Accepting Temperance by Pereybere

“Will you be going to the Halloween party, Bren?” Angela asked, curling a lock of silken dark hair around her finger in the effortlessly flirty way she had mastered so well. With Jack Hodgins and Seeley Booth in close range, Brennan didn’t imagine her behaviour was without motive. And while Booth showed little acknowledgement, aside from the usual banter, Hodgins had definitely noticed.

“I don’t have time,” Temperance replied, using a pen to mark an anomaly on a weathered skull in her hands. The ink left no stain, and Booth frowned, leaning across the table, his brow marred by his bafflement. Her instrument was like invisible ink from the Acme lab. “We put this under an ultraviolet light, when we want to see the marks we’ve made. This is particularly effective when we don’t wish to make any discernible indications of our work on the bone. This piece is one of Goodman’s treasures. He’d have the entire anthropology team dismissed if we compromised this…” Booth’s lips parted as he nodded, a sure sign of his disinterest, or perhaps disbelief that he was still standing before her, listening to her unnecessary Explanations.

She’d been distracted all day – more so than usual, and he was willing to put money on the fact that her disturbance was personal, not professional. When Brennan was weighed down by a personal problem, she submerged herself in science and investigating. It was her way of hiding. It was a technique she had developed when her parents disappeared. One that he’d quickly learned to recognize.

“You don’t have time for pumpkins and candy apples?” Angela asked, appalled. “I’ve already picked an outfit for you, sweetie, and you’re going to love it!” Brennan lifted her artic gaze, sweeping a frosty stare across the lab to her friend, who never seemed to take a hint. However brutal it might have been.

Booth smirked, watching the retorts form on Brennan’s tongue. “I am not dressing up,” she said at last, pulling off her latex gloves with a snap. The sound was decisive and final. Angela blinked, marginally hurt by her friend’s abrupt dismissal. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be completing my report for Goodman in my office.” Halfway towards the stairs she stopped, hands tucked into her lab coat. When she turned, Booth saw the distinct shape of her fingers, curled into knuckle-whitening fists. “And by ‘needing me’, I mean for legitimate work related things. Not parties, or fruitless exercises.” Her card passed through the security system and when she disappeared, they each released a breath.

“Touchy,” Hodgins said, shaking his head. “I guess we can count her off the guest list, then?” Angela dropped her chin to her hand, sounding like a pressure valve when she sighed. “How many days has she spent here? Two? Three?” Hodgins asked, leaning back on his stool.

“Today is the third. She’s spent so many hours in front of that man’s skeleton that she knows his body better than his wife did. If thirteenth century men had wives. I’m sure they did.” Booth tugged on his collar, watching the corner she’d disappeared behind, as if he half expected her to return, guns ablaze.

Swiping his own card, he descended the stairs, wondering at her peculiar behaviour. For the past few days she’d spoken only when she was spoken to directly, and even when her responses were curt, hurried, as if she wanted to isolate herself entirely.

Slinging his jacket over his shoulder, he made his way along the narrow corridor to her office, hearing only the hum of the vending machine and the steady rap of her fingers on the keyboard as he neared the glass paneled walls of her private sanctuary.

Through the blinds, he saw her frame, ever proud, her spine straight, probably because she knew what slouching would do to her bones. Her eyes stared ahead at the words on her screen, her fingers moving evenly over the keys as she submerged herself in her work. This was one of his guiltiest pleasures, and probably one of his most dangerous vices; watching her. He knew he had many addictions, one of which included a rolling dice, but Temperance Brennan, and the enigma that surrounded her, could easily have become a deadly addiction on his part.

Perhaps deadly was a tad melodramatic. But it couldn’t be healthy for his mind. He dwelled too much on her, these days. And her distraction bothered him. Especially since it was so unlike her to have developed a disinterest in her friends and her colleagues. Zach had complained twice in the space of an afternoon of his boss’ abruptness.

He rapped his knuckles against the frame, and her motions stilled, a long silence stretching out before him. After what felt like an eternity, she permitted him inside, her shoulders tight when her eyes fell upon him. “I’m really busy,” she said, pinching the top of her nose. “If Angela sent you-” He dropped his jacket unto her sofa, removing his tie with a silken swish.

“She didn’t,” he said. “And I didn’t come to convince you to duck for apples, either.” Brennan arched her brow, leaning back in her chair.

“Oh?” she said, crossing her legs. He noticed that she’d removed her lab coat, and her tan shirt left her arms bare, despite the October chill outside, the Jeffersonian was still pleasantly warm. “So…?” Her eyebrow didn’t lower as she left her question hanging in the air between them, tossing the ball back into his court. He hated how she could so deftly play the conversation to her own advantage. She would provide him with no information, at least not unless absolutely necessary.

