A/N: This chapter title comes from the song "Secrets" by Alexa Woodward
OOOOO
After his week of constant revelations with Brennan, Booth was starting to feel emotionally exhausted. Rehashing the past and learning about all of the new insights they both possessed was taking its toll. There was only one thing in the world that could make him feel like a new man again and that was the birth of his newest goddaughter.
Kathryn "Katie" Rose Hodgins was born on Friday, February 11th, 2016 and she was the spitting image of her mother. There was something about holding a newborn baby that restored your faith in humanity. Surely, something this precious meant that there was hope left in the world. After one particularly hard day at work, he decided that a trip to the Hodgins' house was exactly what he needed. He hadn't seen the family since they had been in the hospital and he figured a quick drop by might be exactly what Angela and Hodgins needed.
"Hey stranger." Angela said as she opened the front door and gave him a hug.
"How are you doing?" He asked.
"Better once I learned of your reunion with my best friend." She said, clearly wanting his side of the story.
"She told you about that, huh?"
"This afternoon. I have to say it was about damn time." She said, managing to give him her pointed look despite her exhaustion.
"Where's my girl?" Booth changed the subject, rubbing his hands together in mock anticipation. Angela smiled.
"In the nursery. Hodgins took MJ to the park. He was feeling neglected." Booth smiled.
"I'll take him to a hockey game some time. We haven't done that for a while." Booth said, wanting to spoil the young child.
"He's five. He won't last 40 minutes at a hockey game."
"That's okay. We get up and walk around, buy stuff at the gift shop. I teach him about old players. It's all about the experience." Angela smiled as she stopped short of the nursery doorway.
"We're lucky to have you Booth." She told him, meaning it.
"Hey, take it from someone who knows: it takes a village." He smiled and stepped around the corner and into the nursery. He was surprised by the lack of light in the room. It was lit only by a small lamp in the corner and Brennan was sitting in a rocking chair, the pink bundle held up to her shoulder sleeping soundly. She was rubbing the infant's back and leaning her cheek against the soft fluff of black curls that peeked over the top of the blanket. Booth stopped suddenly as he took in the scene, his footsteps refusing to disrupt the peaceful moment in front of him. He couldn't help but think about what a shame it was that Brennan had never had children, but that triggered another bout of guilt that he couldn't deal with right now. Brennan glanced up and acknowledged his presence with a smile.
"Hi." She mouthed almost silently. Booth simply raised his hand as he peeked at his god-daughter. 'You've met Katie?" She asked.
"Oh yeah. We go way back. Don't we, baby girl?" He whispered as he took his final step forward. Brennan removed the blanket from around her face so that he could see her.
"Do you want to hold her?" She asked. Booth shook his head, not wanting to disturb her but she handed the newborn over to him anyway. He cradled her like a pro, his fathering instincts coming rushing back to him, despite the fact that his own son was fifteen years old.
"Hi little one." He said softly, not wanting to wake her up. "Remember me? I'm your godfather." He told her. "It's my job to scare away all of your potential boyfriends with my gun." Brennan smiled. She knew that he was Michael's godfather; that had been determined before she had left for Chicago, but she was glad to know that her god-children were going to be taken care of by such a good man. "Your brother will explain everything when you get a little older." He assured her. At seeing his natural charm at parenthood, Brennan felt her stomach twist and suddenly, being in the same room with him felt suffocating. She left the room, hoping to get a breath of fresh air in a new environment.
"Hey." Angela said happily at the sound of her friend's appearance in the kitchen. "Did Booth steal your turn?" But one look at Brennan and she knew something was wrong. "Honey." She said as she went to wrap Brennan in a hug. She didn't fight it but she refused to cry.
"I just couldn't be in there…" She said simply. Angela pulled away and nodded.
"I was waiting for this." She sighed. "If being here is too hard for you..."
"No, I want to be here. I just didn't anticipate being here…with him." Angela nodded. They heard Booth's footsteps down the hall and they paused.
"I'm heading out." He said to the women in the kitchen. He could feel the tension in the air, but he chose to ignore it. After all, he was a pro at covering stress with charm.
