A/N: I'm putting this at the beginning because I feel my point is very important. I do not mean anyone or any culture any disrespect whatsoever. I did my research on voodoo to portray the aspects of it in this story fairly. I willingly admit I don't understand the vast majority of it, but before I write something, I do educate myself on what I'm saying. Booth ribbing on voodoo and Holly saying questionable things about Catholicism isn't meant to offend ANYONE. In the televised episode, Booth made these comments that I felt would have offended a lot of people who practice voodoo. In an attempt to rectify that, Holly is prodding at his religion to try to make him understand that what she says is coming from the same attitude that he holds towards voodoo. Nothing she says is meant to ruffle any feathers, it's just for the purpose of the story and attempting to put another character's attitude in perspective.
"It'll come back, kid. Just give it a day or two."
Booth's reassuring tone was somewhat comforting, but his words weren't. I let myself lean to the side and against the window of the backseat, lifting my arm up to press my forearm along the bottom of the glass. The colder temperature made my arm feel a little bit better, even though it wasn't chilly enough to be numbing. The doctor had been able to give me Tylenol, but after over a month of first morphine in the hospital, then strong opiates when I was released, the over-the-counter stuff seemed weak in comparison. I had to still deal with the soreness around my throat, the headache, stomachache, and pretty much everything-else-ache, although the discomfort was knocked down several notches. The most hurt seemed to be coming from where the nail had been in my arm.
"You can't possibly know that for certain," I said from the back, glowering out the window.
New Orleans is truly a beautiful city, filled with diverse people and bright colors and music, so much music. I could happily spend a long time out in Jackson Square listening to the performers. The architecture ranged from complex modern designs to gorgeous older plans, sometimes mixed in the same space. It's so full of culture and history. When Brennan had invited me to come this week with her for her vacation, I'd immediately agreed. It combined many of my favorite things: Brennan, travel, and science, to name a few.
Still, that didn't stop me from glaring at the shining fur of a brown horse with a neatly-combed, thick mane halted by the side of the street, tied to a carriage. That horse never did anything to me, but I don't really like the look it's giving me.
Okay, so maybe I'm a little cranky. I think it can be excused, given the context.
"Dr. Brennan has a head injury, I was probably concussed, and who the hell knows? Maybe I overdosed." I would have bit into my lip like I always do when I'm starting to be overwhelmed, but considering my lower lip had been split, that was probably not the best idea, and I refrained, instead pinching the inside of my right wrist. "None of those things are known for having predictable effects."
I didn't give it my full attention, but I saw Booth looking away from the road and into the rearview mirror, checking me over again. He keeps checking on me, making sure I'm alright, and while I know he's always been at least a little concerned – more so since we started to really click and get along – this is almost to an absurd degree. If I can survive Kenton and getting stabbed, I should be able to handle the bruises and scrapes now with no problem.
"I'm just being reassuring," he grumbled, a little upset at being shot down so quickly for good intentions.
I knew he didn't mean to make me snappy and I didn't mean to be so rude, but I've always had one hell of a temper, and my composure was stretched thin enough as it was. I knew I'd feel bad for it later. "Yeah, well, either give me reassuring facts or reassure someone who can't tell that you're just offering empty comfort." I bit, before shutting my mouth quickly and looking back out the window.
Booth had to look away when the traffic started moving again, but he shook his head slowly. "You can be really mean when you're anxious, you know?" He didn't say it with much sting, so I knew we were still fine.
You don't say?
"Sorry, I'll try to look past the aches and ouches all over my body and tone down the crankiness," I said, painfully sarcastic. "After all, I just have to look at the bright side: Today, I got to wake up in a bathroom, beaten to a pulp, and covered in blood with no memories of what the fuck happened." I paused, gave my head a tilt, and frowned, pretending to just realize that it wasn't a good thing. "Oh, wait…"
He must have either thought that bitching about it was going to help me get over it faster, or that it was a good sign because it meant I wasn't too shaken. Either way, he let it go without responding, but he rolled his eyes.
