Title: Life With the Dead
Author: random shoes
Rating: T for the story, probably K+ for this chapter though.
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters. If I did it would be more work and less fun.
Author's Note: Sorry about the wait. I don't expect this will be normal. Holidays and friends and trips and sleep and life got in the way. I actually wrote about three fourths of this before Christmas. But what can you do...
PS Did I over-identify with Booth just a little? I'll never tell.
The Ash in the Lab
Buffy woke with sun in her eyes and a nagging feeling that she needed to get up. She turned over instead. She was clean, warm, and alone, and she was going to stay that way until the last possible minute. Her eyes closed, muscles relaxing slowly back towards sleep, dreamy images flickering through her mind. Dark, narrowed eyes stared into hers, amusement and need dancing in their shadows. Powerful muscles tensed, ready for action, ready to pounce. Something tingled. His hand came out, elegant fingers wrapping around...a gun. That was wrong.
Buffy sat up. She remembered now. Not-Angel and the FBI and the caught-leaving-a-warehouse-full-of-dead-bodies-and-now-possibly-going-to-get-arrested-for-murder thing.
Out of bed and plodding into the bathroom, Buffy began to plan her day. First order of business, call Giles. Next, wake up the slayerettes, drag said girls across town to the local slayer's apartment, and give everyone the run-down on last night's incident. She hoped Beth, the resident slayer not currently in the hospital, had some experience dealing with FBI-types. She majorly sucked at dealing with law enforcement. The Sunnydale Police Department had had a pretty clear idea of what a vampire was, and had done their best to avoid them, and, most of the time, her. As for the agent, should she mention the whole he-looks-like-my-undead-ex-boyfriend thing to the other slayers? She preferred not to talk about Angel unless absolutely necessary, and anyway it wasn't like any of them had ever seen him...
She dressed slowly, avoiding the reproachful gaze of the phone. She hadn't said his name to Giles in years, but she knew the conversation would be much with the awkward. After she redid her hair the third time, there was nothing to do but bite the bullet. Although, biting a bullet didn't seem to be a useful activity, and wouldn't that hurt your teeth, and...
"Screw this," she said aloud, slamming down the phone. "I'm getting a muffin."
•••••••••••••••••
Two hours later Buffy had checked off everything on her list except the dreaded phone call. It wasn't like she needed Giles anymore, well, except for researchy stuff. She was her own woman, the leader of what amounted to an army, and perfectly capable of solving her own bizarre mysteries. Not to mention she had managed to navigate an unfamiliar city, in a rental car, with only the two wrong turns and the one, um, abrupt stop. Vi had yelped, spilling her latte on the upholstery. Rona had glared at her from the front seat, and then offered to drive. Buffy's (unfortunate) pride wouldn't allow this, but they'd survived all right.
Beth's apartment was crappy, although the neighborhood was nice enough. Even after almost seven years, the COS (Council of Slayers, Buffy had immediately ditched the word 'watcher') could barely afford to pay working slayers enough to live on. Still, Buffy had never been paid at all, so she didn't tolerate whining well. If they didn't like it, they could spend their days flipping patties at their local Doublemeat Palace, like she'd had to.
They parked a few blocks down (would she ever master parallel parking?) and buzzed in to the apartment.
Beth opened the door and invited them in with a gesture.
She was olive-skinned and tall, with cat eyes and a too-big nose. Her dark hair was braided down her back, her clothes practical and unobtrusive. The antithesis of Buffy.
The younger woman gestured at a bowl of cereal "I was just finishing breakfast. You guys hungry?"
Buffy shook her head "We made a Starbucks run." Rona and Vi, however, were already reaching for the box of cereal.
Buffy rolled her eyes. Slayer metabolism or something. Did that mean hers was slowing down...?
"You patrol last night?"
Buffy sat down across from Beth. "Yeah. Stumbled on a nest."
"I can't tell you how grateful I am you came out here. I was getting pretty tired going out every night."
Buffy smiled. "You're welcome, although this is pretty much my job. By the way, how's Maddy doing?"
