New Fic: Future Memories
Title: Future Memories, oneshot
Disclaimer: Bones belongs to FOX, Hanson and Reichs
Pairing: Booth/Brennan
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: I'm S6 spoiler free, so this is safe for anyone else who is
AN: Inspired by the S5 finale
Yes, this is my second fic in a couple of days after not posting anything for months, I'm an all or nothing kind of person!
Chapter 2 of Moments II is in the works, though it may take a while as I'm going away.
Summary: They work one last case together before they part. Before Indonesia. Before Afghanistan.
Indonesia
Her days start earlier here, yet it does not take long until the heat makes the sweat trickle down her spine. Tuning out Miss Wick's (she wants to avoid the familiarity that calling her 'Daisy' would imply) chatter about "Lancelot" and "awesome discoveries" has become as second nature to her as breaking to stretch and drink water without anyone reminding her. The first few days with an aching back and a pounding head taught her that. Adjusting to her old life of unearthing bones in far away places, her life before murder victims and late night conversations, is easier than she thought it would be. Except for one thing.
Sometimes she feels the ghost of his hand at the small of her back as acutely as if it had rested there. Maybe she will adjust to him not being around too.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
They work one last case together before they part. Before Indonesia. Before Afghanistan.
Her stomach knots when she sees the bones. The the degree of fusion of the ends to the shafts and the cranial sutures confirm what the length of the femur tells her.
"It's a child, approximately nine to ten years old." Brennan continues to report her first findings. "The skull is slightly darker than the rest of the skeleton. That suggests the victim was clothed when it was put in the ground. The fabric would have protected the rest of the bones for some time."
"Victim?" Booth questions.
Brennan turns the skull slightly for him to see. "An injury like this one usually indicates a blow to the head or the head hitting something in a fall. I'll have Hodgins analyze the soil. It will tell us if this is the original burial site or if the remains were moved here from somewhere else."
They both notice the crooked front tooth. The bare bones become a person.
"The victim wasn't old enough to have all its permanent teeth. I'll ask Angela to do a facial reconstruction to help with identification."
Booth grasps her elbow slightly longer than necessary when he helps her up. His usual order, to ship the remains back to the Jeffersonian, is subdued.
"Look, about everything that's happened," Brennan begins in the car on the way back to the lab when the silence stretches. "I mean Sweets and his book and... us. Now that we're both going away for a long time I..."
"Do you mind if we concentrate on the case for now?"
She would barely need to stretch her arm to let her fingers touch the lips that kissed her that night, but what followed has opened up a gap between them she can't reach across.
oOoOoOo
Afghanistan
The heat is different from the one in D.C., drier. If she had been here Brennan would no doubt have bored him senseless with details about the climate of the region. The islands, the ones he pretends not to know by name, are probably as humid as home this time of year.
"You're planning a holiday? You only just got here!" another member of his unit jokes when he looks at the computer screen over Booth's shoulder. "Indonesia? I would have pegged you for a Caribbean kind of a guy."
"I used to be."
"Look, there's a travel guide for this place!"
The link leads to a site stating that April to June and September to October are the best times to visit. Booth laughs for the first times in weeks. The idea that anyone would go on a vacation to this place is absurd. The war is everywhere. It is suffused into the landscape after decades of war, the broken roads, the broken buildings. The broken people.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
Hodgins confirms that the site where the remains were found by the site-preparation crew is the original burial site. He points to the meager trace evidence.
"Part of the clothing has rotted away. The victim was wearing jeans and a t-shirt or something similar made from natural fibers. There aren't any buttons or a zipper suggesting a coat and there's no trace of any shoes."
"Maybe it was late spring or summer when our vic was killed," Booth muses. "But that doesn't explain the shoes."
"Maybe he or she was killed indoors," Hodgins suggests.
"Anyway we're stuck until we get an ID. I'll check in tomorrow." And with that Booth has turned and is half way down the platform before Brennan has even removed her gloves.
She goes home and reheats some leftovers and calls it dinner. Then she moves from room to room, sipping from the wineglass in her hand, picking up and putting back her cell phone. She tries to behave as if this is just like any other night, but the truth is she can't remember the last time she did not spend the evening with Booth after the kind of day they have just had.
oOoOoOo
Indonesia
There is an indeterminate ache keeping her awake at night that no stretching or water will take away. When there are 334 days until their meeting at the Reflecting Pool by the coffee cart she identifies it as longing.
Angela sends her a postcard with a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Her friend's happiness breathes between the hastily scribbled lines. Brennan pins it up next to the one from the base in Georgia. He has signed with an S. When she can't sleep she takes it down and lets her fingertips trace his inky swirls as if they were Braille.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
It is a boy. His parents reported him missing seventeen years ago. Angela got his hair color wrong, but the face matches the photo in his file.
"I'll do the talking, okay?" Booth says as they stand on the porch. The door opens before he has pressed the doorbell.
Brennan finds herself face-to-face with a woman who, just like her, has a before and an after. A life split in two.
"Mr and Mrs Riley, I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth and this here's my partner, Dr Temperance Brennan. We called about your son."
The couch is too soft. Brennan watches how Booth tries to hide a grimace as he sips his tea. It is surreal, how they have been offered tea and cookies and sit in the family room as if this is a social call. Booth puts down his cup.
"We believe the body that was found by a site preparation crew last Monday is your son. The photo you supplied at the time of his disappearance matches the facial..."
Mrs Riley shakes her head. "You can't know for sure yet. There must be more boys his age who went missing at the same time. Maybe one of them looked liked Matthew?"
She is a mother who hopes her child is still alive and they are here to take away her hope. That is why they accepted the offer to sit down. That is why Booth is drinking "The only thing that tastes worse than your Moroccan beer, Bones."
"I've kept his things. Maybe there's something there that could help you exclude Matthew from your investigation?"
Before they can stop her she has disappeared up the stairs. Booth shifts but Brennan puts a hand on his forearm. "I'll go."
What do you do with a child's bed when it will never sleep in it again? Do you throw it away or do you leave it where it is? Is that why Mrs Riley has left her son's bedroom unchanged? Because she does not know what to do with it? Or is it because she is still holding on to hope?
Brennan knows how strong a force hope is. It was not until her mother's remains ended up on the gurney under the glaring lights of the lab that she realized she had been for hoping all those years. For all her logic, for all her rationality, Brennan did not stop hoping until her mother's face looked back at her from the Angelator.
Mrs Riley opens a chest of drawers. She holds out a sweater to Brennan. "Maybe this will help you? Look, it still has a stain from one of his nosebleeds. It didn't go away in the wash, but Matthew wouldn't let me throw it away. It is his favorite sweater."
"Mrs Riley, we have matched the DNA of the remains with the DNA profile in your son's file," Booth says as he steps into the room. Mr Riley is not far behind. It is obvious from the line of his shoulders and the look on his face that Booth has already told him. His wife does not make a sound as she folds into herself on the bed. Her mouth is open in a soundless scream over the white knuckled grip of a sweater her boy would have stopped wearing long ago had he been allowed to live. Eventually she turns to Brennan. "How did he... did he suffer?"
"It was quick. He wouldn't have known what was happening."
Booth called it the kindness of a lie when he would not share all the details with Cleo Eller's parents about how their daughter died. Now, all these cases later, Brennan can see how it is kinder not to share everything you know. Or what you do not know. She does not know if death was instantaneous or if they boy lay there looking up into the face of his killer as his life slipped away. But his parents do not need to know that.
"What do you call a parent without a child?" she asks Booth when they are back on the porch again.
"What do you mean?"
"If your parents die you're an orphan. If your spouse dies you're a widow or a widower."
"Once a parent you're always a parent, Bones."
"But there is no word for it. There is no word for a mother or a father without a child."
oOoOoOo
Afghanistan
Part of him dreads the phone calls to Parker. He can handle being away better if that is all there is. But his son prattling on about little league practice pulls him out of the reality where rusty, old parts of tanks being turned into a fences makes perfect sense and where electricity and water can never be taken for granted.
There are times when he wishes there was no shop with Oreo cookies and lifesavers on the base, these pieces of home make him miss what he left behind even more.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
She does it because she knows Booth would never do it himself. She is nervous when she rings the doorbell, but the look on Booth's face when he embraces his son makes the butterflies in her stomach go still.
"Rebecca said to make sure Parker brings his project to school tomorrow," Brennan says and hands over the lemon battery.
"Do you want to come in?"
"No, I should go. You and Parker have fun."
For a while the sight of Booth closing his eyes as he buries his nose in his son's hair pushes away the image of a man and woman sitting on a narrow bed, hunched over as if all the air has been sucked out of them.
oOoOoOo
Indonesia
"Is it time for lunch soon?" Daisy grabs Brennan's wrist. She frowns. "There's something wrong with your watch, Dr Brennan. It's not showing the right time. This says it's time for breakfast!"
It is time for breakfast in the part of the world where her minds strays from time to time. How could she explain to anyone how he feels closer if her watch is set to his time? You can not alter distance by moving the arms of your watch, yet she keeps it like that for a year.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
There is no big mystery, only tragedy, behind the boy's death. A fight with the boy next door and a father panicking wanting to protect his child's future.
It is what is not there, the shoes, that leads them to the truth. How the victim was probably indoors when death occurred. After that it is "Old fashioned detective work, Bones."
The truth never brings back the dead, but this time closure and healing lie far into the future. One of the people who brought casseroles to the shocked parents during those first few horrific weeks knew the truth all along. He dug a hole in the ground for their son, for his own son, and then he brought a covered dish and sympathetic words.
oOoOoOo
Afghanistan
The sultry heat is well known, but the cold is just as harsh. Ice appears over the scarred ground like scabs over wounds. She would know about the winter, though. Everywhere he goes, everything he sees, make him wonder what she would say about it.
What she would say about the children in flimsy sandals and threadbare jackets in the middle of winter, some of them carrying smaller children who do not even have coats on?
oOoOoOo
D.C.
"Shouldn't you bring Catherine, Booth?"
"Pops said to bring you. It's his birthday party, he decides who gets invited."
"But isn't it customary to attend social functions with the person you're dating?"
"We're not dating anymore. And pops was very clear, he wants you to come."
"Was it because of the tie she gave you?"
"What?"
"That you're not dating anymore? The style didn't correspond with the type of ties you wear. I would never give you a tie like that. Catherine obviously doesn't know you."
"I'll pick you up at seven, Bones."
oOoOoOo
D.C.
"What's with the long face, sweetheart? Shrimp told me you got picked to do some big, important job in the jungle."
"It's a unique opportunity. Our discoveries will very likely have a great impact on the anthropological field."
"So why aren't you smiling?"
"You're right, Hank, I should smile. My professional reputation will improve even further and this is a very nice birthday party. I'm happy your health issues haven't stopped you from spending most of the evening on the dance floor or enjoying the food and the cake."
"Look, I'm no good at this kind of thing, but I can see something's going on. My grandson's got the same sad face on when he thinks I'm not looking. Is it because you're both leaving?"
"No. I mean I admit I find the thought of Booth going to a war zone unsettling and he'll probably miss me too, but we're both doing the right thing."
"So what is it? Seeley's grandmother was much better at this, but maybe I can help?"
"Remember when you told me it all goes by so quickly?"
"Sure I do, sweetheart."
"I didn't take your advice. Or, I didn't recall it at a time when I should have included it as one of the variables to base my response on."
"You mean shrimp finally made a move?"
"Yes, and I... I responded the way I thought best at the time."
"What do you know, he did what I said he should do. He looked into his heart." Hank smiles and shakes his head before he goes serious again. "I take it things did not move in the direction of happily ever after?"
"No. No one can promise indefinite happiness. Booth wants someone who will spend the next fifty years with him. I can't guarantee that. Or that we will be happy."
"Nobody can. My wife and I got thirty-four years together before she died. If someone had told me we could have four years, I would have gone with that. You take what you can get. Now I suggest you go and ask my grandson to dance. It looks like my domino partner Doris is about to beat you to it if you don't hurry."
oOoOoOo
Afghanistan
Was he really as young as the soldiers he is here to train when he was let loose on the world to deliver death? He teaches them how the layer of sand covering everything here may be annoying to everyone, but to them it is an enemy. Rifles and grains of sand and precision do not mix. He teaches them never to stop to think about if their target has a family. He never tells them he always thought about it afterward. That is when he feels as old as the mountains around them by comparison.
He does not teach them that one of the things working in their favor is that their targets have often spent more time as hunter than as prey. Overconfidence is an enemy as dangerous as the sand.
If he does his job right they will go home the same way he hopes to go home, with the noise of the airplane engines louder than the thoughts in his head and a numb butt from the hard seat, instead of in a coffin.
Surprisingly his years with the squints have given him invaluable experience when it comes to patience and knowing when to ignore everyone's will but his own. Granted, soldiers do not voice their disagreement aloud the way squints do, but they can be as infuriating as the woman wearing a blue dress in the photo he carries on his person for twelve months.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
"I like your dress," Booth says as they move around the dance floor. "Blue looks good on you."
"Angela says this color is called teal, she helped me pick it out."
"You got a new dress for this occasion. I'm honored."
"I don't see why. I'm here because your grandfather invited me, you said so yourself."
Hank catches Brennan's eyes across the room. She slows down her steps, almost making them come to a standstill.
"What's wrong, Bones?"
"This is goodbye, isn't it?"
"Yes."
She moves her arms to circle his neck and steps in closer to put her head on his shoulder.
His palms are warm through the thin material of her dress. It almost feels as if they rest on the bare skin of her back.
"Then can we stay like this until it's time to leave?"
She sighs softly as his lips ghost her temple.
"Do you need a ride tomorrow?"
"Thanks, Bones, but I've got that covered. I'll try and get a pass so I can see you off when you fly to the Mollusk Islands."
"Maluku Islands."
oOoOoOo
Indonesia
"Look, Lancelot sent me a lock of his hair, isn't it romantic? I know we're not together anymore but I asked him for it anyway."
Brennan moves her plate on the table. She does not particularly want Sweets' hair in her salad.
"There's something about distance that makes you miss people. You're so lucky to be unattached, Dr Brennan, you can devote yourself completely to this project and your career. That's one of the reasons Lance and I broke up, my career. Do you mind if I leave, Dr Brennan? I want to go and write back straight away. Do you think I should send him a lock of my hair, or would that be too sentimental?"
"I wouldn't know about mailing part of your hair to Dr Sweets, but please go ahead and leave, Miss Wick."
Brennan starts to go over her latest notes, but her mind wanders. Sweets and her former intern were engaged to be married before this trip made them decide to break up. Angela and Hodgins drifted apart after their first almost wedding. They all decided to spend the rest of their lives with someone. They committed to share what would probably be decades together with another person. Why does it feel like she took those kind of vows more seriously than they all did when she refused to go along with Booth's gamble almost a year ago?
Was Hank right when he said you go ahead and take what you can get, although it may turn out to be only a short time?
oOoOoOo
D.C.
Despite days of being back in D.C. it still feels like he is covered in a layer of brown dust. It took him two weeks in civilian clothes before the feeling left him last time. He takes another sip from the cup in his hand. The guy behind the coffee cart may have changed, but the coffee is just as bad as it was a year ago.
Maybe he shouldn't have ordered hers at the same time? She should have been here by now. Her coffee will go cold. Not that it matters, he thinks as he paces. They're not really meeting to have coffee.
Booth looks up when he hears the wheels of a suitcase being dragged across the uneven ground and running steps. "Good thing I was not planning on playing it cool," flies through his head when he realizes he must be grinning like an idiot although hot liquid is sloshing over his hands as he makes his way toward her.
"I should have been back yesterday, but I missed my connecting flight," are Brennan's first words to his face after a twelve months apart. Then she lets go of her bags to throw her arms around him.
"Careful, Bones, hot coffee here."
"You wanna go sit down?" Booth asks when he has managed to extricate his arms from around her without pouring coffee down her coat. "Maybe check if your purse is still where you threw it?"
They find a bench close by.
"I can't promise you fifty years," she begins.
oOoOoOo
FIN
Disclaimer: Bones belongs to FOX, Hanson and Reichs
Pairing: Booth/Brennan
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: I'm S6 spoiler free, so this is safe for anyone else who is
AN: Inspired by the S5 finale
Yes, this is my second fic in a couple of days after not posting anything for months, I'm an all or nothing kind of person!
Chapter 2 of Moments II is in the works, though it may take a while as I'm going away.
Summary: They work one last case together before they part. Before Indonesia. Before Afghanistan.
Indonesia
Her days start earlier here, yet it does not take long until the heat makes the sweat trickle down her spine. Tuning out Miss Wick's (she wants to avoid the familiarity that calling her 'Daisy' would imply) chatter about "Lancelot" and "awesome discoveries" has become as second nature to her as breaking to stretch and drink water without anyone reminding her. The first few days with an aching back and a pounding head taught her that. Adjusting to her old life of unearthing bones in far away places, her life before murder victims and late night conversations, is easier than she thought it would be. Except for one thing.
Sometimes she feels the ghost of his hand at the small of her back as acutely as if it had rested there. Maybe she will adjust to him not being around too.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
They work one last case together before they part. Before Indonesia. Before Afghanistan.
Her stomach knots when she sees the bones. The the degree of fusion of the ends to the shafts and the cranial sutures confirm what the length of the femur tells her.
"It's a child, approximately nine to ten years old." Brennan continues to report her first findings. "The skull is slightly darker than the rest of the skeleton. That suggests the victim was clothed when it was put in the ground. The fabric would have protected the rest of the bones for some time."
"Victim?" Booth questions.
Brennan turns the skull slightly for him to see. "An injury like this one usually indicates a blow to the head or the head hitting something in a fall. I'll have Hodgins analyze the soil. It will tell us if this is the original burial site or if the remains were moved here from somewhere else."
They both notice the crooked front tooth. The bare bones become a person.
"The victim wasn't old enough to have all its permanent teeth. I'll ask Angela to do a facial reconstruction to help with identification."
Booth grasps her elbow slightly longer than necessary when he helps her up. His usual order, to ship the remains back to the Jeffersonian, is subdued.
"Look, about everything that's happened," Brennan begins in the car on the way back to the lab when the silence stretches. "I mean Sweets and his book and... us. Now that we're both going away for a long time I..."
"Do you mind if we concentrate on the case for now?"
She would barely need to stretch her arm to let her fingers touch the lips that kissed her that night, but what followed has opened up a gap between them she can't reach across.
oOoOoOo
Afghanistan
The heat is different from the one in D.C., drier. If she had been here Brennan would no doubt have bored him senseless with details about the climate of the region. The islands, the ones he pretends not to know by name, are probably as humid as home this time of year.
"You're planning a holiday? You only just got here!" another member of his unit jokes when he looks at the computer screen over Booth's shoulder. "Indonesia? I would have pegged you for a Caribbean kind of a guy."
"I used to be."
"Look, there's a travel guide for this place!"
The link leads to a site stating that April to June and September to October are the best times to visit. Booth laughs for the first times in weeks. The idea that anyone would go on a vacation to this place is absurd. The war is everywhere. It is suffused into the landscape after decades of war, the broken roads, the broken buildings. The broken people.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
Hodgins confirms that the site where the remains were found by the site-preparation crew is the original burial site. He points to the meager trace evidence.
"Part of the clothing has rotted away. The victim was wearing jeans and a t-shirt or something similar made from natural fibers. There aren't any buttons or a zipper suggesting a coat and there's no trace of any shoes."
"Maybe it was late spring or summer when our vic was killed," Booth muses. "But that doesn't explain the shoes."
"Maybe he or she was killed indoors," Hodgins suggests.
"Anyway we're stuck until we get an ID. I'll check in tomorrow." And with that Booth has turned and is half way down the platform before Brennan has even removed her gloves.
She goes home and reheats some leftovers and calls it dinner. Then she moves from room to room, sipping from the wineglass in her hand, picking up and putting back her cell phone. She tries to behave as if this is just like any other night, but the truth is she can't remember the last time she did not spend the evening with Booth after the kind of day they have just had.
oOoOoOo
Indonesia
There is an indeterminate ache keeping her awake at night that no stretching or water will take away. When there are 334 days until their meeting at the Reflecting Pool by the coffee cart she identifies it as longing.
Angela sends her a postcard with a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Her friend's happiness breathes between the hastily scribbled lines. Brennan pins it up next to the one from the base in Georgia. He has signed with an S. When she can't sleep she takes it down and lets her fingertips trace his inky swirls as if they were Braille.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
It is a boy. His parents reported him missing seventeen years ago. Angela got his hair color wrong, but the face matches the photo in his file.
"I'll do the talking, okay?" Booth says as they stand on the porch. The door opens before he has pressed the doorbell.
Brennan finds herself face-to-face with a woman who, just like her, has a before and an after. A life split in two.
"Mr and Mrs Riley, I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth and this here's my partner, Dr Temperance Brennan. We called about your son."
The couch is too soft. Brennan watches how Booth tries to hide a grimace as he sips his tea. It is surreal, how they have been offered tea and cookies and sit in the family room as if this is a social call. Booth puts down his cup.
"We believe the body that was found by a site preparation crew last Monday is your son. The photo you supplied at the time of his disappearance matches the facial..."
Mrs Riley shakes her head. "You can't know for sure yet. There must be more boys his age who went missing at the same time. Maybe one of them looked liked Matthew?"
She is a mother who hopes her child is still alive and they are here to take away her hope. That is why they accepted the offer to sit down. That is why Booth is drinking "The only thing that tastes worse than your Moroccan beer, Bones."
"I've kept his things. Maybe there's something there that could help you exclude Matthew from your investigation?"
Before they can stop her she has disappeared up the stairs. Booth shifts but Brennan puts a hand on his forearm. "I'll go."
What do you do with a child's bed when it will never sleep in it again? Do you throw it away or do you leave it where it is? Is that why Mrs Riley has left her son's bedroom unchanged? Because she does not know what to do with it? Or is it because she is still holding on to hope?
Brennan knows how strong a force hope is. It was not until her mother's remains ended up on the gurney under the glaring lights of the lab that she realized she had been for hoping all those years. For all her logic, for all her rationality, Brennan did not stop hoping until her mother's face looked back at her from the Angelator.
Mrs Riley opens a chest of drawers. She holds out a sweater to Brennan. "Maybe this will help you? Look, it still has a stain from one of his nosebleeds. It didn't go away in the wash, but Matthew wouldn't let me throw it away. It is his favorite sweater."
"Mrs Riley, we have matched the DNA of the remains with the DNA profile in your son's file," Booth says as he steps into the room. Mr Riley is not far behind. It is obvious from the line of his shoulders and the look on his face that Booth has already told him. His wife does not make a sound as she folds into herself on the bed. Her mouth is open in a soundless scream over the white knuckled grip of a sweater her boy would have stopped wearing long ago had he been allowed to live. Eventually she turns to Brennan. "How did he... did he suffer?"
"It was quick. He wouldn't have known what was happening."
Booth called it the kindness of a lie when he would not share all the details with Cleo Eller's parents about how their daughter died. Now, all these cases later, Brennan can see how it is kinder not to share everything you know. Or what you do not know. She does not know if death was instantaneous or if they boy lay there looking up into the face of his killer as his life slipped away. But his parents do not need to know that.
"What do you call a parent without a child?" she asks Booth when they are back on the porch again.
"What do you mean?"
"If your parents die you're an orphan. If your spouse dies you're a widow or a widower."
"Once a parent you're always a parent, Bones."
"But there is no word for it. There is no word for a mother or a father without a child."
oOoOoOo
Afghanistan
Part of him dreads the phone calls to Parker. He can handle being away better if that is all there is. But his son prattling on about little league practice pulls him out of the reality where rusty, old parts of tanks being turned into a fences makes perfect sense and where electricity and water can never be taken for granted.
There are times when he wishes there was no shop with Oreo cookies and lifesavers on the base, these pieces of home make him miss what he left behind even more.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
She does it because she knows Booth would never do it himself. She is nervous when she rings the doorbell, but the look on Booth's face when he embraces his son makes the butterflies in her stomach go still.
"Rebecca said to make sure Parker brings his project to school tomorrow," Brennan says and hands over the lemon battery.
"Do you want to come in?"
"No, I should go. You and Parker have fun."
For a while the sight of Booth closing his eyes as he buries his nose in his son's hair pushes away the image of a man and woman sitting on a narrow bed, hunched over as if all the air has been sucked out of them.
oOoOoOo
Indonesia
"Is it time for lunch soon?" Daisy grabs Brennan's wrist. She frowns. "There's something wrong with your watch, Dr Brennan. It's not showing the right time. This says it's time for breakfast!"
It is time for breakfast in the part of the world where her minds strays from time to time. How could she explain to anyone how he feels closer if her watch is set to his time? You can not alter distance by moving the arms of your watch, yet she keeps it like that for a year.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
There is no big mystery, only tragedy, behind the boy's death. A fight with the boy next door and a father panicking wanting to protect his child's future.
It is what is not there, the shoes, that leads them to the truth. How the victim was probably indoors when death occurred. After that it is "Old fashioned detective work, Bones."
The truth never brings back the dead, but this time closure and healing lie far into the future. One of the people who brought casseroles to the shocked parents during those first few horrific weeks knew the truth all along. He dug a hole in the ground for their son, for his own son, and then he brought a covered dish and sympathetic words.
oOoOoOo
Afghanistan
The sultry heat is well known, but the cold is just as harsh. Ice appears over the scarred ground like scabs over wounds. She would know about the winter, though. Everywhere he goes, everything he sees, make him wonder what she would say about it.
What she would say about the children in flimsy sandals and threadbare jackets in the middle of winter, some of them carrying smaller children who do not even have coats on?
oOoOoOo
D.C.
"Shouldn't you bring Catherine, Booth?"
"Pops said to bring you. It's his birthday party, he decides who gets invited."
"But isn't it customary to attend social functions with the person you're dating?"
"We're not dating anymore. And pops was very clear, he wants you to come."
"Was it because of the tie she gave you?"
"What?"
"That you're not dating anymore? The style didn't correspond with the type of ties you wear. I would never give you a tie like that. Catherine obviously doesn't know you."
"I'll pick you up at seven, Bones."
oOoOoOo
D.C.
"What's with the long face, sweetheart? Shrimp told me you got picked to do some big, important job in the jungle."
"It's a unique opportunity. Our discoveries will very likely have a great impact on the anthropological field."
"So why aren't you smiling?"
"You're right, Hank, I should smile. My professional reputation will improve even further and this is a very nice birthday party. I'm happy your health issues haven't stopped you from spending most of the evening on the dance floor or enjoying the food and the cake."
"Look, I'm no good at this kind of thing, but I can see something's going on. My grandson's got the same sad face on when he thinks I'm not looking. Is it because you're both leaving?"
"No. I mean I admit I find the thought of Booth going to a war zone unsettling and he'll probably miss me too, but we're both doing the right thing."
"So what is it? Seeley's grandmother was much better at this, but maybe I can help?"
"Remember when you told me it all goes by so quickly?"
"Sure I do, sweetheart."
"I didn't take your advice. Or, I didn't recall it at a time when I should have included it as one of the variables to base my response on."
"You mean shrimp finally made a move?"
"Yes, and I... I responded the way I thought best at the time."
"What do you know, he did what I said he should do. He looked into his heart." Hank smiles and shakes his head before he goes serious again. "I take it things did not move in the direction of happily ever after?"
"No. No one can promise indefinite happiness. Booth wants someone who will spend the next fifty years with him. I can't guarantee that. Or that we will be happy."
"Nobody can. My wife and I got thirty-four years together before she died. If someone had told me we could have four years, I would have gone with that. You take what you can get. Now I suggest you go and ask my grandson to dance. It looks like my domino partner Doris is about to beat you to it if you don't hurry."
oOoOoOo
Afghanistan
Was he really as young as the soldiers he is here to train when he was let loose on the world to deliver death? He teaches them how the layer of sand covering everything here may be annoying to everyone, but to them it is an enemy. Rifles and grains of sand and precision do not mix. He teaches them never to stop to think about if their target has a family. He never tells them he always thought about it afterward. That is when he feels as old as the mountains around them by comparison.
He does not teach them that one of the things working in their favor is that their targets have often spent more time as hunter than as prey. Overconfidence is an enemy as dangerous as the sand.
If he does his job right they will go home the same way he hopes to go home, with the noise of the airplane engines louder than the thoughts in his head and a numb butt from the hard seat, instead of in a coffin.
Surprisingly his years with the squints have given him invaluable experience when it comes to patience and knowing when to ignore everyone's will but his own. Granted, soldiers do not voice their disagreement aloud the way squints do, but they can be as infuriating as the woman wearing a blue dress in the photo he carries on his person for twelve months.
oOoOoOo
D.C.
"I like your dress," Booth says as they move around the dance floor. "Blue looks good on you."
"Angela says this color is called teal, she helped me pick it out."
"You got a new dress for this occasion. I'm honored."
"I don't see why. I'm here because your grandfather invited me, you said so yourself."
Hank catches Brennan's eyes across the room. She slows down her steps, almost making them come to a standstill.
"What's wrong, Bones?"
"This is goodbye, isn't it?"
"Yes."
She moves her arms to circle his neck and steps in closer to put her head on his shoulder.
His palms are warm through the thin material of her dress. It almost feels as if they rest on the bare skin of her back.
"Then can we stay like this until it's time to leave?"
She sighs softly as his lips ghost her temple.
"Do you need a ride tomorrow?"
"Thanks, Bones, but I've got that covered. I'll try and get a pass so I can see you off when you fly to the Mollusk Islands."
"Maluku Islands."
oOoOoOo
Indonesia
"Look, Lancelot sent me a lock of his hair, isn't it romantic? I know we're not together anymore but I asked him for it anyway."
Brennan moves her plate on the table. She does not particularly want Sweets' hair in her salad.
"There's something about distance that makes you miss people. You're so lucky to be unattached, Dr Brennan, you can devote yourself completely to this project and your career. That's one of the reasons Lance and I broke up, my career. Do you mind if I leave, Dr Brennan? I want to go and write back straight away. Do you think I should send him a lock of my hair, or would that be too sentimental?"
"I wouldn't know about mailing part of your hair to Dr Sweets, but please go ahead and leave, Miss Wick."
Brennan starts to go over her latest notes, but her mind wanders. Sweets and her former intern were engaged to be married before this trip made them decide to break up. Angela and Hodgins drifted apart after their first almost wedding. They all decided to spend the rest of their lives with someone. They committed to share what would probably be decades together with another person. Why does it feel like she took those kind of vows more seriously than they all did when she refused to go along with Booth's gamble almost a year ago?
Was Hank right when he said you go ahead and take what you can get, although it may turn out to be only a short time?
oOoOoOo
D.C.
Despite days of being back in D.C. it still feels like he is covered in a layer of brown dust. It took him two weeks in civilian clothes before the feeling left him last time. He takes another sip from the cup in his hand. The guy behind the coffee cart may have changed, but the coffee is just as bad as it was a year ago.
Maybe he shouldn't have ordered hers at the same time? She should have been here by now. Her coffee will go cold. Not that it matters, he thinks as he paces. They're not really meeting to have coffee.
Booth looks up when he hears the wheels of a suitcase being dragged across the uneven ground and running steps. "Good thing I was not planning on playing it cool," flies through his head when he realizes he must be grinning like an idiot although hot liquid is sloshing over his hands as he makes his way toward her.
"I should have been back yesterday, but I missed my connecting flight," are Brennan's first words to his face after a twelve months apart. Then she lets go of her bags to throw her arms around him.
"Careful, Bones, hot coffee here."
"You wanna go sit down?" Booth asks when he has managed to extricate his arms from around her without pouring coffee down her coat. "Maybe check if your purse is still where you threw it?"
They find a bench close by.
"I can't promise you fifty years," she begins.
oOoOoOo
FIN