Chapter 2. I am so sorry this took so long but the hundredth episode and the ones after kind of stole my thunder for this piece because they kind of did what I wanted to do. Ah well…I hope this is okay…Enjoy.

Disclaimer: No…sadly they don't belong to me.

Spoilers: Pilot, Man in the Fallout Shelter, Two Bodies in the Lab, The Woman in Limbo, The Man in The Morgue, The Titian on the Tracks, The Boy in the Shroud, Aliens in a Spaceship, Judas on the Pole, The Man in the Cell, The Bodies in the Book, The Stargazer in the Puddle, The Santa in the Slush, The Verdict in the Story, The Wannabe in the Weeds, A Pain at Heart, The Hero in the Hold, The Critic in the Cabernet, The End in the Beginning, Harbingers in the Fountain, The Proof in the Pudding, The Parts in the Sum of the Whole, The Death of the Queen Bee, The Boy with the Answers, The Beginning in the End. (There are a couple…)

I met Seeley Booth a little over seven years ago. Our first case was very much…something. It was the start of something. It was the start of the only relationship that I have not messed up. It is so far the only one where the person I care about has not walked out…not yet anyway. Our relationship has been long and complicated but it was always stable when it matter most.~~

Our first case was supposed to be our last case. The case had a split jurisdiction between the FBI and the NYPD and pretty much all the leads had run cold. So the New York coroner told Booth he should ask the Jeffersonian team for help. He did and together we solved the case. It was really rather interesting, but according to most people who know this story that is not the most interesting part.

Through out the case he and I flirted back and forth. When he fired us from the case because I punched a judge, which was justified, he tried to get me drunk, which failed. After that one of us pointed out that we could date because we were no longer partners. We shared a kiss and I almost went home with him…almost. Later we got put back on the case and once we solved it Booth and I went our separate ways. We did not meet again for two years.

Then we were assigned as partners, permanent partners. At first I was annoyed but quickly got over that. I learned several things very quickly: 1. People are annoying and often rather stupid 2. Being in the field is actually rather fun 3. Being in the field is really rather dangerous. In the first year we worked together my life was threatened three times.

The first one was ironically not even a field incident. It happened in the lab. We were all quarantined because valley fever had been released when cutting open a bone. I started coughing and Booth was worried that I had valley fever because that is one of the symptoms. He learned a lot about me during those few days. He found out about my past…

The second time that year was when I was kidnapped. That was legitimately a field related incident. He saved me there too. I was hanging by my wrists and he came in and shot my captor. Then he helped me down. That was possibly the first time I associated his arms with safety.

The third time was a few months lather and it was sort of field related. I was down in New Orleans trying to help identify Katrina victims. One morning I woke up covered in blood with my dinner date from the night before missing. I also had amnesia. Booth absolutely freaked. I do not know who called him but I know I did not. He flew down to New Orleans immediately and busted his way into the room where the doctor was examining me. It really was not necessary but it was nice to know he cared.

He defended me from the local Police Department and helped me solve the case. He also risked his career to protect me by removing evidence from the scene. I asked him then why he respected me and he told me that it was because once a case had gone cold the killers felt safe. I removed that sense of safety and brought justice to the families after they had all but given up hope.

Later in May, we found my mother's remains. They had been in Limbo at the Jeffersonian as long as I had. It was really hard to know that my parents had walked out on me and lived for two years after they left. It hurt even more that my to know that my father was still out there somewhere. That broke my heart.

I have heard people talking behind my back and sometimes to my face about how I am cold and do not care. I care. I just do not let it show because I do not want to let anyone get close to me. I was fifteen years old when my parents walked out. All I had left was my brother and then I screwed up and he left too. That was all in December of 1991. Can you understand you I do not want to let anyone in? Every single person I have let myself love has left me. I cannot take that risk with Booth. He means too much.

It was the fall after we found my mother's body that we received a new addition to our team. She was Booth's ex-girlfriend Camille Saroyan. We got along just fine with each other after we stopped have turf wars, but I was still jealous of her. Not only was she intelligent and quite attractive, but she had the kind of people skills I envied. She also was dating Booth. Although looking back I wonder whom, out of the two of us, he was really loyal to during those months.

