and the earth is a little bigger, bonesfic, b/b, 4000 words
title: and the earth is a little bigger
author: allthingsholy
spoilers: Makes references to a casting spoiler for next season, but no specifics beyond my speculation.
rating: PG
word count: 4000
disclaimer: Title from "A Matter of Time," by Jukebox the Ghost.
--
“What’s she like?”
Booth looks up from his briefing book, from the tactical breakdowns and insurgence reports. The flap of the tent snaps in the wind. “What’s who like?”
Jen settles her shoulders against her chair and gives him this knowing look. “The woman you’re in love with.” She grins and shrugs a shoulder up and down. “Call it women’s intuition, or the discerning gaze of the tortured artist.”
“You’re a war reporter. Tortured artist doesn’t seem accurate.”
“There’s torture involved in there somewhere.” She looks down, and Booth watches the lines of her neck as she sketches something on the ever-present pad in her hand, and he’s almost caught by surprise when she says, “You get letters.”
His chest tightens up for a second, and he almost reflexively reaches for the envelope tucked into the pocket of his fatigues, but he pulls back at the last minute and says instead, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She levels him with another look, and he clears his throat, and looks at the blaze of desert visible just through the crack at the door. “Her name is Temperance.”
Jen nods her head a little, and leans over her pad again, the scratch of her pen soft and sharp. “You know, that means moderation in action or feeling. Restraint.” She looks up at him, and pushes the hair from her eyes. “It means not doing the thing you want to.”
Booth clenches his jaw. He can feel her letter in his pocket, and the grain of the paper against his empty hands. “I know.”
--
The island is hot and humid, and it rains all the time. There’s a sticky sweet sheen to her skin every day, and in the distance she can hear the rush and bustle of the jungle. The air smells faintly of spices, and she spends whole nights lying awake, listening to the sound of the shore, or the trees, the scent of nutmeg weaving its way into her hair.
“These were called the spice islands,” Daisy is saying, a garish bandana tied neatly at her brow. Brennan leans closer to the specimen and narrows her eyes, but Daisy soldiers on even without a reply. “They were named by traders who came from China in search of then-valuable commodities like clove and cinnamon and-”
“Yes, Ms. Wick, thank you. I’m aware of the historical origins of the islands’ nickname.”
They work in silence for awhile, the rest of the team bustling in and out of the tent. They’ve been here for four months; there’s an academic camaraderie between them all and for the most part everyone works in peace. The Jeffersonian’s team is splitting research time with select agencies from all over the world, and the camp is a frenzy of languages and cultures.
There is a peacefulness here that she finds herself settling into, even as a gnawing feeling grows in her gut. She knows it is an ill-formed metaphor, but-it’s something Booth would say. It makes her feel closer to him, to think of the world in terms he’d use, to see life sometimes the way he’d see it. She tries to imagine his voice in her head, making the observations it took so long to give him credit for, but the only thing she ever really hears him say is goodbye.
--
Booth spends most of his time in training, giving seminars and practical demonstrations. He teaches recruits how to track and detain, how to sift important information from useless chatter, and how to learn to rely on your gut and intuition. He tries to couch it in more dependable terms, but he knows that’s all it comes down to: that feeling you get when things just don’t sit right, and being able to follow that hunch all the way through. Taking the training and learning how to make it work for you in the field, where all the lines are blurred at best, and often gone altogether. It’s a hard thing to teach, but he does his best.
At night, he sticks to his quarters or the mess. Being back in the service carries a weight he wasn’t expecting, one that doesn’t sit right just yet. He eats his meals and then does a few laps of the rec room, watching all the recruits unwind.
Some of the guys wave him over to their table, and he can see cards and poker chips and the easy smiles of cherished downtime. “You want in for a hand?” Davis asks him, taking a long drink of water. Even inside, the heat still presses in on them from every side. It makes Booth restless, and a little uneasy.
“Simms here can’t bluff to save his life, and Johnson’s got more tells than a gossiping schoolgirl,” Bronson says.
Seeley stretches his mouth into a grin that he hopes looks natural, and shakes his head. “No, thanks,” he says, backing away from the table. “I’m not a gambler.”
--
She gets postcards from Angela and Hodgins, delivered far past their prime. They’re usually hastily scrawled greetings on the back of touristy snapshots, and a line or two of news. They stayed a few weeks in Versailles. Angela painted the nudes.
She gets the occasional email from Cam, letting her know how the lab is holding up. “The structural integrity of the lab is not my foremost concern,” she’d told Cam when she’d promised to email. “I’d rather hear about any changes that will affect me when I return next year.”
Cam had given her a look, one she’d been unable to decipher, and said, “You’re sure you’re coming back?”
