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The last thing you remember is her smile, the softness of her still flat belly under your hands. How you laid awake together all night, trying to decide on a name.
*
(who are you?)
“Temperance Brennan. I’m your- we’re partners.”
Partners in crime, your brain supplies. Fidelity, bravery, integrity. Rangers lead the way.
You can’t remember your name.
You close your eyes again. The darkness is cool and familiar; you know how to lay in wait for days.
“You’re going to be ok, Booth,” Temperance Brennan assures you. “I’ll get a nurse.”
You think you hear the thwap thwap of helicopter blades. It’s just your heart.
*
The next time you open your eyes, there’s a Priest standing by your bed.
“I thought you’d find a connection to your faith comforting right now,” Temperance says, from the doorway.
You blink, until the large silver crucifix resolves in front of you.
Apparently you’re Catholic.
“Even though there is no empirical evidence to suggest that magic can heal a person.”
Apparently, she’s not.
“Would you like to pray, son?” the Priest asks.
You nod, and without thinking, find yourself making the Sign of the Cross.
Hail Mary full of Grace
Pray for me, a sinner
After, the Priest leaves a pink Rosary on your bedside table. “Some things transcend the physical body, Seeley,” he says.
He puts a hand on your shoulder. “Your spirit remembers.”
(One week later, at the suggestion of your Neuro-psychologist to attempt activities you might find familiar, Temperance takes you to the shooting range. The gun is hard and warm against your palm. You fire off six shots in rapid succession, leaving a neat cluster of holes in the center of the target’s head.
One shot one kill
You wonder if your spirit remembers that too.)
*
The hands in your dream are so much bigger than yours. There is no face attached, only breath sharp with the stink of alcohol and anger. You grab the man’s wrist, but his other fist swings. Even wrapped safe in the fuzzy logic of dreams, you know this is going to hurt.
That’s ok.
Better you than the boy in the corner. The one with too-skinny arms wrapped around his knees, shaking his head
No Seeley don’t.
You don’t remember the boy’s name. Just that you would die to protect him.
The man’s fist connects with your jaw, and your head snaps back. You hear the thud and feel the crunch.
You wait for the pain.
*
“Booth, wake up. Wake up, it’s only a nightmare.”
Temperance has creases on her cheek in the design of your couch. She leans over you; the curve of her breast visible beneath her thin night shirt. You shiver. Pain medicine makes your tongue feel thick.
You nod up at her, and she lets go of your arm, turning away.
“Wait-”
The dim light of the kitchen sketches the outline of her body in silver and black. She’s sleeping in shorts, her thighs are bare, pale and strong.
The question you want to ask makes sense in your head. “Were we-” you try to mime sex using both hands. But you are tired, over-medicated, and you stop when you realize it looks more like the flapping of a very stoned seal.
“You remember?” Her smile is lovely. It could be familiar.
“So we were?”
“Oh- no.” The smile fades, a trick of light and movement. “No we were not having intercourse.”
You cock your head. “Were we fucking?”
She blinks; you’ve startled her. “You really are not yourself. No. We were not doing that either.”
“I’m- sorry, I don’t-”
“It’s ok, Booth,” she tells you. “It’s a result of your head injury.”
For a second, you wonder how she knows about your dream. Then you remember.
*
Rebecca doesn’t want Parker to know about the amnesia. You can’t argue with her parenting choices; without photographs, you didn’t even know what your son looked like.
Now you’re alone with both of them in your living room, feeling awkward and off balance. Parker doesn’t seem to notice. He climbs into your lap, heavy, sturdy. He fits well there, tucked like a small bird beneath one of your arms.
You open your mouth and nothing comes out. Temporary aphasia is what your doctor’s been calling it. You wonder if maybe you just don’t know how to be a father.
Parker babbles on at you anyway, something about video games and a guy named Brent.
“My boyfriend,” Rebecca mouths silently, over Parker’s shoulder.
You nod, and Parker stares at your head.
“Can I rub it?” he asks, eyeing the growing bristles.
