Author's note #1:
It has been ages (again)... hopefully some people are still interested in how this pans out;) All mistakes belong solely to me, and as a warning (maybe not so much for this chapter, but for the future) this is AU, mainly because I started it mid season 2, but I'm gonna reserve the right to include bits from all episodes aired. Thanks to everyone who left me such great feedback for the last chapter.
CHAPTER THREE
Magnified
-x-
But I will learn to breathe this ugliness you see,
so we can both be there and we can both share the dark.
And in our honesty, together we will rise
out of our nightminds and into the light at the end of the fight.
-x-
The dust slowly settled and the world came back into focus - a bed, a chest of drawers, an open door. Her body seemed to jump and she found herself in the hallway with no recollection of how she'd gotten there.
Booth's voice was deadly low, with a dangerous calmness that rooted her to the spot. She swallowed and concentrated on the frayed edges of the wallpaper that seemed to curl tighter with every heartbeat. In the distance she could make out two figures - one unmistakably Booth, the second a shorter man, held tightly against the wall.
There was the ticking of a gun being cocked and the sculpture before her shifted forward as the man balked in fright.
"I'm going to ask you this once and you are going to answer. This -" Booth gestured at his gun "- is not a threat. One hesitation and it's a promise."
The man nodded, and Booth relaxed his arm slightly, releasing just enough pressure from the man's neck so as he could speak.
Brennan clung to the opposite wall and carefully made her way up the length of the corridor until she faced them. This was all wrong.
"Who are you?" Booth hissed, "What do you want?" His eyes were hardened steel, cold and capturing.
There was a pause before the sickening crack of the man's head hitting the wall reverberated down the corridor. Brennan fought the urge to cry out.
"You remember that promise?" Booth lifted the gun and held the barrel against his head.
The humming heat of the strip light grew unbearable and she felt the moment slow down as a wave of dizziness tossed her back and forth.
"No.." The man spluttered, trying to breath as he sagged against the wall.
"Booth -" Brennan's voice was strangled and high pitched.
"Not now, Bones," he brushed her off.
"Booth," she gasped. "I think he works here." Her feet collapsed beneath her and she slid down the wall to the ground.
For the first time Booth looked down and took in the well-worn uniform that the middle-aged man wore and the name tag, freshly polished that was pinned to his front.
His regret was immediately palpable, as he backed off.
"Is that true?" He questioned.
The man's palms were sticky and sweaty and pressed against the wall. One hand wound its way free and made a weak grasping motion as if he were trying to surrender. He managed a sharp nod, though his gaze was wide and remained haphazardly fixed on his assailant.
"Don't move." Booth, unsure and breathing heavily, kept his gun loosely trained on the man as he took a step back.
"Are you okay?" he asked Brennan, his free hand gently touching the side of her forehead.
Her cheeks coloured as she nodded. "Fine."
He lowered his gun. "The note you put under our door. Where did it come from?"
"It.. it was phoned. He phoned and told me to write it down."
"He?"
"I don't know who. It was a man. He said to keep put it under the door when both of you were there. And I saw you come in.."
"How long?" Booth's voice raised a tone. "How long ago was this?"
"I don't know... I don't.." The man's forehead creased, and his hands trembled with agitation as he tried to remember. "An hour ago, maybe."
Booth pulled Brennan to her feet. "Pack up your stuff. We need to leave here now."
-x--x--x- -x--x--x-
The heat rose slowly from the ground distorting the tyres and wheels that lay scattered about the junkyard. Brennan's coat lay flung across the fence as she absently swung from the wooden bar. The distance was uninviting and all consuming, a single tree the lonely barrier between herself and an empty horizon.
Behind her she could almost make out Booth's voice as he bargained with the owner, his hand as it gently tapped against the bonnet of his van. There had been a measure of pride in his eyes as she'd admired it earlier and now she couldn't bear to watch as he handed over the keys to a stranger in return for whatever piece of scrap metal might carry them further away from all that was familiar.
