Paper Locks
Author's note: I had great plans for this story and then, I didn't. I had originally just thought of leaving the story as is with Brennan going home and leaving Pelant out there somewhere to torture the squints and their FBI guys and gals, but I then got this big brainstorm that fizzled out.
Then came the finale.
Like last season's finale, I became annoyed by some of the reactions and will now throw my two cents into the fray. Somehow the reaction again got my creative juices running and I decided I would try to finish this story using season 8's encounters with Pelant and my take on what could happen.
I don't own Bones, just the 206 of my own. I'm somewhat attached to them.
oOo
THREE MONTHS EARLIER. . . .
He caught her in a lie.
Temperance Brennan did not as a rule lie. Oh, she would obsfucate (a word he'd picked up living with her) to make him feel better about himself or outright lie if it served her general purpose of trying to get him to eat better. Certainly there were times when she pushed aside further inquiries with a lie —like when she'd come home from the hospital after being shot at the lab and hadn't wanted to take the pain pills because they left her in a fog which made it hard for her to spend time with Christine and him.
But as a rule she did not lie.
She much preferred honesty in all her daily interactions, but she had learned how to lie under his tutelage. In the interrogation room, interviewing suspects, witnesses, a lie sprinkled in here and there often produced the truth. Even with their friends, the lie had become a means to an end. The well-placed lie—or the omission of the truth— sometimes was just kinder than the truth.
And that's what this was.
A sigh. That forthright look—he'd been the one to look away—and her voice shifted again past the hurt to her squinty voice and he knew she was lying to spare his feelings before she retreated to their bedroom upstairs.
"Bones? Are we okay?" he had asked.
She had righted herself, but the lie was clear.
"Of course."
oOo
His pain had only a half-life in contrast to his anger.
For most of his adult life he had tried to control the anger that burbled to the surface, calling to mind his father's rages that sent him skittering to the floor only to try to rise up again to defend his brother or mother against the man's drunken savagery. But when he found himself in the garage pounding the body bag with a ferocity he had so often suppressed, whatever control he had shown in the past was gone.
He'd come to destroy Pelant.
The body bag itself was a poor substitute for the man as were any labels or combination of labels he could give him: Psychopath. Killer. Devil. Manipulator. Bastard.
Maybe Bones knew some ancient curse he could hurl at Pelant, some truly horrific words to describe him, but she was upstairs asleep in their bed, and this was his own attempt to find some small measure of balance in his world. He'd taped his hands carefully and strapped on the gloves and pounded the bag with a savage proficiency meant to banish the demons from within.
Then he slowed, the rage-fueled flurry of fists falling into a rhythm of control and precision, each collision of glove with the bag producing a satisfying smacking sound.
Control.
He hadn't slept well, the night giving him no relief from what he had had to do or the pain he had caused both himself and Bones.
She'd reverted to her earlier argument about marriage to save face, the old argument born of her own fears and insecurities. She'd opened her heart completely to him finally and he had turned around and shut the door. And as much as she might say they were okay, he didn't quite trust her words.
And he couldn't be sure they would ever have the opportunity to open the door to marriage again.
He slammed his fist into the bag and felt the ripple of contact echo through his muscles. Again and again, each blow helped to lessen the anger, helped to give him back the control he needed. One-two, one-two-three. He counted out the combinations, dancing around the bag, his movements settling into a rhythm of sorts. Breathing steady and sure, he punished the bag, a poor substitute for the man he truly wanted to hurt. But the workout was helping to clear away the fog of emotions to help him think over his next steps.
Alan Friedlander had once told him that if you knew where the suspect was going, you got ahead of him. If you didn't, you followed as closely as you could.
He had no damn idea where Pelant was or where he was headed. All he knew was that he would have to play this game for now, but eventually he would have to change the rules.
And he would have to find Pelant in order to kill him.
oOo
"Love is an idiot," she thought to herself as she bent over her sleeping daughter. "No," she corrected aloud, "I am an idiot."
Rational thought had warred with emotions last night and under the fog of sleeplessness, she could make no proper assessment of the evidence, but the emotional truth seemed to be winning out.
Christine, the product of grief-fueled love, would never know just how badly her mother had miscalculated the relationship with Booth.
The yellow walls gave the room a sunny feel, but Brennan's disposition was anything but sunny. If there were such a thing, she felt emotionally hung over. Reaching down into the crib, she brushed back a small lock of hair from her daughter's forehead. The baby, immune to the turmoil within her mother, slept on.
