Chapter Seven – What Hurts The Most

"I don't know what to say to you." Booth said, looking away from me once he'd closed the door to Angela's office. "This is just...I can't understand this." He seemed to have calmed down slightly – he was still angry, but he now appeared more vulnerable than before. I could see the hurt that he was feeling just by the way he spoke to me, the way he stood there, leaning against the wall. He looked as if he'd seen a ghost – if that were possible. This was what I feared the most, not the borderline violent side of him I'd just seen. You expect that reaction from a man like Booth, who liked to characterise himself as an alpha male, who liked to be in control. To see this side of him, however, was almost unsettling. Sure, I'd seen his sensitive side on many occasions before, but never like this. Never because of me.

"I don't expect you to, Booth." She said, through her tears, which seemed to be easing off slightly. I understood that this wasn't going to be easy for her, either, but I hadn't done anything to her. She'd brought this upon herself – and me – so why should I be sympathetic?

"But she's mine. You had my kid." He sounded as if he still didn't quite believe it. I didn't really believe it either, not fully, even though all of the evidence was clearly in front of me. Sometimes seeing all the facts still doesn't make something like this feel real. I was finally beginning to understand where Booth had always been coming from when he had those 'gut feelings'. Three years ago, my gut told me to stay in DC, but I let my over-rational head dictate my decisions. I never thought I find myself admitting this, but I wish I'd listened to my gut. "What the hell happened?"

"Are you sure you don't remember any of it?" He shook his head.

"If I did, do you think I'd be half as confused as I am right now?" And if I did, don't you think I'd have made the connection earlier? Surely she didn't think I was that stupid. Or maybe she did, and that's why she thought she could get away with this for so long. She was surprisingly arrogant when it came to her own intelligence, particularly in relation to mine.

"No, I don't." She said, shaking her head a little. "Just let me explain, Booth." 'Just let yourself explain, Brennan.' I told myself. It was harder to do than I'd imagined. No one expects to ever have to explain to someone they love why they took their child away. No one expects to get sympathy for it, either. No one expects forgiveness and yet somehow I still hoped I'd get it from him. Hope really was a dangerous thing.

"I'm not stopping you." I wasn't. I wanted to hear this. It would probably be a pathetic excuse for the world of hurt she'd caused, a world that had just come crashing down around me. How was I ever going to get past this? How could I ever look at her the same way again? She was the mother of my child; I was supposed to feel something for her. In an ideal world, she'd let me. It seemed as if she actively prevented me from loving her at every opportunity available, but somehow I'd managed to get around every obstacle she'd placed before me. I wasn't certain I'd ever be able to overcome this particular road-block, however. This was...this was too much. "But just tell me, why did you ask me for my, you know, 'stuff' in the first place?" I didn't understand why she wanted anybody's 'stuff' in the first place – I had been under the impression that she never wanted kids at all – but right now I figured that wasn't the most important thing to be asking. What I needed to know was why she asked me, and especially why she never let me know I was a father again. I didn't expect a very convincing argument, but I reasoned that it was better to just hear her out.

"You mean your sperm?" No, Brennan, my baseball card collection. I nodded. "I wanted a baby, and you seemed like a good candidate for sperm donation. I mean, Olwyn looks mostly like you, and you said yourself that she's very beautiful. It's an evolutionary thing, Booth, that drives the need for us to find an attractive mate. We want to ensure the best possible genetic make-up for our offspring." Hang on, did she just say, in her roundabout kind of way, that I was hot?

"But can't you, you know, go to a...bank, and just pick a random guy?"

"Well I didn't want my child to have some random stranger's DNA, Booth. I know you, and I know your personality. I also wanted my child to inherit some of those other aspects of you, too. I wouldn't be able to know everything I knew about you about an anonymous donor."

"So basically you're saying that you wanted my child? Specifically?" That was...interesting.

"Yes, I won't deny that I did want your child."

