A/N: This chapter is much shorter than the others, and I apologize for that. It's very emotion-packed, though, so hopefully that will make up for it. Title is from Crash and Burn by Lifehouse, which is one of my all-time favorite songs.
Chapter 8: Crash and Burn
And if I fall and crash and burn
At least we both know that I tried
And as I crawl there's lessons learned
Yeah, they remind me I survived
Silence just keeps screaming back at me
The ones I love are lost in memories
And I wish that I could take back what was done
You can only change the person you become
May 28th, 2018
Slowly, Booth let his cell phone snap shut, his eyes never leaving the room on the other side of the observation room mirror.
His face was hard as he finally turned to meet the alarmed-looking Sweets who was staring at him expectantly. He had just hung up with Angela after informing her of what had happened and what was now occurring. According to the artist, Brennan wasn't at the lab. Where she was, neither of them knew. She wasn't answering her cell.
Booth tried to not let his mind stray to possibilities. There had to be a reason she would suddenly vanish and cut off communication. Maybe she didn't even realize they were trying to contact her. Maybe she was at the gym... that would explain it.
He refused to believe that there could be another reason.
"Booth?" Sweets inquired. "Are you going to... explain what's going on? I was under the impression that Mr. Turner wasn't a prominent suspect? Does Dr. Brennan know about the arrest?"
The shrink had been listening to the conversation he had just had, so there were obviously other reasons he was asking Booth to answer the questions. Pushing that aside, though, he decided that just giving him what he wanted was the best solution for the moment.
"Not yet she doesn't," he said as calmly as possible. "And he made himself a prominent suspect a couple of hours ago."
"How?"
Booth sighed. Brennan still didn't know. It felt like a terrible betrayal of his own, for him to be sharing the information. With everything else, she didn't deserve this as well. But she was going to know soon enough, and Sweets was here to help.
Fighting away his guilt, he answered, "James was sleeping with the victim."
Sweets' jaw went slack, and he instantly cut his eyes towards the man in the interrogation room.
"He... did Brennan..?"
"She didn't know. Still doesn't know."
"Oh my God," Sweets said. It came out like a prayer, a whisper off of his lips as he shook his head. "How are you going to..?"
"I'm not going to," Booth said stiffly, nodding towards the man in the suit, who was still conversing lowly with the lawyer who wasn't a suspect. Yet. Joel was sitting in another interrogation room. It would be a while before Booth bothered getting to him.
"You're going to have James tell her himself," Sweets said, realization dawning. "I can see where that would be the more... pleasant option."
"Yeah, well... nothing is looking very pleasant," Booth spat, his glare returning to his face as he again considered the dozens of painful ways in which he could murder James. None of them would change the fact that Brennan's heart was going to be broken very shortly, though.
All these years, and he'd thought he was doing the right thing by backing off and letting her live her life with a man who she had fallen in love with. All these years, and he had suffered in silence, wanting to be with her more than anything, and thinking that at least if she wasn't with him, then she was with someone that made her happy.
And now, after all of that... he found out that this man, who had everything Booth had ever dreamed of... had had the audacity to turn his back on it. Like she wasn't enough. Like having Brennan love him, like having her to wake up to in the morning, like sharing all those memories and those close moments, like getting her to marry him, wasn't some sort of gift from the cosmos.
He could never have loved her the way Booth had. The way he still did.
But Brennan... Brennan had loved James.
His fists clenched at his sides.
"Who does know about this?" Sweets asked cautiously.
Booth's eyes slid shut again. "You, me, and Angela. And those two scumbag lawyers and the stalker."
The warning was implied. Don't tell anyone else.
Sweets nodded, his gaze returning to the interrogation room.
The door flew open in a sudden motion, and hurricane Brennan burst in. Booth barely noticed Sweets slipping out before the door clicked shut.
"How dare you!" she spat, sparing no layer of her emotions as she pushed herself straight into his face, her eyes burning and her teeth clenched. "You refuse to let me come on the interview, dropping me off at the lab like I'm incompetent in the field, and then you do this? What, were you planning ahead of time, and didn't want me getting in the way when you made the arrest? What grounds? What grounds made this okay? If you have evidence, and you didn't even think to share it with me—"
"Brennan."
