Redux
Chapter 6 – Reunion
Bones and Dr. Sweets arrived at the Jeffersonian to find Cam gone, even though it was eleven in the morning, and both Angela and Hodgins still slept. They were curled up together on the floor of her office, Angela's bright display still showing groupings of names and dates, lighting up their slack faces. Beside Bones, Sweets murmured, "Aw!" at the sight of the two newlyweds, and Bones wondered if he was anticipating a time when he and Daisy would sleep somewhere exceedingly uncomfortable. Bones didn't see the appeal.
Though she thought it might be best to let them sleep, seeing as they had obviously been working non-stop for some time, Bones couldn't help but let her curiosity win out. She cleared her throat loudly, apologizing when Angela sat up with a start, banging her arm against the leg of her desk. "Sorry, Angela. I didn't mean to frighten you."
Angela gave her friend a look and Bones wasn't quite sure what it meant. It could have been anger or annoyance, but it also could have been disbelief. Then, the expression dissolved away into one Bones recognized – a bright grin. "Sweetie!" Angela called, smacking Hodgins' arm to wake him. "You're back!"
The artist stood, gleefully hugging Bones and then Sweets, and the anthropologist smiled at the way Sweets blushed. Blushing was usually an indicator of an emotional stressor such as embarrassment or sexual attraction. Bones decided that since Sweets had just moved halfway around the world for a woman who was not Angela, his blush was most likely due to embarrassment at the expressiveness of Angela's greetings.
Bones could sympathize. It took her a long time to get used to the fact that Angela was a "touchy-feely" kind of person. Ordinarily, Bones did not appreciate being touched by people, even friends, but something about Angela made those anxieties disappear. After she had gotten used to the artist, of course. And that was another thing that had been missing from Indonesia. There was no one to give her a hug just because they hadn't seen her since the day before. Angela's hugs weren't exactly the 'man-hugs' her partner would give her when things went particularly wrong, but they were nice nonetheless. Maybe she could get along without Booth until he came home, now that Angela was here.
"Hello, Angela," Bones chuckled. "Hello, Dr. Hodgins."
"Didn't expect to see us so soon, did ya, Brennan?" the entomologist said, standing up with a yawn. "And Sweets," he said, shaking the psychologist's hand, "just couldn't stay away, could you?"
"I'm just letting you all know right now," Sweets said with a determined look on his face, "that I'm not back for good. After this case, I'm going back to Indonesia, and you'll have to find yourself someone else to do all the psychology for you guys."
"Noted, Dr. Sweets," a voice said from the doorway, and turning around, Bones saw a very haggard-looking Dr. Saroyan standing there.
"Cam," she nodded, a smile springing to her face, though she couldn't tell you why. "It's nice to see you."
"You, too," the coroner said, returning the smile. Then, she caught Angela's attention and asked, "What was this big break-through you left me a message about? At five o' clock in the morning? Before I'd even gotten home…?"
"Well," Angela said, brushing her hair back and tying it at the nape of her neck, "I'm glad you're all here, because I was not looking forward to explaining this multiple times."
"Any word yet on Zack?" Bones couldn't help but ask. She was more than worried about her former assistant, wondering where on earth he could have gone.
"Nothing," Dr. Hodgins replied, shaking his head. "I've asked around some, and I have some more phone numbers to call, but no one really knows anything. He doesn't have any credit cards or a cell phone and there hasn't been any money taken out of his bank accounts, so my guy over in France says there's no way they can find him. Not if he doesn't want to be found."
"I see," Bones nodded, sinking down into Angela's desk chair. It had been a long few days, and even though she was home, Booth wasn't, and no one knew where Zack had gone.
Embroiled in these thoughts, Bones didn't notice anyone was approaching until he said, "Good morning!" It was Deputy Director Hacker of the FBI. What was he doing here? Did he hear that Temperance was back in town and still want to attempt to have sex with her? Had someone on the team requested his help? Who could it have been? "How are all my favorite Jeffersonians doing today?"
Wincing at his loud tone, Bones said, "Not all your favorites, right? Booth isn't here."
Hacker caught everyone's eyes but hers as he chuckled nervously. "Of course, Dr. Brennan. But don't worry, Booth is one of my favorite former FBI agents!"
After a short silence, in which everyone around Bones looked uncomfortable, Cam said brightly, "May I ask you why you're here, Mr. Deputy Director?"
