AN: I own nothing, of course. I couldn't get this idea out of my head. And I'm spoiler-free, but then I read a spoiler-influenced fic, which in turn, spoiler-influenced my fic. I know it looks like Booth-OC right now, but please remember: Everything happens eventually!
There's this thing that happens if you go too long without sleep. Close your eyes for a second, and you're already dreaming. BAM: you're buried underground and they don't find you, or she's bound in some warehouse and you can't find her. You're stuck on the ship rigged with explosives, or she's buried underground—only this time, someone is missing, so she's stuck there, in the ground, forever. All the times things almost went wrong. All the times you almost lost everything.
You want to jerk yourself awake, but part of you knows: you're on a mission. You're hidden on a rooftop or in some brush. Part of you knows it's a rifle in your grip, not Epps' hand. It's a trigger hooked around your finger, not her mother's earring. So you learn to open your eyes without moving. You learn to ease yourself out of the nightmares.
When there is a body in your arms, it's harder. It takes you a moment to remember that it isn't her. You clutch Kate, screaming, "Bones!" She probably thinks your nightmares are about finding mass graves of unidentified victims, wastelands of remains. Instead, you see a wide-eyed woman in a church. "I knew you wouldn't give up," she says as you turn your back—leaving her like everyone before you had.
Booth knew his experience of instant, hyper-realistic dreams wasn't uncommon. He'd had it in the past, and it was even mentioned in the official Ranger training, complete with a squinty name: "hypnagogic hallucination." Lack of sleep and stress were among the causes, and neither problem would be remedied anytime soon. He just had to deal, knowing he could be ambushed anytime he closed his eyes. He also knew he had to tell Kate the truth about the dreams, and about Bones. He owed her that much.
They were on leave, tucked away in a green zone hotel, having a few drinks. Booth suspected Kate would rather be out schmoozing and exploring, but he couldn't handle it right now. Being around combat left him hyper-sensitized. Even now, alone in their hotel room, he had instinctively placed them out of the sight lines from the window, with his back to the wall. Actually, Kate was glad they'd stayed in, too. When she was out, she got itchy. She'd see something or hear something and feel an urge to snap some pictures and start chasing the story. It was almost an addiction. Even now, she could smell a story. It was rolling off of him in waves.
When Kate had been placed with Booth's unit, she'd quickly realized he was a dream subject—the kind of guy who leapt off the page. Readers would fall in love with this guy: his sad eyes, steely jaw and steady hands. After following him around for a few months, she knew she was in trouble, because her readers weren't the only ones falling hard for Sergeant Major Seeley Joseph Booth. Kate had kept him at arm's length as long as she could—she didn't want to endanger her objectivity, or get romantically involved with a soldier. It was too risky. But Booth was like an emotional ninja, able to overcome her every reservation. How was it even possible?
Booth had talked her into a date, and on that date he had kissed her and she had forgotten all her misgivings. That was months ago, and Kate had never known she could feel like this: so safe and cherished. But some nights, just as they were drifting off, his grip would tighten, and Booth wasn't holding her. He was holding "Bones."
"J, why did you come back to the Army?" She tried to sound casual, using the nickname she'd developed for him once they started dating. (For some reason, he hated his first name. Calling him his last name didn't feel quite right, though, so she'd used his first and middle initials: SJ, or J for short.)
"Are you working, Ace?" Booth sounded wary, using her nickname from before they'd started dating. "You already asked me that question a long time ago."
"I know, I know: 'to serve my country and to save lives. They asked me to return, and I couldn't refuse.'"
"You have it memorized?"
Kate shrugged. "Professionally I didn't push it, but you weren't telling the truth." Booth's jaw tightened, so she quickly added, "not the whole truth."
Booth had come here planning to tell Kate everything, but now he was having second thoughts. He felt like a sample under a squint's microscope. "Well, how about you, Ace? Why are you here?"
"In college, while I was studying journalism, I saw a movie called 'Harrison's Flowers.' A journalist disappears in Yugoslavia during the Croatian War of Independence. His wife goes to find him, posing as a photojournalist." She watched his face darken as she spoke. The last thing she wanted was to have Booth push her away, but she couldn't lie. "What she finds is that in war, we want to make one side good, and the other side evil, but both sides are human: capable of the best and worst. It's a reporter's job to be honest, and to record it all—good and bad—so that we don't forget what we are capable of…"
"A movie?" he interrupted, laughing humorlessly. "You're living in a war zone, risking your life because of a damned movie? I was there."
