If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
(title from Daddy by Sylvia Plath)
post-Pain in the Heart Zack fic
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When you live in a mental institution, it's tempting to start believing you're crazy. Zack almost wants it to be true, for very brief moments he wants this to be true, but he can't ignore for long the fact that this would deprive him of his precious reason.
It's just another example of how he's never been good at fitting in.
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It was Hodgins he confessed to as the other man pushed the button over and over to drug him. It wasn't Brennan or Booth or Caroline; they already knew, he was just confirming what the evidence told Dr. Brennan and what Dr. Brennan told them. It was Hodgins he confessed to, telling him that Zack himself was the only one with access to the switched powders, he was the only one who could have tampered with them. Maybe Hodgins already knew, though, pumping the drugs into him to make him sleep, with fear or uninvited absolution.
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You didn't do it, Zack, she whispers while she thinks he's sleeping.
You saved me, Zack, he whispers.
But when he wakes up they're gone.
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If they weren't only dreams he would think he was crazy. And if he didn't know those things were real he would think he was crazy. Silver skeletons don't show up in non-institutionalized peoples' nightmares, and the facility psychologist won't be able to draw anything from it more disturbing than what is proven fact.
Zack still doesn't think he's crazy, but he's never liked 100%.
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You shouldn't be here, she said.
"I'm supposed to be here."
His hands are his evidence, his punishment. Nobody, nothing answers.
-
"I don't think I'm supposed to be here."
"Of course you aren't, Zack. But it's the best place for you for the time being."
I didn't do it, he wants to say. Is this true? Innocence would the the most expedient cause to get him out. Except, he's already confessed, hasn't he?
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"You saved me, Dr. Brennan," he says. But it is an empty room. And, he realizes, it is probably too late to be saved now.
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Through the subsequent days and nights Dr. Brennan lingers in Limbo, pulling out drawer after drawer, trying to put right what has been torn asunder.
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Hodgins tells him all about the case and what he just found through some particularly tricky chemical analysis combined with an experiment, one of those that they would've done, before all this happened.
"You're the undisputed King of the Lab now," Zack says, and Hodgins chokes up. He fights it back though.
"Not like this, man. Never like this." There, he's back: solid, steady Hodgins. Hardly a sign of tears.
-
It wasn't a home. They weren't a family of crime-solving heroes; he was just on the side of the facts, of the bones. In the end he found out it wasn't a home and he didn't assimilate.
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But Hodgins and Angela and Brennan and Cam and even Booth come back to him anyway.
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Zack is coming to terms with the faults in his logic.