Chapter 29
Booth's backside had barely landed in one of the chairs in front of Sweets' desk when the thought first hit him. He had at first been completely shocked by Bones' injury, shock turning to concern, concern giving way to passionate fury at whoever had hurt her, and that fury finally being turned inward and quickly morphing into guilt; in the middle of all that, he had forgotten all about the fact that she had clearly wrapped her coat around her cast to hide it from him.
Turning hurt, shocked eyes toward her just as she took her seat, his sudden realization spilled right across his lips before Sweets could even begin to expand on his own statement.
"You weren't even going to tell me."
She was staring straight ahead at Sweets, not looking at him. He took that as a sign that she wasn't denying his accusation, and turned even more in his seat to face her. There was no anger in his voice - rather, his tone was filled with all the hurt and betrayal he felt. "Why didn't you call me? You were going to hide this from me completely, weren't you?"
Sweets sat quietly, allowing the interruption. He had every intention of getting back to the point he had introduced, but he was curious himself about the answer and where this turn in the conversation would lead. Not surprisingly, there was no answer, and Booth continued to carry on the very one-sided conversation, his voice soft and pained. "You won't even look at me. Why, Bones? God, have I really made you hate me that much?"
The final soft question broke through the mask of composure she wore for the benefit of Sweets, and her head snapped over to look straight at Booth, surprise and something else flashing in her eyes. "I don't hate you, Booth. You know that. I told you that."
Her eyes were finally on him and he wasn't willing to relinquish that, trying to hold her gaze steady on him even as his heart skipped a beat. The way she said that, it almost sounded like she meant... but it wasn't possible she still felt that way after all of his aggressive, jealous behavior, was it?
He had to be sure. "What do I know? Spell it out for me, Bones."
Suddenly uncomfortable, her eyes flicked off of Booth onto Sweets and then back as she obviously hesitated. "Perhaps now is not the best time."
Realizing exactly why she was hesitant, Sweets interjected. "Let me assure you, Dr. Brennan, I have no intention of using anything said in this session today against the two of you. Agent Booth has already spoken with me at length concerning some of the recent changes in your relationship. It's all right. The purpose of this session today is not to evaluate your effectiveness as partners. It is to work through the events surrounding your abduction. You can and should answer honestly."
Her gaze fixed back on Booth, and she only hesitated a moment more before answering truthfully. "You know how I...feel." She had clearly been searching for a different word, and wasn't entirely comfortable expressing it in the terms of 'feeling.'
Booth, however, knew what she meant. It should have made his heart soar, but the hesitant way she said it gave him pause. Instead, he looked as though he wanted to believe her but just couldn't. "If that's still true, then tell me what happened to your hand, Bones. Please. I need to know."
His eyes were pleading with her, but when she dropped hers to her lap he took it to mean that she wasn't going to meet him halfway.
And the dam broke for him, sadness filling his voice as he responded. "Then I don't believe you, Bones. Because you were going to walk out that door just now, knowing Sweets would terminate our partnership if you didn't stay."
"Booth..."
But he was just getting wound up. "The only reason you stayed was because he threatened to have Cam suspend you from the Jeffersonian."
With each word he spoke, he sounded more and more convinced; but it only caused more and more anger to bubble up within her in response. She had not envisioned this conversation going this way: her being forced to defend her feelings for Booth, to Booth, and in front of Sweets, no less.
"That's not true, Booth!" She sounded slightly more agitated that time, the tension in the room rapidly escalating.
Her denial only seemed to fuel his argument, although his tone stayed quiet - more hurt than angry. "No? Why do you think that's what he threatened you with? I'm not blind, Bones. Even Sweets knew you wouldn't stay if he only threatened to break us up! Because if that's all that was at stake, you were perfectly willing to just walk out that door and give up on us, weren't you?"
By the time he finished, Brennan was seeing red from both anger and embarrassment. And then suddenly none of that mattered, and the dam broke for her as well - and it broke in the form of far more than she had intended to admit, especially with an out-of-control, raised voice.
"No! Why do you think I came here today at all, Booth? I'm here for you!"
The words had poured out of her without forethought. In the aftermath of her passionate explosion, the total silence that then engulfed the room was a stark contrast - a silence so thick it was almost stifling, as all three parties in the room processed what she had just said and what it meant.
Booth could only sit gaping at her, the truth in her words so clear that even he couldn't begin to question it. She was there because of him. And even if she had been ready to walk out the door moments before, he couldn't exactly profess ignorance as to what might have propelled her to do so. He had lost control with her - again. The fact that she still cared at all after the way he had been treating her was, to his mind, almost unbelievable. But how did they get through everything that had happened and get back on track?
So much time passed that Sweets was just about to turn the conversation back to the topic he had originally hoped to pursue; but Brennan shocked him by saving him the trouble. Her soft voice suddenly rang out through the silence, cutting it in half in much the same way her piercing gaze seemed to cut right through Booth.
