Disclaimer: I do not own Bones, but I am obsessed!
Author's Note: There is so much that I want to say about this chapter, but I think it speaks for itself. This is one of my favorites, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Chapter Ten: Ilunga
Ilunga: Tshiluba (Southwest Congo) – A word famous for its untranslatability, most professional translators pinpoint it as the stature of a person "who is ready to forgive and forget any first abuse, tolerate it the second time, but never forgive nor tolerate on the third offense."
Special Agent Seeley Booth sat on the bar stool and wallowed. If he was a woman he would have been bawling his eyes out watching some sappy movie while eating nothing but Ben and Jerry's. But he was a man, a guy's guy, and the solution to a tough break up was to drink. It was the second time in a week that he had gotten drunker than a skunk, but he didn't really care right now. He slammed back another shot, barely recognizing the burn of the alcohol as it coursed down his throat.
He thought back on his life. He had accomplished a lot in his forty years: put killers behind bars, solved impossible mysteries, and performed his duty to his country. He had a son and a satisfying job, but it wasn't enough. He knew that he was talented, handsome, and kind, but it wasn't enough. Whatever he was, it was never enough to get a woman to stay, to want to be with him, forever.
Seeley Booth had kissed his first girl next to the water fountain in school when he was thirteen years old. And he hadn't really slowed down after his precocious beginning. He had two different personalities, the Lothario of the seventh grade and the scared boy who hid bruises and protected his younger brother. He continued his dual life for several more years. He wouldn't let himself open his heart, but the girls he picked never seemed to mind. He was the high school heart-throb and any girl considered herself lucky to go out on one date with Seeley Booth. They never learned his secrets, they never knew the real him.
And finally, his father was gone, and Pops was there. He no longer had to hide the physical bruises, he had to hide the emotional scars that had been left behind. He still didn't bring girls home, he contented himself under bleachers and in the back-seats of cars. He still lived two lives, not knowing how to reconcile the two very separate parts of his being.
The summer after graduation he was messing around on the basketball courts with Jared. They were trash-talking and horsing around when Jared tackled him the wrong way. He fell hard and heard something tear or pop, or crack. Perhaps all three. Jared illegally drove him to the hospital and sat with him while they waited for the news. Pops came in looking wild-eyed, but relieved when he saw his grandson in one piece. Still the news was devastating, Booth's basketball dreams and college scholarship were gone and Jared couldn't even meet his eyes. Booth took the blame for his own injury. It wasn't the first time that Booth took the hit for his little brother, and it wouldn't be the last.
It took two surgeries and several months of rehab before Booth felt like his old self. Well, his old two selves. College no longer interested him, and neither did the girls who remembered him so fondly and were home for various breaks from school. He spent months sitting on the couch watching the television and napping. And one morning he had seen his Pops looking at him with such sadness in his eyes.
The next morning Booth showered and dressed and walked into a recruiter's office. Three weeks later he went off to basic training and didn't look back. Furloughs were spent anywhere but home. He wasn't exactly sure why he chose Vegas or Atlantic City and sat at tables instead of sitting at home on the worn couch in Philadelphia. He was still leading two lives, he had traded girls for gambling. And now he hid the trauma of war and the ghosts of the men that he had killed and the friends that he had lost.
He met Camille Saroyan when he was twenty-three. She was a third-year medical student on a rotation and he was in a hospital after a weekend of debauchery with his brother. This time it was Jared in the hospital bed, his fake ID getting him into a bar and a brawl forcing him out of the seedy den and into the emergency room. Somehow, Jared looking pathetic in the bed and Seeley's willingness to take the blame made the younger brother the darling of the nurses on the floor, even the most jaded who had pumped enough stomachs and given enough IV fluid over the years to not even notice another drunk teenager.
Booth wasn't sure why he slept with Cam the first time. He had realized that alcohol was not going to heal him, he had no money in his pocket or in his checking account so gambling was out of the questions. He must have settled on his oldest of addictions, the warm embrace of a woman. They remained friends with benefits for several months. He floated in and out of her life while he finished up his duties with the army and went back to school as a Criminal Justice major. They would meet for dinner and wind up in bed together. She was the first person that he ever told about his abuse growing up, what he did as a soldier. She held him that night, and it was the last time that they found solace in each others arms until fate intervened over a decade later. She finished up med school and moved to DC, where she fell in love with a surgeon with a two-year old daughter. He took up pool.
He finished school and joined the FBI. He thrived, and as he moved through these ranks, he felt like he belonged. He atoned for his sins, let Karma right herself in his life. He was in a good place. And then he met Rebecca.
She was the first woman that he allowed himself to fall in love with. For the first time since he was a small child, he felt like one person. He didn't need to gamble or drink, or use women to hide his feelings. They were happy together. And then the stick turned blue.
He blurted out his proposal, and she looked at him with a smile as she gently shook her head and whispered "no." She had given him a precious gift, his son with the name he had chosen, but she took back her heart. He went back to the pool hall on occasion, but he had a child now and he vowed to be different than his own father. Things weren't always easy with Rebecca, she moved on and he didn't at first.
