(The Pinocchio in the Planter)
I don't own Bones.
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Brennan had always tried to be as honest as she could be in her dealings with others. She had never understood why someone would lie when honest communication was easier to remember. She truly believed that a world without lies would be more efficient.
They were working on a case that dealt with a man who had believed that absolute honesty freed him from societies pitfalls. During that case she had asked Booth if he lied to her and his hesitation before replying with a 'no' to her question made her believe he had lied to her about that. He claimed that he didn't lie to her, but she felt he did, at least sometimes. She hated that her partner felt it was alright to lie to her. Somehow it made him appear to be less honest and yet she knew her partner was an honest man. It was confusing.
"Tell me a significant instance in which you have lied to me in the past." If her partner had lied to her in the past, then she wanted to know what that lie was. She wanted to know what was so important to him that he felt he had to lie about something to her.
Booth had told her he couldn't think of anything, but she knew he just didn't want to tell her and it made her a little angry. Didn't he trust her? Why would he lie to her under any circumstances? What could be so bad about a given situation, that he would lie about it? She wanted an answer. She needed to know what lies he had told her. This was about trust. She needed to be able to trust him.
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Booth didn't believe that all lies were bad. Sometimes they were necessary and he didn't feel bad telling a lie when he had to, but he knew that his partner tried to avoid lying and she didn't appreciate it when someone lied to her.
His partner felt that all lies were bad, but he knew that wasn't true. There had been times during his career when he'd had to tell a victim's family that their loved one was dead and he knew that the truth about their loved one's death would do more harm than good. The families usually wanted to know if the victim had died a painless death and he knew they didn't want to know the truth. No one wanted to hear that their loved one had died screaming in agony. Booth knew that would add to the burden of their grief and he always made it a point to say that the victim had died quickly and hadn't been in pain. It was a harmless lie but a necessary lie.
He'd explained that to Brennan before and she seemed to accept that he might be right but lies were still anathema to her. He knew it was a matter of trust. Lies confused her and made her distrust the person telling her the lie and that left Booth with a problem. He had lied to her in the past, but it had been to protect her.
Brennan had few friends and that was because of her bluntness and her honesty. There were few people in this world that liked to be told the absolute truth. Most people wanted to be lied to if that meant their feelings weren't hurt. He was used to her bluntness and usually forgave her fairly quickly when she upset him with her need to be truthful. She didn't mean to be cruel and he knew that. She just didn't understand that sometimes a lie was comforting.
He wasn't as blunt as his partner when he dealt with people unless it was in the interview room and he was dealing with suspects. He tried to be truthful with most people he dealt with but like most situations, there were exceptions. He used lies when he was dealing with situations he didn't want to deal with. When it came to Brennan, he felt the occasional white lie protected her feelings and was harmless in the long run. Or at least, he hoped so.
She was upset and he knew it. She tried to hide it from him, but he knew she wanted to know what lies he'd told her in the past. He couldn't tell her what those lies were because he thought it would be cruel. On the other hand, she needed to trust him and right now, he knew she wasn't sure about him and his motives.
"You think you're protecting me, but by avoiding the truth, you inevitably create greater harm." Brennan stared at her partner and she wanted an answer.
Shocked, Booth knew this was getting out of hand. "No, no I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that to you."
Irritated, Brennan felt that Booth was being less than truthful and she wanted to know why. "Lying to spare my feelings?" That might have been his reason in the past, but it wasn't needed or wanted.
They were still working on the case and he was starting to hate it. "Maybe it's to spare my own feelings." He saw she was confused and he didn't want to explain what he meant. "I tell you what. I'll give you an example when we finish this case." He hoped she would forget that promise.
"I won't forget." Brennan was determined to find out what lies Booth had told her.
Of course not. Booth knew she was going to want an answer sooner or later. "I know you won't forget." Her eidetic memory was going to haunt him.
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The case was over and they were celebrating at the Founding Fathers. Their drinks on the table in front of them, Brennan reminded Booth about his promise.
Since she wasn't leaving him a choice, Booth sighed and glanced at his hands folded on the table. "Do you remember when I broke up with Hannah?" He hoped he had a solution to his problem.
Puzzled, Brennan frowned at her partner. "Of course, that was very recently."
His gaze back on his partner, Booth gave her a weak smile. "I didn't lie to you. I just didn't tell you how much it meant to me that you were there for me . . . It meant the world to me." And it had.
Brennan thought she understood. "But you didn't tell me, so you lied by omission."
He tried to lighten up the moment. "Well . . . you didn't ask me therefore I didn't tell you."
Brennan smiled. "I'm an exceptional partner."
"Yes, you are." And Booth meant that. She was the best partner he'd ever had. She was there when he was in trouble and he tried to be there for her when she needed help. He'd made a lot of mistakes in the last two years, but he hoped he had fixed most of those mistakes. He'd pushed Brennan when he should have been patient and that had been his biggest mistake. It had been wrong to ask her to take a chance on a relationship with him before she was ready. He'd allowed Sweets to influence him and to this day he didn't know why.
When she'd rejected him, he'd been hurt, but he valued her friendship and partnership and he could live with that rejection. After that terrible night in front of the Hoover, he'd tried to tamp down his feelings towards her and he felt he'd been successful, but in the end, she had gone to a dig in Maluku and that had hurt. She'd been willing to leave their friendship behind and he'd felt like it might be a final separation. She said she was tired of dealing with murder and victims and sadness and pain. He'd tried to encourage her to take a vacation, but she'd accepted a job that would keep her away from him for a year.
She had gone away and left him behind. Because the Army had wanted him back, he'd been foolish enough to contract with them for a year. It was mistake and he shouldn't have let that happen. He had too many health issues and once he was in Afghanistan, he'd realized that the training they'd asked him to do had only been part of what they wanted him to do. They'd wanted to use his sniper skills too and it made him feel sick that he'd added more bodies to his cosmic balance sheet.
Now that Hannah was out of his life, he realized that he'd been making mistakes since his brain surgery. That surgery had affected him in ways he'd never understand and it had taken him this long to realize that he'd let the past dictate his future. He couldn't keep doing that. Brennan was his present and she might be his future. He just needed to figure out how to make that happen for both of them.
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She did think she was the best partner Booth could ever have. She was the best forensic anthropologist in the world and that allowed her to help close cold cases for the FBI. She also used that skill to identify the remains of military personal for the Pentagon and she helped the CIA when they needed it.
In the last two years, she had made several personal mistakes and the biggest mistake she had made had been when she'd turned down Booth in front of the Hoover. She'd been afraid that she wasn't strong enough to allow her future happiness to be dictated to by someone else. If that relationship had failed, she knew it was possible she could lose the best friend she'd ever had and that made her turn him down. She knew she didn't have the heart that he did and at the time, she'd felt that her lack of empathy would destroy any relationship she tried to develop with her partner.
For too long, she'd allowed herself to walk away from strong emotional attachments because there was a possibility that their relationship would fail and that would cause her to be unhappy. Her life had been a solitary one because of her fears and it had taken her a long time to accept that good or bad, allowing herself to care for someone was worth the risk.
For some reason she didn't quite understand, she'd allowed Taffett to sow doubt in her mind that what she did with Booth wasn't enough. The Gravedigger had played mind games with her during the trial and Brennan had found herself sick of dealing with the victims of murder. After the trial, she'd wanted an escape and she took it. Now that she was back from Maluku and she'd worked a few cases with Booth she'd come to the conclusion that she was stronger than she thought she was. She could allow herself to become emotionally attached to Booth, because it was worth the risk. He knew who she was and he loved her anyway.
It was a liberating feeling.
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