A/N: It does not become easier to write this story, as I approach the end. I feel like there is so much I want to say, so much that I need to do to make things perfect, and not enough pages to write it down in. So this is what I offer, as my... second to last chapter. Or third, if you choose to count the epilogue. I apologize for the delay on this one; it is hard to find the time and the peace in which to get the right emotions flowing through my keyboard. I hit that rhythm in this chapter, and I hope that you will enjoy it.
Not much longer, and I'm not ready to say goodbye. Still, there is time ahead of us. Song for this one is Paradise, by Coldplay. It's a beautiful emotional song that I feel has the right amount of melancholy and joy mixed together. I couldn't stop listening to it towards the end of this chapter.
Chapter 35: Paradise
When she was just a girl
She expected the world
But it flew away from her reach
And the bullets catch in her teeth
Life goes on
It gets so heavy
The wheel breaks the butterfly
Every tear, a waterfall
In the night, the stormy night
She closed her eyes
In the night, the stormy night
Away she flied
She dreamed of para- para- paradise
Para- para- paradise
Para- para- paradise
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh
August 15th, 2018
The gun felt cool and warm at the same time, as she clutched it tightly between her hands. She lined up her sight, staring straight ahead with her face as blank as could be. Impassive, really. And then she pulled the trigger, and kept shooting, over and over again, vibrating with the energy of each shot as it wove through the air. Fiery motion.
The bullets tore through the paper target one after the other, and she didn't stop until the clip was empty and she found herself fighting for breath. She hadn't even realized the exertion she was offering with each tug on the trigger.
And yet, when the gun fell loosely to her side, she felt weak, light-headed. She leaned against the wall for support, closing her eyes and tipping her head back. Then she hit the button and listened to the sound of the target zipping along its line towards her. She did not open her eyes for a few moments, even after she knew it had arrived and was waiting for her.
Every shot was a kill shot, of course. Every last one.
She was not pregnant.
She had never been pregnant.
And for the life of her, she couldn't bring herself to understand why the rage that coursed through her now was so powerful.
There had been no planning for children. There was no reason for her to be upset. In many ways, she wasn't, honestly. There had even been a sense of relief when Cam had informed her of the results on her blood test. Being pregnant right now… would not have been a good thing. It would have been complicated, and unfair, and overwhelming.
And besides that, it wasn't even logical.
Looking back on the sudden fear that had enveloped her earlier, she wondered how she had ever let the idea permeate her thought process so thoroughly. Her only sexual encounter recently had been with Booth, shortly before her departure for New Hampshire to see her father. The results from the hospital had confirmed that. And even more so… the hospital would have told her if she were pregnant. It would have shown up on her chart.
If she had been pregnant before going into captivity, she wouldn't be now, either.
She thought of each attack, each cut, each punch, each kick, with a sort of cold separation. Focusing on the details, not her own pain, not her own trauma associated with each action.
No, any chances for that not-even-fetus would have been surely extinguished.
There was really no chance she could have been pregnant, when she had gone to Cam only hours ago.
And yet, the anger was still there.
But she was beginning to understand it.
There was every chance that she could have become pregnant after sleeping with Booth. It had not really been at the top of her list of concerns in those moments, and if it had happened… she couldn't say it would have been a bad thing.
At the time.
It seemed dark, and unfair, and horrible, thinking it, but she was so relieved. So desperately relieved that she had not gotten pregnant that night.
Because if she had… then the brothers would have killed the child. Her and Booth's unborn child that was not really a child at all, not even a fetus… but still theirs. Science abandoned her on the topic, wiping away all her notions of reality and leaving only the raw emotions in their wake. What they said was that she would have been glad of a pregnancy, and that she would have been destroyed by its untimely end.
Booth, too, if it had occurred and he had found out.
She hated them for it. Hated them for what they had done, and what they could have done.
It turned out there were yet more ways in which they could have broken her. More than she'd even considered.
And she wondered if she'd ever be able to build up enough of herself around those barely-solid pieces that were lying so vulnerable. She wondered if she would ever be whole again, and feel safe in her own skin, safe in her own home.
