Am I alone... or did everyone else cry at the end too? They are so evil to us... Well anyways, here's my take on Brennan's thoughts at the end of The End in the Beginning.


She sighs as she stares at the computer screen in front of her, at the words that have been flowing out with barely any prompting from her. She hasn't had to think about a single tap of that keyboard... the words flowing so fast from her fingertips, her mind simply placing her thoughts out on to the blank canvas. As though anything could keep away the pain.

She glances over at him, at the still figure on the bed. The bandages wrapped around his head seem to alienate him from her. Pull him farther into the abyss that he has been falling down... away from her... for the past four days. His eyes are shut... she's beginning to forget exactly what that soft look in them was like; what it was like to see them melt into their soft and caring depths that always made her comfortable, safe... at home.

There is another abyss, one that she has been tumbling down at the same time for those four days. A place that she can't seem to escape; her own mind has imprisoned her. Fear has made her its captive. And she can't even find a logical or rational way to make it go away. There is nothing that can take her from it.

Not when he is there, in that bed. Asleep. In another world altogether...

She thinks back to what his friend from Japan said to her. About loving someone so much and it being worth the pain if it goes wrong. Because they are worth it.

"You love someone, you open yourself up to suffering, that's the sad truth. Maybe they'll break your heart, maybe you'll break their heart and never be able to look at yourself in the same way. Those are the risks. That's the burden.

Like wings, they have weight, we feel that weight on our backs, but they are a burden that lifts us. Burdens which allow us to fly."

She says the last words aloud as she types them, feeling the complete honesty and the inescapable relation to her that they have. They are no longer mere thoughts that could be a part of a story, a part of a novel... they are about her. They are about her and about the man that lies across the room. Across the expanse so great that nothing she can do will change it. Only time can change it.

And time is cruel. It could take him away, it could take him from her forever. It could trap him in that bed for all eternity, with her here and watching. With her helpless... forced to stand by. Forced to know that things... can never go back the way they were. Because it isn't her life without him.

It could never be her life without him.

She needs him...

To fly.

Nothing can change that... can carry her up again. He was her wings. They carried her out of the lab, they led her to a life she couldn't have imagined. They helped her understand things that never could make sense within the confines of the Jeffersonian alone... they let her see that life was not all abandonment... that people don't always leave... and that trust... can sometimes be present. Trust in him.

She can feel, in her heart, and that is only because of him. But it is what she feels... that there is hope... that makes her glance up from that laptop screen towards him once more. He has still not moved. He has still not dug her out of that abyss, has not pulled her from the buried depths so much like he did so very long ago after the Gravedigger...

Maybe he will not be coming this time. Maybe her belief that he would always pull through, would always find a way to do what he did best... what he could always do... maybe, this time, it was too much.

Maybe this was something that couldn't be defeated by her brave partner, who would do anything for her... who would surely open his eyes if he only could. Perhaps he was in there right now, fighting. Trying to get back to her...

But he couldn't. This time... he just couldn't.

She sighs once more and turns back to her screen. She hesitates, and then taps the delete key. It all vanishes, everything she's been working on without even truly deciding to do so... she does it because there is no point.

There's no reason to it, and there's no place for it to go. She doesn't want anyone else to see the words that come so directly from her thoughts. That open herself up so completely.

She would have shown him. Only him. Because he was the one she opened herself up to. He was the one she trusted to hold her emotions and keep them safe.

She'd never even realized that she'd done it, handed herself over so easily to him... not until it was far too late. Until she couldn't take back her feelings and the strength they had over her was too great. When she no longer could deny the truth in the words that others so often repeated. When 'we're just partners' seemed like a sad denial rather than a truthful defense. When to hear him say it... was almost excruciatingly painful.

Because she wished it wasn't just partners. Because she wished... she could open herself up more. And she knew, now, why she had so very much wanted that child with him. She wanted to feel what love was like, since she was too afraid to even attempt to make what was already there between her and him into something more.

Too afraid it might fail. That he might not love her... that maybe he was just her partner.

So she'd asked him to father the kid... so that she was sure she'd love her child. How could she not love someone who was both hers and his? Who was so... theirs? And she wouldn't have to deny that love. She could announce it; she could tell everyone how much the child meant to her without fear of loss or pain. Because she was supposed to love her child. And she wasn't supposed to love her partner.

She felt the fear rising again, as she stared at the blank computer screen. What if he never came back? What if... they never became more than partners?

