Dashboard Confessional
By Ralkana

Disclaimer ~ Bones is owned by Josephson Entertainment and Far Field Productions, in association with 20th Century Fox Television, based on the novels by Kathy Reichs. I own none of it, but if someone wants to give me Agent Booth for Christmas, I think I could be persuaded.

Comments and feedback to Ralkana47@yahoo.com would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Timeline ~ Sometime in the middle of season 2.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Dr. Temperance Brennan peered into the refrigerated case, mulling over her choices. After a moment of contemplation, she grabbed a bottle of water. She was about to shut the case when she paused, then grabbed a bottle for her partner. Shutting the case with her elbow, she turned, almost running into the woman passing behind her.

"Excuse me," she said, stopping short.

The other woman shot a hostile glance at her and then turned away before stopping and slowly turning back to her.

"You’re her."

"Excuse me?" Brennan said again, confused this time.

"The bone lady, the one that works with Seeley."

Her partner’s name had been practically hissed, and Brennan’s eyes widened as she studied the other woman. "You know Booth?"

The other woman’s thin lips pursed and her eyes narrowed, her face pinching into an angry mask as she raked her oily brown hair out of her face with one hand.

"Yeah, I know him. You better watch your back."

"Is that a threat?" Brennan stood up straighter, not sure whether to hold onto the bottles of water as possible weapons, or drop them so her hands would be free. The woman was smaller and thinner than she was, but she knew enough about martial arts and self-defense to realize that meant nothing.

The woman laughed -- an ugly, mirthless sound. "I’m not a threat. He’s the threat. He’s got everyone thinking he’s so noble and brave. I’m sure you’ve heard all about what a hero he is. He thinks he knows what’s best for everybody -- he sticks his nose in everyone’s lives and gets good people killed!"

Brennan stared at the woman, stunned into silence by her vitriol. The bell over the convenience store door jingled.

"Bones," Booth called, irritation in his voice, and she tore her gaze away from the strange woman over to where her partner had stuck his head in the door. "What the hell is taking so long? I thought -- Hannah."

The color drained from his face as he slipped inside and strode up next to Brennan. The woman turned her face away from him, prepared to flee in the opposite direction, but her path was blocked by a mother with an infant in a stroller and a toddler by the hand. She turned back, anger and desperation in her face.

"Hannah, I -- "

"Don’t you talk to me!" she hissed. "Leave me alone!"

With that, she pushed between them so forcefully that Booth had to grab onto a nearby shelf to keep his balance. Brennan was knocked back into the refrigerated case. Booth shot forward and grabbed her by the arms, gently resettling her on her feet.

"You okay?" he asked with a glance at the woman who now stood at the counter. Brennan studied her partner. His face was still pale, and she noticed his hands were trembling.

"I’m fine, Booth. Are you okay?"

"Fine." He raked his fingers through his dark hair, unable to keep from staring at the woman at the counter. Feeling his gaze, she whipped her head around and glared at him, and he flinched. "Um, can we -- let’s go."

"The water -- "

"We’ll get it somewhere else, okay? I’ll buy."

She turned to put the bottles back in the case, and by the time she turned back, he was already outside, opening the door to the SUV. She followed, purposely avoiding the gaze of the other woman, who was still at the counter.

"Watch yourself," the woman hissed from behind her, but Brennan ignored her.

Booth had started the engine, and he was impatiently tapping his fingers on the steering wheel when she opened the door and climbed in. The SUV shot backward and through the parking lot and slid into traffic as soon as she had her seat belt on.

He drove even faster than usual, his gaze locked into the road ahead of him, his movements jerky and erratic. She watched him, waiting for him to acknowledge what had happened, or even her presence, but he did neither, keeping his focus on the traffic.

As she watched him, she thought about the woman and what she had said. Brennan had originally thought that perhaps she was an ex-lover of Booth’s, but what she’d said implied otherwise. Her brow furrowed as the woman’s furious hiss echoed in her mind; what she’d said had been in complete contradiction with everything Brennan knew of her partner.

