**SPOILERS**

Author's Note: I wrote this up immediately after I watched the 100th epsiode, but I tweaked it a bit before I submitted it on . Just so everyone knows--though I was angry about how that episode went down in the beginning, I understand it better now. It's completely realistic, especially when it comes to Brennan. I think it was a very well-acted, written, and directed episode. Personally, I think that Emily and David handled this scene amazingly well--close to perfect. Congrats on 100 episodes, Bones!

We've just got to give it time, and it'll all work out in the end. It's a drama, anyway.

**SPOILERS**

"She said no."

Sweets whirled around to see a very devastated Booth standing in his doorway. He was just about to leave, and his session with Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth had ended over an hour ago. He was about to ask Booth what he was talking about until he realized—She said no.

"Oh, Booth…I'm—" Sweets started to say, only to be cut off.

"Don't, um," Booth cleared his throat and rubbed his face. "Don't worry about it. I just…I thought I'd let you know now…So, um, so we don't get any questions later. We'll be, uh, we'll be fine."

Sweets didn't miss how he used the plural—We'll be fine, not I'll be fine. He could only imagine what went down out there, to leave Booth so crushed. Sweets had never seen the usually tough FBI agent look so hopeless and lost.

"Do you want to…Do you want to talk about it?" Sweets asked softly, glancing at Booth, who was still standing in the doorway.

"Do I want to talk about it?" Booth asked, oddly quiet. "NO. I do not want to talk about it," he spat, his anger growing, eyes flashing up to the young psychologist.

"It was just a—" Sweets began, only to be interrupted once again.

"You think I'd want to talk about it?! The woman of my dreams—literally, my dreams—just dumped me without even giving us a chance! Why do you think talking would rectify this situation?" Booth yelled, moving into the room. Sweets immediately dropped what he was holding and stood his ground—he only stood his ground, of course, because he was already in the farthest reaches of the room.

"I mean she just," Booth began again, his voice faltering this time, his anger quickly fading, "…She didn't even give it a chance. I…I did what you said, okay? You said I was the gambler…So I gambled," Booth looked up into Sweets' eyes, with a look of pure distress in his eyes, "And I lost. I lost, Sweets," he repeated quietly, dropping into the couch and putting his face in his hands.

Sweets moved silently to sit in front of Booth, waiting for him to speak first. It took Booth a couple moments to compose himself, but by the time he looked back up, he looked like he was ready to speak…and hopefully not yell.

"I tried…I tried to get her to see that we would've been good together. But she just—she just couldn't accept it or something. I tried to—" Booth's voice cracked as he explained, "to tell her that I knew…That I knew all along that we'd be…"

"It's okay, Booth," Sweets tried to stop him, seeing how hard this was for Booth to relive such a fresh and painful memory. "You don't really need to tell me all this. If you don't want to talk, then don't talk."

"No." Booth's face was firm now, cleared of emotion. "I need to get this out. I need—to tell someone. And who else am I gonna tell? This is Bones," his face broke from its mask for just a second when he said her name before it resumed its place, "after all. I need to tell someone who gets it. You're the only person I've got, Sweets."

"But Dr. Wyatt—" Sweets was sure that Booth would trust Gordon Gordon more than him. Dr. Wyatt was the person who had weaseled a confession out of Booth once before…A feat that Sweets had not been able to do, despite weeks and weeks of sessions after Booth's recovery from the coma.

"—isn't here right now," Booth finished for him. "You are, and you know what's been going on. You know that this means…Whatever it is that it means."

Sweets paused a moment before beginning the "session."

"Okay, well, if you're sure…" he trialed off, glancing at the obviously heartbroken FBI agent across from him. "Start from the beginning—whenever you're ready, that is."

Booth took a deep breath before recounting what happened.

