Killing Two Birds

By: dharmamonkey

Rated: M

Disclaimer: Hart Hanson owns Bones. But people like me who play in his sandbox give you all those delicious little moments that Hart and friends leave out. In this case, AU do-overs for that gap between Seasons 5 and 6 that wrought so much havoc for our heroes. That's why you read fanfic.

A/N:

1) Military acronyms/terminology: A reviewer noted that I'm using some acronyms/lingo the meaning of which may not be immediately evident. Here are some you'll want to take note of because they show up in this chapter:

NCOIC: Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge is an enlisted soldier, normally the senior-most NCO in a given military unit, who has limited command authority over others in that unit.

MP: Military Police

DFAC: A military dining facility (what we civilians call a cafeteria)

2) Reader response: Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed, especially all those first time reviewers and de-lurkers. I'm so thrilled that everyone is enjoying this piece. I've really enjoyed writing it and look forward to seeing your reactions as the story continues. So, without further ado, let's go back to Bagram.

Chapter 10: Numbness

It was early. Brennan could see the Afghan dawn begin to light up the dark, purple twilight with a warm orange glow between the gaps in the blinds. She lay on her side, silent but fully awake, watching Booth as he lay next to her on his back, his head resting on his free hand as his casted hand fell across the sheet that covered his hip. His breathing was even and she could tell he was thinking from the way his eyes would periodically narrow and blink, and from the way his lips would purse together and twitch.

"What's wrong, Booth?" she asked him, stroking her fingers along the smooth, soft skin on the inside of his bicep. "What are you thinking about?"

A faint smile flashed across his lips as he rolled his head to the side to look at her. "You know," he said, his morning voice low and gravelly from sleep. "For someone who isn't very good at reading people, you've gotten very good at reading me."

"You're worried about something, Booth," she said quietly, sliding her thumb back and forth over the silky, warm skin that overlay the firm edge of his bicep. She traced her fingers along the arc of his pectoralis major muscle, following it from where the point of insertion on the lateral lip of the bicipital groove of the humerus across the top of his chest to his clavicle. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling at the pleasure of touching him this way—not in a sexual way, exactly, but rather admiring with a sensual curiosity the impressive form of his body.

"I don't know," he mumbled, shifting his jaw from side to side as he closed his eyes, trying to relax into her touch. "I just don't know."

"I don't know," Master Sergeant Parnell said loudly as he stood behind the bench spotting Master Sergeant Kennedy. "I don't think he can do it."

"You don't think who can do what?" Booth asked as he settled onto his own bench, laying down and raising his hands to grasp the barbell as it sat on the uprights.

"Kennedy here says you can bench two-fifty," Parnell said with a crooked grin. "But I don't believe him."

"Really?" Booth said, relaxing his grasp on the barbell, drumming his fingers lightly on the steel bar before reforming his grip. It was his third day at Ft. Bragg, his second day with Operational Detachment-Alpha 3623, and though he was the senior non-commissioned officer and thus the NCOIC of the detachment, he was nonetheless being put through the usual hazing ritual to which all new Green Berets were subjected.

"Yeah, really," Parnell retorted, his ragged voice hard with the dropped r's and broad vowels of his native South Boston. "What are you, like forty-five or somethin'?"

"Thirty-nine, you fuck," Booth replied, refusing to give Parnell so much as a second of eye contact. He looked up and quirked an eyebrow at his spotter, Staff Sergeant Swann, who he guessed couldn't have been more than twenty-two. "Start with a forty-five and a twenty-five on each side," he told him. Swann hesitated. "Do it. Then load it up 'til I have two-hundred." The young sergeant loaded up the barbells with enough weight that, taking into account the weight of the bar itself, equaled two hundred pounds.

With a jerk of his chin, he signaled to Swann he was ready to begin lifting. He grunted softly when he lifted the barbell off the uprights and immediately felt a pleasant, warm tightness in his chest and shoulders as he easily completed ten reps. He hesitated for a moment and concluded another ten before bringing the barbell back up to the uprights.

"Give me another fifty, Staff Sergeant," he said evenly. With a vague smile, Swann rearranged the plates and added an extra twenty-five pounds to each side of the barbell. Booth turned his head to the side. "So hey, Southie!" he called out to Parnell with a toothy grin. "If I can do two sets of ten at two-fifty, you owe me a fuckin night of beers on your nickel. If I fail, I'll take you out on mine. Deal?"

