(Sittin on) the Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding
By the third night, he expects it. Dreams ravish her sleep and she begins to thrash wildly in bed, the impulses from somewhere deep in her primitive brain because her genius brain would fight the compulsion. He holds back from touching her—the first night she had practically slammed her knee into his groin. Instead, he begins a gentle murmuring like he might do with Parker to ease him from a bad dream, a soft reminder that he is there beside her, not her nightmare demons.
And his words—unintelligible gibberish at 3 o'clock in the morning—ease her from the memories of captivity. Only then, when her arms relax and her legs slow their mindless run from her tormentors, does he touch her. "Bones?" he whispers into the night as if to dispel the evil. "Temperance, it's all right. It's all right, I'm here." He whispers other names that he has given her, names that she shies from in the light, but here, in the dark he uses them to banish the fear that still stalks her, days later, years after. And when the race from fear ends, he wraps his arm around her and molds his body to hers feeling the heat of her skin through her thin cotton nightgown. The first night she was soaked through and trembling and he woke her and helped her into dry clothes. But by the third night, the race is not so long, the heat not so great, and she slips back into a
oOo
He woke that fifth morning alone.
Reaching out, he felt the cool sheets.
Waking up alone usually didn't alarm him; their schedules and sleep habits sometimes warred with their mornings. But given recent events, he felt a certain possessiveness about knowing where she was.
"Bones?"
He rose stiffly and followed the trail of her voice, padding into the kitchen to find that she was just finishing breakfast.
"Two bodies were found just outside Remington, Virginia," she explained as a manner of greeting. "Cam is picking me up."
She'd already pulled her hair back into a ponytail, her bangs falling heavy over her eyes masking some of the puffiness around her left eye. Her eyelid was still heavy with the plum-colored swelling and gave her face an unintentional look of sadness.
"I wanted to let you sleep."
Well aware of how fragmented their nights had become, he knew why she had been reluctant to wake him early. It was the same reluctance to talk about what had happened.
"So much for death taking a holiday," he said as he slid into the seat opposite from her. His words were light, and he expected her to give him a look, one of those "I don't know what you mean" looks. But she didn't look up from sipping her orange juice.
"So you're not going to ride with Pancho and Cisco?"
No look. No reaction, except for a brief glance up.
"They're good men, Bones." He'd already talked to them, told them what to expect, told them how to treat his squints. He'd joked with her about giving them lessons on "The Care and Feeding of Squints," but she hadn't gotten the humor or had deliberately ignored it.
"You know, Cam will understand if you don't go out there."
"It's my job, Booth. The remains are partially skeletonized and Dr. Edison is not available."
Her tone wasn't something he had been expecting. It did not have that edge of annoyance he'd expect when he suggested something he knew she would not like. Hollow. That's it, he thought. It was as if she were simply saying what was expected of her without much conviction.
Hollow.
It really wasn't like her.
"I made coffee," she said. "Do you want me to make you breakfast?"
This tone he recognized. A tad hopeful, a tad apologetic.
"Just coffee," he said, rising before she could. "I don't think I want any of that cardboard stuff you eat."
This elicited a reaction she'd given him before. "It is a high fiber cereal made with whole grain and. . . ." She stopped and sighed, caught by his teasing. "I was thinking more along the lines of pancakes."
He pulled a cup from the cupboard and poured himself coffee. "Healthy pancakes," he continued. "Buckwheat or something." He smiled at her and was rewarded with one in return. "That's just not normal."
"You need more fiber in your diet, Booth."
Last week she might have begun with "a man of your age" before proceeding to outline ways in which he could prolong his life, but this week, a week in which they were both trying to be careful with the other, careful because they knew just what they might have lost, she had refrained from making an all-out assault on his habits.
This week. As he watched her as he idly sipped at his coffee, he found he was having trouble reading her. He understood fully why they were sharing his apartment. Besides the damage to hers, which was to be repaired today, there were the memories of the assault and the abduction. How much memory she had of either, he couldn't say.
Because she couldn't say. Or wouldn't.
He could guess what had happened—he'd seen the overturned chairs and shattered vases and splayed books. And the blood.
