A/N: This was originally a set of five drabbles for a challenge on LiveJournal, but I've strung it together fo you.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.
Blood
There is a man with a gun. Brennan doesn't care who he is or what he wants. She cares that he just pulled the trigger.
Angela crumples to the ground, and within seconds, Brennan is kneeling beside her, covering the wound with her hands, while the rest of the world moves around them.
Minutes later, the medics push her out of their way and move Angela carefully, but swiftly, onto the stretcher.
Brennan watches them leave out the front doors, then looks at her blood-stained hands. She'd spent so much time with the dead, she's forgotten how dark blood is.
-
Blood is harder to wash off than Brennan remembers it to be, but she won't leave the washroom until every trace of Angela is off her hands.
When she comes out, the lab is surprisingly quiet for the number of extra people there. She wishes it were louder. Then maybe she would stop hearing the echo of the gunshot.
"Bones!" Booth calls from behind her, and she turns. "Hodgins and Zach left already. Do you want a drive?"
Brennan doesn't want to go, but knows she'll regret it if she doesn't, so she nods and turns, heading for the door.
-
The wound is worse than Brennan thought it was, and she is uncharacteristically pessimistic when it comes to gunshot wounds.
There's an observation room above the emergency operating room, and they're allowed to watch. This is another thing Brennan doesn't really want to do, but does anyways.
She isn't reacting the same as the others.
Hodgins is angry, plain and simple. Zach is emotionless. Booth fluctuates between self-anger and numbness.
But Brennan is afraid. She doesn't want to lose Angela, doesn't want to have to know how to cope without her. The fear of losing her best friend is all-consuming.
-
Angela is a big believer in the stages of everything, Brennan knows, so she uses her guidelines to analyse herself.
She's in the phase of grief appropriately named 'denial'.
But it isn't the usual fact ignoring; no facts have presented themselves. The chances that Angela will live are slim, but they're there. Until there's proof the artist is dead, Brennan will avoid it as a possibility. She does not, will not jump to conclusions.
At least that's what she tells herself. In actuality, Brennan just won't admit that Angela is dying.
That is one goodbye she never wants to make.
-
Waiting rooms, Brennan decides, can be listed among flogging and burning alive as effective methods of torture.
Angela's surgery is over. She's survived that, but, in her fragile state, she isn't safe.
Booth is holding her hand from the plastic seat next to her's, but Brennan hardly notices. She doesn't notice anything but the cloud of fear that's slowly dissolving around her. She has no need for denial.
A nurse appears. Brennan is Angela's emergency contact, and they need to talk. Booth gives her hand a squeeze before she stands up on jelly legs.
Soon, she's holding a different hand.