A/N: Zack attack!
Brennan's POV
Black. Are my eyes open, or closed?
My legs are tingling. Slowly I extend them, but my feet bump against something hard – plastic? My back aches. I try to sit up – I bang into something hard. My hands fly up, only to hit more plastic. I run my palms across the walls, into corners, I'm hammering against the walls, fingers bruising, nails cracking –
I sat up gasping. I threw off the binding covers and placed my bare feet on the carpet. The clock on my bedside table showed 6:25 a.m.
You're in your apartment. You're safe.
I told myself the adrenaline was an involuntary and irrational response – a trick of my body.
Another nightmare.
And everyone told me I should get more sleep. Little did they know. I snorted in dark amusement and threw back the rest of the covers. I needed to shower after three days without.
I turned on the lights in the bathroom and was confronted with my reflection. My skin was pasty, my hair dark with three days' dirt. And a dark red slash between two ribs. I ran the pads of two fingers over the thick scab already forming. It stung a little to the touch. Instead of feeling embarrassed I felt calmed, somehow, by seeing evidence of my internal anguish on my body. How irrational.
I kicked off my panties and turned on the shower.
Usually on a Saturday I'd go into work. Even if there wasn't a case there were always bodies in limbo. But today I didn't want to go to the lab. My eyes ached and my head felt swollen with mucus. I wanted to see a friend.
I felt a sharp pang at the thought of seeing Booth. He would be with Hannah, of course. I thought of Angela but was uncomfortable disturbing her domestic raptures with Hodgins. To be honest, seeing her happiness was unjustifiably painful and I couldn't imagine expending the effort today to discipline my reactions and be a good friend. Although I had reconciled with Russ and my father, I was not about to confide emotional vulnerability in the two people that had been the first to leave me. Even Cam was busy, helping Michelle with her college applications.
"So, I'm the only one living the life I expected," I finished.
"So how's that, honey?" Angela asked.
It's not what I expected – I'm sad.
"It's uh, it's how I expected."
My tear glands, however, seemed incapable of producing more tears. I just felt aching and torpid, a combination of sensations I could only describe as despair.
I pulled on jeans and a sweater and roughly combed my hair. By the time I reached my destination it would be dry – and where I was going personal hygiene wasn't a priority.
I had seen the gloves Zack wore when he escaped to help us on a case, but it was still surprising to see the black cotton.
Zack, of course, did not miss the direction of my glance, however fleeting.
"I estimate that I've gained almost 60% full function," he said.
"That's excellent considering the amount of damage incurred," I responded.
I was still standing by the door, several feet away from the chair placed across the table from where he sat.
"Last time you saw me you gave me a hug," he said.
I shifted on my feet and smiled sadly. "Well now if I hug you it will seem perfunctory."
"True," he said.
I strode across the room and threw my arms around his scrawny shoulders. As usual his returning gesture was light – Booth always said Zack's handshake was "like a dead fish." Once again I felt physical pain at Booth's memory.
"I'm sorry I haven't come to see you," I said, pulling back from Zack and sitting down.
"Dr. Hodgins tells me you were in Maluku examining ancient remains. Actually he told me you were examining very ancient remains but I assumed he was being purposefully redundant," Zack said. And people said Zack was too emotionally obtuse to be kind. Clearly in his interpretation of my long absence he was assuming the best about me – and that was a great kindness. In truth I hadn't visited Zack once since his escape to help us on a case. Sweets would probably interpret such behavior as some kind of emotional avoidance – an ambiguous and absurd conjecture, of course.
"I should have remembered to bring you a copy of the latest Jeffersonian Magazine," I said. "There was an article about my time in Maluku. I can tell you, though, that none of our findings were significant."
"You don't look well," Zack said. I laughed – an involuntary response because it was so unusual for Zack to be so perceptive. "I'm in a therapy group that's focusing on nonverbal communication," he explained. "I've found the experience moderately edifying. Although it's difficult to respect a group leader that chooses the precept 'listen with your eyes.'"
I laughed again. It was amazing that Zack could make me laugh, especially when filling my lungs with each breath seemed so arduous.
"He might as well say 'taste with your hands,'" I commiserated.
"When I said you didn't look well I meant physically unwell, but you might be sad. Or angry. Interpreting body language is one of my weaknesses."
He was waiting for me to give him the correct answer – like always. "I found the case I just finished to be very difficult," I chose to answer.
"How so?" he immediately asked. "Did you have difficulty identifying the cause of death?"
"No – I had difficulty approaching the case objectively."
A blank stare from Zack. "You've never struggled with objectivity before," he said.
"I know," I answered. "I was… distracted by significant similarities between myself and the murder victim."
"But you aren't dead," Zack pointed out.
"True, but there were striking similarities," I insisted.
"Can you give me an example?" Zack pushed.
I thought of the ring, the picture, the voice, but for Zack those would be trifling coincidences. In fact Zack was probably the worst person to have this conversation with.
"One of the men who knew the victim, Lauren, said that if she rationally decided there were too many people in the world she'd unleash a plague to kill us all."
As soon as I said it I regretted it.
"That sounds like a similarity with me, not you," he said.
"I didn't –"
"Although there was a fundamental flaw in my reasoning. You would never make such a mistake. Ergo you shouldn't worry about becoming a mass murderer."
How could I possibly respond? Zack would probably never understand my emotional experience with this case. Was this how Booth felt, talking to me? Like I would never understand? Like I was some sort of emotionally defective charity case?
I vowed to myself I would abandon Zack again.
"I brought a game," I said, reaching into my purse.
"Is it a math problem? Hodgins brings me math problems."
I laid the deck of cards on the table between us. "It's a game my dad and I have played. It's called Blitz. It's a game of pure chance, so your heightened intelligence shouldn't affect the odds."
"Can I count cards?" he asked.
I considered. "Possibly, but ultimately what matters is your reflexes."
"Ah, so you plan to use my diminished manual function against me," he said. I laughed again.
When I left McKinley Psychiatric Hospital I didn't feel better so much as determined to stand by Zack. If I felt abandoned by Booth, I'm sure Zack felt even worse. Or if he didn't realize he felt that way, deep down, he was still lonely. I knew because I was like him, no matter if he told me otherwise.
I turned my phone on as I walked to my car. As I sat in the driver's seat my phone chirped. I looked at the screen:
16 Missed Calls
6 New Voice Messages
This made no sense. What possible emergency could have taken place during my brief absence? I opened the call log.
Seeley Booth…
Seeley Booth…
Seeley Booth…
And then the phone started ringing in my hand.