She could not deny that Booth needed to be informed of this. Cam had made that clear when they had spoken, telling her that she needed to discuss this with someone, and it should be him before anyone else. Even if she wasn't pregnant… he needed to know how she felt about the thought she might have been. And she needed to tell him the truth about her captivity.
According to Cam, he needed to hear that he was the only possibility. He had never enquired about the details of her captivity, but clearly he had questions. Questions that were obvious to everyone but her.
She had not told anyone where she was going, and so she was not surprised to find five messages waiting on her phone when she finally left the shooting range.
Three were from Booth, one from Angela, and the final from her father.
She listened to each in turn, grimacing as Max requested to visit sometime soon and trying not to feel guilty when each of Booth's calls got successively more concerned. There was a large time gap between each, and she could understand his fears when she failed to respond each and every time.
He was the one she called back first.
"Bones?" he said hurriedly into her ear, and she ducked her head, slipping into her car and forcing a smile on to her face so her voice would sound at least somewhat natural.
"Yeah, it's me. Sorry I didn't pick up my phone."
"Jesus, where were you? Do you… do you realize how much I—"
"I'm sorry." She paused a second, and then decided she might as well be impulsive. Her heart was telling her to do it. Her head was even agreeing. "Can I meet you somewhere?"
He stammered a second, clearly thrown off guard by the abrupt change in topic. "I… yeah. Of course. Where?"
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
It was an odd hour of the day to be at the Diner, and it was mostly quiet when they found themselves sitting across from each other, picking at their respective lunches. Neither of them were actually hungry, but that hadn't stopped them from ordering.
Brennan was still going over it in her head—still trying to decide what to tell him, and how to do it. Booth was just uncomfortable in general, sensing that there was something she was going to tell him, and sensing that he might not like the subject matter. But he didn't say anything, making small talk and clearing his throat while he took large bites from his burger and repeatedly dipped the same fry into his ketchup.
The waitress that was serving them dropped by more than was necessary, double and triple checking to make sure everything was fine with them. She paid extra attention to Brennan, which both of them noticed and neither of them brought up.
They'd been going there for long enough, now, that everyone who worked there knew their faces as well as their names. It was no secret that she was Temperance Brennan. That she was the author and the anthropologist, that he was the FBI agent and the inspiration for Andy. And now, it was no secret that she had been recently kidnapped and tortured at the hands of two sociopaths for a total of four days.
She could see it in the younger woman's eyes every time she came around with that smile plastered on her face. The awe, the sympathy. The pure knowledge of the truth.
Brennan wished no one knew. She wished she had it all to herself.
Maybe then she would feel better.
Safer.
It was when the dinner crowd began to shuffle in, their voices filling the empty air and enshrouding the both of them in the cloak that she finally got the courage to speak.
The words came without bidding, and she gave up on planning out how to explain. She just blurted it out for him to figure out on his own, determined to make him understand, determined to get it out of herself and into the world. She couldn't hold it by herself anymore, just as she couldn't hold any of it. That was why she shared now, that was why each new detail fell from her lips in these past weeks.
Gradually, the weight lessened.
"They didn't rape me," she said bluntly.
And that was it, all there was to it. Or, at least, to the start of it.
He almost choked on his drink, sputtering and setting it back down. He blinked at her, his mouth open, and it was clear he had no idea what he was supposed to say in response to that.
That wasn't fair to him, and she knew it. So she spoke again.
"They could have, if they had… if they had wanted to. And… I don't doubt that they would have. Eventually. If you hadn't caught them before they came back to dig me up. If they had evaded you, or gotten out of questioning… I know they would have kept me for just as long as they kept Veronica Wheeler. And they would have. They would have…"
"Bones…" he choked out, cutting her off. He was shaking his head, his eyes wide. "Why… why are you telling me this now?" It was the only thing he'd been able to come up with that might make a decent response. Everything else was just unsuitable.
"Because I have realized that… it might be something you would want to know. Although I had originally believed it best to not bring it up at all, in case the… thought hadn't occurred to you."
"It had," he said abruptly, his eyes dark.
She nodded, bowing her head.
They were silent, the air around them buzzing with other people's conversations. They were light, and warm, and they seemed so very far away. Like she and Booth were trapped in a bubble, broken away from the rest of society and unsure of how to find their way home.
