Hi. This is my first Bones story in a long time, but I had an idea…Natalie had an idea…I wrote the story. Anyway. It follows the Season 5 finale.
Spoilers: The Beginning in the End
Disclaimer: Not mine…sadly…I wish it was…
Dedication: Natalie because without her this story would not exist.

Booth had been sitting in the same stupid airplane seat for nearly ten hours, and he had started cursing it about nine hours ago. The plane was just moving too slow for his taste. Yes, he knew that it was the fastest mode of travel. Yes, he knew that it was going about 500 miles per hour at this moment. None of that really mattered to him. All that mattered was that he was not sitting on a bench in downtown DC.

That was where he wanted to be, not on this airplane. In truth, that bench was where he had wanted to be for a year. It was the one thing that had kept him sane in the war zone. When he had flown overseas a year ago, he had thought that he would just fall back into the pattern he was in as a sniper. In a way he did, but in more than one way he found it impossible to revert back completely.

He was a different man than he had been the first time he was a sniper. He had a son now, and he had a woman that he lov…had promised that he would meet in a year. That meeting required him not being dead. Booth shook his head. Who was he kidding? Love. That was the word that described his feeling for Brennan and that was the one he was going to use.

He had told her that he was going to move on and find someone else to love him. He could not do that because life did not work that way. He had fallen for Brennan, and he had fallen hard. Nothing in the world was going to be able to change that fact. A year in a war zone had only reinforced that feeling because watching people die every day reminded him just how precious life could be.

-0- -0- -0-

Brennan sat on a bench waiting… No, that was wrong…she sat on the bench waiting. This was no ordinary bench. This was the bench that she and Booth had promised to meet on exactly a year ago, and today was the day they had agreed to meet. 'No,' Brennan thought with a shake of her head, 'this bench is no different than any other bench in the park.' She sighed and shook her head again. If only she could convince herself of that simple fact. If only she could convince herself that this bench was no different.

A year ago, she told everyone that she was leaving Washington DC for a year to put her life back in perspective. That was not a lie, but it was also not, if she was honest with herself, the truth. The truth was that she was scared. She had worked for years to build up a shell that no one could penetrate, and with that shell in place, she had been safe. No one could hurt her when she was in that shell.

The problem was that Booth had managed to get inside that shell. She felt something that she had not felt for anyone before, and that scared her. Then Booth had told her he loved her…or rather Sweets had forced Booth to tell her he loved her. That was just too much for her to handle. She had left because she thought leaving for a year would remind her that everything fades with time.

That plan had failed miserably. She still felt the same way about him that she had felt a year ago. She refused to call it love because love was just a chemical attraction between two people. Actually, the dictionary definition of the word was 'an intense felling of tender affection and compassion.' Okay, so maybe it was not a bad definition, but it did not matter anyway. They had decided to be just friends…

She glanced at her watch and though it was a little past time, she was not worried. He was probably just caught in traffic. It could be a real bare at this time of day in DC. That was just one of the many differences between Indonesia and DC. DC was all hustle and bustle with everybody going where they were going and never looking around. In Indonesia, everybody moved with careful precision. Of course, the only place in Indonesia that she actually spent any real amount of time in was the dig site.

Brennan glanced at her watch again and looked around the park. He should be here by now. They had agreed that it would be at noon and it was going on noon thirty. 'Had something happened to him?' She closed her eyes. There were so many things that could have gone wrong. What if he had been asked to stay? What if he had been hurt? What if he had been killed? What if he decided he did not want to come back?

'Stop it, Brennan," she told herself sharply. She just needed to rationalize the situation. There were a million benign reasons that he could be late. Maybe his flight had been delayed. That was the most likely explanation, but what if she were wrong? What if it was something else? Again, she looked at objectively. The only possible solution that she could not live with was him being dead. She had already lived through that once and was pretty sure she could not do it again.

'No,' she thought to herself, 'I am a grown woman. I don't need him or anybody else.' If Angela was here she would accuse Brennan of lying through her teeth, but Angela was not here. Angela was off in Paris. Brennan thought of what her best friend had said about her and Booth going to opposite ends of the world being a bad thing. Brennan was inclined to agree.

When they were working together she had worried about him getting hurt, and her not being able to do anything about it. She thought that being away from him would solve that problem. It only made it worse. Over the last year she had still worried about him getting hurt. The only difference was that now there was a good chance she would not know about it either.

She scanned the sidewalks again hoping that she would see him this time. Her eyes caught a familiar figure in the crowd, and she did a double take. It could not be…but it was. A wide smile spread across her face as he walked closer, and it took every ounce of will power she had not to stand up and run to him. He looked almost the same as he had a year ago. A little older, a little greyer, but he was still undeniably Booth.

After what seemed like an eternity he reached the bench and dropped his bags onto the ground beside it. There was a long moment in which they just stared into each other's eyes. Then Brennan broke the trance by extending her hand.

"It's good to see you, Booth," she told him politely.

Booth shook his head and smiled then he pulled her into a hug.

"What did that mean?" Brennan asked after Booth released her.

"God, Bones, what did you think I meant?" Booth asked exasperatedly.

"Well, hugs are merely a firm touch that society has adapted to mean and express the activation of certain pleasure chemicals that are set off in the brain, but they're simply a non-sexual means of physical communication that-"

She couldn't finish her explanation. Booth had pulled her gently towards him into one of those firm touches.

"It means I missed you," he told her as he inhaled the scent of her hair.

"Oh," Brennan replied as she wrapped her arms around her neck, "I missed you too."

And there they stood in the middle of the park with their arms wrapped firmly around each other. To a casual bystander it would just appear to be a solider reuniting with his girl after a tour oversees. And though both Booth and Brennan would deny it until the day they died: That bystander would be completely and utterly correct.

Did you like it? Please review… Bones starts in five days!