"I told her I was the gambler. I said that I would give it a shot—give us a shot. She looked…well, she looked shocked. Like she didn't see it coming. How could she not see it coming? I mean, you were just talking about it, not five minutes before. She started to say that we couldn't work together if we were dating…But I was just so…I don't know, I just couldn't take it anymore. There was no reason—you know as well as I do –there is no reason that we couldn't be together and work together at the same time. Fuck the FBI, it could work, right? Booth didn't even bother to wait for an answering before continuing on.

"So, I just…I just needed her to see that—I tried to tell her, but my instincts kind of got the upper hand and I kissed her. I just had to make her see once that we might be able to be together like that. It obviously didn't work. You were right, Sweets. The dam broke, just not the right one. She shoved me."

Sweets looked up. This was the second time he'd learned of Dr. Brennan hitting Booth in one night. Was it just because her emotions were running too high? Why else would she hit him? There wasn't any proof that she wasn'tin love with him.

"She pushed me away, she yelled at me. I kept asking, 'Why? Why, couldn't this work?' I thought it could've—but I guess I can see now that I was wrong. She said that she wasn't the one that needed protecting—I was."

Sweets was about to interrupt—saying that this was exactly what he was trying to show in his book. Whenever Dr. Brennan got to close to someone, she would shove them away—in this case, literally shove them, Sweets thought sadly—or run away herself. It wasn't all her fault—the only people that had loved her had abandoned her, and she had had an extremely torturous childhood. But by now she should be able to turn that around, Sweets theorized, she's been progressing so much since we first met…Probably because of Booth, he concluded as he was drawn back into the story.

"She said that she didn't have my 'open heart.' …But she didn't know that my heart's only really open for her. That's when it went from bad to worse. I tried to reason with her—believe me, Sweets, I tried. I wanted to make her see that I'd always known. I tried to, you know, appeal to the scientific side of her? It wasn't that good of an effort—and she didn't buy it. I tried to get hr to see that I knew from the beginning, that she was the person that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with."

Sweets was shocked into silence. Luckily, Booth was looking down, so he didn't notice Sweets' open mouth and blank expression. The rest of his life? Booth had never divulged that before. This must've hurt him more than I'd predicted, Sweets thought sadly.

"But she just kept thinking of it in science terms—she said that she couldn't gamble and she couldn't change. That she didn't know how to change. She wouldn't listen—and I…I just gave up. I just gave up like that—and now I'll never get another chance. I tried, Sweets, and I failed."

"You'll get another chance, Booth, you just have to—"

"No. I won't get another chance, Sweets. You said it yourself—we had our moment back when we first met, and we blew it. Like all the other moments—I blew this one too. And this is making me realize—I think it's time to stop trying. I can't keep getting second chances only to have them fall apart. I don't think I can go through this again, okay?" Booth sat still, head hung, face obscured.

Stop trying? He can't give up like that, Sweets thought.

"I've never really wanted to be with anyone as much as I've wanted to be with her…But she doesn't feel the same way—so I need to move on. What happened, happened. She's decided, and I can't make her go back on it. She wouldn't anyway. I told her that I would move on, and I will."

"Do you think you'll stop loving her?" It was a stupid question, sure, but Sweets knew he needed to ask it, if only for Booth's sake.

"You tell me," Booth looked at him sadly, searching for an answer.

"I…I don't know, Booth. But I do know that you shouldn't give up. Just because she said 'no' tonight doesn't mean that she won't change her mind. Don't you feel like you should wait it out—at least for her?" Sweets tried to sway his decision.

"Sweets, I've waited years for this. I had my moment—I had many moments. And I fucked them all up. She didn't love me then, she doesn't love me now, and she won't love me in the future. That's not going to change. If there's one person that will stay constant, it's Bones.

"I told Gordon Gordon that I'd know if she loved me. I meant that. If she truly did—I would know. My gut, remember?" He asked with a sad smile. "I would know, just like I know now—that this won't ever work. She'll move on and I'll…" Booth didn't even bother to finish the simply just cradled his head in his hands, waiting for Sweets to reassure him.

