Author's Note: The definition of insanity is willfully plunging into the Post-100th Episode hell with this interpretation inflaming everything. If you recall, this story started as a dare (a joking dare) and Casket4mytears had a very specific set of questions that came with her retaliatory prompt. Casket, I didn't forget. ;)
~Q~
~The Definition of Insanity~
~Q~
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty, and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, Lines 560-566
~Q~
The trouble with psychology, Brennan reflected, was in the ways it tried to simplify complex matters of experience mediated by emotions and prior experience. She and Booth had been discussing the book Sweets wrote about them over the last twenty minutes, so deep in discussion that they found themselves wandering away from restaurants and towards the Lincoln Memorial. It seemed to be the place they went when they wanted to talk, their place ever since that night after Maggie Schilling's trial.
"In his book, Sweets wrote that being abandoned by my parents made me convinced that all meaningful relationships are doomed," Brennan scoffed. The problem was not that simple, she rebelled internally. It wasn't just her parents who left or betrayed her, she had a lengthy list of contenders: mother, father, brother; lovers (Michael Stires, Tim 'Sully' Sullivan, and plenty of others); Zack, nestled into his own special category. And even Booth, twice despite it not quite being his fault on either occasion.
Still, Booth's vanishings had scarred her most deeply not because she thought a relationship with him was doomed ... quite the opposite. She knew only that her own doom was assured if he ever vanished out of her life again. And she knew that somehow his life always came under threat when he was too close to her so now Brennan had found a vague sort of relief in his forgetting.
As if in agreement with her that the book and its summations of them were spurious, Booth groused out his own complaint. "And he wrote that I got 'White Knight Syndrome' because of my physically abusive, alcoholic father."
White Knights wanted to rescue everyone, but that really wasn't accurate either, Brennan mused. Booth had mostly been haunted by his experiences in the military, by the job of hunting and killing humans from a distance. That is hardly a 'rescue,' as Booth himself would have agreed that often he was the one people needed to be rescued from. He'd even told her that once, just as he was about to charge in and rescue a little boy with a severed finger. That part of Booth was not featured in Sweets's book.
Repeatedly, she'd called attention to the missing part of Booth the Sniper, the patient man who lay in wait and knew his fate, but the only man Sweets seemed to see was the Gambler. None of the conclusions Sweets drew about them were fully correct, only surface impressions that showed only a shallow understanding of who either of the partners were.
"Hate psychology," she muttered, ready to push it all out of her mind. She'd been asking for help for Booth's memories, only to find that psychology was every bit as useless as she'd always assumed. Now she had the proof, striding right beside her, slowing down as they reached the bottom of the steps, slowing and preparing to prove that misinformed meddling would always result in an unfortunate outcome.
Booth had slowed, stopped, and revealed what psychology could not remedy. He was not the same man she'd given herself to. "I'm the gambler. I believe in giving this a chance."
He was not the man who was patient and sure, waiting five years for the inevitable. Booth moved closer to her, but all she heard was rattling dice, a rabid look of anticipation as the Gambler shook his fist and blew on the number and then tossed everything into the air to see how it would land. "Look, I wanna give this a shot."
No certainty. None.
She was dazed for just a moment, stunned that he would gamble her. "You mean, us?"
He nodded, caught up in the madness of deliberate peril, the thrill of winning just coming within reach because he was impatient now. He didn't want to wait, didn't believe in certainty or love, only what he could grab with both hands.
Unprepared for his sudden spin (Russian Roulette with their relationship) Brennan shook her head as that sense of doom she'd just tried to dismiss reared its rumbling head. "No. The FBI won't let us work together as a couple—"
"Don't do that," he cut in. Impatient. Impulsive. "That is no reason why we can't—" and he was too impatient even to finish that thought, too impatient to reason with her. Instead, he simply grabbed her arms, jerking her forward and slamming his mouth against hers to stop her from disagreement. Maybe he thought it would stop her from thinking, but nothing could stop the terror of repetition.
As warmth spread over her lips—he was tender even when rough—Brennan's heart responded, her body crackled into reaction. It would flood her fast, that chemical reaction of his touch pulling her into destruction because he was not patient. Already it was too late to stop the reaction, already they had reached critical mass.
But she tried to stop it anyway. Bringing up her palms to push him back, to contain it, she felt panic clawing at her. "No. No!"
"Why," he asked. And it was only because he couldn't remember why. "Why?"
Too late, too late, her terror chanted. "You— You thought you were protecting me, but you're the one who needs protecting."
"Protecting from what?"