"James has done absolutely nothing to warrant such—"
"Brennan, please just..."
"He's cooperated every time you had questions, he's opened his office to your investigation, and you repay him by—"
"Brennan!"
She stopped short, at last, her breath huffing out. Her hair was coming loose from the ponytail it had been in, and strands of it went up at all angles. He was reminded suddenly of the woman he had first met, all those years ago. The woman who had swung up and slapped him with all her strength because he had grabbed her arm. The woman who had snarled at him like a caged animal making a break with no thought but the attack.
"I didn't plan on arresting him, I promise." Her eyes didn't tame in the slightest; if anything, she looked angrier. He pushed on before she could start yelling at him again. "There's something you should know. It will... explain why I did what I did. But you need to ask him," he said, pointing through the glass. "You ask him why he's here. And if he doesn't tell you, then I can tell you that I will."
Her breathing was quieter, but her hands were still balled into fists.
"No," she said shortly, a quick shake of her head loosening a few more strands of her hair. A long layer tumbled down in her face, and she didn't bother to brush it away, her eyes locked on his. "Tell me now. Tell me why, and then I will go talk to James. Before I take him home. You have no right to hold him."
"Maybe I do, did you think of that? Did you think that maybe I was doing the right thing, Brennan? That I wouldn't have done this otherwise, because I would never do anything to hurt you?"
She was taken aback, something she quickly tried to hide but failed at miserably.
"Booth. Tell me. If it's such a good reason... then tell me."
He didn't want to do this. He didn't want her to know, even though she had to. But mostly, he didn't want to be the one to tell her, even if it was what she preferred. It might make him selfish, but for once in his life, he wanted more than anything to take the easier road offered to him.
The way she was looking at him changed, as she seemed to read his face for the first time since her arrival. She deflated, in a way he had never seen her do, and her eyes widened, their blue depths growing lighter and more childlike.
"Booth?" she asked. Her voice was suddenly quieter. A question there that did not need to be voiced. Now that she was paying attention... she was also realizing that she might not want to hear whatever it was he had to say.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Like a band-aid, he chanted in his head. A mantra to sooth his nerves. One that was not working, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that it was the best way to do it.
He couldn't do it like that. Couldn't do it, because quick and easy was his preferred method. Not hers. She couldn't hear it like that... a rush and a blur and the world crashing down over her head. She deserved to understand, to hear it full out, the way he had discovered it, so that she could process. As hard as it would be, she needed the evidence. It was who she was. Who she would always be.
It made her the woman he still found himself in love with every morning when he woke up.
"I checked up on the stalker earlier," he began. She nodded slowly, seeming to accept that she was getting the full explanation. Her arms crossed over her chest and she adjusted her position as she waited for him to continue. "I knew he knew more than he was saying, so I cornered him after his lunch break, so he couldn't get away from me.
"From Sweets and Angela, I knew that he was almost guaranteed to be the blackmailer. When he opened up to that, I requested his help in order to overlook the charges. So he gave me his camera."
"So you found out who Maggie was having an affair with," Brennan resolved, getting a step ahead of him. Not far enough ahead, though. This time, he knew it wasn't because of her investigative skills, but rather because she wasn't capable of making the connection. To letting herself believe her husband could possibly be the married man who had been sleeping with Maggie.
"And I arrested him," Booth said softly, laying the final brick in the path and waiting for her to step across and realize what he meant.
It took a moment, and he took no pleasure in it, as he watched the change wash over her features. In the first couple of seconds, his words meant nothing to her. They were just words, offering an explanation that she wasn't grasping. She frowned, her head tilting slightly, as if she was waiting for him to continue. When she understood that that was it, the end of his explanation, her frown only deepened, her fingers loosing their grip and her arms uncrossing, falling loosely at her sides.
Her gaze slid away from him, breaking the contact and landing on the two way mirror even as she took a step closer to it. With shaking fingers, she reached up to touch the cool surface.