Brennan hadn’t answered right away, and she remembers the hesitation in her voice when she’d finally said, “Of course.” It’s the same pause she feels when she sits down to write Booth, every few weeks just like clockwork. She writes twice as often as he does, but she knows putting words down like that has never been one of his strong suits. He’d apologized for it at first, for the stop and stutter of his letters, but she’d responded reasonably, “I’m a writer, Booth. You’re not. There’s no sense in pretending otherwise.”
At first, they had emailed but it felt too impersonal, too disconnected. She’d wanted something to hold onto while he was so far away, and so now she writes him. Usually, the page is full of news of her findings, or the occasional anecdote from the camp. She tells him about Daisy sometimes, or the other scientists instead. She tries to inject humor wherever possible.
She tries not to ask too many questions. Not because she doesn’t want to know, but because she doesn’t want him to have to say. She knows he is a man born to serve, to give his all to country and creed, but she also knows the toll it takes on him, teaching new scores of young men how to wound and hunt and kill.
So she tells him about the science instead, in the smallest, easiest words she can think of. She tells him about the sociological implications of the artifacts, and the ways this information could change the world.
--
When she writes, her voice is full of wonder. He knows it’s not something she does on purpose, that she doesn’t set it up as grandiose or try to be self-important. There’s a genuine joy she gets from her work, a sense of purpose that makes her shine.
He wonders sometimes if he should’ve stayed away, way back then. If he should’ve left her to her fossils and artifacts, parsing stories of the living from the remains of the dead. If he should’ve left her reconstructing the world, instead of cataloging all the ways it’s falling apart.
He reads her letters over and over again, until the paper is worn beneath his fingers. He carries each one in his pocket until a new one arrives, and then he works at the creases of the latest until all the corners are bent and the folds feel thready and familiar. It’s something solid to hold on to, when the rest of it seems to pass through his hands like sand.
Jen snaps a picture of him once, feet up in the mess hall, Bones’ latest letter held gently in his hands. Her camera jangles around her neck, and she’s got her hair held up with a pencil. She looks every bit the dashing war reporter, with a mission and a solid sense of right and wrong. He finds himself instantly envious of her ability to separate so quickly the things she sees every day, into absolute chunks of right and wrong. He knows there is far more gray area in the world than he’d ever thought possible.
He keeps her at arms’ length, the way he’s been trained to treat reporters, but she manages to stick around anyway. She takes him with her sometimes, into the town just beside the base, to her familiar haunts. She knows the people there in a way that makes him uncomfortable, and he knows she can read it on his face, in the tense lines of his shoulders and hard grip of his hands behind his back.
“They’re not the enemy, you know,” she says, bringing a cup of mint tea to her lips. The café is dingy but clean enough, and the buzz of Arabic around them makes their conversation stick out. He keeps his eyes at the door, and his back straight against his chair. “The enemy is out there, somewhere. Hidden. Not here.” She motions around them, to the people in the room. “These people are just trying to get by.”
There’s something in her eyes that makes him still suddenly, and ease just a little bit. She tells him about her experiences in the north, about her time in the Baltic, in Georgia, in Chechnya. She’s almost got as many scars as he does.
They spend the afternoon in town, and by the time he returns to the base the sun is setting over the farthest hills. He takes a shower and slides into bed, and reads Bones’ letter one more time before he falls asleep.
--
An archeologist from Scotland keeps trying to ask her out. He hangs out around her tent and makes suggestive and witty remarks, even though she’s told him she’s not interested. He’s nice about it, and jovial, and even though he’s persistent to a fault, she likes him well enough. He makes her smile.
Daisy asks her about it one day, when she spies them coming back from a walk along a high trail in the jungle. “Are you and Dr. McKidd romantically involved?”
“That is none of your business, Ms. Wick.”
“I know,” Daisy continues, falling in step beside Brennan as they walk toward the mess tent for dinner. “But I was under the impression that you and Agent Booth had come to a kind of romantic denouement and if I was incorrect then that means I’ve interpreted those social cues incorrectly.” She shakes her head in exasperation. “I really thought I had it this time.”
Brennan lengthens her strides, but Daisy quickens up to keep pace. When Brennan looks over, the younger woman is staring at her wide-eyed and expectantly, and Brennan stops suddenly, facing Daisy. She takes a deep breath and looks out into the jungle. She knows just beyond the clearing behind them, there’s a waterfall that drops into a small canyon that feeds a stream that meets the ocean. It’s what she’s thinking about when she says to Daisy, “Yes, Booth and I had come to an understanding about our relationship and its romantic implications. He expressed interest in a new, more personal aspect to our partnership, but I’m not-” She falters here, and closes her eyes for just a moment. A waterfall that feeds a stream that meets the ocean. “I wasn’t ready. So we decided to pursue other options for a year.”
