A/N: Hmm. This chapter started out poetic, ended kinda weak, I think. Can't figure out how to fix it, and I don't want to wait any longer to post this. Any help would be great! Enjoy the chapter, and don't forget to review! :D

(P.S., in reply to LMC's review - I don't really know! There might be a day when I decide to go back and watch the rest of season ten, but for now, I haven't been watching. I still feel kinda betrayed by the writers; and for now, I think I'm pretty content just writing about Bones. Gives me my own little canon, I suppose. So yeah. :) Thanks for your review and support!)

(Edited and reposted July 15, 2015)

Part Two: Liberation / freedom from limits; release

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am."
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Four Months Later (January 15, 2015)

They find him in the new year; two weeks in, on a day when the sun is bright and the sky is clear. The snow on the ground won't melt, but instead freezes over, leaving a hard, shining shell over the ground – the kind you slip on when you stop paying attention. They find him when the air is thin and bitter and their breath rises to meet the sky above their heads, when it's nearly too cold for Booth's fingers to move well enough to answer the call when it comes.

He almost misses it because of his damn fingers.

And when he answers it, it's not Angela, like he expects it to be. It's not Cam or Hodgins or Daisy or even Aubrey, and it certainly can't be Bones. She's standing right next to him, on the corner by the diner, waiting for the crossing signal to change – so she's there when a stranger's voice speaks right into Booth's ear. She's there to watch Booth's face change, a sure sign that something big is about to happen. Whether it's something wonderful or terrible, though, is left to her imagination.

The exact way Booth grabs her hand and pulls her across the street once the call is finished leads her to believe that it is a combination of both.

Booth climbs into his SUV and starts it up in the same second, and Brennan barely has time to buckle her seat belt before he's peeling away from the curb and speeding down the street. Her voice is barely heard over the engine's downshift, the sirens blasting above them, as she asks him what's happening.

It takes him a few seconds to loosen his jaw enough to answer her.

"They found him."

Cars are moving perfectly out of their way, blown to the shoulder like leaves from their path.

"They found him?"

There's that feeling in her gut like she's been jolted, breathless, and it's the only thing reminding her that this is, in fact, reality. Breathing and thinking are never difficult in dreams - especially dreams she's spent months hoping would come true.

Booth doesn't reply. Instead, he keeps his eyes locked on the road, his jaw set once more. Brennan continues in her search for answers, an urgent tone slipping through as she asks.

"Booth, what did they say? Is he alright?"

His voice is quiet, nearly washed away by all of the sounds around them.

"Yeah," he finally answers. "He's alive. They said he's okay."

Brennan's bones are suddenly calm again, her whole body relaxing against the seat. A breath she didn't realize she was holding is let out and freed. Meanwhile, the road keeps rushing by, rushing by, rushing by them in one big dizzying blur of gravel and lights and people and ice.

"Then why don't you seem relieved?"

He glances over at her once, twice as he drives, his mouth a line, his eyes dark and distant. He's not with her in that moment; he's somewhere far away.

"I don't believe them."

Missing FBI psychologist-slash-agent Dr. Lance Sweets turns up alive after four months of APBs and continuous investigation following a violent kidnapping. It's a goddamn headline already. Or at least it would be, if there were any reporters around to write it. But as it stands, nobody but the doctors, nurses and technicians on the hospital's third floor has been allowed to do much more than glance in the direction of his room - at least until his contacts were notified. Thank God for protocols.

Currently, those protocols are being followed in terms of the forms. Sitting in some stark, carpeted office, Booth finds himself on the receiving end of a stream of papers, skimming over the important parts and signing each one with a lazy flick of his wrist. He could care less about what he's signing, if he's honest; he'd sign his soul away if it meant getting to Sweets faster.

Thankfully, that isn't necessary. They take him and Brennan to him after just ten minutes of paperwork and legal briefing. As if he really needed legal briefing. Regardless, they take him – but as he walks behind a nurse with Brennan's hand held tightly in his own, a sudden hesitation plants itself in the back of his mind and nearly slows him to a stop. What would they find when they finally reached that room? They said Sweets was alive, they told him over the phone. But alive – it's a blanket could mean so many different things.

It could mean alive, but barely. It could mean breathing, but struggling. It could mean there's a machine-made heartbeat, artificial function, maybe it's time to consider organ donation for what's left of him. He's seen it before. It could mean mangled and destroyed beyond recognition or repair, in more ways than one. He's seen that too. His heart does not stop racing and hammering in his ears until they're standing just in front of that closed door, and that single word alive is finally defined for him.

"He was brought in unconscious with a few broken ribs, a moderate head injury, and several nonlethal lacerations. Further scans revealed minor internal injuries beneath the bruising on his torso," a young doctor, all concerned eyes and soft features, explains. "There's evidence of other injuries as well, from a couple x-rays and other scans we did, but those have either already healed or are in the process of healing. He's in pretty good shape, considering. He's been asleep, but you can see him, if you'd like."

She opens the door with that, and, true to her word, Dr. Lance Sweets is fast asleep, fairly banged up, but on the whole – safe and sound. There's an IV port sticking out from a thin left wrist, a few stitches up by his hairline, but his face is soft and relaxed. For a moment, it hasn't really been four months. It's been a day – a long, terrifying day that's finally over, and now Booth can finally breathe and rest his bones. Unless he's already asleep, and this is all just another too-good-to-be-true dream – but he glances over at Brennan's misty eyes, digs a fingernail into his own palm, and it's all suddenly real. Strangely, surreally real.

There's something magnetic about this room. Something that draws Booth's hand into Brennan's, draws them both into chairs by the side of the bed. The doctor doesn't leave; instead, she crosses the room and leafs through the clipboard on the far wall for a moment before pulling it down and bringing it back to them.

"There are the lacerations… that I think you should see," she starts, walking back. "We had to take pictures, because you can't see them unless… unless you're looking at his back…."

The words alone make his blood freeze in his veins, his chest ache as if he were just crudely woken from a dream – or thrown into a nightmare. His running thoughts stop in their tracks.

"They were easily sealed. They wouldn't normally be of much concern to us, but... as you can see..."

She holds up a glossed photograph, and their hearts nearly stop.

It's there, written in barely-closed cuts across the entire top half of his back.

THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY.

Booth nearly throws up right on the spot. Brennan's hand curls tighter around his, and they stare for as long as they can stand to look before, resigned and silent, Booth hands the photo back to the doctor. He says nothing about it. Instead –

"Who found him?" His voice is quiet, shaken.

"We don't know," is the answer he receives. That's been the answer to most of his questions over the past four months, and this is no exception. Quite frankly, he's not surprised. "There was an anonymous 911 call placed that directed responders to him. They found him unconscious and alone somewhere in Maryland."

Unconscious and alone. Those words seem misplaced, so completely sinful when applied to the sleeping man next to them. It's nearly wrong to picture – after four months of whatever he went through, this four-month long nightmare, Lance Sweets was left alone, scarred and bleeding in the cold. In that moment, Seeley Booth can sympathize with a few of the killers he's put away over the years.

So, leaning back in his plastic chair, hand still tucked neatly into Brennan's, he prepares himself for a long vigil. He's not leaving Sweets alone again – not today, probably not ever – and Brennan seems to have the same idea. She drops her bag onto the floor and makes herself comfortable as the doctor nods her head at the two before leaving the room. Then they wait. They wait for their friends to arrive, for Sweets to wake up; they wait for the moment that they can find whoever did this. Because God knows, as soon as they do, there will be hell to pay.