Dr Lance Sweets was sitting at his desk in his office, steadily working through a stack of paperwork that had accumulated while he had been assisting Agent Booth with the Gormogon case. He'd come into work early that morning and had his secretary clear his schedule until lunch so he could concentrate on clearing the backlog before getting back to seeing his patients again.
He had enjoyed getting more involved with the cases that his favourite - but intimidating- agent kept bringing to him, but Sweets had to admit, he missed doing what he considered his main job. A job that he considered to be most important. In his role as FBI psychologist, he saw many agents in his office suffering from a wide range of psychological issues triggered by the stress of their jobs or sometimes by the disturbing cases they worked. Sweets helped them to deal with that, allowing them to work at their full potential and ultimately, making them better agents.
Sweets had relished the opportunity to work with Agent Booth and Doctor Brennan. He had read all about the decorated Special Agent and his infamous partner from the notes left for him by Dr Gordon Wyatt. They were a fascinating partnership. On paper, they shouldn't work. They were opposites in almost every respect. He was a devout catholic, she was strictly atheist. She relied solely on science, he used gut instincts and intuition. And yet, somehow, it worked. The fact that they were so opposite meant they were like two halves of a whole. What one lacked, the other one possessed. They complemented and completed each other.
Over the time that he had known and worked with Booth and Brennan, Sweets felt he had been effective in assisting the partners with their personal issues, completing his objective of making them a more successful operation. With each session he had watched them grow and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that their personal relationship ran far deeper than anyone knew. But he knew. Which is why he felt a considerable amount of guilt about the experiment he performed on them when Booth had been forced to fake his death in the name of national security.
Previously, they had both agreed to allow Sweets to continue to study them in return for his profiling services. Sweets had been a little reluctant but only because he knew that Agent Booth would take advantage of their agreement and have him work on every case from now on, but the opportunity to study them was not something he wanted to turn down. He knew he could learn a lot from them and was even planning to write a book all about their unlikely partnership. Then, when he had been informed by his boss that Agent Booth was to fake his death, Sweets hadn't been able to resist the chance to find out if Dr Brennan was as adept at compartmentalising her emotions as he thought she was and made the decision to not inform her of the fact that Booth was still alive, despite the fact that she was the first name on his list of people to be told of the truth of the situation.
Unfortunately for Sweets, Dr Brennan didn't take Booth's death as well as he thought she might. In the two weeks following Agent Booth's faked death, Sweets had called into the lab with one excuse or another, claiming to be checking on the welfare of the Jeffersonian team or collecting case files from Dr Saroyan. But each time he had been at the lab, Dr Brennan had been nowhere to be seen. Her colleagues had either wanted to respect her privacy or they didn't trust him enough to answer his innocuous questions about what her state of mind was or give him any details about exactly what work she was doing now her FBI partner was dead. Sweets had only managed to ascertain that she was at work, and she was apparently well.
Eventually, Sweets had managed to convince Angela to tell him where Dr Brennan's hiding place was at the lab. He remembered well the day he walked down the steps and opened the door into the bone storage room. His first thought had been that he couldn't believe the rows and rows of racks, all containing boxes upon boxes, each containing a skeleton. The sheer number of human remains was almost unfathomable. When he had managed to pull his eyes away from the boxes of remains, he saw her. Dr Brennan was stood at a worktable with a partial skeleton laid neatly in front of her. She had a skull in her hands and Sweets had been fascinated watching her work, watching as she smoothed her fingers over the skull, feeling for the minutest imperfections invisible to the naked eye. She had finally raised her eyes when he had cleared his throat making his presence known to her. Sweets had forced himself to swallow the gasp that immediately rose in his throat when he saw her appearance. Her face was drawn and sallow, and she looked like she hadn't slept for a week. Throughout the course of his career, Sweets had seen many people in severe emotional distress. But not one of them had looked like Dr Brennan had in that moment. She looked almost like a ghost, a literal shadow of her former self.
Before he could speak, Dr Brennan had narrowed her eyes at him before saying in a quiet, brittle voice, "What do you want, Dr Sweets?"
"I just came to see how you are, Dr Brennan. Losing Agent Booth must be difficult for you."
