A/N: Things are moving along. One more chapter after this, I think, and that should be it. Thanks for reading, and reviews would be lovely!


They say it's permanent.

It takes him roughly four or five times of waking up to a pitch-black room in the middle of the day to remember it long-term. And after each time he forgot, remembering was, without fail, a swift punch in the gut that never stopped aching until he fell asleep again.

They say it's permanent, and that terrifying fact is all he can manage to keep his mind on; it is expansive and all-consuming. It's the only thing he can see.


One week after he first opened his eyes, once he's able to stay awake for longer than twenty minutes at a time, the doctors tell him that the back of his skull had to be surgically rebuilt, put back together like some fragmented puzzle. He tries to imagine it in his mind's eye, but his mind's eye is so rarely right. He's left with just a hazy idea. Words, words, words – that's all.

Perhaps that's why the words emergency brain surgery and projectile extraction don't scare him as much as they probably should. The bullet in the back of his brain is meaningless, now that it's no longer there. All he's got to attest to how close he'd been to death is the word of the people around him, just vague concepts of coma, brain swelling, bleeding – and it's hard to give any of it that much weight when he's being pumped so full of painkillers. There's just a dizzying, drowsy ache in his head – nothing that could kill him.

Perhaps his own widespread apathy should scare him as much as the fact that he can't see does. But it doesn't.

And he doesn't particularly care.


"Is someone there?" he asks, his voice still rough from two and a half, bordering on three, months without use. (And God, he hates that. It's bad enough he's got to ask the open air if anyone is standing in it, but now he must do so with a voice so full of weakness and exhaustion.)

He hears someone let out a pent up breath.

"Yeah," the voice of Angela Montenegro echoes across the room. "Hey, Sweets."

"Hey."

And they fall back into the steady hum of near-silence. He can hear her breathing by the doorway, assuring him that she hasn't left yet, and he tries to point his head in her direction. He can't be sure it's convincing, though.

After a minute or so, he tilts his chin slightly up and opens his mouth to speak.

"Angela?" he calls, and she hums a response. He hesitates for a moment. "What do I look like? I mean, right now."

He knows well how he looked back in April. Now in late July, after a certain degree of Hell, he's got no idea.

She pauses before answering.

"Well… you look tired."

"And what does that look like?" he very nearly snaps, very nearly begs for more detail. Something inside him is sorry for the near-outburst, but he can't bring himself to verbalize it.

"It looks like…" she trails off. Sweets can't see the look on her face, and each second she doesn't say anything is another pinprick of worry in his stomach.

She offers a small, disenchanted sigh and says, "It looks like heavy, purple half-circles underneath your eyes. And your face is a lot thinner – almost gaunt. Pale. Your hair… they had to shave it when they brought you in. Once they got the bullet out and your skull was starting to heal, they tried to even it out, but… it still grew back sort of uneven."

Bringing a hand to his head, he first feels the bandages still covering stitches in the back. But around it, he feels his own hair.

"Where's it uneven?"

And he hears the distant-then-close clicking of Angela's heels on the linoleum floor as she comes near and gently grabs his hand. She guides his fingers over different parts of his head.

"See, it's shorter here," she says softly, bringing his hand first to the sides of his head, and then to the front as she finishes, "And longer here. It's not very pronounced, so you can't really notice unless you look closely. But they said once the stitches are out, we can try to fix it."

He nods, vaguely unsatisfied with the lack of details, but entirely unsure of what he can ask to get a better picture.

All he can bring himself to say is, "Thank you."


Booth and Brennan are back the next day, and he tries to wait an appropriate amount of time before asking them some of his more pertinent questions.

He ends up waiting five minutes and no longer.

"Have you heard from Pelant?" he asks, his voice near deadpan. And as soon as he says it, the room - which had been full of light, if careful, conversation - goes quiet.

It stays that way for a long while, with no answers being offered at all. Finally, Sweets just tilts his head towards where he's fairly sure Booth and Brennan are.

"If I had to guess," he says. "I'd say that the two of you are looking at each other, trying to figure out how to answer the question. Am I right?"

Another pause.

