A Time to Every Purpose
By: TamsinBailey
Disclaimer: This work is not for profit. No copyright infringement is intended.
When he had been at Quantico, the Academy instructors had urged their recruits to understand the difference between fact, and impression. To learn the subtle disparity between what was indisputably true, and what people simply wished was true.
He had listened attentively, because he could listen no other way, but he had not understood. Truth was truth. Shades of grey could not disguise it. Lies could not destroy it. Now he sits; taught to well to turn from the facts, unable to sink into the comfort of impression.
Fact: the boy did stand, hip shot and defiant before his task.
Fact: the man did speak one last warning. The chore must be done. The boy must comply.
Fact: the boy did turn away from his assignment yet again, sighing and rolling his eyes.
Fact: the man did swing his arm in a perfect arc, terminating flatly against the plane of the boy's cheek.
Fact: the boy did stare at the man, eyes the width of shock, fingertips pressed to the white mark imprinting his face.
Each fact cataloged. Each fact understood. Each fact utterly irrefutable. The man holds his head in his hands and feels the helpless rotation of the earth under his bones.
Somewhere during the past 48 months of close observation, Temperance Brennan had managed to lose count of the number of distinct emotional states available to her partner Seeley Booth. Anger, expansiveness, sympathy, empathy, happiness: just a sampling. Exasperation had shown a markedly high frequency. Sorrow a briefer, but more memorable punctuation.
Angela is the only other person who can match his width and breadth, though she is willing to admit that having to limit most her observations to people at work makes for a seriously limited data set. Now is not the time for whimsey, though. Because today, for the first time in four years, she is seeing her partner slumped against her apartment door, staring at his lap.
She has to step over his outstretched legs in order to open the door. He cants forward as she works the lock, shambling to his feet and following her through. She watches him out of the corner of her eye, but his steps are steady and there is no smell of alcohol.
He stops in the middle of the room, eyes darting around familiar surroundings, apparently unsure what to do next. She studies how his white lips bleed into his white face, and a sudden alarm makes her hand clutch his arm. "Booth. What's wrong? What happened?"
It took so long that she is sure it won't happen, but finally his eyes drag over to her. Dark in a way that she can't read. Hollow. And, pleading? No, she thinks. Doesn't he know by now that she isn't the one for this?
"Parker," he twitches, fighting the words. "I hit Parker. Whaled the shit out of him."
She jerks at the name. Ready for death, or loss of privilege. Surprise makes her blurt out the first question that rises up. "Why?" Booth wracks tighter, and she knows it was not the right thing to say. His head whips towards her, but the heat that flares in his eyes is damped back down just as quickly. He looks away again.
"Doesn't matter why, Bones," he tells the opposite wall very calmly, hands balled deep into his axillae. "I hit him."
Booth, she thinks, and aches for the tension inside him. Aches, in truth, to understand what thought process has made him wait outside her empty apartment. They both know there are better people for comfort. Or absolution. Whatever it is that he wants. People who would understand which one, without asking.
Still, here he is, and even though she has no idea what to say, she does not want him to be with those other people. She draws breath to say anthropologically speaking, but sees how tight his skin is and re-closes her mouth.
Anthropologically speaking, Booth shows none of the behavior common to abusive parents. He is not self-centered or manipulative. He does not pass blame, does not get overwhelmed by situations, does not explode in rage. Because he does not, he cannot. Motion cannot create itself.
It would bring her comfort, knowing that, but he is different from her. Anthropology brings him as much comfort as God brings her. So she lets the words die unspoken, gradually realizing agitation has increased the quantity and motility of his scent molecules. This near to ovulation he smells musky, compellingly familiar.
She shuttles the observation aside. She needs more information. "Are you upset because you hit Parker, or because you acted like your father?"
One-quarter profile is still enough to see how his nares flare sharply and the one corner of his lips press into a thin line. It is not however, enough to tell if the reaction is surprise, or anger. She starts a revetment. "I mean - " but he cuts her off roughly, his voice low and dark.