Angela told me once that she over heard a conversation between Camille and Booth. Camille had asked Booth what he would do if she fired me. According to Angela, Booth had told Camille that, and I quote: "I'm with Bones, Cam. All the way. Don't doubt that for a second." Later he left a date with her to save my life. I do not for a moment assume that to be his loyalty to me over her. That was him once again being a hero.

Hodgens and I had been buried alive in a car by a serial killer we had been chasing for over a year. I was scared to death in that car. I never let it show, but I was terrified. It made me think of just how many things I still wanted to do in life. Then we blew out the windshield and Booth pulled us out.

He came to my house that evening because he did not want me to be alone. I told him it was not necessary but he came anyway…

FLASHBACK

"I am fine Booth," Brennan insisted as she leaned against the door to her apartment.

"Bones you were buried alive," Booth reminded her.

"I know that Booth," Bones replied coolly as she walked into the living room and removed her jacket. She really wanted to break down and cry but she refused to do that in front of Booth.

"The guest bedroom is down the hall. Good night," she told him before disappearing into her bedroom. Booth shook his head and went into his appointed room.

Several hours later Booth heard a strange noise. Sitting up he listened to the sound again and realized, with the well-trained ear of a parent, that someone was crying. Seconds later he realized that it must be Bones. He walked quickly down the hall and opened the door to her room. The sight that met him broke his heart.

His strong, stubborn, partner who never needed anyone was crying in her sleep. She had thrashed back and forth so much that she had thrown the blankets off the bed. Booth made his way over and carefully sat down beside her. He shook her shoulders gently trying to waked her. Bones struggled to get away from him until she realized who it was.

Then she started crying even harder. She did not know why and she did not like it, but she could not stop it. Booth did not ask questions. He just pulled her shaking form into his arms and she buried her head in his shoulder.

Over a matter of minutes, her tears subsided and disappeared. She pulled away rubbing her eyes and looked away from him ashamed. Booth placed a finger under her chin and guided her head back towards him until she was looking at him.

"There is nothing to be ashamed of," Booth told her gently.

"Tears do not help," Brennan replied stubbornly.

"They make you feel better," Booth reminded her, "that's helping."

"I'm sorry I woke you," she told him turning away again, "It was just a nightmare."

"You want to talk about it?" he asked. She gave him a look and then she nodded slowly.

END FLASHBACK

I still have nightmares about that except now he is among the kidnapping victims as well. I never told him about any of the dreams after that night, and I hope he thinks they have stopped a long time ago. Some part of me thinks that he knows…

A month or so after that we found a body that had my father's calling card on it. That was a great way for him to walk back into my life…by committing murder. Russ knew and was helping him. Through a long series of events I ended up handcuffed to a bench as I watched them drive away from me for the second time in my life.

When Booth brought the subject up later he said he was sorry that I had to have that happen again. I shrugged it off by telling him that I was just one of those people who was not meant to have a family. He told me that there was more than one kind of family. I appreciated that and I know he was right. The people I work with fall under the definition, which technically is: a group of individuals who share similar characteristics.

Anyway about two months after that episode, Howard Epps broke out of prison and came after the team. He sent Angela a human heart… He blew up Zack and Booth… He nearly killed Camille… He threatened all my friends to get to me and we just barely made it out alive.

The poison he gave Camille nearly killed her. She was not even out of the hospital when Booth broke up with her. I felt bad about that because some part of me wonders if they would have stayed together had the Epps thing not happened. As much as I was jealous of their relationship, they were still my friends and I cared about them. I wanted them to be happy and if they made each other happy…so be it.

Anyway things calmed down a little after that or at least as calm as you can get when you are solving murders. Nothing really interesting happened…oh well except for a person committing a series of murders based off the murders. That was a little disturbing, but we caught the guy.

