Hey guys! Apologies for the wait, and the brevity of this chapter. School has really been kicking my ass lately, but I hope there's still interest in this story! I struggled a lot with this chapter, and with the decision to write and complete this chapter. It revolves around two characters (Brent and Becca) that are only shadows in the show, and whose presence in this story is felt mainly in their absences than their actions. Plus, a lot of what is happening in this chapter has to do with what isn't being said, and that's a difficult feeling to convey with characters that are intentionally left only sketched-out. But hopefully the contrast to Becca's previous chapter is enough to push the story and her story forward in interesting ways. I have really enjoyed creating Becca, particularly trying to figure out what traits she has in common with Bones/Cam (because everyone's got a type) and what traits of her would have made her a romantic interest for Booth in the first place. As always, read and review, and I promise I'll respond this time through. Lyrics from Bloc Party's "This Modern Love."

Rebecca had vivid dreams of her death nightly. They had lurid, grotesque color schemes, a Poe short story sprung to life. She never died of cancer, though — it was always something infinitely more violent, like something in a Frida Kahlo painting, something involving macabre instruments and Chinese water torture and falls from incredible heights.

The first one left her so shaken that when Brent came with his Egg McMuffin to eat breakfast with her, she was so distracted that he weaseled it out of her. "I had a dream last night," she started. "It was all reds and greens and I was on an acupuncture table, except instead of needles they used machetes. The knives went all the way through my body and then they left me on the table and I died."

His amber eyes had opened wide, and he put one hand on her cheek and the other on her bicep. "Don't, Bec," he said. "Okay? Don't give up. That'd be stupid. Okay? This is a month. This is nothing."

She put her hand over his, stroking his hand lightly with her thumb. "I know. It just happened."

The next night she was on a surgical table, with Booth's clown friend Sweets acting as doctor and Lisa acting as nurse, having her liver methodically cut into Lucky Charms shapes.

The combination therapy was not bad, just tiring. She woke up tired and somehow, by just sitting in wheelchairs and armchairs and sometimes standing for radiation, she managed to become more tired. There were three other women about her age getting the treatment, and before long, they were practically a suburban bridge club. Marianne was 42, a mother of three, stepmother to two, and Parker and her son Grady got along whenever they bumped into each other. Catharine was taking a hiatus from her job as chief of staff to an Oregon congressman. She and her partner, Melanie, had been together for 15 years but didn't have children. Heidi was the youngest, just 32 and with brain cancer, and a brand-new baby. She'd waited to get treated until he was born, and the doctors had made it abundantly clear it would probably cost her her own life. Her doctors were kind of jackasses. Heidi was a psychiatrist, and was trying to turn cancer into something meaningful and fulfilling. It made Rebecca sad.

Parker visited five or six times a week — he was staying permanently with Seeley, because it was just easier. And even though he often stayed for an hour or two, and would call her after school almost every day, she could feel him pulling away a little bit. It was nearly impossibly to detect; it was in the way he stayed in the armchair most of the time and how he used the future tense to describe actions with almost everyone else in his life — he was going to teach Sophia how to ice skate, Bones promised to take him to South America next time she had to go for work, he and Seeley were already arguing about how many Nats games they could go to this summer — but not with her. It was a million other tiny, insignificant, crucially important things.

She didn't know what to make of it. Part of her couldn't bear it. But part of her felt that it was OK. After all, if she did die (which wasn't going to happen) it would be easier on him; when she got out of the woods, he could finally exhale and they'd go back to normal. She didn't want to push him.

The time passed rapidly. She lost weight nearly every day. She lost her hair. Sometimes, if she stared in the mirror long enough, she began to trick herself into thinking things, like Bald is Beautiful, and that there was a certain incredible strength and elegance in the chemo look. She read a lot, too, mostly crappy chick lit and books like To Kill a Mockingbird, which she hadn't read in years. Brent got her the magazines she was missing all the time. Seeley tried to bring her Catholic books on faith and dying and disease, but she yelled at him. He then tried slipping her books that had undoubtedly come from the smirky crank shrink, and she passed those on to Heidi.