He sounded as bewildered as if she were speaking madness; he didn't know how close it was. There was madness in what he didn't know, in what she couldn't say, in all the stories of loss colliding in her memory until the only thing she could stammer was a warning.
"From me! I—" Grief and fear stole her breath as she saw his blood flowing and hotly slick under her desperate hands; his back arcing on the operating table while Dr. Jursik shouted "Clear!" and there came to her the searing scent of burnt flesh and a series of squealing beeps from electrified cardiac tissues struggling to resume a normal rhythm. And the sleep that didn't end, until it ended with the question he never answered. "Who are you?"
There was too much to say, too many secrets, too many losses. She was being crushed under the mass of tragic history. "I don't have your kind of open heart."
She felt the shattering as the weight pressed down. Critical mass.
"Just give it a chance. That's all I'm asking!" He was starting to look a little wild-eyed and desperate as he realized the gamble was not going to result in a win.
It was too late for a win.
"No, you said it yourself; the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome." She knew the outcome already. Had lived it twice, and could not do it again even though by now she knew it was too late and she was doomed to lose again.
Too late, already too late.
Booth hovered desperately in front of her, clawing for purchase on the slippery slope that was sliding him down and away. "Well then let's go for a different outcome here, all right?"
It's too late, she felt fate thundering towards her.
Sensing Brennan's tension, the terror that gripped her, Booth laid claim on the wrong evidence. "Let's just— hear me out, all right? You know when you talk to older couples who, you know, have been in love for 30 or 40 or 50 years, all right? It's always the guy who says, 'I knew.' I knew. Right from the beginning."
Love at first sight? Love conquering all? That in which he no longer held faith? Resigning herself to the truth she knew, Brennan shook her head to refute him. "Your evidence is anecdotal."
Anecdote: Definition 1: a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. How amusing that he wanted her to believe he'd loved her at first sight when only a few weeks ago he'd told her it didn't exist. Anecdote: Definition 2: an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay. How could she believe him now, when he was no longer the patient Sniper? How could she trust a Gambler who didn't believe love could overcome the many obstacles in their path? How could she place her heart into the hands of a man who had already gambled it away?
How could she explain impossibility of them when he wasn't himself?
"I'm that guy. Bones, I'm that guy. I know."
But he didn't know, that was the problem. He didn't know what he couldn't remember, the patient certainty that he'd lost, the risks she'd already taken. He didn't know that he'd just set off the chain reaction that would tear them apart (because a Sniper lays in wait but a Gambler cuts his losses and walks away). He didn't know what he didn't know.
"I ... I am not a gambler." Though it was already too late to save her heart (losing his love was inevitable now), she wouldn't tempt fate and risk his life.
"I'm a scientist. I can't change. I don't know how."
She didn't know how to live without him. "I don't know how..."
The Gambler accepted his loss with a stunned disbelief that tore her open. "Please don't look so sad."
"All right. Okay." Her fear was undeniable, so much so that even the Gambler could see it. Booth sighed heavily and leaned away from her, his back against the wall. "You're right."
Critical Mass having been reached, Brennan knew the Chain Reaction would be self sustaining and nothing could stop it now. How fast, how long before total fission? How long before he was ripped away from her?
"Can we still work together?"
He paused, unable to look at her. "Yeah."
"Thank you," she whispered, knowing he wanted to cut his losses. Knowing he wanted to walk away.
"But I gotta move on. I gotta find someone who's ... who's gonna to love me in thirty years, or forty or fifty."
And that, right there, was the reason. The Sniper already knew it was her. The Sniper waited for her, knowing already that she loved him but the Gambler didn't know her at all.
"I know." Softly, she spoke and let him go ... because nothing can stop nuclear fission from splitting the center apart. Nothing would stop their annihilation.
~Q~
The walk back to the Metro station was quiet, filtered only by the voices of late evening tourists wandering past in clumps. In the train they sat side by side, each lost in their own misery until reaching her stop. She stood, half expecting him to remain but he stood also and they finished the commute in uncomfortable silence.
She paused at her door and turned to him. "We didn't have dinner. Do you want to come in?"
"Nah, I'm good." He turned to leave.
"Are we having breakfast in the morning," she asked.
"Uh, sorry Bones, I have a meeting tomorrow."
And that was how she knew the fission had already begun.
Seeing him flirt with Catherine Bryar only a couple of weeks later provided further evidence, as well as his absence from her evenings and mornings that she filled with lackluster social outings at first. (Hacker, to pretend she had 'moved on' so he could have a clear conscience when he moved away). When that mercifully concluded after five 'dates,' Brennan resorted to hours of unending work and the process of fission accelerated.
