It was a month before she heard from Booth again. On Thanksgiving, she received a single line by e-mail that said, "Thinking of you all the time. Letter's on its way." She knew from the others that he had been out of communication with everyone for some time. Her days were filled with work and new discoveries, with laughter and camaraderie and a lack of mortal danger that she found surprisingly refreshing, but there was still, always, the question.
Where was he? Was he safe? Hurt? Living, or dead?
She recalled him telling her one night that loving someone was worth all of the doubt and pain, but she was beginning to think he might be full of shit. For the most part, all this worry seemed like torture.
On December 2nd, she received a small package, his letter enclosed. Everyone else was in the vicinity, opening their own mail; she retreated immediately to her tent. Inside the box was a black t-shirt with an FBI logo in the left corner. When she was assured that no one else was around, she pulled the t-shirt on over her tank top, sat down on her cot, and began to read.
Bones,
Bones, Bones, Bones. Jesus, do you have any idea what that last letter did to me, woman? You keep that kind of talk up and you're gonna have one sex-crazed Ranger show up on your doorstep out there on Magoo-Goo Island, and then what are you gonna do? (In case you can't think of anything, I've got about 120 suggestions, just off the top of my head). And, yeah, Bones, I guess I've bulked up a little – but the phrase is working out, okay? Middle aged women exercise, riding a stationary bike while they watch Oprah. Big, tough, macho guys like yours truly work out. And since your letter, I work out A LOT – I've got a lot of pent up frustration to get rid of over here. Otherwise, I'd be sporting morning wood all damn day (that's an erection, Bones).
I'm really sorry I didn't write back sooner. Things have been kind of crazy – I just got back to base, then they shipped us out again. They're sending more soldiers through all the time. I teach them what I can, before a fresh batch shows up. I just got word that six of the guys I trained when I first got here got killed by a roadside bomb.
Sometimes, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I believe in our country, Bones. I believe that losses are necessary to preserve the kind of freedom I want for my son – I really do. But sometimes… Yeah. Sometimes, it still fucking sucks. I miss Parker. I miss you. Hell, I even miss the squints lately.
All right, just had to get that out of my system. You were right a while ago when you thought I was having a hard time. You can be a pain in the ass sometimes, Bones, but don't sell yourself short. When it counts, you see what's really going on. Okay, not always – but most of the time. And when you don't… Well, that's what you've got me for.
Among other things.
So, Trista's into chicks, huh? Gotta say, anybody else mentions a threesome and I'm the first to sign up, but you… Nope, I couldn't do it. Just the thought of sharing you with anybody else makes me nuts. Man or woman, doesn't matter – it's my mouth I want all over you, my hands, my cock buried so deep that you're never gonna want us to end. You say you imagine my mouth between your legs, and believe me when I say I've lost whole days to that particular fantasy… Dreamed of what it'd be like to taste you, the feel of your hands in my hair, the look on your face when you slip over the edge. When we're together again, I'm talking days without seeing the sun. The FBI can go fuck themselves… I've got better things planned when I get home.
And that kind of brings me to the next thing. Which is… Listen, I know we haven't really talked about stuff, and this is a weird way to all of a sudden be talking about the thousands of ways I want to blow your mind when I see you again, so, I mean, if you're uncomfortable or scared or whatever… I just really hope you'll talk to me, you know? Don't just go freaking out, Temperance. We can do this. I said it before, and I'll keep saying it: I knew from the start. It's supposed to be you and me. There's this line in a book I borrowed from one of the guys here, and I know it's really corny and over the top and whatever, but it still always makes me think of you.
"For I have loved you from the first day, and always shall."
Geez. It looks even more corny when it's written out like that. Still... That's what you do to me. It might just be because I haven't seen a real, live woman in months, and you have the best fucking tits this side of… ever, though, so don't let it go to your head.
