Bones is finally back!! *squeals loudly* I loved the premiere. All of it. Totally awesome :)

But I just had to write something, after those looks on Brennan's face. I think this will be more than one chapter. Oh... and anyone who's reading What Brings Them Together and/or The Isolation of a Lone Suffering... I haven't forgotten them. Don't worry, they will continue to be updated. (Yes, I am insane for trying to keep three stories running at once.)

Disclaimer: I would love to own them, but I think Hart and FOX are doing a pretty good job with season 5 so far... so I'll let them keep it a while longer xD

Her mind was spinning. Too fast. Way too fast. What was going on with her lately? What was going on with them?

She raced through everything that had happened, every detail since his coma.

There had been the awkward silences for those few days before she'd left for Guatemala... the way that the shock had clung to her, latched itself to every thought, when she'd learned that he'd dreamt the same story she'd been writing. He knew it all. He'd been witness to every one of her imagination's wild creations during those four long and torturous days of vigil in his hospital room.

She'd let it out of control, let loose every emotion that she'd boxed up, and she had allowed herself to picture a form of how things could be. How things might have ended up if they were different people, if they even stood a chance together.

Too close. That was it, she'd gotten way too close.

It had all been a lie, she reflected. Whenever she'd told anyone that she didn't know how to love, that she didn't form those bonds that other people did, that she couldn't understand the emotion or the pain that was linked through that, and the deep happiness that was twined within it, dependant upon it in order to survive... in order for her to live.

She knew exactly what it was like. And she knew that she shouldn't have risked letting it happen. But how could she have avoided this? How could she have kept a distance, remained professional when it was so... easy? When he just showed up at her door with Chinese food, when he laughed and called her Bones, when he didn't immediately judge her upon learning she was from the foster system. The first test, was what it had been. Everyone else... either she didn't tell them at all out of fear, or she did and they treated her... differently. Acted like she was breakable, or damaged, or in need of separate treatment than the rest of the world. And many times they simply left because of that, wanting to be with someone who wasn't so much difficulty to understand. Someone who could be loved, when apparently she could not.

And yet all of this, the fact that no one could love her, hadn't stopped her from somehow letting her love someone else.

Again, the rush of thoughts overwhelming all else, trying to convince her that she did not, in fact, love him... but she shoved it off. What was the point? Why would she deny it when her own writing had very clearly laid it out. She'd written them married, expecting a child, and happy. Together. And he'd woken up... and he'd talked like he was still in whatever dream he'd formulated using what she'd said out loud. And he'd been disappointed, that much was very clear to her, and had been obvious immediately, when he'd finally realized it had all been a dream and that wasn't his life.

So, did that mean she wasn't as good as Bren? Did that mean that she really was incapable of being loved, when the unrealistic version of herself was what Booth would actually want? Could she ever be what he wanted, just as she was right now?

As if in answer, her mind replayed the scene from just over an hour ago, as it had been doing all through her visit at the hospital.

The way he'd suddenly appeared in the doorway, shot the man who would have killed her if he'd had a few more minutes. The way he'd immediately been by her side, so concerned about her. How he'd been upset, even afraid, when he'd seen the knife in her arm. His arms, warm around her while his firm hand grasped the wound and held pressure to it. The sound of his voice murmuring comfort to her like he had so many times before, back when there was no brain tumor, when they were just Booth and Brennan who'd only worked cases together, who were just beginning to become friends, best friends... true partners.

She'd leaned her head against him, shutting her eyes as she felt the pain begin to throb furiously through her from the deep gash. She'd listened to the soft comfort of his voice... and she'd felt his lips press to the top of her head... heard him whisper... the words somehow spreading further warmth through her as she clutched a hand tightly around his arm, clinging to him as the adrenaline wore off, as the realization that she'd survived the encounter sank in.

"I've got you, baby..."

And he'd said he wasn't going anywhere, he'd told her to trust him... and she'd immediately nodded her head against him, immediately held on to those words. She trusted him, yes... she would always trust him.

So here she was, knocking once more on a door, and once more calling out her presence. The situation, so similar to the last one, almost made her hesitate more, almost made her step back out the door, call someone... change her mind about doing things alone. But she didn't.