Brennan hadn't spoken much. I had to wonder if she was having the same problem I was with unintelligible memory flashes. She was uncharacteristically quiet, and while she was doing the same thing where she looked out the window and brooded, she didn't seem like she was focusing on any one thing at once.
The car lapsed into silence. I waited for something to break it, but I guess neither of the adults understood that I didn't want to be left entirely to my own thoughts. While I knew I needed to learn what had happened, I didn't want to be able to put all of my concentration on the hard-to-discern flashes.
Pain, hurt, oh God. Him. What happened? Bloody, collapsed in a heap.
I think the most infuriating thing was that I was getting enough to get the general idea, but I couldn't discern places or people. I just knew that I'd been somewhere with Brennan, and we'd been attacked, and someone else had been there, too. I couldn't remember why I hadn't stayed and fought, or how many attackers there had been, or why we were being assaulted in the first place.
I looked down at my left arm in my lap. I had gotten far too used to wearing a cast, but the doctor had said I didn't need to wear it constantly, and since the one I'd been using was destroyed and blood-soaked, I'd left the hospital without one. It was weird to see my wrist bare again, and I flexed, rotating my hand in a slow and wide circle.
Brennan's ringtone is offensive, I decided when the high-pitched ringing cut the silence and aggravated my headache without thinking twice.
The anthropologist leaned to one side so that she could get it out from her pocket and she held it up in front of her with a frown until she read the caller ID. She accepted the call and pulled it close to her ear. "Brennan," she answered, her voice giving away a little of her discomfort.
I could only make out the sound of a voice, but all of the words being said were inaudible to me. Still, I couldn't mistake Zach for anyone else.
"I'm getting lost so Brennan can go out. Want a souvenir?"
I leaned forward at the two seconds of memory, raising both of my hands to my head and gingerly massaging my forehead, placing my thumbs against my temples. It hurt to remember. Something had suppressed my memories, whether it was a drug, an injury, or just too much stress, and getting them back was a painful process, both physically and mentally.
"You okay?" Booth asked in concern, looking over his shoulder.
I nodded, swallowing, and tried to keep listening to Zach, even if I didn't know what he was talking about. In a way, it was a good thing – hearing Zach's voice triggered a related memory of me talking to him over the computer. If I was recovering memories based on visual and audio triggers, then it could only be a matter of time until I'd triggered enough to understand what had happened.
"John Doe three sixty-one?" Brennan must have repeated it, because she sounded a little lost. "I… I don't remember that," she admitted slowly, twisting in her seat and pushing at her seatbelt to look over the seat. "Holly, do you remember a John Doe three sixty-one?"
"Um." I started intelligently, making myself sit up straight and drop my hands down. "Yeah, just… barely. James brought in a corpse but they took him out for x-rays a minute later, and that…" I shrugged, dropping my eyes apologetically. "That's all I remember." It wasn't anything to be guilty over. Brennan can't remember anything either, and if nothing else, it's obvious we were brutally assaulted. That didn't change that I felt useless for not being able to provide answers to an event I'd lived through.
Brennan's eyebrows drew closer together, puzzled, questioning, and she turned back around. "What about the x-rays, Zach?" Why is Zach calling about an average John Doe? Almost as soon as I realized that that seemed odd, Brennan responded in surprise. "I sent you the x-rays of a murder victim?"
My eyes widened. John Doe three sixty-one was murdered?
"How'd he die?" Booth asked immediately, loudly to be heard over the speaker.
Almost immediately, the noise on the other end of the phone connection grew louder. Brennan pulled the phone away from her ear, looked at it for a second, and then turned on the speakerphone.
"Is that Booth?!" Angela cried across the line excitedly.
"Yes," Brennan answered plainly, not getting why Angela was so happy about that.
"You're hopping the Streetcar named Desire with Booth?!" Angela was so thrilled about it that it freaked me out a little bit. I like them both, but I'd really rather not think of them both like that. I made a face in the backseat, looking back out the window. "Oh, I love this," she added, probably to Zach or Hodgins.