"Thank God," he whispered under his breath, and she looked up in surprise, to find his eyes already focused on her. "Thank God," he repeated, his head slowly shaking. There was agony, cutting across his features. But also relief, in immeasurable quantities. It was overwhelming, though, and it stole her breath away.
She nodded. What else was there to do?
And then she said softly, before the topic could be brought around to a lighter discussion, "I thought I might be pregnant, earlier this week."
He frowned, meeting her gaze seriously. This time, there was no shocked expression. Just immediate concern.
"You… aren't, though? Right?"
She swallowed. "No, I'm not. But… I wanted you to be aware that… you would be the only possibility for the father. If I was pregnant."
He was nodding slowly, as she spoke.
But he couldn't come up with words, and neither could she. It was as if they had both run out. They stared at each other for a long time, just reading the sentences that were written across the others face. And then, as the atmosphere slowly changed, as she felt the bubble start to dissipate and society start to leak in, she shifted her posture.
And then she reached across and snatched a French fry off of his plate.
He was usually the one to lighten the mood, and she had to admit it felt good to do so herself for once. He laughed at once, a cautious sound in the wake of the heavy discussion they had just waded their way through, but warm sound nonetheless. And a welcome one, for certain.
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
It was late August, when they found themselves sitting in his living room, eating Thai food. Parker and Nick could be heard from down the hall, cheering to themselves as they battled it out in some new racing game Parker had bought himself for his gaming system. Brennan didn't keep up with the technology, but the teenager had assured her it possessed the best 3D graphics available today.
They had been discussing Booth's latest case, which had become a commonplace occurrence where at one point it would have created tension. She was still not re-instated, and so she was not allowed to work with him. But hearing about the cases… it made her feel more alive. Made her feel like she was her old self again, at least in that one respect. Booth had noticed the change, and had started bringing case files to their impromptu dinners so she could look through them.
The light in her eyes was one that hadn't been there in a long time. The warmth that spread through her system was not one she had felt in ages, either. She felt at home, in her skin. The scars were mostly healed, now. Some of them would never go away, but she had begun to accept this; had stopped noticing them in the mirror or when she bathed or changed. They were just a part of her life story now. A part that she had survived.
Battle scars, in a way.
Booth had been coming around more and more, and she had begun spending time at his place again as well. The outings with the team increased, and she caught lunch with Angela on a regular basis.
The nightmares still menaced her, night after night. But the flashbacks were mostly abolished, and she was grateful for the small miracles that that brought. It was nice, not having to worry that she might lose herself while doing even the most mundane of tasks. There was no more fear of having an episode in public; she was back in control of her life.
"I've been thinking… about going to see the shrink," she said as casually as she could, poking a chop stick into the nearly empty take-out container of noodles that she held in one hand.
His face lit up at once, and she smiled in response, relieved at the warmth of his response even though it had been expected.
"That's great, Bones! That's… that's really great. So you'll be back soon, then? We'll get to be the crime-solving duo again?"
She laughed. "I really hope so, Booth. I really do."
It was never as easy as that, though, and she knew it. The idea, in itself, was a great one. She longed for the Jeffersonian, for the familiar walls and the comfort of her office. She longed for the sanctuary that surrounded her in the hall of her knowledge as she plucked details from her vast experiences to explain the details of a case out loud. She missed the cool, smooth touch of bone beneath her fingers, and the gentle brush of her blue lab coat as she tugged it over her shoulders.
She had been away for far too long.
Getting back, though, was not a road she was sure she could traverse.
Psychology was her least favorite branch of science. In all honesty, it was not a science at all. And it had never helped her in the past. All those court-mandated sessions she had attended as a teenager… they hadn't done her any good. She had hated just about every counselor and shrink she had been sent to, with their odd-smelling offices and their quiet voices.
They reeked of pity, and they said all the right things to get their patients to open up.
Not once had it worked on her, because she saw it for what it was. She didn't need anyone poking around her in head, finding out things that weren't true, things she didn't want revealed even to herself. She'd dealt with that once, and she wasn't about to deal with it again.