She needed answers, and it didn't matter, suddenly, that the woman was a fake, was claiming to be something that did not exist and was not rational. What mattered here was the fact that this woman had been the reason that Booth had come, had saved her life, and that she seemed very observant... in a way that was similar to Sweets, but not so at the same time. She wanted to hear that insight. She wanted to know what this woman thought, interpreted, from her brief interactions with them. After all, in order to trick people out of their money and convince so many with great skill that she was genuinely in tune with the nonexistent spirits of the universe, she would have to notice things that other people could not. These things... well they might be valuable, even if tarot card readings were not.

"Dr. Brennan," Avalon greeted her from where she sat behind a table, cards laid out in front of her. It was foolish, but the fact that the woman was not in any position to attack her like her last visit to an unfamiliar location relaxed her greatly. More so than she'd have liked. "How are you feeling?"

"Well, they gave me medication... so I feel how I imagine people of average intelligence feel all the time."

The blonde woman stared at her, her facial expression not changing.

She hesitated slightly, but then went on, deciding to go with the direct route since she wasn't about to say that she wanted an opinion. "I came her to see if you had run away."

"No," Avalon said, a slight sadness tainting her tone. She went on almost bitterly, "I'm here looking for clues... something I might have missed..."

"...In your... cards? Because that... is a waste of time."

"You say that, after I sent Agent Booth to save your life."

She scowled slightly, and quickly defended, "Well, you knew where the bodies were, you knew Dr. Lecock would... attack me."

To this, Avalon made no comment, instead she reached for the top of the deck and removed a card, placing it in front of her. "You were an abandoned child," she said. Brennan found herself turning away, her eyes flicking self consciously from the so-called psychic to the card, and then to the floor, where it was safest to look. She didn't like discussing this, and the fact that someone she didn't even know had brought it up, pulled it straight out in front of her, was not something she found any pleasure in. She felt herself shrink away almost without even meaning to. The woman went on, flipping another card and placing it next to the first, "The world scares you, and so you wrap it up neatly in bonds of reason, education, and proof." The truth there struck a bad cord with her, but she didn't speak up. There was no reason to deny, even when this woman had no backing to her statements... she knew that her admittance to these almost accusations was written across her face and in her current slight shifting movements. The observant woman would pick up on this immediately. She would know she was right. "All riddles are solvable to you, except for one."

Now she spoke up, feeling the need to derail this before it went further. Suddenly, the analysis of herself by this woman was not something she was interested in or curious about... but something to be feared beyond anything. She did not want to know what she saw when she looked at her, she didn't want to hear the words should they strike truth, and alter how she was able to live her life. She did not want to look in the mirror and realize that every word that was spoken here was accurate, and that who she was because of it might not be who she wanted to be. Maybe... she wanted to be Bren. Maybe she hated who she was, even after all these years of forming herself into what she'd become.

"Yes, the riddle of how you knew where your sister was buried."

"No," Avalon said, contradicting her with an air of calmness that was almost chilling. "The riddle you can't solve... is how somebody could love you."

She felt an unpleasant sinking sensation as her stomach clenched, and her mind went about the familiar process of simply pretending the words were wrong. She laughed... it was the natural response of denial. One she'd learned well and used to turn away even the most insistant of people who claimed they understood her or thought they had a theory that was simply not plausible. It was something she employed to protect both herself and everything she believed in.

"Well... I'm beautiful, and very intelligent," she said rationally. Both were true... both were why she'd even had boyfriends to begin with. If she hadn't had either then she'd just have been... who she was, underneath that, and that wasn't good enough. That would never be good enough, not for anyone. Not even the people she let closest to her. Because it was her intelligence that connected them, that let them work together. The rest of it... well that didn't matter. It was unreasonable to expect it to, to hope it was true that maybe someone wouldn't care if she was beautiful or if she was smart... but would care for her as a person, as a hurt and insecure person who just wanted to keep the world out... to not feel anymore pain.

Avalon, unlike so many other people, did not accept this... but instead gave her an almost knowing smile, her hand reaching for another card. "The answer to the question... that you're afraid to say out loud, is... yes. He knows the truth of you, and he is dazzled by that truth." She placed a card down, one with a bright sun on it... and smiled softly at her, her eyes conveying no lie, no trick... nothing but sincerity and belief.

