A/N: This is a complete revisionist twist on the sniper-chasing scene in The Bullet in the Brain. I'm filing it under my GraveDigger Re-imagined series' title (from way back last summer), as it falls into that same vein. It will be 4, maximum 5, chapters, posted in installments of approximately 3500 words. I'm writing the last installment now. Work also continues on my next multi-chap fic.

Thanks so much to everybody who left kind reviews for Crazy Over Me! I wasn't sure how a straight-up songfic would go over, and am very grateful for the positive response. Your feedback encourages me to keep writing. And thanks so much to L, who was such a wonderful beta for this piece.

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The underbrush seemed allied with Jake Broadsky, dragging Booth down as it did time and again by grabbing his hair, smacking him across the face, wrapping around his feet. The third time he went sprawling, he tasted blood and didn't have time to figure out whether it was from a busted nose or lip. He dragged himself upright and started forward again, keeping the sniper as much in his sight as possible. It would be hard to find him if he disappeared in the heavy, darkened forest and the thought of not knowing where Broadsky was made Booth's gut clench even as he slipped on a mud slick and almost did a nose-plant into a frigid little creek. Basic sniper training dictated: Don't let him get behind you, or you're dead.

But the man didn't seem inclined to veer off the path he'd initially chosen. He plowed ahead, using his wide shoulders to forge a trail just a few yards ahead. It was easy enough to follow him by sound as much as it was by sight. Gradually, Booth began to get the uncomfortable feeling that he might be being led. Broadsky knew the terrain better than he did. Why didn't he use that knowledge to his advantage? And a sniper of that caliber wouldn't just randomly run without a target in mind. He had to be headed somewhere specific …

Booth had barely processed the thought when the world exploded around him. A giant orange fireball lit up the sky, eclipsing all manner of trees and bushes. He hit the ground, covering his head to protect it from the falling debris that rained down all around him. His ears rang in the aftermath of the almost sonic boom and his eyes watered from the acrid smoke pouring from somewhere close by.

Again, he tasted blood, but this time he was more certain of its origins. He reached up and touched the wound at his temple. There was no way to tell how bad the gash was, but it was leaking O-positive all over his expensive suit. Underneath all the layers of sound and sensation that the explosion had generated, Booth made out the harsh snap of a twig somewhere nearby.

"You shouldn't have followed me, Seeley. I can outrun and outshoot you, and it looks like I can also outthink you. Too bad. I wouldn't have minded a longer chase scene."

Booth opened his mouth to say something, then closed it hard, sinking his teeth through his lower lip as a blow smashed across the back of his skull. He knew the feeling and would've put a name to the sensation-pistol-whipped—if he hadn't already been unconscious.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Brennan paced her office, holding the cellphone to her ear. "I've checked his office, his apartment, Rebecca's place, the hockey stadium—Booth is nowhere to be found. Nor is he returning my messages."

"I'm sure he's fine, Temperance." Hannah spoke soothingly on the other end of the line. "I know Seeley. Sometimes he just needs his space. He'll come home when he gets hungry."

"You may know Seeley," Brennan retorted, "But I know Booth."

"They're the same person," Hannah replied, sounding confused.

"They are, and yet they are not." Brennan felt rage rise within her at the journalist's blasé, patronizing attitude in the face of her boyfriend's disappearance. "While I do not accept the field of psychology as a valid science, Sweets has made a valid point in stating that Booth has several different personas he affects, depending on the company he is keeping, and two of those identities can be divided into his first and last name."

Sweets' head lifted from where it had been resting on his interlaced phalanges. His eyebrows rose into what a less literally-minded individual would have called a surprised question mark. Brennan looked away from him and turned toward her desk, eyes automatically falling on a picture taken by Angela at the Jeffersonian Halloween party two years ago. Booth was wearing his makeshift squint disguise, paired with a Vanity Smurf tie that Brennan had jokingly given him, and which she had never expected him to actually wear. She had on her usual Wonder Woman outfit, and was leaning up against him, her head companionably resting on his shoulder, drawn close to him by his arm around her waist. It occurred to her that she also had two different personas—Brennan and Bones. She couldn't be Bones without Booth, and the thought of losing that part of herself made something inside her feel empty.

"Temperance, you're jumping to conclusions—"

Brennan interrupted, "With you, Seeley wears boring ties and belt buckles that could never be misidentified as modern day codpieces. He eats figs, prefers wine to beer, and rarely makes leaps of judgment that are predicated on his gastric system, rather than his brain. With me, Booth wears striped socks, eats pie, downs shots of tequila, and regularly makes intuitive assumptions that prove remarkably crucial in the resolution of our cases. Maybe your Seeley would behave differently, but my Booth is not prone to simply vanishing without providing a rational explanation first. And he would never go out of town without first letting his son know of his whereabouts. Therefore, my factually-drawn conclusion is that Booth is, in fact, missing!" She snapped the phone shut and jammed it into her coat pocket furiously, ignoring the worried looks from her assembled team.