Sweets… he was the only psychologist she had ever actually liked. He spoke plainly, with a sort of childlike excitement. He put up with the barbs she and Booth threw at him right from the start, and he brushed off all the negativity, so determined to help and be a part of something greater that it was hard not to like him, after some time.
If it was possible, she would gladly sit in his office for an hour a week and talk about her 'issues,' so she could get back to her job.
But it didn't work like that. She would be assigned to someone she'd never met before, someone objective, someone who was not her friend. And they would get to know her through the trauma she had just suffered.
She wasn't very good at the subject, but it seemed to her that Sweets would be the more reasonable choice from the start. He already knew her, and he knew how she handled things. He understood how she operated, and he knew how to talk to her plainly and where the limits were.
It would eliminate a lot of the 'getting to know you' crap that came with a new doctor.
Sweets himself, though, had reminded her that he could not be the one placed in charge of the evaluation.
He did know someone, though, who would be a good option. She wasn't sure how much she liked the idea, but she trusted Sweets decision over that of anyone else in the field. She would get the number from him later this week, and place the call.
It wasn't like with the houses, either. No, this was something she was going to do. It wouldn't be easy, but she would do it.
The house pictures were gone, too. All of them had been taken down and thrown away. In their place she had hung a single image. A picture of her current home. Motivation, to change that, was what she needed more than anything.
But the latest places she had found online had not interested her. They had all seemed wrong, in some way or another, and she had found herself clicking aimlessly through each listing, expecting to see something that caught her eye on each fresh page but ultimately remaining in a constant state of disappointment.
Maybe it really would be better if she got back to work before she focused on the task of house shopping. It seemed the less challenging of the two, when the doctor would be provided and all she needed to do was show up and endure whatever hell they had planned for her.
She put down the take-out container, and leaned back on the couch.
While she was at it, perhaps she would drop by her gym later this week as well. See about getting herself back into her martial arts classes. That was something else she had missed, and it was certainly something that would be helpful in her recovery. Exercise was something that always cleared her head, and in the past week she had been going for morning runs. A good start, but the physical challenge of one-on-one sounded far more appealing. And it would be a chance. An opportunity to prove to herself that she was still capable of handling whatever was thrown at her. A few scars would not keep her from disabling and defeating anyone that came in her path.
Unless, a small voice said in the back of her head, they've got drugs in a needle and they don't even give you the chance.
She pushed away the thought, and smiled at Booth when he looked her way. He smiled back, and his hand slid closer to hers until she closed the gap and twined their fingers together.
More of a common occurrence than it had ever been, she wasn't sure what it meant for them. She wasn't sure if they were even going anywhere, or if they were still treading water at this point.
What she did know, was that they were no longer moving backwards.
And that was all she felt she really needed to know, at this point.
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
"I'm still not sure," Brennan murmured, glancing around the spacious foyer. Booth crossed his arms, a knowing smile on his face.
"You love it," he said, leaving no room for debate. "And so you're determined to find something wrong with it."
She scowled. "Fine. Maybe. But… I still can't make a decision."
"Then let me make it for you. Buy the house, Temperance."
The use of her first name was partly humor, partly seriousness. He gave her a pointed look, his eyebrows drawn together and his smile just barely visible. He knew he had her, though, and his look slowly morphed to that of triumph before he let out a loud laugh.
The realtor, a woman in a smart black skirt and button-up white blouse named Penny Rodriguez, turned around with a look that could only be described as relief on her face. "Have you made up your mind, then?" she called, her heels clicking as she crossed the distance and stopped a few feet away, her hands clasped in front of her as she looked between the two of them.
"This one," Brennan said at last, nodding.
It was their fifth visit, and she had suspected she would be coming back from the time she had walked out the door after the first. There was something about the place that was entrancing. The ceiling was high, in the foyer, and the walls had an artistic flair to them, with thick beams—not wooden, and certainly not ugly—that crisscrossed and wove. It was almost like a sculpture, and the archways between the rooms were high and gorgeous, with distinctive decorative marks at the crest of each.
The walls were green, in this opening room, but she planned to change that. A soft yellow, she thought, would look lovely with the mahogany trim and the off-white tiles. A rug, too, would add some color and some warmth.
