Bones Fic: The Jedi in Brennan's Head, part 9/11

[bloodwrites]

Title: The Jedi in Brennan's Head
Author: Bloodwrites
Part 9/11
Rating: Mildly mature for this part, kiddies T/PG-13
Disclaimer: Would that I owned Bones... But I do not. Never have, never will. No profit made nor ownership claimed.

Late on the second day, Jedediah found them. There had been countless phone calls, Internet searches, strings pulled, and - let’s be honest - perhaps a hint of blackmail, but ultimately it was an innocuous remark by an old acquaintance that had done it. A friend of a friend had a cousin in the FBI who’d wanted to use a cabin up in the hills of West Virginia, only to find that said cabin was occupied. A few pointed questions and a bit more of the aforementioned blackmail, and the truth was revealed.

And now, Jedediah stood in front of the bathroom mirror, smiling at his reflection. The bathroom was decorated in dark marble, with a Jacuzzi tub that he had enjoyed immensely over the past few weeks since his liberation from prison. A strait razor and can of shaving cream stood neatly at the left of the sink, along with a box of black hair dye. For two weeks, Jedediah had strayed from his self-imposed exile only for his soirees with Dr. Brennan, but now the time for hiding was past. He carefully wet his beard, then applied a generous amount of shaving cream, humming all the while. He had an untraceable, brand new van filled with the best medical equipment money could buy, all waiting for him in the senator’s garage. He had an arsenal, up-to-the-minute intelligence on the agents guarding Temperance, and three willing assistants ready to act on his orders.

And he had Temperance, waiting.

He shaved off the last remnants of his beard, leaving a perfectly smooth, well-planed face in its stead. Still humming, unable to contain a smile, he rinsed off the last of the shaving cream and opened the box of dye. It was just nine o’clock. Traveling under cover of night, ideally with no unscheduled stops, he should reach the cabin long before dawn. By morning, he would be back to work once more, Dr. Brennan at his side. He admired his reflection in the mirror, running the back of his hand over his cheek. Temperance would hardly recognize him.

They were dancing in the kitchen - the way she remembered her parents dancing when she was a child, with Booth’s arms around her and everything else suddenly seeming strangely inconsequential. It was the hormones, she reminded herself - the natural reaction to being this close to a healthy, almost abnormally symmetrical male was an increase in both testosterone and estrogen, not to mention serotonin, dopamine, and adrenaline. She was a scientist - she didn’t believe in love. She understood, of course, that the notion of love was a biological imperative designed to strengthen the familial bond and thereby propagate the species - in point of fact, love was just a brilliant example of natural selection at its best.

She understood all of those things. But when the music was over and the cabin was silent and Booth was there with his arms still around her, she couldn’t seem to rationalize herself out of what she was feeling. If they just kissed, she found herself thinking, then she might be able to prove that everything going on in both her mind and her body was a result of the chemicals her brain was producing. But then she looked at Booth, his lips just a few inches from her own, with a kind of quiet, indefinable smile she’d never actually seen on his face before, and suddenly she knew that she didn’t want to just kiss him. And she didn’t even just want to have sex with him. Not just once. Maybe not just a hundred times, though the idea of trying that was undeniably appealing.

She pulled away - she knew that. Not Booth, who was right there smiling at her, almost as if he had realized the same thing. She, Temperance Brennan, pulled away - which was hardly surprising, as she’d done it on any number of occasions in the past. But instead of saying anything about it, instead of asking her to stay or intuitively understanding what she was thinking - which she logically understood was impossible, but how many times had Booth come through for her before? - he just looked confused, and then the smile went away.

“So - uh, I should probably finish up those dishes and make some phone calls before I turn in. Why don’t you head on to bed, you must be beat.”

Which made her think that everything she’d just thought they were sharing had been her imagination, perhaps some residual effect of Dr. Wilcott’s experiments. She wasn’t in love with Booth - it was a ridiculous idea. And Booth definitely was not in love with her, that much was painfully obvious. She had an irrational desire to hit him, which she wisely squelched, and took another step back.

