In The Way
thecrystalkey
Author's note: I really don't have time right now to write much of anything (hence no updates on anything else for awhile) but...yeah. This is one of what I'm sure will be a number of responses to Wannabe In The Weeds. Brennan POV.
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Bones. Characters, etc property of Hart Hanson and whoever else is involved in the show. Probably Kathy Reichs, too. Even this scene is from an episode and is also not mine.
MAJOR SPOILERS. READ NO FURTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE ABOVE MENTIONED EPISODE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
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He put himself in the way. He'd seen the gun first. Heard the words.
"I'm doing this for us." Words they'd heard a thousand times in the interrogation room. Maybe not a thousands but some days it felt like it. "I did it for us." Confession and plea for absolution at the same time. It never evoked sympathy.
"I'm doing this for us."
With one ear she heard his name being called, thought nothing of it. He'd organized this, after all. It could have been anybody. From the corner of her eye she saw Booth turn in his seat and through the music, heard the words. She hadn't seen it happen, lost in the music, the only way for her to be loose enough to get through this without total embarrassment.
She heard the shot, saw him stagger and fall, and knew. Sometimes it was curse to be so constantly aware of details in the world around you, sometimes it kept you alive. Everyone seemed to be moving so slowly around her but she had time to notice details.
Pam standing there, eyes wide. Booth on the floor, bleeding but alive. The screams around them. He'd facing away from the stage when the music stopped, between her and the room. That the shot was so high in his shoulder told Brennan that the bullet had been meant for her. And he'd had his gun out, dropped it on the floor as he'd fallen. He'd seen the danger in Pam's gun, had stepped in front before drawing his own weapon.
You had to have known what was coming, she thought, as she watched the light in his eyes fading and begged him to be all right. She'd seen him draw from a seated position before and he was fast enough that he probably could have had his gun trained on Pam before she actually fired. But she probably would have fired anyway, not believing Booth would hurt her for getting rid of the thing keeping them apart, and he knew that too. He'd waited to draw in order to protect her.
Hyperaware, especially with the amount of adrenaline currently flowing through her system, Brennan didn't have to look to know his gun was there. Picking it up and firing it in response to a threat, Pam once again sighting down her revolver's barrel, was instinct driven by pure fury. The sight of her, the wide eyes and suddenly pale skin, and that little trickle of blood down her throat would be imprinted in the anthropologist's memory forever. So would the satisfaction of taking out the person who'd shot her partner for a stupid reason. But for now only the cold satisfaction registered as she turned back to Booth.
Don't die, Booth. Don't leave me. Everybody leaves me except you. You're not allowed to leave me. The light died completely in his eyes and his eyelids fluttered closed. She fought tears as the hand that had curled around hers when she kneeled beside him squeezed once then went limp.
"No, Booth. Stay with me." She was speaking and knew the words made no sense because Booth was unconscious but she continued talking anyway, watching for signs of life – or lack thereof. His chest rose and fell. He still had a pulse. She kept pressure on the wound, and one eye on his vitals, until the paramedics arrived. Angela and Cam between them had to pull her away to let the two men work. No
one dared to suggest that she stick around the crime scene at which she'd shot someone dead with an FBI Agent's gun. Not when said Agent was her partner, bleeding out on the carpet. She was glad. She'd have had to deck anyone who stopped her getting into the ambulance with Booth. And there probably would have been assault charges. She didn't even argue with Angela's fiancée story to the ambulance drivers.
The last thing she heard as the back door of the vehicle slammed was, "We'll meet you there, Sweetie!" Brennan's mind was already elsewhere.
Please, God, if you do exist, don't let Booth die. He's a good Catholic, and a good man. Don't let him die. Not for me.
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