Whoever she was, she’d been wrong; everything she’d said had been wrong. Booth never spoke of his time in the Army with anything but remorse, or, at the very least, self-deprecation. Even when there was pride in his words, it was tempered with sadness. He never claimed to be a hero – in fact, when labeled that by someone else, which had happened several times during their partnership, he’d vehemently denied it. And nothing about him could be called cowardly; he was quite probably the most selfless person she knew, especially when it came to her safety, and the safety of others. He never acknowledged the risks he took when someone else was in trouble.

She tried to put it out of her mind. He’d discuss it with her if he wanted to, and there was no use dwelling on it.

A Starbucks came up on their right and he slammed on the brakes, shot across two lanes, and made the turn into the driveway, ignoring the angry honks that came from behind him. He tersely ordered for both of them and while that normally would have drawn at least a complaint -- if not a full-blown argument -- from her, she knew that now was not the time. Besides, he’d ordered exactly what she would have anyway.

The perky young woman serving them told him the total over the speaker, and when he didn’t complain even once about the over-inflated prices, it only served to reinforce the level of his agitation. At the window, the woman brightened when she saw him, flashing a flirtatious smile as she wished him good morning and repeated the total. When he didn’t smile back, handing her the money without even a greeting, the smile slid from her face and she scowled at the register as she punched at its keys.

She handed their order through the window without another word, but Booth’s manners were too well ingrained for him to be completely rude, and he managed to thank her, his voice sounding clipped and forced. Brennan had never seen him not respond to a woman’s flirting, even if it was just with a charming smile, and she stared at him, nonplussed. He handed her one of the cups of coffee and both of the bottles of water, setting his own coffee in the cup holder.

Sliding the SUV into one of the few parking spots in front of the store, he threw it into park and settled back into his seat with a sigh. Brennan sipped her coffee and watched him. His coffee sat, steaming but untouched, in the cup holder. He refused to look at her, his gaze locked onto the traffic whizzing by on the street before them. The silence in the car stretched out uncomfortably.

"Well?" He bit out after it became too much to bear.

"What?" She took another sip of her coffee.

"Aren’t you going to ask me who she was?"

"Do you want me to?"

He laughed humorlessly, shaking his head. "No."

"I don't understand. I'm not your lover, Booth. Did you expect me to be jealous of an -- admittedly emotional -- encounter with another woman?"

He turned to her finally, his brow furrowed, his eyes full of pain and disbelief. "What? Jealous? No! But aren’t you the least bit curious?"

Unbuckling her seat belt, she turned towards him in the seat as she set her coffee into the cup holder next to his. "Of course I'm curious, Booth. But she obviously has some painful connection with your past and, given my own past, I'm not likely to force you to explore that if you choose not to."

"You got all that from what she said to me?"

"She spoke to me before you came in."

His face paled. "She did? What'd... what did she say?"

"She implied she knew you," she said vaguely. He was already upset, and there was no reason to exacerbate the situation. "Do you want to talk about it, then?"

"No. But..." He scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed again. Shifting in the seat, he fished his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out several small pictures. He shuffled through the pictures of Parker and pulled one from the back, handing it to her.

It was dog-eared and creased, a little faded. In it, a teenaged Booth, sweaty and disheveled, bruise darkening one cheek, his hockey jersey torn at one shoulder, grinned mischievously into the camera. His arm was slung around the shoulder of a similarly clad but slightly smaller blond boy with a split lip, who smiled admiringly up at his friend. Brennan couldn’t help but smile in return.

The smile vanished abruptly when she glanced up to find Booth also staring at the picture, sorrow etched deeply into his features. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

"He -- his name was Jason Bransen. He was..." He closed his eyes, shook his head a little. "God, we knew each other forever. Grew up together." The look in his eyes was far away now, lost in memories. "He would have been Parker’s godfather."

She frowned. The regret in his voice tore at her, and she reached over, taking the rest of the pictures from him before he crushed them in his fist, knowing how irreplaceable photographs were, and how much it would hurt him if he ruined them. She settled the pictures in one hand and placed her other over his tightly clenched fist.

He glanced down at their hands and then back at her, and then he turned his hand so that hers was lying in his palm. He stared at her, his eyes bright and shining.

"Hannah was his wife."

"Booth..."

He smiled at her, but it was a pale imitation of his normal cocky grin. "If you don’t want to hear this, Bones, speak now or forever hold your peace."

She said nothing. He squeezed her hand briefly.

