A/N: Seriously, what the hell is wrong with our world today? Something is seriously wrong! And when shit happens that I don't understand… I write! So yeah… here's my gift to you that was birthed from deep depression and sorrow and my constant grueling battle within of not understanding WHYYY GOD?! LOL just kidding, guys. Sort of.
I knew you were
You were gonna come to me
And here you are
But you better choose carefully
Cause I … I'm capable of anything
And everything…
Katy Perry – Dark Horse
Galloping Towards the Inevitable
If I could compare this moment to the moment that started all this shit I would be hard pressed to decide which face absolutely crushed me more. And the minute her gentle features and pleasant deep blue eyes turned dark I had to resist the urge to puke.
She steps closer. Just one step. And we're nearly chest to chest.
"I'm sorry… you told her what?"
She feigns confusion but she knows exactly what said and she knows exactly what I mean. But she wants me to be completely sure or even change my mind about telling her this.
Deny.
Lie.
But I can't do that. Denial – it's what got me here to begin with and I Swear. To. God. I will never be anything but truthful ever again with everything and everyone, but especially to myself.
"It wasn't easy. I needed to tell her. I needed to be honest."
She takes a breath and even though I wasn't the one holding it, I too feel relief when she draws air into her lungs.
She shakes her head in disbelief. "I cannot believe you did this to me."
"What did you think I was going to do, Bones?"
"How about what goes on between us should just be ours, Booth!"
My own words to her from what seems like a lifetime ago land like acid all over me. But she doesn't say it with anger. Her words are heavily soaked with sorrow and even more regret than she had when she shared her feelings with me that night. And even though it's already happened, her words are also laced with a plea – like she's hoping that if she says it just the right way I can take it all back. It's as if she's asking me to take us back to that night in the rain– no – she's begging me to take us back to before Maluku and Afghanistan but I can't, Bones. I'm not fucking God. I can't do that for us.
"How do you expect us to have an ours when I have someone that I'm supposed to be honest with, Bones. She's with me. I try to live my life with some kind of integrity." I catch the bitter tone in my voice seconds after the words are already out there.
"Integrity? I wasn't expecting you to do anything more than keep me from…from… this humiliation. I'm so humiliated, Booth!" She takes a step back from me and I immediately take a step to have her close again. I just need to have her close, even if she hates me.
"What should I have done, Bones?" I try to make her understand. "She was my girlfriend, someone I was committed to, someone that I was expected to be honest with about everything."
"She was, Booth? Is she or isn't she?"
I let out a noise; something between a sigh of frustration and an actual animalistic grunt. "I mean is … she is…. As of right now." I add a little awkwardly.
She accepts my answer without questioning it further.
She takes another step back and wraps her arms around herself. I know that move. She's trying to shut me out. She's protecting herself now from me. Me out of all people. If anything in this world makes me want to use my gun on myself that's it. I can't have her retreat. I won't have us go back to those days. Not now.
"Bones." Her name; a barely audible whimper from my lips – nothing manly or prideful about it.
She looks past me and I lose eye contact with her. She laughs. The sound is dark and sarcastic and it could kill me under usual circumstances but being as though the numbness has taken over I can continue standing, continue trying though I don't even really feel myself doing it.
I take a step, again, closing the distance that she purposefully created between us. She understands what I'm trying to do and she responds.
"No, Booth." She puts her arm up to define her space once more. She looks at me again and I'm drawn into her eyes, my comfort place, again. She looks through me and all over me. I don't even know what it is that she's searching for exactly; all I can do is keep trying. Her arm is still acting as a barrier between her and I. I reach out and put my hand on top of her wrist and push it away so I can just get closer. Close. Need to just be close. Please.
"Please." I plead. I step even closer.
"No." She says but she doesn't stop me. Her voice toes the line that separates control and breaking but I hold her gaze. Within seconds, her walls crumble and she's crying. Her breathing is hard so her chest is thrusts towards me with every one she takes and I will myself to not reach out and touch… I, myself, am toeing an entirely different line.