"Better. She says every time the nurses check on her they get these wide-eyed looks."
"Yeah. Slayer healing, not something most medical professionals are prepared for."
"I'll bet." Beth looked down at her bowl. "If, that is, I think she'll be street-ready in a week or so, if you three need to move on."
Clearly, Beth was too proud to ask her to stay.
Buffy was careful to keep her tone light. "Well, there's still the question of why DC is suddenly a vamp paradise. We really can't leave until we've got a read on that mystery. Maddy should get some rest, and anyway there's no way you two can handle the city by yourselves right now. And," Buffy's voice turned sheepish, "I may have kinda sorta got the FBI on my trail."
Beth, Rona, and Vi all looked up from their cereal. Beth's eyebrows stretched upwards. "The FBI?"
"Yeah. I was on my way home after I took out that nest, and some guy was following me. Turned out to be FBI, tried to ask me about the warehouse, got a little antsy. Ended up taking his gun. My guess he's not too pleased with me. Also, if he hadn't already, by now he's been inside that warehouse and found six very dead bodies."
Everyone stared at her.
She looked at Beth. "Any ideas for dealing with interfering government guys?"
"Not really, no."
"Great. Oh, and those dead bodies? We're gonna need to find them."
Cam had made him send the bodies to the Jeffersonian. Booth hadn't wanted to, had even suggested sending them to the FBI morgue. "No bones, no Bones," he'd reminded her.
Cam hadn't been impressed. "I'm still the best in my business. Certainly better than anyone you've got."
And so here he'd come. Against every instinct he had. Giving in to every instinct he had. Dear God, when had he lost his mind?
He was staring at the entrance to the museum. He'd been staring for a good five minutes now. The security guard, a man he didn't recognize, was clearly starting to get nervous. Time to bite the bullet. Bullets...she'd taken his bullets...
He had to go in. Blonde girls to find, murders to solve, people to arrest.
Booth took a step forward, stopped. He'd been in wars, for Christ's sake! He'd run towards men aiming guns at him, been shot at, bombed, tried to reason with Zack Addy, and on one memorable occasion been blown up by a refrigerator. He could do this! He could!
The guard was walking over to him now. Good. Now he'd be forced to go inside.
Booth smiled at the man. "Sorry to worry you. Special Agent Booth, FBI." He flipped open his badge. "Got a little lost in thought."
"Thanks sir. Can't be too careful nowadays."
"No, no you can't." He started towards the stairs. The carved lions seemed to be laughing at him.
"Do you know where you're going?"
"Yeah, I know where I'm going." Towards pain and heartbreak and impossibly intelligent blue eyes, he thought.
•••••••••••••••••
Brown eyes, not blue, greeted him as he entered the Medico-Legal Lab. Booth felt part of him relax. He couldn't see her anywhere.
"Where the hell have you been?" Okay, so not so much of a relief.
"Doing my job." He had been, just, not all of it. Not the part that required him to be in the same room with Temperance Brennan.
Angela's eyes narrowed. "No, I think Agent Perrota has been doing your job."
He tried to act offended. "It was only one case. I needed to catch up on paperwork, and Agent Olson needed help on that series of bank heists." Only because he'd offered it, but Angela didn't need to know that.
Angela studied him. He really hated that. Sometimes, when she did that, he couldn't help feeling that she was reading his thoughts...
"Did something happen at the reunion? Between you and Bren?"
At least he could answer that honestly. "No, Angela. Nothing happened." His voice was flat, expressionless.
She gave it up. For now. "Well, whatever your deal is, get over it. Bren's missed you."
He didn't look at her. "I have to see Cam."
Booth walked away, focusing all his willpower on not stomping.
The anger was back again. The terrible, pointless anger that he'd been doing his level best to keep miles away from Bones. It was unfair to her. She probably had no idea what she'd asked of him.