“That’s so romantic,” Daisy says. “And so depressing. So are you going to get together when we get back? Are you two in love? Is he going to wait for you? What were you doing in the jungle with Dr. McKidd?”
“That was a professional conversation,” Brennan answers, “and this discussion of our personal lives is not relevant to our work here. I shouldn’t have told you.” She turns and heads for the mess.
Just as she reaches the tent, she hears Daisy’s quick footsteps behind her, and the younger woman’s hand grabs her arm. “But wait, was I right? Are you two in love?”
Brennan opens her mouth to answer, to end the conversation, to dismiss the younger woman, but no sound comes out. She takes in a few quick breaths and tries to focus herself enough to answer, but all she can think of is the Mall at night, the Washington Monument looming over them, and her temple resting sadly on Booth’s shoulder. She hardly notices when Daisy scoots past her, jovial and triumphant, muttering to herself, “I was right!”
--
Booth doesn’t hear from Brennan for over a month. At first, he thinks there’s a delay in the post, but then two months have passed without a word. He checks every day, but there’s never anything from Indonesia. He’s gotten emails from Cam with a little news of her, so he knows she’s okay, but that things on her trip aren’t going well. Stalls in the research, contradictions in the findings. She’s having trouble halfway around the world, and he can’t offer help and she doesn’t ask him to. He still waits for her letters with a kind of yearning that sits deep inside him, coiled and restless.
Two months turns to three, and still no news. He takes it as a sign, the thing he was waiting for, the go-ahead to move on. She told him herself she couldn’t do it, and he’d been resiliently doubting her until now, but there’s three months of silence that says she really does know herself better than he does.
So this is how it will be with her, he realizes. This really is all she can manage. He won’t fault her for it, because he knows she really did try, but he also knows he’ll stay a desperate starving man if he lets himself. He’ll hang on to her forever if he doesn’t move right now. He knows he’s only been holding himself back, so he strides with purpose out of his quarters and into the bright, hot afternoon.
--
Brennan and Dr. McKidd-“Call me Thomas,” he’d said, all lilting accent and sky-blue eyes-take the ferry out to Ambon Island for supplies and food and a much-needed break. They stand on the deck for the ride through Amboyna Bay, and Thomas points out the local sights. He’s been in Indonesia for less time than she has, but travels more often to the city and deals with the local universities there. They’ve got equipment out on loan and are using local students as interpreters, and Thomas takes her straight from the boat to the campus.
He shows her the buildings he likes best and then takes her to the library. He leads her to a hole-in-the-wall tea room and bumbles his way through Javanese enough to order them of a pot of something fragrant and strong.
He tells her about his studies in Scotland, about digs he’s been on around the world. They compare war stories and techniques as the noon sun shines in through the window.
“I meant to ask,” Thomas says, sipping delicately at his tea, “you’ve been publishing less lately. Why is that?”
Brennan cocks her head and answers, “I published a paper last year on bone density and trauma cataloging. It was in the Atlantic Science Quarterly.”
Thomas smiles and leans in, propping his elbows on the table. “Yes, but-and please don’t be offended- there seems to be less focus in your work lately. Less passion.”
“Well, I released a new book two years ago, perhaps-”
“You write an awful lot about violence nowadays,” he interrupts. Brennan starts, tightening her hand around her cup. She must look offended, because he backpedals immediately, saying, “I didn’t mean to sound harsh. You just used to write about evolutionary processes, and the historical contexts of your finds. Now it’s all wound deciphering and homicide reconstruction.”
Brennan drops her gaze, overly conscious of his eyes on her. When she speaks again, she tells him about the Jeffersonian and the partnership with the FBI, about her time in the field and the team’s focus on solving hard-to-solve crime. She tells him about Hodgins and Angela, and about Cam. When she mentions Booth, it’s in broad strokes. She keeps a wide berth between herself and her memories of him. It’s hard enough without dwelling, she tells herself, and so she relays the details of their partnership like she’s laying out facts: he works for the FBI, they’ve been partners for 5 years, he’s doing a tour in Afghanistan while she came here to head up the team. She holds him at arms’ length, but she knows she must show more than she means to, judging by the look Thomas is giving her.
He stays silent while she talks. When she finally quiets, he says, “Wow. So you’re taking a far more hands-on approach to the forensics of it, I see.”
“I’ve helped put away over 100 criminals,” she says flatly.
Something in her tone must sound strained because Thomas quirks his head and says, “You say that like it’s something to be ashamed of.”
“No, I just-” Brennan clears her throat and swirls the contents of her mug. “It’s just not what I expected to be doing. It’s not what I thought I’d be pursuing at this point in my career.”
Thomas looks at her, and grins, and asks, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, “Then why go back?”