She'd given up on sleep earlier that morning, revisiting the events that had led up to the proposal, revisiting her earlier arguments against marriage. Against long-term relationships. And revisiting all the evidence that marriage was exactly what Booth wanted and what she had grown to want.
And she had periodically listened to Booth's breathing that night to reveal that he, too, had not been sleeping.
Christine stirred and Brennan patted her daughter's back, comforting her daughter in a way that she herself could not be comforted.
Nothing seemed to make sense; she had ample evidence, but there were still pieces missing.
Had she changed herself for the boy as her mother had accused her of doing years ago? Had she misread what Booth wanted? Was she really the person Booth wanted? Were they just together because they had made a baby together and were now responsible for her well-being?
Nothing made sense, yet it all could make sense and unable to ask Booth anything, the evidence might remain incomplete.
Sighing, she smoothed away a wrinkle of sleep from Christine's brow and tried to order her own weary thoughts. But nothing made sense and yet, it all made sense, from a certain point of view.
Still troubled by the raging thoughts that refused to be tamed, she schooled her features and tried to don the most neutral of expressions. Christine needed her to maintain a working and personal relationship with Booth; Booth needed her to be fine with the new line he had drawn for them.
And even if she wasn't, she needed the world to see that she was fine.
oOo
"Have you and Dr. Brennan set the date, yet, Agent Booth?"
Sweets' inquiry and any like it had been far from his mind, the snippets of conversation between himself and Brennan that morning consuming his thoughts.
"No need to," he said, donning a smile and pressing the lever of the spigot forward for coffee. "We decided last night that we don't need to get married."
Had he had more time, he might have phrased his reply better.
"You mean Dr. Brennan took back her proposal?"
Turning, he eyed the younger man and smiled. "I told Bones that we didn't need to get married. What we have is enough. We don't need a piece of paper."
He'd seen the young man sometimes stunned speechless by himself or Bones, especially when they'd been his patients. Then it had been a game to see just how little they could reveal, just how much they could turn his observations about them back onto him.
But now, Sweets' silence gave way to a quizzical look. "Are you channeling Dr. Brennan after all this time together?"
"Like some Psychic Network hotline?" Booth joked as he wiggled the fingers of his free hand trying to make light of the whole sit. "Look, we're fine how we are and we don't need to complicate things with a wedding and all that goes into that. We're fine. We don't need to get married."
"Because she proposed with jerky?" Sweets actually squinted at him. "I still don't know what that means."
Booth pointed at Sweets with his coffee mug. "She was willing to give me what I want like the jerky because it makes me happy," he said slowly, willing the man to believe him. "But like the jerky, it might make me happy, but I don't need it to sustain me, like marriage. What we have is enough."
He smiled and cuffed Sweets' shoulder. "This is a good thing, Sweets."
The psychologist shrugged and put his own coffee mug under the spigot. "I just find it interesting that you were the happiest I'd ever seen you the other day when you told me that Dr. Brennan proposed and now," he said, "and now it's. . . I don't know that I want to say this."
Booth sipped at his coffee and then plastered on a broad grin. "Go ahead, Sweets."
"All that talk of marriage? Was that a way to test Dr. Brennan?"
Booth hid his reaction behind the smile and just leaned into Sweets. "Bones and I don't play games with each other. You know how she is, what you see is what you get. She wouldn't put up with anything like that."
"Yeah, sure," Sweets sputtered, unconvinced. "but there seems to be something off about this."
"Nothing's off," Booth said, shaking his head. "We're going to go on just as we are. Living together, raising our daughter together. Everything's fine."
"If you say so," Sweets said, shrugging. "If you say so."
oOo
"Have you and Booth settled on a date?"
Words shouldn't have that much power, but they did and Brennan deliberately turned from Angela as she delivered the news that they weren't getting married.
Thankfully there were no additional words from her friend, not at first.
When the silence grew too long, she glanced over at Angela. What could only be described as surprise registered on Angela's features.
"You two getting married is exactly what Booth wanted," Angela finally sputtered. "There's something wrong, Sweetie."
Of that, Brennan could not disagree. Something profound had occurred from the time she proposed to the time Booth had suggested that they should not get married. Here at the lab, away from their home, she had been able to slip into scientific mode and began to examine the evidence with more objectivity that she had before. She'd been over everything that she was aware of from one time to the next, rational thought finally trumping the emotional turmoil, but nothing truly made sense. She had a paucity of information and what data she did have made little sense in light of everything she knew. Booth had seemed entirely happy with the proposal and completely saddened by the recusal.