"I know you were there. I've done my research," she snapped, and began to pace at the foot of the bed. "I'm not some stupid kid romanticizing the war, Seeley! I became a reporter because I wanted to understand people better, and I wanted to tell their stories. I think the more we try to understand each other, the harder it is to hurt and kill each other. And yes, eight years ago I was partly inspired to be an war correspondent by a 'damned movie,' but you know I've seen enough reality to be worth something." She been ran her hands through her red hair in frustration, stopped and crossed her arms. "I answered the question. Now you. And unlike some people, I promise not to mock your answer."
She'd sounded like Bones, talking about working to increase our understanding of humanity. He'd never noticed, before, how alike the two women were.
They didn't look alike. Kate was a few inches shorter and slender, lacking Bones' pinup-girl curves. She had warm brown eyes, pin-straight red hair down to her shoulders, and peaches-and-cream skin with a smattering of freckles. (She had to apply sunscreen constantly, and joked that she couldn't keep the sand out of it, creating "one hell of an exfoliant.") Kate was a lot more old-fashioned than Bones as far as sex, relationships and religion were concerned, and she was better at relating to people. She could get strangers laughing or telling their saddest stories in minutes.
Although Kate was expert at winning others' confidence, she was slow to let new people in completely. Her walls weren't as visible or formidable as Bones', but they were there. Like Bones, Kate usually wore her hair up in a ponytail or bun for work, and was at-home in a tank top, khakis and work boots. Both women were athletic and energetic. Actually, if Bones and Kate met, Booth thought they'd probably be friends. Both women were smart, sexy feminists with curiosity about what it meant to be human. He shook his head at the idea.
Booth didn't know where to begin. "You know about Yugoslavia? What else do you know?"
"I know your basic bio," Kate said. "Everything that comes up on Google or a Lexis-Nexis database search: your military background and honors, the near-sports-career, and your time with the FBI. I know about your role in certain high-profile cases like with Epps and the Grave Digger. I know about your work with Temperance Brennan. 'Bones.'"
Booth got a strange look on his face. "Yeah, we work with bones."
Kate laughed wryly at his misunderstanding of her words and noticed his use of the present tense. "No, I meant…that's what you called her, right? 'Bones?' It's in some of the profiles of you two as partners or her as a writer. You slipped, sometimes, and used it with the press."
"Well, it's not like it's a secret. It's…it's just what I call her."
"Were you two together?" His face looked guarded. "I'm asking as your girlfriend, not as a reporter."
"Frankly, I'm not sure which would be scarier. Look, it's hard to explain," he said. "Bones and I…we were never a couple. We never even had sex, but..." Booth sighed. "What I'm trying to say…it's the kind of thing you should never say to your girlfriend. 'Don't discuss exes.' That's just logic, right?"
"I thought you said she wasn't an ex?"
"She wasn't my girlfriend, but she was my partner for five years, and I thought… from the first day I met her, I thought she was…"
"The one?" He didn't say anything, but it was written on his face. "What changed your mind?" Kate asked.
Booth was silent a moment too long.
"Oh, I see," Kate said.
"No, you don't see. You don't. She…we…we're never going to be together. I tried, you know? I put myself out there, but she told me it could never happen, so I told her that I had to move on. She went to the Maluku Islands to study the origin of the species and discover new things about what it means to be human."
"And you came here to try to keep our soldiers alive."
"And innocent bystanders, yeah."
"Fuck. Deep down, I always knew that you would break my heart."
"What? Nobody's breaking anything."
"Maybe not today…" Kate's gut instinct was telling her to run—the same instinct had stopped them from driving down a street rigged with an IED a month ago. In the last year, it had also diverted her from a checkpoint, a cafe, and a market on days when they were hit by suicide bombers. Most of the guys in the unit trusted her gut now. They called her Miss Cleo or "Ouija," and she rolled her eyes at their superstition. She was probably just subconsciously noticing the nervousness of locals in-the-know. But what about that smell in the air of the burning to come? Kate didn't really know or care where the twinges came from, but she followed them.
"Are you quoting Casablanca? You watch too many movies, Kate." And then Booth kissed her until the sinking feeling in her gut went away. He loved this woman. Not the way he loved Dr. Temperance Brennan—he doubted he could ever love someone like he loved Bones—but maybe he could build a life with Kate. Maybe they could fall deeper in love and love each other for the rest of their lives. Maybe Booth and Brennan could be happy as partners or friends without being together.
Kate held her breath that night when they went to bed, not relaxing until she heard Booth's breathing shift when he drifted off to sleep normally. Booth did dream eventually, thought. He was back at the circus, looking up at the high wire. Bones was almost halfway across, but Kate was on the wire, too, standing in the way.
"Booth?" Brennan called out, looking confused.
"What do we do now?" Kate asked.
AN- Way more OC than I'd planned for, but she kinda barged in and made herself at home. I like her! I want her out of B&B's way, but I like her. Next chapter will have less Kate and more Brennan. Feedback is appreciated.