***Contains spoilers for season six and 'Booth's girlfriend – (yuck) who is rumored to be just like she is below. . . ***
Chapter Two: Booth
There is no doubt in his mind that Afghanistan is hell on earth. The unrelenting heat and dust, the unforgiving sun that has turned his skin from its normally bronzed color, to a deep russet brown. The constant state of fear-tinged expectancy that everyone here lives with all the time because you never know when an attack might occur, never know when a patrol will go missing, never know who might be next to die.
He hates it.
He's seen too much of war now, though he feels the skills he's here to share will hopefully aid and protect these brave soldiers, the troops he's training are all so God-damned young, so brash and confident and all so willing to die for what they believe in. He doesn't want to die here, or for this cause, he see's too many shades of grey in the fight here and feels too great a promise weighing on him.
"Don't be a hero. . .please just don't be you!"
He doesn't allow himself to think of her much, though her voice and what he imagines she'd say to him, keep him company during the times of worst stress.
He wants to blame her for so much, but knows the blame should rest with him. There is so much he wishes he could undo. The night that changed everything is the one he'd start with, that night he'd like to erase from their collective history completely. She wasn't ready, and for years he's waited, hoping that she'd give him a sign when she'd accepted everything that could exist between them as a possibility. He pushed her before she got to that point and it ruined everything. All the months of awkwardness, or pretending he was fine, they were fine, their partnership was fine, it wore on them both and look where it got them.
Still, sometimes he wishes he'd fought harder to convince her, but he could feel her slipping away and after pushing her once, he couldn't bring himself to try again. Now he hasn't heard from her, and he hasn't tried to make contact, though he misses her with every breath.
"I gotta move on. . ."
He meant it as a threat of sorts, but when she understood and agreed with him, that was the moment she broke his heart.
So now it's a mantra, because though his heart is bleeding, his brain knows the only way forward is to accomplish the impossible and get over her. Maybe if he can get over her, he can at least keep her friendship and have her in his life.
She needs him, she relies on him. He cannot let her down, so he must simply stop loving her in this manner she cannot return. He get's up every day and hopes this is the one it hurts a little less that she doesn't love him the way he wanted her too. And everyday though the wall around his heart is a little bit thicker, Brennan is still 'inside' the wall and the pain is still there.
He's dating at least. Hannah is a journalist embedded with the troops here and she's exactly the type of woman who used to turn his head. Tall, blonde and gorgeous, she's sunny smiled and easy to be with. They have fun and like a painkiller she takes the edge off his despair. He worries he's using her, but he's made her no promises and he takes it day by day, while he tries to enjoy her blue eyes that aren't as pretty as Brennan's. Enjoys the silk of her hair as it runs through his callused fingers, while he tries not to imagine fisting handfuls of auburn locks instead. Enjoys the sex, though there is no danger of losing himself and wondering where he stops and she begins its sex after all, so what if he wishes he could make love to her – he can't – at least not yet.
His dreams complicate his life further. If he talked in his sleep he would never let Hannah stay the night. They began a month into his tour, before Hannah arrived here and there are mornings when he wakes with her beside him that he wonders when he'll give himself away.
His coma dream world, the one he's secretly missed the last year, because in that world he was happier than he can ever remember actually being in real life. He's back there so often these days. He'll awaken in the morning reaching out for 'Bren' and discover Hannah instead. His dreams seem to be consecutive, Bren's pregnancy continues and sometimes the life he imagines is so vivid that he wants to sleep forever.
So instead he let's himself sleep barely at all – it's the only way.
He asks God a lot why he's having to go through this, he goes to the confessional and tells the priest everything, he holds nothing back, but though he receives absolution there are no answers to be found, and if God has a plan he prays it becomes clear to him soon.
He talks to Parker every chance he gets, and his son is the brightest point in his life. He's doing so well in school, missing his Dad of course, but Parker's faith in him, his pride in him is so real and obvious. Parker is the antithesis of a pain-killer; he makes Booth feel real and alive and grounded – even here. He reminds Booth why what he's doing is important, it helps him feel a little less like he was running scared when he decided to come.
Still he knows he would have refused the Army's offer if Brennan had decided differently about them. If she had wanted him, no power on earth would have pulled him from her side.
He misses everything they had – even though he wanted so much more – what they had, their partnership, he misses it SO much.
It kills him that he ruined it by wanting more than she could give him. That he took a gamble when he should have waited for a sure thing; that he listened to a 'twelve year old', even though he's come to grudgingly respect said twelve year old over the last two years. He could blame Sweets he supposes, but he knows in his heart that Sweets is just like all the others in their cobbled together family unit; everyone around them wants to see them together. Everyone around them believes, just as he did, he and Brennan love each other. And everyone's half right, he loves her, with all his soul he loves her, but Brennan, she can't.
He never wanted to accept that about her. He sees this now. He thought he loved her exactly as she is that he didn't want her to change, and yet she's always told him that she doesn't believe in forty or fifty years and he never could accept that. He always believed he could change that one thing, that by showing her his constancy, his dedication, his commitment to her, that she would come to believe as he does that love can last a lifetime.
It sucks to be wrong.
It leaves him clinging to the fragments of their partnership, fighting what seems like an un-winnable war, half a world away from home and involved in a new relationship he can only hope will help him move forward with his life.
He's not certain of anything anymore, his certainties all deserted him when she did.
Somehow, someway, when he returns to DC and re-enters his life he has to be ready to see her and be simply her partner once more. There are moments he considers this impossible, when he plans to ask for a transfer to another city, somewhere close enough to be a good father to Parker, but far enough away that running into her wouldn't happen. He knows he will never go through with it, he has promised her too many times that he will ALWAYS be there for her, that he will never abandon her, and he will keep his promises. His pain is not important, being there for her is. Because though he must find a way to stop loving her as he does now, he doesn't fool himself that he will ever stop loving her in some fashion. It's the wanting her, lusting after her, aching to touch her way he has to burn from his soul. And burn it out, starve it out, crowd it out with someone else if he can, someway he'll force his heart to move on, so that he can keep his word to Bones.
At least he's made a start. . .
He's glad as much as he hates it here that he isn't going home too soon. In seven months his progress has been limited, but there has been some – at least he thinks so. The fact that his dream life with his dream Brennan continues is worrying, but he tells himself his heart is coping as well as it can.
His relationship with Hannah is easy and pain-free, he's trying to care for her, and she's worth the effort. Maybe eventually they will evolve into something lasting, for now it simply helps to be around her.
So when the urgent request from Cam comes, he's conflicted. He should go, Cam is his friend, the FBI is backing her request and the Army is willing, but he doesn't feel ready to be back there again.
He get's on the plane anyway. . .