“I was wondering if you fancied some Wong Foo’s?” he tried, knowing that the restaurant had become something of mutual territory for them all.

“No thank you,” Brennan replied. “I have to finish this…” she gestured half-heartedly to the screen, shrugging her shoulders as she did. He watched her fingers move through the burned cinnamon strands of her hair, tousled from many such journeys. Booth listened to her breathing, laboured, as if she were tired – almost sighing. The sound was disturbing, for he liked Temperance to be calm, her chest heaving with soft breaths. Today, she sounded as though something were weighing heavily on her lungs.

“Talk to me, Bones,” he said at last. “Why are you treating us like your enemies?” She frowned, pulling her lower lip between her teeth, her fingers slightly unsteady as she rested her hand on her desk, smoothing the pads of her fingertips across the wood grain. Her gaze flitted across her office, from the ancient artefacts that graced her shelves, to the piles of reports on her desk, and finally, as if she’d run out of alternative options, she looked at him. Perhaps she wasn’t prepared for the compassion, or maybe she didn’t have enough energy to argue, but her breath whooshed from her lungs and her shoulders sagged. Booth couldn’t help but liken her to a balloon, deflating before his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean cast off my negative irritation to anyone else. I guess discomfort is contagious.” She shrugged and he rolled his eyes.

“God Bones, sometimes you’re like one of those classical literature books that no one likes to read because they take so much work to slog through. Having a conversation with you is like deciphering Shakespeare. Speak to me like a human being, Bones, not like a sonnet.” Brennan frowned, her brows knitting.

“A sonnet? I assure you, I don’t have the delicate vocabulary necessary for speaking with any kind of sonnet-like dialogue. I am scientific and the way I see it, science and Shakespeare don’t go hand in hand.” Booth sank his fingers into his hair, digging his nails into his scalp, certain that the pain inflicted by his own hand was no more a headache than Brennan when she went into ‘spiel mode’.

“What’s bugging you, Bones?” he asked, sounding strained. “Have you had a bust up with Dick?” Brennan blinked.

“Who?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Internet boy,” he continued, resenting that she expected him to use her boyfriend’s name. Perhaps he did it because he knew it irritated her – or perhaps he was incapable of reacting to him like an adult.

“David? No, there’s been no bust up. We just… weren’t compatible.” Booth leaned forward, aware of how gloating and pathetic this action made him. Suddenly he was interested, and he felt like a jerk. “Everyone expected a blazing argument, you know, broken crockery and smashed windows. But there was nothing like that.” She brushed her hands along her thighs, lifting her eyes to the ceiling. “We broke up about two weeks ago.” Booth nodded, as her voice lowered. “Don’t tell Angela, or she’ll be a one woman crusade for Brennan and Booth. I’m not… ready for that…” Booth stroked his jaw.

“For Brennan and Booth or Angela’s one woman crusade?” Brennan didn’t miss a beat.

“Either,” she said, and he wondered at how she wasn’t dismissing the possibility of a ‘them’. She wasn’t entirely open to it either, he knew, but he felt a warmth settle in his stomach, at her lack of dismissal. “I have too many other things to be concerned with, right now,” Brennan added, turning her eyes back to her computer. Yet Booth suspected her concerns didn’t center around work, entirely.

“So this relationship didn’t end in threats then?” he asked, cupping his knees with his fingers, his shoulders tight as he watched her slender arms snake around her waist, in a classic protective pose – one that he never imagined he’d ever see Temperance Brennan adapt.

“No,” she grated, her tone sounding rough and impatient. “It did not.” Booth dropped his head back against her couch, his eyes falling closed long enough for images of her saddened expression to burn behind his lids. He hated that even her job wasn’t enough to distract her from whatever dark despair she’d fallen into. He hated more that he felt responsible for her. Responsible beyond simple, professional protection.

“Bones…” he said, his voice a strangled plea.

“Booth,” she replied evenly, “I have so much work to do.” He nodded, lifting himself from the couch, stretching until his bones popped. His eyes never left hers, and while she struggled to regain ground, he knew he’d made a chink in her armor. The icy façade that surrounded her was beginning to melt. Which meant he was on target. Dick aka David was something to do with her mood. His fists clenched. If he’d hurt her… “You’re still standing here, Booth,” she said, a infinitesimal smile toying at her tight lips.

“Yeah,” he said. “And I’m going to stay until you tell me what’s bothering you, Bones. Otherwise,” he paused, “I’m going to bring out the heavy artillery.” Her cool blue eyes widened marginally as he implication of his threat sank in.

