Disclaimer: I do not own Bones. No infringement intended.
A/N : This story is a sincere thank you to everyone who reviewed and/or added Blind Situation to their favorite/alert list. A very special thank you goes out to xcitedutterance who donated money to charity to get me to write more Bones fic. I'm sorry it took so long.
Feedback: I am terrible at updating, but if you let me know you want more, I'll definitely finish this story. Plus, I've never tried anything like this before, so I'd love to hear what you think.

25.

"Don't make this harder than it has to be." Cam says as she closes the car door, securing Rosalind in the backseat.

I fear those being the final words we share. Last parceled out between the ragged zip of her suitcase, and now clashing with the slam of her car door. That fear drills millions of tiny foramina from my frontal bone to my metatarsals. It vitiates me until the pain is unutterable and inescapable.

When Cam finally drives away from the ruins of our family, the moment renders me still. I remain standing in our driveway, unable to move for certainty of fragmenting the shell of what she left behind. It is within the confines of my own disintegration that I can irrevocably know what philosophers and poets have asserted for centuries.

The heart can indeed break.

24.

The walls of Angela's spare bedroom are a peculiar ultramarine; the exact shade of the waters surrounding a small island off the coast of Kenya.

The idea for the trip to the island originated with Angela, spread to Hodgins, and finally greeted me at the bitter end of an exhausting day. It is a day that will not be effortlessly disregarded. A day where we witnessed a child killer go free because, for once, I was not the smartest person in the room.

"I think we should go," Cam said. "Seeley agreed to keep Rosie."

I tiredly opened my eyes, ready to list the abundance of reasons why this was the worst possible time for us to take a vacation.

"I need a break," she continued quietly. I could see the grief exposed in the faint lines creasing her forehead. "I just... really need a break."

Cam rarely admitted needing anything, especially from me. Even during the nascent moments our friendship, she has always accepted what I could give and known it was everything of which I was capable.

So I pushed the reasons away. And within two weeks, we were on an island following Angela through the jungle in her quest to find the exact elements of nature that would create paint the color of the ocean.

Now it is two years later, and I have spent the last six days in this bedroom being tormented by this color.

Angela sits cross-legged at the edge of the bed, and I lean uncomfortably against the headboard. "I've tried harder at this then at anything before in my life, Angela." My admission is the first sound either of us has made in over an hour. "But I don't know how to fix this."

She looks at me sadly, like a friend without answers. "Sweetie, I don't know if you can."

23.

The lab is viciously silent. Booth stands at the back, here only because his service to justice demands it. Hodgins has refused to talk to me about anything unrelated to our current case in three days. Angela tries to smile reassuringly, but when Cam finally joins us, her effort is compromised by the unsparing reality of my mistakes.

Cam stops next to Hodgins, and as far away from me as it is possible to be and still retain visual proximity to the remains. Normally, this is where she would say, "Dr. Brennan, what do we have?"

Today, there is only the stifling breath of excuses and broken trust.

"I... I have determined the cause of death to be a cylindrical item with a diameter of half a centimeter. It was systematically thrust through the victim's hyoid with an incredible amount of force, resulting in the bone's complete shattering."

My pronouncement is met by a long, uncomfortable pause where we all look everywhere except at one another.

"Does anyone have anything else to add?" Cam finally asks. Everyone remains silent. "Okay, when you do, I'll be in my office."

Cam leaves as quickly as she arrived. The precise movement of her walking away from me is an agonizingly familiar sight now. It bleeds into my vision like a stereoscopic depiction of the woman I love and the woman I betrayed.

"Call me when you've got something," Booth says when he's halfway out the door. I want to be angry with him for leaving me here to deal with this alone. I want to be angry with him for failing to be the partner and friend I desperately need. I want to go back three days and-

"Is this how it's going to be from now on?" Hodgins asks me directly, pulling my attention away from Booth's quickly retreating back.

"If it is, our effectiveness will be greatly compromised," I respond. I know I have answered his question like a scientist instead of a friend.

"Our effectiveness will be greatly compromised? That's all you have to say?" He shakes his head primarily in anger, but if I were only to dust the surface I believe I would unearth the artifacts of pity.

"Babe––," Angela starts.

"No, Ange, we had a great thing here and now what do we have? Compromised effectiveness?" he sneers. "That's so not gonna cut it."

"Dr. Hodgins, I..." my words dissipate into barren stillness. He waits for me to continue, but I find myself radically depleted. "Dr. Hodgins," I start again, "I do not know how to make this better for you."

We stare at each other with the breadth of my inadequacies stretched between us and nothing else to say.

22.

Cam sits on our bed, and I kneel in front of her. My hands rest on her legs. From closed eyes, her tears fall against my fingers.

"Just tell me what to do," I plead. "I swear I––" At that, she opens her eyes. Her stare exposes me, reveals the bitter evidence my mistake.

There are no words to fix this. The sudden realization is brutal and terrifying.

"I know why you did it," she says. "I get it. But I can't-" she stops. "I can't––" she tries again. She takes a deep breath and I feel each molecule of oxygen burn inside my own chest. "Just... don't make this harder than it has to be," she finally whispers.

She does not push me away. She sits on our bed and waits for me to move. Before she loved me, I would have been ill-equipped to interpret the subtleties of her unspoken request. But in this moment I understand what she needs even if it is not enough, and not in time.

Slowly, I turn myself away from her until I am sitting on the floor, my back against the bed. I watch as she walks away, and I do not allow my own tears to fall until I hear the soft click of the bedroom door closing between us.

21.

The sun crests the horizon outside Booth's bedroom window and I have yet to go home. I stare at the ceiling not seeing anything at all. His sheets scratch against my naked back. There is heat everywhere our skin touches. The intense warmth, a mixture of love, and guilt, and grief.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. His voice is beaten and hoarse, separated from everything that defines the man I know.

"It's okay," I whisper back.

"I'm so sorry," he repeats, and I understand this apology is not for me.

We lay there in a grave of silence, buried in everything we just lost.

"Bones?"

I lift myself onto my arm and gaze down at him.

"I don't think I can do this," his voice breaks. "I can't believe he's just... not here anymore."

I do not know what to say. I know what I would normally say, but this is Booth, and this is important, so I suppress the instinctual recitation of accurate but suddenly unavailing facts concerning the ostensible mysteries of death.

"You just have to know," I start, and Booth closes his eyes as I speak. "That you were a great dad to him." He breathes in deeply, but not deeply enough to keep him from finally crying. "A great dad," I whisper through my own tears.

He opens his eyes, and I see all of him. He pulls me down into an engulfing kiss, begging me to swallow his suffering.

My attempt is unrelenting. But I am drowning. And the only thing within reach to save me are the jagged shards of an already shattered promise.