Disclaimer: I don't own them, I didn't create them, and I don't profit from them.
Author's Note: This is my entry in Thnx4thGum's Bone's Hiatus challenge on getting rid of Hannah. I hope you enjoy.
It was a dark and stormy night, well really it wasn't, but it should have been. What had started off as a friendly gathering ended up becoming a catalyst for change so profound that no one could have predicted it. Well, Angela Montenegro-Hodgins might have been willing to lay claim to said prediction if things hadn't unraveled in such a swift fashion that she wasn't sure if she'd just unloaded the biggest secret in a three state area or if it was simply Destiny taking control.
Ah, well, we're getting a little bit of ahead of ourselves here, now aren't we? Let's go back to the beginning. No, wait, that's too far. Let's go back to where things all went wrong, back to where the lynchpin slipped and the center didn't quite hold. Well, maybe even that is a little too far back. How about we just get back to the beginning of the night instead and offer a little explanation for where this gathering storm came from?
Dr. Temperance Brennan would probably tell you that a baby shower is one of those anthropologically significant events to women in our culture and as such, she had been compelled to throw one for Angela. And of course what is a baby shower if you don't invite a few guests to join the celebration?
So herein lies what was supposed to be a blessed event to welcome in the new heir of the Hodgins' fortune and turned into a revelation of such proportions that it left everyone in the room speechless and left one Hannah Burley gaping at Temperance Brennan like a large mouthed bass that had just been reeled in and plopped unceremoniously into the bottom of a boat.
No one in the room even flinched, except perhaps Angela who wondered to herself just how that little tidbit of information had managed to escape her mouth without needing to be all liquored up. Sure she could blame it on the hormones that were raging because her pregnancy, but it didn't change the fact that her best friend's partner's girlfriend had just found out that her boyfriend had once agreed to donate sperm to impregnate his partner who was supposed to be just his partner. Clearly all wasn't what she'd been led to believe.
If there was ever an awkward moment, this was it.
Hannah glanced around the room and it appeared that this little bit of news was a secret only to her. If Seeley Booth had hidden this from her, she wondered what else he hadn't shared with her. The fact that every other person in the room had that look that she had come to learn as an investigative reporter meant that there was a lot more to the story than the little painful nugget that had inadvertently been revealed.
Hannah Burley was a smart woman, she was a confident woman, but she was also sometimes a little headstrong and while that often played to her advantage when she was chasing down a story, it could also be her Achilles heel in her personal relationships. She felt sucker punched and without saying a word, she gathered up her purse, found her coat and let herself out of Temperance Brennan's apartment and hailed a cab.
She really wasn't sure where she was going to go, because the one place in DC that had become her refuge suddenly was the last place she wanted to go. Everything that she'd been building on for these last few months, things she had given up to have a life with him seemed like it had been built on a lie. Or if not a blatant lie, a glaring omission to be sure. It was clear that Seeley Booth had been in love with his partner and if his partner hadn't been able to admit it at the time, a blind man could see that she was in love with him now. She'd been trying to convince herself that what Temperance shared with him was just a very good friendship borne out of a working partnership. Clearly she was wrong. As much as she genuinely had feelings for this man, she wasn't his first choice and life was too damn short to be someone's second choice.
She let out a deep breath, gathered her thoughts and then propelled herself into action. She was a reporter first and foremost and if she couldn't tell him with her voice, she could certainly tell him with her words. She knew that if she went back to the apartment, he'd be there with his son for at least a few more hours and so she headed into her office to type up the story of her lifetime and to see if she could get another transfer, one that would take her back to her nomadic lifestyle of chasing stories around the globe, a move that she was more than sure her editor would take full advantage of.
It didn't take as long as she thought it might to pour out what she'd heard, what she felt and where she thought he really ought to be spending his future. She was a romantic at heart and she wasn't about to stand in the way of what she could clearly see as being true love. Her own heart felt shattered, but she had learned to power through pain to get a story and right now, she was channeling that to be able to power through this too.
Several hours later, she made her way back to the apartment, glad that she already had a trip out of town planned and that Seeley should be on his way to take his son back to his mother. She slipped the letter and her key on the counter where she knew he would find it and she quickly gathered her things and went down to meet the cab that she'd called to take her to the airport. The sooner she was aboard a plane with all of her worldly possessions in tow, the sooner she could start putting this chapter of her life behind her.
Meanwhile on the other side of town, Angela Montenegro-Hodgins was doing her best to try and do a little damage control even if it didn't appear to be working. It seemed that Destiny had ideas of it's own and nothing that she could say or do could take back the words that had set pivotal events in motion. And truly if she had known what end these events would have, she probably would have tried to give it an extra shove to make it go a little faster.
If the appearance of Hannah Burley had thrown Temperance Brennan for a loop, her quick exit sent her into a tailspin. Even with her social awkwardness, she knew that this revelation could not have a positive outcome for Booth's relationship with Hannah. She wasn't sure if Booth would ever want to talk to her again, and despite Angela's profuse apology for letting something so huge slip, she was somewhat surprised that Booth had never shared the information with someone who he was supposed to be building a life with.
Two days passed before the partners saw each other. A soft knock at nearly midnight had Brennan padding to the door, not at surprised to find her partner standing there. What did surprise her was the letter he had in his hand that he offered up for her to read.
More than anything as she read Hannah's words, she realized that her own fear of failing was the reason that she and Booth had gone off on this detour in the first place. She had nothing but admiration and respect for Hannah Burley. In the middle of her own heart being crushed she had been able to put the man that she loved first, recognizing that he truly belonged to someone else.
That someone else was her, and as she glanced up to study her partner's face, she recognized her own anxiety and fear of rejection in his eyes. And all of her doubt that thirty, forty, or fifty years with the same person was impossible faded away and all she could see was Booth. Booth wooing her, coaxing her, carefully loving her for years. She had done nothing to deserve it and still he loved her. In the end, it didn't matter how it happened. The only thing that matter was that it had finally happened.
She was in love with him and she knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. What was more, she knew that he was still in love with her.
They were the center and although they had spun and spun out of control and ended up on different paths, those divergent paths had found a way to come back together again. Any thought that their moment had passed them by faded away as they both realized that this moment was their moment, now was their time and neither one of them were going to let it go.
Not for thirty, forty or fifty years at least.
The End