She does keep her arm down though; she doesn't put it back up to keep me away. For now anyway.
"Do you not care about me at all?" I've heard people say this before. I've said it before to lots of people when I felt hurt but I never really meant it. Most of the time those people really do care about you – they just fucked up – and you know they care about you but you ask them do you not care about me at all anyway because you want them to understand how badly you're hurting. With Bones though, it's different. She really doesn't know. She really isn't sure if I actually care about her.
"God…Bones..."
Care doesn't even compare to how I feel.
"I know that you've moved on Booth but please remember my feelings. I do have them. You out of all people should know that. I'm capable of being hurt. And I'm not always capable of compartmentalizing. I can't do it with you… I can't do it with….this."
I'm starting to panic and I say a little less than yelling but a little louder than my normal tone, "I'm sorry!" And I know it isn't enough. But it's all that I can think of saying right now.
"This is why I should have gone through with terminating our partnership. Things are too… too complicated. Relationships and work and girlfriends and partners and friendship…it's too much. It's too intertwined now. I can't handle it!"
Another step back…away from me.
"You don't mean that." Another step forward….towards her.
"This," She looks at the small space between us, "I'm finished with this now."
She turns away from me and begins to walk back towards the building. I follow her. I follow her because that's what I do. That's what comes naturally to me and that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.
"Bones wait."
But she's speed walking now, determined. My fingers tingle beseeching me to reach out and stop her, grab her, and make her just…stop. But I don't. I know that I need to let her walk away right now but that doesn't mean that I won't be right behind her.
...
It's a lie. All of it.
Everything about my life is a gigantic façade. I needed to make a decision and I needed to make it fast and final. I'm sitting in the corridor in Bones' apartment building; right outside her door. I can hear her inside. She probably thinks she's being quiet but hell, I can hear everything. It's a burden, really.
Everyone once in awhile I'll hear a sob. A slamming door. Footsteps. Another sob.
She knows that I'm sitting out here. And she knows that I'm not leaving any time soon. I let my head fall back against the door and my legs slide from their current position of being brought up towards my chest to laying completely flat directly in front of me. I'm exhausted but it doesn't matter all that matters is Bones and just….getting to her.
"Bones."
Slam.
Something was hurled towards the door and I don't even flinch when the wood vibrates against my back.
"Bones, please just let me talk to you. I need to talk to you, please."
Nothing.
I drop my head into my hands and keep it there for a long time. Several minutes pass before I begin to feel the pressure building up against my temples and above my eyebrows because of my slumped position. I quickly stand up and face this stupid fucking door that I just want to kick in and be done with it already. Be done with the meaningless shit that has always kept us apart.
"Please, open the door." Desperation; much clearer to her I'm sure than the words that I'm actually saying.
"If you're going to hate me forever and never give me another chance then please… please give me this opportunity…this last chance to see you face to face. To talk to you. Face to face. Please, Brennan."
The door opens a crack. No light comes pouring out into the hallway so I know she's sitting in dim light. I push the door open and walk inside. I don't even bother closing it behind me because I don't care. I walk into her apartment and find her sitting on the edge of her coffee table. Fuck. I can, just faintly, make out the details of her face. And I know it isn't good.
"I know that you don't even want to look at me right now. After everything….everything that I've put you through recently…" And she wasn't looking at me. She was looking at something just beyond me. That was until she stood up and walked away. Again.
"Bones," I follow her and this time…this time… what do I have to lose? I grab her arm gently and she stops and turns to face me.
"Just… look at me."
When she grants me that I can see that her eyes are red rimmed and swollen.
"Look at me." I say again even though she already is. I just… I don't know. I don't know why I said that.
"I am Booth. You can't see me?" Her voice - more unsteady than the legs (my legs?) holding me up right now.
She moves back - continuing the game we've been playing all night. Or for years. I step towards her again and she backs right into her living room wall.
"I can see you, Bones."