Parnell shot Kennedy a narrow-eyed look and smirked. "Two seventy-five and you've got a deal, old man."

"You're on," Booth said. He turned to Swann and grinned. "You heard him." With a shrug, Swann added the weight and took his place by the uprights.

With a loud grunt, Booth hoisted the barbell over the uprights and lowered it to his chest. With each heaving lift, he felt a tight burn spread across his chest, over his shoulders and sear down the backs of his upper arms. A bead of sweat broke loose from his temple and dribbled in front of his ear and down his neck as he kept a steady pace. Halfway through, after the first set of ten reps, he brought the barbell to the uprights and took a deep breath.

"Uh oh," Parnell said, elbowing Kennedy who snickered. "Look at that. Got a problem there, old man?"

"No problem here," Booth growled. "Give me another ten," he ordered Swann, who swiftly added a five pound plate to each end.

Booth took a deep breath and with a grunting heave, lifted the barbell once more over the uprights. With steady, even movements, each one punctuated by a soft grunt, he completed the second set of ten before once more returning the barbell to the uprights.

"How 'bout them apples, Parnell?" Booth said, letting the raw edge of his Philadelphia accent bleed through his voice. "Huh?"

"Look at that." Parnell raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "Guess I'm buyin', Sarge," he said.

"That's right," Booth said, sitting up and flexing his arms as he smirked at the other man. "Three things to keep in mind, Master Sergeant, okay? So listen up. First off, I'm thirty-nine, not forty-five. Second, I fought in my first war when you jagoffs were still playing Little League. Third, I may be old enough to be Swann's dad, but I can still kick your ass." He chuckled and added, "Just a friendly note to self."

"Thanks for the tip, Sarge," Parnell snorted.

"No problem," Booth replied, wiping the sweat off the back of his head with a hand towel and tossing the towel in Parnell's face as he walked by.

"Talk to me, Booth," she whispered. "What are you thinking about?"

"It's not really a big deal," he grumbled. "It's nothing."

Brennan heard the gravity in his low voice and she knew that, whatever was weighing on him, it was more than nothing. She considered pressing him about it, but decided against it. She slid her hand across his belly and reached for his casted hand. His long, thick fingers were no longer swollen or discolored the way that they had been in the days immediately following her arrival at Bagram. She gently squeezed the fingers of his casted hand. She watched his eyes as he seemed to be formulating a response, then she glanced down at his hand. Normally, when she had squeezed the fingers of his right hand, he wiggled them in response. But this time, while he wiggled his index and middle finger, curling them slightly in response to her touch, his little finger barely moved.

"Booth," she said. "Look at me." He turned his head and she gazed into his warm brown eyes. "Do you have feeling in your fingers?"

He took a long breath and sat up in bed, propping the pillow up behind him as he looked down at his casted hand. "Well, uh," he stammered. "I've been having this tingling sensation in my fingers, sometimes, especially in my pinky finger. And, now that you point it out, my pinky does feel kind of numb." He looked over at her with a wide-eyed expression, his eyebrows raised as the realization creased his forehead.

"It might be your ulnar nerve," she said, scooting against the sheets to sit up, gently pinching each of his fingers. "Can you feel that?" she asked him as she squeezed his ring finger. He nodded. "And that?" Brennan held his middle finger between her thumb and forefinger and squeezed lightly. Again, he nodded. She squeezed his index finger. "And that?" He nodded. She pulled his hand closer and stroked the top of his little finger, then looked up at him.

"It's numb," he said. "I can't feel that." She scraped the fingertip of his pinky with the point of her fingernail. He frowned and shook his head. "Nope, it's just numb." She squeezed it again. "Nothing," he sighed sadly.

"I know your range of motion is limited due to the cast," she said, "but can you try to contract the muscles of your palm, as if you were forming a fist?" He did so, but his little finger hardly moved at all, shifting only slightly by the action of the other fingers.

Booth gulped. "Is it permanent?" he asked, his voice suddenly small and tight. "Can it be treated?"