"Not while I'm here!" I protested loudly, shaking my head quickly despite the headache and soreness of my throat. It was far more important that everyone knew that it wasn't an option.
"Poor Holly," Angela sighed laughingly.
"Obviously, they're working the murder of John Doe three sixty-one together." Zach rationalized calmly. And while we hadn't been doing that before, hell, we had time to kill before we could leave – we needed the results of our tox screens, and we needed to piece together enough of what had happened to come to a resolution that involved no one else getting hurt. Besides, that's what we usually do. Our relationships with each other started with murder investigations, and so that was always going to be an important aspect of it.
"Precisely," Brennan answered, approval clear in her tone. "How did three sixty-one die?"
"The pelvis shows crush fractures," Zach explained, Angela quieting down as the conversation took a turn back into the serious territory. "There's also what appears to be a bullet hole in the skull, but there's no exit wound."
"I'd say execution, except where would the bullet have gone?" I wondered aloud, letting myself sink as much into the evident murder as I could. It was familiar. Depressing, yes, but familiar, and I associated the familiarity with safety. No matter how much danger these cases had put me in, they'd also given me a paternal figure who won't start hurting me. They'd given me friends, a stable place to live, people I can trust. Even a little brother.
Brennan nodded, although Zach couldn't see. "Okay," she said, mostly to herself as she took a deep breath. "Keep working on it," she instructed, not sounding all that strict as her mind was already focusing elsewhere. She ended the call before Zach could answer affirmatively or say goodbye, and fit her cell into her palm, clenching her hand around it.
"You don't remember the case?" Booth asked, making sure he understood the new developments and going between the road and the anthropologist.
"No," Brennan answered. "And it's a murder."
Well, the implications were there. To be prevented from solving murders, we'd been attacked before. Hell, Kenton had betrayed me to cover himself from legal retribution. He hadn't succeeded, but only because Booth and Hodgins had figured it out in time to get to me before I bled out. If the murder was connected to our amnesia, then investigating was not only a pastime, but it would be a necessity.
What's really frustrating is that we have no way of knowing whether or not we need to investigate it for our amnesia because of our amnesia. Freaking paradoxes…
My stomach rumbled emptily and I shifted, grimacing and raising one leg to cross over. With my left arm, I pressed my knee into my stomach for pressure. "Okay," I called to the adults, getting to something that was beginning to seem much more important than it had an hour ago. "I'm going to be typical for once in my life: I'm hungry. Booth, when are you going to feed me?" I could pay for my own food, of course – I usually try to if someone else doesn't "forbid" me, and I have more money to spend at restaurants than I ever used to because of my paid internship, but I can't get any food unless Booth drives somewhere that serves it.
"Well, when was the last time you ate?"
My jaw dropped and I stared at him, sending him the dirtiest look that I could muster. I remembered to shut my mouth, but kept my jaw locked tensely, hoping that I could convey exactly how much I appreciated the question. I crossed my arms over my chest, careful of the tenderness in my right, and cleared my throat pointedly when he just glanced at me, seriously expecting me to answer.
Finally, he realized the problem, and instead of acting cowed, he just chuckled, smiling with mirth. "Oh, my bad," he smiled at me through the mirror. I had no idea what, exactly, was so funny about the situation. "You have amnesia."
"I hate you sometimes," I muttered, shaking my head and looking out the window again.
Glass wall. Tables, booths, chairs. Tall, sideways, African American and wearing an apron… big smile with white teeth, smell of spice and herbs and red letters on the glass.
I shook my head quickly, flinching just a bit at the soreness in my neck, like I'd slept oddly instead of been strangled, and I looked back up to the front of the car. "Um," I said slowly, trying to piece together what I'd seen – Jambalaya Jones, and a short-haired man I didn't recognize. It had looked like a… a diner? "I think I might know a place nearby."
