Enjoy my first ever Bones piece! dedicated to my fav character! DR. SWEETS!
Disclaimer: as sad as it is...i dont own these characters or this show...
(if i did though...bones and booth would have been together in like..season 2.) ;)
They hadn't been fair, they decided.
It truly hadn't been fair how they treated him.
Even before the whole, cannibalistic Zach thing. They truly had not treated him fair.
They had treated him like an outcast, a child, someone who didn't belong. Not with them, not with anyone. They barley tolerated his presence, barley appreciated his work, barley approved of his job.
Barley liked him at all.
And then Zach happened. They had all wanted it to so badly be him. They had wanted sweets, the enduring baby duck, to be the killer. They didn't know him much, the worst thing to have happened to him, was probably losing a game of modern warfare. He was young, and annoying. He pissed them all off with his ability to see right through them, his ability to take their verbal beatings, and yet still come, and tell them he was there if they needed a talk.
He irritated them.
And they so badly wanted him to be the killer.
They had no reasonable proof, no evidence, not even a conclusive doubt in their mind it was him. Hell, at best, Hodgen's should have been the main suspect. But he was one of them, Sweets was not. They had been looking for a scapegoat. And he had been chosen. They went with the suspicious ex-cop's hunch because not a single one of them had wanted it to be one of them.
One of their own.
They had locked him up and thrown away the key, only to be harshly smacked in the face, by cruel reality, only hours later.
It hadn't been Sweets.
It had been Zach.
They had released him and incarcerated Zach. And though they had no reason, no true fount-able reason, they treated him even worse than before. Even though he acted as though he had not been hurt by their cruel prejudice. That he had try to pave the rift between them, the one they had broken. They still treated him cruelly.
Booth, had stuck to insulting him and treating everything he said with an air of distaste. He didn't even bother to look at him, when he responded when sweets spoke, instead talking to Dr. Brennan or Cam.
Dr. Brennan had chose to see every movement he made, to fix, the damage made to them by zach's betrayal, with coldness and dismissal. She insulted his profession and credentials even more than before. Though she knew very well, he was just as professional as herself.
Dr. Saroyan, had chosen to respond to him carelessly, giving him only vague details about the cases, if she bother to acknowledge his presence at all. She didn't ignore him, she completely erased him, her eyes looking passed him whenever he walked in the room, as though she didn't see him, or she was looking for someone else.
Hodgen's had stuck to glaring at him whenever in his presence. He cancelled what ever little sessions they ever even had together. And to add a sting to his bite, he set up with a new phycologist. In a different F.B.I building. Miles away from sweets. He barley spoke to him and whenever he did, it was with a cold, empty voice that practically spewed hatred. He mocked every comment made by the young doctor, not even treating him like a rival, but treating him like he was less than the dirt the man worked with.
All of the other people in the jefforsionan. Or hell, even in the damn F.B.I building he worked in looked down at him. No one cared about his presence or if they did, it was only because they wanted him to get the hell away from them.
And maybe, 'Go back to high school where he belonged '. Quoted by a very angry angela, when he tried to talk to her about his problems.
That had probably been the worst blows, sweets mused.
Angela. Sweet Angela. Who could always see the good in people, treated him no better than the rest. She was cold and unfriendly. And when he had tried to open up to her, to find some damn shoulder to cry on. She had smacked him. Hissing into his face not to talk about her friends that way. And that if he couldn't be a man and take it, maybe he should just leave and go back to high school where he belonged.
Lance hadn't even bothered to feel his wound. He just stood up, straitened his suit. With the blank face that he gave all of them, ever since they started this torment, and walked out. He hadn't spoken to any of them about anything besides cases since. It had been two weeks, and they could hardly care, they were still blaming him. But then, one day, a murder victim came in.
A dead male body. Approximately 5'9. Thick in build, or at least, he was, until the rabid rats at his dump site ate him up. Clothing shredded, a blow to his medicarple and frequent stab wounds to his legs and chest region. Within a minute, Angela had constructed a facial reconstruction and had id the victim. They all worked like machines since zach's ...leaving, not that anyone minded.