"Is what Sweets said true? Do you blame yourself for what happened to me? Is that why you have been so upset?"
Her loaded question snapped Booth out of his shocked silence, causing him to shift uncomfortably in his chair. It was his turn to offer a nonanswer, and he knew what the 'right' answer to that question was - it was whatever would give Sweets the least reason to pick apart his head in front of her. He was fine with Sweets picking his brain if it was necessary, but only in private; not in front of Bones.
"Do I blame myself?" he repeated, as he turned his answer over in his head, squeezing his interlocked fingers tightly together. "Only for the parts that were..." he cleared his throat nervously, "…you know, my fault." She didn't necessarily have to know that, at least as far as he was concerned, all of it was his fault.
Her eyes were fixed on him in a look that he recognized - it was the same focus she gave to skeletal remains when she was hot on the trail of an answer. "And what parts are those?"
This time it was him who was unable to look at her. "We've been through that, Bones," he began noncommittally. "You know what I had to do."
"I'm not talking about that part. What else, Booth? I know that there's more. When you saw my cast, you said that was your fault too."
She had him, and he knew it. "You'd have never been in that club in the first place if not for the way I talked to you that day. Angela told me herself that she took you there because of what happened between me and you. So yeah, I figure that was probably my fault too - whatever it was that happened."
She ignored his pointed reference to the fact that she still hadn't told him what happened, and continued to pursue her point with all the tenacity of a dog with a bone. "But you said you 'let me get hurt again.' Booth, you didn't 'let me get hurt' in Albania. None of what happened there was your fault in any way. It was Edon Tolka who abducted me. That was certainly not your fault."
Something changed in his eyes. The fact that he hadn't told her everything had been weighing on him, and suddenly it was all spilling out beyond his control. "It was my fault, Bones, that he hurt you as much as he did. You don't understand. I had him. I had him and I let him go. I let him trick me, and you could have been killed because of it!"
This was new to her, and she shook her head in confusion. "But you told me..."
He was on his feet in a heartbeat, pacing the room angrily. "Yes, eventually I got him. That was true. He's dead and gone, and God help me, I'm glad. But first I interrogated him, and I let him go. I could have found you at least 10 hours earlier, but I let the little bastard get into my head."
He stopped pacing to see her wide, confused eyes on him, and forced himself to sit back down facing her. If he was going to own up to why she suffered through as much as she did, he could damn sure look at her while he destroyed what little faith she might possibly have left in him.
"After I let Tolka go, I drove all the way from Tirana to Vlore and stormed the wrong damn building. I was still in Vlore with no clue where you were or that you were there too, when Sweets and Zack finally figured out that Tolka was behind your disappearance. I had to drive all the way back to Tirana to find Edon. Then after I finally beat it out of the son-of-a-bitch where you were, I had to go all the way back to Vlore. It is my fault, Bones. That's better than 9 hours, just driving. How much more did you have to go through because I let that bastard trick me? Do you have any idea what I could have let happen to you in that much time?"
Brennan was sitting silently, digesting this new piece of the puzzle, and so it was Sweets whose voice cut in softly.
"As I explained to you at the time, Agent Booth, Tolka was almost certainly a sociopath. And as I also told you at the time, sociopaths have been known to easily beat lie detector tests. There was nothing you could have done differently, and you had no reason to hold him or not to believe him. I'm a trained psychologist, and if it weren't for the small inconsistencies I noted between the two separate videos of him at different times, I might not have made the connection either."
But Booth didn't want to hear it. "I should have smelled it on him," he pushed out between gritted teeth. "I should have known."
"Booth..." This time it was Brennan. "Rationally speaking..."
"Bones, just stop. I should have known he took you. I should have felt it in my gut."
She didn't even acknowledge him, just carrying right on with her thought. "Rationally speaking, had you determined my location 10 hours earlier, you might not have found me at all."
"What?" She at least had his attention now.
"I had only been dressed and prepared for auction a few hours before Naji found me, under the guise of purchasing me for you as a prostitute."
"God, Bones," he winced. He hadn't quite caught her point yet, more affected by the way she had chosen to word it. The idea of her being sold was still a horrifying one to him. The idea of him buying her like that, even as a guise, was worse than horrifying; it was enough to make him sick.
But she wasn't done.
"Logically, had Naji arrived 10 hours earlier or even a full day earlier, my captors would not yet have believed me to be sufficiently dependent upon their drugs. Therefore, I would not have been among the pool of women brought in for him to choose from. You would have been unable to determine my exact location within the building, making a rescue attempt even more dangerous. Even if you did locate me before auction, I would have still been handcuffed to the bed where they drugged me. Again, you would have been unable to free me, and you would not have had even the advantage of performing for the cameras to maintain a cover. And had you been later, I might have been sent to auction and you still wouldn't have found me. It would appear that your timing was, in fact, perfect."