“Yes - I am, actually. Tired.” She backed away, called for Elsa, and retreated to her bedroom.

Booth finished the dishes without turning the music back on. He kept going back over the evening: eating dinner, and the way Bones set the table with candles in the Flintstones jelly glasses, and how she argued with him about the difference between a moth and a butterfly (Booth stood by the theory that butterflies are pretty and moths are creepy, but of course Bones spent about half-an-hour of techno-babble refuting that one), and the way it had felt when they were dancing, and - finally - that look on her face when the dancing was over.

When the dishes were done, he paced around the cabin for a good hour, and then he whipped off a hundred crunches, the whole time watching her bedroom door. Finally, at just after midnight, he’d had enough. Locking himself in the bathroom with his cell phone, he called the only person he figured could help him at this point.

“What’s wrong?” Angela asked, with that little panic thing in her voice that people get when they’ve been woken out of a sound sleep.

“Nothing’s wrong - don’t worry, we’re both fine. No problems,” he said without enthusiasm.

“Uh oh,” she responded immediately, sounding a little more awake. “What did you do?”

“Nothing! I mean - other than doing dishes and making dinner and generally being a stand-up guy - ”

He stopped, because he could imagine the way Angela would be looking at him right now if she was here - the little head tilt, eyebrows raised.

“It’s after midnight and you’re supposed to be on protective detail - what did you do?” She paused. “And isn’t it dangerous to call me? What if somebody traces this call or picks up your signal or something?”

“Gee - I hadn’t thought of that,” he waited a beat, rolling his eyes. “What do you think I am, just off the boat here? The signal’s scrambled, it’s safe. I don’t even know why I called.”

“Oh God - Did you guys finally have sex?”

“No!” Booth said, a little too loudly. “Geez, Angela - I’m up here trying to save her life, not get my… bell rung.”

“All right, then, I give up. I’m brilliant, but I’m not a mind reader. You gotta give me somethin’ here.”

So, he told her about the dinner and the dancing and the almost kiss, which he thought he understood but obviously didn’t based on the fact that Bones had locked herself in her room and showed no signs of ever coming out again. The kiss part was when Angela finally interrupted.

“Well, that’s your problem. You didn’t kiss her, and she thought you were going to.”

“But she was all freaked out - how am I supposed to kiss someone when they’re all freaked out?”

“No, you shouldn’t have kissed her - that would have just made it worse.”

“I don’t see how,” he said, sounding more than a little pathetic.

She let out this long-suffering sigh, like the burden of Bones and Booth was too much to bear. “Wow. You guys are such idiots.”

“Hey! Look, I’m just trying to help here. If kissing will help, I’m willing to give it a shot. But you said not to kiss her, so apparently I did the right thing.”

“Well, what did you do after you guys didn’t kiss?”

He thought about it for a second, replaying the whole thing in his head. “I told her I’d finish the dishes and she could go to bed.”

“But you didn’t say anything about the fact that you’d almost kissed?”

“What? No! Of course not.”

She sighed again, which was frankly getting a little old. “Look, Booth, Brennan isn’t like most women. The whole intuitive, ‘I know you like me’ flirty confidence thing most women have? Brennan does not have that. At all. If she wants to have sex with someone, she’ll jump them - don’t get me wrong. But this isn’t about sex.”

“It isn’t?” Booth asked, frankly a little disappointed.

“No. God, you really are idiots. She’s in love with you. You’re in love with her. Everyone around you knows it - on some level, I think you’re even starting to realize it. And if I know Brennan at all, she just started to realize it tonight.”

“And she’s freaking out,” Booth summarized. When he realized what Angela had said, he quickly followed with, “Except I’m not in love with her.”

