A/N: I do not own Bones or any of the characters (except in my dreams) This is my first fanfiction so please review and let me know what you think! The song playing on Brennan's radio is Rain by Patty Griffin.

~Boneslover29

Chapter 1 Doubts

A thousand doubts plagued her as she drove away. Images of the last seven years played in her mind. Her rational side screamed at her to turn the car around and go back to Booth and beg his forgiveness and promise to fight this together. All it took was a glance in the mirror at her sleeping daughter to make that decision impossible. No matter how much this hurt, deep down she knew she had made the right decision. The system was flawed and she wouldn't, couldn't leave her daughter the way her parents had left her.

Just thinking about her parents unleashed a whole new set of memories and emotions. She felt a profound new understanding of the difficulty in the decision her parents had made all those years ago. She could now imagine first-hand how anguished and desperate they must have been to resort to the decisions they did.

Next to her, on the passenger seat, her cell phone rang the image of Booth's face popping up on the screen to indicate that he was trying yet again to reach her. She had contemplated throwing it away but Max had other plans for it, telling her the best way to leave a false trail was to throw it in a tractor trailer traveling in the complete opposite direction. The phone finally stopped ringing only to begin again. Brennan wanted more than anything to pick it up just to hear his voice. It wasn't supposed to be like this. They had come so far always together even when they weren't…the two of them against the world. She felt a drop of moisture hit her arm and realized that silent tears were streaming down her face. Through it all she kept looking straight ahead, not daring to look back physically or metaphorically fearing that if she did the fragile hold she had on the dam of her emotions would break and burst a flood of emotions that she didn't have the time or the luxury of dealing with at the moment.

Hours later, having gotten rid of the phone like her father had instructed, Brennan stopped at a nearly deserted gas station to feed Christine and change her diaper. As she looked down into her daughter's solemn eyes, eyes that looked so much like Booth's, Brennan made a promise to her, "I promise you Christine that this will not end the way my situation with my parents did. This is only a temporary measure intended to give your father and my team the necessary time to gather evidence to prove my innocence and prove that Pellant is indeed both capable and guilty of the crimes he tried to implicate me in." Christine just gazed at her with trusting eyes. Brennan took another moment to gently crush her precious daughter to her chest. Sobs threatened to erupt from her chest, the reality of her decision to flee settling heavy on her conscience. Her family Booth, Angela, Hodgins, even Sweets, Caroline and Cam would all be accused of being her accomplices and aiding her in her escape. She hated putting them all in this situation but had no other choice that afforded her the ability to stay with her child and safeguard her from Pellant . This time it had been her set up but who was next, Booth? Angela and Jack? Where would that leave Christine? Brennan would die before allowing her daughter to go into the system and suffer the way she had, the way Sweets had. Pellant had proven to be a very intelligent adversary, much smarter than they had originally given him credit for and had managed to get most of her team removed from the case.

Brennan re-buckled Christine into her car seat noticing how darkness was quickly settling around her and angry storm clouds loomed in the sky. She still had a ways to go until she made it to the first destination her father had mapped out. Turning on the radio she pulled away and her mind drifted to the hauntingly beautiful music coming through the car's speakers. Big wet raindrops began to fall in rhythmic pattern against her windshield.

"Sometimes a hurt is so deep, deep, deep.

You think that you're going to drown

Sometimes all I can do is weep, weep, weep

With all the rain fallin' down"

What would happen when this was over? Would Booth ever be able to forgive her for leaving him and taking their daughter away? Would he understand or would he think as she had that he had been abandoned by those he loved most? Many times in the past she had laughed at Booth's description of what a broken heart felt like, informing him that a heart was simply a muscle and not the center for whimsical emotions. It certainly wasn't possible for it to break just because someone was upset at the hand life had dealt them. Tonight though, she admitted to herself that she felt a definite heaviness in her chest, a sadness and ache that truly felt like a piece of her and been torn from her body and she was suddenly incomplete.

"It's hard to know when to give up the fight

Some things you want will just never be right

It's never rained like it has tonight before"

Over the past seven years she had grown and evolved emotionally and just when it had seemed like she had the family she had always dreamed of during the many nights of strange beds and uncaring foster families, it had all been ripped away from her. Steeling her mind to getting through this nightmare, Brennan drove on toward the safehouse Max had arranged for them to meet at. She had to trust that Booth knew her and would understand why she felt this was the only logical decision. He loved her and knew better than anyone how her past had affected her and how she would never willingly do the same thing to her child. Someday soon they would be re-united and be a family again. Until then, she just had to follow the plan….

What did you think? Should I continue? Please, please, please review and leave feedback!