"Oh, please," he smiled at the woman, "call me Hacker, I insist." After her nod, Andrew continued, "I am here at the request of the aforementioned Agent Booth, to help get this new investigation off the ground."
"No offense, sir," Dr. Sweets spoke up, "but isn't this a task you would normally assign to a subordinate?"
"Booth called you?" Bones asked, unsure why she felt so put-out. She knew she didn't want Andrew there in the middle of the investigation. She wanted Booth back, her partner as always. Only now, it would be better between them – more complicated, to be sure, but better. And somehow, she didn't think that Booth would have called Hacker. To test that hypothesis, she removed her cell phone from her pocket and dialed.
"Who are you calling, Dr. Brennan?" Cam asked. "I thought we'd get started on this whole serial-killer thing?" Unwilling to let her conversation be disturbed, because the static would probably be horrendous anyway, Bones stepped out into the hallway, waiting breathlessly.
Sergeant Major Seeley Booth had been in his quarters for about an hour after dinner and evening briefings the next time his phone rang. It was insane how he'd been living from phone call to phone call. And this was only the third one. He'd come to Afghanistan to make a difference, to pass on what he knew and get back home unscathed. But now, preoccupied with Bones and her damn epiphany, his mind hadn't been on the job. He'd been coasting through his days half-assed, talking himself out of calling her every chance he got. What usually did it for him were all the lives that could be lost here in the base if he made too many calls too frequently.
He didn't feel like himself. He didn't feel like much of anything, except when the phone rang – and it wasn't his fault if she initiated the call, now was it? Only then would his heart race like it never did, even during particularly intense training scenarios. His hands would sweat and he felt about fourteen, reaching for the phone and daring himself to let it ring just once more before he picked up, so she wouldn't know how desperate he as to talk to her.
Who was he kidding? This was Bones. She wouldn't read anything into it if he picked up before the first ring had even finished.
"Booth," he answered, just in case it was the FBI calling him back about certain requests he'd made in the last week.
"It's me," Bones said, her low but feminine voice tickling his ear and making the spit gland in his jaw tingle almost painfully, anxious to kiss her. "Why did you send Hacker here?"
"Deputy Director Hacker?" he asked, all thoughts of wayward spit glands lost under this new concern. "I told him to send somebody, not himself!"
On the other end of the line, Bones sighed, "Oh, good. For a moment, I thought … well, I don't know what I thought, but it made me angry."
"Really?" Booth asked, smiling. She was angry because if he actually had sent Bones' former romantic interest to her in his stead, that would be like begging her to move on. And apparently, she didn't want to move on anymore than he did. That's what she had said during their last conversation, and here he was, finally believing it with his whole heart.
"Oh, this was a stupid reason to call you, wasn't it?" she asked with a huff and Booth could almost see that frustrated wrinkle of her brow.
"I'm glad you called," he replied, hoping the tone in his voice would help calm her down. "I'm glad you checked with me instead of assuming something," he chuckled, knowing that as much as Bones hated assuming facts not in evidence, she did it way too often when trying to predict what other people were thinking.
"Okay, then we're in agreement?"
Shaking his head at the leap in the conversation, "Agreement about what?"
"While you're gone, neither of us will see other people."
"No!" Booth cried in reassurance, almost laughing at the thought. Those few dates with Catherine, the 'social contract' as Bones put it, were fine. But she wasn't Bones, and there could never be anyone else, now that thought he knew how she felt about him. "Of course we won't! Bones, you're the only person for me. I told you that already. You're the one. I'm sure of it."
Sighing again, Bones told him after a long pause, "I hate this."
"I know. I do too," he replied. Booth wanted to tell her everything he felt for her. He wanted to say he loved her over and over again until it sunk into that busy brain of hers. The problem was, he wanted to say these things to her face, not over the phone. "But as long as I know you'll be waiting for me, there at the reflecting pool, living until that day is so much easier, Bones."
"I'll be there," she promised, and Booth had to cover the mouth of his phone and clear his throat so his voice would work again.
"So, how about that case, huh?" he asked, needing to change the subject, needing to think about something else for just two minutes.
Bones gasped a little, "Oh! Angela was about to tell us about it. Would you like to listen in for a few minutes?"
"Yeah," Booth smiled. "Yeah, I can do that. Give Hacker a run for his money, hey?"
"I don't know what that means."
