Author's Note: Sorry it took so long to update this. I was a bit stuck on how to proceed, and then recent events in my life along with that depressing season finale gave me a case of "writer's funk" that intially sapped away my energy to write.
And on that note, I'd like to personally thank Stephaniew, Buttercups3 and Fear Herself for letting me commiserate with them and for all their encouragement. :D They helped me to get back on track with my writing. So again, thanks guys. ;)
Oh and there are slight spoilers in this chapter for the Bones on the Blue Line episode, so be forewarned.
I do not own Bones or any of its characters. No matter how much I may want to ....;)
Thank you again to everyone who is reading/following/reviewing this. :D
Stephaniew: I'm glad you like the set-up. I was hoping it would come off somewhat like the show. Oh and thanks again. ;)
Peanutmeg: Darn, I hope I'm not becoming too predictable and cliched here with my plot. :( Hopefully you will enjoy the rest of it. ;)
Rowdyromantic: Thank you. I love writing bits with Sweets and Booth and I think it shows in my work. ;)
Super ario: Well sorry the current update wasn't as prompt as the last couple. I'll try to get things up a little quicker for the rest of this. Thank you for all your kind reviews thus far (I read the ones you left on a couple of my one-shots). Sweets is my favorite character too, and you're right in saying that there is not enough stories with him as the main character. I hope you enjoy the rest of this and my future stories. :D
Iconcurvehemently: Some of my other readers have noted that I seem to like to torture them with cliffhangers. ;) It didn't come as soon as I would have liked, but here is the next cliffhanger *cough* I mean, update. ;)
Buttercups3: Yeah, Hacker is one of the few characters I really don't care for on Bones. I guess I just don't see why Brennan is attracted to him. He doesn't seem like her type at all....And just so you'll know now, Connor is a villian through and through...Again thank you for your encouragement recently and good luck with your projects. ;D
Elipeel: Thank you as always for your reviews. ;) I can easily picture Sweets having Booth on his speed dial. :D....Hmm...Hopefully my predictability will not ruin things for you....And good luck on your story. ;)
Lives in the now: And thank you as well. :D I love Bones and I love writing for it, so this is fun for me. I'm glad it's fun for you too. :)
Perfect pirate captain: Well here's the update at last. ;) Hope it was worth the wait.
Palmer4president: Thank you, as well. :D I think that there just aren't enough Sweets/Booth friendship fics which is a pity since theirs is a warm and fun relationship IMO. Hope you enjoy the rest of it.
Aysel Maha: Sorry to keep you in suspense for so long. Here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy it. :D And I'll try to have the next one up here soon.
The Narrow of the Margin—part 3
Locked in Fisk's office, Booth could not stop pacing as he watched Sweets walk over to Connor. The psychologist was definitely nervous and, more than likely, scared.
"What is Sweets doing here?" he growled.
"Well even though psychology is a soft science, I assume that Andrew thought that it would be a good idea to send Doctor Sweets in to deal with Connor since he is clearly insane," Brennan answered. Booth had stopped pacing and was watching both Connor and Sweets intensely.
"He has no business coming in here and confronting an armed and extremely dangerous suspect," he said darkly. "He's just a shrink…he could get hurt or worse…"
"At least someone is finally doing something," Fisk whined again, causing Booth and Brennan to look over at him. Booth had to suppress the urge to scare him into being quiet again. Instead he turned back toward the show room and watched Sweets.
"Why the hell isn't he wearing a vest?" he muttered. Booth knew then that there was going to be a long and heated discussion with Hacker in his future.
Inside the show room, Sweets continued his slow, careful pace toward Connor. Connor regarded him at first with surprise and then with confusion.
"Who are you?" he said with a shrill to his voice while waving his gun at him. Sweets gulped and took a deep breath.
"I…I'm Doctor Lance Sweets," he said, struggling to keep his voice even. "You said that you wanted to talk to someone, so I'm here." Connor looked him over a couple times, the gun still pointed in his direction.
"Doctor?....Wait, you're a shrink, aren't you?"
'Well at least he's not making a crack about my age,' Sweets thought to himself in a dark humor.
"I'm a therapist…I listen to people," he said softly, his hands still raised upward. "And I think you have a lot that you need to say, so why not talk to me?"
"You…you want to listen to me…and hear everything? Hear the truth?"
