Disclaimer: Still not mine, yet I love these characters so...

~Q~

Doomed to Repeat

~Q~

Chapter Fourteen

"You Believe Love is Transcendent and Eternal. I Want to Believe That, Too."

~Q~

When she opened the door, the first thing Brennan noticed was that the room was dim, lit only by the light over the kitchen sink and one small lamp in the corner of the living room. The next thing she noticed was that it was quiet because the television was off. She concluded Booth must have put Christine down for the night because she couldn't see or hear her daughter, but the baby monitor was resting on the coffee table. He had changed out of his suit into his standard black T-shirt and jeans. The last thing she noticed was that instead of relaxing in front of the TV, he was sitting at the eating bar nursing a Scotch from a bottle she thought might have been full that morning. And she wasn't really sure what that meant.

"Hi," he said.

He sounded cautious, she thought. Wary.

Just like her.

"Hi."

Walking into her own home hadn't been this nerve-wracking in years, not since she had lived with Peter. It had always been a risk during those last, tense weeks. Peter would brood, hurl accusations, start yelling. Some nights it had gotten bad enough that she'd left and returned to work. It was during that time when she'd made the trip to IKEA and had the sofa delivered to her office. Brennan pushed herself into the home she shared now, shutting and locking her means of escape behind her.

"Kind of late," he observed.

The question was there, and she recognized a fear in his words as well. Already, this was different than Peter. Different was good, different meant there was hope and she might bring about a much better outcome. He needed what she needed—he needed to know.

Approaching him, leaving her bag and coat behind and her hands empty, she explained why it had taken her so long to come home. "Well, I went to see Sweets."

She could tell she had surprised him. Booth's eyebrows shot up, his eyes opening wider. "Why?"

"Because," she admitted miserably, "Something is wrong with me."

And wasn't that the origin of it all? Something was wrong with her, about her, inside of her. The same something she had always lacked, had never truly been able to compensate for, was hurting him just as she'd always feared it would. For years she had known she was different, had even wondered idly whether she was broken because of the events of her life, or if she'd simply been born incomplete. For years she'd thought he must have understood, that he overlooked her missing pieces. Yet after yesterday, she couldn't stop the question from circling. What if it was those missing pieces that had driven other people away from her? What if they drove him away also?

"No, Bones. Nothing is wrong with you."

Booth's instinctive protectiveness had kicked in when he heard her speak with such painful self recrimination. He got up and moved closer, yet they were still standing a few feet apart and his arms were crossed in subconscious defense. She hadn't failed to notice his hesitation even as he tried to give her an out, one that would bring about the end they both feared. Did he know that? Was that why he offered it?

Did he think an out was what she wanted?

"No." Forcing herself to acknowledge how little she understood basic human interactions, emotions, and conflict resolution, Brennan shook her head resolutely. A single, simple illustration might show him what she lacked. Angela had called it common sense. "I thought today when we apologized to each other, that everything was fine."

The change came over him slowly, a different kind of comprehension. She'd admitted what she'd misinterpreted from their interactions, and he realized that he should have known better because he knew Brennan had always struggled to capture nuances. It wasn't a question so much as it was admitting that he should bear his own share of responsibility. "Because we were being polite," he said.

"Yes. We were polite." Objectively polite was good—it might have helped the Carmichaels avoid becoming embroiled in assault, financial ruin and homicide. Yet, being polite and apologizing for the surface argument hadn't taken her and Booth far enough to a reconciliation. Brennan knew that her shallow acceptance of empty words might have cost her everything. Her social ignorance had blinded her just as effectively as being mechanically blinded. "But you still knew that everything wasn't fine."

Like a child who grew enough to realize her parents don't know everything, Brennan had grown enough to understand that Booth didn't, either. He was just as lost as she was, the Hansel to her Gretal.

Booth pulled his arms loose and raised his hand up to his brow in resignation. "I was, uh, hoping that it would be. In the future."