We ended up in a restaurant close to the hospital, which, I suppose, made sense. It seemed like something Brennan would do – go out to enjoy herself, but keep close to work in case she was needed. It was a corner restaurant, so it was pretty small, but for its size it was bustling and filled with people of various ethnic groups, all conversing loudly with each other. The three of us tried to talk by ourselves in a booth towards the corner to be alone for privacy.
We weren't even sitting long enough to order drinks before Booth decided that it was probably a good time to start finding out what had happened to us. I, being the one hungry enough to complain for food (and for me, that was actually pretty damn hungry), picked up a menu from where they were lying on the table.
"Alright." Booth snapped his fingers over the top of the menu and I looked over it to glare at him, but he had my attention. "So, what is the last thing that either of you remember?"
"I already told you," I returned, trying to be heated but aware that I was being chilly at best. When working on an empty stomach and without the use of painkillers I'd grown used to having regularly, albeit at a lowering dosage, I wasn't the most sociable person. Not that I ever really am, but I think Booth, Brennan, Angela, Hodgins, and Zach are the exceptions to the rule. Plus, it's really hard to be aggravated when what you want most to do, aside from figure out why you can't remember anything, is to eat, take a long and hot shower, and sleep for a few hours. "The last thing I remember is the John Doe in the morgue, and I told Dr. Brennan I'd be fine if she left me to my own devices for a while."
Okay, so I suppose it's also pretty hard to bitch at someone who's just trying to look out for me. And yes, I can get that he's looking out for me. It's pretty hard not to, and it took a while for it to get knocked into my skull, but Booth cares. Brennan cares. Everyone at the Jeffersonian, including Goodman, cares about my wellbeing to some extent, and not necessarily for personal gain. So, really, it should just make me feel fuzzy and warm that the attachment is mutual. In actuality, I just feel content.
I can't complain about contentment when I used to be living on top of the fence separating mental health from depression.
Brennan was sitting next to me while Booth sat on the other side of the table. I felt a little bit pinned in, despite my obvious safety, but I'm pretty sure that feeling caged is going to be an issue for me for a very long time, given my history with being helpless. In spite of it, I still felt relaxed enough to start to unwind, to let my shoulders fall and breathe deeper. The sharp aroma of spices from the restaurant's kitchen helped to clear my head, too.
Brennan looked at me sideways as I slowly but visibly started to uncoil, and I brought the menu back up in front of my face. She shook her head slightly, as if she'd had another memory flash, and then looked to Booth. I looked around the menu for a moment to survey her posture and decided that she seemed disconcerted, but that I didn't need to worry any more than I already was. "Graham – Dr. Legiere – knocked over a tray of surgical instruments."
"I want to talk to Legiere," Booth decided promptly, making the same call I'd half expected.
"We must've been about to examine John Doe three sixty-one," Brennan mused, looking at me with a little bit of question in her expression.
"Yep, that was right before James brought in the body." I lowered the menu back down onto the table and leaned back against the booth, bringing my left hand up and softly pushing my hair back behind my ear. "There's a good chance he might have seen us after that, though, to show us the x-rays. We should ask Mike, too, because he and Graham were working-"
"Miss Kirkland?" Oh, great, was my first thought at hearing my name and a stranger's voice. I looked around Brennan, sitting up rigidly straight again, but pausing and narrowing my eyes analytically at the stranger who managed to seem familiar. My mind was telling me to relax, but couldn't tell me how I knew the approaching man wasn't a threat – then I made the connection between the height, short black hair, and dark skin to the man in that flash of the restaurant. He was still wearing a white apron. Maybe he worked in the kitchen.
Booth straightened, bracing almost imperceptibly, and he looked the chef over like he was sizing him up, and then glanced at me. I shrugged. I couldn't have told him why the guy recognized me for certain, but I did know he probably knew me from meeting me before.
Damn, that's frustrating. My memory and my senses are the things I've always been able to rely on. Now that I can't, it's really hard to tell what's real, what's distorted, and what's false. How can I know to be wary of my attacker when I don't know who he is?