The greatest proof of his distance came from the bones and the way they spoke to her in a swelling crescendo that she could not resist now that fission was carrying Booth—and her connection to life—away.
~Q~
The bones never stopped calling, her nightmares grew, and the Gravedigger's trial was a suffocating force all on its own.
"So, everybody out," Booth ordered.
A long, wide path descended to the base of the excavated pit where a lonely freezer waited for her. Brennan felt Booth hesitating a few paces behind, his steps slowing because he couldn't move forward. She wondered if he was thinking of Parker, who was now ten years old. Booth had never reacted well when it was a child and she had never been able to contain her horror when it was a person confined in a small, dark space. All the elements of their nightmares were contained in this pit, in this box.
Scrunched in there. So small, so dark. Nowhere to move, no way to turn, no air, no light no food no water no life...
So familiar.
"Oh, god," she murmured, forcing herself closer.
The compulsion to open it and expose him (free him) warred within her but ultimately her drive for justice won. Don't rush, don't compromise the evidence. It was too late to save him but if she acted cautiously there still might be justice. Closer now, she saw the rusted edges, the lid closed over the container that held him trapped. It was old, not sealed.
She reached for the metal lip, sliding it with effort because of all the rust. It screeched and shuddered sideways, releasing wafts of decay and moisture to push at her face and force her to look away but she resisted because below the rotting stench she saw gleaming grey bones huddled at the bottom.
Behind her now, Booth stayed at the top of the incline and breathed out his own forlorn prayer as he beheld the absence of life. "Oh, God."
She looked inside, eyes searching the dark (dark in there, dark out here because it was night) and Booth called out to her from far away. "It's the kid, isn't it."
Small cranium. No twelve year molars. She didn't say this out loud, sensing she didn't need to. It's a child, but was it the child...?
"Terrence Gilroy had a remodeled right ulna from a break when he was eight," she told Booth. Flipping on a flashlight to shine into the box, illuminating him, she gently lifted his right arm. Sounds exploded in her, crying, screaming terror, banging, 'let me out! please!' and she felt the arm falling back towards his chest as she backed up a step and tried to speak above the noise.
Turning towards Booth, she breathed the truth out slowly, giving him time to adjust because the living parent side of Booth hadn't changed. "This is the boy she kidnapped."
Booth said, "I'll call the parents," and turned away as if he couldn't escape fast enough. That's what it felt like, even though Brennan knew why he was leaving and a remnant of her own living pain reminded her of living victims who needed relief. Ripping open boxes to show the cat had died, the work she still did with him must continue. Taffet had handed her the box with malice, dared her to open it.
"Why did she lead us here, Booth? Why did she want us to find him?"
He didn't have an answer.
Heather Taffet, smirking, had taunted her with a number that brought her here to this box that held death inside. A whirling kaleidoscope of coincidences brought her and Booth together, everything condensing into this haunting moment. Kids in boxes and car trunks, meeting Booth, nearly dying, kissing Booth, losing Booth, locked in small spaces, and the ever present fear because at any moment it could all be taken away.
It's always going to be like this, she thought bleakly.
~Q~
Later that night, Dr. Jack Hodgins stood nervously to the side when Brennan stepped to the table and reached for Terrence. Squalling winds howled in her ears while lightning flashed behind her eyes and she recoiled from the violence of pasts colliding. Pressure on her ribs, painful and suffocating and her arms flared with sharp, painful blows as she flailed and tried to escape. A hand closed over her throat, forcing her down and choking her into black unconsciousness.
And when she woke, it was to darkness and the hot, suffocating scent of her own recycled breath. The muffled sound of panic in a tiny space, the pain of broken bones, cracked ribs, hard to breathe, can't move, trapped in black.
Gasping, she dropped back again and felt Hodgins watching her. "What's wrong," he asked gruffly.
"Nothing, I..." She didn't have time for this. The trial would not wait, and Terrence Gilroy had waited long enough. Brennan shook her head, felt her body tremble from remembered reaction, and cast an almost desperate glance at her coworker, fellow sufferer, knowing he would and yet could never fully understand. "There are so many injuries," she remarked with slowly subsiding tremors.
"Good," Hodgins muttered.
She nearly gasped again, stunned at the brutality in his succinctly stated opinion.
Sensing her disapproval he added, "It's good the kid didn't make it easy for her if it will let the jury see what kind of monster she is."
"He was in pain." And terrified, alone in the black.
"Do you think she cared about that?" Hodgins spat.