Booth laughed to himself at the phrase he would never get tired of hearing, because every time she said that, it meant he had something to teach her for a change. This time however, he didn't bother, instead Booth replied, "Just put me on speaker, Bones."
In his mind's eye, he imagined all his squints in the same room, arguing together about the case as their voices reached him so far away.
"I already tried that, Sweets," Angela said. "I figured, if the guy keeps killing these people over and over again, they've got to be special to him. They've got to be his family. But none of the sets of four victims we have are related to one another. Most of the time they're very spread out, in time, in space. I can't find the original victims!"
"Who's your first victim?" Sweets asked her, not backing down from the argument. He knew he was right. As a professional criminal profiler, Sweets had studied dozens of serial killers, and there were only a few main types. And for a guy that had been killing, by Angela's estimate, for almost fifteen years did not all of a sudden pull this pattern out of mid air. It had to mean something.
"Sheila Harris," Angela replied, highlighting the name on her board, "fifteen."
"So some time before the death of Sheila Harris, there should be the murder of an entire family."
"You know Sweets," Angela frowned on him. "Some of these records going back that far aren't great. I can't even be sure–" The computer beeped and Angela said, "Yep. Nothing. No entire families, with these four types of people, murdered until almost fifty years beforehand."
Shaking his head, Sweets decided, "That's too much time. Ten or twenty years, maybe. But let's look at what's missing here. There's no father figure. We've got mother, two children, and probably grandpa," Sweets pointed to Angela's virtual piles of names as he spoke, "but there's no father. I'm betting he's the one who keeps recreating the crime."
"Angela," a garbled voice called out over a speaker, which upon turning around Sweets realized was in Brennan's hand. "Did you try looking for families where one of the members was injured, but survived?"
"Booth?" the artist asked, smiling up at Brennan. "Is that you?"
"Yeah," the FBI agent replied. "Hi everyone, it's me."
"Booth!" Hacker cried. "I thought you said you'd have limited communication."
Sweets noticed the way the Deputy Director eyed Brennan, especially her tight grasp on the phone and the smile playing at the edges of her lips, and the psychologist didn't like it. One of the people in this room was not like the others, and Sweets felt almost insulted or threatened, like their proceedings had been invaded and trampled upon and Booth wasn't there to defend them.
Geez, Sweets needed to get out of this environment. As much as he loved working with these people, he realized that he was becoming too dependent on them as friends and family, instead of just coworkers. He had to go back to Indonesia as soon as this case was over; he had to go back to Daisy. Sweets had to create his own family, because Booth's absence was a big reminder that this couldn't last forever. And without these people, where would he be?
Responding to Hacker's question, Booth said, "'Limited' and 'none' aren't the same thing."
"They certainly aren't," the FBI director replied with a hint of humor in his voice to hide the desperate annoyance.
"What did you say, Booth?" Angela asked, typing furiously again.
"I said," Booth replied, his voice getting louder, so he was practically shouting across the miles, "look for families where one of the four was injured, but not killed."
Hmm, Lance thought. That was actually a really good idea, and he wished he'd thought of it. Too many times, he had all the theories, all the postulates, all the hypotheses in his brain, but not enough real-world application of these theories. He needed some more experience outside his field, he decided, so it would be easier to see what Booth saw. He was hoping a year in the Maluku Islands would give him that.
"Okay," Angela said. "The search is going, but it's probably going to take awhile."
Clearing his throat, Booth called out, "I should go. Call me if you need any other pearls of wisdom."
Brennan laughed and Cam chuckled, Hodgins smiled at Lance, and Hacker sighed. Maybe if this cohesive group ostracized the FBI Director long enough, he would just go away. Yeah, with the way Hacker was watching Dr. Brennan, with a goofy-sad, plaintive tilt of his brows, there was no way that was going to happen any time soon. Not without Booth here to defend his territory as the alpha male of the group.
Geez, now Brennan had him thinking like an anthropologist. Well, in just a few short weeks, Sweets was marrying one. Might as well get used to it, right?
A/N: I got sick last night and had to stay home from work, so you guys get another chapter! Thanks to everyone following and commenting on this story. I'm overwhelmed by the response. Oh, and a major milestone? With this chapter, I will have posted 450K words of fan fiction, all of which was written within the last eleven months. Nanowrimo's gonna eat my dust this year!
On that note, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and please, let me know what you think...