I looked up at the apron-wearing man impassively, trying not to give anything away with my expression. He didn't seem put off by the neutrality. "I thought you were leaving today," he said in confusion. It sounded surprised, but the question itself seemed innocent enough in nature. I could imagine a cartoonish question mark blinking above his head.
"It would seem I'm not." I said calmly, cocking my head to the side. "I know this seems like a weird question, but, uh, who are you?"
Oh, yes, definitely a question mark, and probably one with flashing lights and neon color.
"Peter LaSalle," he said slowly, looking between myself and Booth and probably wondering what the hell was going on. "This is my restaurant. My God, what happened to you?"
I hadn't taken the time to consider how it may seem if I went out in public – I have bruises around my throat, on my face, and my lip is split. I've obviously been beaten up. If he knew to look, he could probably see the bulge of the wrap around my right arm underneath my jacket. Without understanding the context, I probably seemed like I'd been kidnapped and/or abused.
"I'm not sure," I answered, now settling with knowing who he was. And it's not like it could hurt to give him answers if I couldn't give very good ones. "The doctor at the hospital says it probably happened Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning."
"After you left here?" Peter asked with a concerned frown, sticking his hands to his sides despite the obvious inclination to reach out and do something – offer comfort, maybe? In which case, I greatly appreciate the restraint.
"I was here Tuesday?" I asked, blinking, not entirely surprised but still pleased to have it confirmed. It felt weird to know something for fact but not be able to verify it to myself. It was like reading a book with an unreliable narrator – frustrating as hell until the very end, when I know every factor involved. "What about her?" I asked, pointing to Brennan.
Peter shook his head and I frowned, looking at Brennan contemplatively. Tuesday night… maybe I came here while she was with Graham.
"What time?" Booth asked, shifting so that he was sitting angled towards the chef, his right forearm down on the tabletop.
Peter's frown deepened for a moment as he tried to recall. "Um, in at seven, left at eight. Don't you remember?" He asked me, now just as puzzled as I had felt upon waking up this morning. He bent over so that he was closer to level with me. "You had dinner with Sam Potter."
Why…?
Sam was an orderly at the hospital who doubled as a sort-of priest, performing small exercises to the deceased in honor of his religion. He believed in voodoo – the actual religion, not the televised and mispronounced representation. As far as I knew, we didn't have any reason to discuss anything for more than a few minutes, and certainly not long enough to warrant a meal over it.
As far as I know. That's the thing, isn't it? My expression turned dark and I looked down to the table so that no one else could see.
"We have to go back to the morgue," Brennan realized, looking back to Booth quickly. "We need to talk to Sam. He's an orderly. He practices voodoo." Booth made a face. Despite that he practices Roman Catholicism, he doesn't understand many religions that aren't based in Christianity. He respects them, sure, and the people who honor them, but he doesn't necessarily get what they're about, and his experience with voodoo probably extends about as far as the creepy misrepresentations in horror movies and child cartoons Parker might watch.
I cleared my throat pointedly, and all three of the adults turned to look at me, Peter seeming more surprised than the other two. I tapped the menu with my index finger, reminding Booth and Brennan of the entire point of being here.
"Sam isn't going to grow wings and fly over the Atlantic," I reminded them both with a deceptive calmness. "So in the meantime, what do you say we feed ourselves before we starve?"
We found Sam Potter again in the morgue, going through his routines of preparing bodies for autopsies and analyses. He was very amiable to being pulled aside for a few minutes, and since he asked very politely for us to go to the chapel in the hospital, we obliged – well, I said that seemed as good a place as any to talk in private, and Booth and Brennan just sort of went with it.
"I guess we went out to a diner together late Tuesday night." After giving a brief explanation that neither Brennan nor I could remember anything from Wednesday or most of Tuesday afternoon, I asked what I'd been meaning to. "Can you tell me why?"
