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Disclaimer: While waiting for Season 2 to commence I've borrowed them in an effort to entertain myself. They never have been, nor are, nor will be mine.


Ch. 13 – The Afflicted

Booth floundered for something to say to reassure Brennan, something that would encourage her, something that would let her know that he was there, that he was coming, that he cared. He couldn't find anything. His earpiece had been alarmingly silent after her aborted goodbyes; apparently she couldn't find anything to say either. The only sound audible was the familiar rattle of a car driving on gravel roads and he could imagine her being jounced roughly in the small trunk of the Honda. He'd give anything to comfort her but found himself at a loss. Words weren't enough this time but action was impossible. It twisted his gut to think of her bound and alone with a serial killer, incapable of properly defending herself.

Brennan stared unseeingly into the darkness and considered making another attempt at saying a proper goodbye to Booth. She knew from experience that words left unsaid could haunt you and she wanted to let Booth know how much he meant to her before she couldn't say anything. But he wouldn't let her. She knew that he thought that if he admitted that something could happen to her, it would. As if admitting to the possibilities of reality would make it real. She was about to blurt out everything she needed to tell him when she felt the car slow. Her eyes widened in alarm.

"Booth, we've stopped," she whispered.

Booth felt his gut tighten and he attempted to swallow his guilt and fear as he turned the key in the ignition. He pushed Brennan's words to the back of his mind. He would not think of what could happen in ten minutes. As he drove down the country roads, Clark's occasional direction in his ear, he began to pray under his breath.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our… death."

Brennan barely heard the voices in her ear although she vaguely recognized that Booth had finished the Hail Mary and had moved on to what she thought might be the litany. Her brief brush with the Catholic Church had been during a funeral for a friend of her parents when she was thirteen. She'd found the even chanting reassuring then, but now it simply reminded her that Booth was near and was coming. That thought reassured her more than the words he was saying.

The car had slowed to a halt what felt like hours ago and her exhausted muscles were once again taut in anticipation of the moment when the trunk lid would open and her captor's face would appear. Despite her tension she could barely keep her head up, the wracking pain of only a few minutes before having left her weak and sapped of energy. Fighting back was going to be next impossible but she vowed to make an effort anyway.

She heard the car door slam and the crunch of footsteps on gravel. Had they stopped at the edge of the road? Keys scraped lightly against the trunk, which popped open shortly thereafter. She caught a brief glimpse of her captor in the dark night, framed by a sky full of stars before she lashed out with her booted left foot and connected solidly with his solar plexus. The air whooshed out of his lungs as Brennan struggled to a sitting position in the trunk. She attempted to follow up with another blow but found that the last of her available energy stores had been consumed by that single kick. She was barely able to stay upright and as she struggled to just get out of the car, her abductor slowly recovered. Brennan had just managed to hang her other leg over the edge of the trunk when she was backhanded and saw stars for the second time that evening.

"Feisty," the man muttered under his breath. "Good thing you can barely sit up now, I wouldn't want to have to fight with you over the footbridge."

Before Brennan could process what he had said, the killer had scooped her up in a fireman's carry, leaving her to watch the growing distance between themselves and the parked car, the trunk lid still hanging open. The grass below her head was a lush green and in need of being mown. There was the faint scent of manure in the air and she thought that she could hear the distant lowing of cows. They were on a farm. A large farm, based on the distance they had covered since they'd left the car at the side of the road. She soon heard a faint trickling sound. Obviously they were nearing the footbridge he'd mentioned earlier. It was a narrow wooden construction, barely two feet wide and only three feet long. They walked for another few minutes, climbing a mild slope. Shifting her weight slightly, Brennan was able to catch sight of a large wooden structure. A barn she realized.

The man carrying her slowed and then set her down on the ground. She briefly considered getting up and attempting to run but she knew that her energy would be better used if she conserved it for a moment when she was more certain of a positive income. As she watched her captor slide the heavy door open and disappear inside she allowed her head to fall forward onto her knees, her mouth now in closer proximity to her microphone.

"Where are you?" she asked, her voice so light it was almost inaudible.

"I'm getting closer to where Clark says your car stopped almost ten minutes ago. Where are you?"

"Near a barn. Booth, I… the Cicatrix acerbitas, it… I'm exhausted. I can barely hold my head up. I can't fight him off. There's no way I can fight him off. I can't…" her voice broke and she stopped speaking, her head sinking even lower.

Booth heard the unspoken request for him to hurry and pressed his foot down further on the gas pedal. His Bones needed him and there was no way he was going to regret not letting her say goodbye.

Brennan lifted her head up and leaned it against the rough wood at her back. The sky was shimmering with stars and she stared at them, naming constellations, listing the names of all the satellites in the solar system, attempting to distract herself from whatever was going to happen next. She shifted her weight and winced as the metal handcuffs cut deeper into her wrists. She was in the middle of making a list of things she wanted to do if she ever got back to her lab when heavy footsteps approached.

"Are you ready to play?" the newly familiar voice asked.

"No, you son of a bitch," Brennan spat out.

"There's no need for profanity," he said as he once again scooped her up off the ground.

"Then what should I call you?" Brennan asked, blinking as they entered the brightly lit barn.

"You can call me Charlie."