"Don't you talk about my father."
She looks at the floor, stung. He uses that voice on strangers. Definitely on Sweets. Only once before on her. Inside the FBI's observation room, when he demanded that she answer the correct question. She has to blink hard, but even this tone is not going to deter her.
"Even your own brain has told you that you are nothing like your father. Remember?" She can't keep the rebuke entirely out of her voice. He doesn't get to act this way with her. "When you hallucinated your hockey idol for the express purpose of reassuring yourself."
"Made of good stuff, right?" he asks, but his voice is bitter and she knows it is a rhetorical question. Maybe later he will be proud of her. Right now he is too busy stiff-arming off the couch. Stalking across the sunlit space only to whirl back towards her, incendiary anger in his eyes.
"You think you can compare and contrast us? Me and my old man? Cause last time I checked there, Bones, I'm pretty sure you've never met the bastard. For all you know, I'm just like him."
She wants, suddenly, to roll her eyes. Reject his dramatics and force him to realize that every action he takes is proof he is nothing like the man who provided half his genetic code. Instead she tells him, "I see you Booth. I see the way you treat people. I know you are not like your father."
He snorts his derision. She feels it twang through her, the cadence of her voice speeding up. "I've seen you sacrifice your personal well being in order to shield Jared from the consequences of his own actions. And I've heard you say that you love your father, despite the physical abuse he subjected you to. And I know that you've dedicated your professional life to imposing order on a chaotic system."
His steady gaze is a band around her ribcage. She takes a breath against it. Finally, his voice. Wavering on the edge of a monofilament tension: "And that tells you what?"
"That you display classic behavioral traits associated with children raised in a household dominated by a weak individual, who used violence and threat of violence to enforce unknowable and shifting rules."
His arms settle across his mid-thoracic ribs. Defensive posturing. Lacking the forward stance and expanded chest of a threat display. Even so, his face has the flat affect he wears when he is holding himself in tight control. "And are you going to tell me what they are? These traits that I supposedly have?"
These she knows. She has studied them in complete, until memorized. Sociology is not a true discipline, but she must admit that it is not always wrong. "Toleration of dependent behavior; utilization of tactics designed to anticipate and defuse rage; a high emphasis placed on order and predictability." He draws in a deep breath, arms stretching across his inflated ribs and her words loose their precise edge. "No, wait. Listen. That's how I can infer what your father was like. Because you are the inverse."
She wants to cross her own arms in the resulting silence. To hunch her shoulders and be small. She resists, and finally he sighs, saying, "You know, Bones, war is complete shit."
She fits in a surprised eye blink at the subject change, but he's already continuing. "Stuff Joseph Heller couldn't even touch on. Boredom, and terror, and shooting people who are trying to kill you because you are trying to kill them. Catch-22," he sighs out, "the snake choking to death on it's own stupid tail. But you want to know the worst part? The really fucking horrible part?" His fist tightens around the memory. "How glorious it can be. Sometimes. When the illuminants light up the sky: boom, boom, boom, in perfect time. Like the voice of God, like the walls of Jericho coming down, and all you can do is scream out how wonderful it feels. To see the enemy break under your bullets.
He pauses to take a deep breath and to let it trickle out. "And then I went to Fort Benning and I lost that...shared experience. But even still, there were these moments," and now his hands curl, half cradling an imaginary rifle, "these microseconds, when everything was right. When I didn't have to use the calc system, or the range finder. I just knew." His hands drop, and his eyes have re-found the present.
"Parker's spent the last six months being an incredible little snot. Starting fights, talking back, disrespecting everyone he can find. The whole nine yards." This she knows about. She has seen his hunched back worry as he and Rebecca reverberate concern and anger across their phones. "He picked it up from some other kids at school. Rebecca wants him to see a therapist, figure out what his problem is. Hell, I've even asked Sweets about it. But this weekend, when he started up, slapping him was like seeing that bullets trajectory again. Perfect course correction."