But Sweets couldn't say anything. What do you say to that, anyway? 'I'm sure she'll change her mind?' Booth has decided that she won't and he's accepted it—as much as he can. Booth is right—he needs to move on. Or at least try. He can't wallow in her rejection. He'll see her every—wait a minute.

"Wait!" Sweets yelled, jolting Booth from his dejection. "Does this mean you two are quitting? Just after THIS?" It was Sweets' turn to explode. "You two are ridiculous! You both have immense courage—but you can't even face each other!"

"Hey, Sweets—"

"No! Listen, I know this is hard for you, trust me. But that doesn't mean you can just give up what you've worked so hard to achieve! You two have put lots of murderers behind bars—if it weren't for you, all those dead bodies wouldn't have a voice!"

"That's her job—"

"I don't give a fuck what her job is!" Booth stared; he'd never heard Sweets rant before, let alone swear. If Booth wasn't so depressed he might be amused. "This doesn't give you two the right to abandon everything you've worked for! It just ISN'T RIGHT!" Sweets yelled, exasperated.

"Sweets," Booth said calmly, "We aren't quitting."

Sweets spun around, disbelief on his face. "Oh, yeah, right—wait, what?"

"I thought that's what you wanted to hear…?"

"You two…You're still working together? After what just happened? Are you—are you sure you can do this, Booth?"
"I'll be fine Sweets," he replied evenly.

"Booth, I'm serious. You need to look at this rationally. You'll be around her every day. You've gotta solve cases, catch murderers, shoot bad guys—are you positive you can do that when you'll obviously just be focused on what she said to you? Until you move on, and I mean really move on, you two shouldn't be working together." Sweets' was adamant on his position.

"I thought you just said—" Booth began.

"That because I thought you'd quit! You can't quit, but more importantly, you can't be around each other—not now. You need your grieving periods—especially if you think she won't change her mind. You need your time, and she needs hers."

Booth made a face. "I doubt she needs any—"

"She does. Trust me, she does. She'll act like she doesn't, but I can tell that this hurt her just as much as it hurt you." Sweets paused, his face softening as he looked back at Booth. "You had to have noticed, Booth. This was just as hard on her as it was on you. I completely doubt that she'd be able to hide it at the time, especially from you."

Booth looked up. It was true; he had noticed that she'd shed tears too…And how her voice had shook and cracked at the time did nothing to dissuade Sweets' theory.

"Yeah…Yeah, I guess you're right," Booth resigned.

"Okay. Good. But, Booth, I've got to tell you—and Dr. Brennan—that we should do separate sessions from here on out," Sweets said, with a guilty look on his face.

"Separate..." Booth contemplated slowly.

"Booth, I mean it. This is not a negotiation. You two can't do this to each other. She turned you down, but you're still in love with her," Booth shot him a defiant glare, "and don't give me that look. You're still in love with her, and that will not help when it comes to having group can't just jump back to how things were—and I know that you don't want to. You may feel normal now, and ready to go back, but it will hit you—and it may have already. But when it does, you don't need to extra pressure of her sitting right next to you…Get it?"

Booth nodded slowly. It made sense. He didn't even want to face the next workday with her, let alone therapy. What were they supposed to do now? How were they supposed to act around each other? It was sure to be a horribly awkward next couple of months. Separate sessions. Alone. With Sweets. Kill me now, Booth thought.

"Okay. I'll um, I'll let you go now," Booth said, rising and grabbing his coat. "Sweets…Thanks—thanks for listening. That actually helped. I just needed to tell someone, you know?"

Sweets nods, but stops Booth before he leaves.

"Hey, Booth. I just—I want you to know that I think what you said and did out there was really brave. I know how hard that must've been for you—but I think it was truly heroic."

"Thanks," Booth replies quietly with a slight nod before shutting the door and walking out into the darkened FBI floor. Sweets slowly watches him leave the FBI offices before grabbing a notepad and turning off the voice recorder in the back of the room.

"Nothing happens unless first a dream."—Carl Sandburg

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