Brennan doesn’t answer.
--
The thing with Jen creeps up on him, but he doesn’t fight it. He wasn’t expecting it and wasn’t really looking for it, but it’s nice. Easy. As calm as two people taking shelter in a war zone can be, anyway, but there’s no heavy pressure in his chest every time he looks at her, which is relief enough on its own. He doesn’t-tries not to-think about Bones while he’s with Jen, but he still feels the weight of her last letter against his chest, still tucked away in his pocket, and it does its best to pull him back down every time.
The thing with Jen is new, only a few weeks old, and still awkward and fumbling at the edges. He wakes in the early morning and tries to tug his clothes on as quietly as possible, knocking his shin against her dresser and bracing himself with a wince against the mirror.
When he looks up, he sees the photo she took of him stuck into a corner of her mirror, beside one of three soldiers shirtless and laughing next to the bulk of a rusted out Humvee. Behind him, Jen sits up, wrapping the sheet around herself. He meets her eyes in the mirror, and he knows she wants to ask. Do you still love her? Are you waiting for her, even after all this? He isn’t surprised when Jen stays silent, though, and gives him a quiet, sure smile and looks away.
Booth turns his eyes back to the photo. He sees a man in profile, holding a letter, with a look on his face like a starving child. He sees tension throughout the man’s shoulders in the way he curves around the paper like it’s something cherished, or sacred, or dangerous.
He picks up his shirt and feels the weight of Bones’ latest letter in the pocket. He can recite it practically from memory after three months of reading and re-reading, and he weighs the feel of it in his hand as he stands there.
There’s a halted feeling here, she’d written, like we’re waiting with no hope of an ending to come. It’s begun to fester, and breakthroughs are few and far between. I have never been one for overly sentimental responses, but the anticipation seems to have waned and now there is just unreliable research, and a surrounding jungle, and too much rain.
Maybe there is no grand conclusion. Maybe there is no way to change the world. Maybe it will just be like this, forever, with no hope of restoration. The local clerics believe that bones carry with them bad spirits, and are marked for misfortune. They say we are asking for trouble, and are looking hard enough that we will surely find it. I came here certain of my place as a researcher, but maybe they’re right. Maybe I am just a grave robber.
It’s the most doubt he’d ever heard her express, and he’d sent her his best reply, in jumbled phrases and imperfect prose. He never got a response.
He takes the letter from the pocket of his shirt and holds it, running his thumb over the envelope where she wrote out his name. He puts it into the pocket of his pants instead, and he knows when he gets back to his quarters he’ll put it in the drawer with the rest of them. He pulls his shirt on and buttons it slowly, and the weight against his chest feels empty already but also free. Not like a void, just like a space that’s not yet filled. He knows it will be slow, but he’ll get used to it with time.
Behind him, Jen slides out of bed and goes to put on coffee. His bare feet make little sound as he follows her into the kitchen, and he’s silent as he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her back against his chest.
--
The breakthrough comes nine months into her stay. A researcher from Poland makes a discovery in the vertebrae, and then an archeologist from Kenya connects it to a skeleton they’d found last year in Tibet. There’s a chain forming, a narrative rising up, clearly delineating from one site to another. They’re rewriting history with their hands in the soil and the dust in their eyes, and Brennan has never been quite so happy.
Four months after she last wrote Booth, she picks up her pen and starts again. She doesn’t apologize for the absence, and she doesn’t explain. There are things enough to say to him, but not over all this time and distance, so instead, she just writes the first thing that comes to her mind.
It’s coming together finally. Everything’s falling into place, and the feel of forward momentum is back. There’s a sense here of discovery, and triumph, and anticipation. Like we’re all holding our breaths and waiting to come to the end of the line, and look back and see something magnificent. There’s a local word here that some of the researchers have adopted to describe the feel of the camp; there’s no real word for it in English, but it most closely translates to “ecstasy.”
She puts the pen down for a minute and leans back in her chair. The rainy season is finally waning, but there’s a soft sprinkle of drops against her tent. She tips her neck back and closes her eyes, and thinks of the sky and the rain and the waterfall and the ocean, and the way that the world can change by tiny fractions. It doesn’t have to happen all at once, and that’s something she’s known for awhile, but it feels more significant now. Like there are possibilities upon possibilities, and humanity has come from somewhere she can see and understand, and now it can go anywhere. The world can change. She can change. It feels like hope springing up in her chest, and she opens her eyes and smiles.