"Sweetie, I know you're upset, but maybe you should calm down a little—"

"No." Brennan rounded on Angela, knowing her best friend meant well with that gentle, cautious tone, and feeling irrationally outraged at it anyway. "It's been 15 hours. If Booth went after the sniper by himself, that behavior would follow previously establish patterns of misplaced heroism. He went after Broadsky on his own, thinking that because the property was in his name, the vendetta should remain between the two of them rather than dragging in innocent outsiders. And now he's in trouble."

Cam nodded from the couch, where she was seated beside Wendell and Hodgins. "She's right. Booth wouldn't just cut out in the middle of a murder investigation. It's the GraveDigger all over again. If the FBI won't help us find him, we'll just have to do it ourselves, like we did last time he got buried."

"I'm in," Sweets said immediately. "You're not alone in this, Dr. Brennan."

"I'm not," she choked, glaring at the kind-hearted psychiatrist, "But Booth is. He is all alone, somewhere. Last time that somewhere was a boat rigged with explosives. We have to find him."

"We will," Angela said firmly, getting to her feet and pressing her hands to her back to relieve a muscle spasm. "So. Who's going to go explore that property, other than the pregnant lady whose husband will hogtie her if she so much as suggests setting foot at the crime scene?"

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Booth's head thrummed with pain as he struggled his way back to consciousness. It wasn't a typical wake-up-out-of-a-smashed-in-head experience. Rather, he somehow knew in the back of his mind that all was not well and that he might want to come around sooner, rather than later, but his body wasn't immediately cooperative. It took several minutes of arguing with his brain, which was arguing with his battered nerve-endings, before there seemed to be an overall détente inside his head which allowed him to open his eyes.

They fluttered open and he looked around, realizing they might as well have stayed closed, for all he could see. Booth attempted to see his fingers after placing them directly in front of his face. Even that small movement, raising his hands from his stomach where they had been neatly folded, caused stabs of pain throughout his right shoulder.

Nada. There wasn't even a hint of a silhouette of his hands, which led Booth to several theories.

a. He was in a cave.

This theory was discarded quickly, given the lack of smooth stone around him, and the relatively warm, dry temperature of his confinement space.

b. He didn't have eyes anymore.

This rather macabre idea went by the wayside after he touched his eyelids, blinked rapidly, then rubbed his eyeballs, just checking to make sure everything was in place, which it seemed to be.

c. He was buried alive.

That seemed to pretty much fit the picture, especially given Taffett's involvement in this whole mess.

It took a minute before Booth's mind cleared enough for him to realize that the whole hands-neatly-folded-on-his-stomach was especially weird. He twisted sideways, welcoming the pain that his obviously dislocated shoulder presented him with, as it only helped wake him up faster. Trying to turn rapidly brought home the realization of the close quarters he found himself in. His bruised skull immediately bumped into the ceiling.

Booth felt his pulse accelerate. He tried to turn the opposite direction and encountered the same problem. Just above his nose, less than an inch away, there was a rough ceiling that prevented any kind of actual full body movement. He reached out to the left and found another wall, then to the right, and located its twin. Running his fingers across each surface, he decided he was enclosed on all sides by pinewood. On a hunch, he tried to kick his feet and immediately bumped into a barrier.

His pulse went from a mere jog to a full-throttle race. Booth slammed his fists into the ceiling above him. He beat on the surface until sweat ran down his face and mingled with the dried blood from his various injuries. There was no discernible effect on the structural integrity of his prison. His breathing was loud and harsh in his ears, and he cursed in fury and fear—Come on. Come on. Motherf-COME ON!- as he kicked and scratched and headbutted, all to no avail.

He could've gone on for quite some time in similar fashion, but a tiny voice of reason finally broke through. Oddly enough, it sounded liked Brennan.

You're in a coffin. 84 by 28 by about 23. Physical exertion will only speed the consumption of your limited supply of oxygen.

Booth dropped back from the half-sit-up he'd been in. His bloodied hands curled into fists, and he had to force back the urge to start all over again, hammering at the walls around him until they gave way. Terror was a strong taskmaster, but his partner's calm, steady voice was stronger.

If you are entombed in a standard coffin, you will have approximately two hours of oxygen, if that, before you begin to suffocate.

The walls around him pretty much confirmed standard coffin.

You need to limit your physical movements to the bare minimum, and slow your heart rate in order to level out your breathing.

She was right. She was always right.

I will find you, Booth. Be still. Conserve your oxygen. I will find you.

Booth felt his heart rate finally begin to slow, even as the blood in his ears still pounded so loudly he could barely hear himself think. There was next to nothing he could do to help himself right now, but Brennan would not give up on him.