Nothing was as it should be.
"Booth said that we didn't need to get married," Brennan said. "He apparently has come to accept my arguments against marriage."
But Angela could not be, would not be appeased by a straight-forward recital of the facts.
"That man loves you and all he's ever really wanted was to be with you," Angela argued. "He's a traditional kind of guy who believes in marriage."
Brennan, her head bowed toward the skeletal remains she was examining, looked up and straightened. "He finds that living together is satisfactory."
Their morning conversation was forced—even she could sense that—and Booth had seemed to struggle with the little things that he normally handled with grace and confidence.
She was fine, they were fine, everything was fine, but nothing was. Not really.
And while she rarely relied solely on her instinct—her gut—to make a decision, this time she would not deny it.
"Something is wrong."
oOo
He'd hidden away in his office rather than call Bones to meet him at the diner or the Founding Fathers for lunch, but it wasn't exactly work calling to him. Instead he stared at the photo of Brennan and Christine for several moments before pouring over the lists on his desk.
The questions were simple: how do you find a ghost who can manipulate computers to hide his trail? How do you protect yourself and your family while hunting him down?
He needed resources outside the normal FBI channels, but he wasn't going to kill Pelant outside of the law. He'd walked to one of the last remaining pay phones in D.C. to make the first of the calls needed to get ahead of this thing.
But he couldn't keep his eyes from the photo of a smiling Brennan and Christine. He had never expected Bones to propose, but when she had, he'd practically been flying from pure joy. Then fate had snatched back the prize and replaced it with doubt and hurt and lies.
And he hated it.
After his morning workout, he'd passed Bones and Christine in the kitchen, the baby babbling away happily between mouthfuls of cereal and milk, his partner's full concentration on their child. Brennan had only glanced at him, her eyes revealing a long night of wakefulness that he felt responsible for.
No. It was Pelant. It was all on Pelant.
He had once hoped the shot he'd fired into Pelant's car had left him to bleed to a slow, slow death, but fate had only been toying with him. Them. Hodgins had lost his gazillions to what had to be one of the biggest cyber heists of all time and he had drawn a target on his own back with the kill shot that hadn't.
Months ago he and Brennan had gotten past the all-too-polite back and forth that had gotten much too polite until it wasn't and he had secretly hoped that Pelant would piss off someone in Egypt who wouldn't think twice about ending the madman's life.
But Pelant had taken the fight to the FBI by manipulating that girl into killing two agents and he'd requested a task force under his command to gear up to take the man down.
He turned from the picture of a smiling Brennan and Christine and decided if he was going to break protocol this was the time, these were the people to do it for. There would be two tasks forces after Pelant. One official. One not even close to being official anything.
oOo
She remembered everything well. Stay away from tourist areas, public places, big shopping areas. Keep out of the crime-ridden areas as well. Surveillance cameras meant to protect and to serve only served one master these days: Christopher Pelant. Facial recognition software could be had easily enough and that one tool of law enforcement could readily be used to track her movements.
Be invisible. Blend in. Avoid conversations.
She'd taken the added precaution of taking the bus, a crowded vehicle where any number of bodies would obscure hers.
Blend in.
When the woman next to her started in on her daughter's upcoming wedding, Brennan had buried her own hurt and feigned disinterest, then went back to the magazine she'd carried onto the bus.
Avoid conversations.
Max had been implicit in his instructions while she had been on the run with Christine, and now she was on a different kind of run. The life she was saving was the life she wanted.
She was pretty damned sure she had it figured out.
It was part rational thought, part gut, yet she couldn't disprove it, not with the evidence she had before her. But she had trusted Angela, trusted Booth—up until last night—and somehow the conclusion she had drawn felt right.
As did her ultimate conclusion—Christopher Pelant had to die.
oOo
It had been a while since he'd been here in the afternoon like this. Within the building hid a variety of sins that came to light in the darkest of its recesses.
And he was about to add one more sin.
He felt the heavy wooden door close behind him, closing off the afternoon light and leaving him in the cool shadows of the place. In front of him, near the altar, the arms of Saint Joseph were held wide to welcome all.
Even him.
He made his way to the side of the church and slid into one of the pews near the confessionals. Kneeling, he made the sign of the cross and bent his head in prayer.
God knew his heart and no prayer came, just three little words: Forgive me, Lord.
He crossed himself again and slid back into the seat and watched as people came and went, disappearing into the confessional before re-emerging and finding their way to one of the pews around him before making their way back to the outside world.
