Broken Crown
by: TamsinBailey
Disclaimer: blah, blah, blah, don't sue, blah.
Summary: Happy, stable relationships do not make Nielsen ratings. My take on the potential drama.
Jack and Jill when up the hill,
to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down,
and broke his crown,
and Jill came tumbling after.
- Original Author unknown
Sometime during the morning, the world had faded to blue and pink. Sunrise bleaching away the last of the nights gaudy red. The way the break lights had streamed past as they flew down the Beltway. And the color of the fluorescent lights through his eyelids when he closed them to pray. Hiding from the scarlet spill that had stopped, and started, and stopped again.
"Jack?" A voice murmured behind his shoulder, and he tried to remember the last time this man had used his given name. Never, he decided. A hand squeezed, and the hatred was so strong he tasted iron.
"Seeley."
The hand went away.
Booth looked into the nursery, scanning name tags. Jack saw it when he found the first one, and the way his eyes slid to the second. Seeing his little pink daughter; his little blue son. A matched set of weak eyes and rooting mouths.
Jack leaned his head against the thick glass, pressing his face into its cool smoothness. Beside him Booth shifted. Between them was the bottomless chasm of there being absolutely nothing to say.
"That one," he finally pointed to the pink hat, "will go to a couple in Tennessee. Lawyers. Not as rich as me, but good enough. The other one's going to a teacher and an auto mechanic. Lucky if they can retire before they're eighty. Ought to be an interesting social experiment."
"Hodgins, there are other ways. Cam would take them. Brennan. Parker could use some siblings." Booth didn't try the first name thing again. His brow grooved, discarding kind and going to firm. Jack wanted to put his fingers around that throat, and squeeze until the world went blue. He thought there was a high probability that he'd gone crazy.
"Contracts have already been signed. Primary, secondary and college tuition paid. Trust fund kicks in at twenty-five. Parental information, if they still want it, at thirty."
He closed his eyes, and tried to press his eyelids against the glass. They felt hot, and the sockets throbbed. "They won't even have to baptize them."
He could feel Booth's confusion, and the moment it shifted into understanding. The tight little sucking of breath, and the stiffening of his oh-so-catholic spine.
"Placental abruption. Complicated by DIC." He pressed tighter, until his nose was flat and his voice sounded strange. "Do you know what that means? Disseminated intravascular coagulation? It means she bled. From her intestines. From her nail beds. From her lungs.
"That's what killed her, in the end. She drown. Washed them in the blood, and died with a tube down her throat and her eyes wide open." He stepped back from the glass. It was hot now, and wet. On the other side, his daughter's hand undulated in the air. Seeking contact.
"Does that make you want them?" he asked softly, watching that tiny hand wave. When he turned to walk away Booth made no move to stop him.
FIN
Well, character assassination, or believable? This was mostly an attempt to break myself of my obsessive editing habit. If it sucked please let me know. I'll spend some time curled in the corner, then return to my normal level of spastic re-reading.
07º 15' 12" N, 082º 37' 28" W