A/N: I have been trying to write some aspect of this fic ever since the day I saw 'Bikini in the Soup' and it took JMHaughey saying "Write me a 'Proof in the Pudding' fic!" to put all of the right pieces together in my brain. I hope you enjoy!

PS: I don't own anything.

OOOOO

Hey, when was the last time you laughed?

And did you mean it when you did?

I'm just wondering

There's sorrow in your voice, it's abounding

It's astounding how you live so close to your cure.

Let Go – Ingrid Michaelson

OOOOO

"Bones! Let's go, chop, chop!" The familiar command echoed throughout the sterile metallic lab as Brennan removed her gloves. "We found the husband. He's driving a horse and carriage to the wedding and if we don't leave now we're going to miss him."

"I'm coming." She promised with a roll of her eyes as Cam rushed towards the platform.

"Dr. Brennan, can I have a quick word with you before you go?" She asked. Booth groaned, knowing that they didn't have time for this right now.

"We're in a hurry." Brennan said, reading her partner's sagging shoulders.

"I know. I just…I need to apologize about earlier." She said, the sincere look on her face forcing Brennan to stop.

"You already did. And you had nothing to apologize for the first time." Brennan said, dismissing her. "You were completely accurate in your assessment."

"It may have been accurate but it wasn't true." She said with a glance towards the fidgeting Booth. She lowered her voice and continued. "I promised you once that I would never forget everything that you had done, do you remember?" Brennan nodded, recalling the JFK case and Cam's gratitude towards her. "Well, in the midst of my rushing this morning, I forgot. It was selfish and I'm sorry. You may think that people don't notice your actions, Dr. Brennan, but we do. And I, for one, am still just as grateful for them." Cam reassured her.

Booth looked from woman to woman, unsure of what wormhole he had dropped into that had these two strong, stubborn women being so sincere to one other.

"I accept your apology." Brennan said quickly. "Now if you'll excuse me, we have work to do." She said as she took off. Booth took one last glance back at Cam before following his partner out of the lab.

"What the Hell was that about?" He asked.

"Nothing."

"I've never seen Cam look that sorry in my life and I've known her for a very long time." He said. "What did she say to you?"

"Booth, it was nothing." She said. "Can we get back to work please?"

"Yeah." Booth said. "Sure." He said.

However, the investigator in him couldn't let it go. He thought about Cam's words all day, even after they pulled a confession from the husband and solved the case. So, later that evening, Booth sauntered into Cam's office as nonchalantly as he could, desperate for more information.

"Wow. You look great." Booth smiled. "New dress?"

"Hey, Big Guy." Cam said as she turned around at her desk. "Yes. And good work on solving this case so quickly. I'm on my way to see Paul right now." She grinned.

"I know you're in a hurry, but can we talk about what happened this morning with Bones for a second?" He asked.

"What did she tell you?" Cam asked with a wince.

"Nothing. In fact, she completely shut me down when I asked her about it. What did you say to her?"

"It was an offhanded comment, but given who I was speaking to, it was a lot crueler than I intended it to be." She said as she stood up. "Which is why I apologized."

"That's not like you." Booth said.

"Being mean?"

"Apologizing." Booth said. "What did you say?" Cam sighed. "Camille..." He warned, refusing to let her leave until she spilled the beans.

"Dr. Brennan made a comment about how at my age, every man had to be analyzed as a potential mate. I replied that I was only a bit older than her and that at least I had someone to spend the evening with." Cam cringed, even now. Booth furrowed his eyebrows.

"You said you promised her that you wouldn't forget what she had done?" He asked. "What was that about?" Cam sighed in resignation, knowing that he wouldn't give up until he knew the full story.

"I suppose now is as good a time as any." She said. "It was after the JFK case." Cam confessed. "I asked her if she was aware that the President had scarlet fever as a child, which can cause osteomyelitis. She said that it was rare, only a one percent chance and that it wasn't worth sharing that bit of information with you." Cam revealed. "She did that for you, Seeley, because she knew how much it meant to you." Booth couldn't comprehend what Cam was saying. Brennan didn't lie, especially about the scientific truth. It wasn't in her nature.

Or was it?

"She always goes out of her way to protect you, even when you don't realize it. So today, when I found out about the dozen or so men she turned down for a date this evening, I remembered just what kind of person she is. I guess we all just take it for granted these days."

"Take what for granted?" He asked.

