"The Irresistible Force Paradox"
I had to get it out of my system before the finale airs. No matter how I wrote hundreds of different versions, this one sticks to me and I have to let it go lol. DanaGabrielle and I wrote You can't Unring the Bell which covers the entire arch between The Parts in the Sum of the Whole and The Beginning in the End, but this one is exclusively set as the ending scene of the finale. I need some fluff lol. Or not.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to FOX, HH and other acronyms or corporations and stuff that kill real life romance for us :p.
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She was familiar with the place, she had spent more time there than she could count. But today it felt like some strange, foreign land that made her feel cornered, prisoner of something she did not want to be. That was change? Unsettling, almost uncanny. She hated it. The everlasting flow of strangers crossing paths, never colliding, never coinciding, just... passing by without staying, without involving themselves in the instant. How many times had she taken part in that flow without questioning it? Rather welcoming it with relief. The relief to be the anonymous component of an impersonal mass separating constantly, parting ways, avoiding, escaping.
She was at Dulles International Airport, waiting for her flight to Sumatra to take off. She was surrounded by people who had made her step aside from the continuous flow of strangers without strings, without hope. Each of them had made her change. Each of them had participated in the destruction of her aloofness. Each of them had a responsibility in this emotional captivity she did not want to escape anymore. But she could only smile at them.
She could only smile because he was smiling back. She wondered if like her he wanted to cry. Cry at the injustice of those weakening ties they had all cultivated throughout the years, cry at the ineffable fear to become strangers again. She bit her lips, hard.
She was not used to say goodbye. She had always run away. That was all she knew. No one had ever taught her how to say goodbye, she had just been taught to disappear. Today she seemed to have forgotten how to run away as well. She had become an immovable object, when she used to be an irresistible force, always on the move.
No. He was the immovable object. He was her paradox. But he had decided to move, away from them. What did it mean? She needed answers. There was no logic in this reversal; it felt as uncanny as this teeming airport. Her eyes filled with tears, this silent plea sufficiently alarming to make him react instantly. He grabbed her arm, mildly interested in the reaction of their peers, and took her away. Repeating that eternal pattern... removing her from the flow of dispassionate estrangement in which she had once found refuge.
Once they were out of everyone' sight, he released her. She had always felt like he was entitled to take her away. Probably because she had always feared that if he went someday, he could leave her behind. It felt too familiar.
"You're alright?" he inquired, concerned.
No, I'm not.
She nodded, conscious he would not let it go. Not let it go... Nice choice of words in such circumstances, right? He was letting her go. That thought made her throat tighten painfully.
"You're not supposed to move. I am supposed to. This is how it works." she let out, blinking away newly formed tears.
He frowned, "What?"
"You're the immovable object, I'm the irresistible force. You keep me here. If you go, I have no reason to come back."
She knew she made no sense to him. But the reality of their separation was forcing that truth upon her in a hasty despair. She had to say it, whatever it was. Just for the sake of the truth.
"What are you talking about, Bones?"
"It's the omnipotence paradox. It's... Maybe this is not the most adequate metaphor to employ, but... we've always been at odds. You and me. You are solid, and steady. I am... everything but this. But you are steadier than I'm unstable. You are the quintessential immovable object, you can... You can stop me. If you don't... Where will I end up?"
She was desperate for him to understand what a predominant component of her existence he was. How he had found the force to remove her from this irresistible force always pushing her forward, in that flow of quiet disillusion.
He swallowed, this was why he had decided to accept to leave in the first place. He had decided that it was time for her to find her own limits. He had decided that he could not take the responsibility of her welfare at the expense of his own. He had felt old and weary, to see that like any child, she had selfishly used his love to protect herself from life without giving anything in return.
"You need to find out for yourself." he suggested in a whisper. Ashamed to abandon her.
"I don't want to!"
He shook his head at her stubbornness.
"We need to see if we can live without each other, Bones."
"Why?" she asked, in a pleading tone.
"Because of what you just said... Your... omnipotence theory thing. I can't hold you if you keep trying to push me away. If I'm that immovable object, you surely know how to push me so that I let you run... Your force is more irresistible than I can stand. I think."