She didn't make any attempt to respond to him and instead lowered her eyes back to the skull that was still in her hands and resumed running her fingers over it.
Sweets tried again. "I just want you to know, if you need to talk, or need any support-"
She cut him off abruptly. "What I need is to be left alone to work in peace."
"Dr Brennan," Sweets started, wanting to point out that he could clearly see she needed help, but she cut him off again.
"Please leave."
Sweets had reluctantly left her alone. He could see she needed help but he wasn't sure what he could do when she flatly refused any assistance. Even though she was clearly grieving, she was still managing to function, to work effectively, which was something at least. Over the course of the following few days, he visited her at the lab, and every day, she was in the bone storage room, and every day, she gave him the same response, to leave her alone.
Sweets' experiment on the partners, or Dr Brennan specifically, had gone badly awry. He had been fascinated by Dr Brennan's apparent inherent ability to compartmentalise her emotions. Her capability of being able to put how she felt to one side no matter how strong the emotion was to him as a psychologist, utterly compelling. He had never met anyone so adept at this particular skill and he wanted to test her capabilities. It had never occurred to him that she in fact might not be capable of compartmentalising this grief. That had only become apparent to him as he had stood in front of her in that bone room at the lab. She was clearly not coping well, and Sweets realised at that moment that he had not anticipated this outcome and just how cruel his experiment had been.
Every day until Booth's faked funeral, Sweets went to the lab, keeping his eye on Dr Brennan, concerned by her current mental state and how she would react when she learned the truth about Booth's 'death'. She appeared to be coping slightly better on the day of the funeral, but that did nothing to assuage Sweets' concerns or guilt.
He found himself feeling unexpectedly nervous at the fake funeral, wondering how Dr Brennan would react afterwards when the truth was revealed to her. He had never expected the funeral service to be so dramatic. Neither for the fist fight between Booth and his target nor for the spectacular punch Dr Brennan landed on Booth's jaw when she saw he was alive. Booth had told him that his partner was exceptionally strong, but to see the evidence first-hand was still surprising.
Dr Brennan was angry, that much was clear. Sweets felt that anger was a natural response to the situation, and the reappearance of her partner should have finally allowed her to dispel her grief. But Dr Brennan was still suffering. Sweets had seen it. Someone with a less practiced eye would have blamed the fact that her assistant had confessed to being a murderer as the cause of her continuing emotional distress, but Sweets felt that it was more than that. She had thrown herself into her work, something which he expected, but she was avoiding him, and she was avoiding Booth, which was out of character, making him suspect there was more going on than simple anger.
Sweets had made himself a note to schedule a session with the partners as soon as possible so he could ascertain what damage may have been caused and to begin trying to find a way to rebuild whatever it was between them that had broken when Booth had 'died'.
After a couple of hours, the stack of paperwork Sweets had been working through was looking considerably smaller, and he was looking forward to maybe taking a break to grab a cup of coffee soon when the door to his office suddenly burst open. Sweets swivelled in his chair to face the door and whoever had burst through it. He was surprised and dismayed to see a murderously angry Agent Booth stood seething in the doorway.
"Sweets! You son of a bitch!" Booth yelled, not caring who heard him. He wanted the whole world to know what Sweets had done.
Sweets quickly rose from his chair and held his hand out, palm forwards, attempting to calm the irate agent. "Just calm down, Agent Booth. Tell me what's going on." He didn't need to ask why Booth was here yelling at him. He already had a pretty good idea that it was something to do with his experiment. Only something involving Dr Brennan could cause this level of anger in the Special Agent.
"What's going on? Really Sweets? Like you don't already know!" Booth took a step closer to Sweets, his posture one of a hunter and Sweets was his prey. "You." He said while pointing a finger directly at the young psychologist "You were the one responsible for telling the people on my list the truth about my death." He hissed the last word, putting as much contempt into it as possible. "Despite Bones being first on my list, you didn't tell her. You let her believe that I was dead!"
"There was a reason for that Agent Booth. The fewer people who knew you were alive, the safer you would be. It was a matter of national security."
"Bullshit!" Booth roared, tired of Sweets' lies. "You didn't do it for national security. You did it to experiment on her! On us!"