She wasn't going to have the baby. She wasn't going to do it when every single day, every single moment, she would see his face in the face of her child. It would be like carrying around a box filled with pain... like every day re-watching him die before her. Sure, he wasn't dead... but he was trapped.

Much like she was.

And he would die eventually. And most likely before her, as well. Because here she was... sitting with a laptop, free to go and get coffee, free to return to her life if only she could find the strength or the will to. And there he was. Lying there. Just waiting for it to be over. Because for him... it might as well be right now.

She hoped, truly begged in her mind, that he was not thinking that, where he was. That he was still fighting to return.

Her eyes flicked from the computer screen as she heard a slight sound from him. It would be another false alarm. She'd heard a sudden hum from a machine, caught the slightest movement of air brushing the sheets from a ventilation shaft and gotten a waft of hope... far too many times.

So she wasn't expecting him to actually have his eyes open, to be staring at the opposite wall, his mouth slightly open, his fingers twitching slightly... and murmuring coming from his lips.

She stared in shock for a moment, fighting between joy and fear or disappointment before she slid the laptop to the side and getting to her feet. He must not be awake... she must be dreaming, or hallucinating herself... but she must not let herself believe him to be there. To be back. Because it will break her when he is actually not.

The word escapes her lips hardly without her realization.

"Booth..."

She says it again as she gets to his bed and sees that his eyes truly are open. That he truly is there. "Booth!"

It isn't an exclamation... more of a gasp. More of a stutter of shock. She barely gets the word out through her sudden overflow of emotions.

He looks at her... turns his head to look at her... he sees her, she can tell as his brown eyes meet her blue ones and she sees recognition there.

"You're awake," she chokes out, unable to avoid the smile that is spreading over her face, the slight laugh of disbelief and almost insuppressible joy coming out with the words.

"It was so real..." she hears him murmur. There is confusion in his gaze, but she can't make herself feel the fear that should bring. The joy is too strong, the excitement of him being back... of not losing him... it's far to overpowering. She can do nothing to stop it from taking over now.

"You're operation was a success," she tells him, feeling the relief that she is finally able to speak the words that she has been praying she would eventually get to say to him... "But you reacted poorly to the anesthesia." She's nearly crying as she says it, though the smile doesn't go away completely. She remembers with painful intensity how it was... trying to get the doctors to tell her what was wrong as the machines made the sounds she knew they weren't supposed to make. As they called for medical things that she didn't understand, that she was so frustrated about not understanding. In her own lab every word, every term, made complete sense. Here... she had been lost.

But the happiness is overriding the bad memories, and she can barely keep herself from throwing her arms around him and just crying into his shoulder about how afraid she was and how happy she now feels, and how relieved she is that he's here. That he's with her.

"You've been in a coma for four days," she says instead, "It took you so long to wake up..." A few tears slide out. She ignores them... they do not matter.

"It felt so real..." he mutters, and there is a slight frown on his face. There is more confusion in his eyes. He doesn't seem to be understanding what she is telling him... he seems to be lost in his own thought.

A shadow of worry moves in to cover a corner of her joy and relief.

"It wasn't real," she whispers to him, just begging for him to say something, anything, that makes sense. For him to say her name. To say Bones.

Instead he speaks the words that tear everything apart. Her relief is thrown down a dark hole of no return... her joy is extinguished like the only flame, the only bit of hope there is in the darkness of a moonless midnight, under a sudden gust of cold, raw wind. The wind blows across all she has known, all she will ever know, and all that she has ever believed or wanted from her life.

It tears down every last defense that she has; it shatters her walls of resistance and protection; it crushes her faith in him and in everything that she has ever had the ability to open up to, to allow into her heart.

It is like a physical blow. Like a stab to her heart... like she is being ripped apart from within. Every last shred of her is overshadowed by the cloud, is blown away by the wind, is overpowered by the roar of the thunder in her ears. A cold rain, a terrible storm... and end to a life.

Nothing is the same. Nothing can be the same.

She has been hit over the head... tied up and gagged... woken up in the darkness of an underground tomb that she is never supposed to escape... and he doesn't come. He doesn't arrive to save her the way he is supposed to.

She is standing in front of a casket... she knows that it is not true, she is waiting for him to shove through the crowd, to appear and attack the man that is the reason he has been pretending to be dead... but he doesn't come.

This time it is real. This time there is no sudden burst of hope. This time... her relief at him being alive and her anger at him scaring her like that... this time neither are there. This time the relief is gone, the anger is no where to be found...

And the fear is greater than ever before.

"Who are you?"


Believe me, there will be more. I will NOT be leaving it at that. What did you think?