A/N: Thanks to those who've reviewed – I really appreciate the feedback – both positive & constructive crit!
Disclaimer: I may consist of 206 bones, but I don't own Bones.
"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them" - Antoine de Saint Exupery
3.
"Dad?"
"Yeah Bub?" He glanced at his son sitting in a pile of ripped wrapping paper and toys. He was still staring at the original Pete Rose card he held, in admiration.
"This is awesome!"
"I'm glad you like it Parker." He responded carefully.
"And the best part is it's going to match the other one Bones gave me."
"Other one?" Booth asked blankly.
"Yeah. My card? The one she gave me after my playoff game?"
"Your card? What card?"
"She didn't show you it? Man. It's cool. It looks just like this one, 'cept it's me," the boy explained.
"Bones gave you your own baseball card after your playoff game last month?" Booth clarified.
"Yep," Parker nodded. "She said that she was sorry that she couldn't be there to see me play but she hoped I'd like the card, you know, as an apology for missing it. She said she had to meet with a bored guy and he must have been really bored 'cause he made her talk to him for hours."
"Oh." Booth didn't know what to do with this new information.
"Hey Dad? How come Bones isn't here? I asked her weeks ago and she said she'd come."
Booth tensed. "She went away for a while Bub. She said to apologize to you though and gave me that to give you." He nodded to the card.
"Did she have to go help someone with her work?"
"Yeah, something like that."
Parker nodded in acceptance. "Okay."
Booth started. "Wait, you're not upset?"
"No Dad. Bones has an important job, just like yours." He shrugged. "Sometimes the things she does for other people have to come first."
Booth smiled at his son. "But you know that you're always the most important thing, right?"
"Yeah." The boy looked doubtful and added, "Well….kinda."
"Kinda?"
"It's just…well, you and Bones help save people, don't you Dad?"
He cringed, thinking of the aspects of his job he didn't want his son to know about. "Sometimes."
"And you figure out how people die so that their families don't have to worry anymore?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"And you're always saying that adults have responsibilities, right dad? That sometimes you gotta do work even if you'd rather be having fun with me?
"Whatcha getting at Bub?"
"Well I guess maybe aren't those things more important? I mean, like if I'm not scared or hurt or anything?"
"I don't know: you're more important than anything to me."
"Yeah, I know. But Dad, you've still missed things with me 'cause of work. Like that year you got stuck in the lab for Christmas and I had to talk to you through a window?"
"You remember that?"
Parker rolled his eyes. "Yeah Dad. You got me that cool robot?" He shook his head in disgust at his father's apparent forgetfulness. "Plus that time you pretended to be dead? And that time we were supposed to go camping but you went to the circus instead?"
"You got me big man. But I made it up to you didn't I?" He waggled his eyebrows.
"Yeah." Parker nodded enthusiastically. "Tell Bones thanks for me when you talk to her," he added offhandedly. "Hey, why don't you ever take me to the circus Dad?"
Booth shuddered and frowned.
Seeing the look on his father's face, Parker thought he understood. "Gotta wait for armpit hair?"
Booth nodded and felt a wave of pride and sadness. He held out his arms for a hug and kissed his son's hair.
Parker squirmed out of his father's arms. "Yuck Dad!" He ducked but still got noogied for his efforts.
"Such a brat!" Booth teased as they tussled together.
(.xxx.)
"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect." - Margaret Mitchell
(.xxx.)
Dr. Lance Sweets was enjoying his 10 minutes of calm between patients when his office door creaked open and a certain special agent slumped onto the couch in front of him. He stared in surprise at the man, taking careful note of his disheveled appearance. "Agent Booth? Can I help you?"
The man scrubbed at his face with his hands and mumbled, "I messed up."
The psychologist leaned forward. "How exactly did you 'mess up'? Does this have to do with Dr. Brennan's sabbatical?"
Booth lifted his head and glared. "Of course it does. You know it does. She told me she talked to you before she left."
"Agent Booth, what Dr. Brennan and I may or may not have discussed is not something I can share with you."
Finally Booth gave in and confessed what had been bothering him for weeks. "She said I was lying to her."
"Were you?"
"Was I what?"
"Lying?"
"No. I…. She said all this stuff about me not loving her for her? Or trying to fix her? Or something? I don't know. I just. Look, I get that Bones isn't like most women. I mean, that's what I like about her, you know? But sometimes she can be…and I just wish…
"You wish she were different."
"No. Yes? No. I just wish she'd make more of an effort. We're in a relationship; shouldn't she want to spend time with me?"
"When you do things together, has she ever indicated that she didn't want to be with you, that she'd rather be somewhere else?"
The agent paused to consider, "Well, no…at least not once I got her there."
"Did she ever appear unhappy to see you? Or ignore you when you made specific requests of her?"
"Sweets, this is Bones. I try to take her out on a fancy date and she complains that I'm being an alpha male. But no, usually she tries to be there for me, except when she can't."
"So what changed?"
"What?"
"How is any of this different then when you were 'just partners'?"
"We're dating. A relationship. We're not just partners anymore."
