Same Disclaimers apply! Enjoy!
"I'll do it," she said brightly when she returned three days later to visit Zack with a wide smile on her face.
"I think you'll do very well," he nodded approvingly.
"You're not just saying that to give me false hope, are you?" she narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"Have I ever done such a thing?" he asked, confused.
"Nah, I was just messin' with you," she smirked, scrunching her nose slightly.
"Hodgins brought my books over for me the other day," he said gesturing to a brown paper grocery bag next to him with a gloved hand. "Take whatever you need on your way out."
"Thanks, I really appreciate it."
"So I take it you're only allowed to visit me twice a week," he changed the subject.
"Unfortunately, yeah," she sighed. "Wait…how did you know…?"
"Your brother visited me yesterday," Zack said, "on his way back from his FBI training."
"Ugh, I'm 22 and he still gets on my ass more than he should."
"His reasoning is perfectly logical," he pointed out. "If a potential employer were to case your activities and see you coming here often, they would get very suspicious and perhaps the wrong impression of you."
"I'm sorry we didn't keep in touch during college," she took his hands in hers.
"I understand. You aren't one to use technology for small talk. You prefer to talk in person because, logically, it feels more personal to you that way."
"I forgot how easily you can read me," she chuckled slightly.
"Am I correct?"
"Yup, you are. I'm working on reaching out to people a little more. Just so that I don't lose all my friends."
"You haven't lost me," he shrugged. "And you never will. Even if I'm stuck in a loony bin for the rest of my life."
Kylie blinked a few times before smiling in awe. "You consider me your friend?"
"I thought that's long been established," he furrowed his brown eyes in confusion.
"You once told me that you didn't have friends," she reminded him. "Only people you spend time with to maintain some semblance of a social life. Those were your exact words, which actually hurt my feelings, since I felt a lot closer to you than I did my girl friends. I still do, after all this time."
"I apologize for making you feel that way," Zack gripped her hands lightly, though his face remained neutral. "But I assure you, you are my friend. And you always will be."
Kylie smiled. "I still have a billion questions about how you ended up in this mess…"
"It is impossible to have 'a billion questions' about something," he interrupted, and Kylie noticed his lips form a small semblance of a smile. "'A lot' would have been more appropriate, but I am willing to conjecture that 'a lot' to you would only be about four, maybe five, questions."
"I know, Zack," she laughed. "Figure of speech, remember?"
"Yes, I actually remembered that one. That was my attempt at what Hodgins and/or Angela would call 'teasing.'"
"Anyway," she continued. "Maybe we should just catch up on the past five years for now and this stuff," she gestured to the McKinley visiting room, "can come later."
"The 'stuff' that you wish to avoid is part of the past five years, so logically, it would be best to talk about it now instead of bottling it up, as Sweets taught me."
"Sweets? What kind of sweets, cupcakes? Candy? Last time I checked, you hated that stuff."
"No," Zack's smiled a bit wider than before. "Sweets is his name. Doctor Lance Sweets. One Bachelors, a Masters, and Two doctorates in various areas of psychology. He's a very brilliant man, even if others don't seem to think so."
"I see," Kylie suppressed a laugh at the sound of the psychologist's last name. "I guess I'll cut to the chase, then, and ask how you got yourself into this shit hole, excuse my language, in the first place."
"I agree with your usage of that term," he nodded. "It started when I received a letter from the President that my services were needed in Iraq."
"So you fought in the war?"
"I don't believe I would be alive if I did, but my services were needed to help identify remains. People don't exaggerate when they say war changes you, even if you don't actually participate in any battles. My experiences from those three months left me feeling lost and unsure of myself, whether or not I could continue living my life normally after seeing what I saw. I was...weak. And then came the Master, or as everyone else called him, Gormogon."
"Gormogon? Sounds like one of those Gargoyles from those cartoons they played in the morning when we were younger. Did he look like one, too?"
Zack always appreciated Kylie's pop culture references, even if he did not understand what she was referring to most of the time, but he vaguely remembered the cartoons she was referencing. "I suppose his teeth would look like those of one of the Gargoyles from the cartoons you speak of, but he had a set of false teeth, which I made for him out of canines from human skull remains; more on that later. So the M-, Gormogon," he quickly corrected himself, "comes to me with a proposition with logic that, like I mentioned in our previous meeting, was so irrefutable, that I complied."
"And what logic, pray tell, is so irrefutable, that you agreed to be a man-eating serial killer's assistant?"
"He would've picked off everyone at the Jeffersonian one by one if I didn't comply," he said quietly. "And after he finished with them, my family back in Michigan, as well."
"Oh, my God," she whispered. "So he basically blackmailed you."
"Technically, yes."
"TECHNICALLY?!" she roared. "He fucking blackmailed you! There are no technicalities in that."
"Miss Wells," a guard popped in, "please keep it down, we have therapy sessions going on a few doors down."
"Sorry," she said quickly. As soon as the door shut she focused her attention back on her old friend. "Why didn't you tell someone? Go to the FBI?"