Booth blinked once, twice...he hadn't thought of it that way. Had Naji not been able to determine her exact location and provided a way to have him led straight to her, storming that maze of a building looking for her would have been impossibly dangerous. They might never have found her - she and the other women could have been whisked away out another exit and he would have never seen her again.
And then something else she had just said stuck out to him, causing him to realize just how very little they had really discussed the details of what happened during the portions of the entire ordeal when they weren't together.
"They handcuffed you to a bed to drug you?" he repeated softly, his face contorting with a mixture of anger, pain, and sympathy. "Bones..." he breathed, his eyes closing and his lips pressing into a thin line. He had certainly known that a handcuff had been around her wrist at some point, probably for quite some time. He had, after all, seen the horrible marks on her wrists - had, in fact, been forced to grab them and hurt her when she had panicked and fought him, and he had found no choice but to restrain her. He had known drugs were involved too, obviously. But he hadn't known under exactly what circumstances she received them - hadn't really wanted to. For all he knew, she had been chained to a wall or to the floor. Somehow, especially considering all that he had done to her later, knowing she had been chained to a bed just made it that much worse in his mind.
"Yes," she answered, "with one other woman. It appeared to be some type of holding area, a place to confine us while they attempted to make us reliant upon their drugs. I estimate that there were at least 50 beds, each curtained off. Someone would come around occasionally to inject us. The other young woman was already fully dependent upon the drugs. I observed that when they would come, if she appeared dazed from the effects of the drugs, they would not inject her again. I was able to mimic that response, and thereby avoid multiple doses of the drugs."
"Unbelievable." That came from a wide-eyed Sweets, who was listening to her story in utter fascination, clearly affected by what he was hearing. "I'm sorry, Dr. Brennan. That's just - I'm sorry you had to endure that."
The look on Booth's face, while equally horrified, held clear admiration. "That was good, Bones. Smart. You saved yourself." His eyes slipped shut again, but not before the guilt washed back across his face, evident to both other occupants of the room. "I'm sorry you had to."
Brennan's eyes flicked to Sweets once again, indecision written on her face. The clear guilt on Booth's face, however, made the decision for her, and she willed herself to forget the presence of Sweets and tell Booth what he needed to know.
"You're the reason I was able to," she began hesitantly, watching his eyes pop open and lock onto hers at that admission. It felt to Booth and even Sweets like all the air had just been sucked out of the room at such a bold statement from her, but it didn't even slow her down now that the words were out of her mouth. Her decision was made to tell him this, and she was going to do it without further hesitation or fear of repercussion.
"I wasn't able to avoid all of the doses of the drug. I received just enough of them that I began to crave it. Although I knew what was certain to happen to me if I allowed them to continue injecting me, the temptation was quite strong to drop the pretense and allow them to do so. The symptoms of withdrawal were painful. I knew, however, that you would be looking for me and that you would, in fact, find me. That knowledge was what gave me the strength to fight them."
Her revelation did not have the effect that she had hoped for. Instead, Booth looked as though he had just been stabbed through the heart. Long moments passed before he spoke, barely above a whisper. "You held on for me. All those hours, you were waiting for me to get there." Angela had told him as much, but he had not given it very much credence. Hearing it directly from Bones, however...
"Yes," she answered honestly, not understanding the look on his face. "I knew you would find me. I just didn't know when. I shattered a pitcher and armed myself with a piece of broken glass in case I received a chance to escape. But I resisted the urge to use it until the very last moment, to give you time to find me. I never doubted that you would come, Booth. My only question was if you would find me before I had no choice other than fighting to escape or dying in the attempt."
"And then I..." Booth's squeezed his eyes shut, looking for all the world like he was desperately trying to block out the memory.
Sweets practically saw the light bulb click on over Dr. Brennan's head. He understood fully why it bothered Booth so much that she had been hoping against hope for him to come to her rescue. Now, he saw, she knew it too
"You did what you had to do, Booth." Her voice was calm, certain, now that she had deduced why her admission seemed to bother him so much. "If you hadn't done it, we would both have been killed. Right?"
It was that completely trusting, innocent, one-word question that did him in. He had truly never intended for her to know. It was the one detail he had every intention of keeping from her. But listening to her talk about his disgusting actions like he was some kind of hero when he knew better was more than he could take, and his last secret from her came pouring out, drenched in bitterness.
"No, Bones. I didn't have to. It would have turned out the same way even if I had never touched you." His eyes were fixed on a point beside her head and his voice was hollow as the words left him, each one cutting him deeply.
"Booth?" Some of the certainty was gone from her face at that admission, her eyes imploring him to expand on that statement and tell her the whole truth. With great effort, he forced himself to look deeply into her frightened eyes, for what he could only hope and pray was not the last time she would ever look at him.
