A/N: Happy Valentine's Day (the day after). Was yours bad? Yup, me too. Sorry it's been a few days since I last updated, but I knew these few chapters would be so angst-filled, I kept putting off writing them. But I figured, well, the day after Valentine's Day is as good a day as any to mourn the loss of love, right? Make me happy with reviews and I'll make you happy with more story. Ya dig?
PS – I'm not promising a happy ending or a sad ending, nor will I say if Bones is dead or not. You'll have to wait and find out. I'll just tell you some things that will NOT be happening in this story: No one will propose marriage to anyone else. No one will discover they're pregnant. Zac will not blow himself up again, nor will he blow up anything else. And Cam, in keeping with her character on the show, will not be seen eating.
PSPS – Your reviews are far and away the nicest things I've ever read. I truly, sincerely thank you and am thrilled you're enjoying the story.
Chapter 8
"You found the skull fragments buried in a grave labeled 'Bones,'" Booth said, looking directly at McKnowles.
"Yes, sir," the agent said, hearing the anger creeping into Booth's voice.
Booth crossed his arms tightly in front of his body, violently constraining himself from punching McKnowles in the face just because he happened to be standing in front of him. "Ok," he nodded. "What about Christine Brennan?"
Typically Booth felt hopeful went it came to exhumations. When a body was on the table and Bones was able to examine it, she was always able to provide Booth with the answers to all of his questions. But this exhumation he was equally dreading and looking forward to – the results from this exhumation could either give him hope or destroy him.
McKnowles shifted uncomfortably, motioning to the grave behind them, which Booth now realized appeared disturbed. "Well, as you can see, it's been emptied. Recently."
Booth clenched his arms tighter around his body and clenched his jaw so tightly he thought it might snap. "So we have no body to compare the skeleton to?" He asked, knowing the answer. "But we do have skull fragments?"
McKnowles nodded, somewhat surprised with Booth's ability to keep his temper in check. He knelt down on his knees in front of the BONES grave and motioned toward the dirt, "As soon as we saw this new grave, we immediately dug in. We found a ton of pieces of bone – that dirt squint of yours is going to check to see if there's any evidence or bone pieces left in the dirt, and the Zac guy is going to piece the skull together."
Booth nodded, "Then Angela can make a positive identification."
McKnowles nodded. "Well, then it looks like you've got it under control here," Booth said abruptly, spinning sharply on his heel and stalking away before the squints got there. He didn't want to deal with any more inquisitive eyes.
Booth slid into the driver's seat of his car, peeling out of the cemetery as fast as humanly possible, and making a beeline for the gun range. He spent a full hour and a half unloading rounds into the targets from every type of gun he had, spinning the evidence around in his head.
The skeleton. The ring. The will. The funeral invitation. The blood on her sheets. The gravestone. That damned ring on the skeleton's damned finger.
The evidence was too much – he knew everyone else in the lab no longer believed they were searching for Brennan's captor, but rather her killer. He knew the moment each of them had lost hope. For Sweets it had been when he saw the will. For Cam it had been the moment she saw the amount of blood on those sheets. For Mr. Nigel Murray it had been when Zac was listing the extent of the skeleton's injuries, all of which matched Bones' injuries.
The memory made Booth wince. Those injuries he knew nothing about from her foster days. Injuries he had been unable to do anything about. Horrible people he had been unable to protect her from.
Booth lowered his gun and punched a nearby wall so hard his knuckles drew blood again. The fact that he was probably doing permanent damage to his fingers didn't even register with the agent as he mechanically loaded his gun again, raised and aimed at the target, getting his mind back on track.
For Hodgins it had been the moment he saw the security video of the guy laying out the bones. For Angela it had been the moment she saw Hodgins lose faith.
But Zac was the worst. For Zac, it had been the moment he saw the skeleton on the table – the very moment he walked into the lab. And that realization had hurt Booth most of all. Of all the squints he had seen Bones deal with, Zac was the only one she would fully trust. Which was good enough for Booth. And if Zac thought the skeleton was Bones'…
He kept firing until he could no longer see through the tears in his eyes.
* * * * * *
After a fellow agent had quietly put a hand on one of his shoulders and calmly told him the range was closing for the night, Booth had mechanically nodded and headed for the gym, changed clothes, and gone for a run. A very long run through D.C. very late at night, unarmed.
Booth hadn't paid a bit of attention to his surroundings, didn't seem to notice or care the neighborhoods he ran through, and didn't even bother checking for uncoming traffic when he crossed the road. His rage was so great he was doing everything he could to burn up his energy – energy that he desperately wanted to use to kill the man who had taken Bones. The helplessness and overwhelming frustration he felt at not knowing who that man was only fueled that rage. Plus, no one needed him right now – everyone was tracking a lead that would take a couple hours at least to follow through. Booth knew cranial reconstructions often took Bones all night to conduct. So Booth kept running until his legs burned so much he literally could not move any more.
As he got back into his car, dripping sweat and shivering in the cold, his phone chirped again. "Booth," he picked up immediately.
"Agent Booth, the will had no fingerprints or trace evidence on it – it was clean. It appears the man took it out of Dr. Brennan's office at her house and brought it to the lab. It was notarized and is her actual legal will," Sweets immediately informed him without so much as a greeting. Booth remained silent.
"Agent Booth? I've been updated by Dr. Soroyan regarding the cemetery findings. I've also read today's obituary and realize that right now you may feel-"
"Obituary?" Booth asked sharply, cutting the psychologist off. "What obituary?"
On the other end of the line, Booth could practically hear the psychologist cursing his own stupidity. "Oh… I thought you had already been informed. Otherwise, I would not have just so casually-"
"Sweets!"
"Right. Well, um. In today's paper, there was an obituary listing for Dr. Brennan. Your basic 'world-renowned anthropologist and author Temperance Brennan passed away this weekend' bit," Sweets informed him. "We've got the FBI tracing who placed the obit through the paper."
Silence.
"Agent Booth?"
All Sweets heard in response was the ominous click signaling the agent had hung up.
The agent drove quietly, almost in a trancelike state, to her house, half expecting the FBI team to still be combing over her house. Instead, he found her home empty and had a quick start of excitement upon seeing her car in the drive before remembering that it had been there all weekend. It didn't mean Bones was home.
Walking briskly through the front door – this time using the key Bones had given him – Booth quietly, almost reverently shut the door behind him and slid the lock closed. He made his way silently through her house, checking each room for her presence out of habit, and of course in vain.
Her bed had been stripped of its sheets and the mattress, which had also been soaked through with blood, had been transported to the Jeffersonian, leaving only an empty box frame sitting in the corner. The agent slowly sank unto the box frame and paused, seeing the pictures on his partner's nightstand. In one, Russ, Max, and Russ' girls were crowded together under Christmas decorations, smiling as Brennan took a picture during what was clearly their prison trailer Christmas party. The other photo was of himself and Brennan, dressed to the nines at the Egyptian exhibit in her honor. He smiled, remembering the moment Angela had taken the candid shot. Brennan had just finished delivering the speech she had dreaded and was walking offstage, directly into the arms of Booth, who had been proudly waiting to intercept her offstage.
Booth reverently placed the frame back on the table, tilted his head back against the headboard, and pulled out the crumpled picture of a battered Bones he had been carrying around in his pocket all day.
Only then did he finally allow himself to grieve.