And he had seen the room in which she had been held. Cold and dark and dank.
He'd seen the damage she'd done to the one man and he knew how many shots it had taken to neutralize the second.
And he had seen the bruises peppering her fair skin.
He'd seen too much. But she hadn't said much about any of it. The only time she really did talk was in her sleep, when her entire body practically shouted about the fear and the agony and the horror of it all.
"Is Angela still talking about having a party Saturday?"
She nodded. "She says it is so that everyone can see the townhouse and the baby," she said. "But except for Caroline and Sweets, everyone has seen the townhouse."
"It's a party, Bones." He half-suspected Angela and Hodgins were throwing the party as much to celebrate the baby and to show-off the house as to toast Bones' safe return. "Sometimes people just like to get together with their friends and boogie."
The last word earned him a look he secretly cherished. It was Smarty Pants Brennan, anthropologist extraordinaire. "You mean the urban colloquialism meaning to dance in a fast and unrestrained fashion, a term thought to come from the Black West African English bogi 'to dance'?"
She'd bested him there and gave him that look: make no mistake, Temperance Brennan was the resident genius.
"We could boogie all night long," he said, smiling and waggling his eyebrows.
It was meant to make her laugh or break out another squinty definition or some sort of sexual challenge, but she refused to play. Instead, she seemed to be giving him another look, one he wasn't sure he liked as much.
Serious Brennan. Super serious Brennan. Given the past week, he wasn't sure he wanted to go there with her. Not minutes before Cam would arrive and whatever churning thoughts or emotions were left untamed.
But that look passed, too.
She was a finely tuned racecar with her emotions—the ones she allowed him to see these days—going from 0 to playful to serious to neutral in less than 3 seconds.
"What?"
If he pressed her, she might give him an inkling of what was going on in her oversized brain. But given the night terrors and the fact that she had camped out here in his apartment and had only gone to her own once since. . . .
The phone chirped and she bent to read the display. "Cam's downstairs."
She hesitated.
"If you need more time," he dangled the thought out there, "maybe you should take it."
"Why?"
He could think of five nights filled with whys, but she had been evasive about the nightmares. She rose, donned her jacket and placed her cell in the pocket. Before she could start clearing the table, he intercepted her and wrapped her in his arms.
She hung on a bit longer than she usually would. Or maybe he did.
And they kissed.
This communicated in ways her words couldn't.
Or maybe his couldn't.
But all too soon he watched her from the doorway, her messenger bag over her shoulder, taking the stairs without a glance backwards.
oOo
He'd asked her. Twice.
Each time she'd practically shut down and closed him out and he was tired of not knowing.
So when he hit Jeffery Silverman's office that morning, he wasn't sure if he was there out of frustration or concern.
Or fear.
Silverman looked up like he had been expecting him. "Not even a week, Booth. Figured you for a full week."
He laid it out, the official reason why he needed to see the file on the Chinese mob. Loose ends. Security concerns for the Jeffersonian. Maintain trust. Protect valuable assets.
Silverman looked at the piles of folders on his desk and selected the second in the middle pile and offered it to him.
He's seen that one. The one that Brennan had compiled on the dozen and a half murder victims traceable to the mob.
"Dr. Brennan's statement."
Silverman rocked back on his heels and shook his head. "Can't do."
"They're my people."
"Officially, I can't do it. Unofficially," he gave him that look he'd gotten from everyone there after he had pulled Brennan from that damned warehouse, "I'd want to read the file, too, if I was in your position, but I can't help you there."
"I just want to read Dr. Brennan's statement."
"I can't let you do that. I promised."
Not legal reasons. Not security protocols. Not some damned order from on high. Not "it's not your case."
I promised.
"Booth," Silverman began, "that woman's going to be responsible for tying the mob to 18 or more murders over the last three years and I respect that. Damn it, I would have taken Paxton to the woodshed myself had they not gotten to him first, because to endanger her like that was completely inexcusable and sloppy. Damned stupid and arrogant and had I known, I might have decked him."
"But I promised Dr. Brennan that I wouldn't let you read the statement." He arched his eyebrows and gave Booth a long, hard look. "I'd give up red meat and cold beer for her if she'd ask," he said, "because we need to keep our promises to people like her."