"I know you don't remember, Bones. I know that. But I heard the gunshots start before I ever finished the..."
There wasn't a good way to put it, so for once he just spit it out in the most clear form possible. "...while I was still on top of you. I got off of you right then, but by that time did it really matter? None of it mattered. Our cover was blown, maybe before I ever touched you."
She was searching his eyes , and he resisted the urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake the truth into her. "Don't you get it, Bones? All of your nightmares, all of your fear of me, the way that you can't let me touch you? I might have done all that to you for nothing. I did all of that to both of us for nothing." His eyes were more than a little wild, letting her see just how much damage that knowledge - and keeping it from her - had done to him.
Understanding dawned in her eyes at his emphasis of the words 'for nothing.'
"The hospital. That's what you were talking about when you said you ruined things for nothing."
Even after he had explained the rest of what she overheard in the hospital, that one phrase that he had never explained had continued to eat at her. If anything, she felt relief to finally know what he had meant. Suddenly, her clarity and her certainty were both back.
"Booth, even if that's true, which you have no way of knowing, you still did what you thought you had to do. You had no way of knowing what was happening outside of the room. Based on the cameras and the lack of a way to free me from the shackle, your decision was a logical one. There is no need to blame yourself for anything. I don't blame you for anything, Booth. I know that you wouldn't hurt me on purpose, or without a reason."
Booth just sat shaking his head back and forth, unable to allow her to absolve him of his guilt. "How can you say that, Bones? This entire thing is my fault, and we all know it. If I would have just..."
He trailed off at that pivotal moment, his head dropping to stare down between his feet.
Sweets had been waiting for that particular admission, and for that particular opening. Finally, they had reached what he believed to be the root of Booth's guilt about the whole situation. "How, Booth? Tell us why you feel that way."
Booth's clasped hands dangled between his widespread knees, where his elbows rested, and he watched his fingers twist back and forth as he addressed his words not to the man who had asked the question, but to the woman who most needed to hear the answer. "I've been dishonest with you for a long time, Bones. I knew how I felt about you, and I knew it for a long time. If I had had the guts to tell you I loved you, maybe none of this would have ever happened."
Brennan's eyes shot toward Sweets once again at Booth's extremely clear wording, before carefully going back over to Booth. "But Booth..."
"Maybe you wouldn't have gone at all. Or maybe I would have been with you. Either way, Bones, if we had already been together, this would have turned out so differently."
"Booth," Sweets cut in reasonably, "you know Dr. Brennan very well. Even if, hypothetically, the two of you had been married, who Dr. Brennan is would not change. She would still be a successful forensic anthropologist, and she would still remain quite committed to her career."
Brennan was all too swift to agree. "He's right, Booth. Had we been together, I would have still gone to Albania. And it is unlikely that you would have accompanied me. I doubt that Cullen would consider babysitting me to be a job for the FBI."
"Then I'd have taken vacation days, Bones." He was looking at her again. "You know I would have. I wanted to anyway, even without us being together. I knew this trip was going to be dangerous."
"And I wouldn't have let you. You should take your vacation days with Parker," she pointed out reasonably. But he was in no mood for reason.
"It just would have been different, Bones, if I had been honest from the very beginning. For one thing, I'd have insisted that you stay in your room instead of going out where Tolka could get his hands on you. I was so busy in that damn meeting with Cullen that I didn't even think to tell you..."
"Booth," Sweets cut in again, "I spent a great deal of time working up a profile on Tolka. He didn't just randomly happen upon Dr. Brennan because she just happened to decide to go for a walk. He had already planned to take her, and would undoubtedly have approached her in her room had she not ventured outside. He simply capitalized on the opportunity. The situation could have been even more dangerous had he broken into her room. There would have been a struggle, and Dr. Brennan might have been gravely injured or killed. The point is that we can't know for certain what would have happened. Just as you couldn't have predicted what would come of the actions you did take, it's even more impossible to determine what would have happened had you acted differently."
Booth heaved a huge sigh. "But there's one thing I am certain of." He turned his eyes on Brennan. "Had I been honest with you before you ever left about the fact that I'm in love with you, and if we had been together - if we had made love, even one time - what happened in that room would have played out so differently. Would you still be so afraid of me? I don't think so, Bones. I think that the whole thing would have been completely different, because you would have had no reason to doubt my intentions. You'd have seen through what I was doing and known from personal experience that I wouldn't ever hurt you like that. Even if you couldn't have played along, you'd at least have known that I wouldn't hurt you like that. Maybe it would all be so different now."
She sat staring at him, unable to respond, trying to find a way to tell him she knew that about him anyway. But after a moment he dropped his head. "I'm sorry, Bones. I'm sorry for what happened, and I'm sorry for the way I've been treating you. I know you weren't suggesting what I accused you of on Friday. I don't know why I thought that you were. I'm sorry for not knowing that you needed time before we jump into anything, and I'm sorry for not trusting you. I didn't mean to ever hurt you again, and that's what I did. You asked me for time, and that's what I'm going to give you. I hope that one day you can forgive me for everything - but mostly for not being honest with you a long time ago."