And then it's Brennan who answers with only slight difficulty, "You are correct…. We haven't heard a word from Pelant. He hasn't called or sent anything out, and the woman... the woman who shot you is still awaiting trial."

"It's taking three months to organize the trial?"

"No," she answers. "They've decided to delay it until the person she attempted to kill is able to take part. The district hasn't even decided on a legal team to prosecute her yet. So I don't foresee it starting any time soon."

To that, Sweets nods - before he realizes that nodding still makes his head ache from all sides, and it's something to be avoided for the moment.

He switches topics not quite seamlessly, but quickly nonetheless.

"And how are you?"

Still the same psychologist he's always been – just slightly diluted with lost time and idle sleep. Instead of having to wait for a response this time, it comes far too fast. Almost instantly Booth answers.

"Fine," he says, his tone starting out defensive but finishing soft. "We're fine. We're just glad you're okay."

Sweets considers this for a moment; he considers it a stretch.

"What do you look like right now?"

And the answer, just like before, comes far too soon.

"The same as we did in April."

The psychologist closes his eyes at the statement, tries to imagine it. He has a clear enough picture; he just wishes it was the truth. His jaw tightens for just a moment.

"I'd appreciate it... if you didn't lie to me," he says, his voice shaking again, to his pure frustration. He tilts his head slightly to the left, towards where Brennan should be. "Dr. Brennan - you'll give me an objective answer, I'm sure. What does Booth look like?"

At first, like before, there's nothing. And then there's Brennan's hesitant voice.

"He looks... tired. He got his hair trimmed yesterday, so it's about the same length it was in April, perhaps a bit shorter. But it's messy. Sticking every which way. He also shaved yesterday, for the first time in a while, but it looks like he missed a few spots along his jawline..."

He hears the sound of skin on skin, and he's left to assume it's Booth rubbing a hand over his face at the comment.

"And Booth, what does Dr. Brennan look like?"

"She looks," his voice starts right away, even if there's hesitation in his words. "Beautiful, as usual. She has her hair put up in a bun, and she did her make-up really nice this morning. Thin black eyeliner on the top eyelid. Her clothes are a little wrinkled; she's wearing a purple button-down and jeans. Other than that… she's got that look on her face, the one she gets when she's thinking about something scary but doesn't want anyone to know. Where she purses her lips, and her eyes get all big. But other than that… that's all I can say."

Silence stretches through the room for a few moments before Sweets finally nods his head again, keeping the movement small and slow so as not to jar anything.

"Thank you."

"We're going to catch Pelant, Sweets," Booth says, his voice firm, as if this is more than a promise; it's a fact. To that fact, Sweets can only offer a halfhearted smile.

"I know," he says. "I never doubted that. I still don't."

And the rest – is silence.


They get him out of bed in the days that follow, and walking turns out to be a bigger challenge than expected – although after three months off his feet, the pronounced muscle atrophy should have been expected. Nonetheless.

It takes a while, but after a time he finds himself shuffling down the hallway, leaning heavily on both the walker they've handed him and the person to his right. And during a brief pause, with sweat running down his temples, his frustration – at being reduced to this, God, to dragging his feet through a hospital, unable to even stand upright without assistance, his head hurting more and more as they wean him off of the painkillers – bubbles up and starts to overflow.

"How am I even supposed to know where I'm going?" he snaps, nearly growls out in a desperate huff. He can't see himself, but he feels his eyes go wide with every emotion he can't quite find the words for. He feels moisture by the corners of his eyes but no tracks down his cheeks. His arms and legs all shake violently – under not only the weight of his own body, but that of everything else combined.

The doctor to his left, soft-spoken and impossibly calm, maintains his patience.

"Well," he says. "Agent Booth is on your right. Remember? You trust him. Just let him help you. He'll guide you."

There are no words after that; the hand on his right shoulder just tightens its grip. And after a few moments more of catching his breath, Lance Sweets gathers himself, nods his head, and stumbles on into the darkness.


A/N: Shamelessly steals line from Hamlet. No matter! As always, I continue to beg for reviews! Next chapter should be up soon. Thanks for reading!