"Brennan putting you first." Cam said with a pat to his shoulder. "I don't suppose that she even thinks about it anymore." She paused. "For me to forget that, well, it was shameful." Booth sat dumbfounded as Cam looked over his shoulder. "Paul's here. I have to go." Booth nodded but made no attempts to leave her office so she simply kissed his cheek and headed out the door. He could show himself out.

OOOOO

Not even the shooting range was helping him work through this dilemma.

Booth had never thought twice about whether to take Brennan's word for less than what it was. She valued honesty as much as he did and she valued scientific truth above everything else in the world. The thought of her going against her nature and lying for him ate him up inside. He remembered being grateful that she had kept looking into the JFK case because of him. Once he had heard what he wanted to hear, did he keep thinking about it? No, he really did trust her. If Bones said it, it had to be as scientifically accurate as humanly possible. She wouldn't accept anything less.

But then, a thought came to mind from years ago.

Take the brain, put it in neutral. Take the heart, pop it into overdrive.

She had done this before with her father's murder charge, twisted the facts to suit her needs without changing the truth of them.

Just an interpretation of existing facts. An alternative story.

She had manipulated the facts, gone against everything that she held sacred in this world, and he had been the one to teach her how to do it.

He sent off another angry round of bullets before stopping to reload.

As if summoned from his mind, he turned around and saw Brennan pushing a cart towards him.

"Bones, what are you doing here?"

"This is my Valentine's Day gift to you." She said with a smile.

"Come on, Bones, I told you…" He said, wanting nothing of the sort.

"Just…Open it." She requested

"What is it?"

"Just open it." She said with an encouraging smile.

So he did.

OOOOO

Leave it to Bones to be both the problem and the solution.

Thirty minutes with a Tommy gun and Booth was feeling infinitely better than when he started out this day.

"You know, you really didn't have to do this, Bones." Booth said as he helped her push the cart of Tommy guns back towards her office.

"It's what partners do." She said with a smile.

How much do you do? He wondered and he knew he had an opening for a line of questioning.

"Bones, can I ask you something?" He asked.

"Sure." She said as she sat down on the front of her desk.

"I know it was a long time ago, but the JFK case? Cam told me today that there was a one percent chance that it was actually JFK that you examined. Why didn't you tell me that?" He had to give her credit; Brennan only looked murderous towards Cam for a flash before cooling her features. Most people would have missed it but Booth knew her better than most people.

"A one percent chance is very, very small." She informed him using her best squinty voice, like he wouldn't recognize a cover up when he heard it.

"But you declined to mention it at all. Why?" Brennan glanced at him and sighed. He could see her trying to figure out the best way to continue.

"You know how in the field, you always say that you're the gun? You protect me?" Brennan asked. Booth nodded. "Well, sometimes, you're the one who needs protecting." The unfortunate choice of words echoed with the heartache of the past year and they both felt it, deep within their bones.

"From you?" Booth asked, repeating her words from that night and playing along.

"From me." She agreed. "And from yourself. You give yourself away, Booth. To your job, to the people that you love... Whether you know it or not, there are certain subjects where you seem to be all in, all of the time. You can't separate yourself from those situations. I just, I try to limit them."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is this about Hannah?"

"Hannah…." Brennan shook her head with a bitterness that stole Booth's attention. "I sat here," she said as she laid her palms down on the front of her desk, "when Hannah first arrived and I told her about your character, about your big heart. How when you give, you give everything, until there's nothing left. I let her know that if she couldn't reciprocate that generosity, she should get out before things got serious or it would be akin to stealing a piece of you. She looked me in the eye and promised me that I had nothing to worry about. When I think about it now…" She trailed off, upset just thinking about it.

"You can't control other people, Bones." Booth said. "No matter how hard you wish you could sometimes."

"Do you remember when she left? When you asked why none of us wanted what you had to offer?" Booth inwardly winced at the foggy memory. "You were asking the wrong question." He stared at her, trying to decipher what she meant. "The real question was why we felt we couldn't be what you needed." She informed him. He waited for her to explain. "When you give everything you have to someone, it is implied that the other person will respond the same way. We weren't ready for that. None of us were." She clarified. "Rebecca wanted to keep her independence, Hannah couldn't sit still, I wasn't ready to lose my best friend, my job, for something that I could so easily destroy..." She looked at him mournfully. "It wasn't until after I got back from Indonesia that I realized I already had." She confessed. Booth felt his heart stop. "I see now that when I left, I gave you up. Unintentionally but still, I did." She said, refusing to look at him. "It had never occurred to me that the foundation of our relationship would be altered if we left." She paused to focus on her point again. "When I came home and you were with Hannah, I realized that I had already lost all of those things I had been fighting to save." She said. "I guess that was my way of giving everything I had: I gave you."