He gradually got back out in the dating world between rough cases and weekends with his son. He met Tessa, but he wasn't willing to love again. Not yet. He kept her at arm's length. Gemma Arrington's case file ended up on his desk, giving him a new purpose, a mystery to solve. It stayed on his desk for months, each lead getting him closer and then stalling him. One day his old friend Cam came to visit. After her residency and her messy break-up, she had moved to New York and become a coroner. And it was Cam who first mentioned the name of the second woman that he allowed himself to fall in love with.
Temperance Brennan. One case was all it took. She was intelligent and infuriating, passionate and beautiful. One kiss in the rain and he had seen his whole future, what his life could be. But she had gotten in a cab by herself and then picked fights with him. She finally slapped him, and stormed out of the Hoover building. It would be a year before he would see her again.
He had never forgotten their first kiss, but they both seemed determined to ignore it as if it had never happened. They continued to bicker and tease each other, but slowly they began to trust one another. They let each other in, as far as each of their damaged hearts would allow. They became best friends, partners. But the memory of her first rejection remained firm in his mind, and they never crossed the line between them.
He fell back into old habits. He didn't need the pool hall or a bottle of tequila, he once again found himself with Rebecca and then with Cam. He cared for both of them. One was the mother of his child, the other one of his oldest friends. Cam knew the majority of his secrets and it was easy and fun to be together. Even when he felt the sad eyes of his partner upon him. Howard Epps redrew the lines for Booth. Cam was placed forever in the friends category, and Bones once again became an impossibility.
Booth remembered mistletoe and Christmas trees. He thought of Sully and Hacker. There was her father's trial and his brain surgery. There were bullets and bombs. There was Sweets' interference and Zack's betrayal. So many events pushing them together and pulling them apart. And one night, he decided to gamble one more time, on them. He had kissed his partner and best friend. The woman that he loved. And she had told him "no" and asked to keep working together. He was heartbroken. He had allowed himself to fall in love again, allowed her to unknowingly heal some of his oldest wounds. She alone knew all of his secrets and he knew hers. They had shared everything, even a bed (although platonic and under the guise of undercover work). He had proposed a life together, and she had turned it down.
He had no choice but to accept it. He showed up for their next case, danced with her at her high school reunion, stood by her side in order to convict the Gravedigger, and let her go to Maluku. He got to hold her hand tightly, one last time, for the briefest of moments and let her go. It was the only thing he could do.
He was once again two people when he went back to the Army, now hiding the bruises of his broken heart. One side of him was the commanding officer who didn't even have to ask in order to have the respect of his trainees, the other was a homesick man who missed his regular job, his son, his friends, and his partner. And then Hannah appeared.
He saved her life, and she rewarded him. It had been a long time since he had sought a woman's arms as a source of comfort. She was all too willing to give it. Booth wasn't sure of how lust had turned to love, but it had. She helped heal his broken heart and followed him back to the States. It was flattering, and he had been downright giddy with her arrival in DC.
Months passed, his life had changed, but not all of it. He still had his job, his son, his friends. His partner. He wasn't naïve enough to miss the sad glances from his partner, and he always felt guilty when he noticed the looks. And his own heart broke a bit when he had to break her heart on a stormy night. He would always love Bones, but he had moved on. And one drunken night with Sweets, he decided that he had to prove that he had moved on.
For the third time in his life, Booth proposed to commit himself to life with a single woman. This was the first time that he had bought a ring for the occasion. It was the first time that he had planned what he was going to say. There was still a rather large dose of impulsiveness in the action, but he was going to romance the woman, take his time and give her his heart. And, for the third time, he had heard the word "no." He hid his heartbreak with anger and Hannah had left for good.
And that brought him back to the bar stool, he was currently sitting in. Three strikes and he was out. He felt the anger well up inside of him again, and hastily threw back another shot under the careful gaze of a disapproving bartender. He was dangerously close to losing control, close to splitting back into the two people that he had spent his life being. And then Bones had walked into the bar and sat beside him.
His partner, the woman that he had once loved, the one who had told him that she did in fact want a chance with him after he had already moved on, had walked into the bar. She was sitting next to him, wanting to console him, trying to ask if now that he was free if he could give her another chance. But he wasn't ready for that. He was so filled with anger. Anger at Hannah, anger at her, anger at himself.
He gave her an ultimatum, and she wasn't happy with either of her choices, but she remained sitting next to him, poured liquor down her throat and ordered another. She would stand by him, and he was grateful.
It would take a stalled elevator, a burning candle, a sniper gone rogue, and the death of an intern before he finally let go of his anger. Booth found himself holding his partner in his arms as she cried.
He couldn't stop himself from his past, from when he lived his life as two people. Old habits die hard, and he gambled one last time. "Do you believe in fourth chances?"
She raised an eyebrow at him, not quite knowing what he was referring to. But he felt himself exhale the breath that he had been holding when she snuggled into his chest, rested her palm over his heart and whispered, "Yes." She whispered "yes" again as she tilted her head in order to kiss him.
Their first tequila-infused kiss he had been forced to forget. Their second kiss had been a bribe that he had just had to accept. Their third kiss had broken his heart.
Their fourth kiss and his fourth chance, he couldn't describe. All he knew was the he had finally heard "yes." He felt whole and alive. And then two people finally became one.