A/N: I know that it has literally been years since I posted anything, let alone updated, so feel free to let me know how you feel. I may be convinced to revisit/-write some of my older stories. As for now, I bring you the new and improved PottersChick7!

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
There is going to be some serious angst going on here! There are multiple character deaths and suicide is a big factor. I am by no means condoning it, merely using it as a way to show how the characters are so entwined. If this is not something you are comfortable reading, turn back now. I won't be offended, nor will I even know.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except my (today exceedingly depressing) imagination.

I guess I should say that there are spoilers for The Pain in the Heart, but it aired so long ago that if you're concerned about spoilers, why are you reading fanfiction? Nevertheless, consider yourselves warned. Not that much in that episode will be revealed; as you will see I am going to take some serious artistic license. Now, on with the story!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Excuse me," said one of the honor guard roughly, pushing his way out of the line and moving toward the man on the outskirts of the group. They began to fight, knocking over the coffin and revealing that it only contained a dummy roughly the same size as Seeley Booth. Breaking out of their stupor, several of the other men joined in and subdued the smaller man, and the guardsman who had initially attacked stood and revealed himself to be Seeley Booth, in the flesh, though favoring his right side a bit, as his wound had not yet healed completely.

He had expected things to go differently, more people perhaps, and certainly protestations of joy at the sight of him alive. But when he stood without the cap that had fallen off moments before in the brawl, there was dead silence, suddenly broken by a sob from someone on the other side of his 'grave'.

Seeley glanced around, trying to see who was crying, when he saw the Jeffersonian contingent, or the 'squint squad.' They looked devastated to see him; Hodgins and Zack were crying and Angela was all out bawling in the bug guy's arms. Bones was nowhere to be seen, but he wasn't too shocked. After all, this was the queen of compartmentalization he was talking about, and she had been told that his 'death' had been a ploy to draw out an old enemy.

FBI agents came in to disperse the mourners who no longer had anything to mourn. He could hear them as they spoke gently, saying that Agent Booth would be available later, but right now they needed to clear the scene. Zach and Cam turned away, still looking heartbroken. Hodgins tried to pull Angela, who was still sobbing, away, but she refused to leave. Agents went over to them to try to persuade the distraught woman to move along.

"No!" she cried out. "I'm not leaving until I talk to that son of a bitch!"

"Ma'am, we need you to leave; we have to-"

"Fuck you, I don't care!" she screamed again and finally pulled away from Hodgins and marched over to where Booth stood, confused.

"Hey, Angela, where's Bones? I'm gonna need her help to wrap up a case that-"

"You want to see Brennan?" she said through her tears. "Fine, you can see her right now."

"Oh, she did come? I didn't see her; I figured she already knew what was happen-"

"Just shut up and come with me."

The usually calm artist's demeanor shook the former Ranger as she grabbed his hand and pulled him deeper into the cemetery. They walked, or more like Booth was pulled, away from the military graves and into the civilian section.

"There," the artist sobbed, "There's your precious Bones."

Booth looked around confused. "Angela, what-"

"There you bastard!" she screamed. "She's there because of you, and she doesn't get to mysteriously show up! She doesn't get to come back!"

His heart suddenly went cold when he realized where they were standing; he had been there with Bones to get her to try to talk to her mother so recently. There was a new grave next to it, a bit over a week old.

Dr. Temperance 'Bones' Brennan
Sister, Daughter, Mentor, Friend
1976 - 2008

"Wha-what happened?" he asked, sinking to his knees by the headstone.

"You killed her" Angela bit out. She shoved two pieces of paper at him, and walked away, sobbing once again.

Booth sat in shock. You killed her was Angela's accusation. But how was that possible? He had saved her, he had taken the bullet that Pam Nunan had meant to put in the anthropologist and he had nearly died because of it. He had heard her shoot the other woman after he fell to the ground. She had been there, begging for him to stay with her. But now she was six feet under and he was alive.

He braced his hands on his knees, bowing his head to cry when the papers Angela had given him rustled. One looked as if it had been unfolded and folded many times, the other was still sealed. It was addressed to him. He looked at the open one first.

Angela,

Likely you were the one to find me here, and I am sorry about that. I know you have worried about me for the last few days and you probably came to my apartment the minute you realized I wasn't at the Jeffersonian. But how could you not have worried? My partner just died, the love of my life, saving me. Yes, I love him. I love Seeley Booth, but I realized it much too late. Maybe if I had told him sooner, things would be different. But instead, I was a coward, and chose to hide behind my walls so I wouldn't get hurt. I hurt more than ever now.

I have always been the one to make rational choices, to talk you out of pulling some crazy stunts. Our relationship has been that way since college and I want it to stay that way. There will be no talking me out of this. I have always been rational, but Booth makes me want to be irrational. He makes me want to be the person I could be, a woman who isn't obsessed with her morbid line of work and thinks going to identify bodies in mass graves is a good coping mechanism. He makes me want to be impulsive, and 'go with the flow'. That's the only reason I got up on that stage at the Checkerbox, because I wanted to show him that I could be more than just a squint. And that night has resulted in both of our deaths.