My hands. They continue to battle with me and I'm left to surrender or fight back. She keeps her eyes fixed on me as I slowly move my hand up towards her face, surrender. I want to push her hair away from her eyes. But when I move in to do that my fingers instead arrive at her face just below her cheek. I don't touch her but instead my fingertips to hover and ghost over her skin instead, fight back.
I place that same hand on the wall behind her and remain close at the same time giving her space to leave – but she doesn't because I know she needs this too.
"I never ever meant to cause you any pain, Bones."
...
Outside of Brennan's apartment Hannah watches through the door that was just slightly left open.
"I never ever meant to cause you any pain, Bones." He whispers with such strain she wonders if it was physically painful for him to say.
She watches the undeniable intensity that is coming off of him in waves. Brennan's chest was pushed out towards him in a stubborn manner -open to him. At the same time her chin set and hard in clear defiance. He still stood dangerously close to her. He knew she was angry, but she also knew she couldn't keep him from being near, not if she didn't put up a convincing enough fight. And she didn't. They moved like one. Whenever she moved an arm, a leg, whenever she shifted her weight or changed the angle of her head in the way she looked at him he would follow her movement exactly. Yet, she wasn't trapped. He wasn't keeping her against her will. He wasn't even physically touching her – yet he had such a tight grasp on her in every other way.
For a moment Hannah forgot about her own hurt and saw what everyone else saw. Something beautiful.
The tortured look on his face would almost break Hannah's heart if it wasn't for the fact that she was looking at a man she knew. A man she loved.
He looks down at her mouth. And now he's hesitant. He isn't sure about something but he seems to fight against those feelings anyway. He slowly and still hesitantly moves his hand up towards her face and gently sweeps her bangs across her forehead. Whatever tension she had remaining, whatever fight she had left leaves her immediately and it can physically be seen as her body nearly collapses with relief. He's done it. He's gotten to her. She uncrosses her arms and she laughs. It's not a dark or sarcastic laugh but a happy realization, relief of burden type of laugh and hearing that could have killed Hannah under usual circumstances but being as though the numbness has taken her over, she was able to continue standing and not even know how she was doing so.
She stepped out of the shadows of the hallway and made her presence known by letting her heavy purse drop to the floor once she was just inside of Brennan's apartment.
Brennan saw her over Booth's shoulder and Booth himself turned around to see her standing on the little marble area in front of the door.
"You know I told myself that I didn't see it. That it didn't exist. But I do and it does."
"Hannah, what are you doing here?"
I turn so that I'm standing almost totally in front of Bones. I'm not sure if she'll move from around me but I know that my immediate default is to put myself in front of her. This isn't about her.
"Well, when I got home and you weren't there I called you. Sixteen unanswered calls later I called your boss who told me that you weren't there, so I called her boss who told me that you were there but you left…with your partner. And they haven't seen you since, so I came here. Your phone," She tossed it to me and I catch it "was out there in the hallway and the door was open…"
"Hannah, I-"
"Bones," I say without turning around, "this is all on me. This is my problem to fix."
"What the hell is going on?" Hannah finally asks.
"We need to talk." I say as calmly as possible.
"I know, Seeley! That's why I came back early, so I could talk to you and try to fix things between us. I thought I was being too hard on you." She looks at me with disgust.
I see Bones out of my peripheral step out from behind me.
"You said that you loved me. You asked me to stay here with you. You asked me to live with you, Seeley. And now… I come back here and…and… you're basically on top of her," she points to Bones. "The same person who still has feelings for you apparently."
Before I can answer she waves her hands in front of her face as if she was trying to erase the situation from her view, her memory. "Bye Seeley." She picks up her bag from the floor.
I look back at Bones and she's back to holding herself and she isn't looking back at me. I want to stay with her but I know I can't do that right now. I have to handle this situation, how it's going to be handled I have no idea.
"Bones, I have to –"
"Just go Booth."
"Bones, I'm s-"
"You're sorry. I know."
Whew….. Well that was interesting! Or maybe it wasn't. I don't know. Either way, let me know!
