Author's Note: Next chapter. There's a good chance that another semi-crack fic that I wrote off another prompt in this thread will go up this week, but it will be much shorter than this one.
I apologize for not doing this in the last chapter, but I want to thank Iam space from LJ for coming up with the prompt.
I do not own Bones or any of its characters.
Thank you to everyone who is reading/following/reviewing this. I'm glad you've decided to join in on this little bit of insanity with me. :)
TimeWitch93: You know, I'm surprised that more people don't get hurt in the lab than what we've seen on the show considering how Hodgins is with his experiments. I shudder to think what would happen if Cam finally snapped because of them. :)
Peanutmeg: Oops, darn typo. I did fix that, and thank you for pointing it out. And thank you for the review. I hope you enjoy this chapter as well. I'm sure you'll be glad once you've wrapped up your tasks for the quarter.
Fear Herself: This one will have more humor than the other projects I have going right now mostly because the idea is so absurd. But you know me, don't be surprised if some angst manages to sneak in there...
Rankor01: Haha. Yes, when I saw this prompt for a fic, I really couldn't resist. Especially since, like you mentioned, Booth has been calling Sweets a twelve-year-old since the first episode Sweets appeared in. It will be pretty light-hearted overall, but like I told Fear Herself, don't be surprised if there are also some more somber moments as well.
D: Your review summed up the approach I took with this story well. :) B&B might have gotten more than they bargained for with a time-warped duckling...
Lives in the now: Thank you. I know that this one is a little bizarre compared to my usual work, but I have had so much fun writing it, I hoped that my readers would enjoy it too. Hope you enjoy the rest of it as well.
The Confusion in the Duckling—Chapter 2
After a lot of persuasion and reassurances, Booth finally managed to convince Sweets to go with the EMTs to the hospital so that he could be examined further. Brennan and Booth followed the ambulance, and once there, Booth tried to handle the paperwork as much as he could. By the time he was done, the agent was ready to go home and call it a day. Instead he ended up joining Brennan in the waiting room, determined to stay at least until they got word from the doctors on Sweets' condition.
"Booth, do you think Sweets will get his memory back?" Brennan asked, breaking the silence. "Cognitively speaking, he seems to have retained his intellectual abilities, but…."
"I don't know, Bones," Booth said, running his hands down his face. This was just the sort of question he would usually ask Sweets, and Booth found himself frustrated that this was not an option here.
"He seems scared," she said.
"Can't really blame him," Booth replied. "He was just in an explosion and now he wakes up to all these people telling him that it's thirteen years later than what he thinks it is."
"Booth…he kept asking for his parents," the anthropologist said quietly. The agent nodded and started to rub his eyes. Brennan didn't finish her thought. She didn't need to.
They both knew, courtesy of Wyatt, that Sweets had lost both of his parents not long before they met him. Although they never asked him much about it, both of them sensed that it had been a devastating loss.
'How do you tell someone who thinks he's a kid and who thinks that he's still living with Mom and Dad that he's never going to see them again?' Booth asked himself. 'It was probably bad enough to lose them the first time as an adult. But now….'
Booth stood and began to pace back and forth. He knew that the doctors were explaining things to Sweets like what year it really was and his actual age, and he hoped that that would be enough to jog the psychologist's memory so that none of this would become an issue. Still, he wondered how well Sweets was handling all this.
After what seemed like hours, a nurse finally came out to meet them.
"Agent Booth," she said. "Mr. Sweets keeps asking for 'that FBI guy'. I think you should go to him now. The doctor will speak with you on the way."
A brief discussion with the doctor yielded nothing that Booth hadn't been able to guess on his own: some minor bruising with the most serious thing being a blow to the head that somehow had robbed the therapist of all his memories after the age of twelve. After being assured that he could take Sweets home, Booth walked into the examination room and found the psychologist studying himself in a mirror. There was a large bandage on his temple, but otherwise he seemed all right.
Sweets whirled around when he heard Booth approaching, but after he saw who it was, he went back to looking into the glass.
"When did I get so tall?" Sweets asked with tinges of awe. Booth could not suppress a smile.
"Hey, Sweets how are you doing?" he asked. Sweets shrugged and moved away from the mirror to hop onto the examination table.
"Ok, I guess," the therapist responded. He looked down at his legs which were dangling over the edge of the table and began to swing them back and forth.
"They told me that it's 2010," Sweets mumbled. "And that I'm actually twenty-five years old."
"All true," Booth nodded. "You believe that, don't you?"
"I suppose I have to," Sweets said, looking into the mirror again while running a hand along his face. "How else could I have aged this much? It's just that…."
The psychologist paused and jumped off the table. He paced back and forth, his stride jittery.
"It doesn't make sense, you know?" Sweets said. "How can I go to bed one night, twelve years old and starting on my summer vacation, and then wake up the next day and be twenty-five? I mean, I was just getting ready to start high school in a couple of months."
"High school at twelve?" Booth asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Why not?" Sweets pouted. "I was finished with elementary school by the time I was almost ten."
"Look you're just having a little temporary memory loss here," Booth said. "I'm sure after a little while your head will clear, and then…."
"Retrograde amnesia."
"What?" the agent asked.
"It's called retrograde amnesia," Sweets repeated as he sat back down on the table. "And you don't know for sure if I'll remember things again. It doesn't always happen."
"But hey, you're already starting to remember the stuff you learned in college," Booth said encouragingly. "That's a good sign, isn't it?"
"College?" Sweets said, furrowing his eyebrows. "I read about all that stuff last year. Dad got me some psychology textbooks because I…."
Upon mentioning his father, Sweets became somber again.
"Agent Booth, shouldn't I go home to Mom and Dad?" he asked. "Maybe they could help me remember…or if I can't remember, they could…."
"Sweets, this is your home now, all right?" Booth said. "Look, why don't I take you around to some places like your apartment and where you work. Seeing all that might help you remember something. How does that sound?"
Sweets fidgeted; he opened his mouth as if he was going to speak, but then would immediately close it again. He did this several times before starting to blush.
"Will you…will you stay with me? Until I remember?" he asked in a tiny voice, not daring to look Booth in the eye.
"Of course I will, Sweets," the agent assured him. "I won't leave you alone until then. I promise."
Booth decided that the best place to begin would be Sweets' home, so after getting the psychologist discharged from the hospital, the two of them along with Brennan headed over to Sweets' apartment building. The agent noticed that Sweets was eerily quiet during the ride, but decided to leave him alone for the time being.
Once they arrived, Booth used the therapist's keys to get in. The three of them walked in with Sweets moving ahead of them while looking around the room. He slowly walked about, examining every corner of the room. He finally stopped to pick up a framed picture that was sitting on a stand near the couch.
"Mom and Dad," he murmured.
Booth edged closer to see a photo of a teenaged Sweets standing between two people with greying hair and kind eyes.
"See anything familiar here?" he asked the psychologist.
"No," Sweets replied. "I don't even remember this picture being taken. Sweets ran his fingers along the glass as if he could somehow reach his parents by touching the images encased within. He sat the photo back down and resumed walking around the room. After a couple minutes of this, Sweets turned back toward them.
"Um…I'm going to go to the bedroom," he said. "To see if I can remember…and to change. It feels weird wearing this suit."
"Sure think, Sweets," Booth said. "We'll wait for you here."
The psychologist walked away, and Booth leaned against a wall. He then spotted Brennan walking around the room and picking up some of the items she found.
"Bones, what are you doing?" he hissed.
"Sweets will likely need a variety of memory triggers to help him recover from his amnesia," she replied as she gathered the items she found into a pile on a stand. "We cannot just rely on familiar settings."
"Yeah, you're probably right," Booth said, scratching the back of his neck as he began to pace about. The anthropologist nodded and started to place the items into a small, plastic bag that she had taken out of the kitchen.
A couple of minutes later, Sweets emerged from the bedroom wearing a long sleeved tee shirt and jeans which only served to re-enforce his youthful demeanor. He was carrying what looked like a giant photo album.
"Hey, I found this in a trunk at the back of the closet," he said, holding it up. "It's got, like, a ton of photos in it. I thought I'd take it with me and look at it. Maybe it will help me to remember?"
"Worth a try," Booth said. "Would you like to go somewhere else now?"
"Sure, where?"
"To the Jeffersonian," Brennan answered.
"I work at a museum?" Sweets asked.
"No, I work at the Medico-Legal lab," she answered. "I'm a forensic anthropologist."
"No way!" the psychologist replied. "So, you study dead people and find out who they were and how they lived?"
"That's an oversimplification of my job, but you are correct," Brennan said. "I am impressed that you know about the type of work that I do." Sweets blushed and looked away.
"Mom and I saw this show about anthropology on TV one time," he mumbled. "But wait, if I don't work there, why are we going?"
"While it's true that you are not technically employed by the lab, you do spend a lot of time working there with me and my team," Brennan responded. "Would you like to go there now?"
"Sure," Sweets said, starting to smile. "I haven't been to the Jeffersonian since I was a little kid. Do you think we'd have time to stop by the Egyptian exhibits?"
"Sweets…this isn't a field trip," Booth cut in. "We're trying to get your memory back."
The therapist's smile immediately vanished from his face, and he ended up hanging his head.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "You're right. That was dumb of me to ask." Booth sighed; he hated seeing Sweets so miserable.
"Hey, why don't we run over to the lab, and then when we are done, maybe just maybe, we can take a quick run over to the Egyptian section," the agent said. "How about that?"
Booth reached over to pat Sweets' shoulders, but the psychologist flinched and backed away.
"That's ok, Agent Booth. It…it wasn't important anyway," he said. "We should probably go now."
Sweets kept his head down as he trudged out the door into the hallway with Brennan following him closely. Booth turned to lock up the place and glanced over at the photo Sweets had been looking at earlier. The agent noticed the wide smiles and the sparkling eyes which told of the happiness Sweets and his parents had shared.
While it might not mean much as far as helping the psychologist recover his memories, Booth wished that he could produce a similarly happy expression from Sweets right now.