What He Offered
Chapter 7: Casework
It was a wonder, now, to Bones that all those times she'd been moved to assure Booth that he was not his father, he hadn't answered: Maybe not, but you are. She had never made the connection between her own assault on him and his father's repeated beatings, not even when they'd reviewed together what he'd learned of the legacy of his abuse in therapy. She imagined that blow on "Calamity Day" must have felt to Booth like being struck in a particularly sore spot, or taking a punch to an already fractured bone. And yet, he'd never reproached her, at least, not unless this passage counted as a reproach, which she didn't think it did. She shook her head; the damage we do, all unwitting…
The phone rang: call from the Zoo Squad leader. "Hello, Booth."
"Hey, there, Bones. Listen, Christine is trying to convince me she can share her goldfish with Hank, but that doesn't seem right to me…"
Goldfish? Where in the world would Christine have gathered goldfish? Some aquariums had shallow water tables complete with small sea creatures for visiting children to explore, but she didn't remember such an exhibit at the zoo. And, then she understood: whole wheat fish-shaped crackers. "What's this really about, Booth?"
A silence on the other end of the line, then, "I guess I just wanted to check you're still talking to me."
"That's not something you ever need to worry about. The reverse? Maybe."
"I'm shaking in my boots. Okay, so… thanks. No, Christine, Mommy can't talk right now…" Call ended.
Mommy still had a lot of pages to get through, and not a lot of remaining free time. She picked up the next page, and read.
A Tale of Twin Booths, cont'd
Vic knew that Tim was right about Temperance Brennan, but he simply couldn't let go. She hadn't given him a chance, not a proper chance, and he couldn't give up without another try. It was not in his character to surrender the chase, and so, periodically over the next few months, he would swallow his pride and phone the Jeffersonian, hoping to entice her back with an interesting case, only to be stonewalled every time by her assistant, Jack or Zach, he could never remember which.
For his part, Tim did not miss Brennan nor wish her back in their life. And yet, he found himself wondering if there were more to her story than he'd suspected. It was Vic's teasing jab about his reputedly having as cold a heart as Brennan's that had set his psychologist's mind in motion. The two were a pair, he'd said so himself; was the resemblance merely superficial, or was there something in Brennan's past, as there was in Vic's, to account for her behavior? In the interests of fairness, he decided to look into the matter, and, in the end, didn't need to look far. It was all there in her file for anyone to read: Brennan had, in effect, been orphaned as a teen. Her parents had gone missing some fifteen years before, and their fate had never been determined. Her parents' disappearance had resulted in the further critical loss of her siblings, an elder brother, Russ and her identical twin sister, Joy Ruth. A legal adult, Russ had gone off to find his fame and fortune, leaving his sisters to the tender mercies of the foster care system. The sisters had, apparently, been placed with different foster families, and had never lived together again. The lack of any further information regarding Joy Ruth and Russ seemed to indicate that all three Brennans had been making their way alone in the world for some time.
Having read her file, Tim could have kicked himself: he should have recognized the signs. It was now evident to him that Temperance Brennan had a heart every bit as broken and guarded as Vic's. He was loathe to reveal his discovery to his twin, but after the harsh things he'd said about the woman, he felt he owed it to Brennan to share what he'd learned. He should not have been surprised to discover that Vic knew the story already, that he was, indeed, vastly better informed about the beautiful young scientist. That was Vic all over: knocked down, but not out. Unable to pursue her in person, he had redirected his focus into learning everything he could about her. He had even started his own personal file where he conserved the printed matter his research turned up: newspaper clippings, flyers announcing public lectures, photocopies of her more recent scholarly articles, and the like. When her novel, Bred in the Bone, was published, he was first in line at the bookstore to purchase a copy.
It was reading the novel that convinced Vic to make one last ditch effort to win Brennan back, if not to him, then to the FBI. "You can't say I'm not the inspiration for Andy Lister," Vic insisted, when Tim finally finished the last page and put the book down. "He's got smarts, enormous sex appeal, and a powerful vibe of simmering aggression under his cool exterior. She based Lister on me all right."
"Loosely based, very loosely. He's probably a composite of any number of people. And, besides, fictional characters in the police procedural genre are functions of the plot, not the other way around."