Booth's face was wrought with confusion but his heart was pounding in his chest at her words. Was she saying what he thought she was saying?

"Those are the actions that Cam was referring to this morning, the reason I didn't give you all the facts with the JFK case, the reason I ran to Indonesia, the reason I tried to talk to Hannah, the reason I haven't accepted anyone's dinner invitations this evening. I have made a habit of trying to protect you." She confessed.

"Why?" He asked, the word leaving his lips before he even realized he had said it.

"Because I realized a long time ago, sitting on the floor of a bar, that protecting you protects me." She told him, her delicate finger stabbing her own chest. "And I've been trying to outrun that feeling ever since." Booth stood there staring at her, completely overwhelmed at what she was revealing. "And if that means that I have to befriend your girlfriends, or move to the other side of the world so that you can get your time and space, or lie about one percent chances then I'm going to gladly do it." She said. "Because I can never feel that way again, Booth." She said, her eyes tearing up as she shook her head. "I can't."

"Hey," He said as he wrapped his arms around her. "Shh. It's okay." He held her tight, wanting nothing more than to make her feel better. She buried her face in his neck for a moment before taking a few deep breaths.

"I'm sorry." She said as she pulled away and attempted brushed her own tears away. Booth closed the distance and ran a thumb across her cheekbone.

"You have nothing to be sorry for." He assured her. "I'm the one who is sorry. Bones, I'm so lucky to have you. I've always known it, I just," he sighed, "didn't realize how much."

"It's getting late." She said with a glance towards the security guard walking through the lab.

"Let me take you home." Booth requested but the vault doors were quickly slamming shut on her vulnerability and Booth could see the change as soon as he spoke.

"Booth…" She shook her head. "It's okay."

"No, I want to." He said.

"You don't have to…." She stopped short.

"Don't have to what?" He asked.

"Be nice to me. I don't want your pity." She said as she began gathering her things.

"Bones…" He scolded. "You don't have my pity." He said as he tried to turn her around to look at him. She wiggled out of his grasp.

"No. You've made it very clear that things have changed between us, Booth. Please don't change that now just because you want to make things right." She said as she slung her bag over her arm and headed out the door.

Making things right: that was him all over. She wasn't wrong then and she certainly wasn't wrong now.

Anything he might have said in the moment to defend himself would have sounded empty so he folded his now vacant arms and watched her go. His actions of the past year had spoken loudly enough.

Then again, his words had been pretty loud as well.

I love Hannah.

Not a consolation prize.

He had told Brennan that he didn't love her anymore and she had believed him.

The whirring of the lab doors closing brought him back to his senses and he immediately reached into his pocket for his keys. She had done her best to protect him from the truth. Now it was his job to bring everything back into the light.

OOOOO

Booth secretly followed Brennan back to her place for the first time since her confession in his car a few weeks prior. He kept a comfortable distance and parked in the lot across the street and waited for her apartment light to come on. It was a routine that he had perfected over the years, when she was feeling particularly distant during a case or if they were in a fight. He had protected her just as much as she had tried to protect him. His phone rang beside him in the console and he picked it up. It was her.

"Booth." He said into the phone, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Do you want to come up for a drink or did you bring Chinese food?" She asked. He sighed, knowing he had been caught. He saw the curtain flutter in her window.

"I don't have food." He said, not answering her question.

"Then scotch it is." She said.

"Bones, I don't know if…"

"Aren't you the one who is always telling me that it's not okay to drink alone?" She asked. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth despite himself. "I think we could both use a drink right now." He heard the clinking of ice on glass and he knew that she was starting with or without him. With another sigh, this one more resigned than the first, he gave in. "The door will be unlocked." She said before she got his verbal answer.

"That's not safe." He said as he got out of his car.

"Then you better hurry up." She said as she hung up the phone. He jogged across the street and made his way up the stairs to her apartment. He knocked and let himself in, locking the door behind him. She was sitting on her couch, her legs tucked underneath her.