For the second time that day, Booth felt like he was watching her slip away from him.
"Unofficially," Silverman started again after a long, long pause, "I can tell you that they wanted to terrify her as long as possible. You know, make her think they were torturing Paxton in the next room, start and stop their little torture machine, demonstrate what they were planning on doing. When she fought back and knocked out one of the two offenders, the other chose to use drugs on her."
"There's nothing else, Booth, really. You were with her at the hospital. You know how she was there," Silverman shrugged. "Your Chinese guy kept telling us she was shén jīng bìng, crazy, you know. The other one won't be doing much talking for a while. He got off lucky if you ask me."
He thanked Silverman and turned to leave.
"Booth?"
He turned back.
"Give her time. She has to be one tough woman inside and out to take what she did and not crack."
"What?" Booth hadn't heard this part of the story. He'd gotten a Cliff's Notes version less than a week ago and there were still too many questions he needed to have answered. "She gave them a list of the murder victims." He had wondered if she had shut down because of that. The damned Chinese wanted to check to see if the FBI had caught up to all the bodies they'd strewn up and down the coast.
"Yeah," Silverman chortled, "she gave them a list of murder victims, descriptions and the like. But none of them match any of the people who were actually killed by the Chinese."
"She made them up."
oOo
How do you love a genius?
How can you not?
Standing in the doorway of her office, he watched the concentration that seemed uniquely hers. The intensity of her eyes as she scanned the image in front of her never failed to draw him in as well; sometimes he wondered what she saw with that genius brain of hers.
Like most workdays for her, this one started much too early and ran much too late and if he had had a better day himself he might have pulled her from the lab earlier. But nothing these days seemed to be working as it should.
"You know, you can save some of the answers of the universe for tomorrow," he said hoping she took it with the same lightness he meant it.
She looked up and the picture of intensity dissolved.
The injured eye seemed to droop more after a day of work and he could tell she was tired.
"How'd it work out with Pancho and Cisco?"
"Booth, neither Kennen nor Collins is Hispanic nor are either of them desperadoes, so I don't understand why you refer to them as two iconic Mexican characters from a 1960s television show."
"Someone's been Googling."
"Cam calls them the Doublemint twins." She eyed him. "While it's even more troubling since neither of them resembles the other, I don't even understand why the two of you persist in providing them with nicknames at all."
He knew this mood. He knew that it was better to duck and take cover rather than expose oneself to the inevitable shrapnel.
"They're amusing, Bones." He stood at the edge of her desk and tried to figure out what was making her so irritable.
"They're inaccurate and confusing."
"But they're your FBI guys until I get back. It shouldn't be much longer."
Something shifted. It was subtle, but years as her partner, studying her, knowing her as he did, he could see the change. He decided a different direction was needed. Quickly.
"I thought I could keep you company."
She said nothing.
"You know, hang out here."
Her whole body seemed to twist as if it were trying to work out a kink.
"Spend some time."
"You want sex."
"No, I mean, yes, but no, not now." The whole attitude was cold, clinical Bones. "That's not why I came here. I thought you might want to go back to my place or get something to eat. You don't have to solve the case tonight."
She looked at him with that cool, assessing look she had, the one in which she seemed to be sizing something up and he was little more than a pile of bones on a slab.
"So how close are you to catching the murderer?"
Even this was the wrong thing to say. "I don't actually catch murderers, Booth. I simply. . . ."
"Bones. . . ."
". . . Provide invaluable assistance in identifying victims. . . ."
". . . I only came by to take. . . ."
". . . To law enforcement officers who then. . . ."
". . . You to dinner. I. . . ."
". . . Use that information to help them apprehend and convict. . . ."
"Stop." He held up his hands in surrender. "Just stop, Bones. I know what you do. I know what everyone here does."
She glared and he had no idea what he'd said to set her off. He had the vague notion that it might be the distress finally jumping from her dreams into the daylight, but he wasn't sure.
"Then if you are fully aware of everyone's function, then you must be aware that I have a great deal of work to do."