"No." The word was a soft sound. It was a plea, and she spun around the moment it had skittered loose of her tongue, her eyes connecting once more with his. Even as the horror drained all the color from her face, she was still shaking her head, her eyes seeking desperately across Booth's face. "No," she repeated, a bit more forcefully.
"Brennan, I'm so sorry..."
"No!"
She was searching for something to hold onto, and he wished it could be him. But she sank helplessly into the nearest chair, shaking violently, her eyes vacant and darkening with every passing second. She looked terribly innocent and victimized. Broken beyond repair in that one moment.
He was reminded of an image Angela had once brought to his mind. An image of what Brennan had turned into in the aftermath of receiving the news of his death in that hospital waiting room. Only, now he was getting a front row seat for it.
And it was breaking his heart.
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
If there was ever a moment when Brennan wanted to escape reality, this was it.
She stared at Booth, feeling helpless and lost. Hating the vulnerability that was washing over her, but being completely incapable of saving herself from it.
Any moment now, someone was going to wake her up. Someone was going to save her from this nightmare that she'd just been thrust so cruelly into. How could this be happening to her, after all she had already gone through? How could happiness be continually dangled in front of her, only to be snatched away in the worst ways? Every. Single. Time.
No one had been there to wake her up on that Christmas morning when the presents were lonely under the tree and her parents' car was still missing from the driveway while the phone lay in its cradle, still refusing to ring and answer the hundred of unanswered questions chasing each other through her head.
No one had been there to wake her up the first night a foster father creaked her door open in the darkness and whispered her name.
No one had been there to wake her up in that windowless cell, as she lay on the dirt floor with a bag over her head and listened to the voices promising to put a bullet through her skull. Promising that no one would ever know what became of her... the way she did not know what had become of her parents.
No one, no one, had been there to wake her up in those two weeks after Booth had stood up in front of her in that karaoke bar, saving her life and destroying it in that one simple action.
And now... now, no one was going to wake her up. No one was going to tell her that what Booth was saying wasn't true. No one was going to explain that it had all been a misunderstanding, and that James had not done this.
"No," she said again, her voice foreign to her own ears. She couldn't look at Booth anymore. Couldn't meet his pitying gaze. She closed her eyes, raising her hands to brush at her hair. It fell across her face, shielding her, guarding what little remained of her shattered heart from the unwelcome view of her one witness.
"I'm so sorry," Booth repeated softly. She only bowed her head further, her teeth digging into her lower lip to fight back the first sob.
"Proof," she choked out. "I need... please." He wouldn't lie to her. She knew Booth, and she knew he would never have told her if he wasn't sure himself. But she needed, needed to see for herself. She needed to know that this was real. "Please," she repeated softly.
She could feel him hesitating, shifting on his feet. And then he retrieved an envelope from inside his coat. Through the curtain of hair, she watched as he opened it and withdrew a photograph.
Suddenly, she wasn't so sure if she really wanted to see. But she still raised her head and reached up to take it from him. He looked unsure of himself, his brow furrowed with more wrinkles than she remembered him having as he relinquished the glossy image.
The picture was less than she had been expecting. Booth had probably picked a less compromising one on purpose... she didn't doubt that the envelope held more. But she didn't ask to see those. Didn't want to.
The one image, on it's own, was more than enough.
Somehow, seeing it was easier than she'd been expecting. James, in a strange bed, arms around a woman who was obviously Margaret Singer. The punch to the gut stung as she felt her breath rush out, a small sound escaping along with it, one she hadn't given permission to. Booth shifted, looking like he wanted desperately to comfort her, but he didn't know what to do. She'd have helped him, but right now... she had no mind to even take in his situation.
It seemed horribly simple. So easy to accept, really. After all, had she really believed that someone could unconditionally love her? That they would never hurt her? Had she really been so foolish as to think that she could be enough for another person?
It almost made sense, in a twisted, painful sort of way.
She had set herself up for this, by letting herself believe in all those concepts of love that her friends had been pushing on her for years.