“Seeley,” Angela said, and it was her don’t-fuck-with-me voice, the one he’d always found kind of sexy. In a totally platonic, from-a-distance kind of way, of course. “You’re in love with her. Okay? It doesn’t need to be a big deal - people fall in love all the time. The world doesn’t end. Sometimes, it even works out.”

He wasn’t sold on the whole idea, but he figured rather than risking her wrath, he’d just go along with it. He cleared his throat, a little self-conscious that now that all this had been spelled out, he was even more confused about what happened next.

“So, what am I supposed to do now? Anybody else, I figure out I’m in love and we grab dinner and a movie, make some small talk, and hit the sheets.”

He could almost see her roll her eyes. “That’s sweet, Booth. Remind me one more time - why are you single?” There was a pause on the line, like she was thinking it through. “Just be nice to her. She’s been through a lot, I’m sure she’s still freaked out about the whole Wilcott thing. Take her out somewhere, get away from whatever hellish FBI safehouse you’ve taken her to… Actually talk to her about something.”

“We talk,” he said defensively. “We talk all the time.”

“You talk about work and then you argue about inane things that drive the rest of us crazy. Just be open - that’s all I’m saying.”

Booth nodded. “Okay. Be nice. Be open. Take her out someplace. Got it.”

They hung up then, because Booth had a feeling he was about to be called an idiot again. And a guy could only take so much of that before he’d start to take it personally.

According to his intelligence, there were two posts watching the cabin where Dr. Brennan was being held - one a lookout at the foot of the steep drive leading to the cabin itself, and the other a fire tower several miles away. Jedediah chose the fire tower as his first destination, as it would provide him an opportunity to survey the land without being spotted. They parked two miles away, covering the van with brush before setting out on foot; once Jedediah and his party were within a mile of the tower, he sent one of his trio of soldiers on ahead.

The boy was Wallace, a smallish blonde man, willowy and delicate, who’d worked in an acting troupe with Jedediah’s brother. The boy - barely twenty, not even old enough to order a drink on his own - was fearless, hungry, and surprisingly talented. He wore bright, high-tech hiking gear and carried an oversized backpack; when he stumbled over to the fire tower - disoriented and stammering, assuming the role of an amateur hiker with aplomb - the agents working above were easily convinced of his authenticity. Just as Jedediah had predicted, Wallace needn’t do anything from there - the men invited him into the tower, where his protégé shook two packets of a homemade concoction into their coffee. While the men were distracted, Jedediah and his remaining interns crept closer to the tower. He could hear them laughing; he checked his watch, that warmth strengthening inside him.

Gradually the laughter quieted, until the tower fell still altogether. The doctor heard a soft thud - the sound of a body hitting the floor. A moment later, Wallace’s pale face appeared at the door.

“All clear.”

Jedediah climbed up to find two agents sleeping soundly, drugged to the point of oblivion. The doctor skipped the multitude of instruments and scanners on one wall in favor of the telescope pointed out the large picture window at the front of the tower. He peered through the scope lens. Aided only by the light of the snow and an incandescent half-moon, he could see the cabin where she lay, awaiting his return.

He was watching her. Brennan was back in the hospital, her legs useless and her mind even more so. “Agent Booth is dead,” he told her again. “Your father is dead. Your brother is gone.” He smiled. “Your work can’t save you from the past, or the future.”

She hated the fog - more than anything else, she hated the fact that she couldn’t make her brain process things the way they should be processed. Left to right, top to bottom, one problem at a time. The world kept shifting; she was on a playground, in her parent’s bedroom, at the foster home, in school, overseas… Things shifted so quickly that she found herself getting dizzy, the only constant Jedediah Wilcott’s face.

And she hated that face.

He came to her with someone beside him, and it took her some time to figure out that it was Booth. Except that it wasn’t Booth - it was a dead Booth, in the final stages of decomposition, and though she had never once been revolted by the sight of a dead body, this made her feel ill. But then the decomposition process seemed to reverse itself before her eyes, so that a moment later a fully revitalized Booth stood before her, talking to her as though nothing was wrong. Wilcott was gone. Everything was fine.

“I still can’t move my legs,” she said.

He smiled at her strangely. “You never could.”

And once more, she couldn’t remember what was real and what wasn’t - couldn’t make her mind focus on the details enough to work out the puzzle.

“But my work… I can’t figure out what’s happening.”

“Your work was the dream. Let’s talk about something else.”

She stared at him. “We don’t do that. Tell me what happened, I’ll solve the case. I don’t remember which part’s real.”

Booth disappeared. The room disappeared. They were back in the hospital, Wilcott standing over her with a scalpel.

“I am the only real part of this equation.” He leaned closer, until she could feel his breath at the back of her neck. “I’ll be with you until the end.”

It was just after three when Booth heard her scream. He’d finally fallen to sleep a couple of hours before, draped on the couch with his gun close by and his cell phone on the coffee table. The gun was in hand and he was on his feet seconds later, trying to reorient himself. The dog wasn’t barking. There was no other sound coming from the bedroom. No one had called - either from the fire tower or the lookout down the hill.

He went to the bedroom door and knocked softly, not wanting to wake her if it had only been a dream.

“Bones? I thought I heard something - everything okay?”

He pushed the door open slightly, his gun at the ready, only to find her sitting up in bed with every light in the room on. Her hair was loose around her bare shoulders, her eyes rimmed with red, tears still streaking her cheeks.

“Are you okay? I thought I heard you yell.”

One look at her told him she definitely wasn’t okay, but it was also pretty clear that this wasn’t the kind of thing his gun would be much help with. He holstered his weapon and came into the room, sitting down at the edge of the bed.

“It was just a dream,” she said, but it sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than Booth. She wiped her tears self consciously, sitting carefully apart from him.

It took him a few seconds before he could come up with anything resembling a solution.

“When Parker has bad dreams, I make him warm milk - my mom used to do it for me. You want some?”

She made a face, looking almost like herself. “That sounds terrible.”

He tried to keep from arguing with her. “Okay, so no warm milk - what about some tea? I think there’s some chamomile in the pantry.” God, if the old man could see him now - he’d probably get at least a boot in the ass for that one. Real men didn’t even know where the pantry was, let alone that there was chamomile there.

It didn’t matter, though, because Bones liked the idea. “I find chamomile very soothing,” she said, and she looked a little more relaxed at the thought.

When he came back a few minutes later, she was still staring into space with all the lights on. He turned off the overhead and, after only a second of thinking it through, sat down beside her on the bed.

“Here - push over.”

She didn’t argue, taking her tea and moving a little farther to the left so Booth would have room. Elsa definitely looked pissed - she waited a few seconds to see if Booth was leaving anytime soon, then gave a big sigh and hopped off the bed. Bones watched her head for the living room, but she didn’t say anything.

They were alone. Bones was underneath the blankets, but she was still shivering. She wore a tank top, goose bumps standing up on her arms and - if he’d noticed that kind of thing, which he definitely did not - the outline of her breasts clear through the shirt.

“You wanna talk about your dream?” he asked, but she just shook her head.

Another few seconds of silence passed, while she sat shivering and drinking her tea, and he just sat shivering. Finally, she seemed to realize that he was wearing only a t-shirt and sweats.

“You’re cold,” she said, like it was some revelation.

“Well, yeah, Bones. It’s like ten degrees out, and the fire was almost out when I woke up. It’s a little chilly here.”

“You don’t have to snap at me - I just hadn’t realized. Why didn’t you get under the blankets?”

Under the blankets - now there was an idea. Considering the conversation he’d had with Angela and the fact that he couldn’t seem to get his eyes off Bones’ shirt, it probably wasn’t the best idea, but it was still an idea. And hell, it really was cold. And Bones needed him - wasn’t he supposed to be there for her right now?

And so he got under the blankets, his sweatpant-clad leg up against her sweatpant-clad leg, his arm wrapped around her shoulders (for warmth. And comfort. And that was all.) She yawned, leaning her head into the crook of his shoulder. He took her tea and set it on the nightstand.

“Thank you,” she said, a second yawn almost smothering the phrase.

“Think you can sleep now?” he asked. He sounded the way he did when he asked Parker the same question.

Unlike Parker, though, Bones didn’t nod her head and say she’d be fine. Instead, she seemed to freeze as soon as he asked, her whole body tensed beside him. He knew she wouldn’t ask him to stay - that would be like giving in. Or giving up. Or something. He sighed.

“Actually, it’s pretty cold out there… would you mind if I stayed here a little longer?”

She looked at him then, this kind of gratitude in her eyes that - well, it sort of broke his heart. She nodded, doing her best to stay cool and calm.

“That’s probably very sensible.”

Booth reached over and turned off the bedside lamp. Suddenly, there he was - Special Agent Seeley Booth, in bed with the world famous forensic anthropologist-slash-mystery-writer. They both lay down, Bones’ head nestled at his shoulder. A few seconds passed in silence, before he surprised both of them by saying,

“Y’know, I was captured once. I mean - you know, held hostage.”

She turned over to face him, staring at him so hard that you’d think she could see right through the darkness. It being Bones, Booth actually wouldn’t have been surprised if that were true.

“You never told me that.”

He nodded, still lying on his back with one arm stretched out for Bones. “I know. I don’t really like to think about it.”

He could make out the way her head bobbed her agreement in the darkness, like this made perfect sense. She rolled back over, resting her head on his shoulder again.

“Were you afraid?” she asked.

He smiled grimly, glad she couldn’t see his face now. “Hell yeah, I was scared. I didn’t think I’d ever get home again, ever see Jared or my mom.”

“But you made it. You survived, and now you’re fine - no one even knows it happened.”

He thought about that - thought about how sometimes he could still smell that cell in his sleep, or how on cold nights like this the bones in his fingers ached so much it hurt to make a fist, from the days of interrogation. But that wasn’t what she needed to hear, so he just nodded and forced a smile.

“Yeah, Bones - now I’m fine. You just… You get through it, I guess. It sucks, and it’s scary, but eventually the dreams fade and the Wilcotts of the world get theirs.” She tensed when Booth said his name, but that was probably okay. She needed to hear it.

“Not always,” she said.

“Well, in this case - he’ll get his. We’ll find him.”

A few seconds passed, Booth becoming more and more aware of the fact of Brennan’s body against his. She turned to look up at him again, and he rolled over so that they were face to face, toe to toe, and everything in between to everything in between. He was having a hard time breathing, let alone keeping up a conversation.

“How did you get through it? I mean - when you were there. Did you talk to God? I didn’t experience it myself, but I’ve read that people often become very religious when they believe their lives are about to end.”

He couldn’t help but roll his eyes at that one, a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, Bones - Geez. Of course, I prayed. But honestly…” he paused, embarrassed at what he was about to say, at how naked it sounded. But in for a penny, in for a pound - whatever the hell that meant.

“I mostly thought about my mom, and how happy she’d be when I showed up alive. So, whatever was happening and however bad it got, I just had this picture of her in my head. And that’s what got me through.” He paused, self conscious when she didn’t say anything. “It’s hard to explain,”

“No, I understand,” she said immediately. Another few seconds passed, and Booth could hear the wind outside in the trees, and he could hear Elsa snoring quietly in the next room. Bones tilted her head up to look at him, and he could see the way her eyes kind of sparkled in the night.

“I thought of you,” she said - so soft he wasn’t even sure he heard her right. “You were the only thing that was real.”

For one long second - definitely no more, probably no less - nothing happened. And then, he lifted his hand and ran a finger along her face, tracing the outline of her cheekbone, her earlobe, her lips. She closed her eyes, and he thought of the times he’d been in love and the times he thought he’d been in love, and how none of those times had prepared him for this.

