(The Pain in the Heart)

A/N: MsNYC wanted to see how Sweets handled Brennan's notification about Booth's 'death' after 'The Wannabe in the Weeds'.

I don't own Bones.

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"Dr. Brennan, I need to speak to you." Sweets had been given Booth's list of people to be notified that he wasn't dead and he'd had every intention of informing Brennan that her partner was alive until he'd entered her office and found Brennan working on something on her PC. "If I may?"

Her mind still racing with what had happened the previous evening, Brennan turned to face the young psychologist and tried to get rid of him. "I'm busy. I don't have time to chat with you."

Her words were cold and unemotional and Sweets found that to be alarming. He knew that Brennan was less emotional than the average person, but it seemed to him that in this case, her lack of emotion was signs of denial. As far as she knew, her partner and friend had died the previous evening and yet she didn't appear to be grieving for the man. "I wanted to check on you. Booth has been dead for approximately twelve hours and I wanted to see if you needed to talk to someone about it."

Talking about Booth's death was the last thing she wanted to do. Her friend had died in the hospital the previous evening and she was having a hard time accepting that fact. Perhaps if they had allowed her to see his body then this would all be real to her, but right now it wasn't real at all. For a brief moment the previous evening both Booth and she were happy. She was singing and her friend was in the audience smiling and acting goofy. It had been a wonderful moment, a happy moment and then it wasn't. "I don't need to talk to anyone about Booth's death. He's dead and there is nothing you or I can do to bring him back. I accept his death and I will now move on."

The coldness of her words sent a chill down Sweets' back. He knew that Brennan wasn't a cold person, far from it and to act like Booth's death didn't really matter was disquieting. He felt that she was bottling up her emotions and she wasn't allowing herself to properly grieve. In the long run, he felt that she might be setting herself up in some way. He just didn't know what that might be. "Dr. Brennan, Booth was your friend. It's alright to cry now that he is dead. You're never going to see him again. He's never going to work with you again. Surely he deserves some tears."

She had learned a long time ago that public tears could only cause trouble and pain. When her parents and brother had abandoned her, she had dared to cry for her loss. The foster parents she had been assigned to, took that as a sign of weakness and made fun of her. They had called her a baby and slapped and punched her, insisting that she grow up. Their abuse convinced her that tears in public only invited punishment and mocking and she vowed to never shed a tear in public again. Over the years she had broke that rule twice, but it had been with a man she trusted, her partner Booth. She had cried in Vince McVicar's barn and she had cried when Booth had saved her from Jaime Kenton. Now that Booth was gone, there would never be any more public tears because she didn't trust anyone else in her life to accept what she was going through. Booth had understood her and her friend was gone.

Her silence worried Sweets. Not only was she not grieving for Agent Booth, she wasn't allowing any emotions to show at all. To act like the agent's death was inconsequential made Sweets wonder how much Brennan was suppressing. From the first day they had met, Sweets had thought there was a connection between Booth and Brennan. He'd seen the looks, the light touches, the soft-spoken words and he'd come to believe that the couple loved each other. It was maddening that they couldn't see that and Sweets had tried to force the issue more than once, but they had denied everything and they'd insisted they were just partners. "Dr. Brennan, I am your friend and it's alright to grieve for Booth. If you can't do it in front of your other friends, you can do it in front of me. It's okay, I can help you."

Except it wasn't okay. Brennan had never trusted psychology and she didn't trust the purveyors of such a soft science. Psychologists seem to make up data to back up their theories because they certainly couldn't point to real data to back up what they believed. When she had met Sweets, she had felt that he was too interested in her personal life. His probing questions were embarrassing and his innuendo about her and Booth was annoying. He was a child compared to her and what had he seen in life to make him someone she could trust?

She had mourned at home and had cried hours of tears, but she would not do that in front of Sweets or anyone else. "I do not need your advice, Dr. Sweets nor do I want your sympathy. Booth is dead. I have nothing else to say about the matter."

He could have told her at that point that her partner was alive, but Sweets was concerned that Brennan was suppressing everything she felt at the moment and he wanted her to admit that she had lost someone she cared about. He wanted her to admit that she cared for Agent Booth and his death wasn't something she could ignore and just move on. Glancing at the calendar on his phone, he knew that Booth's fake funeral was going to be scheduled to occur in two weeks. He had time to help Brennan accept that Booth meant something to her and that his loss was worth mourning. He didn't care if she cried in front of him, but he needed to see some signs of grief. Sweets was worried that Brennan's ability to suppress her emotions was denying her, her ability to be human. No matter what others thought, Sweets knew she wasn't a Vulcan or an unemotional robot. He felt that by denying her attachment to Booth and not allowing herself to grieve, that someday she would break and that break would be devastating. He had two weeks to get her to admit that she had felt an attachment to her partner and that she missed him, that she felt his loss.

Two weeks and then when she finally admitted her loss, he would tell her that Booth was alive and she would be prepared for his reappearance. It wasn't a lot of time, but he was confident he would prevail. "Alright . . . I'll be going now, but . . . well, I'll see you tomorrow or maybe the day after. I'm going to let you process what happened and then we'll talk."

Her patience at an end, Brennan stood up. "I have processed what has happened. Booth is gone. Now you must leave. I have work to do." Once the younger man was gone, Brennan sat back down and faced her PC again. Opening up the Word file she had been working on, she read what she had written so far:

I'm sorry that you're gone, Booth. You were my friend, my partner, my confident. I trusted you and you promised not to leave me, but of course you have. Everyone leaves me sooner or later and I have grown to accept that. No one loves me enough to stay. I loved you and now you are gone.

She felt a tear slide down her face and she dashed it away. She had cried the previous evening and she would cry no more. Booth was gone and she had to live her life without him.

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