A Tom Grayborne. A convicted child abuser, who apparently beat many of the foster kids he adopted, and even his own son and daughter, to near death, multiple times. Convicted of drug abuse, rape, sexual harassment and many other charges that left the team cringing at his image floating on the electromoniter.
Non-the less, Booth complied a list of possible killers and called in, reluctantly, Sweets to id which one had better motive. Sweets had arrived an hour or so later, his face blank of all emotion as he walked into to Angela's office where they were all waiting. Hodgen's was there to give some information he found about particulets to Angela. Who was constructing a diagram of the presumed murder weapon with Cam and Dr. Brennan. Booth stood up and glared at Sweets when he walked in, the others ignoring his presence while he chewed him out for taking so long.
Sweets just stared at him blankly, his arms outstretched, for the files booth shoved in his hands. His eyes glazed over them as booth started going over the case.
'We've got his name and previous address. We looked up all his abuse victims to see if any lived in the area. Maybe came back for revenge, you know, the usual.' Sweets didn't respond, his eyes still glancing over the files as Booth's cold voice continued. 'Your gonna go over the files of all the abuse victims and tell us which one has more of a motive, more mentally insane, and we'll go and do the real work, and find the bad guy, got it?' He ordered out to sweets.
The others eyes flashed over to the young doctor, who had stopped shifting through the files, and was now looking unemotionally at Booth. His eyes flicked to the reconstructed face on angela's monitor, and he pointed to it lazily.
'That him?' his voice was slightly cold, but soft spoken. His question had brought most of the team's attention towards him as they guffawed at him.
'No duh, idiot.' Hodgen's snickered nastily. 'What? you think angela cant handle her job now?' His eyes narrowed on the stoic doctor, who just shook his head balefully.
Moving towards Agent Booth, Sweets shocked them all when he violently shoved all the folders back into his hands. All but one.
' I wont be helping you catch who killed this man.' He didn't give booth a chance to respond before he opened the file and started talking.
' That man, was a rapist, he abused children, played on whores, gambled kids support checks away. He ruthlessly beat the children he adopted and starved them half to death near all the time for his own sick enjoyment. He would lock them in closets, and sell their bodies to his loan sharks, when he had no money to pay them off. And when the whores costed too much, he raped the kids.'
'If he was lucky, and managed to adopt two kids at once, he forced them to have sex and abuse each other, before he would rape them both, and then lock them in closets with no food or ways to use the bathroom for days.' Sweets eyes ignored the sound of the others gasps as he continued to read the one file he had left over. His eyes blank as he skimmed over it.
' He would torture the kids to no end. Thinking up new and twisted ways to torment them, until they vomited at the mere mention of them. He was a cruel, but smart man. He had a wife who he would rarely beat, and allowed her to join in the fun of torment. But only if she helped him to create fake names and identities so he could adopt more kids to torture.' Sweets eyes flashed up to meet the people surrounding him. His eyes were cold and his voice like ice as he continued.
' His wife died of an overdose on cocaine. He was so upset he wouldn't get anymore 'free kids', he beat the one adoptive son, he had then, nearly to death. He tortured him, whipped him, raped him. Burned his chest with hot oil and gasoline, forced him to eat spoiled food for days till he puked and then did it all over again. Tied him up with coarse rope that tore his skin and left him in a cold basement to die.'
Lance's eyes burned as he took in the disgusted horrified faces around him. Tossing the folder he had on the counter, all the eyes in the room turned to it. On the cover was a small, paper clipped photo of a beaten boy. His face swollen from wounds, tears streaming down his face, blood pouring down his head and covering his soot withered clothes.
Pointing to the file, Sweets raised his voice. ' That boy was found, two weeks later by a Social Worker. Not even half alive, the man who tortured him passed out on the couch, surrounded by beer, spent with money supposed to be used to by the boy's food. The boy was so weak, and injured, he could barley speak above a whisper for nearly a year after his rescue. He was the last child ever assigned to that man, who was then incarcerated in jail. The boy had been hospitalized for nearly a whole year. He had to see many psychiatrists who tried in vain to heal his trauma. Both physically and mentally. The boy lived a broken, damaged life for a very long time. I wont help you find this man's killer.' Sweet's voice had a silent force to it as he slowly lowered his finger to look at the shocked faces around him.