The other rooms didn't need much help. The living room was spacious and high-ceilinged. The beams that crossed it were wooden, but it wasn't rustic as she might have expected. It was warm, and it gave off a feeling that she couldn't quite describe. A bit like home—she remembered now that her bedroom had had slanted ceilings, with wooden beams running overhead. She used to count them to fall asleep.
The kitchen was large, with a cozy breakfast nook and a long counter edge lined with bar stools. The appliances were all mostly new, and the shiny front of the refrigerator gleamed. The countertops were black marble, and the walls were wallpapered with blue and white vertical stripes. That would be another change she planned to make, and probably the only thing in the house that made her cringe.
Nick's bedroom was larger than the one he currently had, but it was also of a different shape. It was sort of like an 'L,' and in her head she could already see where they could fit the bed, and how the corner would be a nice place to put a bookshelf and a comfortable chair of some sort.
Her own master bedroom was longer in one direction that the other—a long rectangle. There was space for her bed at one end, near the door to the master bathroom and the walk-in closet, and at the other end she could even put a couch and a bookcase for herself. Right in front of the fireplace.
It wasn't the only one in the house, either. There was one in the living room as well, and she could already picture it crackling merrily in the corner during the cold winter months.
What she found she loved the most, however, was not any of these details.
Light. The place itself seemed to glow with it, with high windows covering walls and skylights pouring the rays down in abundance onto each room in turn. It was like her own personal kingdom, with its warmth shining around her from every angle.
Things like this, of course, did not come cheap. This was the sort of place that was ready to be lived in, with only minor aesthetic changes. There would be no maintenance; this was not a fixer-upper. The price-tag had almost knocked the breath out of her when she had first seen it, but it wasn't like she was unable to afford it. She had another book in the works, and her bank account was already looking cheerfully plump from the years behind her.
And then, of course, there was the fact that she had come into a large sum of money recently.
James had failed to alter his will before his death, probably because he hadn't thought it would be necessary. What with his plan to have her killed and all. Now, though, it left her with the bulk of both of their fortunes at her disposal.
It only seemed proper that she put it to good use.
She signed the paperwork that was pushed at her, nodding and smiling to all the things Penny had to say, and then she finally mentioned that she would like to spend a bit more time in the home for today and the other woman nodded and stepped away, making a phone call.
She turned to Booth, and he smiled and nodded approvingly.
But a moment later he leaned down to whisper conspiratorially in her ear: "Angela's going to have a field day."
And she had to laugh. Because it was so true.
She wove his fingers through her own, and leaned back into his shoulder. Just a light touch, because there was no definition and there had been no discussion. But they were both aware that they were heading somewhere. And they were both content to let the journey take its course, and let the road make its own decision for them. They were confident that they were being led the way they were supposed to be, and they were going to come out in the same place, together, no matter what happened between now and then, or how long it took.
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
Their first date was really not a date at all. It was an average evening—or at least that had been the original plan.
They were just going out to pick up some Chinese for dinner, and Nick was at Daisy's nearing the end of his play-date with Taylor.
She had gone to her first therapy appointment the day before, and it had been an unwelcome addition to the long week they had spent during the move-in process. The house was hers, now, and tonight would be the first night she spent there. Tomorrow would be the first day she lived in it; the start of the first week and the first month and the first year. The start of the rest of her life.
But the therapy had not been nearly as terrible as she had been expected. Dr. Rachel Fairing was a calm woman, with small glasses perched on her nose. She smiled a lot, and she had two perfect rows of shiny white teeth. Her nose was slightly crooked, and her blonde hair was cut in a bob that bounced up and down whenever she nodded.
There was a lot to see in her eyes, though, and it was obvious she wasn't as relaxed as she appeared to be at first. She had a haunted-ness about her. A darkness in her eyes that did not belong. She had seen things, heard things, experienced things that put her on a level that Brennan had not been expecting. They were more of equals than she would have imagined.
They did not spend the session discussing what had happened to her in captivity. She had been expecting this, but she had not been expecting how easy it would be. She had been expecting to know the doctor's every move, to predict where each conversation would lead, and to understand that each one was merely a tactic to get her to open up. If it was not direct and focused, then it was some sort of trust groundwork that was supposed to make her talk more openly at a later date.