Sweets felt all the blood drain from his face when Booth hit the nail on the head. He swallowed harshly and attempted to keep the tremor he could feel in his stomach from appearing when he spoke. "I did not experiment on you or Dr Brennan. I knew Dr Brennan would be able to handle your death, so I didn't think it was necessary to inform her of the truth." He knew it was a lie, but he was trying to protect himself and what was worse was that he had been wrong. Dr Brennan had not been able to handle Booth's death.
Booth felt fury rising inside him, burning away any last semblance of reason. "Well, turns out she couldn't handle my death. And now, she won't even speak to me, let alone work with me. Or anything else for that matter!"
"Booth, I'm sure once she has had some time to calm down…"
"You still don't get it, do you?" Booth spat. "We were together, as a couple. In love! And you've taken that from us! You've destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me!"
Sweets felt his jaw drop open and he gasped in shock. He was completely stunned by Booth's revelation. He had known that the partners were close, but he'd had no idea that they had taken their relationship to another level entirely. "Wh-what?" Was the only word he managed to stammer out in his shocked and confused state.
"`You heard me." Booth said, his voice glacial. He pointed his finger again and took another step closer. "You're finished. You will have nothing to do with me or Bones again. Do you hear me? And if you dare to interfere with us again, you're a dead man."
Sweets was in no doubt that what Booth said was true. He'd heard Booth threaten to shoot people before, but he knew it was always an idle threat. This time Sweets knew he absolutely meant it.
Booth turned abruptly and stalked out of Sweets' office, slamming the door behind him.
Sweets collapsed back onto his office chair. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands. It was possible he could lose his job over this. Not only was it completely unethical to allow one half of a couple to believe that the other was dead, but he knew he had done untold damage not only to Dr Brennan but also to her relationship with Agent Booth. Sweets was also questioning his own skills as a psychologist. It was his job to read people, to interpret their body language, finding hidden meaning within their words. He knew that Agent Booth and Dr Brennan were close, closer than partners normally are, and he suspected there might have been something more going on between them. But for it to be going on right under his nose and him not knowing a thing about it was galling for Sweets.
He cast his mind back a while to figure out if he could pinpoint any specific moment when something had changed between Booth and Dr Brennan. He finally remembered sitting in the diner, and them accidentally telling him how they had kissed under the mistletoe. Dr Brennan had declared the kiss to be 'sexless' but Sweets had wondered at the time if neither Dr Brennan nor Agent Booth had been truthful about that fact. He had marvelled at how kissing each other hadn't seemed to have triggered anything between them or affected their partnership in any way. Well apparently, it had. It was the only explanation that fit.
He sat up in his chair and considered his options. Damage limitation was definitely going to be necessary in order to try to salvage his career but also, he wanted to help Agent Booth and Dr Brennan. He liked them both a lot, feeling almost like they were becoming more like colleagues and friends than patients. It was his fault they were in this situation, that they were both hurting, and he was responsible for that.
He picked up his phone and called his secretary, requesting that she clear his schedule for the rest of the day. He needed to make amends, to repair the mess he had made. Starting with a visit to the Deputy Director. It was confession time.
0-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-0
With trembling hands, Seeley Booth splashed cold water onto his face. Thankfully, the men's bathroom on the 4th floor of the Hoover was deserted meaning Booth didn't have to disguise the fact that he was still furiously angry. He'd thought that yelling at Sweets would have helped him to disperse some of the fury he still felt but if anything, it had just fed his ire. The cold water was helping to cool him down both literally and figuratively, but it wasn't enough. The muscles in his hands still twitched of their own volition, itching to be squeezed around Sweets' neck. Booth had deliberately locked his sidearm in his desk drawer before paying a visit to the young psychologist who had ruined his life. If Booth didn't have his gun with him, then he couldn't shoot anybody or anything. The last thing he wanted was to end up in jail or Bureau mandated therapy again. He was done with psychology and psychologists. He finally agreed with Bones, psychology was pointless and, on this occasion, had been downright damaging.