At three a.m., Alan - an intern whose letters had impressed Jedediah while he was in prison - left the tower and set out for the woods, carrying a five-gallon container of gasoline. Alan was sturdier than Wallace - large and dark, Mediterranean in appearance. As per his instructions, the man trekked through the woods under the cover of darkness, until a cabin at the top of a steep hill was in his sights. He poured the gasoline along the tree line, as conscientiously as a farmer watering his crops. An hour after he’d left Dr. Wilcott at the tower, Alan struck the match. Within minutes, the forest was ablaze.

The fire tower was now Jedediah’s - he imagined himself as a conquering nation, gradually collecting territories to call his own. There had been no time to revel in his victory, however - once Alan was on his way, it was time for the rest of the plan to begin. Jedediah’s third man was Lincoln: small, compact, marvelously fit. Spectacularly greedy.

The others were simply pawns, but Lincoln was trained special forces - he was here for a reason. Wallace was sent to employ the same tactic he’d used in the fire tower on the agents guarding the road leading up to Dr. Brennan’s cabin. Lincoln and Jedediah stayed to the trees, Lincoln carrying an impressive looking rifle, binoculars, and an extra belt of ammunition. They were on the hunt; Jedediah’s only regret was that he no longer had access to Dr. Brennan’s brainwaves, to chart the effect of the next few hours on her psyche.

Despite the snow, the fire would spread quickly - the wind was right and the timber relatively dry, certainly enough so to cause the kind of panic the night required. Jedediah inhaled deeply, breathing in the cold, clear air. The night was silent but for the sound of the two men’s breathing, hushed in the stillness. He could see the cabin where Temperance stayed, just a few yards from now, but he forced himself to remain patient.

It was almost time.

When their lips met, it was game over - there was no more fighting it, no more pretending. Booth knew - he knew it in his head, he knew it in his heart, he sure as hell knew it in his shorts. The kiss started slow, his mouth just barely opening to hers, but when he felt her body press against his, he was lost. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer, his hand at the back of her head and his fingers tangled in her hair. She moaned, almost purred, and it was a sound he never would’ve imagined Bones making, but now that he’d heard it, he knew he would never get that sound out of his head.

He moved his hands around to her back, finding the opening where her sweats met her tank top, and pushed her shirt up so that he could feel the muscles in her back and shoulders under his hands. And through all of it, through the knowledge that she was right there and he was more than ready for any kind of sex she could imagine, he thought that he’d never get enough of just kissing her. It turned out that after five years of not kissing Bones, now he couldn’t imagine not kissing Bones. What the hell had he been thinking? He shifted position so that he was over her but not on top, deepening the kiss until she opened and he ran his tongue along hers, exploring every inch he could find. His hands ran along her stomach and she kind of shivered under his touch, which made him even harder than he’d been before, and for just that few seconds nothing but the two of them mattered on the planet.

Two things happened at that point, and neither of them were what Booth was hoping for. First, Elsa started barking - not a casual bark, but an in-your-face, racing-from-window-to-window bark, way at the back of her throat. There was no trying to ignore it, no question that something was going on. Booth sat bolt upright up and Temperance was right there with him, that tension returning in a second. He had no time to think about protocol in this kind of situation - he ran the back of his hand along her arm quickly, hoping that that was enough to let her know this wasn’t where he planned on ending things, and reached for the sweatshirt she’d been wearing before she went to bed.

“Here - put this on. Get your gun out of the drawer. Stay here. Don’t move.”

A second later, traveling low to the ground and staying clear of windows, Booth peered out the side of the window where Elsa was having her meltdown. On the horizon, close enough to feel the heat, a steady orange glow was moving their way. Booth closed his eyes and steadied his breathing, searching for the cold, quiet place he needed for what was about to happen.

Wilcott was here.

TBC