"He was so in love with her, even when we were kids. They were high school sweethearts. We always hung out with each other, the two of them and me and... whatever girl I was dating at the time."

"And I'm already well aware that there was no shortage of those," she said, forcing a smile, and he gave her a watery chuckle.

"A few. He and I... since we were little, barely old enough to play with Nerf rockets and BB guns, we had always had a pact that as soon as we graduated, we’d enlist together. We’d had it for so long that we never talked about it, it was just something that was going to happen."

"Hannah didn’t know about your plans," she deduced.

"She found out when she asked him what colleges he was planning on applying to. It was the first big fight they ever had. She didn’t talk to him for days. And that was only the beginning. All through our senior year, she did everything she could to change his mind. He didn’t because I didn’t."

He reached across her and pulled the picture out of her hand, staring at it. "I was an okay student," he said, not looking up. "I could have maybe gone somewhere with football or hockey, but I’d thought about joining up for so long... My dad was always after me to be a jet jockey like him, but I knew, ever since I was a little boy, that I wanted to be a Ranger. It was what I was for -- where I was supposed to go to become a man. We fought about it all the time."

Booth glanced back at her, and she could see in him the vulnerable boy he must have been, determined to reach his own goals but anxious for his father's approval. She blinked away the sentimental and irrelevant thought.

"Jason didn’t have to go, though," he said. "He had the grades -- he could have gone anywhere."

"He went where he wanted to go. Where you went."

He shrugged. "Yeah. I guess. I was best man. At their wedding. She didn’t want me there -- blamed me for the whole thing -- but he insisted. They got married a month after graduation. I think she thought maybe it would change his mind. It just made him more sure -- it meant he had a family to support."

He shook his head, his gaze far away, lost in the memories. "They did nothing but fight. Before he left, through basic, when we got deployed... every time he called, in their letters -- it just got worse and worse. He was miserable, and he just wanted to go home and be with her.

"I just wanted him to be happy -- we were brothers, Bones -- I was closer to him than I’ve ever been to Jared, and after we trained and fought together..."

His voice was shaking now. "It was his birthday, and he hadn’t talked to her in two weeks. She was never home when he called, and he was... he was so hurt, and so mad at her. He didn’t want to call her. I told him to. Wouldn’t leave him alone about it, and he finally did, just to shut me up. And she finally picked up the phone, and she told him she wanted a divorce. And then she hung up. Didn't even wait for him to answer."

He was clutching at her hand, his grip painfully tight, and she bit her lip to keep from saying anything, knowing that he wasn’t hurting her on purpose. She tightened her own grip in return, hoping to reassure him.

"Not that he could have. Answered, I mean. It broke him, Bones. He just... he didn’t care, and you couldn’t not care, not over there. I tried everything. I tried talking to him, yelling at him, I tried beating some sense into him. For two days. And all he did was stare. His heart wasn’t in it. Worse, his head wasn’t in it. And then..."

"He’s the one, isn’t he?"

Booth looked at her, startled, and she wondered if he’d been so lost in the memory that he’d forgotten she was there. She remembered his x-rays, the damage they’d shown, the proof that he was heroic, no matter what he said or thought. "He’s the one you tried to shield."

He closed his eyes, anguish in his voice. "I tried everything, Bones. I did everything I could, but there was -- he -- he was gone." His voice broke. A tear slid free and he swiped at it defiantly, pulling his hand from hers.

She didn’t know what to say, how to help him. The physical comfort of holding his hand had been easy to give, but she knew there were things that more well-adjusted people would say, platitudes she didn’t know. But she did know the truth, and she could tell him that.

"His death is not your fault, Booth."

"He joined because of me! I told him to call her! How is it not my fault?"

"He was an adult, and he made his own decision to enlist; you didn’t coerce him. You nearly died trying to protect him."

"Which wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been there," he insisted, his expression obstinate.

"But he was, and you can’t change that. Booth, you risked your life to protect your friend, and no one can ask more of you than that."

"I should have -- "

"There is nothing more you could have done. You know that, Booth -- you know you know that."

Booth nodded, but she could see that she hadn’t convinced him. There was probably nothing that could.

"You know, it’s not your fault their marriage was failing. Anthropologically speaking -- "

"Don’t," he said harshly, and she stopped. "Jason is dead and his widow hates the sight of me. I can’t look at this anthropologically."