She picks up her pen again, and touches it to the paper. Today, she saw the build of her bones taking shape a thousand evolutionary steps back, and she can see the person she is now, and the person she could be. She can hear the buzz of the camp outside, and just past her door someone is laughing. She listens to the rain falling softly against the canvas of the tent, and leans down over the paper, and starts to write.
author: allthingsholy
spoilers: Makes references to a casting spoiler for next season, but no specifics beyond my speculation.
rating: PG
word count: 4000
disclaimer: Title from "A Matter of Time," by Jukebox the Ghost.
--
“What’s she like?”
Booth looks up from his briefing book, from the tactical breakdowns and insurgence reports. The flap of the tent snaps in the wind. “What’s who like?”
Jen settles her shoulders against her chair and gives him this knowing look. “The woman you’re in love with.” She grins and shrugs a shoulder up and down. “Call it women’s intuition, or the discerning gaze of the tortured artist.”
“You’re a war reporter. Tortured artist doesn’t seem accurate.”
“There’s torture involved in there somewhere.” She looks down, and Booth watches the lines of her neck as she sketches something on the ever-present pad in her hand, and he’s almost caught by surprise when she says, “You get letters.”
His chest tightens up for a second, and he almost reflexively reaches for the envelope tucked into the pocket of his fatigues, but he pulls back at the last minute and says instead, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She levels him with another look, and he clears his throat, and looks at the blaze of desert visible just through the crack at the door. “Her name is Temperance.”
Jen nods her head a little, and leans over her pad again, the scratch of her pen soft and sharp. “You know, that means moderation in action or feeling. Restraint.” She looks up at him, and pushes the hair from her eyes. “It means not doing the thing you want to.”
Booth clenches his jaw. He can feel her letter in his pocket, and the grain of the paper against his empty hands. “I know.”
--
The island is hot and humid, and it rains all the time. There’s a sticky sweet sheen to her skin every day, and in the distance she can hear the rush and bustle of the jungle. The air smells faintly of spices, and she spends whole nights lying awake, listening to the sound of the shore, or the trees, the scent of nutmeg weaving its way into her hair.
“These were called the spice islands,” Daisy is saying, a garish bandana tied neatly at her brow. Brennan leans closer to the specimen and narrows her eyes, but Daisy soldiers on even without a reply. “They were named by traders who came from China in search of then-valuable commodities like clove and cinnamon and-”
“Yes, Ms. Wick, thank you. I’m aware of the historical origins of the islands’ nickname.”
They work in silence for awhile, the rest of the team bustling in and out of the tent. They’ve been here for four months; there’s an academic camaraderie between them all and for the most part everyone works in peace. The Jeffersonian’s team is splitting research time with select agencies from all over the world, and the camp is a frenzy of languages and cultures.
There is a peacefulness here that she finds herself settling into, even as a gnawing feeling grows in her gut. She knows it is an ill-formed metaphor, but-it’s something Booth would say. It makes her feel closer to him, to think of the world in terms he’d use, to see life sometimes the way he’d see it. She tries to imagine his voice in her head, making the observations it took so long to give him credit for, but the only thing she ever really hears him say is goodbye.
--
Booth spends most of his time in training, giving seminars and practical demonstrations. He teaches recruits how to track and detain, how to sift important information from useless chatter, and how to learn to rely on your gut and intuition. He tries to couch it in more dependable terms, but he knows that’s all it comes down to: that feeling you get when things just don’t sit right, and being able to follow that hunch all the way through. Taking the training and learning how to make it work for you in the field, where all the lines are blurred at best, and often gone altogether. It’s a hard thing to teach, but he does his best.
At night, he sticks to his quarters or the mess. Being back in the service carries a weight he wasn’t expecting, one that doesn’t sit right just yet. He eats his meals and then does a few laps of the rec room, watching all the recruits unwind.
Some of the guys wave him over to their table, and he can see cards and poker chips and the easy smiles of cherished downtime. “You want in for a hand?” Davis asks him, taking a long drink of water. Even inside, the heat still presses in on them from every side. It makes Booth restless, and a little uneasy.
“Simms here can’t bluff to save his life, and Johnson’s got more tells than a gossiping schoolgirl,” Bronson says.
Seeley stretches his mouth into a grin that he hopes looks natural, and shakes his head. “No, thanks,” he says, backing away from the table. “I’m not a gambler.”
--
She gets postcards from Angela and Hodgins, delivered far past their prime. They’re usually hastily scrawled greetings on the back of touristy snapshots, and a line or two of news. They stayed a few weeks in Versailles. Angela painted the nudes.
She gets the occasional email from Cam, letting her know how the lab is holding up. “The structural integrity of the lab is not my foremost concern,” she’d told Cam when she’d promised to email. “I’d rather hear about any changes that will affect me when I return next year.”
Cam had given her a look, one she’d been unable to decipher, and said, “You’re sure you’re coming back?”