Their eyes met, her head turned away from the wreckage of the boy and his eyes blazing with hatred over the wreckage of his own painful memories. It wasn't exactly an understanding between them, possibly only a cautious agreement to proceed. Hodgins dropped out and reached into the filthy freezer to collect soil samples. Slowly she turned back and stepped to boy's side again. Brennan drew a deep breath, bracing herself for the impact as she reached forward to trace the fracture lines marring his ribs.
"Hands off!" Caroline Julian bellowed from the base of the platform and Brennan stiffened at the abrupt command, pulling her arm back as if burnt.
"Ma'am!" the security guard objected when Caroline bulldozed past the card reader, up onto the platform, setting squealing alarms pinching at their eardrums. Caroline ignored the chaos of her own entry and ordered in a slightly more moderated tone, "No one touches a thing!"
Hodgins joined Brennan's side to gape at the Prosecutor. "What are you talking about?"
"This is our chance to get some hard evidence they can't dismiss," Brennan offered, but she sensed Caroline had come bearing bad news. The only times she could ever recall being ordered away from evidence by Caroline had involved injunctions or other incomprehensible legal edicts.
Sighing sympathetically, Caroline explained. "Not if you touch it. You can't act as an expert witness in a case when you are also a victim."
Hodgins objected, "We aren't victims in this crime." That didn't make him hate the Gravedigger any less, however. His frustration carried through very clearly as the verbal restraints held his hands back and began to shackle him. Terrence's bones whispered discontent and Brennan resisted the urge to place a soothing hand over him, over both the complaining victims (one alive, one dead; both trapped in an unjust world).
Shaking her head, Caroline gestured helplessly. "We filed one complaint with seven counts. Since the trial started, you and Dr. Brennan are linked to all the crimes."
Comprehension emerged, but it offered no comfort when Brennan finally saw the motive behind the number Taffet had taunted her with, the number that led to the box and this virtual confinement. "That's why Taffet wanted us to find the boy. She knows we're the only people who have the skills to connect her to the crime."
Her living victim shook his head, disgusted at being so thoroughly outmaneuvered. "And now our hands are tied."
Tied up in the dark, trapped in pain and fear and bleeding hope. The sound of ragged breathing never left her ears, and the sobbing cries of a terrified boy never abated. "Don't leave me to another," his bones seemed to whisper, "Only you can really hear me."
It was a gamble anyway, one Caroline was taking because most of the compelling evidence had already been eliminated at the evidentiary hearing and only this case had any serious potential of winning a conviction. "You want to proceed rationally, correct?" Booth had said it, redirecting her away from an emotional reaction when she'd discovered her mother's murder, when she didn't want to talk to her brother because it was painful. "I think you're taking this too personally ... you can't personalize the work." Michael Stires, telling her not to personalize what had been done to Maggie Schilling.
What we feel doesn't matter, only he matters. Only Terrence and the story he could tell. Once the goal became clear to her, so did the route to reach it. Brennan made the decision very quickly. "Not if you drop our case."
Caroline's eyes widened in slow motion while Hodgins huffed in disbelief. "Excuse me?!"
"If Caroline doesn't prosecute our kidnappings, we'd be free to testify as expert witnesses in the boy's case."
"You'd be willing to do that," Caroline asked, impressed.
"No," Hodgins objected impatiently, as if she'd forgotten their entire purpose in working this hard, staying up this late, enduring these horror-splattered memories. He wanted vengeance. "No, Caroline has to prosecute our case. Taffet tried to kill us."
She'd tried to kill many people, Brennan reminded herself; she'd destroyed many families. She'd looked into the eyes of James Kent, the father of murdered twins. She'd felt his pain when Booth was taken. She'd felt the terror of the dark closing in and death stealing her breath. All sides of the horror raged in her like a cyclone that Taffet set loose with sociopathic dispassion. Keeping away from Terrence just enough to staunch the flow of pain, Brennan faced off against her friend, knowing he might not forgive her for this. "All of our evidence has been thrown out. The rational thing to do is to pursue a case with fresh, untainted evidence."
It was the only way to stop the hurt, but Hodgins exploded in fury. "Are you kidding me?! Is it really that easy for you to forget what happened to us?"
Advancing on him, Brennan let her own anger surge forward. "I will never forget what happened to us." Furiously, she ground out the names of fellow sufferers. "Or to Booth. Or this boy." Or to all the others, the pain that never ever stops and she could never seem to escape it.
At that, his eyes dropped in shame but Brennan continued relentlessly. "You are not the only one suffering, Doctor Hodgins but your emotions have no relevance. Not if we want to convict Taffet."
