A/N: Hi! I haven't written anything in ages but I saw the 100th episode and couldn't stop the despair and suddenly this appeared. Because we all know she loves him and I couldn't bear the thought of her rejecting him for any other reason. Hope you all enjoy it and please review and share with me your opinions on the fic/episode :D
It was the best solution for everyone, Temperance Brennan told herself as she curled up on her sofa with a glass of wine, a cushion clutched to her chest. Thinking back to the look on Booth's face as she told him that they couldn't be together, it was hard to see things in a rational light but she was a scientist and that was what she did. She had to be that be the person who saw things rationally because without it she was nothing.
She wasn't naive or foolish; she had known all along that one day it would come to this, known when Booth had called her to tell her they should talk to Sweets about his book that this may well be the outcome, known that Booth loved her and that they could never be together. And she knew that things wouldn't be the same now that she had told him that, that's why she didn't ask him if they could continue being friends – she knew they couldn't – working with Seeley would be the only way she could be with him now and she had to be okay with that.
She didn't regret her words or her decision. It had been for him, after all, that she had made it. The empirical evidence which was the only thing she had ever been able to rely on other than him told her that they would have broken each other had they tried to be a couple. They may love each other and they may be excellent partners but they could never have been partners. When she had said she couldn't change, that she didn't know how, she had meant it. He wanted something different from life, from a relationship, than what she could offer and maybe at first it would be enough for him to have her, maybe he wanted her as much as he wanted a family and a wife, but eventually he would have looked at her and wondered why he had chosen her. He'd ask for things that she couldn't give or worse, not ask for them at all because he knew her too well. But he would resent her, regret their being together, because it stopped him having the things he had always dreamed of. She had seen him with Parker, seen the love in his eyes when he looked at him and heard him talk about how much he just wanted to be able to spend more time with him. He loved children. He was born to be a father. And, now, one day he would be. He'd move on and meet someone new. Someone beautiful and kind and caring and just as open hearted as he was and they would get married and start a family together and she would watch, on the side lines, going through empty relationship after empty relationship. And thirty or forty or fifty years down the line she would still be there, thinking about how she could have had him, the man she really loved, how he had given her that choice and she had said no. Because she loved him and because she was a scientist and she didn't know how to change.