She did not feel tricked, though, at the end of their session. She was reserved, still, and unsure if she believed in this or even if it was going to help her… but she felt like there was something more to it than she had originally thought. She would be okay coming back, even if she wasn't necessarily going to be looking forward to it.
But she could handle it, and she was ready. Ready to get it over with, ready to do anything she needed to do, and ready to get back to her job and her life.
The Chinese food was an escape from any and all of it. A way to connect back with the future she was heading towards, and back away from the past she was still outrunning. It would be her and Booth and Nick, the way she had wanted it to be for a while now. Surprisingly, it didn't happen as often as she had been expecting. Booth came by later, in general, when he got out of work. They watched movies or got ice cream, but there was rarely a sit down meal with all three of them.
So tonight would be a night of multiple firsts.
She loved the house. Angela and Jack had volunteered to help them paint, and by the time the day had arrived the entire team had gotten in on it, making it a group activity of sorts. They had spent the day laughing and sharing stories while they coated the walls in the new colors that Angela had helped her select. The plastic crinkled underfoot, and the paint smell permeated the air around them and soaked into their clothing, but none of them cared. When it was over, they were stained and tired, but grinning. They'd gone out for a group dinner, picking up the kids and taking them along, and the whole night had brought back waves of emotion connected to these people and what they all meant to her.
They were a family, and it was at times like this when she could see it so clearly it was hard to believe it had ever been otherwise.
Angela had wanted to throw a housewarming party as well, but Brennan had assured her that it was not necessary. She saw everyone regularly enough, and the painting session had been enough of a house-warming in itself. They had made her house into what it was now; that was the greatest gift they could have offered her.
She would organize her own sort of get-together eventually, however, once she was comfortable with the new layout and familiar with where she had put all of her belongings. A small gathering in her kitchen, perhaps, with a nice home-cooked meal.
It was this that she was thinking about when they left the Chinese restaurant that they frequented, both of them carrying bags of steaming food. The smell was intoxicating, and as they climbed into the SUV she couldn't help but unfurl the top of the one she was holding to peer inside at the containers.
"Hey, no getting a head start on me, there, Bones," he warned, his tone warm with amusement.
She gave him a playful glare. "I'm checking to makes sure we got everything we ordered, Booth," she informed him matter-of-factly. And then, when he turned towards the wheel, shaking his head and grinning, she pulled out a long strand of Lo Mein and popped it in her mouth.
"I saw that."
"Saw what?"
He gave her an incredulous look, his eyes shining with laughter, and then he turned towards the road and focused there.
She ate another noodle.
"Will you stop doing that? You're taunting me over here… and that smells really good."
"Would you like some, then?"
He gave a soft snort. "I'm driving, Bones, in case you forgot. And unlike someone, I can wait until we get home."
She gave him a shove on his shoulder, laughing. "I can wait. I just choose not to. It's your loss, regardless."
"Hmph."
They were silent for a long moment.
Right up until she pulled out a noodle and reached over to dangle it in front of his face.
"Bo-ones," he complained, drawing out her name but grinning nonetheless.
He snatched it from her grip with a light pluck, and then dropped it from above into his mouth, chewing and making an approving sound from the back of his throat.
"Better than usual," he noted, smiling and turning to look at her.
She nodded. "Yes, I agree. And they gave us a larger portion than normal, as well. I think they're starting to consider us as regular customers."
"Probably. Maybe we should take it as a sign that we get take-out too often."
"I can fix that."
"Really, now?"
"Yes, I can. How about macaroni and cheese for dinner tomorrow?"
His mouth fell open, and he gave her a look that said 'are you serious?'
"I love you," he said simply. They both knew, at once, that it was not a thank you sort of I love you statement. It wasn't a phrase said in the excitement of the moment. It was raw, and honest. It was a reflection of his feelings, brought out into the open not because of his great enjoyment of the food, but because of the eager way in which she volunteered to make it for him because she knew how much it meant to him.
And he needed her to understand how much she meant to him.
Her eyes connected with his for a second before he glanced back at the road, and she saw the full truth there, in his dark gaze.
"I love you, too," she echoed firmly.
