It's funny how you never think about the women you've had.
It's always the ones who get away that you can't forget. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Chapter 23: Sympathy for the Devil

"Booth, I'm fine." Brennan brushed off his worried hand from her shoulder as she adjusted herself in her hospital bed.

"You're not fine, you have a dislocated wrist and you were just pulled from a burning building that you were being held in against your will, Bones." He took a seat at her bedside.

"I was only held for nine hours. You should go check on Clayton – he was held for nine days."

"I will, they're running a million tests on him now. Giving him the full Presidential treatment." He ran his hand tenderly down her arm, stopping at the fresh cast on her wrist, "Are you sure you're ok?"

Brennan nodded, "I really am. This was nowhere near as bad as previous incidents."

"I hate that we live a life where you can actually rank your abductions."

She smiled and reached out to stroke his cheek with her good hand, "I love our life even with all the bad occurrences."

He leaned into her touch and then turned his face to kiss her palm, "Me too."

"Bren!" Angela exclaimed as she made her way into the room. Booth moved over to let the artist envelope Brennan in tight hug, "Are you ok?"

Brennan offered an assuring smile, "I'm fine, really."

As Hodgins and Sweets made their way over to his wife, Booth quietly left the room and went to check on Clay. The hospital staff had gotten him cleaned up and he was resting, not-so-comfortably while waiting to be taken for the next in his full course of tests.

"How you doing, Mr. Speaker?"

Clay tenderly pulled himself up to a sitting position, wincing the entire time, "Booth, call me Clay. You just saved my life, no need to be so formal."

Booth nodded, "Ok, Clay." The two men shared a moment of silence that was laden with things they would never actually say to the other.

Clay leaned back in the bed, unable to muster the strength to stay upright any longer, "I have to thank you – for everything."

"I was just doing my job." Booth shrugged before shoving his hands in his pocket.

"Like hell you were. Bren filled me in on everything and…I will never be able to repay you for keeping Charlotte safe, taking care of her and all of that…"

"Well, you know Charlie, she pretty much takes care of herself."

Clay titled his head and nodded slightly, "Yeah but… I can't even imagine how she, I mean…Four years of her life just…" He closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

"Yeah, I know. She'll be ok, though. She's got you and I don't see you going anywhere.'

Clayton agreed, "Of course not…I was read…things," he looked pointedly at Booth, "that may or may not be true but I know my wife and I love my wife.'

"And that's all that matters."

"Exactly."

After a moment of silence, Clay pulled himself up again and asked, "Where is she? Everyone else is here, right?"

"Yeah, the rest of the team just got here…." Booth looked at his watch and suddenly realized that it had been nearly 45 minutes since he had phoned Gus, "They should be here, let me give Gus a call."

When Gus' phone went right to voicemail, Booth tried Charlotte's and got the same result, he looked over at Clay with apprehension in his eyes, "There's no answer, I have no…Let me go check with some of the other agents."

"Tucker is still out there."

Booth shook his head, "Not for long."

B&B

Booth quickly went back to Brennan's room next door and pulled Hodgins aside, "Weren't Gus and Charlie right behind you guys?"

Hodgins nodded quickly, "Yeah, I mean… I think Gus wanted to give her a few minutes to get herself together but they shouldn't have been more than 15 minutes behind us at the most. They're not here?"

Booth glanced over at Brennan and then closed his eyes and tried to refocus, "I…I have to go." He turned quickly on his heel but Hodgins reached out and grabbed his shoulder.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to retrace the path from the house to here and hope I get lucky." He wasn't about to have saved Clay only to lose Charlotte.

"Do you want me to go with you?"

"No, I'm quicker on my own. Stay with Bones."

B&B

Gus maneuvered the car into the street, heading for the hospital. Two blocks from the house, Charlie turned to Gus to ask him a question when she was interrupted by a soft voice in the backseat.

"Well hello, Ms. Charlotte."

"Tucker!" Charlie gasped as she lurched as far away from him as possible, pinning herself against the dash of the car.

"On your way to that man you shackled yourself to?" Tucker asked as he pulled a gun up to her eye level. "Uh, Agent Blanc, I'm going to have to ask you to hand your gun over to me and just keep driving. There are things that me and Ms. Charlotte need to discuss before this is all over."

Gus contemplated a million ways that this scenario could play out but ultimately he knew that relinquishing his weapon was the safest course of action. Reluctantly, he snapped his sidearm out of its holster and dropped it over the back seat, keeping one eye on the road and the other on Tucker through the rearview mirror.

"Ah, ah , ah, the one on your ankle too. I know you guys – need your guns to feel like a man."

As Gus reached down with one hand toward his ankle, he muttered, "And what makes you feel like a man?"

"Keeping an eye on this one here has helped make me feel like quite the man over these last few years." He explained as he accepted Gus' smaller gun and placed on the backseat next to the other.

Charlotte swallowed hard but couldn't tear her gaze away from the Glock that was less than two feet away from her face, "Tucker, what do you want?"