"Yes, I do," Sweets nodded. "Please tell me everything." Connor lowered the gun and Sweets sighed in relief as he lowered his hands.
"I don't know where to start," Connor said. "It's all so much, you know."
"Just start from anywhere," Sweets said gently.
"It's…it's them…They are in every part of your life, you know. They think of themselves as the government, but I see them for what they truly are…Shadow forces…do you know what they do to those who know?" Sweets shook his head.
"They take over your thoughts…you can't escape them," Connor answered. "Even when you tell yourself that you're not going to think about them, all you can think about is how you're trying to not think about them."
"Yes, I understand," Sweets said calmly.
He continued to give Connor his undivided attention while he went further into how the "shadow forces" were trying to control his mind and his memories.
"So, the reason you are bombing these buildings is because once they are gone, you no longer have to think about them, and the shadow forces can no longer control your memories of them," Sweets deduced.
"Yes, exactly," Connor said, his eyes lighting up. He walked closer to Sweets, a smile forming on his face.
"You're not like the others. You really understand." Sweets tried giving him a slight smile back.
But after smiling at him silently for another minute, Connor took his gun and placed it firmly against Sweets' forehead. Sweets flinched; the muzzle was still slightly warm, and the metal was pressed hard against his skin.
"Now tell me what you really want, Doctor Sweets," Connor said, still smiling. "Tell me or else."
Sweets trembled. He tried to stay composed and keep the fear out of his eyes. But he was worried that he was failing miserably.
One person that noticed his fear was Booth. Sweets and Connor were only a few feet away from him so he could easily see the look on Sweets' face. He stood as close as he could to the glass. His expression was unreadable, but his posture was clearly tense.
"What's he doing? Why won't he answer?" Fisk said with a touch of hysteria in his voice. "Is he trying to get us all killed?"
Brennan noted the intense look in Booth's eyes and the angry stance that he was in. She had come to recognize that look as the one he had whenever someone he cared about was threatened. She had seen it many times when they worked cases together.
"Mr. Fisk, I think it would be better if you ceased conversing," she said. Fisk gave her a pained expression, but slumped back in his chair and looked down at the carpet quietly.
Booth ignored this conversation and focused his attention on the scene outside the office.
'You can do this, Sweets…Just stay calm,' he thought.
Sweets tried to swallow around the lump in his throat before answering.
"I know you want all of this to stop," he said. "That's why you're here today…so that you can make it stop: the mind control, the watching of your every move and the persecution from the shadow forces…You want to make it stop. I want to help you with that."
"How can you help me?" Connor said, moving the gun away from Sweets' forehead. Sweets took a shaky breath once it was gone.
"We can go outside," Sweets suggested. "There are people out there who can take us to a secure location. Once we are there, the two of us can sit down and talk about how we can stop the takeover of your thoughts and memories…After all, that's what you want, isn't it? To be free of their control?"
Connor shook his head back and forth vigorously.
"Nuh-uh. I'm not going out there. I'm staying right here. If I go out there, they'll get me for sure."
Connor then reached down onto his belt and pulled off a small device that was sticking by a strip of Velcro. He kept tracing his fingers over the buttons on it.
"I'd rather die than let them get me," Connor screamed.
Several of the customers and employees crouched even closer to the ground and began to weep at the sight of what Sweets assumed was the trigger device for the bomb. Sweets put his hands out in front of him in what he hoped would be perceived as a nonthreatening gesture.
"No…you don't have to do that," he said. "You don't have to die. No one has to die here…We can just stay here for now, if you want."
Connor looked like he was going to hyperventilate, but he stop playing with the device in his hand and reattached it to his belt.
"There, now we can talk for a while longer," Sweets assured him.
A sudden sound from the back of the show room caused both Sweets and Connor to turn toward it. One of the women who had been admiring the tennis bracelets earlier was rising to her feet, her eyes large and watery.
"No…no more talking," she cried. "We've had to listen to it for almost two hours now…Two hours of your stupid conspiracy theories…I can't take it anymore…I can't take any more of that nonsense." Sweets swiftly strode over to stand beside her and patted her shoulder.
"It's ok," he said. "Calm down." Connor's face turned red and he was livid.
"Shut up," he yelled. He then aimed and shot the woman square in the chest, barely missing Sweets in the process. She fell to the ground and a large stain of blood quickly bloomed onto her shirt. From the way that her eyes stared up at him, unmoving, Sweets knew she was dead.