The tone was decidedly chilly.
"You have to eat, Bones."
"I'm fully aware of what my body needs, Booth."
He released his breath and decided to retreat. "I'll see you later then."
"I'm going to my apartment tonight."
That stopped him in his tracks. "That's a good idea." He kept his tone light while his own insides were roiling. "You can check to see how the workmen did and I can bring some takeout."
"Alone." She offered him only a glance. "I'd like to be alone tonight."
Her eyes revealed nothing, just that stubborn streak.
"Alone?"
"Yes." She turned back to the laptop on her desk, dismissing him. "I have a great deal of work to do."
He tried to wait, tried to give her an opportunity to explain, but she had silence down and wasn't giving him any idea what had just happened or why.
How do you love a genius?
At that moment, he figured out the punchline: Very carefully.
oOo
Cam's lab offered only an empty slab and the vague shadow of a body in the cooler at the end of the room
Hodgins' bug world contained creepy, crawly things and plants, but no Jack.
So he wasn't expecting a real live person in Angela's office.
Instead he got two.
Angela was juggling the baby in one arm as she was trying to pack things into a diaper bag while keeping an eye on her computer screen that was zipping through images at a breakneck speed.
"Hey, hey," he said taking the baby from her. "Your momma needs a couple more arms, slugger."
"And probably a new job," she groused and gave him a withering look, "especially after today."
"Bad case?"
She stopped midway through zipping up the diaper bag and dropped it to the table.
"You don't know the half of it." She grabbed her controller and hit a few keys. The images seemed to slow down. He could make out that they were of faces.
The baby closed its eyes although its hands reached up to grasp bits of air and then release them.
"No ID yet?"
She gave him a look.
"Ange, you're the best." He gauged how his compliment landed. The scowl told him he'd have to try much, much harder.
"When are you going to stop playing catch-the-counterfeiter and start playing catch-the-murderer again?"
He let out the breath he'd been holding and held tighter to the baby. Angela's tone too closely mirrored Brennan's attitude.
"Look, it's going to take a couple of days, but it'll work out. Kennen and Collins are pros. This will all work out."
The scowl deepened. The baby was oblivious to the danger he was in.
"Bones will be fine. A few days and you'll all get used to. . . ."
"No!"
She advanced on him and he could think of no other time in which Angela had ever made him feel so concerned for his own life.
He held the baby even tighter.
"Brennan's not the problem, Booth." She shook her head, grimaced and shook her head again. "Sure, I think she could have taken a couple more days off, but I always think that. It's your FBI guys."
"Ange, there's always going to be a bit of a shaking out period with new people."
"Shaking out?" She huffed. "Booth, they were. . . they were just. . . ergghhhggh-grrrhhh!"
oOo
"Seeley, it wasn't just one thing they did," Cam said as she downed the shot of rye. Picking up the beer, she then set down the bottle almost immediately again. "Everyone set about to do their job, but they were just. . . ." She closed her eyes and shook her head and he knew nothing good was going to come out of this. "They were just not you."
He didn't want to think about it. After his talk with Angela, which had left him just as unsettled as his conversation with Bones, he had thought to make one more try with Bones, but when he looked across at her office the lights were off.
He could rescue her from Chinese thugs but not from the long hours at the Jeffersonian.
Or from the latest FBI guys.
He'd sought out Cam for a drink and an explanation of why he'd managed to piss off two women in one day without having spent more than a few minutes with each.
"Cam," he said, "it's not going to be forever. Just a little while longer and I'll wrap up the fraud case. Then we'll all be back together, one happy little squint family."
He realized, too late, that he had managed a trifecta: he'd pissed off a third woman.
"A little while longer?"
"Cam, it's out of my hands."
"They managed to irritate Angela, Seeley. Angela. They'd already got to Brennan, but we all expected that. But Angela?"
He leaned back in his seat. If he were being perfectly honest, the fraud case was languishing. Fletcher had been as much a fraud as the cases he handed him—he'd already pulled strings to keep him on the gift card case and had managed to keep him so busy dealing with other cases, he hadn't had the time to really crack it. And Tracy Lord, the woman he was dealing with, was tough. She wasn't giving up any of her secrets no matter how charming he was, no matter how much surveillance he ordered.