It was a little weird to be in charge of asking the questions, but at the same time, I was getting my own answers for a problem that spooked me to no end. I appreciated the control Booth was letting me exercise.
"You invited me to dinner," Sam responded matter-of-factly, his voice a deep bass that was calming to listen to and very distinctive to him.
"Why?" I asked, finding it very hard to believe. I realized a minute later that I'd sounded pretty rude to him, and he'd been nothing but polite to me for all that I could remember. "No offense, but I don't really do the whole… socialization thing."
Sam passed over a small wooden box carved with symbols that meant nothing to me, but probably had something to do with his religion. It opened on the right side and had small silver hinges on the left. "You found this in the mouth of a John Doe," he answered, letting me take it from him, putting a hand underneath and opening it with the other. The pale color of my skin was a very sharp contrast to the black wooden box, even in the darker lighting of the chapel.
"Looks like there's something lodged between his teeth." That was one of the last things I remembered before I started to draw blanks.
"From John Doe three sixty-one," I said, loud enough for Brennan to hear, and looked over the contents. It was… weird, to say the least, but they seemed ritualistic. A couple seemed like bones from a small animal – maybe an owl, or a rodent – that hadn't been properly cleaned or treated. There looked to be plant root in there, too, but it was old and dead long since. The others were less remarkable and seemed a bit more stereotypical – small beads, mostly, which I suppose means something the same way that flowers have their own meanings. "Voodoo?" I guessed.
"Let me see that," Booth muttered, leaning forward from the pew behind me to look at what I was holding. He and Brennan were both present, but since I had been at the diner with Sam, I guess this was my part of the investigation to lead. I turned more to the side, lifting up one leg and bending so my knee was on the seat and holding up the box for them to look inside. Booth grimaced. "That's voodoo?"
If Sam was put-off by Booth's tone, then he didn't show it. "It's a gris-gris bag," he explained patiently, and the term rang a bell somewhere in my head. "It's a mojo. This one is meant to silence the dead so they can't speak."
I kind of hope that's meant to be more symbolic than literal.
"Well, usually dead people are pretty much silent on their own," Booth pointed out crassly, not quite getting the sentiment behind it.
Brennan gave him a soft elbow in the side. "Voodoo embraces the premise that spirits can speak to us from beyond the grave," she told him truthfully. Even though it was factual, it still sounded a little disrespectful to the religion that she called a big part of their belief system a 'premise,' and I sighed at them both. At least Brennan's pronouncing it right.
"Voodoo is all about the balance of the forces," Sam elaborated gently, kindly expanding on what little part Brennan had touched. "That wind, the flood, this death – it's all out of balance now. Katrina was Armageddon for the ones who love balance." Armageddon, Apocalypse, Ragnarök – all terms for the end of the world as we know it. "Some think it was Secte Rouge that brought it on."
"What's that?" Booth asked, curious and yet a little bothered by not understanding. "Some kind of gang?"
"The ones who follow evil," Sam corrected, looking over the back of the pew to the FBI agent and the anthropologist. "Some believe that they purposely angered the sirens who sent the flood." … Sirens?... I'm not going to question it. "This…" He pointed to the box I held but seemed distasteful of what was inside. "This is Secte Rouge."
"Okay," Booth said, nodding like he got it. "So that's literally 'bad voodoo.'" Well, he kind of got it, but he was oversimplifying it to the point of it being just barely correct.
"Firstly, you're pronouncing it wrong," I told him, fighting hard not to roll my eyes. It was a popular misconception, and it's not exactly surprising he doesn't know the ins and outs of a religion that isn't his own. "It's voodoo, not voodoo. The "V" sounds like an "H." Secondly, Secte Rouge is a subgroup of voodoo practitioners who distort their religion to serve their own amoral purposes." Booth stared, waiting for me to make it less abstract like I do with a lot of things the scientists say. Unfortunately, I could only dumb it down so far before it became inaccurate. I sighed and tried to find something to relate it to. "It's… it's like Farid Masruk, okay?"
