Title: Only Time Will Tell
Author: NexustehULF0o
Description: "What's a year?" they had joked. A year was definitely not what she expected. Oneshot.
Rating: K. Possibly K+. Yeah, K+. For safety, y'know?
DISCLAIMER: Bones is owned in part by FOX, and also in part by Kathy Reichs. :D I love her books – I have almost all of them – and I LOVE this show…so if I actually owned Bones, I think I would die.
Nexus: I don't think, after seeing S5's finale, that I couldn't write a fanfiction. I tried so hard not to…but I kept thinking about it…and that was the problem. XD Also, my friends and I keep talking about it – opening the wound again and again and again…and so here's where I dedicate this to my Bones Buddies – Becca, Danielle, and Carissa! Love you guys!
It had been two hours, forty-nine minutes, and seventeen seconds.
Eighteen seconds…
Nineteen seconds…
The constant reassurance of the oh-so-slow-passing time wasn't helping Dr. Temperance Brennan any. Of course her flight had arrived early, and she had taken a long relaxing shower and unpacked at her apartment, remembering that Booth had told her in an e-mail that he might be in from Afghanistan later than he had hoped.
Later than they both had hoped.
Sorry, Bones. He wrote among the various descriptions of life on a military base and stories of fledgling soldiers learning to become war machines. It's orders. I've been assigned to train recruits from five o'clock in the morning `til noon, not counting the time difference. Needless to say, I'll be a little late.
Bones.
She now recalled Booth's pet name for her as she had every day since their farewell. She had hated that name. But now, being called "Dr. Brennan" all the time felt alien to her without a "Bones" or two fitting into the equation somewhere. In Indonesia, amongst the anthropologists, dirt, and "humanoid remains", there existed a small sliver of truth; something she probably would have found in one of Angela's additions to her books.
Life just wasn't the same.
Contrary to what she had thought a year previously, being at the Jeffersionan was not trying. It was not mentally exhausting. Not at all, whatsoever.
It was home.
After all, who was Dr. Brennan without Hodgins and Angela flirting and pushing at each other, Cam smiling and worrying about Michelle while still barking out orders, or Sweets listing off psychological reasons for things that she had no desire to listen to…? Of course, she still physically existed as Temperance Brennan without them, but something inside of her was gone – maybe not literally, but she knew she had left something behind the moment she boarded her plane.
Her thoughts returned to her clock. It had been two hours, fifty-two minutes, and thirty…seven seconds since the taxi had first dropped her off at the reflection pool by the National Mall. He still wasn't here. But he would be. Noble, upstanding Booth – one of the many parts of him that she had truly admired – kept his promises.
However, whether or not he would actually be here was the least of her current worries.
The Maluku Islands had brought a great deal of pensive stress to Temperance Brennan. She had, as she had explained to Angela, needed to get away from it all in order to "see her life with some objectivity", to wonder if she was really losing herself in the people she cared about.
She wouldn't tell anyone, but she had been truly afraid of her departure to Indonesia.
"Things will change," Booth had promised, a sick feeling rising in her stomach at that thought, Booth wanted to change, and he didn't blame him for wanting to. Her fear of engaging in a romantic relationship with him, although secretly heart-crushing for her, had taken a serious, irreparable toll on her partner.
Two hours, fifty-seven minutes, and fifty-eight, no, nine seconds. She sighed. "What's a year?" they had joked. A year was definitely not what she expected.
She knew after five minutes on the plane that she had made the wrong decision. About going to Maluku. About their relationship. About everything. The way his eyes bore into hers, the feel of his hand gripping her own eagerly –
"Listen Bones, you gotta be really careful in that Indonesian jungle, okay?"
It shook her to her core. How could he possibly say something like that when he was going into somewhere so much more dangerous…?
And the final look exchanged between them before they left only made fracturing all the worse. The bones of her iron resolve splintered, making them all the more difficult to piece back together in the time that she did, not to race towards him and latch on, never to let go.
But a year had passed, and although the bones had healed, Brennan still had trouble standing on them. Tears still threatened her eyes when she was thought of him during her many sleepless nights. She was surprised that aforementioned tears weren't harassing her now. But she would soon break the bones again. They would fracture and splinter all they wanted, but Booth would easily be her cast and crutches. She would soon learn to once again walk on her own.
At least she hoped she would be.
She returned to the clock with a deep sip of her coffee from the nearby cart.
It had been two hours, fifty-nine minutes, and forty seconds since she had been prepared to tell Booth she loved him.
Make that forty-one seconds.
Temperance Brennan slowly stood from the bench she had been sitting at, looking to discard her insulated Styrofoam coffee cup into the relatively-adjacent garbage can. After doing so, she yawned heavily before pushing a stray lock of auburn hair out of her eyes.
Her watch beeped.
She panicked, pulling her watch close to her face.
Three hours.
01.
02.
03.
The seconds ticked by, each one making it harder to accept what she would be doing very soon.
And then, out of the corner of her eye…she spotted something.
His hair had been cut shorter, which overall, made him look younger. He was wearing a faded blue t-shirt and a pair of ripped, paint-stained jeans – something she would never understand. Why does wearing old, faded, and ripped clothes make one popular, even considered sexy? He was thinner, but more muscular, something she had expected from the heat and turmoil in Afghanistan. And although the sun was now a barely-visible sliver on the water, Booth still wore a pair of sunglasses.
He smiled at her, and instantly, she knew that this was real.
There was no running. They simply walked toward each other, both grinning like fools. They met halfway, in a patch of green grass near the sidewalk. And then he spoke.
Bones. Her name. A name she hadn't heard in a long, splintered, pensive year.
She knew it wasn't physically possible to grin any larger, but she would have if she could. He softly stared into her eyes for a moment, taking her hand in playing with her fingers between his own soon afterward.
"Booth," she muttered, beginning to chuckle. "You're late."
"Yeah, well…" He stifled a laugh himself before sighing heavily. "I'm here now, right? And that's all that matt –"
She reached upwards and entwined her mouth with his.
It had been six years, three hours, two minutes, and nine seconds since two people had begun their journey as partners and even longer that they had become acquaintances. It had been on long year, three long hours, two long minutes, and twelve very long seconds that they had been kept apart.
When they met again at the reflection pool near the coffee cart by Washington D.C.'s National Mall, there was no time frame. The moment was timeless.
For time, at least for Dr. Temperance Brennan and FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, stopped the moment their lips met.
Nexus: And there you have it! My first Bones fic, done in a fit of passion at 12:30 A.M. :DI thought I would contribute to the people out there who are just as lost without Bones as I am. XD
If you would R&R, I would greatly appreciate it :3 Especially on how well I kept Brennan in character. :D Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!