I wanted to write a story speculating about A Shot in the Dark (or is it The Shot in the Dark? I'm not sure, I've seen both titles used) since the first spoilers about the episode came out, but I could never find the inspiration to write. But last night, I got this.
If you don't want to be spoiled about the episode, you should stop here and not read it (although it doesn't have that much spoilers and it's much more speculation than anything).
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The way we feel time passing is usually related to what is happening around us. Sometimes hours can feel like minutes when we are having fun, sometimes we can sleep for ten hours and feel like we only dozed off for five minutes. But as Booth sat in the waiting room of the hospital, waiting for updates on his partner, he felt like decades passed before a doctor would come out of the operation room to bring him news.
It had been such a stupid fight.
The day had been long and exhausting. Christine hadn't slept well the night before and when they were finally able to sleep – when the toddler settled down in the middle of their bed – they were called to go to a crime scene. The state of the body had been horrible, and the squints concluded by the very specific strike marks on the bones that it was probably a victim of a serial killer. The victim was a young woman, and he was the one who had to inform the parents that their daughter had been killed, which was never something he particularly enjoyed to do.
All in all, it had been a very bad day, so when he got home and found a letter from the Brazilian government inviting Brennan to participate in a dig in a new historical site they found at the Amazon, he lost it. It was dated from a week ago, so it was obvious that she kept the letter and was giving it some thought. He didn't bother to ask her if she had accepted it or not, as soon as she left the shower and joined him in the kitchen, words started spilling out of his mouth. He wasn't sure what triggered it, maybe it was because the thought of having her away for so many months again scared the hell out of him. It wouldn't be the first time she would leave him without second thoughts. In their many years of partnership, he had lost count of how many times Brennan just announced him the day she was leaving that she would go away for a while. And then it was two months in Guatemala, New Orleans, a month in Peru, six weeks in Guatemala again… one year in the Maluku Islands, without bothering to call him even once.
But now it was different. She couldn't simply leave him like that anymore. They were together. They shared a house. They had a daughter. The idea of more months like the ones he spent alone while she and Christine were on the lam made him shiver with dread. The fact that Pelant was back and they still weren't able to catch him didn't help with the situation either.
He didn't let her speak. He said there was no way he would allow her to leave again, that it couldn't be like the past anymore and before he knew it, he was saying all the things he felt when she ran away with their baby, the things that made him mad that she left him behind, even though he knew it was their only chance.
But Brennan was tired, so tired. She didn't want to fight. She told him that she hadn't accept the invitation, that she kept it because she still had to write them back thanking them for thinking of her, but apologizing for not being able to be a part of it this time, even though it seemed very interesting. But by then the can of worms had been opened, and hurtful words had been said. So she told Booth that she would go to the lab and work on the case, and then, when both of them could be able to think rationally, they would talk about it.
It was late and she was tired, but she couldn't go to bed like this. And she didn't want to keep fighting with him.
Booth didn't like her working late at the lab and since they've moved in together, she never went back there in the middle of the night. Surprisingly, she never felt the need. The Jeffersonian was her escape, her place to go when her mind wouldn't stop working, the place that would keep her brain occupied when she didn't want to think about her personal life and her problems. Now, if she woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep, she could simply talk with Booth, or sometimes watch her daughter sleep. She loved doing that.
But tonight, the Jeffersonian felt very appealing. She wanted to clear her mind. Or maybe it was just her rebelling against him, for acting so irrationally, since she knew he hated it.
Booth didn't say anything other than a mad "Fine!". He didn't ask her to stay, he didn't say that she was tired and that she should just go to sleep and that they could talk about it later. He let her go.
He let her go.
A couple of hours later, after showering and feeding Christine her night bottle, when the clock stroke midnight and she still hadn't come back, he realized he overreacted. He hated it when they fought. He hated going to bed alone. And more than anything, he hated the idea of her alone at the lab while Pelant was still out there, planning the next turn in his sick game.
