What He Offered
Chapter 3: Rebecca
Having come to the bottom of the page six, Bones decided it was a good moment to stop and reflect on what she'd just read. She was a whiz at understanding the straightforward language of scholarly texts and articles, even those replete with academic jargon, but allegories were not her strong suit and required more focus on her part. On the backside of the page, she jotted down, for future reference, her interpretation of the tale so far:
As a child, Booth had conflicting feelings about Marianne's leaving: he grieved and longed for her / he was angry and hated her. This resulted in an internal conflict that went unresolved and which manifested later in his relationship with girls as follows: he was attracted to girls who, like his mother, needed rescuing (white knight syndrome?) /he was attracted to girls who, like his mother, were unavailable (at least initially). Vic is the active aspect (chasing, seeking out the lost mother) while Tim is the passive aspect (enduring, waiting for the lost mother to return). Since neither strategy arises from a unified self, the relationships unavoidably fail.
She scanned what she had written, and decided she had summarized her conclusions in an adequate fashion. She added page six, face down, to the pile on her desk, and took up the story once again.
A Tale of Twin Booths, cont'd
The college years rolled around, and though the twins were not on the best of terms, they did not enroll in different universities, or even, in choosing their residence hall, opt for other roommates. Whether it was because they had dim recollections of the happy days when they'd been as one, or because they complemented each other in ways they hardly understood, they felt bound to remain together. It came as no surprise to anyone that Vic chose criminal justice as his field of concentration or that Tim decided to major in psychology. They completed their degrees in the standard four year time-span, went on to serve in the military — Vic as a combatant, Tim as a mental-health specialist — and upon honorable discharge, the young men found employment with the FBI. Vic rose rapidly to the position of special agent in charge of homicide investigation while Tim, upon earning a master's degree in psychology, was assigned work as a profiler.
Rents in the D. C. area being what they were, the twins decided that, financially-speaking, it made more sense to share an apartment than to live apart. As, increasingly, they began to investigate murders together, their living arrangement had the added benefit of allowing them to take their work home in the evenings. For the first time in years, the brothers found themselves working toward a common goal, and in the process, each discovered in the other reasons for admiration and respect. When they were out in the field, Tim appreciated his brother's physical dominance, his speed and agility in pursuit, his sharp eye-sight and steady hand with a gun while, in the interrogation room, Vic's imposing presence and aura of barely-controlled aggression were an undeniable asset. Similarly, Vic valued Tim's ability to calm and comfort victims and witnesses at gruesome crime scenes, his empathic manner in delivering terrible news to the victims' families, and his insights into the criminal mind. Not infrequently, Tim's compassionate approach to interrogation, particularly of child suspects and witnesses, produced better results than Vic could manage with his more forceful technique. They balanced each other's weaknesses as well: when Vic lost his temper and resorted to violence, Tim was the one to restrain him, and when Tim's over-identification with a potential subject threatened to blind him to that person's guilt, Vic was the one to snap him out of it. All in all, they made excellent partners and enjoyed working together as a team.
The personal side of their life together was another story. In regards to the women in their life, the patterns they had developed in high school remained unchanged. Tim had a number of female friends and colleagues who called on him for a heart-to-heart whenever they felt the need for a sympathetic ear, and Vic had a series of brief monogamous relationships with women who, in the main, all conformed to a recognizable type: they were beautiful, professional women whose careers were central to their identity, women who took pride in being financially self-supporting, ambitious women for whom marriage and children were questions rather than inevitabilities, women succeeding in traditional male jobs without sacrificing sexiness or style, women uninhibited about sex and unapologetic about it to boot; women, in short, who were very hard-to-get.
Vic's most important relationship up until that time had occurred while the brothers were in the military. Rebecca had been a graduate student at the period, and so not yet proven in her chosen field, but she'd had plans for her future, and those plans hadn't necessarily included a husband, even when she found herself pregnant. Vic had wanted very badly for that relationship to work out, and not only for the sake of the child. He was happier with Rebecca than he had been with any of his previous flames, and he really thought he could put his days of chasing skirt behind him, if she would agree to be his wife.
But Rebecca fell prey to the same niggling dissatisfaction that all Vic's women experienced. Like so many of her predecessors, she brought her doubts and sense of vague disquiet to Tim. "I just don't understand him!" she told her lover's twin. "It's like he's not wholly present, not fully engaged. I sometimes feel I can't get through to him. He listens, but he doesn't really hear me. Do you know what I mean? There's so much I love about him: he's handsome, attentive, reliable, fun-loving, sexy…" She shook her head sadly, her pain and confusion obvious. "But, Tim… I hate to say this… sometimes, it really seems he doesn't have a heart."
Tim held her loosely while she drenched his shoulder with her tears. He wanted to tell her that he had a heart which was hers for the taking, if only she'd ask. It wasn't much of a prize, as it was still broken and bleeding from previous wounds but if she would take it into her loving care, he was almost sure it would heal in time. He had no illusions about the attractiveness of such an offer, however, so instead he assured her that, yes, indeed, his brother had a heart, a very fragile heart that was guarded about with a hard, protective shell; that was the heart he offered her, a very real, beating heart. She would need patience and persistence to break through the barrier, but Tim was practically certain it could be done.
Perhaps Rebecca did not feel up to the challenge of reclaiming Vic's heart. She had a baby on the way, after all, a new life already guaranteed to drain much of her limited resources of patience and energy; there was no guarantee she would have anything left over for Vic. Or, perhaps she doubted her ability to endure or simply despaired of success despite her best efforts. The only thing the twins knew with absolute certainty was that she had decided to decline what Vic offered.
"What'd I tell you?" Vic said, bitterly. "Woman leave. It's what they do."
They'd been living in D. C. for a while when Tessa Jankow caught Vic's eye. She was the complete package: a lawyer with a prestigious firm, she had a gorgeous face, wavy blond hair down to her waist, a tall, slender figure, and legs that didn't stop. She was hot as all get-out, too, as sexy in her career-wear suits as in Vic's borrowed shirt. While she often stayed over, she had her own place, and wasn't in the least possessive or demanding. While perfect in many respects, Tessa didn't hold Vic long. He tired of her first, and she was perceptive enough to pick up on it. One evening, she took Tim aside and asked him, "What's up with Vic? He seems withdrawn lately, as if his mind is elsewhere. He looks like he's listening to me, but I don't think he really hears what I'm saying. Are you guys working an important case, or something?" When Tim told her no, there was nothing work-related to account for Vic's behavior, she went on, "You don't think I've put on weight, or anything like that, do you? I mean, is it anything I've done? Or, haven't done?"
Tim could have told her that Vic's distraction had nothing to do with her, personally. The calamity had already happened, Tessa just hadn't been informed of it yet. That calamity had a name, and Tessa had been introduced to the woman bearing that name without once suspecting she was meeting her boyfriend's ideal woman: Dr. Temperance Brennan.