The treatment was finally, mercifully done, on November 10th. She was given a few days to recover at home, then rounds of tests, then Decision Time. She knew that if it hadn't improved, she'd go in for more surgery right after Thanksgiving. But it was absurd; it simply had to get better. There was no possible way she had offended the cosmos enough for that not to happen. Parker skipped hockey practice to escort her home, and he and Brent had hung a "Welcome Home" banner over the kitchen table. They had Seeley, Temperance, Sophia, Lisa, Sarah, and their families over for a little carrot cake, and then she had to take a short nap.

The short nap, of course, turned into a 10-hour sleep, and when she awoke she found Brent, in flannel pants and a tee, sitting up in bed next to her on a new laptop.

"When'd you get that?" she accused sleepily, running her fingers up his arm. Brent hated computers and thought Parker's laptop was an absolute nuisance; they had a desktop in the nook off the kitchen but that was it.

"I bought it a few weeks ago — I wanted something I could use up here," he said, still clicking away.

"Whatcha use it for?" she asked, trying to sit up a little.

He finally snapped it shut and put it on the floor next to the bed. "There are … support groups, online. For cancer spouses. And researching the treatments and everything."

"Support groups?" she said, her jaw opening slightly. The doctor had mentioned them but she found the idea ridiculous. "What, to like, bitch about this?"

"No, not at all," he said. "Well, to air out the emotions. To talk about the emotions, everything. How to … be supportive. And what to expect."

She carefully thought back over Brent's behavior. He'd been great at first, then a little distant, but mostly he'd just been quietly, unfailingly supportive. "You know, you can talk to me," she said.

"Babe, that's the thing. They're just going through the same thing. And right now, you're the sick one. How you feel takes precedence, and I want to be there for you. These people are there to help me with that, and also for my concerns. What I'm concerned about shouldn't concern you — you don't need the extra stress."

"What are you concerned about? I'm going to beat this, you know." It was fact.

"Babe, come on, you're dreaming about your death. In really freaky dreams. And yeah, I want you to beat it, but at this point … I'm just scared that you might not." He looked at her hesitantly, like he was afraid to express the thought, and it just made her angrier.

"That's ridiculous, Brent, because I am going to."

"That's a great attitude for you to have. I want you to have that attitude. I have that attitude, most days. It hurts not to. And the groups are mostly just how to be supportive. What tricks might help you. Remember the whole flavored ginger ale that helped your nausea when you were on that one med? I got that tip from these groups."

It quelled her anger somewhat, but she finished with, "Please just talk to me, alright? About anything. I don't like feeling like you're keeping things from me right now. And I will beat this. I know I will."

"I know too," he said, leaning forward lightly to kiss her lips.

But she wrote in her journal to Parker for almost five hours the next day.

She was fine for the next week, but one Wednesday when she was supposed to drive Parker to school she woke up with a cough. When Brent woke her up when he came home from work that evening, he noticed she was burning up — something that was absolutely not supposed to happen under her cocktail of immune-system-suppressing drugs. He rushed her into the car so quickly she barely had the presence of mind to grab her phone to call Seeley and have him pick up Parker from hockey.

Three hours later, she was back in her old hospital room (probably in her old gown), when Dr. Nixon came in. "Rebecca, sit up, please, we need to talk," he said gently.

"That doesn't sound good," she said weakly, and Brent crossed to sit by her.

"First, we need to talk about your test results from earlier this week. I'm — I'm very sorry, but they show no significantly decreased level of mets or other markers. Most worrisome, there's no decrease in your lungs or liver."

"Shit," Brent muttered.

"So, surgery?" she asked. "Can we wait until after Thanksgiving, at least?" She had promised Parker the holiday.

"We have to," he said, and he didn't sound happy. "It appears that you've got a nice case of pneumonia, and we can't operate when you've got that. Most likely, you picked it up after being in a sterilized environment for so long and then going back into the real world."

"So you're saying the combination therapy actually made me sicker?" she said. This was ridiculous. "Do you know anything, honestly? Where did you get your MD?"

"Stanford," he said patiently. "Believe me, I know this is frustrating. But we've got to focus on one thing at a time. We'll kick this pneumonia, then we'll have the surgery, OK?"

She pursed her lips and shook her head, and finally said, "Fine. That sounds fine."