He sat there a long time and waved off an elderly woman who pointed toward the confessional as if to give up her place in line. She slowly shuffled into the box, head bowed and solemn before emerging a short time later.
He waited out them all until he was the last then slid over to the confessional and opened the door.
There was something unsettling about closing off the bits of light from the church and being left in total darkness. He sensed the priest on the other side of the screen and knew the few moments between him kneeling and the opening of the screen were meant for the confessor to order his thoughts.
But he had already chosen this path.
Although he was expecting it, the sliding of the screen startled him and he waited for the priest to invite him to speak in the whispery voice of the confessional. "You may begin."
"Bless me, father," Booth intoned. "But I'm not here to confess my sins which are many. I need a different kind of help."
oOo
She'd followed his instructions to the letter, paying for everything with cash and finding her way to the small deserted neighborhood park. Wait 15 minutes, he had instructed. If he didn't appear during that time, she was to meet him a few blocks to the east.
Fear had fueled her flight before and that same fear now commanded her actions. She had only to look at the flayed bodies left behind by Pelant to know that the game had to have a different set of rules.
So she waited, glancing at her watch only as she turned the pages of the magazine she had brought. Here she could find out the latest about Britney Spears and Taylor Swift and she secretly wondered why anyone would really care about one or the other.
Then she saw him.
His gait still showed signs of the damage he'd done to his hip and leg almost two years ago. He smiled as he neared and she suddenly felt a different kind of fear.
She stood, leaving the magazine to the breeze which teased the pages open where she had left it on the seat.
"What, ho, wait, honey," he said, "I thought this is what you wanted. I thought you said that you think Pelant is behind this."
"I don't know, Dad," she countered. "There's a preponderance of evidence that suggests. . . ."
She talked to quell the fear, to hide her discomfort at what they were about to do, but her father, ever-patient with his headstrong daughter, waited her out as the arguments slowly petered out.
"You need my help, honey," he finally interjected. "This bastard is never going to let up. You know what his endgame is." Max paused. "He wants you or Booth or both of you dead."
It was the one piece of conjecture she had no incontrovertible proof of, yet she knew it to be true.
"So what do we do, Dad?" she finally asked although she knew the answer.
"We hunt down the bastard."
oOo
He found her in her office, a dozen books open and strewn about the coffee table, while she seemed to be pouring over the contents of her computer which was balanced on her lap.
He recognized the look—one of complete concentration, when little of the outside world could penetrate.
"Hey, remember us?"
Christine got a smile, but when her eyes met his the smile softened and then disappeared.
He dropped his own gaze toward Christine, the change in Brennan's face a little too hard to take. Their daughter was babbling into the ear of a small white rabbit which she then held out to her mother.
"I'll just be a minute," Brennan said stiffly.
He watched as Brennan closed each book and piled them on the table, then took the long way around the table as if to avoid him.
He sighed.
"We can stop at Whey Chai's on the way home," he offered. "Unless you want something. . . ."
"No, that's fine," she said, cutting him off. She grabbed her bag and looked at him. He couldn't read her expression.
"Yeah, home we go." He grabbed at the stroller and begen making vroom-vroom noises for Christine and only felt Brennan walking out with him. He didn't dare glance at her.
oOo
The smell of the food definitely warmed up the car and when he threw a smile at her she only shrugged.
"Smells good, right?"
She glanced back at Christine. "She might like the story about the anthropomorphic mouse and his peers."
Booth sighed. He was doing a great deal of sighing since he arrived at the Jeffersonian.
"Maybe," he started, "maybe we should get away this weekend. Let you dad take Christine and we can. . . ."
She finished his sentence with an Anglo-Saxon expression for intercourse and she watched him visibly wince.
She'd done it on purpose, testing him, wanting to know how he'd react. It gave her no satisfaction to hurt him, but she had to know.
"No, not. . . ," he sputtered. "Not just. . . . Do you have to say it that way?"
"It's one of more than 300 descriptions for the act of intercourse," she supplied. "Would you like me to describe it as the beast with two backs?"
He was flustered, that was evident.
"We could make love," he said, emphasizing the last two words. "You know that's what we do."
"We could stay at home to have sex."
She watched his walls rise as he sighed and sat back in his seat visibly annoyed with her. He glanced her way and she deliberately looked down at the cartons of food in her lap.
And she heard him sigh.
oOo
Three months ago is when it began—the season of lies and secrets.