“Heavy artillery?” she questioned, her shoulders squared, prepared for a fight. He should have known she wasn’t a woman who was easily frightened. But he suspected his words had a tiny effect on her.

“You’re too distracted to work on my cases, Bones,” he said with slow deliberation. “And a distracted scientist is a liability. You’re a liability to me.” Brennan pushed her chair back, standing before him. She wasn’t much smaller than he, and he hated that she wasn’t a little bit tinier. It was difficult to tower over a tall woman. Brennan had the advantage here, and she knew it.

“You’re threatening me, Booth? You’re using our work against me? That’s an all time low, even for you.” Pulling her lab coat off the back of her chair, tossing it aside and searching for her jacket. “It always seems as though I’m fighting to please someone. My personal life is mine, Booth and it doesn’t effect my job.” He shrugged.

“It affects your friends, who are afraid to talk to you. And you have spent three days in this lab, which is a sure sign that you’re hiding from something.” Brennan glared at him through heavily lidded eyes.

“I don’t hide from my problems,” she growled.

“So you admit there is a problem then?” Her chin tilted in steely resolve. “C’mon Bones, what is it? Your parents? Russell? David? Are you pregnant?” Her face paled considerably, and he stiffened, his heart leaping and his stomach clenching. “Bones? What the hell is going on…?” Her eyes dropped to the tips of her boots, and she shuffled. “Are you pregnant?”

“Yes. No! Oh God, I don’t know Booth.” He was struck by how, in the moment of her admission, he was most concerned with how she wasn’t pregnant by him. It was a ludicrous, selfish moment in which he was distracted by the gravity of his thought. When the moment passed, he saw her strong shoulders sag and her body seemed to crumble. “I just don’t know…”

“David?” he asked, sinking back into her couch, certain that his legs wouldn’t hold his weight any longer. Brennan nodded. “Is that why you broke up?” he asked, tugging on his open collar, feeling choked by her news. Almost suffocated. He suspected his reaction was far from what she expected. Or needed.

“No,” she said, a mirthless laugh passing across her lips, sounding like a breathless hiss. “It’s so ironic. Ironic in a cruel sense,” she sat in her chair, her knuckles white. “David wanted children and I didn’t. I don’t. I don’t,” she stressed, meeting his gaze, daring him to contradict her. He merely nodded. “When I stressed this point to him, he looked as though I had torn his soul into shreds. He wanted a conventional relationship with marriage and kids always looming on the horizon. I… I just don’t. So he left. And it seemed like that was for the best, until a week ago…” She shrugged hopelessly, trailing her fingers through her hair again. “All I can think about is the consequences of my actions. What if I am, Booth? What if I am?”

He stood, bridging the gap between them in a few short strides. His arm slipped over her shoulder, drawing her cheek against his torso. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “Don’t worry.” His reassurances were idle, for he had no idea how he ought to help her. He was certain that she would be unable to accept pregnancy. Brennan did not want children – and this was a fact he’d come to accept and even understand, in a bizarre sense. She was overly cautious, and until she learned to accept the grim consequences of life, she’d never be able to become a mother.

Except he wasn’t sure she was going to have a choice, now.

“You have to take a test, Bones,” he said, lacing his fingers inside her hair. Against his stomach, she nodded.

“I know. But then it’ll be confirmed, won’t it?” He sighed.

“But then you’ll know. Then it won’t just be speculation.” He couldn’t quite believe that he was having this conversation with Temperance Brennan. He could easier have accepted Brennan confessing that she’d gotten married after a drunken night in Vegas, than accept the possibility that she could be pregnant. It seemed illogical. Or perhaps downright wrong. What was worse, however, was that underneath his kind concern, his macho ego was fighting a jealousy that raged, reminding him with each breath that she wasn’t having his baby, but rather that of some man she’d met on the Internet.

“I can’t be pregnant, Booth,” she said, leaning back, shaking her head. He saw that her irises were glassy, and he supposed she had resisted the urge to cry for an entire week. He understood her fear, in a warped sense. She had stated her case, time and again, explaining why she didn’t want to be responsible for a child. And while he would never have given Parker up for the world, he was reluctant to want any more.

“I’ll take you home,” he said, holding out his hand. “We’ll stop at the drug store and get a test.” She met his gaze, offering him a watery smile.

“And what if…?” she asked, shrugging helplessly.

“If,” he replied, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He sounded confident, but inside, he felt as helpless as she.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

“How many minutes?” Brennan asked, sitting on her bathroom floor, cross legged, watching the shadows on the ceiling. On the toilet seat, Booth held the home pregnancy test between his fingers, careful not to glance down too soon.

“Three minutes, Bones,” he replied, tapping his foot. Three minutes felt like an eternity. “Are you scared?” he asked, watching her features contort anxiously.

