Fic: Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back
A/N: I usually keep to the discussion posts on Bones communities as a rule, but some combination of pre-finale anxiety, post-finale anxiety, and lots and lots of Elliott Smith resulted in this little ditty (my first). Comments and crit more than welcome, especially as this is unbeta'd!
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Three steps forward, two steps back.
The nightmares had stopped, but the dreams weren’t over.
She’s young again, on the shores of some unnamed beach. Somehow these strains of youth have escaped the sieve of a tampered memory, revealing themselves with arresting clarity. She’s waist-deep in the ocean, mere feet from the gravelly bottom of crushed seashells that marks the tide. Her father is just beyond her, his thinning hair blowing in the sea breeze, coaching her on. “Come on, Joy,” he says, grinning in a way not entirely trustworthy. “The water’s not so scary, now, is it?”
She’s young, and she’s trusting, and she follows- small, tentative, waterlogged steps forward, swaying slightly in the undertow. Her arms float, slowly, away from her sides; the water creeps up, up, up to her neck and her nose is filled with the salt-thickened air. “That’s my girl!”, her father coaxes. Her brother laughs along, floating on his back and kicking, splashing, waving his arms in crazy circles, as if in on some hilarious inside joke. “Now get on over here and show your brother what a real backstroke looks like!”
She takes a deep breath and tips her head back to gaze at the sky- grey, filled with uniform clouds, she notes, ever-observant. These aren’t the playful, powdery kind that she and her mother would spy from the lawn of their suburban house, searching for recognizable shapes or patterns (somehow dolphins, always a dolphin sailing above). Instead in that instant it’s an unbreakable mass, with a single spot of neon white revealing the sun’s disguise amongst the rain. She breathes it in, closes her eyes, and takes a step forward.
It’s abrupt, she remembers; it catches her completely off-guard, each and every time that it happens all over again. She’s tumbling through the cold abyss, head over heels and back again and she has no idea which way is up and she flails, floundering, searching back through her six years of life to find some key to staying afloat but finding none. She feels the breath surge from her lungs in rapid, angry bubbles but it’s wasteful and it’s futile and she knows this- but too late. A thousand thoughts run through her mind, fast and all at once, and just as suddenly there are none at all. And then, just as suddenly, she stops.
She’s suspended, floating. There’s calm and peace and silence and she realizes, with the harsh water’s dull burn slowly fading in her eyes, that the sun has broken through the clouds and she’s surrounded by a brilliant, endless blue. And she knows it’s stupid and she knows it’s hopeless but she knows, somewhere deeper, that everything is going to be alright.
And then strong hands break the surface and she’s pulled right up with them, forced into the light and wind- coughing, sputtering, breathing life. Large, rough hands clap her back and the familiar voice laughs, filled with charm and wit as always. “That’s my girl!”, he cries. “If you learn anything from me, remember this,” he says, as her eyes sting into focus on his sun-reddened face, “three steps forward, two steps back. That’s the way life is, and that’s the way it’s going to be for you as much as anyone.”
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As always, the alarm clock brought her back to earth.
It had been this way for days, weeks, since the trial of the Gravedigger. She hadn’t told anyone- specifically, she hadn’t told Booth.
It would have been too easy to say that things were back to normal. The gang of “squints” was back in the lab, doing what they did best. Booth was back in the interrogation room, pounding the pavement and flashing his badge. Sweets offered unsolicited consultations and from time to time tested out his “grown-up” vocabulary. Most importantly, Brennan herself made every effort to immerse herself in cases from Limbo, pouring all of her energy into remnants of the past: those with no living relatives, no bleeding wounds, and no horror stories left to tell.
It would have been too easy, because it wasn’t the truth. Angela and Hodgins shared honeymoon plans; Sweets would take his lunch hour to interview wedding bands or go to cake tastings with Daisy. Booth would knock on her door, almost every afternoon, a case file in his hands- a question, posed in his eyes, dying on the spot as he saw her hunched over a two-hundred-year-old femur, magnifying glass in hand. And every time he said he understood, managed a feeble smile that was a pathetic ghost of the one she knew so well. And every time she’d fake one too, offering no apology. “This is what I do, Booth,” she told him once (or was it a dozen times?). “This is what I did, before I ever met you. This is who I am.”
“I know,” he’d say, “I know who you are.” And he’d smile (but not at all), and shrug, and each time he’d walk away.
Days of this, weeks, a blur, and the decision was simple. It couldn’t last. The foundation they had built over the years of their partnership had been irreparably damaged, weakened. No matter how many times she asked him, begged him to keep things the same, to maintain the stasis, it was impossible. She’d made her decision (the decision, a decision for both of them) that night outside of the Jeffersonian. Brennan realized all too quickly that he was simply biding his time, waiting for a signal. Waiting for a cue. He was pretending for her, acting the part, and it pained her more and more every day.
In her mind, Brennan knew the trip to Indonesia was the most logical decision. It would benefit her career, it would benefit science, it would break them out of this awkward, painful rut they had fallen into and couldn’t escape. In her heart (damn it!), she hated herself for what she knew she was doing to the both of them. But she knew better now, or simply realized again what she had always known: Booth had taught her a lot of things, but Temperance Brennan was still a woman of reason. Her mind won out, and her heart would be left to pay the price. So she told him face-to-face, gauged his reaction and gave him courtesy. She pretended she hadn’t made up her mind, that she wasn’t storing up all of the strength she had to do what had to be done.
Brennan believed in evolution, the gradual adaptation of species to best insure survival on the harsh, unforgiving earth. Booth said he’d learned that from her, and wasn’t that funny? Because all too clearly her own life was changed by a two-minute conversation on a park bench in downtown DC. Her heart wrenched at the look in his eyes, and she realized now she had given him no choice. She was calling off their façade, the attempt to sweep away her rejection and retrace their steps to a time when everything seemed so simple. He had played the part valiantly, but it was falling to pieces now. So she met his gaze, and forced a smile, and swallowed her own urge to cry. She walked away with a weight in her heart but with purpose, because it was inevitable and it was what was best and there was no way, absolutely no way, they could go on the way they had been. Logic triumphed, and her heart tore.
She wasn’t surprised when the dream came again.
But this time, finally, it was different.
Strong hands once again pull her to the surface. Her father holds her, his eyes bright blue to match the opening patches of sky above their heads. “Three steps forward, two steps back,” he says, as always. But now his gaze is warm and he says, with clear conviction, “But don’t let it stop you from diving right in. You got that?”
And as a child she doesn’t, of course she doesn’t, but she nods understanding anyway and her father turns, yelling “Kyle! Bring it in, kiddo, let’s get some lunch, OK?”
But this time was different. And this time she understood. And she knew, believed more strongly than anything else that she and Booth may be fighting the undertow, but they were moving forward. Three steps forward, two steps back, and somehow everything was going to be alright. She would wait, she would work, she would gain the courage to take the step and take the fall and tumble headfirst into whatever was just beyond her reach.
A year. Maybe a year was long enough.
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