He delicately scratched his forehead with the barrel of the gun before turning it back toward her, smirking, "I bet you think I want you, don't you?"

"I-I don't know. I just know you've been following me for a really long time."

"Not following!" Tucker yelled and then reclaimed his calm reserve, "I have been watching you, protecting you."

Charlotte glanced at Gus who just nodded faintly, encouraging her to continue her line of questioning. She softened her voice and asked, "What were you protecting me from? I don't need protection from Clayton-"

"Do not use his name!"

She nodded, "OK, ok…But I do not need protection from my husband or Lou or anyone that I have chosen to make a part of my life. Tucker, you must understand that."

"Those men you mentioned and the one you didn't all prevented you from being the woman you were meant to be."

"I-I don't understand. I've been trying to understand because I truly want to but I don't."

Tucker leaned back in his seat and exhaled deeply, "That first day you arrived, when you joined the unit, June, 3, 2010, was the most eye-opening, world-shaking day of my life. I never knew a woman could look like you, do what you do for a living along with embodying the values that you did and still be a lady. I'd never met anyone like you."

"What about your wife, Eloise?"

He scoffed and leaned forward, "Between you and me, and I know I can be honest with you, I thought I loved her, until I met you and I realized that there was no way on God's green earth that I could love a woman like that when there was someone like you in this world. I don't think I ever really loved her, it was practically an arranged marriage – a business deal between our two families."

"But why did you…All of this? Why Lou?" Charlotte pleaded more than asked.

"Mr. Robertson was a mistake. I just wanted to talk to him and it got out of hand and I do have to apologize for the outcome but if I was given the chance, I would do it all over again." He wiped his mouth and continued his explanation, "I thought that he, more than anyone else, would be able to convince you to get back on your path. The path that you were destined to travel on and complete."

Knowing that Sweets' theory about Tucker was correct, somehow comforted and emboldened Charlotte at the same time, she leaned forward, toward Tucker, "This is all because I stopped working? So what? If I had continued with my career you would have just stayed in the shadows of my life?"

"Perhaps, but I always knew that eventually you would screw up so magnificently that it would come to this."

"And what is this, Bradley?"

The sound of his first name startled him and he squeezed his eyes shut tightly before opening them and leaning closer to her, "This is me correcting all of your wrongs. Sarge, the Speaker, even this one here," he tapped his gun on the back of Gus' head, "even he wasn't good for you. You didn't need any of them – you had me!"

"If you care so much, why do you want to take the people most important to me away from me. Don't you want me to be happy?"

Tucker laughed, a hollow, empty laugh, "That's your problem – always has been. You think being happy is so damn important! Did being bent over a fire escape in the middle of the night by a man you didn't love make you happy? Does being controlled by a man who has forced you into a spotlight that has done nothing but burn you make you happy? Does having this lug next to you every step you take make you happy?"

Charlotte nodded, full of righteous of anger, "Yes."

"But you being happy isn't the point of it all!" He growled. "You were supposed to stay the way you were! For one moment in time you were perfect and then you ruined it all!"

"I was only living my life, Tucker! How was I supposed to know any of this? You barely even spoke to me over there. I never knew!"

"I never had the chance to explain all of this to you during that time – you were busy."

"Why didn't you contact me when you got home? You came to that first speech I gave here, you could have approached me then – I would have been happy to see you there."

Tucker rolled his tongue across his teeth, he knew that she thought she was making an excellent argument for herself and it killed him that she was so wrong about it all, "I knew that you being in DC would lead to one thing and one thing only."

"Seeley?" Charlotte whispered.

"Oh yes, you couldn't have stayed away from him if you tried and I knew that it was best to bide my time. When things ended with him, I was joyous – you started to take your fate seriously again only to get completely off track when you met the Congressman. What was so damn special about him? 'Cause I never got that."

Charlotte looked down at pristine, emerald-cut diamond on her left hand and bit her lip, a tear threatening to slip down her cheek, "He loves me without pretense. For who I am – not who I could be. He gave me a home after I had spent so much time wandering. He's my family."

The talk about the man she had surrendered herself to became too much for Tucker and he shuddered at the idea of her 'family', "I'm sorry it had to come to this but after learning about the bastard in your womb, I see no other choice." Tucker explained with true regret in his eyes as he cocked his gun and then closed his eyes in what almost seemed to be a silent prayer, "You could have been spectacular. I am so very sorry."

Charlotte slowly and inconspicuously reached down to the bag at her feet, his words about her long-wanted, unborn child seemed to collide with the past week's events; Lou's death, Clay's kidnapping, the letters, the journals, all of it was just too much for her to bear any longer. Gus glanced over and knew what she was going for and he braced himself for it – there was no way he was going to stop her.

Gripping the cold steel that had laid untouched in her purse for nearly two years, she pulled it out and pointed the gun at Tucker, "I have to say, I'm not sorry for this at all."

For the rest of her life Charlotte would never be able to understand how a bullet moving so fast could make time crawl to stop.