Brennan narrowed her eyes as she thought about it. "There is a condition called ulnar nerve palsy," she explained. "There's a nerve that runs from your elbow down into your hand, through the muscular tissue adjacent to the ulna bone. That nerve controls feeling and articulation of your digitus minimus manus."

Booth's brow knit at her use of scientific terminology. "You mean my pinky?"

"Yes," she said with a faint smile as she recognized yet another instance when her partner, who more often than not claimed complete ignorance of 'squinty' verbiage and 'sciency' concepts, clearly knew what she had meant. "That nerve runs through your palm like this," she said, tracing its path with her index finger across her own right palm. "Considering that you suffered a traumatic compound fracture of your ulna and radius, there's a chance you might have injured the nerve, though I would have guessed that the orthopedic surgeon who set the fractures would have noted that at the time. More likely, in my opinion, the severity of your injury caused you to have some residual inflammation in the soft tissues of your forearm that are putting pressure on the nerve, which would in turn cause tingling or numbness."

"So it should go away?" he asked hopefully. "Right?"

"I can't say for sure," she said with a grimace. "I seem to recall an article I read a few years ago about the correlation between high energy, widely-displaced fractures of the distal radius and ulnar nerve palsy. I'd have to go pull the article, but based on what you've told me of the circumstances of your injury, I'd say they qualify as high energy, widely-displaced fractures." She looked down and saw him clenching and unclenching his left fist anxiously. "Booth, you need to go to see your orthopedic surgeon. He'll be able to do x-rays, check the progress of your healing, and will probably administer a cortisone injection which, if the issue is in fact muscular inflammation, would help reduce your symptoms."

"Okay," he agreed with a pout. "I hate going to the doctor."

"I know you do, Booth," she said. "But wouldn't you rather try to get this issue resolved as soon as possible? The longer you wait, the harder it might be to address."

He shrugged. "You're right," he said. "It was just kinda tingly yesterday, though. It hasn't been numb like this before."

"I would consider that a positive sign," Brennan said. "If you had suffered trauma to the nerve itself, either from the fracture or as a result of the surgical intervention, you would have felt the numbness long before now." Booth narrowed his eyes and nodded. "Don't worry, Booth—alright? But you should call to see if you can get an appointment with your surgeon this afternoon."

"What time does Wendell's flight come in?" he asked.

Brennan looked over at Booth's casted hand again. "And you need to start wearing your sling again, Booth," she said with a healthy measure of chastisement in her voice. "Your dislocated shoulder seems to be healing well, so there's no reason to think that wearing the sling would impair later shoulder function. But keeping that injured arm somewhat elevated will help reduce or prevent further worsening of the inflammation."

"I hate the sling," Booth grumbled.

"Don't whine," she said. "Do you want to get better?"

"Yes," he said, a smile breaking across his face.

"Then be a good boy and wear your damn sling," she said with a grin, leaning over and kissing him on the cheek next to his ear.

"Do I have to wear it to bed?" he asked with a snicker.

"No," Brennan replied. "I'll give you special dispensation to take it off in bed." She kissed him again, letting her lips linger on the stubbled skin of his jaw as she laughed softly. Pulling away, she added, "But you should wear the sling during the day, while we're working, and when we're moving around the base."

"Even while driving?" he asked, his eyebrows raised expectantly.

"Even then," she said. Rolling her eyes at hearing him sigh, she said, "You're a very intelligent man, Booth. I'm quite sure you can figure out how to shift gears on an automatic transmission vehicle using only your left hand."

"Fine," he grumbled, pouting his lips again before breaking into a goofy, lopsided grin.

"Fine," Brennan replied, leaning in once more to kiss his jaw when Booth turned his head and caught her lips with his. Their mouths opened to one another and their eager tongues tangled briefly in a short but passionate kiss. "Mmmmm," she murmured as she reluctantly pulled away, sure in that moment that she would never, ever tire of kissing him.

"So," Booth said with a grin. "What time does Wendell's flight get in again?" He glanced at his watch. "I've gotta print out Angela's sketch and then take that file on the female remains to the MPs first thing this morning."

Brennan squeezed his bicep and shrugged. "Does that mean we don't have time to—?" She arched an eyebrow and gave him a suggestive half-smile, the mere sight of which made him hard every time she did it.