"Gormogon would have found out, killed me for exposing him, and gone after them, too. My priorities at the time were to keep my loved ones safe," he said. "As he went through his ritual one by one, he kept his word about not harming them. I even installed a camera at the Jeffersonian in the vault for him, but while he used it to spy, I used it to make sure he kept his word. Every time Cam, Agent Booth, Doctor Brennan, Angela or Hodgins checked on the vault, that was reassurance to me that he was keeping his promise."
"You still haven't told me how you ended up here," Kylie crossed her arms, her voice breaking.
"I'm getting there. Approximately three weeks ago, I gave him information on this Lobbyist, his next target. At the Jeffersonian, we found canine marks from the false teeth I mentioned earlier. I lied about my findings, and then proceeded to do an experiment with Hodgins, which was a distraction for the Gormogon to steal the silver skeleton in the vault, which was composed of remains from older Gormogon victims."
"You mean, there's been more than one psycho like that?" Kylie's normally bright features contorted in disgust.
"Yes, there's been quite a few of them – a sort of secret society – but I'd rather focus on the present. The explosion in the lab is the one I told you about when you visited me at the hospital. I miscalculated the dosage of one of the chemicals; it wasn't supposed to be as large a magnitude as it was. What you would see on my hands would've happened to Hodgins, had I not insisted in playing the part that I did. Therefore, I ended up in the hospital, instead of him."
"So you actually killed the guy."
"Not exactly."
"What do you mean, not exactly?!" Kylie began shaking in her chair.
"Ten minutes, miss," the guard popped his head in. "Then it's time for Zack to go to dinner."
"I won't need much longer, Sir," she didn't bother changing her tone. "You either killed him, plunged a knife into the guy's chest, or you didn't. Which one is it, Zachary Uriah Addy?"
Zack blinked. My mother used my full name when she was angry with me, which was not often, so Kylie must be angry with me, as well. "I…didn't."
"Then who did?!"
"Please, stop yelling," he whispered quietly, old tears threatening to fall.
Kylie sensed she'd hit a nerve, even though from her experiences with him, he wasn't fazed much by emotions, so she softened her tone. "Who killed the lobbyist, Zack?"
"The lobbyist's murder was supposed to officially make me his apprentice," he said. "There was another before me. He killed the lobbyist."
"So you weren't really his apprentice."
"There can only be two."
"Like the Sith in Star Wars?"
"Exactly like that," he nodded.
"Was the dude a Star Wars fan, or something?"
Zack chuckled slightly. "Agent Booth and Doctor Brennan eventually discovered me while in the hospital, for which I am extremely grateful, because Gormogon would have killed me since I was no longer of any use to him."
"Did they catch the guy?"
"I gave up the location of Gormogon's house and they ambushed and killed him in combat."
"So how did you end up here?" Kylie asked again.
"After confessing to killing the lobbyist while in the hospital, I was then declared non compos mentis, an agreement that would put me here instead of prison, where I undoubtedly would not have done well."
Kylie stared at her friend for a few moments before leaning forward to emphasize her anger at her realization. "Are you an idiot?"
"Despite my high IQ, I must be, if I got myself into this mess in the first place."
Kylie shook her head in disbelief. "I can't believe you."
"I don't understand," he looked at her in confusion.
"Tell me again everything that happened from your confession onward."
"The prosecutor, Caroline Julian, worked out a deal with the judge to have me declared non compos mentis so that I would be here instead of prison. I thought I made myself clear," he frowned.
"I'm really sorry for this," she leaned over and slapped him on the back of the head, "but earth to Zack, you were never formally arrested or given a trial."
"Being an associate to murder is just as bad as being the actual murderer," he countered.
"You didn't help that creep on your own volition," she said angrily, tears forming in your eyes. "You were blackmailed at gunpoint."
"He preferred knives…"
"Whatever! You were never read your rights, given an attorney, or a fair trial, so you shouldn't even fucking be here! I don't know if you just completely missed that obvious detail, or if you're just running away from the truth, but you're better than this, and you know it!"
She pushed her chair back in a huff, grabbed her purse and headed for the door.
"Wait!"
"What?" she glared at him, crossing her arms.
"The textbooks," he gestured to the floor.
She sighed, picking up the brown paper bag and carrying it from underneath before turning the door handle with her hip bones. "Thanks."
"Kylie," he called again.
"What is it now?" she sighed again, exasperated.
"I-I'm sorry."
She shook her head. "You left your friends with the impression that you're a genius-turned-serial-killer-assistant-murderer, when you didn't actually kill anyone. I'm not the one you should be apologizing to."
Poor Zack :( Kylie was much more angsty in this chapter than I anticipated, and I apologize if she seemed like a bitch toward the end, but I figured with all these emotions hitting her so fast (I should've made this clearer before, but she's been in DC for less than a month by the beginning of the story) and given her and Zack's history as friends, her reaction is fairly reasonable. And just as I predicted, you will meet one of the main characters in the next chapter. Stay tuned, y'all! Thanks for the reviews and follows!