"Ready?" His hand on her shoulder distracted her momentarily.
"Guess so." She took one last look at the dealer as he revved the engine from the front seat of the van.
Booth turned her head back to face him and waited until she looked up to catch his eye. "We don't know how they're tracking us. Better that we cover all our bases, right?"
She nodded tiredly. Booth would have noticed if they'd been followed and after searching through their small pile of possessions to locate any form of tracking device, all that remained was the van itself.
Brennan picked up her jacket and followed him towards the rusty car that lay abandoned by the gate. Booth dumped their belongings into the back seat and slid the key into the ignition. After a momentary splutter the engine coughed into life.
It works, she thought. It works.
A few miles later and Booth had figured out how to use the radio. Sitting back in his seat he drummed the steering wheel in time to the music, then opened the window causing Brennan's hair to spread out behind her like a fan.
She turned to him in annoyance, but soon found that her bad mood was no match for his chilled out demeanour and yielded to a smile. He grinned back at her and absent-mindfully punched her shoulder.
"What?" she shouted over the noise of wind and gravel.
"Nothing," he returned. "Just good to see you smile again."
He turned back towards the road and began to hum. She stared at him a second longer before doing the same, her smile holding fast as the world sped by.
-x--x--x- -x--x--x-
The ease that had settled between them dissolved as the first low buildings of the suburbs slipped by and reality slowly trickled in through the slant of the open window. Brennan felt Booth's mood change, as his forehead creased and the silence consumed her unspoken words. She played with her lip, catching it between teeth and tongue. These were the moments where she failed to distinguish between the need for space and the need for reassurance; both tending to be swallowed whole by unplanned monologues.
So she waited. Booth would speak when his brooding was done. Or not at all. Either way, she was suddenly terrified of whatever it was they had done or were about to do; or indeed what they hadn't done at all.
He pulled the car over into a parking lot and shut the engine off.
"It's a block from here," he said. "We go in, do what we have to do and get out. Don't talk to anyone."
"Fine," she said shortly. "Surely your card will flash up that you're an out of town agent anyway. I fail to see why we have to be so clandestine about the whole thing."
"You call this clandestine?" Booth smirked.
She sighed. "You're acting like this is an operation requiring some degree of precision. From what I see it's just a normal in, check a database and go."
"It's not that simple," he argued. "The best way to arouse suspicion is to look suspicious, Bones, so I suggest you act as normal as possible."
Brennan held her breath.
"Look," Booth said, his voice taking on a more serious tone. "The way things stand we have our guy and he's on the system and we nail him. That term, the 'Two-hit' thing - it's not known, Bones. We knew it - three of us, and the only others who could possibly know are.." He pointed up. "Top level. Access to a lot of files."
"So," she said tonelessly as understanding dawned, "what you are saying is that we are either going to get through security with no trouble, but there's the possibility that as soon as you swipe your card we'll be.., it'll be.."
"What I'm saying," he stated, "is that I don't know. I don't know who the enemy is, Bones."
-x--x--x- -x--x--x-
Her father was a criminal. The thought suddenly hung loosely around her, as she watched Booth fumble in his pocket for his swipe card.
Nobody paid them any attention, the other agents milled around the office building without a second glance. She was not her father, she told herself, but there was a vague and unfamiliar thrill that raced through her as Booth's card suddenly opened the door and allowed them access.
"No alarms," she commented.
"Not yet," Booth replied. "Of course that's not to say they aren't silent and all video camera eyes are now on us."
She considered this for a moment.
"Come on," Booth urged her.
"Have you any idea of the layout of this place?" she hissed as they walked quickly down a lengthy corridor.
Booth looked around. "No, but I made up for it by timing our little adventure during lunchtime."
"What do mealtimes have to do with anything, other than the fact that we've barely eaten.. oh!" she broke off.