"Only if we admit that it isn't fine right now." Their weak apologies were like putting a band aid over necrotic tissue: it cured nothing and let the disease spread unchecked. This was the slowly growing truth that had become increasingly inflamed between them over the days since she'd left, and like a patient avoiding treatment, the infection had spread over everything between them, invading even the healthy areas of their lives. The only cure was conversation, excision.

She closed the distance between them until they were standing just a foot apart, but Booth glanced away. He'd been doing that all along, and she had not known what it meant. Sensing he was not ready to face the work ahead, she searched through the previous two hours of work she'd done with Sweets for something to offer. Booth had given her an out; perhaps he needed one as well. It might facilitate the discussion to take even more of the blame, and in so doing to alter their course.

There was a reason she'd let slip the comment about taking Christine alone to the Children's Museum. There was a reason that particular catalyst had set loose the tempest between them.

"Sweets says that I am subconsciously rebelling against the fact that my happiness is now contingent upon your happiness, and Christine's."

She knew this was partly true—she'd always struggled with letting anyone in, had even told Booth that she was afraid of loss years ago. It was her primordial truth, one of the parts of her that had always been missing, but she knew it wasn't the real problem they faced now. She thought she might finally know what the real problem was, and was slowly working up her courage to confront it.

Meanwhile, Booth demonstrated his mastery over emotional minefields quite adeptly, by dismissing what he knew was merely emotional chaff. "Sweets is good with the psychology, but we're more than psychology."

What they had lacked was hope, faith, trust. What had separated them was fear and doubt.

"We're going to be okay," he promised softly, and assured her more than he could ever know just by saying it.

She heard it, that his faith in them had returned.

"I just—I don't want to be polite about this!" She slapped her hands lightly against his chest, needing him to take a step further with her. Don't hold back. Don't protect me. Don't protect yourself.

Raising her hopes, she met him with a silent plea. Could he still read her? Would he get the message? Talk to me.

His eyes were warming, the hint of a grin flickering at the edges of his lip. "Okay. I'll just make sure that it doesn't happen again."

"How?" She knew she sounded skeptical because his agreement had come too fast.

His teasing grin completely disarmed her. "I'll fart when I kiss you."

Laughing despite herself, she groaned, "Oh my God."

He laughed a little also, but then grew quite serious. The joke dissipated, having served its purpose to lighten the mood. As sorrow whispered across his countenance, she was reassured that Booth could indeed read her still. He had gotten the message, and he was keeping his promise not to let it happen again.

"I was mad. I lost you and Christine for three months. I'm never going to be able to get that time back."

She nodded slowly, feeling partially mended simply by his willingness to reveal part of himself to her. Now it was her turn. She could never restore their time apart, but there were still concessions she could make. "I have a way to fix that."

"What, you have a time machine in your basement?"

"No." He was taking refuge in humor—Brennan recognized this was what he was doing. Just as she hid behind facts and algorithms, Booth hid behind jokes and bluster. The sweet sensation of affection washed over her as she recognized his coping mechanism for what it was. "But we can take Christine to the carousel. Even though, I know the outcome."

"You're a wild woman," he teased.

"I love you," she declared firmly, knowing she was making her own leap of faith. To get reassurance from Booth, she would reassure him first. "I'm willing to do irrational things to prove it."

It might have worked. Taking the final step between them Booth kissed her gently, his lips teasing over hers. "'Cause you're irrational?" he asked against her.

Instead of saying anything, Brennan returned his caress and raised him a brushing of noses. But as he pulled back a bit, she felt the tell-tale tensing of his abdomen and narrowed her eyes at him in warning. "Don't you dare."

"What?" he asked, as wide-eyed and innocent as Parker tried—and generally failed—to be.

"Don't you dare…." She was almost laughing, but considered plugging her nose just to be safe.

"I wouldn't…." he insisted unconvincingly.

"I will hurt you."

"Bones, I don't doubt it."

He was laughing, but … it hit her hard, what he'd said. What she'd threatened, what she'd done. He should doubt it, should never be so sure she could hurt him.

She reached for him, pulling him closer until their bodies connected, burying her nose in the curve of his clavicle, her lips resting right above the bony callus from that long-ago break when he'd been caught by the bomb meant for her. That callus was there because of her, he'd been hurt because of her. "I'm sorry. I acted like an alpha female and I shouldn't have done that."