Booth was the first to shake out of it and angrily pointed at the mans electric face on Angela's screen.
' I don't really care how awful he was Sweet's, he was murdered, and it's our job to find out who did it. Whether this kids sob story pisses you off or makes you want to cry to your mommy doesn't matter.' Holding the files out to Sweets, Booth glared at him. ' Take these files and do your damn job, so we can get this over with already.'
The others seem to have agreed and were nodding silently, but Sweets surprised them again as he shook his head and swatted the files out of Booths hand, and onto the floor. Glaring at Booth and the rest of them, Sweet's icy eyes bored into them as he pointed to the boy again.
' I don't think you understand at all, Agent Booth.' Sweet's voice spoke out, his voice like a swift razor, cutting into them as he glared.
' I don't really care what you guys think about me anymore. I have been nothing, but your scapegoat, for weeks now. You have berated me, insulted me, denounced me, disrespected me. You've criticized my credentials, my job, my work ethics, you've all but eliminated any thought of likeness to me. You have chosen to blame me for what happened. And i have sat by. I have taken it, i have tried to be there for you all when you were hurting. To ignore the icy glares and the hurtful words and the spiteful glances. The way you walk out when i come in, how you roll your eyes at my every word. How you all but physically started to abuse me.' Lance snorted coldly.
His eyes glaring at them all as he straitened his shoulders and grabbed the beaten boys picture off the ground. Showing it to them he stared at their faces blankly. His next words cold and unfeeling.
' I have sat by and taken it all. I have tried my best to ignore, to help on cases and put away bad guys.' Lance shrugged his shoulders indifferently, turning the photo back to him, as he stared blankly into the boys broken eyes. ' But not this time im afraid. because you see...'
He looked up at them, giving them a small tortured grin as he flicked the photo towards Agent Booth to catch. Holding his arms out in a small shrug he turned away form them and started for the door. Pausing when he got there to look back at their shocked faces and grin nastily, but with hurt raining down his face, as he stared at them.
'That boys name, was Lance Grayborne. Before he was hospitalised and adopted 3 years later by Mr. and Mrs. Francis Sweets. They passed on only days apart from each other, only two weeks before their adopted son started as an F.B.I. physiologist.' His expression faded form nasty to soft hurt as he glanced at their torn features. Each one underlaying shock and disbelief. Shrugging again, he smiled softly at them.
' Im afraid, i wont be able to assist you on this case, Dr. Brennan, Agent Booth. ' He nodded at them.
' Im afraid im a suspect, but hey! Maybe if your lucky, you just might be able to put me away this time, huh?' He chucked softly at them.
Then, turning to the door, he opened it, his shoulders sagging with a heavy weight they hadn't known was there. His hurt, tearing, face turned from them.
Doctor. Lance Sweets walked out of angela's office, dialing an F.B.I agents number, to inform them of his active suspect priority in this case. The door shut silently behind him and all those in the room quickly turned to one another.
All of their eyes underling with guilt, pain, regret. Their faces filled with fear shock and disbelief. Angela, the only one who, at the moment could speak, spoke directly from her heart, the question everyone was asking themselves.
'What have we done?'
authors note!
ok then! i think this is pretty good! dont focus so much on any mistakes please! i like, editied this thing 5 times now and CANNOT take anther comment on my grammer. its pissing me off XP...
i dont know if im gonna chapter this , but i do have some ideas for it! please forgive any spelling or grammer mistakes, though there shouldn't be that many, my spell check sucks..XP. i know in real life, none of the characters were this bad, but i was really pissed no one ever apologised for imprisoning poor sweets! they never said sorry, or had a real reason to arrest him in the first place. this was mainly written to get some closure for the poor little duckling, who took all the abuse from his friends. i promise though!
happy endings will prevail! XDD!
NOW REVIEW!