"Okay, well did you ever discuss your expectations for a relationship with her?"
"Well…" Both men leaned back in their seats, one studiously attempting to avoid the other's gaze.
"Agent Booth, you perhaps better than anyone knows that Dr. Brennan is not a mind reader. If you are not happy in your relationship with her you have to tell her directly."
"Who said I wasn't happy?" Booth defended with a glare.
Sweets looked at him but said nothing.
"Look. Bones, she's everything. I am happy with her, I am," he insisted.
"Then why are you here?" Sweets let the question linger before he noticed the time. "I have an appointment."
"Sweets?" Booth hesitated at the door. The other man waited. "Do you think she was right?"
The doctor frowned. "No, Agent Booth, I don't think you were lying to her." At the agent's more than relieved look, he added, "I think you were lying to yourself." With that, he turned to his desk in dismissal.
Booth's face was grim as he walked out the door.
(.xxx.)
"Even still, we run. We have not reached our average of 57.92 years without knowing that you run through it, and it hurts and you run through it some more, and if it hurts worse, you run through it even more, and when you finish, you will have broken through. In the end, when you are done, and stretching, and your heartbeat slows, and your sweat dries, if you've run through the hard part, you will remember no pain." - Lauren Groff, The Monsters of Templeton
(.xxx.)
Temperance Brennan stared at the file in front of her, unseeing. Sifting through the detritus of human life required a specific mindset; one that she had always prided herself on inhabiting. With each day she spent in this place, it became clearer that, metaphorically speaking of course, she had changed.
She sighed; despite the rustic conditions and the fact that she had been refused access to the grave site, the dig was well organized. The bodies came to her devoid of flesh and grime. She spent much of each day cataloging markers on the bones in dim light, eyes squinting through the magnifying lens that had been provided. It should have been satisfying.
Instead she felt off-balance without her team; without the technology she was accustomed to; without her gloves and sterile work environment. She was frustrated at how little the forensic evidence meant, watched as critical information was ignored or tossed away. Despite an abundance of proof to the identities of the guilty, very few would ever face punishment. Many of the victims would never be known, even with her colleague's patient collection of DNA samples.
She scraped her feet against the bare earth floor and chased away the fly that was teasing her hair. The fans ineffectively pushed air around her makeshift office, brushing hours of cumulative paperwork listlessly across the table and cooling nothing.
Brennan's job was this: catalogue the bones, read the notes, and assign names where she could. The task was daunting with only stray scraps of paper and oral histories to rely upon, if she was lucky. Sometimes she was forced to question the local people with her interpreter: so and so had a limp, this man hauled rock at a quarry for a time, there was a boy with a chipped lateral incisor. The last she had surmised from a pointing finger. Only five of the assumed missing had medical records. The inequality of life haunted her dreams. The poor didn't go to the dentist to fix a broken tooth. The poor didn't have protection from political strife. At her most cynical, she'd posited that rich men rarely ended up in unmarked graves. No one contradicted her.
Her mind wandered. She berated herself for not being focused, for letting her thoughts drift across the large land mass and the ocean towards the place she called home. Her heart wasn't in this anymore. The work still felt important, necessary, but lacking in some way.
The man, her interpreter, Ibrahim, had braved the ongoing conflicts and tensions to tell UN observers of the grave in western Sudan. Twenty three bodies had been discovered, tossed inside a shallow pit like yesterday's refuse. Forty more were missing; most of them young men, but she had concluded in the week that this was not their grave. The bone fragments were many, but the numbers didn't add up.
She hungered to tear away the secrets buried in the ground, to dig until no one was left unaccounted. She knew Ibrahim feared that he would not survive long after this work was done. She had watched him often of late. He would sit quietly in the shadows, almost as if waiting for more secrets and rumors to reach his ears, anything to keep their group from leaving, anything to stay alive. There were new graves appearing. The conflict refused to end. The work would never end. Often she felt hopeless.
The world was pretty here. The world was ugly here. In the mornings, she sat with her tiny cup of guhwah coffee, the sweetness of the grass filter warring with the bitter beans, and watched the mist on the mountains and felt at peace. Sometimes at night the heavy drums beat the rhythm of her heart as she willed sleep to come. She would laugh when the mothers chided their children for going out in the heat of the day or darkness of night. The heat will get them; the nayama will get them, the mother's would say in worried tones. They were not entirely wrong. By some estimates, 480,000 had died in this conflict, millions more displaced. It wasn't because of a mythical animal or the weather. People were the problem; greed was the problem.
No, the cause was a just one. She had something of value to contribute to it and she did not fear for her own safety. But being so far from home was much harder than she had considered. She had too many attachments now, too many people depending on her. She wasn't sure she liked it, the sensation of attachment, however metaphorical it may be. She missed being responsible for only herself. She was irritated that her actions had consequences for others; that she had a duty to consider them as well.
She huffed in annoyance and closed the file, deciding that her current train of thought was unproductive. She had a professional obligation to use her skills, and if it provided her a chance to escape the tension at home, then so be it. No one else deserved to have a say in how she lived her life.
If only she could determine which life she wanted to live.