Her head was spinning, and tears were ready to fall down her cheeks. There was so much more she wanted to say to him, so many flaws in his reasoning that she needed to point out, but she couldn't bring herself to say any more in front of Sweets. The rest of this conversation was going to be theirs alone, and she needed time to plan what she wanted to say. This was not something that she intended to risk going about in the wrong way.
"I'm sorry, Sweets. I have to go." It was all she trusted her voice to say.
She looked somewhat desperate, and Sweets nodded his agreement, not wanting to push her too far. "It's all right, Dr. Brennan. We've made good progress for today. Perhaps we can meet again tomorrow?"
Her eyes turned to Booth, but he wasn't looking at her. "That's fine."
Quickly, she grabbed her coat and left the room. This time, Booth let her go.
… ooo … ooo … ooo
Booth didn't go home or back to his office when he left Sweets' office a few minutes later, after absently agreeing to meet with him again the next day, and - in the meantime - to write down some of his feelings about the meeting they had just finished. He might just as well have agreed to a deal with the devil, as much as he cared about what he was saying. He just needed to get out and have time to think.
A huge part of him wanted to chase Bones down and have an actual real, non-shouting, reasonably sane conversation with her for the first time in days - one, at least, that didn't involve a moderator. But if the look on her face when he sneaked a peek at her as she raced out of Sweets' office was any indication, she needed time to think just as badly as he did, and probably wouldn't appreciate him reprising his role as pseudo-stalker. He had just apologized for all of the controlling behavior, so it would probably be better not to go chasing after her if she wanted to be alone.
Although he wasn't entirely sure that he completely bought it as being the reason he had been unable to control his reactions recently, he truly had not realized just exactly how responsible he did feel for everything until the words came out of his own mouth. Even so, for some reason it had come as quite a shock that Bones didn't hold him to blame for everything that had happened - or any of it, for that matter. He wasn't sure he entirely bought that either. He had held her down beneath him, made her afraid of him and afraid in general, and then told her there had been no reason for it. She had to blame him, at least a little bit.
On the other hand, he felt like a huge weight had lifted off of his shoulders after hearing her calm, rational reasoning about his timing in the rescue. He had been so busy kicking himself for not finding out sooner where Tolka had taken her, that he had never really thought about how it would have gone down if he had. But now that he was finally thinking about it, he had realized some things that even she probably hadn't thought about: and they sent shivers up and down his spine.
She was right; there was no denying it - not from a tactical standpoint, and not even from an emotional one. If he had seen through Tolka immediately and had made his way to the place she was being held, he would have had to choose from a few very bad options: either storming the building with no clue where to look for her - risking her life as well as his and Naji's - or waiting it out and becoming that slimeball club operator's best damn customer, making 'deal' after deal from the women they were offered until they finally prepared Bones and brought her in as one of the selections - which would have happened at the exact same time that it did in the first place; not one damn minute sooner.
And then Naji would have still purchased her, and things would have still turned out the same way, except he would have some other things to feel horribly guilty about. Because those same damn cameras would have still been there while he was keeping up his end of the 'bargain' with the wrong women he had to 'purchase' in the meantime.
He would always hate that Bones had to wait those extra hours not knowing how close he was to finding her, but maybe fate had just spared them both something worse. One simulated rape was bad enough - throw in a few more with other innocent women who had been fully drugged to be 'participative', and he'd be beyond help. Crazy as it sounded, he had loved Bones enough to do it to her so he could save her, even knowing it might make her hate him. He had said he'd do anything necessary to bring her home safe, and he meant it no matter what - but could she have forgiven him if that had been put even more to the test, and her rescue had come at the expense of others? Could he have forgiven himself for not even having to stop to think about it?
She and Sweets were also right that he couldn't have stopped her from going to Albania, no matter what their relationship. It was just the way she was, and actually one of the reasons he loved her.
And, of course, Sweets was also right that Tolka would have been gunning for her either way. He still believed, though, that telling her the truth a long time ago might have changed things for the better in plenty of other ways. Nothing was going to convince him that, as more than just her partner, he wouldn't have been able to exert at least some influence over her security and safety precautions.
And, of course, there was the rest of it; he still thought that the actual 'attack' might have been less traumatic for her as well if she had known at the time that he loved her and just how much. Because if she had even half of an idea of just how much he loved her and what that meant, she'd sure as hell know that he wasn't even capable of maliciously hurting her. She had looked more than a little skeptical when he had advanced that theory in Sweets' office, but he was 100% convinced of it - if for no other reason than the fact that it allowed him to hold onto some of the guilt that had become such a comfortable companion. He wasn't entirely ready to absolve himself of all responsibility just yet, even if she was; not when she was still clearly suffering the effects of what he had done.
