fic: time slips through like water
fandom: bones
pairing: booth/brennan
spoilers: season 4 finale.
summary: AU - Booth has amnesia. "Who are you?" She doesn't know, now that he's gone (in a sense). All she knows is that she'll wait.
notes: the title is taken from maria taylor's leap year. good song. :)
"Who are you?"
She feels floored - if that is, indeed, the right word. It's not like all the cliched movies and books that she's never watched say it is; the world doesn't fall away from beneath your feet. Rather, it feels like the whole world comes up to meet her in a bone-jarring impact that isn't bone-jarring at all: there'll be no evidence of this hurt on x-rays. The only clue to what she feels right now is in her heart, even if her logical, empiricist mind refuses to believe it.
She thinks she makes some small talk with him, but she doesn't really register it. In a vain attempt to convince herself that Booth was just momentarily disoriented, that it's not amnesia (it couldn't be) she offers him some hospital pudding, joking that there was no Hodgins to steal it this time.
He stares blankly at her. Somehow, she doubts this is because she made a weird, hospital-pudding themed joke that wasn't even funny.
Fuck.
--
Horn of plenty
Heavy sunlight
Autumn's bounty
Bread and red wine
In a hurry
But there's so much time
The seasons pass, slowly but predictably. She shuts herself off, the self-defense mechanism she'd put in place all those years ago coming into action. And to think, recently, she'd almost shut it down - knocked down the walls. She thought she'd never need it again.
Maybe she had too much faith.
Summer is hot. Her clothes stick to her skin and her pallid skin is covered with a shiny sheen of sweat constantly. She takes some time off work, and favors baggy clothes instead of tight fitting work clothes. She passes the time; not enjoyably, but the floor has sunk back to a normal level by now.
Angela comes to visit her numerous times, her makeup still looking flawless in the sticky heat, but her eyebrows are furled in an obvious concern for her friend. Brennan has made no effort to reconnect with... Booth, if he could still be called that. She finds it hard to stay in the same room with the shell of the man that she had once - and she chokes a little when she admits it - loved.
She's not ready to let an impostor in, one that looks exactly like Booth, one that shares the same name. Because it'll never be him. She vainly waits, vainly hopes that he'll come back one day, as the months pass yet again.
The Jeffersonian hosts an Autumn party at the suggestion of Angela, though Brennan thinks it's a stupid idea. Parties for the sake of parties are intolerable to her. And the name 'Autumn Party' sounds ridiculous, though Cam tells her it's to please the top benefactors of the Jeffersonian. She does enjoy the wine, however.
---
The party passes in a blur. Small talk was exchanged with countless members of the faculty; professors, heads of departments, heads of the Jeffersonian itself, but she is not interested. Time flies quickly for her now; she's shaped it so. This way, the waiting is more bearable, if you could call it that.
She barely believes the lie herself; that letting days, weeks, months slip by her like they were an hour is a good thing. The wretched sobs in the shower, drowned out by the hissing water jets, the letters addressed to "Seeley Booth", she forgets them all. She forgets nearly everything; all that keeps her going is her work, the cases.
But slowly, she can't easily ascertain right from wrong. The skeletons placed in front of her aren't simply a case of right and wrong anymore. There's no more black and white, only grey. And slowly, she fades into the background, merging with the gray...
But all the same, she waits.
Please, tell me what you thought!
I haven't written Bones fic for a veeeeery long time.