As usual, Vic wasn't listening. He was already busy devising a strategy to do an end-run around the blocking assistant to insure some face-time with the evasive anthropologist. It took considerable tactical planning and inter-office cooperation, but it worked: Vic finally found himself in the same room as Dr. Temperance Brennan. She made no pretense about being happy to see him, and immediately penetrated his ruse of riding to her rescue, but he had snagged her attention for at least as long as it took to drive her from the airport where he'd had her ambushed into the city, and he determined to make the most of that time.
Despite what he'd learned about her background, Tim still considered Brennan abrasive, and had remained in the car while Vic played out his charade. She didn't seem to register his presence in the back seat when she swung ungraciously into the car and slammed the door shut with unnecessary force. For Tim, it was like watching a replay of that ill-fated day: it started out with Vic trying to charm her, Brennan not having any of it, leading to Vic becoming snarky, and Brennan demanding in no uncertain terms to be let out of the car. When Vic complied, there ensued a literal chase, with Vic running after the irascible scientist and having to agree, if only to buy time, to the terms she stipulated for her assistance. They returned to the car, and the spiral began again: she condescended, he sneered, she mocked, he belittled, and on and on, like cranky children or, which was more to the point, two adults fighting an unwelcome sexual attraction.
That became the pattern for their interaction: Brennan aggressively keeping Vic at arm's length with snide comments and thinly-veiled insults, and Vic reacting defensively with dismissive remarks about "squints" and unsubtle attempts at physical intimidation. In their intense focus on each other, they seemed entirely unaware of Tim's presence when he was with them in the field or at the lab. By and large, it wasn't a harmonious collaboration but, as with their first case, it was producing outstanding results, and that went a long way toward reconciling the ill-assorted co-investigators to the discomfort.
The first time Brennan deigned to acknowledge Tim was when he was obliged to interrupt her while the three of them were at the Eller home informing the bereaved parents that they had recovered their daughter's remains. Brennan had been on the point of telling the grieving couple the unvarnished truth about Clio's painful death when Tim had horned in and told a comforting lie instead. She had shot him a malevolent look, and later outside the house, she had challenged him, asserting that the Ellers were entitled to the facts, which only confirmed Tim in the belief that the woman knew next to nothing about humane interaction. He had not scrupled to tell her that, as well as a few other home truths about her social skills. She went back to ignoring him.
As she had done before, Brennan went rogue — at least she limited herself to threats instead of actual assault this time — with the result that the case was reassigned to Agent Furst. In the few hours remaining before they had to turn the files over, Vic, Tim and Brennan worked relentlessly to find justice for Clio. Late in the evening, Vic requested Brennan join him in his office, but when she arrived, Vic had stepped out for a moment, and it was Tim she found sitting behind the desk, watching a video of Clio and her family in happier days. Given their earlier testy exchange, she approached the desk gingerly. "You wanted to see me?"
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her no, he didn't want to see her, that, in fact, he'd be perfectly happy never to set eyes on her again. Instead, the psychologist in him spotted an opening, and he said, "You don't want to talk about family?" When she didn't answer, he tried again. "Temperance, partners share things. It builds trust."
She didn't give an inch. "Since when are we partners?"
He gave up the effort. No one could say he hadn't tried. "I apologize for the presumption."
At the eleventh hour (almost literally), Brennan put together all the puzzle pieces, and, knowing time to be of the essence, raced out alone to apprehend the murderer and secure the crime scene against destruction. When Vic and Tim arrived, she was holding the killer at gunpoint, a bit shaken but otherwise in complete control. Later, at the cemetery, when the three of them were standing on a small rise looking down at the mourners, Tim brought himself to acknowledge her invaluable contributions to the case. "They would still be wondering what happened to their daughter, if not for you."
She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then, as if she had taken his advice to heart, volunteered the information about her parents' disappearance and the burden of not knowing their fate.
In exchange for this confidence, Vic offered one of his own: he admitted to having killed fifty individuals as a sniper, and of hoping, as a recompense, to remove at least that many murderers from the streets.
In typical Brennan fashion, she laughed at Vic's resolution. "I don't think there's some cosmic balance sheet!" At her scornful inflection, Vic bowed his head, embarrassed, and Tim, seeing it, felt he could never like this woman, no matter how many murderers she busted single-handedly. And then, a very odd thing happened: Brennan sobered and said, in apparent sincerity, "I'd like to help with that." Vic recovered sufficiently to make light of accepting her offer, and Tim thought for the first time that there might be hope for Temperance Brennan, after all.