Please, Ange, make sure to give my letters to everyone. Even if he can't read it, I want my letter to Booth buried with him. Many ancient cultures believed that belongings placed with them at burial would go on with them to the afterlife. Maybe that is true, maybe not, but I want to believe that perhaps Booth will somehow be able to find out that I loved him with all of my heart, shriveled and cold as it is. If only we had had more time together, maybe I could have worked up the courage to do something about it, but now my only hope is that, despite how much I have protested against its existence, there is an afterlife, if only so I may have one last glimpse of him.

Temperance

She had used her best stationary, he noted, the paper she only brought out for very important messages. Now, it had been used to write the most important of all, her farewell to the world. There were a few drops of blood on it; after being around the lab so much, he knew that pattern had come from a gunshot wound.

His eyes were starting to cloud with tears; he dashed them away and broke the seal on the letter addressed to him.

Booth,

I love you.

It has taken me three years and your death to finally say it, but I love you. That is all there is to it. I cannot live without you, can barely breathe without you. You somehow managed to wriggle past the carefully constructed wall around my heart and make yourself as necessary to me as oxygen and water. I don't know how you did it, and I wish I had realized it sooner, but this is all there is now – a letter to be placed in your grave.

Catholics believe that suicide is one of the gravest sins. The Japanese see it as an act of the highest honor. A Hindu wife is expected to throw herself onto her husband's funeral pyre. I see it as an act to see you again. I do not care if I am to spend the rest of eternity in Purgatory or Hell, or if I am to be reincarnated as a cockroach. All I know is that perhaps I will see you again.

Bones

Booth finally allowed himself to cry, prostrating himself on her grave. All he could think of was the one line of English literature that had stayed with him – "I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul." When he read Wuthering Heights, it had seemed melodramatic, if poignant. It was merely Catherine being her usual self-centered self. But now, he saw what they meant. Two things had kept him going in the last two weeks, Parker and Bones.

And now Bones was dead. But she should be alive. She was supposed to know he was alive! She had been above even his family on the list of who to notify of his false demise.

"I'm sorry Bones, I'm so, so sorry," he sobbed. "You were supposed to know, supposed to be told that I wasn't really dead!"

He didn't know how long he sat there sobbing, saying he was sorry when someone suddenly spoke behind him. He jerked his head around, noticing for the first time that the light was fading. It was Max Keenan.

"Love means never having to say you're sorry."

"Have you come to kill me the way you have everyone else who hurt your family?" Booth snarled. "Go ahead, my day can't get any worse."

"No," Max said. "I don't hurt people who love my daughter."

"How did you-"

"Aside from your reaction? You've been muttering for the last half hour or so, along the lines of I love you, I'm sorry, and You were supposed to know."

"So why are you here then?" Booth asked, more tears dripping down his face.

"Am I not allowed to pay respects to my wife and daughter? Besides, I have something you might want. And don't ask how I got it, because then I would have to kill you."

"All right Max, I'll bite. What do you have?"

"Read it after I've left; remember I'm only the messenger." With that the older man gave Booth a sheet of common printer paper folded in thirds and walked away.

As he had requested, Booth waited until Max was out of sight before he unfolded the paper. It was a printout of an email from one official FBI account to another; Max was right, Booth didn't want to know how he had found this.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Two days later, Seeley Booth entered the JEH Building. Only those who knew him best would be able to tell anything unusual had happened over the weekend; after speaking to Max in the cemetery, he had decided not to act rashly. The email he had been given was damning in his eyes and he wanted time to prepare the proper retribution.

So that morning, he had dressed with care, wearing his standard brightly colored tie and socks. What no one else knew was that the tie and sock were both ones that Bones had commented on. He had a whole drawer that he had emptied in order to store any clothing she had said she liked, that way he was guaranteed to know she would smile when she saw him. God, if only he had said something sooner! Then he wouldn't have this guilt laying on him for letting her believe he didn't love her. In the mean time, he had a psychologist to hurt.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Dr. Lance Sweets had timed his return from his personal days to coincide with the first session he would have with Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan after the agent's 'resurrection'. Their appointment was at 10:30, so he did not expect to see either of them until 11. He was anxious to see Dr. Brennan's reaction to the fact that Agent Booth wasn't really dead; after all, he had withheld the information to test their relationship, which he suspected was far deeper than that of a mere partnership.

He was surprised to see Agent Booth exiting the elevator alone at 10:29. He and Dr. Brennan always arrived together, nearly always half an hour late. He purposely scheduled extra time for their appointments so as to accommodate their tardiness.

