A/N: Aaaaand, we're back! Hope this chapter didn't disappoint. If you could just drop a note at the end of this and let me know what you think so far, I'd really appreciate it! Haven't really heard much from people on the last couple of updates, so anything's welcome! Thanks!
October, 2014
After two weeks of aimless leads falling flat, Booth pulls up the email on his computer. He's read it so many times by now, he's already got it memorized.
I highly recommend that you stop digging in the Bureau.
He stares it for another minute more before clicking the reply button; the sender's information is blocked out, hidden – but it's got to go somewhere.
God, he must be getting desperate. Because even with the small voice of reason whispering in his ear that it's probably a terrible, dangerous idea, he types out a single sentence and hits send almost immediately:
Or what?
January, 2015
When Lance Sweets wakes up for the second time, around seven o'clock, when the sun is just starting to rise higher in the sky, Booth is not in the room. This is entirely accidental, but not entirely a bad thing.
He wakes in the same off-white hospital room, with placid winter sunlight shining right in his eyes. He shakes his head, and his eyes adjust – and hell if he doesn't feel that. As he slides back into awareness, he becomes further aware of the dull ache in his head, the twinge in his ribs, the harsh sting on the skin of his back, right where his shirt rubs against the backs of his shoulders.
That last bit – that's what makes his breath catch in his throat. That's what makes four months' worth of hell rush back to him, and his heart starts pounding in his chest at the thought that it's not over. (Because it will never be over, not while he's still held against his will, and not while Waller is still breathing and free. And with the pull she has in the FBI – she will be free until the day she stops breathing.)
A nurse enters at the sound of heart monitor alarms, and she tries her best. He'll give her that. But just because she doesn't wear a mask doesn't mean she's innocent, and until she can prove otherwise, there's no reason for him to believe she isn't working for the same people who landed him here, just popping in to fix what's broken before throwing him back into the dark.
The proof comes just minutes later, in the form of Seeley Booth pushing his way into the room in between the nurse's faded mantras: It's okay, everything's alright, you're safe. It's okay, everything's alright, you're safe.
He sees Seeley Booth, and everything in the room goes silent. Even the thoughts in his own mind, they screech to a sudden halt. And – although he hates the fact that it's projected out for the room to see and hear – his heart slows down. He remembers last night; and all at once, Booth seems so very, very real. He stares and stares until, in spite of his own shell-shocked expression, the high beeping goes even and the alarms go silent of their own accord.
"Hey," is all Booth can bring himself to say in that single moment, when reality crashes down on the two of them and they're left to decide where that leaves them.
It leaves Booth to dismiss the nurse and gently, gently wrap his arms around Sweets' shoulders, as good a hug as he can manage with the IV still sticking out from the psychologist's wrist and the voice in his head screaming that he shouldn't touch Sweets while he's still so tense and terrified and fresh from an obvious physical beating.
(The voice in his heart, on the other hand, is telling him to stay right where he is, holding Sweets in place as tightly as he can, as if that could keep him close and safe forever. That is the voice he's listening to.)
He stays until after one of Sweets' hands comes hesitantly to brush against his back. He stays a few breathless minutes longer, until the other one reaches up quickly, grabbing onto the back of Booth's shirt, his shoulder and gripping it as tightly as his fingers would allow.
Seeley Booth is not a person in this moment, but a lifeline.
He supposes Lance Sweets just happens to be one as well.
October, 2014
Just hours after Booth's reply, the second email comes at the stroke of midnight:
Or your twenty-nine year old psychologist never makes it to thirty.
He wakes up dizzy and dazed, tied to a chair, face to face with two masked nobodies and the distant echo of Naomi Waller's voice.
"I apologize for the quick start," she says without a hint of apology in her voice as soon as his eyes open. He's lost count of how many times he's slept since his first and only other meeting with the cryptic dealer. He's lost on an exact number; but it's been a few days. "But it seems that your colleagues don't quite understand what will happen if they continue to spin their wheels in my direction."
He looks around. There's a bat gripped tight just in front of him. A sock of all things, with something heavy – maybe a handful of change, maybe nuts and bolts, who knows – gathered by the toe. A belt hanging from a bar across the room.
"And since I hear you've got quite the computer genius on your side, that rules out a visual explanation."
He tries to find her somewhere in his field of vision, but she is nowhere. Her voice is everywhere. He, at least for the moment, is unafraid of this.
"What do you mean?"
She appears like a ghost, walking out from behind him with her back still turned. She's got a microphone in one hand, the kind music hobbyists use to record, and starts plugging it into a nearby laptop. She does not turn her head at all when she answers.
"It means you have to scream, Dr. Sweets. Sincerely and truly."
He's a quick thinker. So he comes to the conclusion almost immediately. It gives his stomach time to drop low enough, and it gives his mind a chance to finally let fear in, to adequately panic before the recording light turns on – an angry red threat.
It's not long before it starts, and the bat, the sock with what he learns are screws lumped inside, they both become useful. The belt does not move from its spot the entire time.
And the entire time is long – because he tries his damned hardest not to make a sound at first. He clenches his jaw shut and screws his eyes and breathes quickly and deliberately through his nose, intent on remaining quiet.
But when something hard and fast slams into his stomach, he can't stop a muted grunt from forcing its way out, an involuntary groan. From there, it escalates.
Soon, he's screaming without even hearing himself, and for some reason he can't understand – they don't stop there.
The recording finds its way to Booth's inbox a few hours after Sweets finally falls asleep, his body practically pulsing in the dark.
Booth finds it at work and slowly brings himself to play it.
The moment he closes the message out is the moment he decides that he can now sympathize perfectly with the kind of cold killers he's put away over the years.
It's also the first moment that he starts to cry under the weight of everything. There was the fight for his life four months back. There was prison.
And now there's the ever-present reminder that he's spent his life working to protect everyone, but when it really comes down to it – he can't protect anyone.
(Not even family.)