Brennan hadn’t answered right away, and she remembers the hesitation in her voice when she’d finally said, “Of course.” It’s the same pause she feels when she sits down to write Booth, every few weeks just like clockwork. She writes twice as often as he does, but she knows putting words down like that has never been one of his strong suits. He’d apologized for it at first, for the stop and stutter of his letters, but she’d responded reasonably, “I’m a writer, Booth. You’re not. There’s no sense in pretending otherwise.”
At first, they had emailed but it felt too impersonal, too disconnected. She’d wanted something to hold onto while he was so far away, and so now she writes him. Usually, the page is full of news of her findings, or the occasional anecdote from the camp. She tells him about Daisy sometimes, or the other scientists instead. She tries to inject humor wherever possible.
She tries not to ask too many questions. Not because she doesn’t want to know, but because she doesn’t want him to have to say. She knows he is a man born to serve, to give his all to country and creed, but she also knows the toll it takes on him, teaching new scores of young men how to wound and hunt and kill.
So she tells him about the science instead, in the smallest, easiest words she can think of. She tells him about the sociological implications of the artifacts, and the ways this information could change the world.
--
When she writes, her voice is full of wonder. He knows it’s not something she does on purpose, that she doesn’t set it up as grandiose or try to be self-important. There’s a genuine joy she gets from her work, a sense of purpose that makes her shine.
He wonders sometimes if he should’ve stayed away, way back then. If he should’ve left her to her fossils and artifacts, parsing stories of the living from the remains of the dead. If he should’ve left her reconstructing the world, instead of cataloging all the ways it’s falling apart.
He reads her letters over and over again, until the paper is worn beneath his fingers. He carries each one in his pocket until a new one arrives, and then he works at the creases of the latest until all the corners are bent and the folds feel thready and familiar. It’s something solid to hold on to, when the rest of it seems to pass through his hands like sand.
Jen snaps a picture of him once, feet up in the mess hall, Bones’ latest letter held gently in his hands. Her camera jangles around her neck, and she’s got her hair held up with a pencil. She looks every bit the dashing war reporter, with a mission and a solid sense of right and wrong. He finds himself instantly envious of her ability to separate so quickly the things she sees every day, into absolute chunks of right and wrong. He knows there is far more gray area in the world than he’d ever thought possible.
He keeps her at arms’ length, the way he’s been trained to treat reporters, but she manages to stick around anyway. She takes him with her sometimes, into the town just beside the base, to her familiar haunts. She knows the people there in a way that makes him uncomfortable, and he knows she can read it on his face, in the tense lines of his shoulders and hard grip of his hands behind his back.
“They’re not the enemy, you know,” she says, bringing a cup of mint tea to her lips. The café is dingy but clean enough, and the buzz of Arabic around them makes their conversation stick out. He keeps his eyes at the door, and his back straight against his chair. “The enemy is out there, somewhere. Hidden. Not here.” She motions around them, to the people in the room. “These people are just trying to get by.”
There’s something in her eyes that makes him still suddenly, and ease just a little bit. She tells him about her experiences in the north, about her time in the Baltic, in Georgia, in Chechnya. She’s almost got as many scars as he does.
They spend the afternoon in town, and by the time he returns to the base the sun is setting over the farthest hills. He takes a shower and slides into bed, and reads Bones’ letter one more time before he falls asleep.
--
An archeologist from Scotland keeps trying to ask her out. He hangs out around her tent and makes suggestive and witty remarks, even though she’s told him she’s not interested. He’s nice about it, and jovial, and even though he’s persistent to a fault, she likes him well enough. He makes her smile.
Daisy asks her about it one day, when she spies them coming back from a walk along a high trail in the jungle. “Are you and Dr. McKidd romantically involved?”
“That is none of your business, Ms. Wick.”
“I know,” Daisy continues, falling in step beside Brennan as they walk toward the mess tent for dinner. “But I was under the impression that you and Agent Booth had come to a kind of romantic denouement and if I was incorrect then that means I’ve interpreted those social cues incorrectly.” She shakes her head in exasperation. “I really thought I had it this time.”
Brennan lengthens her strides, but Daisy quickens up to keep pace. When Brennan looks over, the younger woman is staring at her wide-eyed and expectantly, and Brennan stops suddenly, facing Daisy. She takes a deep breath and looks out into the jungle. She knows just beyond the clearing behind them, there’s a waterfall that drops into a small canyon that feeds a stream that meets the ocean. It’s what she’s thinking about when she says to Daisy, “Yes, Booth and I had come to an understanding about our relationship and its romantic implications. He expressed interest in a new, more personal aspect to our partnership, but I’m not-” She falters here, and closes her eyes for just a moment. A waterfall that feeds a stream that meets the ocean. “I wasn’t ready. So we decided to pursue other options for a year.”