"I was right," he chuckled. "You are insatiable," he said huskily as he threw off the sheet and rolled her onto her back with a quiet grunt as he straddled her.

"Is that a complaint?" she asked.

"Definitely not."

The pair stood by a window in the Bagram Airfield Passenger Terminal as they watched the charter flight from Dubai (via Kandahar) taxi across the tarmac and unload its passengers. Several minutes passed while pallets of freight and passenger luggage were hauled out of the aircraft's cargo compartment, and Booth watched with silent amusement as Brennan stood, shuffling her feet and fidgeting, as they waited for their passenger to appear in the terminal.

Booth saw a smile break across her face as Wendell Bray entered the terminal. In the past, she would never have admitted having an emotional attachment to any of her interns, but the way her face lit up at seeing the scruffy-cheeked, fair-haired, blue-eyed young man left absolutely no doubt in Booth's mind that she was happy to see him, and that—while she would probably never admit it to Wendell—she had missed him.

"Dr. Brennan!" Wendell called out as he made his way through the crowd of soldiers and airmen who filled the cramped terminal.

The young man dropped his duffel bag and accepted a hug from Brennan, his eyes wide with surprise as she patted his back awkwardly. Booth smirked at the warm if not somewhat awkward display, holding back before stepping forward as his partner moved aside. He embraced Wendell with his left arm, an irrepressible grin on his face as Brennan's twinkling gray eyes met his.

"Booth!" Wendell said, clapping him on the back before taking a step back. "You look great, Booth—except for the arm, obviously."

Booth raised his casted arm the inch or two the sling allowed and shrugged. "Hey," he said. "It's not like it's the first time you've seen me in a cast, right?"

"True," Wendell replied with a wink. "So," he said, turning to Brennan with an open-mouthed grin. "I made it."

"Well, obviously," she said. Booth winced at the awkwardness of the exchange, remembering what his partner had told him a little while earlier about how she wasn't any good with hellos or goodbyes. "You must be fatigued from your journey," she observed. "If you're hungry, we can get lunch at the DFAC and then Booth can show you to your living quarters. Then, if you're up to it, Booth can pick you up mid-afternoon and bring you by our makeshift lab that he's taken to calling the 'Jeffersonian East.'"

Wendell smiled at the term. "Yeah, I've been on airplanes and in airports of one kind or another for the better part of the last thirty-six hours," he said. "A hot lunch sounds great."

"Come on, then," Booth said, scratching the back of his head before gesturing for Brennan and Wendell to follow him.

Booth opened the door to the hangar and gestured for Wendell to enter.

"This is where they've put you guys?" the young anthropologist asked, arching his eyebrow as he walked past stacks of coffins and scores of crates and boxes marked for shipping. A young woman in fatigues stood at a table ironing an American flag and looked up at the pair as they walked by, nodding to Booth deferentially as he passed.

"That half of the building houses the 54th Quartermaster Company," Booth explained, his voice darkening as his eyes surveyed with sadness the 54th's work area. "They're mortuary affairs specialists, charged with preparing the remains of service personnel so they can be sent home."

Wendell's eyes narrowed as he heard the shift in Booth's tone of voice. "Are you okay, man?" he asked, his voice heavy with concern.

Booth stopped walking and turned around, his left hand on his hip as he looked into Wendell's bright blue eyes. "This is the deal, okay?" he began, swallowing hard as he gathered his thoughts. "I was in a Special Forces unit, right? Green Berets. A twelve-man detachment—ten NCOs like me, two officers. We were on a mission in Marjeh, down in the south. I was the advanced recon unit, on the ground, observing the target, a suspected Taliban insurgent leader, from a nearby building. The other eleven guys were coming in on helicopters. They were approaching the target location, a local café, when I heard an explosion, a crashing sound in the distance, and one of the helicopters that I'd been talking to became non-responsive to my radio call. A couple seconds later, I heard the pilot issue a mayday." Wendell saw Booth's eyes glaze over a little as his gaze seemed to focus off in the distance. "I heard more explosions and then a terrible crash immediately behind me."

"What happened?" Wendell asked tentatively as he saw the drawn expression on his friend's normally jovial face.