"Alright. Thanks for stopping by Booth." Angela said.
"I'll be right behind you." Brennan added and he nodded and headed for the front door.
"Are you going to talk to him?" Angela asked when the coast was clear.
"I'll think about it." She said.
OOOOO
Booth stood outside waiting for Brennan to finish her conversation with Angela. Her sudden disappearance in the nursery had stirred memories of word games and hallucinations and it dawned on him that this might be really hard on her. They should probably talk about that too. At this point, what was one more issue to work out? He paused his thoughts as she walked out of the house and joined him in the driveway.
"It wasn't in the book." He said, hoping she would understand.
Brennan stared at him, trying to uncover what he meant. He was leaning against his car, his hands stuffed into his pockets, and he looked deep in thought. Judging by the look on his face, she knew that it must be serious, whatever he was referring to. He turned his head just enough to look at her. "My, um, donation?" He said, clearing up the confusion. The pain in her eyes didn't go unnoticed and he felt a stab of guilt. "I regret it sometimes, you know? You should have been a mother." He told her.
"Booth, can we not…?" She was too spent to talk about this right now.
"I'm serious, Bones. I see you with Parker, and especially with the Hodgins' kids and I just, I can't help but think that you should have had the opportunity to experience that yourself." She sighed.
"I appreciate the sentiment, but looking back and knowing what I know now, I think not having a child with you was one of the best decisions I ever made. I didn't know what I was asking for. I had no idea about the magnitude of my decision."
"Things would have been so different for us." He said, knowing it was true. "If we had had a child, we would have been forced to make things work, we couldn't have fled the country when things got hard."
"And the FBI would have broken us up." She added. "Infinity goes on forever in both directions, Booth." She told him. "There's no point in discussing it." He stared at her, his brows furrowed.
"Bones..." He said, surprised by her outburst. She sniffed and crossed her arms. "What's wrong?" He asked. He put her hand on her wrist and she squeezed her eyes shut, really not wanting to have this conversation with him in a driveway. "I'm sorry if I…"
"No, it's not your fault. You don't know." She said, feeling bad for snapping at him.
"Don't know what?" She took a deep breath and he waited for her to explain. The silence felt like hours, but he waited for her to feel comfortable.
"I was pregnant." She said quietly. "Three years ago." Booth could have sworn he felt his heart stop beating in his chest. "I didn't even know it until it was too late." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I collapsed during one of my classes and was taken to the emergency room. It was an ectopic pregnancy, where the egg stayed in my fallopian tube." She explained. "I was only a few weeks along, but as the fetus grew, the tube burst and the damage was severe enough… I can't have children." She said as she wiped the tears out of her eyes, hating herself for crying about it. Booth acted without thinking and wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly to his chest. She closed her eyes, wanting to take comfort in him, but knowing that even he couldn't fix the pain that she felt.
"Please tell me you weren't alone for that." He begged her. "Tell me that you had someone…"
"Angela flew out and stayed with me." She reassured him as she pulled away from him.
"What about…?" He asked, knowing it wasn't his place to pry.
"The father?" She finished. "He never knew." She said. "We had broken things off already and there really was no point in telling him considering the facts."
"I'm so sorry." He said, meaning it with every ounce of sincerity he could muster.
"The only thing I could think of at the time was how thankful I was that this didn't happen with us." She admitted. "Losing a child I hadn't planned for was bad enough but if I had lost your child…" She couldn't even bring herself to complete the sentence. Booth's heart broke all over again. "And you would have irrationally blamed yourself for any pain or damage caused." Her voice cracked, knowing it was true. "It would have been terrible." She said. He held her tighter to him, wanting her to know that he was there.
"It wasn't your fault either, Bones. Things just happen. We don't know why, but they do." He spoke softly in her ear. She pulled away and glanced toward the house, watching as a curtain fluttered in the window. They both knew they were being watched.
"Can we go somewhere?" She asked. "Drive somewhere?" Booth nodded without another word and opened the car door for her.