“That’s so romantic,” Daisy says. “And so depressing. So are you going to get together when we get back? Are you two in love? Is he going to wait for you? What were you doing in the jungle with Dr. McKidd?”
“That was a professional conversation,” Brennan answers, “and this discussion of our personal lives is not relevant to our work here. I shouldn’t have told you.” She turns and heads for the mess.
Just as she reaches the tent, she hears Daisy’s quick footsteps behind her, and the younger woman’s hand grabs her arm. “But wait, was I right? Are you two in love?”
Brennan opens her mouth to answer, to end the conversation, to dismiss the younger woman, but no sound comes out. She takes in a few quick breaths and tries to focus herself enough to answer, but all she can think of is the Mall at night, the Washington Monument looming over them, and her temple resting sadly on Booth’s shoulder. She hardly notices when Daisy scoots past her, jovial and triumphant, muttering to herself, “I was right!”
--
Booth doesn’t hear from Brennan for over a month. At first, he thinks there’s a delay in the post, but then two months have passed without a word. He checks every day, but there’s never anything from Indonesia. He’s gotten emails from Cam with a little news of her, so he knows she’s okay, but that things on her trip aren’t going well. Stalls in the research, contradictions in the findings. She’s having trouble halfway around the world, and he can’t offer help and she doesn’t ask him to. He still waits for her letters with a kind of yearning that sits deep inside him, coiled and restless.
Two months turns to three, and still no news. He takes it as a sign, the thing he was waiting for, the go-ahead to move on. She told him herself she couldn’t do it, and he’d been resiliently doubting her until now, but there’s three months of silence that says she really does know herself better than he does.
So this is how it will be with her, he realizes. This really is all she can manage. He won’t fault her for it, because he knows she really did try, but he also knows he’ll stay a desperate starving man if he lets himself. He’ll hang on to her forever if he doesn’t move right now. He knows he’s only been holding himself back, so he strides with purpose out of his quarters and into the bright, hot afternoon.
--
Brennan and Dr. McKidd-“Call me Thomas,” he’d said, all lilting accent and sky-blue eyes-take the ferry out to Ambon Island for supplies and food and a much-needed break. They stand on the deck for the ride through Amboyna Bay, and Thomas points out the local sights. He’s been in Indonesia for less time than she has, but travels more often to the city and deals with the local universities there. They’ve got equipment out on loan and are using local students as interpreters, and Thomas takes her straight from the boat to the campus.
He shows her the buildings he likes best and then takes her to the library. He leads her to a hole-in-the-wall tea room and bumbles his way through Javanese enough to order them of a pot of something fragrant and strong.
He tells her about his studies in Scotland, about digs he’s been on around the world. They compare war stories and techniques as the noon sun shines in through the window.
“I meant to ask,” Thomas says, sipping delicately at his tea, “you’ve been publishing less lately. Why is that?”
Brennan cocks her head and answers, “I published a paper last year on bone density and trauma cataloging. It was in the Atlantic Science Quarterly.”
Thomas smiles and leans in, propping his elbows on the table. “Yes, but-and please don’t be offended- there seems to be less focus in your work lately. Less passion.”
“Well, I released a new book two years ago, perhaps-”
“You write an awful lot about violence nowadays,” he interrupts. Brennan starts, tightening her hand around her cup. She must look offended, because he backpedals immediately, saying, “I didn’t mean to sound harsh. You just used to write about evolutionary processes, and the historical contexts of your finds. Now it’s all wound deciphering and homicide reconstruction.”
Brennan drops her gaze, overly conscious of his eyes on her. When she speaks again, she tells him about the Jeffersonian and the partnership with the FBI, about her time in the field and the team’s focus on solving hard-to-solve crime. She tells him about Hodgins and Angela, and about Cam. When she mentions Booth, it’s in broad strokes. She keeps a wide berth between herself and her memories of him. It’s hard enough without dwelling, she tells herself, and so she relays the details of their partnership like she’s laying out facts: he works for the FBI, they’ve been partners for 5 years, he’s doing a tour in Afghanistan while she came here to head up the team. She holds him at arms’ length, but she knows she must show more than she means to, judging by the look Thomas is giving her.
He stays silent while she talks. When she finally quiets, he says, “Wow. So you’re taking a far more hands-on approach to the forensics of it, I see.”
“I’ve helped put away over 100 criminals,” she says flatly.
Something in her tone must sound strained because Thomas quirks his head and says, “You say that like it’s something to be ashamed of.”
“No, I just-” Brennan clears her throat and swirls the contents of her mug. “It’s just not what I expected to be doing. It’s not what I thought I’d be pursuing at this point in my career.”
Thomas looks at her, and grins, and asks, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, “Then why go back?”
Brennan doesn’t answer.