Charlie dumped Brennan on a square bale of hay and then climbed out of sight. Brennan took the opportunity to examine her surroundings. It was a large barn that was used only to store bales of hay and straw. She was seated roughly in the center of it and she saw that there were two doors, one at either end, the one that they had used still hanging open. On her left was a ladder that offered access to the hayloft above her head. The loft extended outwards from three of the walls ten feet above her, and was dark, making it impossible to determine how far up the structure extended. Charlie had disappeared up there and she heard a metallic clanking emanating from some point above and behind her. The main floor was lit by five large spotlights set up on stands of approximately six feet in height. The metallic clanking had now evolved into the recognizable sound of a chain rattling. Brennan craned her neck and watched as a heavy chain with a metal hook at one end descended down towards her. As it landed beside her on the bale, she again spotted Charlie who was now clambering down the ladder, the other end of the chain held tightly in his right hand.

Brennan let her head fall back and she stared up into the darkness. Based on the sound of metal links sliding against each other she determined that the chain was connected to a pulley near the ceiling that was most likely used to lift bales off the main floor of the barn up into the loft. Charlie wrapped his end of the chain around a large hook attached to the wall adjacent to the entrance they had used. As he walked towards her, Brennan attempted to keep all signs of fear out of her face, letting only anger and defiance dominate her expression. She would not let this bastard see that she was afraid.

Charlie walked around the bale and grabbing the hook that had landed next to her, attached it to the chain of her handcuffs. Then coming around to face her, he crouched down so that he was at eye level with her and studied her for a long moment. Brennan glared at him but he merely chuckled at the intensity of the hatred in her eyes. He stared for a few moments longer.

"I can't believe it. You're her."

Brennan felt uncertainty well up within herself but wouldn't let it show. The likelihood of this man recognizing her was slim but she was more wary of the man in front of her. She watched as a delighted smile crossed Charlie's face.

"You are her. I can't believe I found her. You bitch. Why did you do it?"

"Do what?" Brennan asked, suddenly confused. This man obviously hadn't recognized her from the photo on the dust jacket of her book.

"We were happy, you know. My parents were happy. My life was good. And then you just waltzed in with your skimpy outfits and a shake of your hips and ruined everything. Absolutely everything. My father left because of you. And then you broke him. Took his money and walked away. And he never came back. You ruined my life, you bitch," he said harshly and backhanded her.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I've never met your father," Brennan protested as the man roughly hoisted her upwards and kicked away the bale she'd been sitting on, leaving her to stand unsteadily, the cool metal of the chain seeping through her clothing and chilling her.

"Of course you have," Charlie said, and laughed harshly. "Oh well, not you exactly, but it was you. She's there, in you. It's in the eyes. And now I'm going to save you from her because you don't want to live with her in you. You don't want to be like her."

Brennan creased her brows in confusion. The man was no longer making sense. He was babbling incoherently. She considered asking further questions but didn't when Charlie suddenly turned away from her and disappeared behind her. When he reappeared in her sightline, she felt her eyes involuntarily widen in alarm. This evening was headed in a whole new direction.

Charlie approached her holding a bamboo staff in his hands. It was maybe five feet in length and he balanced it lightly in his palms, a pensive expression on his face. He suddenly flipped it so that he was clasping it tightly in his right hand, holding it upright and at a slight angle.

"You'll thank me for this," he said seriously to Brennan.

The length of bamboo whistled through the air as he swung it towards her. When it connected with her ribs, causing a sharp, stinging sensation and raising an immediate welt on her skin she unwillingly sobbed out the name of the one man that could help her in small voice.

"Booth."

Upon hearing Brennan choke out his name in a voice laced with pain and fear, Booth felt his blood run cold. His SUV skidded to a halt behind the Honda Civic and he leaped out of it, grabbing his gun from beneath the driver's seat. As he slammed the door shut, he let the last phrase of the litany that he could remember slide over his lips.

"Comforter of the afflicted, pray for us."

He began to run quietly across the field, the lighted barn faintly visible in the distance. His stealth training had never been more useful or important in his entire life as he sprinted silently. As he ran, Clark informed him that back up would be at Brennan's location in fifteen minutes. Too late to be of any real help. Saving Brennan would be up to him.

Brennan again tasted blood in her mouth as she bit her lip to prevent crying out. There was no way in hell she would offer the bastard who was beating her the pleasure of hearing her make any sound of discomfort. Her body was burning with pain that was interspersed by lightening bursts of agony when the bamboo connected with her body. The blows never landed in the same place twice and they were in no way regular, leaving her wondering when and where the next one would come from. The anticipation was almost as awful as the blows.

There was a long pause, longer than any that had occurred between blows before, and Brennan opened her eyes, unsure of when she had closed them. Charlie had leaned the staff against the wall and was approaching the hook where he had looped the other end of the chain that was hooked to her handcuffs.

"No," she whispered hoarsely, realizing what was about to happen. She briefly struggled against the handcuffs and then attempted to step through her arms so that her wrists were in front of her but she only managed to stumble and she fell in an exhausted heap on the floor. She heard Charlie's harsh laughter but couldn't summon any anger towards him. She could only think of one person and she swallowed tears of regret as she did.

She shut out the clanking sound of the chain as Charlie loosed it from the wall and used the last of her energy to whisper, "Seeley, I want to… thank you. Thank you for pulling me out of that lab and for caring and for… everything. It meant so much to me. You mean so much to me. You're my…"

Her words were cut off when a new pain shot through her arms as Charlie pulled the chain down towards him, wrenching Brennan's arms and the rest of her body up off the floor.

"I told you no goodbyes," Booth whispered harshly in her earpiece.


Sorry guys, I had to stop there, it was the best place to break it up. Don't worry, we're getting closer to some resolution now. So, did you love it, hate it, deeply desire for me to write the world's biggest chapter so that you don't have to deal with any more cliffhangers? Any deeply insightful suggestions or comments? To do any or all of the above you know what button to push.