As he was thinking, he made his way from Sweets' office straight to his SUV, which he had just got back that morning after it had been repaired from his accident. While he was in the process of apologizing for his bad behavior, there was one other person to whom he definitely owed an apology. And he was going to get that out of the way immediately.
… ooo … ooo …
Somehow, Brennan's feet took complete control of her body, and she ended up allowing them to carry her straight from one office in the Hoover building into another one. Much though she wanted time to plan out what to say, she couldn't leave the building without at least seeing Booth and scheduling a time to speak to him. If nothing else, she at least owed him an explanation for...well, for a couple of things that had happened in that office - starting with her hand.
Although she normally might not have thought twice about flouncing right around behind his desk to his chair and sitting in it, she made a conscious decision to stay on the visitor side of his desk this time, taking one of the other chairs.
Her last several encounters with Booth had been much like being yelled at by a stranger who just happened to look (and smell) just like him. Overall, she was feeling a little hesitant where he was concerned, in every way. It was an odd feeling for her, but not one that she intended to fight - not yet, at least. She had spent much of the weekend trying to figure out what was wrong with him, which had been an exercise in futility. She had spent the rest of it suffering the worst flashbacks and nightmares she had yet experienced. While the nightclub and her experience there certainly hadn't helped, the fact that Booth was the aggressor in more and more of those nightmares made her quite certain that there was more to it than just the events outside the nightclub.
Of course, Angela had been there for the first half of the weekend and had received an eyeful as well as an earful of the worst of it, before Brennan finally got tired of hearing Angela's opinions on the topic and insisted that she go home. The fact that she had barely slept for the rest of the weekend had apparently been written all over her face when she arrived at the office that morning, and had led to a repeat of the same conversation, ending with angry words between her and Angela...
It was a strange feeling, having every part of her limited support network at odds with her. Angela's angry words from that very morning washed over her once again.
"When are you going to talk to somebody, Brennan?"
"I'm fine, Angela."
"Obviously. When's the last time you slept?"
"I was experiencing a throbbing sensation in my injured..."
"No, you were awake screaming Booth's name all night long - and not in a good way. It's not getting better, Bren. It's getting worse, and you need to talk to somebody. Please, just let me call Sweets - or Dr. Wyatt. Or somebody completely different. I'll even go with you."
"I assure you, Angela, it's completely unnecessary."
"Right. And as long as Booth keeps avoiding you just as much as you're avoiding him, it'll keep being unnecessary. But what the hell are you going to do when Booth shows up with a case - or God forbid, wants to talk about the huge elephant in the room between the two of you?"
"In answer to your first question, I should imagine that I will go to the crime scene with him, do my job, and solve the case. You are the one, after all, who suggested that I give Booth some space personally. And as for your second question, it makes...no sense at all."
"You know exactly what I mean. What's the plan, Brennan? About Booth. Do you honestly intend to spend all night every night being afraid of him when he's not there, and then all day pretending not to be when he is there? How long do you think you can keep that up? He'll know the first minute he sees you."
"You're overreacting, Angela. In fact, Booth and I have an appointment with Sweets this afternoon..."
… ooo … ooo …
A little more than an hour after Brennan had left for her session with Dr. Sweets, a soft knock sounded on the door of Angela's office. She turned to see one of the last people she expected.
"Booth!" She actually sounded a little bit glad to see him, which he really hadn't expected, before her expression completely changed and she crossed her arms. "If you're here looking for Brennan, I'm going to kill her."
His mouth had already opened to start his apology, and Angela's statement threw him a little off balance.
"I beg your pardon?"
"She's supposed to be with you, in therapy, right now. If she's anywhere else, you're going to get to save her again, because I fully intend to strangle her."
His eyes narrowed. His something's-wrong-with-Bones antennae were on the alert instantly, his apology forgotten. "What's going on, Angela?"
Angela sighed, wishing she hadn't brought it up, remembering how on-edge he had been recently and not wanting to set him off again. Booth throwing Brennan over his shoulder and dragging her to therapy would probably not help matters. Brennan knocking him into the middle of next week for putting his hands on her again probably wouldn't help, either.
With a dismissive wave of her arm, she turned her back to him, going back to what she had been doing. "Nothing, Booth. Really. I didn't mean to scare you. Just Brennan being stubborn. She's not exactly speaking to me right now. What can I help you with?"
He hesitated just another moment, not sure what to do. His gut told him there was more to it than that, but he was really trying not to overreact again like he had been doing. "She's okay, right?"
After a moment, Angela nodded. "Yeah, Booth. She's fine. Did you need to talk to her?"
The fact that Angela had hesitated just as obviously as he had wasn't exactly calming, but he had just seen Bones less than an hour before so he knew she was okay, at least physically - well, other than her hand; and she had looked more than a little tired...