His fingers glided gently through her hair, lifting her, his expression affectionate and curious. "What do you mean?"

Brennan reached for his hand, lacing her fingers into his, but her eyes had drifted to the small round scar she knew still marred the skin over his right pectoral. "I never told you why I hit you."

"Which time," he asked lightly. Turning, he pulled her over to the sofa so they could sit and settle in together. Brennan dropped her head back onto Booth's steady shoulder, relishing the sturdy warmth and strength and solidity of him.

"At your funeral. I was angry."

His shoulders jostled under her head as she felt him chuckling. "I kinda figured."

"But I never told you why I was angry."

"Well, it was obvious why."

"No, Booth. I don't think you realize." She hesitated, took a sharp breath as she pressed herself closer to him. Paradoxically, as she opened a door to past pain and anger, she needed to get closer, to reassure him that she was lancing the healed wound for a reason. An apology was meaningless unless he knew she fully understood what she'd done to him, and how intense was her regret over it.

"I was angry because you made a unilateral decision. You acted like a typical alpha male, put yourself in danger without regard for the consequences—I thought you died!—and you didn't involve me anywhere in that decision. You just … acted. And I was furious."

"Bones, I didn't decide anything. That woman was going to shoot you. I didn't think, I just stood up." He pulled her in tighter. Without even having to look, she sensed his eyes darting around the room searching for hidden threats before his lips dropped to the top of her head. "I would do anything to keep you safe, you and Christine and Parker."

Brennan accused softly, "But if you'd have had time, you still would have done the same thing." Always the sniper, always the protector, she knew he'd never needed time to think. Booth had always acted on instincts and impulses.

"Probably," he agreed without remorse.

"Hitting you was my first impulse because you were alive and I couldn't even be happy about it. You'd made me so angry when you took the decision away from me. The whole time you were dead, under all that pain I was angry. I didn't want you to die for me."

"Bones," he murmured sadly.

Drawing back, facing him, she confessed softly. "I loved you."

"Then?" he asked, slightly breathless.

"Always."

They'd covered this before. Always means forever, a promise she'd once said she couldn't make, yet she was making it now. She could see the difference work its way through him, how his eyes softened and his body seemed to relax next to hers.

"I was glad to have you back, but under that I was angry." I can know you, she realized with a searing joy, because I know myself. "You're angry with me for the same reason."

"You understand." The relief came off of him in waves.

"I do," she affirmed, her forgiveness sounding clear and true, her love coming through. And the acceptance that she'd harmed him compelled her to say the rest, that part he needed most right now.

Brennan loosened her hands from his just long enough to trace a gentle line along his fingers, up his right arm, and across unerringly to the scar that hid under his shirt. "That's why I should know better than to be a hypocrite, because I know what it feels like to be the one who is shut out. I understand what you meant yesterday, Booth. I did shut you out."

She raised her eyes at last, knowing he would need to see the contrition in her, as well as the love and acceptance. "We each thought we were taking care of the other in some way, but it was wrong to make a huge decision like that without including the other person."

Seeing that she had surprised him, Brennan set herself to wait for his response. He was shaking his head, clearly somewhat amazed.

"That's not quite what I meant, Bones, but … yeah." He sighed.

"I want to explain why I took Christine," she offered cautiously.

"You don't have to, I understand why."

Again he would avoid lancing the wound, so she squeezed his hand and begged him to stop avoiding the painful cure. "Please, it's important."

He groaned reluctantly, dropping his head back against the sofa. "Okay."

"When my parents vanished, Russ and I thought something bad had happened. It was awful, thinking that they'd probably been killed. The difference in how that felt, versus how it felt when Russ left me … it hurt worse, Booth, because he chose to leave. And then, when I found out my mother had been alive for almost two years—that she also chose to leave me…."

"Bones, don't." He wrapped his arm around her more tightly, unable to resist protecting her even from haunting memories.