That didn't mean that the compulsion to hurt Sweets had gone away though. Booth didn't really want to harm the kid, he just wanted him to feel some of the pain he had inflicted on him. He knew hurting Sweets physically was wrong but hurting him in other ways might provide Booth with some of the retribution he desired. He fully intended to pay Deputy Director Cullen a visit to let him know exactly what Dr Sweets had done. His actions had been highly unprofessional, and Booth thought his boss deserved to know.
Booth had barely slept since walking out on Bones at the lab last night after she told him that she didn't want to be in a relationship with him anymore. He regretted walking out on her, but he was so overwhelmingly angry, he knew he wouldn't have achieved anything by staying. However, each minute that went by without speaking to her, he could feel her slipping further away from him.
Her rejection was the most painful thing Booth had ever felt, her words from the previous day still reverberating through his head. He knew she still loved him. She had demonstrated that time after time these past few months and she wouldn't have grieved him so badly if she didn't. He knew her response had been provoked by her fear and grief, but he had been too angry at the whole damn situation to think clearly, to see past her words. He knew he was going to have a fight on his hands the moment he laid his eyes on her in her office after the funeral. She meant too much to him to ever stop trying so, the first thing he had done early that morning when he finally gave up on sleep was to call her. He wasn't surprised that she didn't answer but that didn't stop him trying again and again. Eventually he left her a message asking, pleading with her to just call but she hadn't. It was now almost midday, and she still hadn't called. Booth could feel his anger turning to despair and he just wanted to cry, wondering exactly how his life had gone to shit so quickly.
Booth's unrelenting anger had fuelled his actions that morning, making him hunt down the agent who had overseen the details of his faked death including, he hoped, who had been responsible for his list. Agent Clay had been surprised to see Booth again so soon after the resolution of the case. Witness protection was his specialty, but occasionally an agent was required to go into hiding, which was also part of his remit, and usually, once a case had been resolved, unless the agent regularly required deep cover, Clay wouldn't see them again for quite some time.
Mathew Clay was tall – almost six four and with his close-cropped blonde hair and penetrating pale blue eyes, he knew he was an intimidating looking guy, but it was almost like he hadn't registered on Seeley Booth's scale of intimidating. If anything, it was the other way around. There was something about the ex-sniper turned FBI agent that gave Clay the vibe that Seeley Booth didn't intimidate and that you really wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of him. Something which was suitably demonstrated that morning when he had unexpectedly strolled into Clay's office.
"Agent Booth! How can I help you this fine morning?" Clay had said cheerily upon seeing Booth in his doorway.
Booth had entered the office and Clay got a good look at him. He looked like hell. He was unshaven and he looked kinda rumpled, almost like he hadn't slept. Concern rattled Clay a little, wondering if maybe something from the case had gone to hell.
"There's nothing fine about this morning, Clay. It's raining outside." Booth responded tersely with a raised eyebrow and a finger pointed at the window to demonstrate his point.
There was something about Booth's tone though that told Clay his bad mood was about more than just the weather.
"Right. What're you doing here, Booth? Everything ok?"
"Yeah, everything is just peachy." Booth bit out acerbically. Done with the small talk, he got straight to the point. "While I was in the hospital, I wrote a list of people to contact to inform them that I was alive. Who was in charge of telling the people on that list?"
Clay raised an eyebrow. That was not what he was expecting Booth to ask, and he was immediately concerned that there had been a leak from one of Booth's contacts.
"Why, has there been a leak?" Clay asked, rising from his desk to go grab the file from the cabinet.
Booth shook his head and a small humourless smile crept onto his lips. "No, nothin' like that. I just wanna find out who decided not to tell my partner, despite her being at the top of the list, so I can kick his ass."
Clay turned away so Booth couldn't see his face and smiled wryly. He had heard all about Booth's partner, the infamous Doctor Brennan. The unconventional pairing had been the talk of The Bureau ever since the inception of their partnership a few years ago. Agent Booth's overprotective behaviour around his partner was an almost constant topic of conversation at the Hoover, and the subject of several betting pools. Clay gave one small shake of his head. He swore that FBI agents were worse gossips than old women.
Clay opened the file but when he saw who had been responsible for the list, he hesitated. If it had been anyone else, he would have enjoyed watching Booth kick their ass, but as it was, Dr Sweets was just a kid. But when he looked up from the file, Booth was staring at him, glaring, like he was trying to pick the information right from his head and Clay knew he would never get away with lying about it.
