"One year from today, we meet at the reflecting pool, on the Mall, right by the.."
"Coffee cart, I know."

Brennan was running, she couldn't help it. She missed him more than she expected, and it was surprisingly painful. He was there. He was always there. He gave her his back and he couldn't see her, so she stopped to catch her breath and walked slower towards him. He turned around as he heard her footsteps and he suddenly got up. In less than a blink they were extremely close to each other, she could feel his smell, his breath, his nervous hand-scratching. And then she hugged him. Tight.
'Please, please.' She whispered. 'Don't let me go'.
Sounded needy and, yet, it was exactly what she meant. It was just amazing to be back home. She closed her eyes and then she found it. That small dimple on his shoulder that perfectly fit her forehead. She breathed him deeply and they stayed like that for some more long minutes.
Eventually she came out of the hug, staring at his reassuring brown eyes. He looked at her as well, and he smiled. She could feel his eyes piercing hers. God they've known each other for so long.
'It's great to be back, uh Bones?'
She smiled hearing that nickname no one had been calling her for the past seven months.
'It is, Booth. It really is.'
'Heading back at the Jeffersonian?'
'Not yet. Just.. not yet.'
'Okay. Okay.' His arm was round her back now, and her head was on his shoulder.
'How were the Makuku's?'
She smiled, Bones knew he called 'em wrong on purpose, but she couldn't help but laughing.
'It's Maluku's, Booth. Ma-lu-ku's. And it was great. We found lots of remains that might be really interesting, anthropologically speaking. What about Afghanistan? It's not.. Easy to live a relatively normal life once you fought in a war zone. So, um.. Are you okay?'
'I'm good. I'm-'
He was interrupted by his phone ringing. She kept talking as usual, asking him about the past months.
Clearly, he couldn't answer her. He put a finger on his mouth, she had to shut up. She stopped talking and began to look around, seeing if anything had changed. Apparently everything was the same. Booth hung up the phone, and she asked him who it was.
'Um, just no one.'
'Technically it was someone, Booth. You've spent the last few minutes talking to the phone to someone, it must have been someone. Or you've just gone mental and now you talk to yourself during fake phone calls.'
'Bones, just drop it, it was no one.'
He looked upset, but she just kept her mouth shut. He clearly was mad at her not because he was actually mad at her, but because he was mad at someone who wasn't there now and he needed to talk to someone as if it was the person he's clearly mad at. She hates psychology!
'So..' he said, 'did you meet anyone special in that Indonesian jungle?'
She turned my head and closed her eyes tightly. That wound was still open and bleeding like hell. A voice came in her head 'I'm not a gambler, I'm a scientist! I can't change, I don't know how.' And then Booth's face looking at her. The face of someone who had just been pushed away from the woman he said he loved. That was the first time she realized he was broken. She broke him. And he needed her not to be around for a while. She took a deep breath and looked at him again.
'Nope. No one. And.. what about you?'
He didn't answer, at first. But she got it from his eyes, looking away from her.
'Umm, well.. Kind of. Yeah.'
And is she gonna love you thirty or forty or fifty years? That question was up to come spontaneously out of her mouth, but she kept it wide shut.
'What's her name?'
'She's.. Hanna. '
'Oh. And is it serious, between you two?'
'It's.. we're taking it slow. We've been taking it slow in Afghanistan. She is a journalist, you know. A reporter. War articles and pictures on various newspapers. She stayed there, you know. She.. She had no idea when she's gonna come back.'
'Oh, so you broke up.'
'No.. What? Why do you think we broke up?'
'Long-distance relationships don't exist, Booth. It's obvious that two people need a certain level of physical contact, even not involving sexual activities, to be together, and you obviously end up with cheating or reciprocal intolerance.'
'Bones, that's not the thing that someone who just left his girlfriend behind in a foreign country wants to hear.'
'It's not me, it's.. Facts, Booth. I'm talking about facts. Chemistry keeps you together as a couple, and chemistry is the reaction of hormones and the body in general to an element that you can see and touch and talk to, in person.'
'Okay, I'm fine. Hanna's fine. She will come here soon, Bones. And then we could have a relationship, a short, really short-distance relationship. I mean.. Don't you want me to be happy?'
'Of course I do. My point is.. Are you happy?'
'She could be the one who's gonna love me for thirty or forty or fifty years.'
She didn't say anything else. One of a sudden, Brennan was exhausted. And speechless. And breathless. They stayed close to each other, though, and she desperately hoped he didn't see the tear she quickly wiped out of her cheek.