"I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to come back," she pressed, resisting his effort to stop her confession. "If I had left Christine, she would feel that same rejection, that she wasn't loved enough. I didn't want her to feel that kind of pain. If I told you what I was planning, and you let us go, then you would be the one giving her up. You would be the parent who left her."

The tears were back again, and she fought them. Sweets had advised she share her feelings, and she knew eventually she would, but for now she needed to share her logic. At the rate she was going, the feelings were bound to come through regardless.

Booth's face had gone pale at Brennan's analysis of who would be abandoning Christine. He looked sick, and angry.

She raised her hand to touch his cheek, to draw his angry gaze onto her. "But if I didn't tell you, if I took the choice away and stole her from you, then it would be me. Only me. She would never feel that you didn't want her. She would know that you didn't have a choice because I took it from you."

He pulled himself away, standing to pace and his eyes skittered all over the antiques in the room. "You were being rational," he repeated. He'd said this before. "I get it."

Shaking her head, she stood but didn't stop his frenetic activity. "No, I was being completely, unacceptably emotional. If I'd have been acting on reason, I would have realized that shutting you out of a decision about our daughter's future was wrong. But I was scared, Booth."

The tremor in her voice reached him as a seismic wave. She had never admitted to fear before. Coming to a halt, he watched and waited, held suspended by anticipation, as if he knew what was coming next. And here it came, the inevitable collapse of her flimsy emotional control in front of the only person she trusted enough to witness it.

"Why did he do that to me?" she finally asked, her voice breaking. "Why does he hate me? I never did anything to him, I don't even know him."

Booth cursed and returned to enfold her in his arms. "I don't know," he told her. "I'm not angry at you. It's him, it's what he did to you, to us, that has me tied up in knots."

Finally the carefully constructed defenses splintered and sheered away, leaving two raw and wounded souls to grieve in unison. It was the first time they'd cried about Christopher Pelant's assault on their life together. Huddled together in the center of their home, they both let go and fell together.

~Q~

The antique cuckoo clock in the kitchen drew a wheezy breath before thrusting the colorful bird out to announce the hour had grown late. Brennan stirred, pulling herself back from Booth's sleepy arms and shooting the noisy contraption a quizzical glance.

"You wound it?"

Booth's eyes crinkled, his brows raised. "You just now noticed?"

Flushing, peeved at her inexcusable lack of awareness, she glared at the offending time piece. How could she have missed it, given how loud the rapid clicks from the pendulum were in the otherwise quiet house. She had been focused so intensely on Booth that nothing else had mattered. "It wasn't wound last night."

"I wound it tonight when you didn't come home," Booth explained.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because it was too quiet."

He'd been sitting at the bar, staring into the dark and empty living room, keeping company with a bottle of Scotch and a ticking clock. She had only spent one night alone in this, their home, and it had been hours of silent misery. For Booth, it had gone on for months, and after last night she could finally begin to comprehend how painful it must have been. Yet there was nothing she could do to take those months of sorrow away. There were no reparations that could restore time.

Bringing his gaze from the antique that had been his grandmother's to Brennan, he absently brushed a wisp of hair away from her cheek. "I wound it every morning you were gone."

Another clutch of impending tears tightened her throat and throbbed under her brows. "You were afraid I wasn't going to come home," she realized, struck hard with remorse. Not just the time she was a fugitive, but tonight.

He tossed out a self-deprecating laugh. "Yeah, I guess."

"I should have called." Tearfully, she palmed his cheek. "I'm sorry."

"I know." His hand stroked over her head, drawing her chin up so he could see her face. "You gotta stop apologizing every five minutes."

"I will stop when I no longer do things that later compel me to express my contrition," she promised solemnly.

Laughing, he tugged her closer for another embrace. Neither moved for what seemed an eternity, lulled by their closeness and the rapid clicks of the pendulum. Booth often joked that he could hear her thinking in moments like these. In this moment, her mind had been temporarily dampened, all of her mental energy going towards him.

She could feel him thinking about something, worrying it between cerebral fingertips as he often did with the poker chip.

"Bones, you said something yesterday that bothered me."