“Uhm, ok.”
“Hey, it feels like a ferret! Come here, mom, feel it!”
Rebecca laughs. “Maybe next time, kiddo,” she says.
Parker shrugs and clambers off you. “I wanna show you my new GI Joe, daddy. Wait here, I’ll be right back!”
You smile at him, because it’s easy. Then he’s gone, and you fold your hands between your knees. Rebecca sits down next to you, close enough to touch. You don’t.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” she says.
But you stay quiet, and she lets you just look at her for a while. You can’t remember sleeping beside her. You can’t remember what she might have looked like pregnant. Your son has her eyes.
“Did we- Did I-” you bite off all the curses that threaten to spill. For some reason, those words come easy. You don’t want to know what that means.
“You want to know if you loved me.”
You swallow. Nod.
“Honestly? I was never really sure.” There’s no accusation in her voice, and if she’s sad, you can’t tell. She puts a hand on your arm, her nail polish red and shining.
*
“You are staring at the ketchup bottle.” Temperance says.
The diner is noisy, it’s hard to separate her voice from the rest. It makes the space between your eyes hurt.
“I’m just trying to-“
“You like ketchup on your eggs,” she tells you, with certainty. You’ve noticed she says most things with certainty.
“Ok.”
You pour the ketchup all over the scrambled eggs and hash browns in front of you, and take a bite. You spit it out a second later, reaching for some strong coffee to wash the taste away.
“Guess you were wrong about that one.”
“No, I wasn’t,” she says. With certainty. “Perhaps you shouldn’t return to the lab yet. It’s not essential for you to be there, and if you’re not fully- ”
“I’m fully,” you say, putting the coffee down. “I just want things to go back to normal.”
*
“-in the posteroparietal area of this fracture is a roughly rectangular shaped displaced fragment of skull,” Temperance is saying when you walk into the lab.
It’s just her and Sweets, and you wish he wasn’t there even as you’re grateful the rest of them don’t seem to be around.
(Squints. You used to call them squints, she said, but that word doesn’t sound familiar and the lab smells like sour chemicals and decay. You wonder how she gets that smell out of her hair.)
The body she’s examining takes up only a quarter of the metal tray.
“Where’s the rest of-”
“Her,” Temperance tells you, without looking up. “And the victim’s remains are all present.”
You step closer. A tiny, complete skeleton, with its skull bashed in sideways. A bag of clothes folded neatly at the body’s feet. A single sparkly pink shoe, splattered with dried blood.
No gore or guts, and you’ve seen death before. You’ve *caused* death before.
You put a hand on the railing beside you, as the room tilts.
“I’m fine,” you say, quietly. Or maybe you just think it because neither of them look over at you.
“In the majority of murders of children under the age of 15, the perpetrator is a family member,” Sweets says. “Were there signs of sexual assault on the victim?”
Your vision narrows, and your ears ring.
“I’m fine,” you hear yourself saying again, to no one in particular. Even as you throw up all over your shoes.
You’re ordered into bi-weekly appointments with Sweets. Placed on something called “indefinite leave”.
They make you surrender your gun.
*
“Can I see Parker?” you ask Rebecca.
“It’s 9:30, Seeley, he’s sleeping.”
She’s eyeing you through the little chain lock on her front door. You’re suddenly very aware that you haven’t changed the shirt you threw up in a few hours ago. And that you probably stink like beer. And that you probably shouldn’t have driven here.
But Temperance is still at the lab because a child was murdered, and they are not going to stop working until they find the killer.
(“We’ll find him, Booth,” she said. But you’re not part of that we anymore.)
“Hey-” she says, suddenly, sliding the lock open. “Are you ok? What happened to- Come in.”
Her apartment smells like whatever she’s been cooking. It’s comforting, homey. You wonder if you ever had dinner here, together, like a family.
“Where’s uhm...Brent?”
“He’s away for the week,” Rebecca tells you, ushering you toward the couch.
“He doesn’t want to be here all the time with you guys?”
