This is my interpretation of Brennan's mindset immediately following Booth's supposed death in season three. Hope you all enjoy

~AlphaGirl13

I do not own bones

Dear Booth,

You are gone now, but I am writing as if you were still alive. Angela thinks it will help me cope with your death. She thinks I'm incredibly upset. But she doesn't know the truth of it. I am terrified Booth; I am afraid to live my life. Every person I allow myself to form a bond with, leaves in one form or another. My parents deserted me, and now you have been killed.

I only wish I had taken the opportunity to know you in a different way than I had. I only wished I had told you how I felt. For this letter, I am putting science aside, like you told me once, to tell you that I am in love with you. I have been for years, and I do not know if I will ever recover from your death. Disregarding science, I let you into my heart; I trusted you; I loved you. And I revealed things to you that I was afraid to reveal to myself.

And you showed me things I never dreamt possible. It was as if I was Galileo, and you were my telescope. You allowed me to see the entire universe; to see colors, feelings, and dreams that I could never have imagined.

These discoveries tilted my world upside down. Everything I believed, was now false. You showed me that the world is not black and white; it is filled with every shade of every color, and we cannot begin to understand its complexity. But these things were not destructive to my life, they only changed it. And in fact, I would say that you have changed me for the better.

In the vernacular, I was broken, and you fixed me. You took the shattered pieces of my heart and you began to put them back together. But I resisted; I fought. I didn't want to reassemble my heart for fear that it would shatter again. Perhaps now, I'll never fully recover from my parent's disappearance. You are no longer here to read me, to see my every feeling, and to know when I will need comfort before I know myself.

My life was richer with you in it; I was richer. I had a friend whom I could confide in, and a partner with whom I trusted my life. But I never told you, and I regret that now. You will never know how I've felt about you these three years. Or perhaps you did know; you could read and understand me better than anyone I've ever met.

I am sad that I will never get to read you the letter I wrote to you when I was buried alive. I am sad that I will never read this letter to you. And I am sad that another person that I loved has come and gone from my life. Experience is a cruel teacher, and your death has taught me one, very important lesson. I can never give my heart to someone again, not fully. I will only be left broken in the end. And if your death hasn't already metaphorically shattered my heart beyond repair, someone else will. I must protect myself, mend my heart to the best of my ability, and keep going with my head held high.

I will not be going to your funeral. I need to close myself off again before I face a calamity that I cannot overcome. I do not know if your death will be such a calamity, but I must protect myself in case it is. I must fortify my walls and be ready to weather a storm that I may not survive. There is a difference between living and surviving. Living is embracing happiness, it is enjoying life. Surviving is simply not succumbing to death. I loved you; you started to fix my broken heart. I do not know if I have the emotional capabilities to live through your death, but I will close off my heart, and I will survive it.

I hope you found your heaven Booth. Because when you died, you took mine with you.

I put down the pen and read over the letter. A single tear fell on the paper, blurring the first two words. I wiped it away and folded the letter into fourths. My eye was drawn to the fire, and I considered throwing the paper in. but instead I turned away, and slid it behind the glass of a picture frame.

The picture was of me and Booth facing each other, smiling. Angela had snapped the photo after one of our first cases. There was already another paper behind the glass, a torn page of my novel: another letter I couldn't bring myself to burn. Attaching the frame back together, I set it on my window sill, facing the rising sun.

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