OOOOO
Booth pulled off onto a gravel road and didn't stop until they hit a small picnic clearing. It was appropriately abandoned, being eight o'clock on a February night. They sat in silence for a bit and then Booth couldn't help but chuckle to himself. Brennan looked over at him, surprised by his laughter.
"What?" She asked.
"Do you remember when Parker broke his wrist?" Booth asked her with a smile. The question took Brennan completely off-guard, but she nodded, almost imperceptibly. "He was seven. He was terrified." He said, remembering the scene. "Hell, I was terrified!" She nodded, remembering how secretly panicked Booth had been, although he didn't reveal it to her until Parker was gone. "And you met us at the hospital and you brought those markers from Angela, so he could color and write on his cast." He smiled at the memory. "And you sat down and you showed him his x-rays and you explained that he had broken his carpal bones."
"And he thought I said carpet bones." She smiled. Booth nodded.
"And you wanted to laugh but you held it in and you corrected him, but in such a kind way that I just stared at you for a minute." He said. "You turned your head and smiled at me and then went back to signing his cast." He shook his head. "I think I had always known, but in that moment, I knew that I was a lost cause." Brennan realized what he was saying and she couldn't help but be shocked by his honesty. A little voice in the back of her mind reminded her of what he was doing. What he had always done.
You have to offer up something of yourself in return.
She had revealed something deeply personal and now, he was doing the same. Her heart clenched in her chest at the gesture. Once she had gotten over the initial shock, his words fully sunk in.
"Booth, that, that was before your brain tumor." She realized. He knew what she was getting at, but he let her mind work through it anyway. "You weren't in love with me until after your brain tumor. Sweets said that it wasn't until the dream that you realized…"
"You're going to listen to Sweets? After all that we've been through with him?" Brennan conceded that point and lowered her gaze for a second to gather her racing thoughts. "When did you first know, you know, that you loved me?" He stumbled on the words, still unable to believe that she could have ever felt that way about him. She took his question to heart, considering it carefully.
"When you died." She said quietly. "I had always known that we had… something, but the thought of never seeing you again caused me great distress. I realized then that I was more than just your partner, but I told myself that it was because we were a family. I would have been just as distraught if Angela or Hodgins were killed. Whether or not that was true, at least in the same way I felt towards you, I don't know." She said.
"That was years before you told me." He said as he sat back into his seat. She nodded.
"Do you think if we had…"
"Booth." She admonished him.
"Right. Both directions." He reminded himself as he stopped his train of thought. She was right. What was done was done. Still, it felt like such a waste. He thought back on her quote from Rebecca in her memoir. They had missed a lot of moments in their time together, but he knew that if they had been able to get their act together, they would have caught fire. Her book. The thought struck him like lightening and he put two and two together.
"Bones, you said it took three years to write your book?" She nodded. "The last three years?" She nodded again. The failed pregnancy had been the catalyst for her to write the memoir.
"I quit my job after…I couldn't go back to that room." She looked down, ashamed and he reached out for her hand. "I needed to know why I had ended up where I had. As much as I hate psychology, I thought that if I got the whole story on paper, I could see the cause and effects of my actions. I wanted to know what I had done wrong." She started to tear up again and Booth reached over and wrapped an arm around her. They sat in silence for a long time. Finally, she decided to speak. "Would it be strange if I told you that I missed laying my head on your shoulder?" She asked him quietly. Booth simply smiled and shook his head. "I find it to be extremely comforting, even now."
"I missed it too. And the smell of your shampoo." He teased her. She smiled despite herself and sighed.
"Thank you Booth." He didn't know the exact reason why she was thanking him, but he nodded anyway. In the end, it didn't matter.
OOOOO
A/N 2.0: I wrote the bulk of this chapter last winter before certain events in Season 6. Please keep that in mind. I refused to change my original idea because I like the direction this went, so please don't take it the wrong way. Whatever my opinion of the season 7 storyline, I don't want anyone to think that I'm trying to kill off any babies. I'm not a sociopath, I promise.