She stops, frowns. “Wow, you’re- *really* not yourself are you?”
“I don’t know who myself is.”
“I’m going to get you some water. And an aspirin. Or- a few.”
You grab her arm as she turns to go. “I don’t know who I am.”
“Seeley-”
“Rebecca. I don’t know who I am.” Letting go of her arm means nearly tripping over the furniture.
“It’s ok. It’s going to be ok,” she tells you, bending and folding you into a comfortable position on her couch.
Your raise up, press your mouth to hers before she can pull away. She doesn’t pull away.
Instead, she reaches for the fly of your jeans. She touches you like you’re familiar to her. You groan, and lose yourself inside of her for a long while. It’s sweeter than being lost.
*
“Wow. Remind me why we broke up again? ‘Cause that was....yeah.”
She laughs. “*That* was never our problem.”
“Hunh. So what was?”
“Oh, only pretty much everything else. Are you sober enough to drive home now?”
You are. But you’re also warm and comfortable, and it’s twenty miles back to your place.
“You can’t stay here,” she tells you, before you can say a word. “It would just confuse Parker.”
And she’s already handing you your pants.
“Can I just- look in on him before I go?”
“Sure,” she says.
She turns away from you to get dressed.
Parker has glow in the dark stars on his ceiling that Brent probably put up. He sleeps with both fists tucked underneath his chin. His mouth is open, breath coming in tiny huffs against his Superman pillow case.
You reach out with a careful hand to push the curls off of his forehead. He’s warm and a little damp with sweat. You search his tiny, almost delicate features, looking for traces of yourself there. But your own face is a stranger’s, and so you find nothing. You pull your hand away. The truth is that holding your weapon felt more natural.
(But buried there beneath the pile of blankets he is so- tiny. Helpless. And the world is full of fists and gun shots, children cold and butterflied open on concrete slabs.)
You don’t remember driving home.
Just before dawn, you fall asleep on your own couch. Still wearing your boots, both fists tucked underneath your chin.
*
“Atlas.”
Temperance is whispering, pressing her wet open mouth to the back of your neck, on the bump below your skull.
You shiver. “I should have known you’d have a weird idea of foreplay.”
“Booth, this is important,” she tells you. “The first cervical bone is called the Atlas, for the leader of the Titans, condemned to hold all heaven and earth on his shoulders.”
You don’t have to see her to know that she is frowning in concentration. But the tip of her finger never stops tracing your spine, raising goosebumps and groans.
“Sacrum,” she breathes, the ends of her hair brushing your naked skin. “For holy, or sacred.”
“I like that,” you say quietly, and you can feel her smile against your hip.
(And oh, you remember now, this is what she does: she reads the dead like Braille, like ancient hieroglyphs, she interprets the space and silence of things long gone, then whispers all of their secrets back to you, in words you can understand.)
Another kiss, much lower. “Coccyx,” she says.
You know that one. “It sounds dirty.”
She laughs. The sound rushes up the length of your back, makes all your small hairs stand on end. You shift against the couch.
“Turn over.”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
She straddles your lap, naked and unashamed. It feels as if it’s been years since you were allowed to touch her. You don’t understand why.
You reach for her breasts, but she catches your hands in hers. Kisses each finger in turn.
“Phalanges,” she says, only it sounds like sex.
Maybe because she is starting to suck on each finger; slowly, gently, down to the knuckle. Her tongue curls around your palm, and it’s so good your back wants to arch. She has you pinned to the couch with long legs and a steady blue gaze.
“It’s a Greek word, meaning closely knit row. Phalanx. Your fingers are named for soldiers. Which is appropriate, I think.”
Finally, finally, she places your hand on the swell of her breast, and you squeeze. Careful, gentle (patience and restraint). Until her eyes flutter closed, and that. Feels like victory.
“What’s this, then?” you whisper, leaning up to press a kiss in the shadow of her cleavage.
She tugs you away, and points. “Scapula. Sternum. Xiphoid.”
