"Even the very wise cannot see all ends." – Gandalf ala J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring

Meekness

For the first time in a long time, Dr. Temperance Brennan felt adrift.

"Do you think I'm a loser?" his words had reverberated in her mind as they had driven in stony silence back to the Jeffersonian.

Bickering she understood, as they had been doing that almost since the day their paths had crossed. One of them would give an opinion, the other would counter it, and on it went until they either came to some middle ground or merely agreed to disagree. Words were volleyed back and forth and while they might tease or goad each other from time to time, there was never the biting edge that had existed today.

Jared's words- much smoother than his elder brother's- had made so much sense to her at the time. After all, who would know her partner better than his own brother? So she had naively granted him the trust that she normally reserved only for Booth and had allowed herself to believe that perhaps her partner did not strive to be at the top of his hierarchy; in Booth's vernacular, that he was a loser.

The mixture of disbelief, hurt, even betrayal that had played across her partner's face when she had challenged him haunted her now as she dressed for his birthday celebration. She wasn't sure what reaction she had expected from him, but she had never intended to hurt him, and she certainly had not wanted her words to sever their friendship.

Her arm throbbed as she maneuvered it through her sleeve and back into its sling. The pain of the bullet had been nothing to the cool, professional manner that Booth had addressed her with once he was certain that she was okay. Something inside of her had ached when she watched Paul Stegman embrace his wife, knowing that, had she not trusted Jared over him, perhaps Booth would have embraced her too instead of turning away from her to check Sheriff Wilkinson's pulse. He had taken her to the hospital afterwards and driven her home, but it all lacked the empathy that she had become so accustomed to, and she had not realized how much she had come to appreciate it until it was no longer extended to her.

She sighed, remembering a time when life had not been so complicated; when she had not cared what others' opinions about her were, or if she had offended them. The purely academic life had consisted of cutthroat values that left little consideration for the feelings of others and while it had been an environment in which she had thrived quite nicely, she had to admit that it had been a lonely one as well.

Now, she thought as she seated herself on the couch to wait for Angela to pick her up and take her to Booth's party, it was incumbent on her to ameliorate the situation. Confronting Jared had been the first step and she harbored no lingering regrets over physically assaulting the younger Booth in the process. The next step would be to apologize to Booth for doubting him, as well as to assure him that she would not leap to such conclusions again in the future. Sweets had also suggested that she was the only one would could successfully convince Booth that what he was doing for Jared was not doing either one of the brothers any good; but for such a conversation to take place, the partners would need to be back on good speaking terms.

As she sat, words of apology began to form in her mind. She thought about the situation, and everything that had occurred to bring her to the conclusions that she had. It was not often that she was wrong in a situation, but she had been here and she would need to admit that, no matter what it cost her. She thought about what she knew of both anthropology and of Booth and a framework for her apology began to emerge.

Would Booth understand? Would he accept her apology? Would he forgive her and reestablish their friendship?

She hoped so because as much as a part of her still thrived on academic pursuits, another part of her had become accustomed to Booth's presence in her life- to his friendship, no matter how little she truly understood about him- and if repairing the rift between them meant that she had to admit in front of all of their friends that she had been wrong, so be it.