She stared at the card, the words still ringing in the air. Rationally, she knew that she could not believe it. The word of a psychic was little compared to the word of reason... and yet she was drawn to trust it, to grab that ray of hope that maybe he did love her, that maybe he cared for her and all of her, despite all her flaws, despite all that had happened to her in her life and the scars it had left behind.

He'd said he wasn't going to leave her... he'd said before that he would never betray her... he'd saved her life so many times... he'd held her close through the worst moments and he'd laughed and teased her during the best... He hadn't fled like the others when she told him, bit by bit, spread out by fear of judgment and abandonment, the fragments of her life. And he'd shared his own stories, entrusted her with them as she had with hers to him. But did all that mean that he... that he loved her? That he wanted her, not Bren, not a blonde lawyer, not someone who'd lived a pleasant childhood and had no social ineptitudes? It couldn't... but yet she wanted it to. Oh, she wanted it to, more than she'd ever wanted anything.

If only she could really believe, really truly believe that it was true, and that it was possible that he might know all of her, even the parts she was ashamed of, the parts that reflected her weaknesses and fears, and still care so deeply about her that none of it mattered.

She remembered his arms around her, she recalled the way he'd been so concerned for her safety whenever they'd worked a dangerous case. The way he'd flown all the way down to New Orleans when she'd woken up that day, covered in blood and with an entire day wiped from her memory, and he'd been so concerned about her that even then she had questioned whether or not he was more worried about losing her as an asset to the FBI, or losing her as something personal that he could not live without.

Flickers of the times that she'd felt safe, that she'd just wanted to let a moment last forever... they all traced through with lightning quickness, but she slid them aside at a faster pace, racing to ones that might prove the point of him loving her... she no longer needed to linger on the ones that showed her own feelings... those she knew, those she had feared and yet been unable to release or push away. Those were something she was sure of. It was the rest that needed proving, that needed to be backed by the truth, the understanding, which Avalon had somehow spoken of a moment ago...

And she did need that, too, to have the world wrapped up as though in a textbook within the confines of binding and strict rules that kept track of all within and controlled the plot line so it would not deviate from its planned course of action... and it did make her feel safe and protected from all the things that concerned her in the world.

It shouldn't be right, to trust in the word of a psychic, to go off of conjecture and unreasonable hopes... but she decided to anyways. The swell of possibilities almost overwhelmed her, and for a brief second, just one second... she saw herself as Bren... but as not the exact woman, because she realized that was not truly who she wanted to be, and it was not the Booth she wanted it to be with, from that world, either. She wanted it to be them, who they were with the bickering and the case solving and her intelligence and his people skills... but she wanted it to be their interactions that mimicked the world she'd created and found refuge in during those days of fear while he slept, while the silence tore away at her and gave meaning to all that she'd feared and trapped within herself after his faked death.

She wanted it to be them, the two of them who had stood down death and suffering, who had worked together through the hardest parts of her life and some of his... and she wanted to not have to question it, to never have to question it the way that Bren had not once even considered the possibility of a life without her husband. Bren did not dwell on the risks and the fears... she never even voiced them, never let them come into her mind. She did things as she wanted to, as she thought was right... and she was happy. That was how she'd written it... and that was how she wanted it. To be able to wake up in the morning, with Booth next to her, and to just know, in the way that she knew the truth of science and the truth of everything else rational, that he loved her, without having to even hear the words from his mouth. To just be able to sense it, to see it in his eyes, his actions, to feel it in his touch and the warmth of his arms around her.

But what she wanted... could it happen? Could it truly happen to her? And the fear remained, eating at her, telling her that it was safer to not rely on this, to not get her hopes up...

She decided to remain silent. Decided to not say anything... to continue as it had been. And maybe the reality of true life would provide for her what conjecture could not.

It was suddenly evident that her worries about what he was to say next were not nearly so great as her fears, terrors, of what losing him might mean. Was she already losing him? She said it, and everyone else said it... that in a few weeks everything would be normal. How many times could they continue to just set a timeframe around it... even when it didn't happen? What if there were things about him that were lost... gone forever? What if the Booth she'd known for so long was no longer there, but rather a form of him, one that had been affected and confused by her fantasies imposed into his vulnerable brain... one that would always need reminder to do the most basic things that simply made him who he was.