They stumbled into the main office area. It was deserted, the quietness punctuated only by the whirring of computers and the flashing of screensavers.
"Good timing," Brennan murmured, before snapping back into work mode. "Okay, you start looking over there. I'll start here. There's bound to be some hooker agent that forgot to log himself off."
"Rookie," Booth supplied.
"Huh?"
"Nothing." His fingers tapped at the keyboard, his face washed out by the brightness of the monitor. "And I'm.. in!"
There was a loud clap as Booth rubbed his hands together and pushed his chair back from the desk. Brennan pulled herself to a stand and hurried over to lean on the desk beside him.
"That was fast," she exclaimed.
"Well," he began modestly, "I was once told that the best security breaches are the ones that I don't do myself. Seriously, this dude even left his database window open."
"He must have been really hungry," Brennan stated.
Booth chuckled. "I guess."
Briefly, she felt her skin flush as though his gaze had set her flesh ablaze, but the sensation was too soon extinguished - the fire watered down by a tide of goosebumps: saturating and soft, but ultimately so fleeting that she could deny it ever existed.
"Who's first?" she whispered.
"George Xavier." Booth deftly typed in his name. The screen flickered, a small hourglass turning over and over, as the photograph in the window ticked and changed.
"He was a good man," he said, looking over his shoulder. "They both were. I can't imagine either of them having anything to do with this, Bones. We trusted each other without question."
He exhaled, as the machine beeped.
"Booth -" Brennan balanced herself on his shoulder and leaned over to run a finger across the screen. "He'd dead."
Booth followed her finger. "Killed in action 199- God, Bones, he didn't even make it home from Kosovo."
"You didn't know?" she asked. Booth had slipped into a strained silence, his eyes fixed on the screen.
"We were spilt up shortly afterwards. It was the way things worked for us," he said monotonously. "I guess I'd just always assumed that we'd all made it home."
He sighed and typed in the second name.
"Paul Lewis," Brennan read aloud.
"I don't believe this." Booth banged his fist on the desk. "Two years ago. Heart attack."
Brennan was still for a moment, allowing things to sink in. "They can't both be dead. It's not logical! Who else, Booth? There has to be someone else who knows."
She pulled a chair over and sat down dejectedly. "There's got to be someone else. Are you sure that it was just the three of you?"
"Yes!" Booth stood up. "We invented the concept, there was never anyone else there. Nobody else shared our quarters, except -" He paused. "We picked up an injured soldier on the side of the road on our way there. But he didn't know. He was just a kid. We kept him out of the loop."
He looked at his hands. "There is no way he could have known. We were careful never to say anything to him. Hell, we even had one person stay with him while the others were off.. hypothesizing."
"Name?" Brennan asked.
"Ansar," replied Booth. "Lucas Ansar. We called him Luke."
The screen flickered and then froze at the grainy image of a young man.
"That's him," Booth said.
"He's alive," Brennan pointed out. "But he's not army any more. Medical discharge after he returned home." Her voice took a more serious tone. "He was diagnosed with FSH dystrophy."
"FSH?" Booth wondered.
"How did he even manage to get through training in the first place? He must have been symptomatic even before he was deployed. This is very unusual, Booth," she said.
"FSH?"
"Facioscapulohumeral Dystrophy. It's a form of muscular dystrophy that causes weakness and wasting of the muscles around the eyes and mouth, and of the shoulders, upper arms and lower legs. It's unlikely for someone to have no symptoms by the age of twenty. You said he was injured. What injury did he have?"
Booth shrugged. "Some shoulder thing. He said he strained them. There wasn't any obvious injury, but he couldn't lift his arms above his head. He was eighteen at the time, by the way."
Brennan paused. "He's not the shooter, Booth. It would have been very difficult for him to climb a tree and aim at my window."
"I'm glad you agree. He had no idea of -"
"I think he's the accomplice," she informed him.