He nodded, and then a grin broke out across his face as though there was no way he could fight it down.
Nothing else was said. Nothing else needed to be.
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
She made him mac n' cheese just as she had promised, and she made it better than she had ever made it before. In ways, it was more of a family meal than the night before. They cooked it together, although she did most of the work. Nick even tried to help, in his own way. Mostly he got underfoot, but they were all so caught up in the fun and the laughter that it wasn't frustrating—it was simply another layer. Cute, really, how he looked up at the both of them with wide eyes and begged for a task to do.
Brennan ultimately put him to work as their table-setter and scrubber, and he rushed around with a dishcloth, brushing the crumbs off of the counters. They wound up on the floor, but Brennan was unfazed. He was eager to help, and he was proud of himself, and she wasn't about to correct him of that view.
She made it just the way Booth liked, with the breadcrumbs and extra cheese on top, adding a thick crust that made him grin from the moment it went in the oven up until a good ten minutes after he had put his fork down and leaned back in his chair to pat his stomach in an over exaggerated manner.
Parker came by in the aftermath, gladly accepting the leftovers that he was offered.
The thought came spontaneously, and she spoke as such.
"Parker, would you mind watching Nick for an hour or two?"
Booth frowned, tipping his head to the side questioningly, but she did not break eye contact with the teenager.
"Yeah, sure. No problem," Parker agreed with a shrug. He smiled at the younger boy, who was all smiles. He was going to get to stay up past his bedtime, and he knew it.
She nodded to Booth, indicating that they should go out the door, and, still frowning, he went with it. They stepped out of the house and onto the lit cobblestone pathway that led in a soft zigzag across the yard to where it connected to the brick driveway.
"Where are we going?" Booth asked curiously.
She said nothing, though, just smiling a thoughtful sort of smile and reaching down to slip her hand into his and weave their fingers together. He gave a soft squeeze, and she responded in turn, leading the way to the street and then across it.
"Bones?" he queried, but it was with less insistence and more confusion.
She shook her head, giving him a raised eyebrow look of warning that said she wasn't going to tell him, and so he might as well give it up. They walked for a while in the quiet night-time silence, listening the rustling of the leaves overhead in the soft summer breeze, and taking in the deep black of the star-filled sky overhead. Not a cloud in sight. No worrying weather sitting on the horizon ahead of them.
They came to the small park that had been influential in her decision to move to this neighborhood. It had a few sets of swings and a seesaw, and there was a purple dinosaur shaped toy on a spring with handles sticking out on either side of its neck. Nick had already developed an attachment to it.
They settled onto a bench that looked across the abandoned space. The area was meant for families, but there was a divide; a space for relaxation and observation, here on these benches. A separation from the world. There was a gap in the trees that allowed for a wider view of the night sky, while it still blocked off the road. Every now and then, a pair of headlights flickered in between the trees. But it was gone the next instant, and the darkness returned.
It was not a bad darkness. It did not loom, did not suck her under. There was no fear in her heart, her hand clutched in Booth's and the crickets chirping in a soothing symphony.
"I love you," she said suddenly, turning to look at him inquisitively. His eyes widened, but he was smiling.
"I love you, too," he responded, tilting his head to the side again. They both already knew this, and he could tell there was something else she was getting at here, something related that she wasn't bringing up directly.
But she planned to.
Another moment, and she looked down at their interwoven fingers, the smile on her lips twitching and her eyes soft and warm like his. He was so much like Jasper; the warmth in those eyes was an honesty that could not be denied. It said everything, without the need for words.
Or maybe it was Jasper that was like him.
Either way, she could see him as clearly as she could see the swings in front of them waving in the breeze.
Angela's first date with Hodgins had been at a playground, she remembered offhandedly.
She wasn't sure if this counted or not, but she suddenly didn't care. They didn't need a definition. They just needed to be… them.
"I want you to move in with me," she stated boldly. At this, his smile faltered. He looked unsure, questioning, and he clutched her hand with a sudden sharpness.
"Bones…" he said softly, dipping his head to look upwards at her, seriousness lining his forehead in the wrinkles that suddenly seemed so much deeper.