He could not be saying that. He could not tell her that he was not strong enough for them both. He could not tell her she was stronger than him, or too much for him. Or not enough. The innermost significance of his words rang through her mind as she processed through each of them. He was letting her go. He was. He had never let her go before. He had never let her feel lost before. She was an orphan all over again. That fact soon became unbearable. He realized it when he saw her face contorting in a painful expression.
"You're the only one who makes me feel like I don't have to run," she says, almost to herself, her voice broken.
"Then why do you keep on running?" he whispered both accusingly and soothingly.
"Because," she sniffed, looking down. "I know you will catch me."
He sighed. Yes, precisely.
"We can't be... pushing and pulling at each other anymore. I need both of us to stand. You see what I mean?"
"No," she answered, wiping her tears with the impatience of a child.
"It means I need you to stop running. I can't catch you anymore."
"Why?" she asked for the second time, unaware that her insistence and stubborn incomprehension convinced him all the more he was making the right decision.
It made him smile. A paternalizing smile she knew only too well.
"You remember what I told you when we started working together," he said, calmly, composed. "About give and take in partnership?"
When he saw her nod, he resumed before she could make a comment about the hypothetical inconsistencies of his analogy. "I love you, Bones. It's just... a fact. But I need you to love me too. We've been here before. You know what it means. I need you to stop running away when I try so hard to keep you with me."
"You think I don't love you?" she frowned.
He shrugged, "You never made it very clear."
"This is why you're leaving? Because you think I don't love you?"
He wanted to tell her it was not the reason, he wanted to prove that he needed to make her see for herself that life was not about struggling, but about sharing. That he could not struggle with her, nor for her anymore. But the truth was that a part of him had decided to make her see, somewhat forcefully, what it was to be in his shoes. To love a shadow, to live for a shadow.
"I'm leaving," because you leave? "because I am not an immovable object. Not any more than you are an irresistible force. We have to stop this, Bones."
She nodded slowly, taking in the painful significance of his words. She tried to find a way to counter-act it. She needed arguments, but she could find none. Her logic was failed, his seemed... implacable. Then she realized there was something left unexplained.
"What if I don't leave? What if I love you? What if I become the immovable object?" she shot each question rapidly, her reasoning building up.
His breath got stuck at the succession of questions. "You're leaving in thirty minutes." was all he could find.
"I can decide not to leave." she pushed, now determined.
He remembered that conversation he had shared with Cam, almost a year before. It had been the first time he had acknowledged he was in love with Bones, and she had asked him why, when they clearly were not compatible. Immovable object and irresistible force. He had said she gave him reasons to believe in justice, in the truth. Her constant, raw, sometimes hurtful honesty was like a reference. He had also said her abruptness was a source of ever renewed surprise. She did not prove him wrong.
"What are you trying to say?" he whispered, almost afraid to think it.
"I'm not..." she looked around, pointing her index randomly at people making their way across the wide terminal. "I'm not in this anymore. I can't... I can't move. I realized I couldn't move anymore. I can't run. I don't want to run."
When he realized what it potentially meant, he took a step closer, penetrating her personal space. She welcomed him there with a shy smile. Another type of irresistible force pushing her, not away, but towards him.
"If I don't move," she continued, "but you do. What does it mean? Does it mean I am the one who will have to catch you?"
He smiled back, his thumb now tracing the contours of her delicate face.
"Why would you want to catch me?" he asked tentatively, his eyes focused on her lips.
"Because..." she started, unsure. It had been so easier to say it out of frustration, or as an hypothesis. Why was it so difficult now? She sighed, defeated. She was still running. Running away from the truth, even though it was firmly planted right before her.
He took the last step separating him from her and caught her lips with his own. He was still there, clinging to her, not as ready as he had thought to let her go. More immovable than he had imagined.
This was what happened when an irresistible force met an immovable object... They struggled against each other, with each other, clinging desperately and trying to move forward. Slowly, so slowly it seemed they were static, going crazy with frustration and unfulfilled expectations. They were a paradox, incompatible yet complementary. The truth of their dichotomy sometimes too painful to bear, they tried to erase it, to obliterate it. But this was who they were, and the only struggle they would lose, would be that of change.
The End