He was stuck in limbo.
Oh, he didn't miss dead bodies or notifying families of their loss, but he did miss the squints. And the lab.
And working with Bones. Especially that.
"Bones isn't going out into the field with them, Cam. It'll be okay."
He had no idea if it would be okay or not. He only hoped. He had basically ordered Kennen and Collins not to go out into the field with Brennan unless they had a SWAT team to back them up, but he knew that he couldn't expect them to keep her in bubble wrap for long. Someone or something would draw her out into the field and he didn't trust anyone beside himself to protect her.
"Brennan trusts you. We all do, Seeley." Cam wasn't about to pull any punches. "I think we all feel safer working with you. Brennan would not have been needlessly endangered like that had you been working the case. In fact, we all would have been taken care of. Paxton never considered us to be targets and he should have."
"Cam, once I clear the fraud case, I'll be back working with Bones and the lab. Promise."
"But we also trust that you'll take what we have to say seriously. That you'll remember that it takes a while for test results. That you'll respect us." He couldn't retreat from Cam's eyes. "This is just the first day, Seeley. Tomorrow I'm expecting all-out revolt."
oOo
He'd let the TV drown out the thoughts, but once it was turned off and he'd gone to bed, he couldn't quite shut them out any longer.
In fact, he lay in bed staring into the darkness, all too aware of the vacancy on his right side.
He could blame everything on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and anyone who didn't know Bones would have signed onto that explanation for her nightmares and anger. He knew the truth about the anger: she and the others were simply suffering from Paxton-Time Stress Disorder. No one, including himself, wanted to speak ill of the dead. But he'd made the mistake of trusting Paxton to do the right thing by Bones and by the squints. All Paxton had done was follow the FBI bible chapter and verse and had left Bones and the others vulnerable.
Pancho and Cisco. . . . Erase that. Kennen and Collins had thought things went well. He'd called Kennen on the way home from the bar, certain he'd hear another tale of misery, but the man had only one complaint—the lab results seemed to come in slowly, a bit too slowly for their tastes.
"They seem a bit set in their ways, Booth," Kennen had pointed out. "But if you say they're the best, then we'll work with them."
Collins, too, had painted a rosy picture although he hadn't been entirely complimentary.
"It's kind of like walking on broken glass with them, isn't it?" he had said. "They're very, very touchy."
He tried to close his eyes and will it all away if just to get some sleep and have a different perspective in the morning when the phone rang. Fraud cases didn't usually warrant late-night calls so, given everything that had happened so far, he figured it was Rebecca calling to complain about something he'd done or didn't do. Might as well, he thought. Then I can start pissing off the other half of the population tomorrow.
The caller ID told him a different story.
It took him a full two seconds—and another ring—before he answered it.
"Booth?" Bones' voice was hesitant. "I hope I didn't wake you."
"No," he stated honestly. "Is everything all right?"
"No," she sighed. "Yes. Everything is all right. I'm fine." He could hear her breathe out as if she were preparing to make some great statement of truth she'd just discovered. "My father said it would be important to talk to you. I'm not sure why."
His hand traced an arc on the right side where Bones should have been. He wasn't sure where the conversation was going, but he was grateful to Max. He'd just pick a topic to keep her talking. "How's the apartment?"
"It's good. The clean-up and repairs were done well."
"I can come over." He tried to wash hope from his voice.
"No, it's late and you need your sleep. Besides," she offered, her voice taking on an odd edginess, "my father's here. He's going to spend the night."
"Good. That's good."
He didn't know if it was good or not, just that he was glad someone would be there for her when the night terrors became too much.
"Are you still going to the memorial service tomorrow?"
It was another thing that Paxton never understood. He'd managed to alienate the squints yet they wouldn't allow their personal feelings—their very justifiable feelings—from doing what they considered to be the right thing. They'd honor him in death.
"Do you want me to pick you up?"
"I'm going with Angela and Hodgins."
He closed his eyes and wondered if he shouldn't just sit in the back of the church and let Angela and Hodgins deal with Bones and her questions about the Catholic requiem mass. It might distract Angela from being angry with him.