"Hi." He said awkwardly, unsure of what this whole meeting was going to be like. She pointed to his drink on the coffee table. He walked over, picked it up and sat down next to her. One sip and he knew that this was a brand that was far more expensive than he could ever afford to buy. She had broken out the good stuff.

"I didn't mean what I said earlier, Booth." She apologized, in her own sort of way. "I know that you don't pity me."

"I don't." He agreed. "But I do want to make things right." He said. "I know that it will take a while, and that I've screwed things up but…"

"Don't do that." She said, shaking her head. "I'm not blameless in this." She reminded him. "You have every right to be mad at me. I ran away. There's no other way to say it. And while part of me did it to protect you, another part did it to protect me."

"Bones, you're my best friend, and I want to work this out with you. I'm tired of us not being us, you know?" She nodded. "But when this is all said and done, and we're back on solid ground again, what is our relationship going to be? What outcome are we going for here?" He asked, taking the first leap.

"What outcome do you want?" She asked.

"Do you…" he started, nearly losing his nerve to ask the question. "Do you still love me?" She nodded, unable to say the words out loud. "And in your ideal situation, we would…be together?" He asked.

"I want us to be on the same page, whatever it is." She informed him.

"So if I decide that I can't get beyond all of these issues between us, then what, we'll just stay partners?" He asked.

"Yes." She said.

"And you'll just go on loving me despite the fact that you know that you will never be able to be with me." He added.

"Yeah." She nodded. Booth chuckled before he took another drink. "What?"

"I know that is what we both did for years but saying it out loud makes it sound just…insane." He said.

"What would you suggest?" She asked, wanting to hear an alternative plan. "What is your ideal outcome?" She asked.

"I don't know yet." He said honestly. "I used to have big dreams and they all got shot to hell." He said bluntly. "Frankly, I don't want to make plans anymore. I just want to let fate, or the universe," he added at seeing her upturned nose, "take the lead and see where we end up." He watched as Brennan thoughtfully took another sip of her drink before setting it down next to her.

"There's something I have to ask you." She started, looking slightly more nervous than before.

"Shoot." He said. Why hold back now?

"I know that I'm not always good at deciphering subtleties. But when you and I were talking after the Sister wives case, and you said that there is always one person that you love the most…"

"I meant you." Booth said with a quiet nod. Brennan exhaled sharply. "Look, Bones, I know that I told you that I loved Hannah, and I did." He defended. "But she wasn't my first choice. I could have been very happy with her but she wasn't you." Brennan looked away from him for a moment and took a deep breath.

"Then why did you turn me down when I told you how I felt?" She inquired when she turned back around. Booth was shocked to see a vulnerable sadness in her eyes. "Why did you propose to her when you knew that I lo…." She cut herself off, refusing to say the word out loud. Booth hung his head, unable to look her in the eye when he gave his reason.

"She was the safe bet." He finally admitted. "You and I, we're so different, we've always been so complicated, I just…"

"Wanted things to be easy." She said quietly, her heart break evident in her voice.

"Knowing how you felt and making it work were two very different things, Bones. I panicked. I guess I just wanted to lock down something that I was certain of so I wouldn't have to wonder about all of the possibilities that lay ahead. If I were married to Hannah, it would shut that door between us forever. I could move on."

"But she said no." Brennan replied.

"She said no. And suddenly easy became very, very complicated." He said, finishing off his drink.

"Do you think that you will ever be able to forgive me for what I did?" She asked. "Saying no. Leaving?"

"I'm not mad at you. Just at the situation." He clarified. "I mean, why is it that we both have to make all the wrong decisions before we can make the right ones?" He inquired. "I just need some time, you know? To clear my head, heal." Brennan nodded and looked like she wanted to reply. Booth set down his empty glass on the table and gave her his full attention, waiting to see what she would say but she didn't speak. "Bones, what is it?" He asked.

"And when you're done clearing your head?" She asked. "Then what?"

"I don't know." He said, unable to promise anything in the moment. Brennan looked down at her hands, not likely that answer. "But when I do, you'll be the first to know." He added. He waited with bated breath for her response. He knew that he was asking too much of her. He needed her to give him time, to put her own feelings aside and put him first yet again.

But this time it was intentional.

When she looked up at him again, her eyes radiated with something he had never expected to see: determination.

"Well, at least you'll know where to find me." She said as she settled back into the couch and folded her arms over her chest defiantly. "Because I'm not going anywhere."