'No…he didn't need to do that…she was just scared,' he thought.
"You see…you see that Doctor Sweets?" Connor screeched. "You see why I had to do that, don't you? She was one of them…She was….You see that, right?"
Sweets looked back at Connor and nodded in agreement, hoping to soothe him. But he also kept stealing glances at the woman on the floor. Her unseeing eyes seemed to be looking straight at him, almost like an accusation.
'It's my fault…I shouldn't have suggested going outside yet, it was too soon…I agitated him too much...and now someone else is dead.'
"It's not your fault, Sweets," Booth muttered. He had watched Connor murder that woman, and while he was angry that it happened, initially, he been grateful that Connor had missed hitting Sweets. But then as Booth watched the psychologist's eyes grow shiny, he could guess what Sweets was thinking.
Brennan thought about mentioning to Booth that there was no way that Sweets could hear them, but changed her mind.
"Of course it's not his fault," Brennan mused instead. "He didn't fire the gun or encourage Connor to shoot her. Doctor Sweets is intelligent enough to understand that he is not to blame."
Booth just shook his head and continued to watch Sweets.
'Being smart enough to know better doesn't always mean that you listen to reason,' he thought.
He remembered how affected Sweets was when he was in that subway accident and a man he was talking to hit his head and died right in front of him. Sweets had been badly shaken and had taken the death rather hard even though the man was a total stranger to him.
'That thing in the subway…that was a total accident. A freak occurrence that had nothing to do with him. But this….'
Booth ground his teeth. This was one of the reasons why he didn't want Sweets involved in the first place; he didn't want to expose him to this sort of thing.
'Just relax and hang in there, Sweets…'
"It's all right now," Sweets said with a slight quaver to his voice. He walked back toward Connor, his arms out and his hands making a patting motion downward. He didn't want anyone else to get any ideas and hoped that if he remained composed, the other people would follow his lead and remain quiet. "No one else is going to try anything." Looking around the room, Sweets prayed that he was right about that.
"You see, don't you?" Connor said, almost tearful. "They put those thoughts in her head, and she became another puppet for them, spewing out their ideas…But she's lucky now…she won't be used by them anymore." Connor put his hand to his head and rubbed his temple.
"I didn't want to kill her," he said. "But I had to…but at least now she will be free of their mind control."
"You don't want to kill people, do you?" Sweets asked. "That's why you're sorry that you killed her…isn't that right?"
"Yeah," Connor nodded weakly. "That's right…not unless I have to."
"Of course…of course only if you have to," Sweets agreed. "So let's make it so that you don't have to. Let's let these people go…just have them walk out the front door. Then the two of us can talk alone and they won't have a chance to fill your mind with any more of their ideas."
Connor suddenly narrowed his eyes at Sweets.
"What are you saying? Are you saying that I can't shut out their mind control? That I'm too weak? Too weak to resist them?" Sweets immediately shook his head.
"No…not at all…I'm not…"
But he was cut off when Connor struck him in the head with his gun. The blow caused Sweets to fall to the ground and see stars. Despite the pain and the disorientation, Sweets struggled back up to his knees. He touched the side of his head and could feel blood starting to dribble down from a gash that had been opened up on his temple near his eye.
Meanwhile, Booth had gone back to trying to break the door down. He first tried kicking it, and then he took his shoulder to it, but to no avail. The door did not budge an inch.
"It's no use Agent Booth," Fisk said in a small voice. "That door is solid."
Booth stopped trying, but he still pounded his fist against the door in frustration.
"Just be glad that madman can't get in here," Fisk added.
While watching Booth walk back to the window, his hands still balled up into fists, Brennan doubted that that fact was any comfort to him.
Sweets was still on his knees, trying to think straight again when he felt a hand grab his hair and yank him upright. He rose to his feet unsteadily and gasped when Connor wrapped his arm around his neck, holding him close from behind. Sweets grabbed at Connor's forearm, trying to loosen it from against his throat, but Connor had a vice-like grip fueled by mania and madness.
"I should kill you right now for trying to mess with my head," Connor hissed in his ear as he placed the gun to Sweets' temple. The psychologist closed his eyes.
'He's going to kill me…I'm going to die now…'
Then another urgent thought filled his mind.
'No…I can't die yet…I still have to save Booth and Brennan…and everyone else…I have to think of something….'