"I need to talk to James," she said, fresh resolve taking over. She needed someone to be angry at, and she needed it right now. She was almost grateful to Booth for giving her the opportunity.
"Of course," he said quickly, preceding her out the door.
He opened the door to the interrogation room, and gave her a look before he stepped inside on his own, shutting the door behind him. A moment later, Kevin stepped out of the door, his eyes sweeping over her but giving no indication of whether he was on her or James' side in this. Not like she needed to know, though. It was clear he would side with his friend. His client.
Booth stepped out, and murmured to her in a soft voice. "I have to stay in the observation room. I'm sorry, Brennan, it's protocol."
She just nodded. "I don't mind you watching," she said quietly. She did mind, but she wasn't going to say that. She couldn't change the situation anyways.
Booth looked at her like he suspected she was lying, but then he stepped aside, holding the door open for her. When it shut behind her, she felt like she'd just been tossed into the lion cage at the zoo. There was a silence, while they both observed each other. Him from his uncomfortable chair on the other side of the table, her from her standing position beside the door.
Her footsteps were loud when she finally moved forward, her heels clicking coldly against the hard floor. When she stopped beside the chair opposite her husband, the sound echoed. Her eyes bored into his.
He didn't even look slightly remorseful. Mildly uncomfortable. Tired. But not sorry.
She pulled the chair out, and the legs dragged. A high, shrieking sound. Like the screams reverberating in her head, that she could not let loose upon him.
Much like she suspected Booth would have done, she slapped the picture down in front of him, slowly seating herself.
She had no words. An accusation would have been woefully inadequate, and the picture carried out the task for her, regardless. Besides, what would she say to him? Mostly, she wanted to either strangle him, or go cry in a corner. Neither were suitable options.
But it became clear that he wasn't going to say anything, either. He stared at the picture for a while, and then lifted his eyes to meet hers again. Both of them silent.
"Why?" she said. It was a single word, but the emotion behind it was like a hurricane. She wished she could have held it back, but the desperate need resonated from the simple question. Why did you do it? Why did you leave me behind? What did I do wrong?
He sighed. A soft sound that hit her like a blast of shattered glass.
A slight shiver trembled down her spine.
"Tempe... I used to love you."
She clamped her teeth together hard, swallowing. She couldn't have spoken if she had wanted to. Her eyes flicked to the two-way mirror, knowing that Booth was watching this. It made it even more difficult than it already was.
Better than a random stranger, she forced herself to think.
"You, though... you never stopped loving your job." He leaned forward towards her over the table. "It's interesting, how there's always something that draws you to someone else... and it becomes that one thing that you can't stand about them, later on.
"And with you... it was that passion for anthropology. All those early mornings, taking off to the lab. All those late nights where you forgot to come home..."
"I still love you!" she shouted out. It was almost involuntary, and it took a long moment for her to recognize that the words had actually escaped from her own lips. "I still love you," she repeated, more softly, her eyes staring desperately into his, searching for what she used to see in those depths. All she found was darkness. "Was it because we were having problems? Was that it? You didn't... you didn't want to take the time to sort them out?"
His tongue slicked over his lips, his gaze trailing slowly along the wall. Finally, they arrived back at her face. "Tempe, I started seeing Maggie last year."
Last year, things between them had been fine. Things had been great.
"I don't... I don't understand," she ground out, blinking quickly to clear her vision.
They'd still been sleeping together last year. So he had been... spending the day with Maggie and the nights with her? Her head was spinning. The pain in her chest, around her pounding heart, was becoming more than she could bear.
"Maggie... she understood me. She cared about me. She did everything for me. And she was always there."
"I was there," she choked out. "I... I loved you, all those years... do you have any idea..."
"I know," he said shortly. "I get that it meant a lot to you. But Temperance, we aren't compatible. And I was going to tell you. I just never got the chance to, and then poor Maggie—"
She let out a small sound of disbelief, watching the way his eyes strayed to the picture again. The way they softened with the first trace of sadness since she'd entered the room. He had no sorrow for her. He didn't feel bad for what he had done. The only thing he was upset even slightly about... was the fact that his mistress was dead.