The socks, the crazy tie, the belt buckle... that was Booth. That was who he was. And he'd lost it... he'd had to be reminded of it. Did he still care? Did he now wear them because he understood why he always had in the past, or was he simply going through the motions, trying to keep himself the way he'd been and yet maybe slipping deeper and deeper into the waters that had wrenched him away from her to begin with?

He hated clowns. He hated them more than anything, maybe more than she disliked snakes. He'd shot two, since she'd started working with him, after all, and he'd gone pale in that fun house... he'd been jumpy and nervous... and now he found them funny. No, that was not the Booth she'd known, not the Booth she'd grown so close to. Would that part of him come back, the part that edged away from the brightly dressed circus people? And even if it did, would there simply always be something nagging at the back of his mind, something that wasn't right?

Did he remember everything about her? Did he still know her favorite flowers, and her favorite planet? Did he recall Jasper, and Brainy Smurf? Or was that lost as well? This whole time, when he was watching her with those curious and fascinated eyes –yes, she'd noticed the way he stared, the way he observed with a slight smile tipping up one corner of his mouth– was he just picking up on details for the first time? Was he storing away things about her for future reference since he'd realized he should know them, or was he remembering things from before, and just being glad to be working side-by-side with her once more? Or maybe it was neither, maybe it was something else entirely? The not knowing, the uncertainty of all of it, was what caused the most fear to rise within her.

"What did you want to tell me?" she asked, pushing away the rush of emotion and confusion for the importance of gaining this knowledge, of just knowing, at last, what it was that he wanted to say to her.

He stared at her for a second, indecision racing through his eyes.

"I love you," he said. No emotion, no signs for her to read from him. Just the words, which should have been enough. She felt the breath fly out of her as her mouth opened slightly, her eyes widening... her heart nearly stopping.

She didn't know what to say, and even if she did, she was fairly certain she wouldn't be able to speak. Had he just said that? Had he just told her the three words that she'd never thought to hear from him, even though she'd imagined on the possibility enough times within the past few days, within the writing period of the fantasy world.

But she didn't get a chance, not even to process the words, what they meant, how they would affect everything about her world...

He opened his mouth, and her total attention went to him, expecting further words, further explanation. "In a professional... atta girl kinda way," he said, his tone different but so hard for her to understand, to grasp the meaning of... and there had to be a meaning... The words themselves, though... she couldn't process them. He said he loved her, and she'd only just barely felt the flicker of light, of hope, of almost excitement... before he'd cut it off, changed the explanation, dashed her overactive imagination's thoughts to the ground. This was what she deserved, for actually believing a psychic. He didn't love her. He couldn't, no one could. She should never have hoped it. And yet the words came out anyways, the shocked ones, the ones that were questioning his second statement, half-hoping he'd take it back.

"Atta girl kind of way?"

It was a foolish sort of hope, the kind that she'd always avoided. The kind she had been right to avoid for so long.

He looked away, then looked back and nodded. And that nod was all she needed, the only thing that had to be provided for her to mentally slap the part of her brain that wanted, needed, to be connected, to be cared about.

After that, everything she said, everything she did, was on that same level as her laugh from earlier, when confronted with something else that she could not process without aid from her compartmentalization skills. They took over, and she turned on the autopilot.

Pretend to be amused, to have no problem or confusion at all about what he said. Don't act upset, don't allow emotion and pain to show on the exterior. Laugh. Good, keep it up...

She should have known, should have realized... risk, hope, they were all traps, and they were only able to be set by the people that were to be captured in them.

Well, she would not fall victim again. Booth did not love her. So she should cut off her own emotions, she should end that way in which she saw him, in which she relied on him. It was time to stop being the way she'd become. It was time to stop imagining a future like that of Bren and the nightclub...

And get on with reality, painful reality... and painful life.

She would survive, yes, but she wasn't sure how much of her happiness, so newly found in the past few years... would make it through with her.

What did you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts... they will keep me happy until next Thursday :)

Next chapter I think will be a much needed conversation between Booth and Angela. I like Cam, I really really do, but I think Ange would be the more likely person to go to about a matter concerning Brennan. Especially now that he's sort of told her, and got to see her reaction before taking it back.

...Who can't wait for next week?? *waves both hands madly in the air*