"Everything went black," Booth said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. "One of the helos crashed into the building I was in, and the building partially collapsed. That's how I got all banged up," he said, pointing to the still-red gash over his eyebrow and demonstratively waggling his casted arm in its sling. "The other helo crashed right into the building across the street—the café—and it completely collapsed, killing everybody inside."

"And the helicopters?"

"Everyone," Booth said quietly. "All of them—gone. The other eleven guys in my unit, plus the ten aircrew. Twenty-one in all." He closed his eyes and shook his head as if jettisoning away a memory. "I was the only one that survived."

For several moments, Wendell stood there numbly, unsure of what to say.

"I'm sorry, man," he said quietly. "I'm really sorry."

"So," Booth continued. "Back there are the twenty-one guys that were the rest of the operation. Plus the four civilians that were in the café when the second helo crashed into it."

Wendell nodded solemnly. "All Afghans?"

Booth rubbed his hand over the top of his head. "All except one," he said. "When Bones and I started separating—" He exhaled through pursed lips and shook his head. "When we went through what was collected at the scene of the crash, we found an extra set of remains—a Caucasian female with blond hair."

"Western?" the younger man asked.

Booth nodded. "Yeah," he said grimly. "We think she's a war correspondent named Hannah Burley. Based on what the MPs told me this morning, she's been missing for the last seven days. I took Bones' preliminary report and the sketch that Angela did over to the MPs this morning, and they confirmed the findings are consistent with Burley. They've requested dental records, and once we get those we'll be able to confirm identity and help ship her home."

Wendell scratched his stubbled chin, knowing without Booth having to say so that his job was to help his friend do for his fallen comrades what he and Brennan appeared to have been able to do for the dead journalist: to give them names and send them home to their families.

Booth glanced over his shoulder at Brennan who stood over one of the steel tables, holding a mandible under a magnifying lamp. "I'm glad you're here, Wendell," he said, placing his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "Seriously. It means a lot to have you here—to both of us."

Wendell's eye twitched at the added remark. He thought about the brief phone conversation he had with Angela during his layover in Dubai:

"So you think Booth and Dr. Brennan are together now?" he asked her, rubbing his travel-bleary eyes as he was certain he had misheard her.

"I can't be sure," Angela said. "But I've never heard her sound so—well, so happy. She sounded almost cheerful when I talked to her. And, with her being in Afghanistan, dragged away from her dig in Maluku, spending ten or twelve hours a day separating the charred remains of twenty-one of Booth's comrades from six thousand-odd pounds of twisted, torn steel. I don't know, Wendell, but—I can't put my finger on it, but she's happier than I'd have expected to hear her sound under the circumstances."

Forcing a smile, Booth clapped Wendell on the back. "Ready to do this thing?"

"Yeah, man," Wendell replied with a solemn nod. "Let's do it."

Brennan glanced up as she sensed she was no longer alone, and she yanked the earbuds out of her ears. "Hi, Booth," she said, brushing her fingers over her partner's hand as he walked past her to the other end of the table where a file box lay. "Hello, Mr. Bray. Feeling a bit better after a shower and a nap?"

"Yes, I do, thanks," he said with a faint smile as he noted the brief but tender gesture.

"Booth," she said softly, nodding in the direction of the box. "An airman came by about an hour ago with this—said you'd requested it."

"Right." Booth looked down at the box, which was labeled Army Human Resources Command CONFIDENTIAL. "Yeah," he whispered, tearing away the strip of packaging tape that secured the lid before opening the box. Inside were twenty-one file folders—one for each of the men in Operational Detachment Alpha 3623 and the ten Special Operations Aviation Regiment aircrew.

"Yeah," he said again, his voice grim and his face long with sadness. He reached in and pulled out the first file: 1SG Parnell, Kellen John.

"Oh, Lord," he whispered, his nostrils flaring as he tried to hold back the tears he felt burning in his eyes. Turn to me and have mercy on me, he prayed silently. Grant your strength to your servant and save the son of your maidservant.

A/N: So, Wendell's here. But Booth's still struggling quite a bit in recovering from the affects of crash, physically and otherwise. He and Brennan seem solid, and she's trying to help him as best she can, but is she up to the task? Now that the mystery blonde is now, apparently, identified, and the task has moved on to identifying Booth's comrades, how will he manage? And will he be able to learn what really happened that day in Marjeh?

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