I think I've wrung all the Bones-smell out of that hair thing you sent me, so you think you can send something else? Anything. I just like having a piece of you with me, you know? I keep watching these guys leave, keep hearing shells coming closer and reports getting worse, keep thinking about Parker and how someday he could be one of these kids shipped off to die, and… Shit, sometimes I feel like I'm losing it over here. But it's quieter, easier somehow, when I'm holding a piece of you.
Sorry, I didn't mean to make this whole thing sound so dire. I'm really fine, Bones, I swear. Just lonely, and tired of being away from home. Tired of being away from you.
I better go, sounds like chow's on. Take care, Bones. Know I'm thinking of you all the time. Write when you can.
Yours,
Booth
She read the letter again and again, and then one more time for good measure. Over dinner, she read it once more. There were eighteen people working on the team, people who were not only colleagues but who had become friends, but she ignored everyone that evening. She received several insinuating glances when she kept Booth's t-shirt on as she walked around the camp, but she didn't care. As a teenager, Brennan had observed classmates who would wear their boyfriend's rings, sweatshirts, t-shirts, or what-have-you. She always felt slightly superior to those girls; anthropologically speaking, that type of gift was such a transparent way for the male of the species to mark the female as his possession.
"My girl," Booth called her. She sat on her cot with the letter beside her later that evening, her knees curled up to her chest, and buried her face in the soft cotton t-shirt, breathing him in. It occurred to her that this type of ownership didn't have to be derogatory or threatening. It didn't have to be demeaning. For I have loved you from the first day, and always shall.
He was right – it was very corny. And over the top. Nevertheless, she found herself surprisingly moved by the sentiment. She lay down on her cot and pulled the collar of his shirt up over her nose. Closed her eyes.
A moment later, she sat bolt upright when she heard the tent door being unzipped.
Trista stood just inside in shorts and a tank top, an amused expression on her pretty face.
"Sorry, Dr. B, didn't mean to interrupt. Let me guess – your mate, the super agent, finally wrote you another letter?"
Trista had dark hair swept back in a ponytail, a satchel over her shoulder. Her accent was so thick that it had taken several days before Brennan had become accustomed to it enough to understand half of what the woman was saying. Of course, the majority of her words were not fit for anyone under eighteen, so it was fairly simple to catch the gist. Apparently in Australia, there was less of a professional barrier between professors and their students.
"This was the first time he had a chance," Brennan said, as though the other woman had somehow implied otherwise.
"Oh, I've no doubt. I'm glad he finally got 'round to it, though. No offense, but you're not a lot of fun when you don't have your sergeant whisperin' sweet nothings from a thousand miles away."
Trista tilted her head slightly. She was only an inch or two shorter than Brennan, but well-muscled. A woman whose athleticism came naturally, and never failed to impress Brennan. Volleyball, surfing, yoga, boxing, dancing… Trista was rarely still, and never seemed out of her realm in the physical world.
"What?" Brennan asked, when she realized the other woman was studying her.
"Nothing, really. Just… I hope I'm in love like that someday. You're just fucking shining, inside out. Must be amazing, being loved like that."
Brennan felt herself blushing. "We're just…" She stopped. Realized she could no longer finish the sentence honestly, as she once had. Friends. Partners. Certainly, they were still both those things. But it wasn't all they were, any longer.
"Oh, you're 'just,' all right. Just fucking adorable, love." Trista completed for her. "Now, you ready to tear yourself away so we can get on with this?"
Brennan made a face. The sun had set; a full moon was shining down on the island, the winds high and a significant amount of commotion coming from the camp outside.
"Perhaps we should call it off."
"What?" Trista looked appalled. "Are you fuckin' balmy? Don't you want to see what mysteries this place reveals to us by the light of a gorgeous, full fucking moon? C'mon. I know – you just want to stay here, have a little time alone to tickle your clit with that handsome soldier fresh in your head."
"I don't know even know what that means," Brennan said, though of course she knew precisely what it meant. She stood, reluctantly folding Booth's letter and setting it with the others he'd sent. She did, however, keep his shirt on.
"Come on, Doc. I'll tell you some stories you can write back to your man – we'll have that bloke's big, manly soldier dick so hard he'll be swimming the seven seas to get a taste of your sweet ass."
Brennan grinned. It was a pretty night – a good night to be outside, really. Booth could wait a few hours before she sat down to write him back. She followed Trista into the cool, dark night, with no idea how quickly the tide could turn.
It was ten days before Brennan sat down to write Booth again.
When she did, it was deep in the night. The weather had changed, and the air was cold on the beach. She wore a long-sleeved, thermal knit shirt under Booth's now-bedraggled t-shirt, a sweater topping them both. Thermal underwear and yoga pants. Before setting pen to paper, she stared out at the ocean with her arms wrapped around her knees, curling herself up as tightly as she could. She hadn't been warm in ten days, no matter how many layers she wore.
Her right hand was bandaged. Twelve stitches were sewn across her left cheekbone. The water was calm now. A sob welled up from somewhere deep; Brennan stuffed it back. She ran a hand through her hair. Picked up pen and paper.
Dear Booth,
It's been some time since I got your letter. I nearly e-mailed you yesterday, but things got busy and our connection is sometimes difficult. The weather has been bad.
She stopped. The same sob she'd felt before pressed against the wall of her chest, and she fought it for several seconds before she continued.
Trista died today. We were on a night dig – I didn't want to go. Or… I suppose that's a lie. I was excited by the spirit of it, by the enthusiasm of the graduate students, by the possibilities of what we might find, what we might see. Landry thought it would be educational, and of course our students were eager to take part.
I should never have agreed to it. Intellectually, I know it is no more my fault than you saying you're responsible for the young men you've trained dying over there. I can't seem to stop thinking it, though. She was very beautiful. An amazing student. And she was a good person, I think. She told very good jokes. I should have said something.
It was a wave. She was swept out – one moment she was there, looking at something while my back was turned, and the next moment I heard her scream. I turned, and she was gone. We rescued her, dragged her in, but she'd been battered against the rocks. She never regained consciousness. They airlifted her to the nearest mainland hospital. Nine days on ventilators. The family made the decision today to let her go.
I don't know how you can believe in… anything. Tonight, sitting here alone, the world feels like a terrible, lonely, frightening place.
I would give up a substantial portion of my wealth right now to hear your voice. Hold your hand in mine. Lose myself in your arms. I never told you how much I love kissing you – not that I've had a great deal of experience, of course, but that first night… That first night, I lay in bed after I left you standing outside the bar and couldn't get the taste of you, the feel of your arms around me, out of my head. And then that Christmas when Caroline gave me an opportunity to taste you again… God, I wanted that kiss to last so much longer than five paltry steamboats.
I'm sorry I didn't kiss you back that last night, when everything in our world turned upside down. That night outside Sweets's office. You'll never know how sorry. The look on your face, all those torturous months afterward… I'll never forget that look. I'm still the same person, Booth. I'm still bad at this. I still balk at words like forever; I still fear, more than anything, that I will hurt you. You are such a good man. I feel, sometimes, that it is a personal weakness on my part that I don't stop this and let you find the person who can be everything you deserve. But… I want to try. I want to believe I'm the woman you seem to see.
I don't want to go backward (metaphorically speaking, not literally). I'll try not to "freak out," as you say. I want to see what we can be. I still don't believe in forever, necessarily, but I believe in you enough to question my own judgment on the matter. I might not know everything about everything just yet, as it turns out.
One of Trista's favorite singers was an Australian woman whose name I can't recall at the moment. A line in one of her songs keeps replaying in my head:
"You're the only one that feels like home."
I understand that now, when I might not have before I met you. You have always been the only one that feels like home.
Yours,
Bones
She returned to her tent. Trista's things had already been packed away. The decision had been made not to bring anyone else into the program, as they were already more than halfway through the year's studies. Daisy was sleeping. She had been close to Trista, and Brennan knew she wasn't taking the loss well. Over the past week, the usually unbearably chipper graduate student had dropped weight, and become markedly more quiet. More withdrawn. She'd spoken frequently of Sweets ("Lancelot," Brennan thought with a mental eye-roll), and Brennan noticed that the good looking grad student she'd been spending time with had not been around nearly as much.
In the dim light of her lantern, Brennan returned to her own bunk and riffled through the clothing she had folded neatly beside her cot. Shorts, skirts, t-shirts. Tank tops. Underwear. Hats, bras, a minimal number of socks. She pinched the fabric of Booth's tattered t-shirt between her fingers, debating.
Finally, she stifled a grin. Thought of some of the deliciously off-color things Trista was always saying to her:
"Fuck your bleeding hair hanky, Dr. B – your panties, you silly cunt. A man like that needs a good whiff of snatch when he's alone in the desert all those months. His balls are prob'ly bluer than a fucking smurf's by now… Send him what you got on right now, and he'll be chasing you over the ends of the earth 'til you're both too old to do anything about it."
Brennan glanced at Daisy's sleeping form across the tent, took a breath, rolled her eyes, and pulled off the underwear she was wearing. They were cotton bikini briefs – sensible, since she was working, after all, but they were still attractive. Deep purple. They would do. Before she could second-guess herself, she folded the underwear neatly and put them in the envelope with the letter.
She sealed the envelope, lay down on her cot, and took out the letters Booth had written her. They were wrinkled now, worn from the countless times she had read and re-read them, memorizing phrases, imagining Booth writing every word. She closed her eyes. Breathed in the shirt that had ceased smelling like her partner some time ago, and wondered when she had become the kind of person who ached for someone else.
Five months seemed like an eternity.
It was Brennan's turn to help with dinner on Christmas Eve. There was a feast to help lend a festive air – seafood native to the island, Guinea fowl, freshly grown vegetables from the garden they'd planted. Brennan was working with Dr. Landry on the best strategy for serving everything when Daisy came racing over the horizon, looking flushed and gesturing with the wild enthusiasm that had been absent since Trista's death.
"Oh my God. Dr. Brennan. You have – you have a…" She stopped, gasping for air.
"I have a what?" Brennan asked, a shiver of fear climbing her spine.
Daisy held up her hand. She doubled over at the waist, hands on her knees, as she attempted to regain her breath.
"Is something the matter?" Landry asked. He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, along with an apron too small for him with a cooking cat on it that said, inexplicably, "Mew-ah Stewart."
Daisy shook her head, her long hair flying back and forth. "No. It's just – Dr. Brennan." Another breath. And another. Brennan was preparing to throttle the girl.
"A call. You have a phone call. Up at central HQ."
"From whom?"
"Agent Booth. Or Sergeant Booth. Or – oh, I don't know. Booth!"
Brennan took off at a run, not even bothering to explain to Landry what was happening. She was sure Daisy would take care of that part, anyway.
Central HQ was a large, sturdy tent at the center of the island where all of their equipment and larger communications technology was housed. There was a satellite telephone there, as well as several computers and any of the more expensive pieces they couldn't risk to the weather. It was half a mile away, over rough terrain, climbing at a steady pace.
Brennan made it in just under eight minutes.
She slowed to a more sedate walk just before she hit the entrance to the tent, trying to get herself slightly more under control. She couldn't help but think something had gone wrong. Booth was hurt, or something had happened to Parker. She opened the tent door and glanced around, her eyes falling immediately on the sat phone waiting for her, one of the graduate students – Eli, a bright but unmistakably lazy twenty-something Welsh man – sitting beside it.
"Dr. Brennan," he said brightly. "You've got a call."
Brennan stalked over and took the phone from him. She didn't sit. She didn't bother to say hello.
"What's wrong?"
"Geez, Bones, how about 'Hello?' 'How's it going?' 'Merry Christmas,' even."
It was Booth's voice. Not hurt, not weak, not ready to deliver horrible news.
And, incidentally, not coming from the satellite telephone she held in her hand.
She whirled around, and very nearly passed out.
Booth grinned at her.