Not letting himself see the boy, Hodgins turned to Caroline for support but when he saw her nodding encouragement as well, he fell back in defeat. Ripping his gloves off and throwing them onto the table, he turned and snarled, "This better work."
Another person leaving. Brennan drew a breath sharply at the blow. Caroline promised she could begin working on Terrence in the morning and left Brennan alone beside the boy. Reaching forth at last, she smooth a tender fingertip over his frontal bone as if brushing back a tendril of loose hair. "Tell me what happened," she whispered. "You have to tell me everything. It's the only way to beat her."
~Q~
It's always going to be like this.
The bones would whisper and she would listen. Science would tell the story, prove it true enough that she could try to bring them justice. People would question how she knew, and her own past would call it all into question. Time and again, the cycle would repeat.
Booth would advise her to let the jury know what a victim suffered while she would fight against letting them see too much lest they think she was projecting her own past onto the bones. Terrence deserved justice and she would get hers vicariously, as always.
"What do you say we ease up on the scientific stuff, okay?"
She shook her head, feeling the internal pressure mount. Feeling also, a haunting déjà vu as history repeated again and again. "The science gives us the height of the assailant. 162 centimeters. Taffet's height."
They'd done this before. "That's...that's..that's good and all, but Taffet's kind of had a field day, you know, trashing the whole technical goobledy stuff. And the jury seems to like her for it."
"But those are the facts." No one can question facts, no one questions science.
They were right back where they started, Maggie's trial being no different than Terrence's trial, and the stakes were just as high and the cost just as severe. "It's how you present the facts that win or lose a case, Bones. The jury needs to know what that little boy went through."
"Don't front-load your testimony with a lot of technical crap." Because nobody wants the truth, they want entertainment. A good story.
It's always going to be like this.
~Q~
So she gave them what they wanted: the story, the subjective truth of what it felt like to be Terrence.
Brennan summarized her findings with all the passion she'd always avoided before. "The five-foot-four assailant crushed the boy's chest, choked him and finally caused him a torturous death by burying him alive."
Heather Taffet gleefully pounced. "Objection. Speculation. She can't know what the witness felt."
Pushed to the edge of control, the lid rattled under mounting internal pressure until it lifted and she blew off steam in the form of spiteful disclosure. "I was buried alive, which makes me uniquely qualified to comment on its horror."
Only later did Brennan realize she'd been duped, had fallen into a trap set by the opponent who knew full well how to exploit her pain. "Objection, Your Honor. This is grandstanding. Unless the witness has any additional facts..."
It's always going to be like this.
When the defense finds out about her past, they use it against her.
"Dr. Brennan, don't you think your trauma as a kidnapping victim prevents you from being objective?"
Yes, she always worried about that. Yes, she always knew that she wasn't completely objective when the bones called out to her. It was always a struggle, always, to ensure no one else ever questioned her ability to to prove what she knew because she was the only one who could speak for them. She saw a face on every skull and heard a whisper from every bone but science alone made it fact.
"It's only natural that you would want to construct facts that would give you some closure and peace."
Nothing would ever give her closure or peace as long as the bones of the restless dead clamored to be heard. As long as she kept doing the same thing over and over, the result would always be the same. They would accuse her of making it up, or projecting. It was insanity to expect otherwise. "I resent your implication. I do not let my emotions cloud my findings."
"No, not intentionally of course," Taffet soothed. But then she asked, "Doctor Brennan, you are currently seeing an FBI psychologist, are you not?"
Forgive her, she's merely insane.
And Brennan recognized insanity well enough to see that it was always going to be like this. No one believed the prophesies of Cassandra, and no one would believe that Temperance Brennan could hear the bones whisper their stories. No one would believe what she could see unless she presented it with science. Take away science and all that remained was Tempe, with haunted eyes and stories of abuse that no one believed. Stories she couldn't prove.
Trapped again by her own past, Brennan stammered, "What? That has nothing to do with..."
"A yes or no is all that's required, Doctor Brennan. Are you currently seeing an FBI psychologist?"
"Yes, but—"
She smirked. "Thank you. No further questions."
Desperately, Brennan tried to explain. "No, that has nothing to do with this case. My findings are sound."
She never reported anything that couldn't be verified by a fellow scientist. She never testified to any truth that couldn't be backed by another expert witness.
"My findings are sound!"
But really it was hopeless. No one would believe her stories without the science. She would fight the same battle again, and again and again.
It was always going to be this way.
~Q~
Author's Note: The strands of this story are all coming back together now...
And here's another line from the 100th episode that powered this AU romance... "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome."