"The Man in the Hospital" - Chapter 4
Title: The Man in the Hospital
Author: Shannon - shannyfish
Disclaimer: I do not own “Bones” or its characters, Fox does. This is merely for entertainment purposes only.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Pick up from the Season Four Finale - plain and simple.
Warning: Severe spoilers for “The End of the Beginning” - Season Four Finale episode! You have been warned!
Chapter 4 - “The Road Not Taken”
Author’s Note: Okay, I’m excited to see the Bones panel at Comic Con coming up here soon! Hopefully I’ll get in...because I REALLY want to see it! : )
chapter 4 - “Ava Maria" - Beyonce
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Lima, Peru
Lima was alive even though it was late. It reminded her of a lot of other cities. She didn’t plan on being there for long though. She had had enough of humans and life. She missed death... Lima was packed together; there wasn’t enough space in between the buildings and the people. Brennan couldn’t relax. She’d stay the night there, but in the morning she had to head Cusco where she’d continue her journey.
She took a taxi to her hotel and eventually found her room. It was what she needed. She hadn’t gone all out. All she needed mainly was the bed and the shower.
Once she got into her room, she found herself too tired to sleep. Brennan let herself fall onto the bed though and curl up. She closed her eyes and found tears falling down her face. She rolled over, so her face was against the pillow. The tears soaked it and muffled her sobs.
It was still hard.
She had thought that the distance would help. To make the coping that much easier. It wasn’t easier. It was almost harder. She hurt. Her insides felt twisted, like they were being pulled out through her belly button. Brennan curled up and hoped that she’d cry herself to sleep. It had been some time since she’d done so, but this time...she hoped for it.
She felt weak.
Pathetic.
Stupid.
She absolutely hated feeling like that. Brennan shortly wondered if this was what dying felt like. Sure, she’d almost died...she could have died, when the Gravedigger had buried her and Hodgins alive in a car. She had known that Booth would be there to save her. Now, she knew that he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be there for her. This was so much worse...maybe it was just the not knowing that truly hurt.
Eventually, she did cry herself to sleep into a black darkness that took her in.
*~*~*
The Next Day...
En Route to Cusco, Peru
Brennan felt like she wasn’t really there. Like it was all just a dream. Maybe this was what it had felt like for Booth to be in a coma...
She shook her head and tried to shake the thoughts off. She’s promised herself, no thoughts of Booth on the trip, but she found that near impossible. After all, they’d been working together for five years now...he’d agreed to father her child...she loved him so dearly and now...now it was like someone had shaken a picture on an Etch-a-Sketch. It was all gone.
It wasn’t fair.
She knew it was stupid to go back to that. It being fair. Life wasn’t fair, she knew that better than anyone, but she was just having a more difficult time coping with this. She’d found herself ignoring the beautiful and culturally rich Peru on both sides of the vehicle transporting her from Lima to Cusco, and instead she was torturing herself.
She wasn’t being fair to herself.
This trip was supposed to be a trip that would heal her. Cleanse her. Something that would help her deal with what was happening with her life. She knew that she should feel excited. What she was about to do usually had to be booked months, if not a year in advance, but she’d been lucky enough to go on it with such little notice.
It was a once in a lifetime experience.
Brennan shook her head again. She forced the tears to stay back. She didn’t want the whole trip to be one big mental breakdown. She could do this. She could make it work. Her life wasn’t all about Booth. She’d survived on her own for so long before Booth. She could survive this week without him as well. Brennan had planned on a twelve day trip. And then she’d return and see if she could continue.
She’d figured out back-up plans, of course, but none of them were as rewarding in her mind as her job at the Jeffersonian’s Medico-Legal Lab working with the F.B.I., working with Booth. It would leave her life solitary...it would mean that she’d have to leave her friends behind and possibly move farther away from Russ and his family. It was so hard to think of it. To leave Booth behind was hard, but even harder for her to imagine leaving Angela.
Although they had their differences, Angela had always been there for her and she liked to think she’d been there for her too. Angela was what she thought a sister should be. They shared secrets and they helped each other. Angela was always trying to get her to do things that she may not be sure about doing. She pushed her. She made her better. She wasn’t sure if she could just leave Angela...though now Angela had Hodgins. It would still be difficult.
Brennan sighed and then turned to look out her window. It was beautiful. Breathtaking.
Cusco was not like Lima. There were tightly packed places, but they weren’t the same type of buildings as in Lima. A backdrop of beautiful natural mountains made it into a perfect picture. It was natural beauty in the midst of civilization.
Where she was going, there wasn’t going to be any civilization.
Well, at least not much.
She’d wanted to complete the journey she had wanted to make all on her own, but it wasn’t allowed. She had to stay with a group, for heaven’s sake they had a cook on duty! Brennan had lived in harder places with no cook or no bathroom tents... This wasn’t going to be exactly the journey she’d hoped for, but she figured that there was a possibility that she could make a deal with her guide.
For the next seven days, she’d be making her way to Machu Picchu on foot. The Salkantay Inca Trail was not the normal route taken, but rather an alternate trek which added much more challenge to the journey. They’d be leaving from the village of Mollepata and would be passing through various different climates and weather changes.