"But why did I agree to this? I mean, as good as your arguments are, there's no way I'd just let you have my kid, Brennan. We'd have to be together before that could happen. I'd have to be a Dad to our child, not just a donor." If only you knew how much I wanted you to let me in, to let us have that kind of family. Don't you see that we could have been so much happier together? Maybe if I'd just come out and told you that, none of this would have happened.

"I don't know why you agreed, Booth. I did make myself very clear, that you wouldn't be the child's father, but you said yes anyway."

"But then …I didn't?" He seemed confused. This must have been difficult for him, not remembering what happened, especially when he needed to get into the mindset that he was in three years ago. Otherwise, I couldn't see him understanding those decisions. Not when they seemed so ludicrous to him now.

"Yes, you changed your mind. You told me that you couldn't bear to let me have your baby and not be a part of its life. Apparently you came to that decision with the help of a cartoon baby."

"What?" Wait, what?

"Yes, you had hallucinations of a cartoon baby, and they helped you come to the conclusion that you couldn't let me go through with it. Of course, that's when I realised that you had a tumour."

What the freakin hell was she talking about?

"A…cartoon baby?"

"Yes, I believe it was the child from Family Guy. The one with the completely out of place accent and oddly-shaped head."

"Stewie Griffin. Okay, well that's not weird at all. And how the hell do you know who he is, anyway?"

"I googled 'Stewie Griffin' and came across a YouTube video in which the child pole vaults into a glass cabinet and then runs around the room with a large piece of glass protruding from his forehead. It seemed like a television programme that you would have appreciated more than I do." Again with the insulting of my intelligence.

"Okay, whatever, me seeing Stewie Griffin is really not important right now. If I told you I didn't want you to do it, why did you go ahead?"

"Remember what I said earlier? I was already pregnant before you had that tumour-induced epiphany of sorts. I was about to tell you I'd been inseminated when you told me not to do it. I became distracted by the clearly worrying symptoms you were presenting, and then before I knew it I was sitting at your bedside for a week, waiting for you to wake up. When you did, you looked me in the eyes and told me in all sincerity that you had no idea who I was."

"And you thought then would be an appropriate time to just up and leave? How was that supposed to be protecting me?" He asked, incredulously.

"When I'd gotten inseminated, I was under the impression that you didn't want anything to do with my child. When you said you couldn't do that, that you had to be a part of her life, Olwyn suddenly became your child, too. I'd seen what having Parker out of wedlock had done to you - this wasn't your fault, you didn't deserve that again. So I left, and you didn't have to even know she existed." This really made my blood boil. She made it sound as if I resented having Parker, as if she would have been placing an extra burden on me by having my baby. I could barely look at her - not that I was making much eye contact to begin with.

"What the hell are you talking about, Brennan? You think I don't love Parker with everything I have, just because I don't see him all the time? Just because ours isn't exactly a nuclear family? He's the most important person in my life, or at least he was until about fifteen minutes ago. I don't understand why you couldn't have just told me about her! I would have been there for my daughter, no matter what! I would have been there for both of you!"

"But neither of us wanted to start a family together." Hey speak for yourself, Brennan. You can't imagine how privileged I would I have felt to be the father of your kid. Back then, anyway. When I was still naïve enough to believe we could actually have a relationship that would work. "I wanted a child on my own, and I thought you understood that. I wasn't ready to become the mother of your baby - I wasn't even ready to be more than a friend to you."

"Well when you ask someone for their sperm, you're kind of going beyond the friend zone." I can't believe I actually had to tell her that.

"I understand that now, but it didn't feel that way when I asked you. All I could see was that it made logical sense: I wanted a child, and you had sperm that would provide my child with excellent genes. I didn't understand the emotional implications for either of us, no matter how many times Sweets tried to explain them to me." Of course she didn't. She was emotionally stunted. "When you didn't object it only reinforced my skewed perspective, made me think my over-rational and logical approach to conceiving a child was valid. I was able to ignore all the emotions involved until you finally owned up to your true feelings. Your timing was impeccable, by the way."