Farid Masruk had been a Muslim who claimed to have converted to Christianity. He poisoned and murdered his own brother as an act of terrorism. He'd been about to detonate a bomb of dioxin chemicals in the midst of a huge population at the Hamilton Cultural Center in D.C., but Booth had shot him just in time. Like Secte Rouge, Masruk had taken his religion and used a bastardized version of it to justify what he'd done.
"Oh." Booth seemed a little more concrete with that, so I nodded, satisfied.
Sam took the box from my hands again carefully and I didn't protest. I wasn't exactly disturbed by the contents in the same way that he was, but the animal bones and what they were supposed to represent did unnerve me a little. "It's black gum root," Sam said, looking into the box before closing it. "There's only one place you can find it – a voodoo shop on Pontchatrain Avenue, run by Richard Benoit." His name was pronounced Ben-wah, which seemed like it would be fun to say. "He's a good man. Maybe he can help you."
So, I found a voodoo mojo in the John Doe's mouth, and I asked Sam about it. Why was there a mojo in his mouth to begin with? If he was a murder victim, does that mean that his killer is involved in Secte Rouge? In which case, maybe they're the reason Brennan and I were attacked. Had I accidentally gotten us involved in something that dangerous?
"Thanks," Booth said, with real gratitude for shedding light on the situation. He and Brennan both started to stand up simultaneously, and I took my cue to start to my feet.
"Dr. Brennan, Holly." Sam started, but he remained sitting down, just looking up to us while we stood higher. "A lost day? Perhaps a spell was cast on you, as well," he suggested, with a hint of foreboding in his tone that would have put me on edge, except for that it didn't feel like a threat.
Brennan offered a tense, small smile, trying not to convey how uneasy she was. "No disrespect, Sam, but it's not my religion."
Brennan and I both got into the aisle and while Brennan immediately started back up to the doors to leave the chapel, Booth paused and turned back halfway up to look back to Sam, who remained at the pew with his head down.
I figured he might be praying or something, so I jerked my thumb over my shoulder towards the doors after Brennan, dropping my voice to hiss at Booth, "Unless you're afraid he's going to stick your lookalike doll with a needle, let's blow this joint."
"Voodoo," Booth repeated, still using the inaccurate pronunciation, in the car with derision. "Who's going to believe that stuff?"
I don't know why it bothered me so much, but it seriously irked me that he, of all people, was criticizing someone else for a belief system that he thought made little to no sense. Not only did it seem hypocritical of him from my perspective, but it also pissed me off that he was needling at Sam Potter, who was a hell of a lot easier to get along with than I ever have been.
"That's what I used to think about all religions, yours included," I said sharply, letting my tone be cold as I glared at him through the rearview mirror. He's never expressed negativity towards my beliefs, and I've respected his in return. "God sounds no more sensible to me than the universal balances do to you." At the slight against God, Booth's shoulders tightened. "Oh, don't tense up like that," I snapped. "You've known for a long time that I'm Atheist."
"It's a religion," Brennan said simply to Booth, as if that explained why his views contrasted – and it did explain it, in a way. "No crazier than… well, what are you?"
Booth's jaw tensed and he didn't answer immediately. I thought that whatever points Brennan would make would do him some good, so I responded for him. "He's Catholic."
Brennan nodded, rolling with it and looking back out the windshield. "They believe in the same saints you do, and prayer." She told Booth helpfully. I guess she thought that if she drew the parallels between voodoo and Catholicism, Booth would be forced to recognize that they're pretty similar in some aspects. "What they call spells, you call miracles. They have priests…"
"We don't make zombies," Booth stressed strongly.
Instead of rolling my eyes, I raised my eyebrows in the mirror at him so that he would see if he looked up. "Really? Because the definition of a zombie is a revived corpse." I knew he wouldn't like the way I went about making my point, but someone needed to put things in perspective for him, and Brennan's way wasn't working. "Jesus Christ was crucified and remained dead for three days before he rose again. He was a corpse, and then he was revived. Hence, zombie."
