A longish one shot that popped into my head. Mostly about Booth and his reaction his dad's death. A little B&B, but mostly just Bones being a good friend. rated T for thematic elements about Booth's past.
It'll be good, trust me:)
I don't own Bones, however, I did elaborate on the Booth commiting suicide and troubled childhood thing.
It was the first time he'd seen the man in twenty two years. Truthfully, he never wanted to see his face again.
For his face had coveted those eyes. Those brown eyes occupied with nothing but hatred and sin. The eyes that glared into his own right before he was struck by one of his jaw shattering blows or beaten into unconsciousness. Those eyes that truly, genuinely shook fear through every nerve in his body.
What he hated most about those eyes was that they reflected his exactly. Every morning when he looked in the mirror he saw those eyes, staring back at him. He saw a man who could easily have turned out to be a drunken abuser. He saw the thin line of morality begin to fade. He saw the bruises and the cuts and the blood on the floor. He heard the screams. He could feel the pain that plagued him as he tried to sleep at night.
But at that moment, his eyes were closed. His pale body lay unmoving on the steel table in the morgue.
"Is this him?" The man asked. He just nodded, swallowing back the knot in his throat, not sure if he was supposed to cry or rejoice.
The coroner pulled the white, sterile sheet slowly back over his face.
"I'm very sorry for your loss, Agent Booth." The man told him. Booth replayed over the many times he'd said those exact words. Now he realized that they were really no comfort at all.
He hadn't told anyone. He had gone through most of the days before the funeral in a haze. He went to work and sat at his desk, on the phone with Jared and his half sister Lilly, going over plans. He didn't talk to anyone else. He just constricted into his own corner of loneliness.
He didn't sleep. He couldn't sleep. He'd tried several times, but was awakened in a cold sweat.
He saw them every time he slept. The memories.
The memories of standing over his brothers unconscious, blood covered body, his terrified mother screaming in the background, his sister's tears streaming down her sick face. His body being smashed against the wall as he fought the darkness seeping into his line of sight, knowing that if he fell to the ground, the drunken monster would only go after his mother next.
The memory of the bottle splitting his skin open from his chest to his hip, the alcohol seething fire into his gushing cut.
The memory of the bruises that he'd have to account for at school. The, "Are you sure everything's okay?"'s he received from teachers and coaches and teammates and girlfriends.
The memories of the family hurridly packing their bags with their essentials and fleeing town during the darkness of the night while the beast was slumped over in a blackout against the bathroom wall.
The memories of living in a hotel room for nearly a year with his sister who had to grow up without her father and her biological mother, his brother who continually got into trouble at school and his mom who, on some days, wouldn't leave her bed because she was so depressed.
The memories of being sent off to his grandfather's house as they took his mother away, never to be seen or heard from again until he'd found out in the sixth grade that she'd hung herself with an extension chord.
The memories of staring down the gun, debating whether or not to put it in his mouth, pull the trigger and make the pain of living go away.
The memories of pausing as he walked home, standing over the edge of the bridge, peering down, thinking for more than an instant that it would be a nice way to go. A free fall. A rush of excitement, the wind in his face, it didn't sound like a bad 'last event' to him.
The memory of his grandfather walking in on him in the bathroom that one time, the time he'd began to slash his wrist his rusty pocket knife. No one knew it, but that was the reason he had the tattoos. There was a deep scar underneath the right kanji.
The sound of his drunken, slurred voice that sounded eerily the same as his own. "You're worthless, you know that? You'll never do anything! You won't change anything! You're meaningless! Your life will amount to nothing! You may as well just kill yourself now, kid!"
It echoed through the very soul of him.
No. He could not sleep.
Finally, the day had come. He stood in front of the mirror, his eyes dead to the world and their glowing amber ring replaced with black. He pulled the tie on and stood there looking. Looking at who he was now and what he was destined to become. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed as he skimmed over the purple shadows under his tired eyes. He looked like a wreck.
He sat on the edge of his bed. He finally came to a conclusion as he tied his black dress shoes. He was strong. He'd put up with torture, beatings, emotional trauma and death. But this time, he had to admit his own weaknesses.
He couldn't get through this alone.
He swallowed what was left of his pride and picked up his phone, wondering how much he would have to plead to get her to drop everything and put on a black dress.