She nodded, doing her best to hide how much the rebuke stung her. "I’m sorry. It’s how I deal with things, you know that."

"Yeah, well, it’s not how I deal."

"You prefer reckless driving. And violence," she added, handing him the rest of the pictures.

He chuckled grimly as he took them from her. "Yeah. I’m not the only one. She threatened to kill me."

"What? When?"

"They sent me back to the States to recuperate, after... after. And when they released me, I had some leave before they sent me back, and I went to see her. I... I don’t know what I was thinking, or hoping for. She screamed at me for twenty minutes, pointed a shotgun at me, and told me to get the hell off her property or she’d finish what they started." He shrugged, and another sigh escaped him. "She was grieving. She still is."

"So are you."

His face crumpled, but he fought the tears as he shoved the pictures back in his wallet with trembling hands.

"It is not your fault Jason died. If anything, it’s Hannah’s."

Shocked, he dropped his wallet and turned to her, his eyes wide with astonishment and bright with grief. "What! How?"

"She gave him emotionally devastating news in a war zone, when he needed to focus his attention on survival. She could have waited until he was safely home to tell him that she wanted a divorce. Instead, she told him when he was thousands of miles away and under constant threat of attack."

"No -- she -- it’s not -- "

"It was actually very selfish of her."

"Bones, no. Things were... they were..." He trailed off, shaking his head.

"Booth, it doesn’t matter, does it? He’s dead." He flinched at her words, and she sighed. "I’m sorry. But he is, and blaming yourself -- and her blaming you -- is not going to bring him back. You did everything you could to save him, Booth, and you know that’s the truth. And so does she, whether or not she wants to admit it."

Booth shrugged again, the motion listless, and she frowned, remembering the woman’s gaze full of shocked recognition. "The truth is," she told him, "She cares enough about you to keep track of you. She recognized me as someone you work with."

"Keeping tabs on the enemy."

"Perhaps. Perhaps she cares enough about her husband’s friend to make sure he’s doing all right."

"That sounds like speculation."

"Positing a scenario. I’ve been exposed to you for far too long," she said in exasperation, and he smirked in reply. "You feel guilty, and you’re grieving. She probably feels guilty, and she’s grieving. It’s unfortunate that you can’t feel guilty and grieve together."

He winced. "Yeah, that’s... never gonna happen."

"Probably not."

"I’m sorry I went a little nuts there, Bones. I -- just, seeing her, it..." He sighed.

"Don’t apologize, Booth. I’m glad that you told me, that you trusted me enough to tell me."

"I do, you know that. And... it -- it helped... some, just telling someone about it. Telling you about it."

"I’m glad that I could help you."

He nodded, gathering himself, locking his grief away as he picked his wallet up and put it back in his pocket. "Come on, we got a body to ID."

"Well, you’re the one driving, despite my best efforts and all logical arguments to the contrary."

He laughed as he reached for his long-forgotten coffee. Taking a sip, he grimaced and pushed open the door, pouring it out on the ground. "Stone cold. Come on, let’s get some more. My treat again, since I didn’t exactly let you drink the last one."

"Another chance to flirt with the woman at the window?"

"She was a kid, Bones! And I wasn’t exactly in the flirting mood."

She laughed. "No, but she was."

"I’m sure she was just being friendly."

"Well, you weren’t very friendly back."

He frowned. "Yeah, I wasn’t, was I? Let’s not go back, she’d probably spit in our coffee."

"That is disgusting, Booth." She shuddered.

"Liquefied bodies in bathtubs and people hacked into tiny bits you can handle, but you have problems with a little saliva in your coffee?" His voice was teasing, and she was so glad to hear that tone in it again, even if the words he said turned her stomach.

"Booth, stop. Please."

He laughed. "Yeah, I’m not real big on the idea either. We’ll get coffee somewhere else."

"Good," she said, relieved.

He backed the SUV out of the spot and shouldered his way into traffic as she hastily re-buckled her seat belt.

"Temperance?"

"Hmm?"

"Thank you."

She glanced at him from where she was warily observing the traffic in the side mirror. He was smiling, and there was so much warmth and gratitude in it that she felt the corners of her mouth pulling up in return.

"You’re welcome. Any time."