"It was Doctor Sweets, Booth."
"Thanks, Clay." Booth called over his shoulder as he abruptly turned and left the office.
"Booth!" Clay called pointlessly after him, wanting to warn him to go easy on the kid but he had already gone.
The revelation that Sweets had been the one to inflict all that pain and grief on the woman he loves incensed Booth with rage. He felt it burning within him, making his muscles twitch and harden, ready for a fight. In a way, Booth was glad of the anger. It was a familiar emotion, unlike the overwhelming grief that was bubbling under the surface, waiting to overwhelm him once the fury had subsided. He had made his way to his office to lock away his weapon feeling like his body was being consumed by fire and not in the good way he was accustomed to when he was with Bones. That fire was pure heat, like laying on the beach in the warm sun, feeling the warmth soaking into your bones and spreading through your body. It was comforting and welcome. How he felt at that moment felt more like someone had doused him in gasoline then lit a match. It was painful, making his whole body ache, making him feel like he wanted to peel off his skin just to escape the burning sensation. Almost against his will it was compelling him to act, making his feet move of their own volition. Somewhere, behind the fire, his brain was telling him to take a breath, to calm down. But there was another part of his brain also telling him that this was the solution, that taking action would extinguish the flames.
By the time he got to Sweets' office, the part of his brain telling him to calm down had become slightly more dominant, but not enough to stop him from storming straight inside, ignoring his secretary who made a valiant but ineffective attempt at arresting his progress. By the time he'd done yelling at Sweets, he was glad that he hadn't done anything to hurt the Bureau's resident psychologist, but he didn't feel better, he just felt worse.
By the time he got back to his office after his short detour to the bathroom, the anger was rapidly dissipating, the flames finally being smothered by the iciness of grief and despair. He removed his suit jacket, sat heavily in his desk chair and liberated his gun from the drawer in the desk. As he held the weapon in his hand, for one brief, mad moment, he considered holding it to his temple. Shame rushed through him as his gaze landed on a picture of his son. Death was never the solution and Booth intended to be around for a long time yet to take care of Parker and even if Bones didn't want him anymore, if the last two weeks had shown him anything, it's that his death would kill her too, and he loved her too much to do that to her.
Shoving his gun into the holster at his hip before he could consider doing anything else completely stupid, he leaned back in his chair and scrubbed his hands over his face. The stress and the night of no sleep were catching up with him and he felt drained. He pulled his cellphone from his pocket, hoping for a message, a missed call, anything. But the screen was blank. He tossed it on the desk and sighed heavily, dragging a file off the pile that had appeared on his desk in his absence.
He tried to concentrate, but the words were swimming on the page in front of him and no matter how much he squinted or tried to focus, he just couldn't concentrate enough to read them. Groaning in frustration, he tossed the file back on the desk, stood up and grabbed his jacket. It was obvious he wasn't going to achieve anything here today. He thought about going to the range and shooting a few rounds but quickly dismissed the idea when he realised if he couldn't concentrate enough to read, he certainly wouldn't be able to shoot.
Trudging out of his office and through the bullpen, Booth saw Charlie Burns, one of his favourite agents from his team.
"Hey, Charlie." Booth called out. "I've got a migraine. I'm no good here, I can't damn well see. I've gone home if anyone asks." It wasn't a complete lie, but it was a convenient excuse.
"Sure thing Booth. D'you need me to drive you home?" Charlie responded, concerned. It was out of character for his boss to go home in the middle of the day.
"No, thank you. I'll be fine." Booth said as he pushed the button for the elevator. The doors opened immediately, and Booth entered the car, not noticing Charlie watching him from the bullpen with a troubled look on his face.
Booth rode the elevator down to the underground parking lot, not really knowing where he was going to go. He really didn't want to go home to his empty apartment, but he couldn't think of anywhere else to go. What he really wanted was Bones. To feel her in his arms, to breathe in her scent, to hear her throaty chuckle when he said something deliberately stupid to make her laugh. She was his home and without her, he was lost. Adrift at sea with no way to get back.