You nod, running your tongue over the shape of them where she tastes like sweat and sweeter things.
“Clavicle,” she finishes, tossing her hair over one shoulder so you can continue licking. “It means- oh- it means little key. Because that bone appears to ‘close and lock’ the other bones of the chest.”
You grin. “Key to your heart?”
She looks at you, frowning again. “The heart is a muscle. Aside from its valves, it neither opens nor closes.”
“Sure it does,” you tell her, slipping so damned easily inside where she is already warm and wet for you.
She’s light but strong; she pushes you down into the couch, soft hands on your shoulders, soft thighs along your sides. You don’t fight the urge to press up, to bite at the corner of her little pink mouth. To smile when she bites back harder, her teeth sinking into your bottom lip so you feel the jolt brain to balls.
It isn’t enough.
You cradle the back of her head, roll together off the couch and onto the carpeted floor. Her legs wrap around your waist, pulling you closerdeeperharder, yes.
You shove the coffee table out of the way and it rolls against the wall with a thud -
*
The knocking gets louder. You open your eyes. Rub a hand over your face, and feel creases on your cheeks in the pattern of your couch cushions.
Temperance is standing at your door, holding two cups of coffee and a bag of something that might be pastries. The dream clings to you, sticky and thick. Her smile is wide as morning, and you can’t stop staring at it (her).
She doesn’t wait for an invitation, just steps inside, handing you a coffee, putting your breakfast on the counter.
“I wanted to check on you,” she says.
You watch her, the way her hips move beneath her skirt, the way she knows where your napkins are. The ease of familiarity which feels like something stronger than dreams.
“And to tell you that we’ve identified the child. Your boss feels confident we’ll find the person who murdered her. I thought that might make you feel better about not being able to assist with the case.”
You nod as she hands you a muffin. “So did everything go all right your first night alone?”
It doesn’t occur to you to lie to her. “I – actually spent most of the night at Rebecca’s.”
She turns away to find sugar for her coffee, but not before the look on her face tells you only that you ought to teach her poker. You’re pretty sure you used to be able to read people. You can’t remember if you used to be able to read her.
Your hand hovers by her shoulder, but doesn’t touch. You want to touch. “You said- are you sure we weren’t, you know. Together?” you ask her back.
“No, Booth. We’re just partners.” You drop your hand. When she turns around, she is smiling again. It looks real.
She leaves for Central America the next day.
She doesn’t say good-bye.
*
She’s gone a week when your memories return, like a pipe bursting.
(we're Scully and Mulder
I don't know what that means
you're gonna make me fall!
I’m never gonna make you fall, I'm always here
if it wasn’t for my grandfather, I probably would’ve killed myself when I was a kid
you want me to come to India with you?
ball’s in your court brother
I’m better for Parker being in the world and someday you will see that
his mother? she likes you?
yeah, she likes me but she didn’t love me
you loved her though?
of course I loved her. I still do, I just don’t like her too much
daddy daddy daddy look what I did it’s a dia- diaroma
you know, we all die a little bit, Bones with each shot, we all die a little bit
she’s my partner, see, and if anything happens to her, I will find you and I will kill you I won’t think twice come here, look at my eyes look at my face, if anything happens to her, I will kill you you understand, you understand?)
You have to take half a bottle of aspirin, and the phone off the hook, because even though your head is swimming with thirty five years worth of memories, you can’t remember how to fix plumbing anymore.
*
Sweets shows you the scans they’ve taken of your brain: Before. After. The shiny colors that prove your feelings are illusion. And this ought to convince you, the *science* of it ought to convince you.
But getting your whole life back still feels like losing the single most important thing you ever had. There aren’t any scans that can read a man’s heart.
(it felt so real.
it wasn’t)
You hold the x-rays up to the light as if you could interpret them. They are see through, flimsy, they weigh nothing.
They’re skin without bones.
*
The first thing you remember is her smile, and the softness of her under your hands. Sometimes, you still look at her, and wonder what she would think of the name Hank.
-end