She held still and waited for him to continue, her mind working over what it was. It wasn't like her to worry, to fret over what had not been expressed yet. Brennan had always shunned speculation. However, in the last few days she couldn't seem to stop her spinning thoughts from extracting the worst possible ideas and enlarging them. Sweets had explained she'd regressed, returned to a previous state of hyper-arousal and wariness that had carried her through her adolescence and early adulthood. To Brennan, it felt like she'd lost half of her mind: the analytical, patient half that avoided speculation and conjecture in favor of empirical evidence and facts.

"You asked if I would stay with someone I didn't love because they were having my baby. I thought we were talking about you."

Yes indeed, the rational side of her had gone missing. Rather than wait calmly for him to elaborate, her association centers began mixing past and present, conflating what had happened with what she feared might happen. Brennan knew her hypothalamus was connecting the fear to her pulse, sending out distress hormones and initiating a fight or flight response.

She could feel it beginning, the haziness and loss of contact. Sweet had told her to ground herself in some way when it began.

All the doubt of yesterday came crashing back over her in a rise of icy seawater swirling round her thighs, then it morphed into a rogue wave shoving her off her feet. She'd been knocked down by a rogue wave once before, had felt the solid thump of a watery fist at her back, had fallen and tumbled blindly in the scouring sand as the wave rolled her. She'd lost her footing, lost her orientation, lost all sense of direction, and lost her air. Everything vanished, except for the strong, warm hand that grasped her by her shoulder and hauled her upright.

It was Booth.

Keeping her eyes open and fixed on him, she felt control returning as the rushing waves faded and the chills stopped.

Booth's hand was steady on her shoulder, his gaze holding hers. "Are you all right?"

Her head trembled more than it nodded, as if it were about to tumble off completely. Yet he didn't seem to notice anything was amiss.

"Come with me, I want to show you something." Without any further explanation, Booth grabbed the baby monitor and propelled her upstairs, down the short hallway, and into Christine's room. "Look," he commanded in a whisper.

Christine was laying on her back, her tiny hands curled into fists. Little brows were smoothed out, her tiny lips pursed slightly. They had stood like this only three and a half months ago, his arm around her shoulder, watching their baby sleep.

His breath tickled against her ear. "Do you know why that is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen?"

She shook her head, too uncertain to speak.

Taking her back out into the hall, Booth led her to their bedroom. His eyes never left hers, his hand held on tight. What he said when they paused inside the door, when he closed it and locked them in, made no sense at first. "Because she's your baby."

"I don't understand," Brennan said.

"She's your baby, Bones. She's part of you, she came from you. You and me. Everything I love about you is in Christine. I never wanted to have a baby with anyone but you."

Disturbed, she shook her head in rapid denial. "Parker—"

"I didn't want a baby with Rebecca, what I wanted was fun and sex. The pregnancy just happened. I love him, yes, but he was unexpected." He set the baby monitor on the dresser.

"So was Christine."

"Christine was inevitable. It was never going to be just sex with you, Bones. You appreciate the literal so here it is, the literal truth. We made love that night, two people becoming one. Our daughter exists because I love you, and you love me."

Brennan melted a little and smirked a bit more before finally pushing him in exasperation. "Christine was inevitable because we failed to act responsibly. We had unprotected sex."

"No." He was guiding her deeper into the heart of the room, stopping only when her legs bumped into the bed. "You've never been that unguarded with anyone but me. Right?"

Contemplating the truth in that accusation, she felt her foundation shift and stabilize, a certainty that came from him. As if he could hear her thoughts, see the trust she'd placed in him, Booth's charm smile lit up the room and the darkest corners of her heart.

"It was fate, Bones. I knew the moment I first saw you that I was going to love you. And you were going to love me."

Do you believe in fate?

Brennan felt his love lifting her cheeks, crinkling her eyes, warming her from the inside out. "That's highly improbable."

"Improbable is not impossible," he countered.

Booth's face grew tender yet the kiss that crashed over her was anything but. Fiery, hot possession, his body pressed hers down onto the bed, and her body rose up in reply.

This was Oxytocin glue, the healing power of touch and tenderness.

~Q~