"So, you hit him on purpose." Her voice elongates the vowels out, uplifting the word ends until they are almost, but not quite a question. He stands very still under her consideration, then gives a confirmation she doesn't really need.
"Yes."
It was why he had come here, she realizes. So she could ask that non-question, and he could answer. Angela is sympathy; Cam can banish self pity; even Jack will commiserate over the crappiness of the world in general. She is explanations. But oh, he is going to fight.
"Booth. Children in Parker's cohort are just beginning to resent their societal disenfranchisement. They increasingly desire autonomy from parental rule, but cannot participate in the labor economy, and therefore cannot fund their desired independence.
Most solve their dilemma through an allowance, or a familial barter system. They gain purchasing power and develop a sense of social responsibility, which in turn means their parents can grant them more autonomy. Parker though, he's building a manipulative power base. Gaining freedom by undermining your authority and exhausting your willingness to parent. He wont, " she hesitates, hunting for the right words, "it won't turn out well."
"Finnish it," he demands. "Say whatever you just didn't say."
"It's dangerous," she blurts it out. "He's rejecting our societies accepted path to success, and the longer he's allowed to continue the more locked in he'll become. Eventually his only access to wealth and power will have to come from criminal activity. He needed to be shocked into derailment."
"And you know this how?" he asks. She shrugs. "I did have to take cultural anthropology classes as an undergrad. I can grasp the basic political economy of American society."
"Bullshit. Grasp? You play with dead things because your brain is too damaged to connect with living people. And kids? They are so far beyond your grasp they might as well be Mars."
The apartment is suddenly too close, way too tight. She takes a step back, but his contrition is already coming fast. "Jesus, Bones. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He sounds panicked. "I didn't mean that."
He did, but only because he was already stressed. Forgiving each other for passing thoughts is what people who - it's just what people do. She nods, "okay."
"No," he contradicts, scrubbing his face. "None of this is okay. Not one thing about this entire craptastic day is okay." He has swung all the way back to struggling for words. "God, God. He was just standing there, holding his cheek and sobbing. Staring at me like I was some kind of alien wearing his dad's skin."
"You scared him," she says, feeling the puzzlement unfold. Why he came here, instead of Angela or Cam. Even Jack. What he has been trying to say. "You scared him, and you think you should feel terrible about it, but you don't."
Sometimes sociological studies can uncover a truth, and discomfortingly enough sometimes Oocam's razor can fail. The simplest answer cannot explain the moral man who understands the least harm in shooting people in the metaphorical back. The same man who can terrorize an eight-year old and feel no guilt. The thing he feels, the thing all those good friends would miss, is his shame at not feeling any guilt.
He refuses eye contact, touching instead the anthropomorphic snarl of an Olmec Jaguar-god mask. "No."
"You didn't just give into anger, Booth," she tells him softly. "Even if it only took a second, you thought it through. You didn't do the wrong thing."
"Not quite the same as doing the right thing, huh Bones?" His voice has a tired sort of defeat. "The one thing I swore I would never do."
"I know," she says, and she does. Not that he had made that kind of vow, though it is hardly surprising. What she understands is that sometimes you have to sacrifice something big, like the conviction you are nothing like your father, in order to keep another person from greater harm.
"You do, don't you?" he asks, but this time there is kindness. She nods resolutely. "Yes."
He smiles again. Different this time, with something she is starting to recognize on his face. As frequent as the exasperation. Tenderness. Great care. She tells him he needs a drink, that he is too emotionally worked up to drive and is therefore sleeping on her couch. He accepts the bossing, shuffling obediently after her towards the kitchen.
Nothing has been solved. Nothing has really been made better. Still, she allows herself to sink into the comfort of sitting across from him. To acknowledge the irreplaceable singularity of him. Yes, he is big; and yes, he is strong. And yes, he is in need of something only she can give him.
She is not going to let anything screw that up.
A/N: Hullo! Good? Bad? Indifferent? You'll have to let me know.
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