Then we went to Angela and Hodgin's attempted wedding a few months later. That was a very interesting event. Angela and Hodgens ended up running out because they could not get married right then. Booth and I ended up standing right for a moment and for one irrational moment my brain asked what if? What if he and I just got married right then? Then reality came crashing back down and all the reasons we could not do it returned crushing the beautiful possibility. I think later that night was the first time I ever admitted to myself that I loved him.

About six months came and went before anything extremely momentous happened again. Then I kissed Booth. I only did it because Caroline could get a trailer for my father to hold a family Christmas party in but she said she would only do it unless I kissed Booth. I am not entirely sure if he knew what was going on but it was not like I was going to give him a choice.

It was wonderful. I have kissed a lot of men in my time but most of them were disposable and/or forgettable. Booth was not either. I will remember that moment as long as I live…

The kiss might have been wonderful but things went downhill very quickly after that. The first thing was that my father went on trail for the murder he had committed nearly a year ago. That was hard for me even though I never would admit that. My entire team had to testify against my father. All of them did it grudgingly except Zack and Angela. Zack had no problem with it, which is exactly why I hired him. Angela refused to testify at all and got placed in the courtroom holding cell. I still do not completely understand why she did that for me, but I appreciated it.

The case they had was iron clad and my father would almost certainly have spent life in jail, except Booth helped me with a little plan that gave the jury reasonable doubt. He almost messed it up by defending me but it worked. It was so weird that I wanted to help a criminal go free. After all, my job is putting them behind bars. Booth helped me work through that too. He told me that it was okay to want my father to go free.

Then a week later at the end of our next case he convinced me that I should sing 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," at an open mic night we had run across during the course of the investigation. The entire team was there to watch so I decided to do it. I was half way through the song when a woman we met on the case walked in. She had become obsessed with Booth and pulled a gun on me. The problem was that I did not see her, only Booth did. She fired and he did not think. He dived across the stage and took that bullet for me.

I do not remember much that happened after that. I only know what people, mostly Camille, have told me about. All I concentrated on was Booth and whether he would make it. It was nearly four in the morning when a nurse came out of surgery and told me that he had died on the operating table. Camille was the only other one in the waiting room for which I was very thankful because I lost it completely. I started crying and I could not stop.

I do not remember much of what happened after that but I do remember the two weeks after that. At least I remember them as a painful blur. All I could think about was the fact that Booth was never coming back to me. I needed him so much more than I could ever admit to anybody and I was so lost and alone for those two weeks because he had done the one thing I feared. He had left me. I would have rather taken that bullet than have lost him forever.

Then I had to go to his funeral. I did not want to do that at all. I had to though because Angela asked me to come as a friend. Then I found out that he was not dead. I saved his life and then I punched him. I saved him because he was my partner. I punched him because he lied to me, left me, and broke my heart.

Then I barely got used to him being back when we lost Zack. He did not die but we found out he had joined Gormagon. That broke my heart because I raised him to be who he was academically between being my grad student and my assistant. I wanted to know, and still do want to know, where I went wrong. Booth was there for me on that one too. I am pretty sure he threatened Sweets when the latter pointed out an insanity plea would not work for Zack due to the fact that he was not actually insane.

Then there was the session when they looked at all of Zack's favorite things. I never gave him anything material… I regretted that but as usual Booth found the thing to tell me that made me feel better. He read me the letter of acceptance I had written to Zack after selecting him as my grad student.

Day and weeks passed after that. Some stood out more than others but in that entire year only two days will be engraved into my memory forever and a day. The first was when the gravedigger got Booth. This was the first Gravedigger case where I had been searching for living victims because the first time I was one of the living victims. It was race against the clock to find him and we just barely won. I flew out in the helicopter and he just barely got on in time. When he did get on I pretty much grabbed him and held on to him before I thought about anything else. At that moment I did not care about appearances or weakness or anything else. I just needed to know that he was there with me and no one could get him. That was not the first time that I had considered the fact that if he died it would be like a part of me had died also.

The other thing was later that year when I realized Booth had a brain tumor. When I was in the waiting room telling the rest of the team, I nearly lost it. That was the closest I had come to crying in public in a very long time. I went into surgery with him and was there the entire time because he wanted me there. He was in a coma for three day and when he woke up he did not remember me at all.

