Chapter Text
It started with silence. Not the comforting kind Zack Addy had learned to wrap himself in like a weighted blanket, but the kind that echoed.
The kind that waited.
The kind that haunted.
He’d been staring at the wall for four hours and forty-seven minutes. Not that he was counting. Not in the way he used to count the revolutions of a centrifuge or the precise seconds it took to synthesize ammonium bi-fluoride in a vacuum-sealed lab.
No. This was a different kind of math. This was the math of obsession.
The wall in question was boring: off-white, institutional, with a slight texture that revealed itself when the light hit it just right. It had no art, no message boards, no signs of life. Just one sentence-carved, not written.
"Perhaps you should consider that your delusion is that you're not delusional."
Etched in flawless handwriting, the edges so precise they could’ve been laser-cut. Zack’s handiwork. Obsessively neat. The scrawl of a man
trying to make sense of something that refused to make sense.
He had written it weeks ago. Or maybe years. Time didn’t pass the same way in this place. It melted, pooled, reformed. Some days he felt like two people: recovering and yet everyone who looked at him thought he was irreparably broken.
He didn’t sleep much. He didn’t speak much. But the words stayed. Like a fossil in the drywall.
A nurse passed the door and paused, glancing in. She never asked what the sentence meant. No one did. Maybe they thought it was a quote from a manifesto. Maybe they were scared to find out. Because according to them, Zack was a monster. Maybe he always was, maybe others
always knew as well.
Zack hoped they never recognized it.
He had been seeing Sweets for years, always the same day at the same time and then suddenly, just like that, he’d never see him again.
The news came in a beige envelope. No conversation. No phone call. Just a folded obituary from a local paper. One sentence was underlined in red:
“Beloved FBI psychologist and author, Dr. Lance Sweets, was killed in the line of duty.”
Zack read it once.
Then he carved the quote into the wall.
Then he stopped talking.
He didn’t expect a visitor. Certainly not him.
The door clicked open on a Thursday- Zack only knew because his meds were slightly more orange than green that day- and a familiar pair of boots stopped in the doorway. Muddy. Probably from the garden. Zack could smell the dirt on them.
“Zack?”
Hodgins.
Zack didn’t look away from the wall.
“Zack, it’s me. It’s Jack.”
Silence.
The room was colder than Hodgins remembered. The air felt dense. Like grief had weight.
He followed Zack’s gaze to the carved wall and read the words. The quote.
It hit him like a crowbar to the chest.
“That’s Sweets, isn't it?” Hodgins said softly, stepping inside.
Zack blinked. It might have been an agreement.
“You remembered that?”
Stillness.
“Why that quote?”
A beat.
“Because,” Zack said finally, voice papery with disuse, “He spoke to me. He tried to help me, gave me questions like that hoping I would think, really think, maybe even get better. He still thought I was worth talking to. Unlike some.” The last two words had been spoken with a bitter hurt in them.
Hodgins swallowed hard.
“I should’ve visited more.”
Zack didn’t respond.
“I should’ve-” Hodgins' voice cracked. He stopped. “He never stopped writing about you. Sweets. I read some of his notes once. He believed in you, you know? Said you were the hardest puzzle he ever cared about.”
Zack turned his head, slowly, as though it hurt.
“You left,” he said.
Hodgins closed his eyes.
“I know.”
They stood in that silence. Not the haunting kind now. The kind that waits for forgiveness.
“I’m sorry,” Hodgins whispered.
Zack blinked again.
“Sweets wouldn’t want you to be.”
Then, quietly, like an afterthought:
“He remembered my birthday.”
Hodgins sat down on the edge of the bed, eyes glistening.
“I didn’t.”
"He said that when I was committed, one of our first sessions. I think I thought if I could understand it... maybe I wouldn't belong here."
"Zack, why didn't you tell me this mattered so much? Y-You could have written, or mayb-"
"Because you stopped asking."
"I'm sorry. I thought I had time."
"So did he."