--
The thing with Jen creeps up on him, but he doesn’t fight it. He wasn’t expecting it and wasn’t really looking for it, but it’s nice. Easy. As calm as two people taking shelter in a war zone can be, anyway, but there’s no heavy pressure in his chest every time he looks at her, which is relief enough on its own. He doesn’t-tries not to-think about Bones while he’s with Jen, but he still feels the weight of her last letter against his chest, still tucked away in his pocket, and it does its best to pull him back down every time.
The thing with Jen is new, only a few weeks old, and still awkward and fumbling at the edges. He wakes in the early morning and tries to tug his clothes on as quietly as possible, knocking his shin against her dresser and bracing himself with a wince against the mirror.
When he looks up, he sees the photo she took of him stuck into a corner of her mirror, beside one of three soldiers shirtless and laughing next to the bulk of a rusted out Humvee. Behind him, Jen sits up, wrapping the sheet around herself. He meets her eyes in the mirror, and he knows she wants to ask. Do you still love her? Are you waiting for her, even after all this? He isn’t surprised when Jen stays silent, though, and gives him a quiet, sure smile and looks away.
Booth turns his eyes back to the photo. He sees a man in profile, holding a letter, with a look on his face like a starving child. He sees tension throughout the man’s shoulders in the way he curves around the paper like it’s something cherished, or sacred, or dangerous.
He picks up his shirt and feels the weight of Bones’ latest letter in the pocket. He can recite it practically from memory after three months of reading and re-reading, and he weighs the feel of it in his hand as he stands there.
There’s a halted feeling here, she’d written, like we’re waiting with no hope of an ending to come. It’s begun to fester, and breakthroughs are few and far between. I have never been one for overly sentimental responses, but the anticipation seems to have waned and now there is just unreliable research, and a surrounding jungle, and too much rain.
Maybe there is no grand conclusion. Maybe there is no way to change the world. Maybe it will just be like this, forever, with no hope of restoration. The local clerics believe that bones carry with them bad spirits, and are marked for misfortune. They say we are asking for trouble, and are looking hard enough that we will surely find it. I came here certain of my place as a researcher, but maybe they’re right. Maybe I am just a grave robber.
It’s the most doubt he’d ever heard her express, and he’d sent her his best reply, in jumbled phrases and imperfect prose. He never got a response.
He takes the letter from the pocket of his shirt and holds it, running his thumb over the envelope where she wrote out his name. He puts it into the pocket of his pants instead, and he knows when he gets back to his quarters he’ll put it in the drawer with the rest of them. He pulls his shirt on and buttons it slowly, and the weight against his chest feels empty already but also free. Not like a void, just like a space that’s not yet filled. He knows it will be slow, but he’ll get used to it with time.
Behind him, Jen slides out of bed and goes to put on coffee. His bare feet make little sound as he follows her into the kitchen, and he’s silent as he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her back against his chest.
--
The breakthrough comes nine months into her stay. A researcher from Poland makes a discovery in the vertebrae, and then an archeologist from Kenya connects it to a skeleton they’d found last year in Tibet. There’s a chain forming, a narrative rising up, clearly delineating from one site to another. They’re rewriting history with their hands in the soil and the dust in their eyes, and Brennan has never been quite so happy.
Four months after she last wrote Booth, she picks up her pen and starts again. She doesn’t apologize for the absence, and she doesn’t explain. There are things enough to say to him, but not over all this time and distance, so instead, she just writes the first thing that comes to her mind.
It’s coming together finally. Everything’s falling into place, and the feel of forward momentum is back. There’s a sense here of discovery, and triumph, and anticipation. Like we’re all holding our breaths and waiting to come to the end of the line, and look back and see something magnificent. There’s a local word here that some of the researchers have adopted to describe the feel of the camp; there’s no real word for it in English, but it most closely translates to “ecstasy.”
She puts the pen down for a minute and leans back in her chair. The rainy season is finally waning, but there’s a soft sprinkle of drops against her tent. She tips her neck back and closes her eyes, and thinks of the sky and the rain and the waterfall and the ocean, and the way that the world can change by tiny fractions. It doesn’t have to happen all at once, and that’s something she’s known for awhile, but it feels more significant now. Like there are possibilities upon possibilities, and humanity has come from somewhere she can see and understand, and now it can go anywhere. The world can change. She can change. It feels like hope springing up in her chest, and she opens her eyes and smiles.
She picks up her pen again, and touches it to the paper. Today, she saw the build of her bones taking shape a thousand evolutionary steps back, and she can see the person she is now, and the person she could be. She can hear the buzz of the camp outside, and just past her door someone is laughing. She listens to the rain falling softly against the canvas of the tent, and leans down over the paper, and starts to write.