I do not own Bones or the Characters represented within. All rights belong to the creators and Fox. No copyright infringement intended—I'm just an admirer!

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This is something sort of random that came to me today while I was trying to keep from going out of my mind at work. If it's been done before, I'm sorry! There's too many fics on this site for me to possibly have gone through them all!

The woman in room 418 stirs, one small finger twitching on the bedsheet—a movement many would miss, but not the man sitting in the vinyl chair to her left. He sits straight up, his whole body taut, staring at that one little finger.

"You alright there?" inquires a passing nurse who saw the man's abrupt movement.

The man does not answer, instead staring at the woman's hand, boring into it with his gaze, never blinking.

The nurse watches for a moment and continues along, only pausing to hitch up the box of linens under her arm, securing it tighter against her batik-print scrubs.

"Everything alright down there, Alma?" inquires another nurse, coming out of her station.

"Ah, yeah, just the same thing that's been happening, that's all, Louise," the first woman sighs, handing her colleague the box. "He's just staring at her again. I guess he thought he saw her move, poor bastard."

Behind her, away from her vision, the woman in room 418 moves again.

The woman in room 418 opens her eye.

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The whole thing was a bit clichéd, really, when you broke it down. Young forensic anthropologist paired with handsome, devoted FBI agent find themselves in peril, she gets attacked, he intervenes, and all seems well again.

Until the attacker got in one final swing, smashing her in the ankle with his gun, bringing her head down, connecting to the concrete floor with a thud.

The papers gobbled it up, splashing the man and woman's pictures about, talking about the possible melodrama of it all.

Yet the media tires quickly if nothing else, and soon she was forgotten by most of the world. Slowly, unbeknownst to her, she dissolved into little more than the woman in room 418.

Over the course of six months, the steady stream of visitors trickled to a chosen few, the man seemingly taking up residence in the vinyl chair by her bedside, appearing at her side directly after work each day, staring at her as if he was trying to will her to move.

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The woman in room 418 opened her eye, prompting the man by her side to jump fully out of the chair, grasping both her shoulders in his hands and staring down at her. Her other eye opened, taking him in, both blue orbs widening in some sort of surprise.

The man backed up quickly, stumbling over the edge of the bed as he ran, tripping, out into the hall, sliding to a stop in front of the nurse's station. Louise looked up calmly as he grasped the cracked Formica.

"She's awake!" he nearly shouted in her face.

"Who's awake, Mr. Booth?" she replied, hardly doubting what he was saying could be true. Louise Ferrington was not a stupid woman. She saw hundreds of patients come in and out of her wing over the past 12 years, and she knew the chances of that woman waking up now were not as high as the eager FBI agent before her wanted to believe.

"Bones—I mean, Temperance, Dr. Brennan, 418. She's awake!"

Louise had barely opened her mouth to speak when his large hand closed around her wrist and dragged her down the hall.