Title: For the Greater Good
Rating: T
Spoilers: Season three finale and season four.
Disclaimer: HA!
Characters: Zack and the rest of the Squints
Summary: He had done it for the greater good-all lives over one life-but his greater good only consisted of five people, and someone needed to see that (my idealized wishes for season four and the truth of the finale).
Author's Note: I would deeply appreciate feedback on this chapter. Thank you.
Chapter Three
"It's a very impressive cup castle, Dr. Addy."
"Thank you. I've been relatively bored the last week, and I needed something to accompany my mind. I'm trying to create a replica of a castle I saw in one of Angela's photography books."
"You have an eidetic memory, yes?"
"I suppose."
"Dr. Addy, you never paid much attention to psychology and doctors in the past."
"They told me I was emotional retarded. My mother didn't like them so she stopped taking me to see them. She said that negative thoughts would only make it worse." His voice carried well over the room, and Dr. Foley heard the now familiar tone of disconnectedness that Zack used when he was uncomfortable. He treated himself as a specimen-an experiment-whenever he didn't want to face the truth. "That's why she had me take singing lessons."
"You sing?"
"Yes; it was to integrate me into the circle of children around my age."
"It didn't work, did it?" He adjusted a cup on one side so that it fit perfectly atop the center of another. "You didn't know how to react when they talked to you, and after that they didn't talk to you any more." He was counting the cups now, and his fingers hit the bottom of each upturned cup dead center. "You tried to fix it, but you didn't know how."
"One, two, three, four…"
"You read books about what you'd heard the specialist say, and you set up rules for yourself."
"…Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…"
"Maybe you timed yourself when you made eye contact, or you made sure that you didn't talk for longer than a minute on your favorite subject."
"…three, four, five, six…"
"It was bones, wasn't it Zack? I'm betting you had memorized all of the bones by the time your mother stopped taking you to the doctors. They told your mother that you had a psychological condition. You overheard, but I don't think you heard all of it. She stopped taking you, and you never found out more. I'm betting you read every book on psychological disorders in the library though."
"…seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…"
"Did your mother find out and take them back? I'm betting she did. You wanted to make her happy so you did it, and I doubt you ever tried to find out even after leaving home. You're very loyal."
"…twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, one, two, three…"
"You've been here nearly a month, Zack. You've had no visitors; no family has shown up, no friends have come to comfort you. Where are they? You were so loyal to them. You know why they aren't coming. You betrayed them, and they're paying you back. They might even be happy your gone: no more social interaction lessons-I'm going to bet that you asked for help-to take up their time; no more awkward situations to get out of that you started; no more having to look after poor, little Zackary Addy with the problems reading people. How many hours did you bore away from their lives with long winded speeches on bones and basketball?"
His fingers were hitting the bases of the cups harder now.
"You gave up your life for them, didn't you? Look at where they left you!"
His body jerked once, and his hands hit the base of the cups. Fluid, but ungainly, his body was a force of frantic energy. The metal fingers hit the sides of his skull as he pushed his body off the floor and into the air with his head held in between his hands. She noticed the clench jaw, the muscles in his arms jolting, and his eyes closed tightly against her words.
If he couldn't see her, she didn't exist. By default, her words would cease if she ceased to exist.
He rocked back and forth on his toes.
"I did it to save them. To save them, to save them, to save them…"
The new graduate students were idiots, and the expenses for seven broken beakers, two broken microscopes, and the destruction of the computer setup agreed. They needed another child prodigy, or any graduated student with the maturity and knowledge greater than that of a ten year old.
"It's like they're all teenagers still. It's all boobs and jokes with them."
"The third one downloaded porn on his computer. I found it when I tried to fix the system."
"I don't like having graduate students that call me a 'cold bitch' when they think I'm not behind them."
"That one was pretty funny, Bones." Cam's ears were tired of the endless complaints. Booth nudged Hodgins. "He put a rubber chicken in the rib cage of one of your Limbo skeletons." The laughter was short lived,
"It could've harmed the bones or the particulates."
"And your pride." Angela shook her head and looked on as Brennan eyed Booth and Hodgins as they sniggered.
"I thought it was evidence."
"All right, listen people, the fact remains that we need another forensic anthropologist-that's not an idiot. I've been trying to screen the graduate students, but at the moment we've been through all of them. Any suggestions?"
"IQ test?"
"Personality test? If they fail miserably they're probably good."
Camille Saroyan glanced around at all of them, and the unspoken agreement echoed in the area as they all turned to leave. Even Booth whispered the same sentence with the others as the group separated.
"We need Zack back."
His body was curled up against the side of the bed as he muttered to himself. She stood back knowing that her touch of comfort would go unnoticed. Zack would speak unheeded by his personal controls now, but she would have to wait. She had already waited a month when she realized he would never speak without a push.
She had pushed. Only his anger would stop the controls he had placed on himself years ago, and he was so slow to anger.
She had pushed hard.
"You're timing yourself, aren't you?"
"Yes, Dr. Foley. I don't want to bore you like I did before."
"You weren't boring me. I enjoy listening to people talk. It's my job and a hobby."