Half an hour later she was at his door, coffee in her hands and Kleenex in her purse. He almost grinned at how warm hearted she was being about all of this, but then he remembered that he'd done much the same thing for her just three years back.
They drove off in silence, her blue eyes wide and solemn. Finally, she spoke.
"I'm not sure what to say." She whispered as the pulled to a stop at a red light.
"That's why I asked you to come with me." He paused,
"Because we both don't know what to say." Brennan nodded as if she understood, but he knew that she didn't, which only succeeded in making him feel the tiniest bit better.
The key turned in the ignition and he stepped out, walking chivalrously over to the passenger side door to let her out. She took his hand and stepped down from the SUV, not letting go of her grip on him as they walked across the parking lot to the church. He glanced down at her hand and instead of thinking about how he shouldn't be doing that and how they were just partners and how he was squeezing to hard and how he was going to scare her off, he just let his grip relax and allowed her to hold his hand, appreciative of having another person there to comfort him.
As he opened the funeral home door, she squeezed a little, then let go, allowing her delicate hand to fall to the side of her black dress.
There weren't many people there, but neither of them expected that. After all, if you want a big fancy funeral with sobbing family and grieving loved ones, don't go on a drinking binge nearly every night and abuse your children and rape your wife. It wasn't too much to ask for.
As the preacher read a few verses, Booth looked down at the ground. He wanted to cry. But he always thought that if you were going to cry, you needed a distinct reason as to why. At that moment he wasn't sure why he needed to cry.
He didn't know if it was because he was sad that despite everything the man had done, the man was his father. It may have been relief that finally this scum bag was gone and the world was free of his sickness. It may have been some sort of twisted happiness that after all of those years of the beatings and the bruises and the cuts and the blood and the terrified screams and the hate that the man had finally got what had been coming for him.
He was still staring down at his feet when he felt a warm hand on his knee. He glanced up and saw Bones half smiling encouragingly at him. She let her thumb rub gently against his knee and he heaved a sigh. She dug for her purse and whipped out her ever handy tissue.
They joined the preacher in prayer. He didn't hear what he was saying, his mind was a blur. All he heard were the last few words.
"…May God bless James Seeley Booth. Amen." Booth nodded and heard the voices in the room all repeat the last word, even his partner.
They began to make their way to the casket at the front of the room. Booth saw Jared glance down and walk away, sniffling. He saw Lilly peer into the box and tuck a piece of her brown hair behind her ear.
He watched them in envy, knowing that they weren't half as affected by all this. After all, Lilly had been young. She had only lived with her father for a few years before they'd escaped.
Jared wasn't even biologically related to the man (he'd figured it out in tenth grade when they studied genetics. He'd always wondered about it, because both of his parents had brown hair and brown eyes and yet Jared ended up blonde with blue eyes), that and he'd been drunk or off doing something stupid most of the time anyway, sneaking in late after the man had blacked out, leaving his older brother to cover for him and protect his sister and mother at the same time.
His siblings sat back down and Booth rose, Brennan taking his arm instinctively. He pulled her closer as he marched off into the unknown, anxious and yet not at all ready to see the bastard one last time before he was sealed up and gone out of his life for good.
He peered cautiously at him. He saw not the man who'd beat him to a bloody pulp and killed him from the inside out, not the man who'd been the cause of his mothers perish and his own psychological wounds, but a corpse. A dead man with nothing left. A dead man who could feel no regret and no pain. Just a pale, older version of himself lying peacefully in a casket, ready to be buried under a hundred pounds of dirt.
He wasn't sure when the tears began to fall, but he knew that Bones was there with her welcoming, empathetic arms wrapped around him.
"I'm just like him." He said in a hardly audible whisper.
"No." She shook her head firmly, letting go of him. By that time, the funeral home was empty, everyone was walking to their cars or getting in the limo, ready to follow the hearse to the cemetery.
"No, you're a strong, brave man. You're Seeley James Booth, not James Seeley Booth. Your not afraid to take a stand and you will guard what you love to the death. You are nothing like that man." She hugged him again.
"How bout this? When I get scared, you can hug me." She recalled.
Reviews are always welcome!
~Rhea~
"We make life out of chaos and hope. And love." -Angela