"Agent Booth," he said as the man stormed into the room. "I'm surprised you didn't wait for Dr. Brenn-" He was abruptly cut off by the much larger man grabbing him by the collar and shoving him against the wall.

"Now, Sweets, you had better tell me right now the meaning of this message or so help me I will blow your head off." He shoved a paper at the psychologist.

Dr. Sweets opened the sheet of paper to see a printout of the email he had sent to Director Cullen, asking his permission to go against Agent Booth's wishes and not inform Dr. Brennan that her partner wasn't really dead. He had said that he fully expected the forensic anthropologist to be able to compartmentalize and move on from Booth's 'demise' and he wanted to see how she reacted to the news that he hadn't really died, especially since he had taken a bullet for her.

"Dr. Brennan is in such control of her emotional state that I believe she would be able to process your death and move on."

"You made us into your fucking guinea pigs!"

"No, I was merely observing your rather unique partnership. Is Dr. Brennan on her way? I am anxious to hear her thoughts on the subject."

"She won't be joining us." Sweets thought he heard a slight hitch in the agent's voice, and looking more closely, it appeared he had been crying recently.

"Is there a new case she is involved in? I hadn't heard anything but then again, I have yet to check my email since I got in today."

"No."

Sweets paused at the abrupt answer. It appeared there was something going on here.

"Agent Booth, I don't understand. Will your partner be joining us or not?"

"That would be rather difficult considering she is where I supposedly should be right now." The psychologist was starting to worry about the man's eerily calm demeanor. Any moment he could snap.

"Agent Booth, I really must insist that your partner be involved in this session to evaluate her response to your actions and-"

"You want her reactions? Her reaction was to blow her fucking brains out because she was in love with me and thought I was dead! Her reaction was to hope that her beliefs were wrong so she could see me again in the afterlife!" There was the snap Sweets had been waiting for. The agent was so tightly coiled that –

"Dr. Brennan is dead?" he gasped.

"It's all your fault!" Booth shoved the smaller man against the wall once again. "She was at the top of that fucking list, the first person to be told that I hadn't died to save her! But no, you decided to screw with her head and let her believe I was dead!"

"Agent Booth, I swear that I thought Dr. Brennan could handle your death!" Somehow, even while openly crying, the agent remained menacing.

"Well apparently she couldn't!" Sweets noticed people starting to gather outside his office; he had forgotten to close his blinds in anticipation of his sessions. "Do you know what she said in her note? She said that she would rather risk Hell for committing suicide on the off chance that she would see me again rather than 'compartmentalizing and moving on' as you assumed she would." Suddenly, Booth released his hold and stepped back, adjusting his tie and jacket. "Now you get to live with the knowledge that you could have prevented the deaths of two people if you hadn't been so fucking focused on dissecting us. Yes, I love her. Yes, I was too stupid to say anything. That's what you've wanted to hear, isn't it?" With that, he turned and stormed out of the office.

Director Cullen stepped out of the crowd of people that had gathered.

"Sir, shouldn't we try to stop him? He pretty much announced that he was planning to kill himself."

"Do you think you could stop him right now? Besides, he is no longer an agent with the FBI; he resigned half an hour ago and turned in his badge, weapon, and car." The Director placed a hand on Sweets' shoulder. "All we can do now is make sure he receives the respect he deserves at his second funeral."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

For the third day in a row, Seeley Booth found himself standing at Bones' grave. His time, however, he hadn't brought any daffodils. Just a gun and a silencer; he didn't want to disturb any of the other mourners.

"Your dad said that love meant never having to say you're sorry. Well, I am sorry Bones. I'm sorry I trusted Sweets to tell you what was going on instead of calling you like I did for Parker. I'm sorry that you were willing to throw your life away for me. But most of all, I'm sorry that I never told you that I love you in person, that I can only say it now. I'm sorry that I was too much of a coward, because I thought you would reject me. I decided that it was better to be friends and partners than to risk putting my heart on the line. I'm sorry that we never had the chance to be more."

He sat down and leaned against her headstone, screwing the silencer onto his personal weapon. He had already decided to shoot behind his ear at an angle so that the bullet would embed itself in the ground.

"I love you Temperance."

There was a muffled pop, and then silence as he slumped against her headstone with a smile on his face, waiting to be found by the FBI.

In his last moments before his body registered that a bullet had ripped through his brain, he swore he saw Bones waiting for him. With the last breath in his lungs, he whispered, "I love you."

A/N: Thanks for all of you who hung in there 'til the end! I know that this is an extreme situation and probably very out of character, but love can make you do crazy things. Remember that this is just my imagination running wild; I watched Pain in the Heart the other day and thought how Shakespearean it was, so I decided to take it to the full on Romeo and Juliet level. And yes, I know that I threw in an incredibly cheesy movie reference, but I think it's perfect given that Ryan O'Neal plays Max Keenan.

Please let me know what you think! Like I said at the top, I could be convinced to revisit some of my older stuff as well.