“More so than I have ever been in my life. And I don’t scare easily.” Booth nodded.

“I know you don’t, Temperance,” he said, and she turned to him, a moment of quiet understanding passing between them. He shared her anxiety, simply because he didn’t want her to be pregnant. Not to some man who never accepted her as she was. “I bet it’s times like this that you wish you believed in God,” he quipped, and she shrugged.

“No. I wouldn’t want to believe in God purely for my own purposes. That would degrade religion. That would degrade those who believed in it, too. And while I don’t put any credence in the prospect of a God, I respect those who do.”

Booth smiled at her, shaking his head. “Logical, in all situations. Bones, you defy logic sometimes. But just so you know, if you wanted to ask God for help, just now, I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

Brennan smiled, her rosy cheeks covered with her tousled hair. She looked like a child, afraid and helpless.

“No thanks,” she said and he chuckled, using his free hand to stroke her hair.

“I’ll pray for you, Bones. I always do.”

She met his gaze, looking like a startled cat.

“Do you pray that I’ll find God, Booth?” she asked and he shook his head.

“I pray that you’ll be safe and happy. And right now, I’m praying that you’ll be okay.” He needed quiet to pray. Yet he knew she needed conversation to get her through the long three minutes that stretched before them. One minute, now. They’d already been talking for two, now.

“Thank you,” she said, taking his hand, squeezing his fingers with all the accumulated energy she had. He returned the gesture, passing his thumb over her skin, relishing the feel of her, the joined affection and how she drew strength from him. “Angela is my best friend,” Brennan said, “but somehow, you seem to understand how I feel. You don’t become doe-eyed at the mention of a baby.”

Booth shrugged. “I’m not sure I want you to have a baby, Temperance,” he said, and she turned her head. “I’m sure you’d be a wonderful mother, given the chance. But I don’t see you being ready for one.” Brennan nodded.

“Me neither,” she admitted. “How long now?”

His fingers tightened again. “It’s about time,” he said, and she noticed his knuckles were white. “Are you ready to know, Bones?” She shook her head.

“Not really, no. But there’s no alternative, is there?” He summoned a comforting smile, shrugging his shoulders. “Okay,” she inhaled. “Look.” He turned his hand, and she shook her head. “No. Wait.” A pulsating moment passed between them, when she screwed her eyes shut. “I don’t want to know, Booth. I really don’t.” He reached out, stroking his fingers along her temple, and he knew he wasn’t offering her merely friendly support.

“It’s negative, Bones,” he said.

It felt as though a week of accumulated stress permeated her pores, and her eyes flew open. She looked startled, her eyes wide and round, her lips parting and forming a perfect ‘o’. After a long moment, she offered him a tinny laugh in response to his news, which was followed by a deep, side-splitting belly chuckle that made her bend over, clutching her stomach. Nervous laughter.

He joined her moment of euphoria, passing her the pregnancy test. She stared at the slim blue line for a long time, shaking her head, tossing wavy curls about her cheeks. Her joy should have riled him, because she was so delighted not to be pregnant. But as the fading light of the late October afternoon slanted through her bathroom window, bathing her in a golden light, she looked almost angelic. He was happy for her. And so relieved that David hadn’t left a permanent mark inside her body.

“Congratulations,” he said as she dropped the test into the trash can. Brennan pressed her head against the wall, releasing a deep breath from her lungs.

“Isn’t that what you say to pregnant people?” she asked, pressing her fingertips to her racing pulse.

“Not you, Bones,” Booth replied, standing. “If that little symbol had been a red plus, I’d be offering condolences,” he stretched out his hand and she grasped it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “But since this is a happy occasion, let’s have a beer to celebrate. Then you’ll have to call Angela.” Brennan frowned.

“Angela?” she asked, following him from her bathroom into the living room.

“Yeah. To tell her you’ll be going to the Halloween party. You should see the costume she’s got for you. You’re going to love it.” He chuckled, and she swatted his arm, unable to fully comprehend how much she’d been through in the past seven days. It astounded her to think that the only person she imagined turning to was Seeley Booth.

“Thanks again, Booth,” she said, her fingers closing around his bicep.

“You’re welcome, Bones,” he replied, pulling two bottles of beer from her fridge. “To life without a child,” he said, uncapping the bottles and giving her one. “And finding someone who accepts that.” Brennan chinked the neck of hers against his.

“Cheers,” she said, turning towards the living room. “Do you think I ever will?” she asked. “Find a man who accepts that?” He watched her retreating back for a long moment.

“I’m sure you will,” he said, and when she was out of earshot, he sighed. “I think you already have.”