him. They were relentless. He knew what they were doing and he fought hard to keep his composure and admit to nothing, but he wondered how long he could hold himself together. The best of the bureau and their litigation pals were putting words in his mouth, writing their own stories about what had happened, and all but holding his hand and making him sign them. Aside from three brief visits with Caroline Julian's ex-husband, who was acting as his attorney, he hadn't seen anyone familiar or even remotely friendly in months.

First he'd been too injured to have visitors. As he'd healed, they had said it was special circumstances—that his training and experience posed too much of a threat—that he'd be able to send coded messages or perhaps even escape if he'd been granted visitors. Then the fight in the rec room had led them to request that he be completely isolated—he was obviously too much a threat to anyone (even his lawyer) for them to allow any visitation.

Weeks had stretched into months. It had been about three months since he'd been arrested. Eleven and a half weeks… 81 days… 1,953 hours. Military training about how to pass time while being held hostage and too much time spent with the squints had turned him into a master timekeeper—even without a clock within sight. The fact would have amused him if it wasn't one of the precious few things keeping him from unraveling.

Having shuffled slowly down the long hallway and through 3 or 4 gated areas designed to manage the flow of traffic and reduce the chance that anyone would be able to escape, he found himself now standing in the room just outside the one where prisoners were allowed to talk via phone through plate-glass windows to their attorneys or loved ones. As he waited, he paused and pulled himself together. They'd brought him here before and let him stand there for an interminable time hoping he might see his attorney or possibly his wife, only to transfer him to an interview room to interrogate him. He could do this. He had to do this. Failure was not an option. They could not bring anyone to question him who was better than he was. Name, rank, and serial number only. Reminders that he would provide no information unless his attorney was present. Polite requests that he be allowed to see his wife or his bartender or even Sweets or Gordon Gordon Wyatt. He'd done this dozens of times before. So far, he'd only been allowed a few brief visits with his lawyer.

The guard beside him nudged his shoulder hard to make sure he had his full attention, but he refused to wince from the pain. His ego was battered, but pride was one of the shreds of himself that he could still cling to. After listening to the guard's directions about the length of the visit, what he was and was not allowed to do, and the warning that everything said during his visit was being recorded, he nodded slightly.

As time and experience had taught him, he was safest in any open space keeping his head down and his eyes trained about 4 feet ahead of him on the floor. The likelihood of anyone jumping him in this small space limited to fewer than 10 prisoners at a time was slim, but he wasn't taking chances. Listening to the guard at his back and walking beside the other one, he stayed alert to any threats that might materialize. Little did he know that what he'd see on the other side of the glass was more dangerous to him than anyone on his side of the glass who might try do him physical harm.

As they arrived at the place where he'd meet with his attorney, the guard reminded him of the rules. "Here we are. Cubicle 7. 30 minutes. No exceptions. No sudden movements or loud noises. Everything is recorded."

Only after the guards turned to leave, did he look up to make eye contact with his visitor.

As their eyes met, his knees buckled, and he barely recovered enough to slump into the chair to avoid collapsing on the floor. Still not breathing, he reached for the phone hanging on the wall inside the cubicle.

"Booth, I love you so much...," he heard his wife offer urgently, tears filling her eyes and spilling down her cheeks.