"Why not just get a divorce?" she asked, the words like knives on her tongue. "Why not just be done with it, rather than... rather than stringing me along all this time?"
"You barely noticed anything was different," he shot back. "You barely even noticed that I was unhappy. I mean, God, I thought things would change after we got married, but you know, they never did. You still kept everything bottled up... still wouldn't let me in on things that were bothering you. And you went on, and on about cases you were working, as if I actually cared!"
That last part was very nearly her undoing. She gave a ragged gasp, shaking her head, and then did the only thing she could possibly think of doing.
"Did you kill her? Did you kill that woman?"
He shook his head, the regret returning to his eyes. "No, I didn't kill her. And I'm very sorry that she's gone... it's not quite the same at the office anymore."
She was gone in a flurry, knowing that she would throw a punch or at the very least slap him if she didn't get him out of her sight. The door slammed shut behind her, and she stalked up the hallway, brushing at the tears that she suddenly couldn't seem to stop. She was only grateful that they had waited until she was out of James' view before they began pouring down her face.
"Brennan!" Booth called, his voice out of breath. She could hear his footsteps pounding after her up the hallway. She kept going, trying to ignore him as she sniffled away a few more of the tears, feeling horribly undignified. If she'd spotted a lady's room, she would have gratefully vanished into it. But there were none in the hallway, and the elevator ahead was her only option for escape.
He called her name again, and she ducked her head, still swiping at the tears as she picked up the pace of her walk, stumbling slightly in her heels as she hit the edge of the hallway's runner carpet.
"Brennan, wait!"
Her finger punched the down button, and a soft ding washed relief through her as the doors slid open. She stepped in and hit the close doors button, but not before Booth swooped in beside her. The doors slid shut, locking them in together.
He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes wide and his breathing still coming in short rasps. She was slightly out of breath as well, but she kept her lips pursed tightly, staring at the wall, the ceiling, the changing lights that indicated which floor they were on. Anything that would keep her gaze away from his worried face. She could feel his stare burning into her.
The tears continued to traverse their paths down her cheeks.
When the elevator car shuddered to a halt and the doors started to open, he reached out a hand to block her path, hitting the button to shut the doors again before they even finished opening.
"Booth," she said, her voice pleading. She was too tired for this. Too tired for anything. She just wanted to go home... get away from this building, from all this truth that had been showered down upon her. And Booth was a part of that truth. She needed to get away.
"Bones," he said, his voice soft. A sound that she didn't recognize escaped her lips. It might have been relief, or shock, or any mix of the two. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I am so, so sorry."
Her back hit the wall for support, and she found herself nodding. She hadn't heard that nickname in years. In so long that she had almost managed to forget the sound of the word off his lips. It hadn't been just a name, for those long years of their early partnership. It had been her definition.
And she recognized that in using it, he wasn't trying to lay any sort of claim. He wasn't trying to do anything, really, other than express how deeply apologetic he was. And that name... that name said it, all on its own.
She wished he would say it again, but he didn't. He stayed on his side of the elevator car, watching her with his brown eyes shining. She couldn't tell if it was with tears, or simply with the kindness she had always found in those warm brown depths.
"I hate this," he said quietly, "But I have to say it. This... what we've just found out... makes you a suspect. And God, I know you had nothing to do with it, but this isn't in my hands. I'm going to talk to my boss... get him to let me be the one to question you, no matter what he says about it. I don't care if I'm too close to this one." He stepped closer. "I'm not letting anything else happen to you."
Her breath whisked free of her lungs.
"I don't... I don't need your protection," she said quickly. It sounded like she was trying to convince herself, more than him.
He paused, and then nodded in understanding.
"James is being held here overnight. You can go home... he won't be showing up there."
"Thank you," she whispered, and then she escaped out the elevator doors, leaving him standing there on his own, staring after her.
Reviews will make my already amazing week that much more amazing. Because this girl is going to Virginia Tech! :D Also, the line that James said, about having that one thing attract you to someone, only to hate it about them later, is a line I took from Castle. Which is an absolutely brilliant show... that I don't happen to own either. xD