"Then I'll probably see you there."
In the silence that followed, he wondered if that was the wrong thing to say.
"Bones?" he listened for her breathing. "Are you still there?"
He waited a while longer. "Bones?"
"I'm not sure why I called, Booth, except," he could hear all kinds of possibilities in his head, "I find that I feel better in talking to you."
"I'm glad you called." And he was. A talking, shouting, berating Brennan was much better than a silent one. "I'll see you at the memorial service tomorrow."
This time he made sure there wasn't any hesitancy in his voice.
"Booth, would you like to come to dinner here tomorrow?"
In her question was a peace offering. "Yeah. I'd like that." He halted, then decided he'd test the waters. If nothing else, it would keep her talking. "Could we have some real food? I don't want to eat rabbit food or that cardboard you eat."
oOo
The whispers began the moment they walked into the church. St. Patricks opened up into a huge space filled with old-fashioned statuary that he knew would elicit a wave of questions from the woman at his side, but he didn't care. She'd met him outside and slipped her hand in his and he really didn't care about her potential questions or comments or the whispers as they made their way into the church.
She'd smiled and kissed him and slipped her hand into his and nothing else mattered.
He knew what the smattering of FBI agents scattered throughout the church were whispering.
"There she is."
He made a point to look in Kennen and Collins' direction, made a point to look their way and dare them to dispute just how important she was.
"That's her."
She had survived. She had been the only woman to be taken by the Chinese and the only person to hold them off. And she'd taken out one of her abductors and identified the other two and had he not shown up when he did, she might have figured out a way to neutralize the other man.
And she'd given them nothing.
"It's her."
She'd given them nothing except a long list of unsolved murders solved. She'd given them years behind bars once the convictions came down. She'd given them the end of the Chinese on the East coast.
"Dr. Brennan? Booth?"
Hodgins caught his attention with a loud whisper and Booth steered them toward the pew where Cam and Angela waited. He let Bones enter first and then he genuflected, made the sign of the cross and gave another glare to Kennen and Collins.
If Brennan were aware of the whispers, she didn't let on. He was sure she was more interested in the iconography than the people. She seemed especially taken with the statue of the Blessed Mother holding the body of her Son.
He looked closely at her face when she turned to him. Her left eye looked better, taking on that odd greenish-yellow tint around the edges that told him it was healing.
"It's a pretty horrific image," Bones said. "But the artist did a fine job recreating the skeletal structure."
oOo
It took him mere seconds to recognize the bluesy sounds emanating from the stereo when he let himself in. "I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time. . . ."
It seemed an odd lyric for the squintiest of the squints, a workaholic who bested even himself or Cam. It also seemed odd to see Max Keenan busy at work at the stove.
"Hey, Booth," he said as he slid the ingredients from bowl into a pot on the stove. "I hope you like vegetarian goulash."
The smell was inviting enough. He snuck a peek as well as a carrot from beside the chopping block.
"Here," Max said, handing him a baster and pointed toward the oven, "why don't you check on our food? Tempe laid down when she got in and I think she fell asleep."
Booth opened the oven to a see a small bird roasting under an aluminum tent.
"It's capon," Max said. "A man's got to have some meat and Tempe, well, she's going to insist that her tofu and such is just as good." He gave him a wistful look. "No matter how good everything is, it's just not enough sometimes."
Booth grinned as he basted the bird, then grabbed himself a beer and watched as Max put a pot of water on to boil.
In some ways, he thought, Max had it figured out. His presence was a promise kept, a way to stay in his daughter's life even if it meant doing so on her terms. A compromise, of sorts, that benefitted them both.
And it all came down to promises.
It fit well with the decision he had made that morning while shaving. He was tired of the fraud case, tired of watching the people he cared about making compromises while he just muddled along waiting for a break.
He had a promise to keep.
And when the reason for the promise came into the kitchen, he realized he was making the right decision.
He might lose his job over this, but he didn't care. It was the right thing to do for the people he loved.
For the woman he loved.
"So Bones," he said as he kissed her hello, "how'd you like to go undercover?"