I knew I didn't have all of the facts or background of what had happened – why should I? I don't personally believe it ever happened. But Booth does, so I knew that grossly oversimplifying would offend him, and maybe that was the only way of making him realize he's been doing the same thing I am now.
I was right that he didn't like it, and it definitely shocked him. He twisted in his seat for almost two seconds before he remembered that he was still driving, and, casting a heated scowl over the back of his seat, he returned back to the road, his hands tightened to fists around the steering wheel.
Brennan's phone rang. The scientist didn't have it in her pocket, so she just had to raise it up to her head and accept the call. "Brennan."
Booth's voice was tight and strained, like he was taking great effort not to yell at me. "Jesus is not a zombie," he said tersely. "Alright?" He looked up at me through the mirrors, eyes narrowed, daring me to challenge him on that. "Man, I shouldn't have to tell you that," he complained.
Brennan looked over at Booth like she was seriously considering his mental soundness, and she leaned to the opposite side of the car, putting her free hand over her hear to better hear her own conversation.
"All I'm doing is being fair," I countered Booth calmly. Although I know I'm royally ticking him off, I'm doing so for a purpose.
Part of the reason I try to avoid conversations about religion is because I know I'm probably going to accidentally offend people if I participate. What Booth is doing now, generalizing and stereotyping everyone who practices voodoo, could be roughly equated to saying everyone from the Middle-East supports Al-Qaeda, albeit on a smaller scale. Every religion has people who abuse it; every belief system can be portrayed negatively. Unfortunately, most of the voodoo Booth has been exposed to has been horribly stereotyped and inaccurately portrayed by media.
I continued before he could contradict me and say something along the lines of "Jesus is not a zombie" again. "You don't believe in Atheism, but you've never gone after my beliefs. You don't believe in voodoo, either, but you're going after theirs. Why? If you can't respect their religion, why should you expect anyone else to show you that courtesy?"
"Congenital?" Brennan asked before Booth could answer what was mostly meant to be a rhetorical question. "Cross-reference what you know so far with the D.M.O.R.T. records of missing Katrina victims." I looked to Brennan over the shoulder of her seat, done with Booth's debate as far as I was concerned. Brennan's expression visibly softened and became apologetic. "Pretty soon, Ange… no, of course not."
I leaned forward to hear Angela. What was she saying that was making Brennan react that way?
It was very, very faint, but I could make out the words that Angela was saying. The artist sounded confused and a little bit hurt that we weren't coming back yet. "Alright, what's going on?"
I sighed before speaking loudly to make up for my distance from the microphone on the cell, explaining quickly for what felt like the dozenth time. "I woke up in the motel bathroom this morning, bloody and amnestic, and Dr. Brennan wasn't in a much better state, so I called Booth to tell him we were in the hospital because he seems to like to know these things, and he-"
Booth reached over quickly with one hand and pulled the phone away, using the element of surprise to confiscate it. Brennan released it more out of surprise than acquiescence, and the FBI agent held it up to talk into while he kept trying to drive. "Okay, Bones and Holly have amnesia because a voodoo murderer put a spell on them to keep them from solving the murder of John Doe three sixty-one."
I had to admit that that seemed to sum it up nicely, aside from the whole spell part. Although it sounded a little ridiculous, I probably wouldn't believe most things that have happened to me this year if I hadn't lived it.
"That's a huge supposition!" Brennan cried in protest, reaching to try to steal her phone back away. Booth switched hands between the phone and the steering wheel so that she still couldn't get it, like he was playing keep-away.
Angela sighed loudly. "That's fine, if you don't want to tell me." She sounded put-out and resigned, which I didn't like to hear, but she turned off the phone and the screen lit up, the time the call had lasted flashing on the screen momentarily.
Booth held it away and frowned at the screen. "She doesn't believe me," he said, sounding more than a little miffed.
"Well, if we're being completely honest, I probably wouldn't believe it if I were her, either," I admitted.