It was something in which she’d wanted to just lose herself in. Maybe take ten days to make the journey instead of seven. To let herself get lost and find some happiness there. That wasn’t the plan that was laid out on paper, though. Either way, she hoped that it was for the very least...a diversion.
The car moved through the city of Cusco and started towards the mountains. She had to get to the 9,515 feet point where the village was located and where she’d be meeting with the people she’d be travelling with. She’d packed her own backpack and left it at that. The company was supplying the tents and the base camp gear. She’d packed the clothing which was absolutely necessary along with other essentials. She’d also packed rain gear, a sleeping bag, and extra thermal blanket, and water bottles. She felt prepared. It wasn’t like these kinds of journeys were new to her; she just hadn’t travelled to Machu Picchu before.
The slow climb up the mountain allowed her to take in the greenery and try to breathe. Things were going to be fine. Things were going to be better.
*~*~*
Mollepata, Peru
Mollepata was where she’d depart. It was unlike Lima and Cusco in the facts that it was connected with dirt roads. The buildings were farther spaced and not constructed of such complex materials as were the far more populated cities.
Far from civilization.
Of course they wouldn’t be immune from people. There were a few trails that people departed on between Mollepata and Machu Picchu, they just happened to be taking the longest one in. She still had planned on asking about extending her trip, so the seven days would melt into nine...or so...until she felt like she was ready to leave. She didn’t want to be rushed or paced.
This was supposed to be a journey.
She wanted to leave Peru with a sense of what she could endure and what would come next in her life. Brennan didn’t think she’d felt so confused, constantly sad to almost a state of depression, and generally feeling alone since her parents and Russ left. She had thought that those years following had been the worst in her life, but she thought that this was much worse. The pain was much more severe. Her heart ached and pain spiked through her veins, reaching out and electrifying her system with jolts of pain, extending all the way to her fingers and toes.
Booth.
If Booth were here, she knew that he’d label this a spiritual journey...she knew him well enough to know that. He’d smile his charming smile at her and tilt her head and tell her that he knew that she knew the answer to what she was looking for, but that looking for guidance meant that her journey she was about to undertake would be deemed as a spiritual one. And maybe he was right. She could think of many cultures with similar rituals and rites of passage. Maybe this was hers.
She liked to think that if this was some kind of spiritual journey that she was doing it on behave of Booth. In order for her to know how to best live with the life they’d shared over the last five years...and truly know what to say to him and what to do once she got back to D.C. and saw him. She couldn’t picture herself telling him anything...not even goodbye, which made her think that maybe she really didn’t know what to do deep down... Maybe she was stuck. Maybe she was just scared. Brennan didn’t know. All she knew was that she was doing this in order to be able to do what was best for them both.
The car came to a stop and she paid the driver before exiting and removing her bit of luggage. It was just enough that she needed, a hiking pack filled with what she needed and she’d added some granola bars and some other foodstuffs that wouldn’t perish and wouldn’t take up much space in case the trail guide decided to let her stay a bit longer. Her sleeping bag was strapped to the outside, even though the travel company supplied them and the porters transported them to every campsite, she was still hoping to persuade them to let her adjust the trip.
The car sped away and she turned, looking for the travel group. She located them quickly. There was a group forming near a few mules which were packed with equipment and a man speaking with a brightly colored shirt on that had the logo of the company she’d booked with, or at least she thought it was the logo. She headed towards them and quickly saw that it was indeed the logo of the company. At the very least she was in the right spot.
She joined them and stayed quiet. Most of the people there looked like they were probably American. Brennan wagered that they probably were doing this as a “challenge” and probably went to the gym and thought that they were in great shape. She didn’t think that people could declare themselves in great shape until they’d climbed and hiked trails around the worlds in various climates and altitudes. Sometimes just a small change, like sand instead of grass, could up the difficulty one hundred fold. She doubted any of them knew or cared about that.
This was one of the reasons why she didn’t want to stay with the group. Most of them were inexperienced, but were okay with camping in luxury. The porters would spoil them carrying their luggage and camp gear; they’d set up camp ahead of them and have a hot meal waiting. That’s not the experience she wanted. She could get that in D.C. easily enough. Though it was a metropolitan area, there were still hiking areas close enough by she could travel to. That’s all this was...bringing the outside world in.
Brennan stayed quiet as the man talked. The trail guide was supposed to be bilingual, speaking both English and Spanish. She figured that given the area that the guide probably could speak different dialects of Spanish as well. She’d pull him aside later and talk to him; see if they could negotiate something.
As she stood there, not really listening, she realized how much she missed Booth and Angela and Hodgins... The Jeffersonian and those she worked with had been a major part of her life for the past five years at the very least and she found herself homesick for it all.
She tried to force herself to concentrate on what was at hand. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on the voice of the guide, she found herself not able to. Though she wasn’t too concerned at what she was missing. This trail was a road not taken by many, she’d been on trails such as those in the past, she figured that she knew the jist of what he was trying to convey to them.
Soon enough they’d be leaving Mollepata and heading up towards the higher mountains, into nature at its finest and possibly most purest form.
*~*~*
TBC...