"What?" he said sharply, "that's a bit of a leap. Especially for you."
"Look at his file," she gestured towards the screen. "Fourteen month sentence for fraud and money laundering, violent tendencies. He was released from jail six months ago. He's a criminal."
"Just because he has a record doesn't mean he's responsible for this. You of all people should realise that," Booth argued.
"He was there, Booth. Regardless of whether or not you think he didn't hear or know anything. He was still around the three of you which makes him a suspect. And then there's you."
"Oh," he said sarcastically, "and how am I implicated?"
"You take on this massive guy outside my block, someone who is supposed to be dangerous and you walk away with no injury, no bruises - nothing."
"So, he wasn't the best at hand-to-hand," Booth replied nonchalantly, "plus it always helps to have the element of surprise."
Brennan was distinctly unimpressed. "Or maybe he was too weak to put up any fight at all, even after you'd surprised him."
There was a stony silence.
"I'm not trying to cast doubt on your combat abilities, Booth. I'm just wondering if it's possible."
He sighed again. "He wasn't the opponent I'd expected. Far from it, in fact. He was unresponsive, not just verbally.. he didn't lash out at all. He had a limp, as though he had to drag one of his feet."
"Foot drop," Brennan said automatically. "It's him."
Booth ran a hand through his hair.
She quickly printed the file and they left as speedily as they had arrived, the haze of adrenaline not yet faded. Even so, as the building grew smaller behind them the one thought that ran a loop through her mind was that the discovery was small, and that the shooter was still unknown.
-x--x--x- -x--x--x-
Driving to destination nowhere was more exhausting that Booth had anticipated. Brennan had fallen asleep again, and he'd haplessly been taking random exits and following random road signs ever since. She'd finally awoken when he'd had enough and pulled into a lay-by.
He wondered if he could ever get used to motels. It was comforting to have a bed and roof, but as he looked around the room, he felt a strange pang of loneliness. The place was old and shabby. It had seen many travellers through a cold night, yet stayed static and unchanged while everyone moved on: transience magnified, or catalysed. He hated goodbyes.
Brennan sat on the bed, filling in the newspaper crossword. She was as still as the walls that surrounded her, but he could feel the dynamic between them shift and change.
Booth finished up unpacking and moved over towards her.
"I didn't know that left wing advertising was your thing, Bones." He pointed at the pen she was holding.
"Oh," she lifted it up between two fingers for inspection. "This isn't mine. I think Russ left it the last time he was here."
She frowned. "Practices like this are quite clever. It's an effective means of promoting a cause to a wider audience. Had you not pointed out the logo, I may have noticed it on a subconscious level, a reading between-"
"It's okay." He interrupted, leaning over and grabbing her wrist to pull the pen into view. "I'm sure the, eh, 'Maverely Foundation' are glad of your support."
She glared at him and resumed writing. "This room is too small for both of us."
He chuckled and settled himself on the bed next to her. "You're just too used to having an apartment to yourself." He wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
She stood up and flung the pen at him. "You are so frustrating. I'm going to the -" she looked around, realising her options were limited, "-bathroom."
"Bones?" His voice had softened considerably.
She looked back at him.
"You surprised me, today."
"I did?" She stilled, thrown off balance by his remark.
"I guess I'd expected you to ask me what the note said at some point."
She shrugged, but her expression wobbled slightly as she sat back down beside him. "I suppose I knew that if it were important to the case you'd tell me."
She cleared her throat.
"Do I need to know what it said, Booth?"
He squeezed her shoulder. "Naah," he whispered. "But I know you, and I know that you're going to ask me to tell you anyway."
"That's true," she conceded.
He rubbed her arm, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper. Her breath caught in her throat as she unfolded it, revealing the spidery handwriting and dark ink.
"Missed you," it shouted at her.
Author's note #2:
Lyrics at the top are from the song "Nightminds" by Missy Higgins. Thank you for reading, and as always feedback is adored;)