He needed to just do what he had come there to do and get out before he could do anything else that he'd be apologizing for later.
Clearing his throat, he stepped around to put himself in her field of vision. "No, actually I'm here to see you."
The artist managed to look delighted, abandoning her work and throwing him a mockingly flirtatious grin accompanied by her full attention. "Me? Mmm, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
It was a wonderful little bit of normalcy that made him smile. So maybe it was a little egotistical, but he had always enjoyed Angela's obvious appreciation of him. "I wanted to apologize, for the other night at the diner. You didn't deserve me yelling at you, and I'm sorry. You've been a good friend to Bones - to both of us. I was out of line."
She nodded her head in acceptance, a light smile on her face, but her words were serious. "I knew there was a reason I adore you, Booth. Apology accepted. But I think maybe you're apologizing to the wrong girl."
"No, I know. Don't worry. I already apologized to Bones." For just a second, he was almost overcome with the urge to confront Angela about what had happened to Bones' hand, but he thought better of it. 'Just stick to the plan.'
"I gotta get back. See you later, Ange."
Angela watched him walk all the way to the door, wrestling with herself over what she was about to do. On the one hand, Booth needed help as bad as Brennan did. On the other hand, he seemed like he had at least somewhat straightened himself out, and it wasn't as though there was exactly an abundance of people who could get through Brennan's hard head and get her to listen. And he had, after all, apologized and seemed to be thinking clearly...for the moment at least.
Her decision made, she took a step toward the door. "Booth, wait!"
At the exact same moment, Booth had stopped, whirling back around to face her. "Angela, listen..."
Both of them paused, a nervous laugh coming out of Angela's mouth. "You first, G-man."
He still wasn't sure if the new, improved, non-scary Booth that he was trying to remember how to be should really be going behind Bones' back, but it was going to eat at him until he knew. "What happened to her hand? She wouldn't tell me, but I saw the cast."
Angela nodded, her own decision made. "Yeah. We can start there. I didn't exactly tell you the truth a minute ago, Booth. She's not fine."
… ooo … ooo …
After 30 minutes of sitting in front of Booth's desk waiting for him, Brennan had at least a mental outline of what she wanted to say to him, and a basic plan for how she wanted the evening to go. After she had arrived at a conclusion of how she wished to proceed, she quickly became restless waiting there with nothing to do. Clearly, he was not coming back to his office anytime soon. Just in case, however, she quickly found a sticky note and a pen, and left him a note on his desk.
'Booth,
Please call me when you get in. I need to talk to you.
-Brennan'
Walking briskly to her car, she noticed that his SUV was now missing from the place where she had seen it parked on her way into the building earlier. She had not been aware that it had been repaired and he had it back after his accident. Perhaps it was irrational, but seeing it had made her feel somewhat better. It was just normal, and she seemed to be desperate for that recently - even for little things like him driving the right vehicle, which logically should not make any difference.
Getting into her car, she started it up and made her way out of the parking structure, intent on her destination.
… ooo … ooo …
A familiar stab of worry shot through Booth at Angela's words, his eyes taking on an intense look as he directed all of his attention on her, instantly focused. Those dark eyes focused so hard on her almost made her shiver, but not out of fear. The amount of devotion this man held for her best friend never failed to leave her a little breathless. If he was this intense and focused about just protecting the woman he loved...wow, what would everything else be like?
'Snap out of it, Angela...' she shook herself from her brief vicarious thrill.
"You're not going to like it, Booth. I can tell you that right now. We were dancing, and some guy wanted to dance with Bren."
To her complete and total lack of surprise, Booth's jaw tensed and that little muscle there started jumping immediately.
"The guy was drunk. He didn't do anything all that terrible, but he came up from behind her and she didn't see him coming. He put his hands on her waist. He just wanted to dance with her, Booth. That's all."
It was exactly what he had been afraid of in the diner, and he could feel himself turning red from his chest up, suddenly needing to loosen his tie as he got hotter with anger by the moment, barely keeping it in check. "And?"
"And she almost broke his arm."
"Damn."
She quirked an eyebrow at him, questioning his disappointed response, and he gave a tight shrug of one shoulder. "I wish she had done more than almost."
Angela rolled her eyes, attempting to calm Booth back down. She could see the effort it was costing him to keep from going completely off the deep end, and she had to give him credit for trying. She was fairly certain that a few nights ago, his hand would have been in a matching cast to Brennan's after hearing this, and Cam would be putting in a work order to have the wall repaired. It obviously wasn't easy for him, but it was certainly a change for the better from the last time she had seen him. "Easy, there, big guy. She definitely overreacted. I got her to let go of him, but he was full of liquid pride. He turned around and lunged at her, and she flattened him."
"The guy tried to hit her?" Booth looked absolutely furious.
"And she flattened him," Angela reminded him, before he could start interrogating her for a description of the poor guy, which she was pretty sure was going to be his next move.