•••••••••••••••••
It wasn't that she'd said no. He recognized her right to say no, even if he didn't believe she was right, even if she was hurting herself as well as him, even if, he couldn't help but think, she'd never said she didn't want him, never said she didn't love him. No, it was what she'd done after that mattered now. After she'd kissed him back for just a moment, then pushed him away and taken all the air with her. After that desperate "I don't know how, I don't know how." After he'd let go of the urge to say, I'll teach you, and finally, finally given up the five-year battle he'd been waging, because he knew now that he would never be able prove to her that he could love her in thirty, or forty, or fifty years, could never prove to her that he wouldn't leave her, because he didn't know it. He believed it. And that would never, could never, be enough for her. For all that, he couldn't hate her. But then, she'd turned to him, tears in her eyes, goddamn her, and asked two things of him. "Please don't look so sad," she'd said, and then, "can we still work together?" That was it. The moment when his heart really, truly broke. Because she was asking him to pretend. Please don't look so sad. This never happened. Keep being just my partner. Pretend I didn't break your heart. And in that instant he knew that whether or not she loved him or wanted him, she needed him. She was terrified he'd leave her, like everyone had left her, and so she was asking him to live his life in limbo, and he was going to say yes.
"But I gotta move on. I gotta find someone who's gonna love me in thirty years, or forty, or fifty." It was the healthy response. He knew it was the healthy response. And so he convinced himself he could do it, could move on. He would move on.
Yeah. That was bullshit. He figured that out quick. Seeing her as she'd been in high school—"You were Wednesday Addams!"—the weirdo everyone was just a little afraid of, the odd, brilliant, outsider. God help him, he'd loved her more. And then, the prom she never went to, the awkward slow dance she never had. She looked so happy in his arms, and the word husband was ringing in his ears, and how could he ever feel this way about anyone else?
So yes, he could find someone who would love him for thirty or forty or fifty years. The bitch was, could he ever love her back?
•••••••••••••••••
Cam had her hands deep in someone's chest when Booth walked in. It wasn't the girl.
"Diggin' out hearts?"
Cam looked up. "What does that even mean?"
"I don't know. Sounded good in my head. Got anything for me?"
"Not much. Same as the others. Punctures in the neck, blood loss, minimal defensive wounds. This one's got a fractured finger and a few bruises on his arms. Nothing internal."
Booth took a moment to adjust himself to the words that were about to come out of his mouth. "Check the neck for DNA."
"What?"
"Hodgins thinks the killer might have a...vampire obsession."
"So you thought maybe he..."
"Yeah. Or she."
Cam looked surprised. "I would've thought—that is, this seems like more of a...guy thing."
"We shouldn't make assumptions. There's no reason to think that the killer is male or female."
Cam looked even more surprised. "That sounded a lot like Dr. Brennan."
"No, it sounded like a good cop." Or one who had more information than he was willing to share at the moment. He really needed to swallow his dignity and come clean.
"She's at lunch right now, you know. With Andrew Hacker."
And just like that, all thoughts of the case went out the window. At lunch with Hacker? Less than a month after... And why Andrew? He wasn't particularly attractive...he was funny, but it wasn't as if she got any of his jokes...not that she got Booth's either but...
"She should be back soon. If you want to talk to her."
Cam was now roasting him with the same mind-reading gaze that Angela had used on him. He really hated smart people.
"Yeah. Thanks. I'm gonna go check on Bug Guy. Call me if you find any DNA."
He practically ran to Hodgins' work station. He needed to get out of the building before Bones got back from her...date.
"Anything on the ash?"
Hodgins looked altogether too pleased with himself. "Yes. DNA. Human DNA."
Oh no. Not this again. "So...the killer burned some of the victims?"
"Where? How? Completely reducing the human body to ash requires a furnace that can reach temperatures of nine hundred degrees Celsius."
Booth looked at him. "And in American...?"
"About...one thousand, six hundred and...fifty degrees Fahrenheit. The point is, it would be impossible to reach those temperatures in a huge, open warehouse, not to mention that if you somehow could, more things would burn than just the body. Well, actually, bodies. The DNA came from multiple people. I'm not sure exactly how many yet. More than five."
Booth took a moment to sort all this out. "So could the killer have stolen the ashes from a crematorium and spread them around the room?"
