Title: Lost and Found
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Rating: T, and not the warm liquid kind.
A/N: Well, no posting yesterday because I came home, fell on the bed and slept. I am yawning now, too, because I'm so tired but I get withdrawal symptoms if I am away from my precious stories for too long. Good news, for me at least, is I am off work tomorrow! Let me know if you like this by clicking the little button. Thanks.
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"Dr Bones?" Brennan massaged her temples, resting her elbows on the old, chipped dressing table. She wondered how her 'get away from it all' vacation had somehow turned into an escaping run for her life. Each time a car door slammed in the parking lot beneath her, she was on immediate alert, prepared to climb out windows and shimmy down drainpipes. Or, on moments like now, when her adrenaline was almost pumping out her ears, she would have used any one of, or perhaps all, the martial arts she was trained in.
"Yes Parker?" she said, careful not to allow weary exasperation to seep into her tone. The child, sitting on the bed, knees drawn to his chest, looked tired, his eyelids drooping but his body unwilling to let him sleep. Outside, halogen lamps burned bright, casting a beam of luminous light into their tiny room. Night-time rained down on Montana and there was still no sign of Seeley Booth.
"Where's my daddy?" It was a question she did not want to think about. At night, the threat seemed so much more real and she dreaded to imagine what had transpired in the forest once their lucky departure.
"I'm not sure," she admitted, pinching the top of her nose, lifting her head and catching sight of her eyes, heavy and dark, in the mirror. She looked like someone who had been having a relaxing holiday and who had been tossed and battered in a storm. Days worth of emotional stress, coupled with the muscular pain she felt now, made her feel worse than she had immediately after being released from hospital – and her leg throbbed now, too.
"Can I watch TV, Dr Bones?" Parker asked, shifting beneath the wool comforter, a mossy brown colour.
"Sure," she said, thinking that the television might provide some kind of distraction and break the thick silence that made each lower noise sound like an explosion in her ears. The screen came to life, splashing blue colour across the once ivory walls. Brennan brushed her hands over her thighs, removing accumulated dampness on the denim and swallowing bile that tightened her throat. There she was, responsible for someone else's child – afraid that she was a target – a threat to an innocent little boy. Would she be his saviour or his demise?
Lifting the receiver on the telephone, she dialled Angela's telephone number by heart. The time difference ensured that the answer she got was sleepy, muffled and not entirely happy.
"'Lo?"
Brennan cleared her throat, her shoulders easing just at the sound of her carefree, slightly unhinged best friend. "Hi," she whispered, glancing at her own slim wrist watch. At eleven thirty, she calculated that it was one thirty in D.C. – on a weeknight, nonetheless. Poor Angela, with a return to the Jeffersonian looming on the horizon, was trying to sleep before work. She felt guilty.
"Sweetie?" Angela asked, immediately alert. "Are you home?" Brennan glanced at Parker, his eyes fixed on the late night cartoons that flickered across the screen.
"I wish I was, Ange," she said, turning back to the mirror, the weariness of her features highlighted by the bluish light.
"Where are you?" Brennan contemplated an 'in hell' retort, but kept her lips tightly pursed as she wondered what it was, exactly, that she wanted to say to her friend, or even why she'd phoned. Perhaps it was a familiar voice she wanted. Or reassurance. When Angela had suspected Kirk to be dead, hadn't it been Brennan that she'd phoned? The problem that lingered, however, was that Angela's suspicions were right, and as the minutes ticked by, Brennan was beginning to worry that hers were too.
"I'm in Montana," she whispered as Parker's eyes began to droop again, the little boy fighting to keep them open. There was a long silence on the other end – so quiet that Brennan wondered if Angela had stopped breathing.
"You found him, didn't you…?" Brennan felt her own lungs hitch and her stomach do a flip.
"I hoped if you never told me where you found him, I'd never come close to locating him. I wasn't trying." Parker dropped the remote control on the floor, and the sound woke him from his slumber. Temperance sighed, reaching out and stroking his dark hair until her touch lulled him back to sleep. "We're in trouble, Angela…" she admitted, more to herself than her friend.
"You slept with him?" Angela asked, and Brennan wondered how that could even be considered as trouble, now. She shook her head at no one, unfolding her legs and crouching to retrieve the remote.
"No," she said, "I was followed. At least I assume I was followed. Either that or it's an almighty coincidence…" Knowing that she was spinning a web of confusion, Brennan clicked her tongue. "We were shot at today. I got Parker out, and we're laying low at a motel, but Booth… I don't know where he is." The silence dragged on, with Angela's unspoken opinion very clear.
"Get home now," she said, "and we'll get Cullen to sort something out – to find a new place for them." Brennan tossed her hair.
"Don't you understand, Ange? I don't know if he's alive or dead. I'm stranded in a crappy motel with his son and I'm… afraid. I'm afraid, Angela, because now his life rests in my hands – in my care." Her voice started as a whisper, and rose. Angela shushed her, willing to her remain calm. Losing control was something Brennan was not familiar with.
"Relax sweetie, tell me everything that happened…"
When Brennan had retold the story of the day's events, she felt wearier than before, disproving entirely that a problem shared was a problem halved, for in fact, she felt immeasurably worse. "What if I've made Parker into an orphan?" Angela sighed into the receiver.
"Booth must have had a plan," she said, as if it made perfect sense. "He wouldn't have risked death – Parker means everything to him." Brennan realised that Angela was right. He hadn't been willing to put his life, or Parker's, in danger before. He was unlikely to start now.
"Of course you're right," she agreed, and when she was sufficiently satisfied, she told Angela she'd phone again soon.
"Come home, honey… now." Brennan promised that she would return as soon as father and son were reunited. Then, as she climbed into the bed next to Parker's, she promised that the moment they were, regardless of her love for Booth, and her thoughts of what might have been, she would let him disappeared into the sunset where he'd be safe and she'd never set out in search of anything, least of all him, again.