"I'm very sorry, Rebecca, but don't give up hope yet," Dr. Nixon said, squeezing her bicep lightly before leaving the room.

She sighed and threw her head back, feeling reckless and despondent at his news. "Can you call Seeley, please?" she asked, playing with the IV cannulas attached to her arm. "We should talk about Parker and … things." The words tasted foreign in her mouth. The thoughts that had swarmed her brain felt foreign in her head.

But Brent was pacing agitatedly. "Actually, can we talk about this first?" he hissed.

"What's there to talk about?" she yelled. "Those are facts!"

"Let's start with how you're feeling, Bex," he yelled, throwing wide his hands. "Because that doctor basically said you're one step closer to dying!"

"Will you stop saying that!" she yelled, then pursed her lips desperately. "I don't want to seem like I'm ignoring the problems here, but let's not go nuts, Brent! Let's not think like that!"

"We've got to, Becca!" he yelled. "Because I can't lose you, and you're rapidly getting less and less of a vote in the matter!"

"Do you think I'm going to die?" she shouted. "Do you just sit there and think, 'she's going to die soon?' Do you like that?"

"God, I don't like it, Becca, but yeah, I think you are. I think you're dying, and I think you don't want to acknowledge it. And I need you too. Can't you get that?" With that, he kicked the wall and stormed out.

She sighed, and picked up her cell phone to text Seeley. Forty-five minutes later, when he arrived, Brent still had not shown up.

"Oh hey," she said, turning and sitting up as he walked in. She ran her thumbs under her eyes.

"What's — is everything ok?" he asked cautiously.

"Yeah. Of course."

"It's just — you've been crying."

"Oh," she said, finally noticing the dampness on her thumbpads.

"What's wrong?" he asked, in that goddamned patented Perfect Seeley voice, and she felt righteous indignation swell inside her.

"Seeley. You have two roles in my life: Father of my child and meddling ex-boyfriend. In neither of those job descriptions does it say therapist. I have plenty of those."

"Ok," he said, sounding genuinely confused. "Then why did I get a text saying I should stop by on my way back from work?"

She took a breath. She needed — needed, for her own sake — to get through this without breaking down. Seeley was already again everywhere in her life, and she needed distance for clarity. "The tests showed — the last round didn't go well, Seeley. At all, really. There's … there's going to be more … surgery… and things. But first, I have pneumonia. And they need … they need that to clear up. So we're waiting."

"What? Bec, okay, you know what you've got to do? You've got to stand up and demand more treatment. You can't let this kick your ass, dammit. You can't."

"I won't," she snapped. "That isn't what I wanted to talk to you about. Again, you don't have a say in that," she paused to have a coughing fit, and Seeley spun so he was in front of her.

"Quit being so territorial, Bex, and let me help. Where's Brent?" he pleaded. She sighed. He just really, really didn't get it some days.

"He's out," she said, holding up a hand. "There aren't that many courses we can take until the pneumonia clears up, when we have a meeting then I'll let you know. I swear. What I needed to talk to you about … What I needed to talk to you about is Parker." She prayed that she could have a rational, honest conversation with him. Brent was all sputtering and emotional right now, and she just really, really needed Seeley to focus on the task and let her get through that, so that her mind would be at ease.

"What about Parker?" he cocked his head and squinted his eyes.

"Just as a precaution," she started, "I'm going to have the lawyer who wrote up the wills make sure that everything's airtight — assets, inheritance, his college funds." It wasn't much and it wasn't like what Temperance had bequeathed him in a fit of benevolence right before she and Seeley married, but it was something and it was hers. "I'm going to make sure that if anything happens to him, everything's taken care of." It was time. It was really, really time.

"Bec —"

"It's not time for the big type of conversation, Seeley," she said firmly. "I — just not yet. Please?"

He saw something in her eyes, and he finally relented. "Alright," he said. "Let me know if you need any paperwork or a signature or something."

He left, and Brent finally, finally came back, forty-five minutes later, after she had had more than enough time to think. He looked abashed, and sat down on the bed next to her. But before he could say anything, she shook her head quickly, then opened her mouth. "I'm scared," she said, finally, shakily. She collapsed back onto the bed, trying very hard, and mostly failing, at keeping her composure. "I'm really scared, too."