Booth narrowed his eyes. "That's bullshit. I saw her hand, Angela, and Bones knows how to hit somebody. Believe me, I know."
Angela smirked a little, remembering just exactly how Booth knew. She'd never forget the sight of Bren's fist flying into his jaw in that cemetery. "You're lucky you didn't get a refresher on that in the diner the other day."
"Yeah, that's great. Don't change the subject. My point is that she didn't do all of that just by punching some handsy bastard one time." A horrible thought hit him, and he started to lose color in his face. "Angela, I'm trying really hard to stay calm here, but if you're about to tell me that anybody else put their hands on her after that, so help me God I'm not responsible for..."
"Breathe, Booth. She punched a brick wall."
"What? Why?"
"Like I said, you're not going to like it. She was a little out of it after she knocked that guy down. I got her out of there, but two steps out the door she lost it and had another one of those flashbacks. I think she almost took me out, but at the last second she turned around and tried to put a hole through the brick wall. It was the worst one I've seen, Booth - well, up to that point anyway."
He didn't miss the qualifier on her last sentence, and his head inclined sharply toward her. "Up to that point?"
"The rest of that night was hell. I'm not even sure I should tell you this."
Staying calm was a long forgotten goal. "You're going to tell me," he growled, but Angela had already seen enough to know that at least some semblance of the old Booth was back, at least temporarily, so she wasn't really too worried.
"She couldn't go an hour without a nightmare, and even when she was awake every little thing triggered more flashbacks. Bad ones. And..."
He could see from a mile away that she was about to sugarcoat. "Tell me everything, Angela."
"Sorry, Booth, but she's back to having the kind where you're the bad guy. I kept trying to talk to her about it, but she just got mad and sent me home late Saturday night. But I can still tell you exactly what happened all day Sunday - more of the same. She looked like hell this morning. I'd bet you a pair of brand new Manolo Blahniks that she hasn't slept since I've left, or if she did she woke up screaming."
Booth looked more than a little lost. "You did the right thing, Angela. Thank you for telling me."
"Hey, Booth, listen..." She wanted to soften the blow, but there wasn't really any way to do that, which became obvious when she couldn't think of another word to say.
He understood anyway. "It's all right. I'll be okay, Angela. I needed to know."
Before he could turn away, Angela grabbed him and hugged him tight. "Take care of yourself, Booth. I'm worried about you, too."
He managed a small smile as he pulled away. "Yeah, I know." And to set her at ease, he admitted something he hadn't really intended to. "I'm talking to Sweets. I never thought I'd say it, but I think he might actually know about more than Star Wars and video games. But don't tell him I said that."
Realizing it wasn't probably the easiest admission for him to make, her answer had a double meaning. "Your secret's safe with me, G-man."
… ooo … ooo …
Believing that Bones was, undoubtedly, holed up in her office and intending to stay there for quite some time, Booth gave her office a wide berth on his way out of the Jeffersonian. After talking with Angela, there was no way in hell that he wasn't going to be approaching her and soon, but he really needed time to figure out what to do first.
It was more than a little jarring to hear that her nightmares about him had grown worse, although after watching him rant and rave and grab at her over and over, he couldn't say that it was so very surprising. What, exactly, had he expected when he had practically been foaming at the mouth and acting like something out of a bad stalker movie the last few times he had seen her - not that she owned a TV or had ever seen a bad stalker movie. He was back on the rollercoaster ride, brought firmly back down from the temporary high he had felt at hearing some of her rebuttals to his guilt. Maybe she really didn't blame him, but she was sure as hell still terrified of him, at least the him that she saw in her dreams. He'd rather have her completely back to normal and flashback free, hating him for what he had done - at least that way he'd be the only one suffering.
He drove around for almost an hour before driving toward her apartment. He still had no more idea what he was going to do than he had when he had left Angela's office, but there was one thing he had decided he was doing immediately. After what Angela had told him Bones was going through, he wasn't going to sleep if he didn't check on her. Her car wasn't there, which meant the only other place she could be was the Jeffersonian. It stood to reason that if she couldn't sleep, she'd decide to work all night.
Going by her apartment on his way home to check on her was one thing. He needed a better strategy if he intended to pop into the Jeffersonian at that time of night, or she'd be defensive instantly. He drove back to his apartment instead, but rather than going inside he soon found himself going for a walk down the sidewalk as he tried to sort everything out. He walked until he could barely feel his feet from the cold air, and then turned around and walked back. Still unable to bring himself to go inside and not having reached any kind of conclusion, he kept going and started walking the other way, still lost in thought. It was almost a half hour later when he eventually got back to his building, finally giving in to the cold and deciding to go inside while he figured out what to do. He was so deep in thought that he didn't even notice her car, parked near the back of the lot outside his building as he passed it.
TO BE CONTINUED...