He asked Sweets to keep an eye on Christine and drove to the Jeffersonian, playing his apology in his mind a hundred times until he got there. He would explain to her why he reacted the way he did, and why the single thought of her away from him yet again made him lose his mind.
They would be fine, he told himself. They always were.
Things didn't happen the way he expected, though.
Not even close to it.
The Jeffersonian was quiet and empty, not that surprising at this time of the night. He didn't like it. He just wanted to find Bones and take her home.
What he didn't know was that he would find her lying in a pool of blood on the usually extremely clean lab floor.
He felt the world crashing down around him.
Booth didn't remember running to her or calling the ambulance, he just remembered that he realized she was still alive and that he kept pressing on her shot wound.
"I- I'm… sorry." She whispered to him, the effort of talking making it more difficult for her to breathe.
"Don't talk… don't talk, baby." Tears were spilling out of his eyes, one of his hands was on the shot wound on her chest, the other stroking her face. "You're gonna be fine. You're gonna be fine, okay?"
"Hurts…" She winced and closed her eyes.
"No, no! Don't close your eyes, Bones!" He begged. "Stay with me! You have to stay with me. You hear me?"
"Sorry…" She whispered the word again, still not opening her eyes.
"Stop apologizing, Bones. I am sorry. But this is not the time for that, okay? I need you to open your eyes for me, baby. Please, please open your eyes." He kissed her forehead, feeling more desperate than he ever felt in his life.
She opened them up a little.
"Yeah, that's good, baby. That's good. Now stay with me." The blood kept soaking the handkerchief he was using on her wound, the white cloth now dark red. If the ambulance didn't get there soon, she wouldn't make it. But she had to make it. "I need you, Bones. You can't leave me. I told you earlier that I wouldn't let you leave me and I won't. Okay? I love you, I love you so much and I can't live without you. So you have to stay with me."
"Dying… too… much… blood." He saw the tears leaving her eyes as she said that.
"NO! No! Don't say that. You're not dying, Bones."
"I… I love you." Breathing was getting more and more difficult as seconds passed. She knew she didn't have much more time.
"I love you too." He cried, resting his forehead to hers. "And I'm going to say that a million times more, because you're not going to die."
"Christine…" The sadness in her eyes deepened. "Te- tell her… tell her… I love her… every day."
She closed her eyes again. And this time, she didn't open them again.
"No! Bones! Bones!"
But she had stopped breathing.
She died.
Right there, in his arms.
He hadn't been able to save her.
He felt himself dying too.
Everything that happened later was a blur. The paramedics arrived and they pulled him away from her. He screamed and said he wouldn't leave her, but they pulled him away anyway.
She hadn't died, it turned out. Not yet anyway. They had been able to bring her back, and for a moment Booth could feel the floor under his feet again.
She didn't die.
She was alive.
Her situation was extremely serious and he knew only a miracle could save her.
But he believed in miracles.
Bones didn't, but he did.
It had been two hours since they arrived at the hospital and they took her to the surgery room. Two hours of waiting that felt like a lifetime. They gave him a clean shirt and a pair of pants to change, he had her blood everywhere in his clothes. He didn't want to change. But they said he couldn't stay there like that, so he changed.
Angela and Hodgins arrived at the hospital a few minutes after he did. He didn't know who called them or how they found out about it, but they were there. Angela couldn't stop sobbing, so Hodgins took her to the snack bar in the first floor to try to make her drink something to calm her down. She didn't want to go, but he took her anyway.
"She's a tough woman." Booth's head snapped up when he heard the voice and realized he was no longer alone in the waiting room. "I'd even dare to say she's the most stubborn woman I know. She'll make it, Seeley."
Booth felt the hot tears warm his cheeks again.
"It's not fair." He shook his head and she sat next to him. "It's just not fair."
She'd never seen her friend look more miserable and she prayed to God that the woman in the surgery room would survive; otherwise she had no idea what would be of him.