She raised her head, meeting his stare with a steady intensity. She was not kidding around; she was serious about this. She wanted it. She wanted him, and she wanted there to be so much more between them. She wanted there to be everything. And she was ready for it; ready to answer any questions he might have. And she was sure he had more than a few, especially when it came to her captivity and those weeks of aftermath in which she had boxed herself up and kept everything from him and the others. But especially from him.
"You really mean it?" he asked, but she knew that he already knew the answer.
She nodded simply, raising an eyebrow. It was open for him, now. He was the one who got to make the call here. Whichever way it went, she would be fine with it. That was another thing she had learned from him. She didn't care how they got to where they were going. She just cared that she got to be there, with him, along the journey. There didn't even have to be an ending, so long as their hands could remain bound together like this. So long as she could feel him with her, and hear his heartbeat as though it were her own.
There was no other option. Losing him… was simply not a feasible possibility.
It never had been.
He leaned closer, and she met his lips with a passion, reading her yes in the movement of his body against hers and the way his hands slid around to weave through her hair and cup along the curve of her neck. There was a slight stubble on his chin that brushed along her cool skin, and she breathed him in with a soft gasp as they broke apart for the briefest of seconds, before she fell forward again like he was her gravity and the world itself had simply ceased to exist.
His hands fell lower, landing on the small of her back, which had truly always been his. But now it was his in more ways, and the rightness of that stunned her even as she was caught breathless by the sudden brush of his tongue against hers and the slide of it along her teeth.
She pushed back, wrapping her arms more securely around his shoulders and turning so they faced each other on the bench. She barely noticed that it was uncomfortable. Barely cared that they probably looked like a couple of horny teenagers.
They were a world away from reality. Perceptions meant nothing. Feeling was everything.
Emotion ran rampant.
When his hands slid up under the fabric of her blouse, though, and touched the smooth skin of back, they found the scars that she had known they would.
And at once, she was the one whose lips were moving as his ceased. He did not pull back, simply began to decline in his involvement. A finger traced the crescent line of a knife-mark that she knew was pale and shiny where the skin had pulled tight. Where the stitches had once been but no longer were.
The marks were some of the ones which would not fade.
And there were more of them.
She stopped moving her lips, pulling back and sliding her hands up so they no longer wrapped around him, but merely rested on his shoulders with a gentle pressure.
Her eyes met his darkly, and the agony in his was strong. Intoxicating, and not in a good way. Overwhelming, overflowing. It bore down on them.
"There are more," she told him honestly, tipping her head and challenging him with her gaze. It was a simple truth. A truth that could not be denied, because it simply was. It had happened. The evidence could fade.
The truth could not.
He nodded with a sort of numbness. His hand still lay alongside the scar. His finger still touched the edge of the crescent marking.
She saw him swallow; watched the bob in his throat and the way he glanced away for a second while he gathered his thoughts before speaking.
"I know, Bones," he murmured. "God… I know."
She smiled. A sad smile. And then she shook her head in a hopeless sort of way.
"I wish…" he started, but then broke off and bowed his head. She took her hands off his shoulders, gently pried his arms away from her and around so that they were both loose, in between their bodies. She clutched both of his in hers, their fingers not weaving together, but still clutching at one another. Unconscious lifelines.
"So do I," she said softly.
And then she leaned forward to kiss him again. It was tender, tentative, and he responded slowly at first, and then more passionately. Their hands slid across each others skin, slipping back into their former places. They filled the warm imprints they had left, and she sighed into the warmth.
His finger traced over the scar again, but this time he kissed her only more firmly, pouring his love and devotion into the action as his hand stroked over the thick scar and the lines that surrounded it. He weaved his own stitches, his own healing medicine.
He tried to erase what could not be erased.
And she felt that it might have begun to work.
I apologize for the misconception about the pregnancy. I know it was totally set up to give the impression she really was pregnant... but she isn't. (And for those of you who might still be confused... Brennan was never sexually assaulted while in captivity.)
Anyways, thanks as always for reading. Please, please leave me a comment letting me know what you thought. I feel like I need some cheering up after each of these chapters... I still can't quite grasp that it is all coming to a close. Not sure I can let go, haha... so it would be nice to know that you are all still here with me, heading through the final legs of our journey.