"Hey don't try to pin this on me. Just because you can't understand normal people's emotions doesn't mean this is my fault! I was sick!" I couldn't believe she was trying to make it out as if I'd caused this. Okay, sure, I wasn't completely innocent – I'd made my fair share of mistakes – but you gotta admit that she was most at fault. And I wasn't in the best frame of mind to be making those decisions, even if none of us were aware of it at the time. Who knows whether or not the tumour had been the only reason I'd been willing to let Brennan have my stuff in the first place? I know I certainly wouldn't let her if she asked me now that I was tumour-free.

"That's not what I'm trying to say, Booth! This is my fault! All I'm trying to do is explain my reasoning behind what I did. Obviously you contributed to my decisions, but I never even thought of blaming you. You were just trying to make me happy, despite your own feelings. You did the right thing when you told me the truth. Your timing was just unfortunate."

"Look, I get that I changed my mind too late; I don't blame you for that. That was my fault. I should have been straight with you from the beginning. But if you'd just been straight with me, we wouldn't have had a problem. I would have understood the situation. It's not like you forced me into giving you my stuff. I made a conscious decision to let you have it. When you got…"

"Inseminated." I never quite understood why Booth had such a problem with saying that word.

"Yeah…that…anyway, you had my permission. It was my own damn fault that I didn't tell you the truth in time. I wouldn't have punished you for doing what I told you you could do. I mean, I get that you wanted to be an independent mom, and while I'm not saying that I could have been completely on-board with you raising my kid alone, we could have worked something out. I'm not an unreasonable guy, Brennan. You know that.

"What I just don't get is why you left when I was sick."

"I was trying to protect you, Booth."

"Stop saying that! I didn't need protecting!" He snapped back at me.

"Well I thought you did. I felt like I'd made a huge mistake and I didn't want you to have to suffer because of it."

"Oh yeah, because it would be such a pain to know I was the father of your baby. I don't know how I could have possibly survived." His tone was laced with sarcasm. "You seriously think I would have resented Olwyn?" As if it were possible for me not to love that little girl with all my heart.

"No, but I thought I was doing you a favour. You didn't ask for any of this. I thought that you wouldn't want to have to go through what you do with Parker, all over again, and I wasn't prepared to let you be the father you would want to be to her. I was being selfish. I was putting what I wanted before what you and Olwyn needed. That was wrong, and I understand that now." Angela had helped me to put that into words where I had always failed. If I hadn't had her unconditional support and realistic outlook throughout this, I'm not sure I ever would have been able to understand my own reasoning behind these decisions.

"So you thought that me losing my best friend," and so much more than that, "when I was seriously ill, and then not hearing from her for nearly three years was better than me finding out I had a kid who I couldn't be a father to. Yeah, that makes total sense."

"Booth, what you're failing to see is that I'm not defending myself or my actions, I'm just explaining why I did this to you; my perspective on the situation is clearly different now! What I did was selfish and irrational, and there's no excuse for it; I can see that now that I've had the privilege of having Olwyn. That's why I'm telling you about her now, Booth. That's why I want you to be a part of her life. I can't change the idiotic decisions I made or their consequences, but please recognise that I'm trying to fix this." And I think I could see that. I know Brennan was a bit obtuse when it came to human interactions, but having a child changes you, gives you a new outlook on life. I didn't expect Brennan to be an exception to this. What remained to be seen was the extent to which she'd evolved. I didn't want to get my hopes up - it doesn't take an emotional genius to work out that it was a bad move to hide a person's kid from them for three years. "If I could change what I did, I would, but you and I both know that's unfortunately impossible."

"Look I get that you regret what you did, but you can't expect that I'm not gonna be seriously pissed off with you about this for a long time." 'Pissed off' was probably putting it lightly.

"No, I get that. I don't…I don't expect you to forgive me for this. All I want you to know is that I am sorry." I could feel the tears prickling at my eyes, which were so weak from crying that they weren't ready to put up much of a fight. "I just…I just don't want you to miss any more time with her because of my stupid, selfish mistakes."