"Seven years." He let out a sad laugh. "It took us seven years. And then what? First we get Pelant, now this… why can't we just have a normal life? Why can't we just be happy? Am I that awful of a man, Camille? Why does God have to keep punishing me like that? What did I do that was so horrible to deserve this?"
"You're a very good man." She was crying too, and she held his hand a little tighter.
"Then why does this keep happening?" He took a deep breath and looked up.
"She doesn't want to die." He closed his eyes, hoping that somehow, when he opened them up again, he'd be back in their bedroom with Brennan sleeping next to him and that it all had just been a nightmare. The worst nightmare. "She doesn't want to die, she told me that."
He remembered a conversation they had not long before, after closing a particularly sad case.
"Do you fear dying?" She whispered the question, surprising him a little. They were lying in bed, lights off and he thought she was already asleep.
"Yeah…" He turned around to look at her, not knowing what she wanted with this question. "But I fear losing the ones I love more than dying. Why are you asking me that, Bones?"
"I was never afraid of my death." She said seriously. "Death is inevitable, and we all are going to die. I know that."
She looked at him for a while before continuing: "But since we've got together and I had Christine… the idea of dying makes me feel very uneasy. The thought of never seeing her growing up, of not being there for her in her first day at school, or when her first teeth falls, when she gets hurt, not being able to hug her when she feels sad… it terrifies me."
"Bones, you're not going to die anytime soon."
"We can't know that. We don't know when we are going to die. It was very difficult for me to lose my mother when I was 15. I don't want Christine to go through that too."
"She won't have to." He kissed her affectionately. "You'll live for 120 years, Bones. You have to, eating all that healthy stuff you try to make me eat every day."
"Which you refuse most of the time."
"Well, we agreed that I'm gonna die before you anyway, remember?"
"I don't remember agreeing with such a thing."
"We did. You promised me you'd make sure I was dead before you allowed them to bury me."
"I'm not comfortable with the idea of you dying before I do."
"Oh, but you better be, Bones. Because there's no way I'll outlive you. There's no way I'll live in this world when you're not here anymore." He smiled and kissed her, this time a little harder. "Now why are we talking about death? I can think of a bunch of better topics we can discuss, starting with how gorgeous you look tonight…"
They didn't talk about it anymore after that night, but he knew she didn't want to die. She would fight. She had to fight. For them. For their daughter.
"Christine…" He thought of his beautiful baby girl, barely one-year old, completely unaware that her mother was fighting for her life. "She's just a baby, Cam. She needs her mom. When she wakes up in the middle of the night and she is sick… she just wants Bones. No one else, just Bones."
"You'll be fine. You're all going to be fine. Doctor Brennan never leaves anything unfinished, this won't be the first time." She tried to smile a little. "I know this is not the right time, but I was at the lab looking at her findings on the body and trying to figure out who did this to her."
"Do you have any doubts it was Pelant?" Booth snorted.
"It wasn't Pelant."
"What?"
"Brennan found out the identity of the killer of our newest victim. Turns out he's a sick serial killer who should have been caught long ago, but no one could link him to the killings yet. He must have figured out she was going to identify him and that it would send him to jail. He wanted to stop her before she did it, but she was faster." She explained. "We still don't know how he got through the Jeffersonian security, but we're working on that. We have his address and information, he don't know we know it's him. He didn't check her papers. It won't be long until he's caught now."
"I'll kill the son of a bitch." Booth said it with so much hatred that Cam feared he'd do something stupid. "I'll kill the son of a bitch and make sure he burns in hell. I swear, Cam."
"He'll pay for what he did. He won't get away this time."
"I'll make sure of that."
She thought it would be better if they changed the topic of conversation.
"Are there any updates on her yet?"
"No." He shook his head. "Two hours since they took her there and still not a word."
"It's good. No news means good news."
"I hope you are right."
"I usually am."
There was nothing else he could do now, other than wait.
So, he waited, and hoped for the best.
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I don't have to say I'm pretty much dying to see this episode, right?
And Bones is back in 4 days! With two brand new episodes! YAY!
I'm so excited to watch the rest of this season, everything looks so good!