"How did you know?"
"You time your eye contact too. I noticed that everything was the same amount of time: three seconds of eye contact and fifteen of talking."
"Was it that simple?"
"No, you were very adept at hiding it."
"I don't want to make people feel awkward."
"May I suggest something?"
"Yes, Dr. Foley."
"You could talk to me without holding back. It would be therapeutic-cathartic."
"I can't."
"You won't bore me."
"I can't. I'm sorry Dr. Foley."
"A change of topic then?" He nodded. "You know why you're you, don't you?"
"Because I'm me, therefore I know myself."
"Zack, I know that you know what I'm talking about. You're too intelligent to miss it, and it's not metaphorical."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Foley."
"You don't want to address it, do you?"
"It's irrelevant to my life now."
"You have Asperger syndrome." His eyes avoided her own. "You know that. You shouldn't be embarrassed."
"I'm not."
"Then why?"
"Most people would doubt my abilities since it is an autism spectrum disorder."
"You didn't want them to pity you."
"Dr. Foley, I wouldn't know what pity was when they expressed it. That's what would bother me. I read the books, but I can't…I just wanted to be a forensic anthropologist."
"And you succeeded. You should be very proud of yourself-your employers and family doubly so."
"It would harm the prosecution if the expert witness had a psychological disorder."
"I doubt that they would let it go unmentioned without defending the fact that Asperger syndrome doesn't affect your intelligence or abilities."
"I do not wish to harm the efforts of the lab. He paused. "I did not."
She had suspected it since their first encounter. His body was wiry, but strong. He was uncomfortable in his skin, but he could move with purpose. He had learned over the years to hide his almost bouncy stride as he walked. He did not anger, he did not rise to bait, and he did not put force behind his voice. Logic ruled, and this was not logical. His logic would not have been flawed. He did everything to aid the Jeffersonian. He focused solely on it sometimes without realizing how his deeds affected the outside world.
She kneeled before him now with one hand under his chin and tilting his face towards hers. Protocol could wait.
"Explain it to me, Zack."
"I couldn't let them get hurt."
"Explain."
"Yes, Dr. Foley." His fingers tapped out some unknown five note tune on his palm. "Secret societies exist. The human experience is directly affected by these secret societies, and the destruction of secret societies through the killing of the members will aid the human experience. The importance of the human experience is greater than that of the importance of a single human. It was logical at the time."
"Why is it illogical?"
"The importance of the human experience is not greater than the importance of a single human being."
"Explain." He eyed her.
"Do you just want to hear me say it?" She nodded. "I acted to save Hodgins putting my plans at risk. This proved that I acted to save one human live while disregarding my plans. It was an inconsistency in my reasoning. You know that."
"Had you ever been inconsistent before?"
"Not that I can recall."
"Then why now?"
"I had hoped…" His voice dropped. "They're apart of the human experience. By helping the human experience I could help them."
"Your friends?"
"Yes."
"You're very intelligent, Dr. Addy."
"This is true."
"You're also very bad at understanding body language and gestures."
"Accepted."
"You're lying."
"I am not."
"Yes, you are."
"I just wanted to repay them for everything they had done for me. They are apart of the human experience."
"I believe that you wished to help them. It's that you suffered an inconsistency in your logic is the lie."
"I can make mistakes."
"Yes, you can-by omission. I doubt that you make mistakes when you have all pieces of the puzzle. You're quite skilled at placing things in order, and I highly doubt that you missed such an obvious flaw. You've acted in favor of the one before the whole before. You've told me about it. It's what you do every day when you try to find murderers and identities of the victims."
"I make mistakes, Dr. Foley."
"Only when you need to."
"I make mistakes."
"He was going to hurt them!" He spoke in a voice too soft for anger, but his arms had flailed outwards. One joint of metal caught her lip. "He said that he would turn them over to Gormogon, and that...I couldn't let that happen!" She watched his eyes. "He was going to hurt them, and so I did it, but I didn't think I would get stuck there and I had to come up with a plan and the only thing I could think of was logic because Dr. Brennan wouldn't question that and Agent Booth wouldn't know what to question, but he would trust her, and then he would leave them alone, and no one would try to hurt them because if they knew he would hurt them and they would be proud of me! I did it all for them! I had to do it!" For the first time she heard and edge in his voice.
She had lost his train of thought in the mixture of conjunctions and antecedents.
"I had to save them. I did it and I saved them!" His voice was louder now, and she was glad that the noise would be drowned out by the other screams of the insane. "I had to do it. It was the only way with the best possible outcome logically." He dropped his hands and fell back to the floor in one smooth motion as his body lost all of its energy. "I don't make mistakes."
Vivian Foley reached out and tilted his face up towards her once more. "I know. Now tell me everything."
"I don't make mistakes." He reached out with one metal encased hand, and the blood from her cut lip smeared on his fingers. "You're bleeding." She nodded as her legs curled up underneath her. They eyed each other for a second before he leaned forward and let his head fall into her lap. She brushed his hair off of his cheek.
One of her feet kicked one of the crushed cups under the bed.
-TBC-