(.xxx.)
"Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you." - Hafez
(.xxx.)
"Hey ladies, what do you have for me?" Booth forced lightness into his tone and step as he joined Cam and Angela on the platform.
Angela glared at him and turned back to Cam. "I'll be in my office."
He shrugged it off. "Was it something I said?"
Cam just looked at him and turned toward the body on the table. Threads of flesh and grime still clung to the bones. To Booth's estimation, not much had been done since transferring it from the dumpster to the lab. "I've completed a preliminary exam, but I'm afraid I can't give you much. Hodgin's has been scouring the crime scene all morning. Angela's been checking the dentals, but no hits so far. Clark will be here tomorrow morning. He's going to review the x-rays before catching a flight back from L.A. tonight."
Booth straightened in surprise. "That's it?"
"Yes Seeley," she explained patiently with a hint of an ironic grin. "Unlike some people, I do flesh, not bones."
He ignored her smile and continued, "What's Clark doing in L.A.? Shouldn't he be here?"
"We haven't had a case in over a month. I told him he could attend a three day conference." She shrugged. "What were the odds?"
"Isn't there anyone else? Wendell? My boss is breathing down my neck for answers."
"Wendell is an intern, Seeley. I don't believe Caroline would be impressed with having to present his credentials to a jury."
The man slumped against the railing in defeat, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Angela's mad, huh?"
Cam looked at him knowingly. "She's her best friend."
"I know, I just…."
She moved beside him and bumped his shoulder. "Have you talked to her?"
He ignored the implication in her voice. "Angela?"
"Sure, let's go with that." She looked up at him. "It might help, you know."
"I just don't want to hear it. She's the one who left, not me."
"And you didn't give her good reason to?" She asked pointedly. "Look Seeley, you're a big boy, you do what you want. But remember that all of us are affected by this. And we want to see you happy. Both of you."
(.xxx.)
"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you." – Elbert Hubbard
(.xxx.)
He knocked softly on the artist's door. "Ang? You got a minute?"
The woman glanced up at him and then back at her computer screen. "I'm running the dentals for missing women of Hispanic origin, but until I have more to go on I don't think I'll be able to narrow it down much. I'm going to have to wait until Clark can give me a better age range and some tissue markers to get a good feel for the face."
"That's not what I'm here for."
She looked up at him again. "That's all I have to discuss with you Booth."
"Look, I know I messed up, but can you… Is she doing okay?"
Angela stood and retreated as he advanced into the room, shaking her head dismissively. "I'm not talking to you about this."
He sighed. "What if I talk to you?" She didn't move. "Look Ang, I know I screwed up. I just got tired and frustrated, you know? It was just so hard and nothing seemed to be changing despite my best efforts. And then she ran away..."
The anger in the artist's eyes shimmered brighter. "You can be a real ass sometimes Booth." She shook her head, almost to herself. "I've been trying to convince her for years, years Booth, that she should give you a shot. I mean, my god, you were like some sort of saint with her. I rarely have that kind of patience with her and she's my best friend. But the second you get involved, the second she truly lets herself be vulnerable to you, you go all Jekyll and Hyde on her."
"I didn't…"
She cut across him. "No, okay, I've changed my mind. You'll listen and I'll speak. 'Cause you say you know you messed up, but you don't get it, do you? You still don't see what happened?"
She gave him a rueful chuckle and held up one finger. "She agreed to date you; to be with you in a 'monogamous relationship' were her words." She added another finger. "She told you she loved you despite never telling any other man those words." Another finger. "She let you open doors and drive and pull out chairs and all that other chivalrous garbage you love and she hates." Another. "She stopped working on weekends and didn't pull a single all-nighter the whole time you were together. Booth, for five months!" She held up her hand. "Number 5. She lit up when she saw you or talked about you. Six. She wouldn't discuss her biological urges with me, at all. She just kept saying that 'what was between you was yours,' like some sort of mantra. Sweetie, trust me on this: she used to tell me everything. Seven. She gets offers for outside work all the time and she used to accept three or four a year, sometimes more. Since she started working with you, it's been one a year. Since she started dating you? Nothing. I mean, there have been some pretty awesome offers, the history changing kind she loves. But she just turned them down flat until you guys went on the skids, and even then she wasn't going to accept. I had to convince her to go. Me!"
Booth glared at her at this last one. "Look Booth, usually I'm all 'Go Team Booth n' Bren!' but she was barely eating or sleeping. Every time she talked or didn't talk to you, she was on the brink of tears. She blamed herself for everything. There was no compartmentalization, nothing. That's not Bren." She sighed. "Do you want me to continue? I've a few more fingers to go and there are two in particular I'd like to give you."
He didn't break a smile at her joke. "I think I've got the point."
"Do you?" Angela asked earnestly. "She has changed Booth, a lot. It may be subtle and it may never be a perfect transformation, but she did it because of you. It was so hard for her to let you in Booth, and you basically told her it wasn't good enough." She paused and stared him down. Finally, she sighed, "Maybe it's about time for you to start making some changes for her." She sat back down at her computer, slipped on her headphones and left him to his thoughts.