"So I can tell her who I am, then?" I really couldn't wait to hear her call me 'Daddy'. It's just this feeling I can't quite explain…I barely even knew this child, and yet I suddenly loved her more than anybody else in the world, except for Parker of course. I was still reeling from the news that I had a daughter, still not quite able fully understand what it mean, but this love felt real. That's all I needed.

"No." She said this very quickly. What the hell? She couldn't just stop me from telling my kid I was her Daddy. It was her fault that Olwyn wasn't aware of that fact for the last two and a half years – she had absolutely no right to keep up this charade.

"I wasn't really asking, to be honest." He said, making towards the door.

"No! You can't. I mean, of course you can, but just…not yet. You can't just go up to her and tell her who you are, Booth. She won't understand." Olwyn was highly intelligent, but she was still only a highly intelligent two year old, after all. This was going to turn her world upside down – we had to do this carefully.

"Brennan, I have dealt with kids before. Unlike you, I'm not a first-time parent here."

"But you don't understand her like I do, Booth." She tried to explain. Of course I didn't understand her like she did – I had missed over two years of her life.

"And whose fault is that?" He snapped back.

"Look, I've said that I'm sorry, Booth. This is my fault, but that doesn't mean I'm not right, either." I sighed. I was the 'bad guy' here, for sure, but I needed him to see that I did have his and Olwyn's best interests at heart. I was trying to help. "I just want to tell her with you. She has to be able to see that we're both her parents, together, that she has both of us, not just one or the other." I feared that if Booth told her he was her father alone, and then took her out by himself, she'd get the impression that I was abandoning her, that she could only have one parent at a time. I didn't want it to be that way. I needed her to know that I would always be there for her, as would Booth. Two year olds are highly impressionable; you can't underestimate the effect that anything has on them.

"Fine, we can tell her together." I relented. I figured that if we were going to be parenting Olwyn together, we might as well start that way. "But I want to spend time with her afterwards."

"If she doesn't seem too perturbed by the news that you're her father, then I see no reason why I shouldn't let you."

"Well you know, I wasn't actually asking for your permission. She's my kid just as much as yours, Brennan. It's not your job to tell me what I'm allowed to do with her anymore." There was a venomous edge to his tone. "You're going to have to get that in to your head, okay? I know you're not used to sharing her, but as we both know, it takes two to make a kid, as much as I'm sure you wish that wasn't the case. You gotta share her."

"I know, Booth. I just…I want to make sure she's okay. I want you to spend time with her, more than anything, but children need to feel safe, they need stability. We need to ensure that she knows that she's safe, that while things are going to change, she's not going to lose anything. Like you said, she's the most important person in this equation."

"Fine, I get that." He nodded. "She is the most important person here. She doesn't need to suffer because of whatever we have going on between us. Now I don't think we should keep her waiting any longer, do you?" He made for the door, and I followed him out. I hated it when he looked at me like that, the hurt and anger evident in his eyes. I couldn't live with myself knowing I'd done that to him. All I wanted was for him to flash me that irresistible Booth smile and for everything to be okay again. I wasn't sure that he'd ever smile at me like that again, and that killed me inside. But this wasn't about Booth and me. This was about Olwyn and her Daddy. He'd smile like that at her, he'd hold her tight and he'd tell her he loved her without a second thought. I couldn't help but find myself feeling slightly envious of my two year old daughter at that moment. What in the world was I becoming?

And more importantly, why?

A/N – Thanks for all the great feedback (and messages of good luck ). The exams went well, it's great to have them over with now! The gap between updates won't be so long from now on…I have two weeks at home before heading to CTYI for three weeks, but I promise I'll write enough in those two weeks to keep updating while I'm away ^_^

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that chapter! Review whether you did or didn't – your feedback is always so helpful!

And thanks to my friend Sadhbh, who has been reading all these chapters before I publish them, discussing this fic with me and generally being someone to bounce ideas off for how this story is going to play out Merci beaucoup Sadhbh P: