Dr. Good and Mr. Lucky — Blessed
Booth didn't know what he'd expected, but, as brilliant flashes of insight went, this seemed very small potatoes. "That's it? That's the big reveal?" He watched her smile dim, and her eyes lose some of their sparkle. He felt like a cad. "Sorry," he muttered. "I didn't mean to rain on your parade. Go on: tell me your theory. Please," he added, seeing her hesitation. "I'm sure it's something deep and meaningful."
That did the trick. "It's simple, really, as you intimated. Seeley is what your family and long-time friends, like Cam and Rebecca, call you. It's also what your father called you, the name you associate with childhood and misery. The 'Tim' in your therapy story could just as easily be called Seeley. By refusing to be called by that name, you signal your rejection of that self-image, just as Victor rejects and tries to bury Tim."
Right, as usual. Fact of life. "I'll say this, Bones: Dr. Cameron's got nothing on you. I mean," he said, as her brows drew down in confusion, "he made the very same point. And, I'll admit, I was impressed by his analysis. He said the way I insist on using my last name exclusively is a symptom of the problem: I want to be only half of who I am." He laughed shortly. "And, here I was thinking all along that Seeley's just a stupid name."
"I don't think it's stupid. It means 'blessed.' Did you know that?"
"Yeah," he said on a sigh. "That doesn't help."
Fortunately for him, her phone pinged at just that moment, so he wasn't required to elaborate. She retrieved her phone from her jacket pocket, and checked her message: it was from Max. "Oh, look," she said, her expression softening. She held the screen up for him to see the photo of Hank lying asleep on his back in the playpen, his little arms crooked at the elbow and raised shoulder high as if he had been forced to surrender to sleep at gunpoint. "Checking in," Max had texted. "All A-ok. C U soon."
"What time's it getting to be?" he asked, as she took a last fond gander at their son. The final third of the message struck him as a subtle hint that they should not prolong their absence.
"Just past four," she said, in evident surprise.
"Can't be! Really? It's been two hours already?"
"According to my phone, which I have no reason to mistrust as it doesn't appear to be malfunctioning in any other respect." She backed up the swing, and picking up her feet, glided forward one last time, hopped off as the seat reached apogee, and landed nimbly on her feet. "We'd better be heading back," she said, rather wistfully, he thought. "This was a very good idea on your part, Booth. I will have to tell Angela when I see her tomorrow that she was quite right: swinging is a most enjoyable activity."
"And, the best date you've ever had?" he prompted.
"I couldn't possibly arrive at a conclusive determination without reviewing all the dates I've been on, an undertaking which would require entirely too much time and effort to be worthwhile."
He followed her through the gate, and latched it closed behind them. "It was a joke, Bones."
"Oh! I see. Yes." Her mouth tipped up to one side, and she favored him with a knowing look. "It's funny because it's absurd to suggest that an evening spent at a playground is comparable to an evening at the symphony, or the opera, or dining in a five-star restaurant. Yes, very amusing. Good one, Booth!"
It wasn't until they had reached the top of the rise and plunged into the shade of the little wood that she brought their conversation round again to the ostensible reason for their afternoon stroll. "What you said earlier, about the meaning of your Christian name not helping, I don't understand…"
He blew out a long, noisy breath. "Yeah, I was kind of hoping you hadn't picked up on that."
"If you'd rather not…"
"It's not that I mind. It's… I'm not sure how well I can explain. I'll probably make a muddle of it."
"You won't know until you try," she said, unanswerable as ever.
They were held up at the crosswalk by a steady stream of cars traveling in both directions, but eventually, they were safely on the other side of the road and he could procrastinate no longer. He stuffed his fists into the pockets of his jacket, and began, "One of the things that made a strong impression on me growing up was my father repeating that I would never amount to much on my own. That was a fairly constant theme in his ranting, that I was going to need a lot of luck to get anywhere. What I took away from that… assessment, I guess you'd call it, is that I couldn't make things happen, I was at the mercy of mysterious forces that could work for, or against, me pretty much at random.
"It's like the opening of that fairy tale Christine likes so much — Sleeping Beauty, I think — where the princess, at her christening, receives a whole bunch of valuable gifts from her fairy godmothers, and everything's hunky dory until the one fairy who wasn't invited crashes the party
and lays a curse on the baby. That's the nature of luck in a nutshell: it's uncontrollable. You may think you've recruited all the fairies to your side, but, despite your very best efforts, there's always one or two you've overlooked. Do you see what I'm getting at?"
She did not immediately reply, just walked on in deep concentration, her eyes lowered, her brows loosely knit. She was silent so long, he was all but resigned to having to try again with another example and different words, but then she said, decisively, "So, that's why you're a gambler," and it dawned on him that far from being puzzled, she had not only understood completely but had taken the next few logical leaps ahead as well.
The realization brought him, literally, up short. "How did you do that?"
"Do what?" She met his gaze, all innocence.
"Go from point A to point Z?"
"I don't know, precisely, what you mean by that, but I expect you're referring to the chain of reasoning that lead to my conclusion. I deduced from what you said just now, and what you said previously about Victor, that being only lucky, having little or no control over your life, having to trust fickle, inscrutable others to shower you with blessings at their whim, is a trait that you associate with Tim, that part of your personality which you do your utmost to deny. Effective repression requires a great expenditure of energy, and when energy stocks run low, as must happen occasionally, particularly in times of stress or unhappiness, the usually dominant self is unable to repress his alter-ego, and… how did you put it before? … the script flips. Tim is the gambler in you, the one who relies not on his abilities — that's Victor — but on his luck. He surrenders control of his fate, and, here's where the addiction comes in, he surrenders it unconditionally. Quod erat demonstrandum."
He was so blown-away, it didn't even occur to him to protest her use of Latin. "That clinches it," he said, when he was finally able to pick his jaw up off the ground. "Who needs Dr. Cameron when I've got you?"
She smiled, justifiably proud, and taking his arm, set him once again in motion. "I infer that Dr. Cameron was of the same opinion?"
"It's uncanny, Bones! He said the same thing, practically word for word. If you ever get bored being the leading light in the field of forensic anthropology, you've got a solid future waiting for you in psychotherapy."
"No doubt you're right, but I find I'm satisfied with talented amateur status. Did Dr. Cameron happen to tie your inability to accept praise in with your fear that 'being blessed' underlies all your accomplishments?"
"Wow, great minds really do think alike. Yeah, he puts my 'discomfort with forms of recognition' — that's how the man talks — down to an unconscious fear of being an imposter, of being rewarded not on the basis of merit but of unfair advantage. It's like you said before: intellectually, I know I work hard, very hard, to get ahead, and I deserve any advancement that comes my way, but, emotionally, I can't trust it. I shy away."
Her only answer was a number of slow nods: yes, she followed, yes, she concurred with the expert. He marveled again at the quickness of her mind, the acuity of her understanding. A fact of life, true, but he doubted he'd ever really get used to it, and, he realized somewhat to his surprise, he was good with it, better than good, in fact. She was unpredictable in the best of ways: refreshing in her candor, astonishing in the breadth and depth of her knowledge, delightful even in her misunderstanding of commonplace idioms. Naturally, without effort, she was forever making the world wondrous and new for him. Just now, he couldn't begin to guess what theory, insight, or question that super-computer-brain of hers was developing, but he fully expected it would be well worth the wait.