The entire team worked with him for days and after a while he started remembering bits and pieces. Then I could not take it anymore and I went on vacation. Admittedly vacation meant going off to some remote part of the world and identifying long dead remains. When I got back he was just about the same as he was before the tumor. He had forgotten a few small things but he was give or take the same.

Later in that year we received a set of remains that may or may not have belonged to JFK. We were all locked in the lab with out being able to make contact with the outside. We managed to sneak out one call to Booth. He then tried to get into the lab and could not so he shot his way in. His expression when the guard told him he would have to stay was priceless because he was quite smug.

We conducted the investigation and there startling similarities to JFK's assassination. The only problem was that if it was JFK it meant that there was a conspiracy to hide the truth of his murder because our findings and the official ones did not completely overlap. It was important to Booth that this not be JFK because Booth had always put his faith in his government. He had killed people for his government. I proved to Booth that it was not JFK because the victim had a condition that JFK did not have.

I do not know if that was the right thing to do because it was not completely conclusive as Camille pointed out later. I am sure that I would do it again to protect Booth because he had protected me for three years. Anyway the circumstances that Camille specified are quite rare…

Then it all went south. Booth and I told Sweets all about our first case and Sweet appealed to Booth's alpha male qualities. He made it seem that if Booth did not tell me he loved me then he was a coward. I do not think I will forgive Sweets for that as long as I live because as soon as we left Booth told me exactly that. He told me that he loved me. There were a million things that I could have done then and I did not do any of them.

I had loved Booth for years. I would do anything for him, but I could not bring myself to be with him because I did not want him to get hurt. I am a scientist. I follow the facts and the math and the science. I like things that are certain or nearly so. Love is none of those. Except for me it had proved to be nearly certain that I pushed everyone I cared about away. I told him that I could not do it. I am not actually sure what all I said but it was enough to push him away. He told me that he had to stop waiting for me and find someone who would love him in twenty or thirty years.

I know that I will love him for that long and longer, but I cannot ask him to wait for me. He deserves better. He deserves someone is not so broken that she can barely find it in herself to trust people let alone love them. He deserves someone who can give him her whole hear. He deserves someone who is not scared to love. He deserves that someone and that someone is not me.

Soon after that we had a murder involving my ten-year high school reunion. We went up there to solve the murder but to all my classmates we pretended to be a couple. I was lost in memories of the high school I had gone to a decade earlier. Some of the memories were good but most were bad. I was the geeky outcast with no friends. People treated me a little different at our high school reunion because I had Booth with me. I liked that.

What I liked even more was the dance at the end of the reunion. It was kind of like the prom I had never gone to. It was wonderful. I dance with Booth under the silver stars that hung from the ceiling (which were also the murder weapon) and let everything fall away. Just for the length of the song I was young and anything was possible. I had a family that cared about and I was allowed to be in love… That ended with the song.

A few weeks later the gravedigger went to trial. That case very nearly shot the sanity of everyone on the team. For us to be able to work the new case, Caroline had to drop mine and Hodgens' case. That was hard but it had to be done if we wanted to bring this woman to justice. Booth told Caroline to drop his case so he could work the case too. He also told me that he was not letting me do it alone.

In the end we sent her to jail for a very long time. That was our revenge but it had come at a pretty high price. I do not know how many members of the team have lost sleep over the gravedigger but I would guess all of us. Some more that others but at some point or another the gravedigger kept us awake.

With in the next week almost every member of the team had received an offer that they could not refuse. I so now I am going to the pacific to do science research for a year and Booth is going to help train army recruits. Daisy is coming with me. Hodgens and Angela are going off to Paris. Camille and Sweets are staying at the Jeffersonian. In a year we will all come back together.

Booth and I promised that we would meet each other on our favorite bench in DC in exactly one year. Right now a lot of things are uncertain but there are three things that I know:

1. I love Booth.

2. No matter what anybody, including him, says or does, I always will love Booth

and

3. In exactly one year I will be sitting on that bench waiting…

Alright so there it is. Please tell what you think. I would love to know.