The scene below with Angela is in response to some your comments about her reaction. After reading your reviews, I became inspired to add it.
The only reason I'm mentioning this is to let you know that reviews do have an effect - more than just earlier updates. I read every comment you post and when any of them get me thinking, I get to writing.
So, without further ado , here be:
Chapter 8: Guileless
Hodgins found Angela morosely fiddling with the Angelator. "Hey Babe." He hugged her from behind. "Apparently, Booth solved the case. I think this is the first time we can tell the family about the death and its cause all in the same conversation."
"Bren would pleased."
He followed her focus to a holographic collage of office photos: halloween parties, birthday celebrations and occasional work-mandated donor function. The common denominator in all of them was Dr. B and the team. "Cam texted her the update."
"She didn't reply?"
He shook his head with a frown. He could tell Angela was looking for something in the pictures, but he couldn't see what.
She zoomed in on one of her and Bren. "Am I a good friend?"
"You're the best friend anyone could ask for."
"Don't just say that because right now I feel as insecure about my social skills -"
"Dr. B?"
She put the remote down and it automatically zoomed back out. "I hate not knowing how to behave around her - like everything I do is just not the right thing."
"I know what you mean. I got used to making allowances for her hermity ways. It wasn't personal it was just Dr. B. And then I saw her completely shellless with him - it's like I never actually knew her. . . Almost a decade and I still don't know my boss."
"I don't know my best friend."
He turned her around so he could see her eyes. "She's not acting this way to make us feel bad. You believe that right?"
"It's weird, but I'd feel less hurt if it was an intentional Brennan plot, but this is just her - the real Bren."
"Maybe or maybe it's just another side of the old one."
"Have you ever seen her smile like that?" She walked towards the Angelator. "I've been looking and I can't find it with us. Not once."
"She's comfortable with him. Ange, remember when we had that case about her family?"
She snorted, "Which one?"
"Where we found her mom and Russ came down." She nodded. "I had never seen her so emotional. She was furious one second, then completely breaking down, and near catatonic the next. I'd only been working here a few years and honestly, it freaked me out."
"Me too."
"She was visibly breakable and we weren't used to that."
She sighed, "What's your point?"
"I think it was after that and then all the stuff with her dad that we really became a family: Booth, Bones and the squints." They looked at the recent picture where it was most visible that they were more than colleagues.
"I guess."
"Well, this guy, Caleb, he was there when all this stuff with her family really went down. He was probably around when Russ bailed and saw her get shuffled from one crappy foster home to the next. He saw her when breakable was kind of all she was." Angela nodded. "If being there for grown up Dr. B made us feel closer, it shouldn't surprise us that the friend who was there from the beginning is closest of all."
She looked back at him with a touch of awe. "You're wiser than you look."
He squeezed her hand softly. "It's gonna be okay. She loves us and we love her. She just has her own way of showing it."
"But Cal-"
"-Either you accept her as she is or you talk to her about it."
She pushed out her lower lip. "I don't like those options."
With a faint smile, he replied, "Friendship isn't easy. Caleb knows that which is probably why she trusts him."
"It's a lot harder for us."
He grinned skeptically. "You really believe that?" She looked sincere so he continued.
"You know how moody and uncooperative she gets when something is bugging her. Imagine a newly abandoned Dr. B and add in the hormone cocktail that is adolescence, and Cal, he stuck by her - through everything. The more I think about, the more I believe he earned his place with her."
"He did, didn't he? Poor Bren."
He smile sympathetically, "Poor Cal."
"It's going to be okay."
She sounded a little doubtful, so he reassured her. "Yeah, it really is."
She turned around and settled into his embrace. Together they pondered the pictures of their past with new eyes.
Sweets hesitantly knocked on the door. Not hearing a response but seeing the door was open, he stepped inside Booth's office. Instead of a reproachful scowl, Sweets found the agent slumped in his chair looking out the window wearily. On further inspection, the exhausted demeanor was almost purely emotional. "You notified Mr. Grimmet's parents today."
Still spacey, Booth just nodded.
"You okay? You know, I could have gone with you. If I'd known you were going to go so soon, I totally would have."
He scowled faintly. "Delivering bad news is bad enough without a shrink making faces. Thanks though."
Sweets frowned. "Expressing my sympathy is not making a face."
Turning his chair towards the younger man, his regained some of his usual animation. "It is when you're consciously doing it - here's my sympathy face, my understanding face, my omniscient professional face." He spat, "It's distracting and bordering disrespectful."
"I doubt the families see it in those terms."
"Disrespectful to your partner Sweets. Anything that makes a hard task harder is just plain rude."
Sweets expression reflected understanding. . . and shame. "I'm sorry."
Having turned towards the window again, Booth's tone turned suspicious. "You're making a face aren't you?"
"Not on purpose."
"I just need for this day to be over." He dragged a hand across his face wearily. "What did you need? I assume you had a reason for coming here besides making faces at me."
Even though the agent couldn't see it, Sweets nodded enthusiastically. "I know why he chose the fall."
"The squints already ruled out suicide."
"I mean the time of year. I know why he chose to break in during the fall five years ago."
Booth sighed completely uninterested. "Good job."
"Don't you want to know?"
"An accident doesn't require further investigation and my idle curiosity isn't what it used to be." Seeing the psychologist begin the slump, he continued, "but sure go ahead. Why the fall?"
"I checked the prison records. Mr. Evans was admitted to the infirmary in the beginning of October."
"Beaten?"
The young shrink coughed. "Among other things." Trying to suppress his blush, he continued, "Grimmet tried the appeal process again, but even if it had gone somewhere it would have taken a good long while, so he didn't wait long after Evans was attacked to try and get him out."
"And fate stepped in to keep a bad man behind bars."
He tilted his head thoughtfully. "I haven't heard you mention fate or destiny in a while."
"Well, no one is here to tell me it doesn't exist, so I figure, why not take advantage?"
He heard the weariness back in his tone and made an observation. "Something tells me you're finding the loyalty in this case less touching than you would usually."
" Not all loyalty is equal. Grimmet tried to break a convicted criminal out of jail."
"One who was being assaulted and had reason to fear for his life."
Booth raised both his brow and his volume. "You think what he tried to do was right?"
"I think it's understandable."
" Understandable? He died trying to break out a man he hadn't seen in years. I did my homework too. They went to the same school once, and then they moved on and grew up. Loyalty to a friendship that died years ago isn't touching and I sure as hell don't understand it. "
He took a calculated risk. "Maybe that's something you could bring up to Dr. Brennan."
Not even blinking at the subject change, he scoffed, "Because grilling her about her past leads to such great results."
"I didn't say to grill just -"
"You know your advice about me and Bones has been pretty iffy lately. You said to gamble, and I gambled so much, it scared her off. You told us we have this amazing connection and then I see what a real connection with her looks like." Sweets tried not to wince at the verbal lashing. "And you know, I want that with her more than anything, but you can't help me get that can you?" It was both an accusation and a plea, and Sweets responded with a confession-like answer.
"I can't change her."
"I'm not asking you to, but isn't your job to change us - to make us the best we can be? Why couldn't we be that?"
"That's something you'll have to work out with her."
"As soon as I stop fearing the result, I might."
" If you can't talk about what's important to you, then you two don't have any connection - romantic or otherwise."
He exited quietly leaving the agent to consider his words as well as the implications.