Hodgins' face fell. Booth felt a jolt of triumph. Did he just succeed in killing the vampire theory?
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense."
"Can you check local crematoriums for me?"
"For what?"
"Uh, stolen ashes? Suspicious activity? I don't know, you're the squint. Anything that might help us."
He could escape now. "Call me if you find anything. I'm going back to headquarters, see if I can get IDs from missing persons."
"Will do." Hodgins was already back to doing...whatever it was he'd been doing to the ash. Booth hurried out of the room.
She was blocking his escape.
"Brennan's due back in ten minutes."
Damn. "I've gotta get back to the office, Angela."
"Bull."
The anger had now found a new target. "What do you want from me, Angela? What? What business is it of yours?" His voice was dangerously close to shouting.
Angela's face registered shock, hurt. Booth found, to his surprise, that he didn't care.
"Leave. Me. Alone." He sidestepped Angela and headed for the door. She didn't try to stop him.
"Why can't you two let yourselves be happy?"
He stared straight ahead, and didn't say what he was thinking. There was no point.
Ask Bones.
The Jeffersonian at night had a hum to it. Instruments, florescent lights, air conditioning. All too soft to be heard amidst the bustle and chatter of its daytime occupants, but still there, just skirting the edge of audible noise, the building's version of a heartbeat, comforting and constant. Temperance Brennan usually loved that sound. She knew that when she heard it—at that indefinable moment when the softest noise turned sharp and immediate—that was the time she could really begin to work. No living people to distract her from the dead.
Tonight it was an unidentified World War I soldier, one of hundreds she had been working through for years. He was Caucasian and very young—approximately sixteen—but she had not discovered anything else. He had not broken any bones in childhood, nor been noticeably malnourished. His skeleton was absurdly pristine, excepting the small nicks on his ribs, the only remaining evidence of a bullet that had almost certainly pierced his right lung. She could find nothing else.
She hated to admit it, but she was bored with the soldier. His bones refused to tell her anything that she could run against the database, and even if she did find his identity, it likely would not matter much. Any family he had living almost certainly knew what had happened to him, generally if not specifically. There was no one to blame, no one to comfort, no one who needed her. And that was what really bothered her. She'd become attached—addicted—to the immediacy of murder, and she couldn't remember when this, her job, her life, had become less important.
Unable to glean anything useful, and unable to reach the familiar trance, she was becoming restless and moody. Restless because she was getting nowhere, and moody because, well, Dr. Temperance Brennan did not get restless.
Her mind would not focus. Would not set itself to the task. The hum was getting louder and she was not sure if she liked it anymore.
A crash broke the air, as loud as a symbol in the silent lab. In an instant, the hum was gone, and Temperance was sprinting towards Cam's dark room, heart in her throat and excitement in her belly. She could hear smaller crashes, shuffling feet, even what might have been a grunt, and as the room came into view she saw movement. The noises stopped as she skidded to a halt in the doorway. The lights were on, sensors triggered by the motion. Standing in the doorway, she could clearly see...
"Booth? What are you doing?"
He was standing in a cloud of dust (didn't Cam clean her office?), looking at her with a wariness that made no sense.
He slipped something into his pocket. "I—I'm uh...Booth?"
Panic replaced Brennan's confusion in a heartbeat. "Booth, are you hallucinating again? If you've seen anything, anything that shouldn't be there, we need to get you to the hospital. The tumor might be back."
He was standing unnaturally still, his face closed, the smallest hint of confusion in his knitted brows. "Excuse me?"
"The tumor, Booth. You need to be checked out by a doctor as soon as possible. If there's any possibility—"
"I believe you have mistaken me for someone else," he said.
That was when she finally looked at him. He was dressed all in black, including a long leather coat she'd never seen before, and his hair was sticking up a lot more than usual, and something was missing from his face.
Acid was churning in her stomach. "Booth?" she whispered, uncertainly.
"No," he said and then, after a moment, "Angel. My name is Angel." And then his mouth closed, and stayed closed, and Brennan realized with blank clarity what had been bothering her about his stillness. He wasn't breathing.