In the dark, he felt his chest tighten for a reason entirely unrelated to his imprisonment. He'd given up on her, on them, but she had remained loyal throughout. It wasn't totally inappropriate that he was hemmed in by dirt on all sides, when that's pretty much what he'd shoveled spadefuls of at Brennan ever since getting back from Afghanistan.

For months, he'd refused to go near that door, but now his mind threw it wide open. Hannah wouldn't find him. She wouldn't even think to look for him until it was too late. It wasn't her fault that she didn't know him better; he hadn't let her in. Brennan was the only woman he'd ever given a glimpse of the real Booth, and she'd proven worthy of that carefully placed trust, unlike him.

Hannah might be his girlfriend. Brennan was his partner. Hannah would mourn him after he was dead and gone. Brennan would leave no stone unturned to make sure such mourning did not have to happen.

Okay, Bones. He settled back and took one long breath which he let out slowly, reaching for what he'd learned years ago about enduring torture with a minimum of reaction. Work your squint magic.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Brennan stalked the Jeffersonian platform, looking for something useful she could do. She and Cam had spent hours combing through the wreckage at the bombsite, searching for any clue to Booth, including Booth himself. The painstaking search for bone fragments had been agonizing for Brennan. As she searched for clues to her partner's whereabouts, every piece of charred wood she turned over or destroyed chunk of furniture she shoved aside left her wondering what she might find underneath. In the end, the investigation gave them no leads, either positive or negative. Their one clue was a set of muddy tracks leading away from the crime scene in a southern direction.

Without warning, she swooped down on Hodgins. "Have you discovered anything?"

The entomologist glanced up. He'd carefully created a dental stone cast of the tire impressions, had dipped the mold in ink and was now running it over a sheet of butcher block paper. "Maybe." He led Brennan over to a table strewn with a series of similar ink imprints and pointed to various red circles he'd made on different impressions. "See these? They're mold marks, created during production. They're all identical, meaning that the tires were made in the same factory."

Brennan was less than impressed. "How is that helpful in determining where Broadsky took Booth?"

"Sometimes criminals have different tires on their getaway car, in order to make their origin harder to isolate," Hodgins explained. "But these—the tire camber and tread design are unique." He indicated the computer where Angela had input the data into a C.A.S.T. forensics search engine. "The wheelbase and front track don't match anything else on the regular market. This was a custom job. If we can figure out where the tires were manufactured, we can most likely identify who sold them, or at least who they were sold to."

"In all likelihood, Booth doesn't have that much time," Brennan pointed out. "You have to do better, Hodgins. This is the only lead we have. I need you to work faster."

She knew all too well how long that process of identification could take, not to mention how hypothetical this particular lead was. They didn't have anything else to go on, but that knowledge didn't abet her sense of frustration at her total lack of control over the situation.

"You want speed or you want accuracy?" Hodgins demanded, blue eyes flashing with irritation.

"Both," Brennan replied bluntly.

"Stop it." Angela stepped between the two scientists. "Sweetie, you need to step it down a notch. Hovering over Hodgins like you're going to bring a ruler down across his knuckles if he doesn't get the answer right isn't helping him to hurry."

In spite of her overwhelming concern for Booth, the look of weary tension on her friends' faces sent a wave of guilt through Brennan. Ever since her partner's disappearance, they'd been working without rest, and without complaint.

"You should get some rest." She glanced meaningfully at the artist's four-months' pregnant midriff.

"Not until we find Booth," Angela retorted stubbornly, giving her husband a warning glance when he unwisely tried to open his mouth to concur with Brennan's suggestion. "Bren, we're all doing the best we can."

"You are," Brennan agreed. "However, I've done very little to aid the progress of this investigation. There are no bones, no clothes' remnants, no tissue samples to examine for DNA—my particular skill set is entirely useless in this instance." She knew she was becoming over-emotional and was embarrassed by the strained pitch of her voice and the exchanged looks of concern between Hodgins and Angela.

"You want to help me run the database query?" Angela nodded at the computer, again glancing out of the corner of her eye at Hodgins.

Humiliated by her friend's good intentions, Brennan frowned. "You don't require my assistance to do your job. I'm going to call Caroline and see if she has made any progress in getting the FBI involved in the investigation."

She moved toward her office, aware that the whispered conversation behind her was only her friends showing societally appropriate concern, but irked nonetheless by the feeling that she was being treated like a child.

Stepping inside, Brennan hovered momentarily, at a loss for what to do. She knew better than to interrupt Caroline, despite what she had said to Angela. If the prosecutor had information to share, she would call. Disturbing her would not resolve the mystery of Booth's disappearance any faster, and might even hinder the investigation.

She closed the door and took a step toward her desk, thinking of the many emails she needed to answer. Hesitancy was not her standard mode of operating, but she found that anything unrelated to Booth's investigation was so far from important that she couldn't even consider undertaking it. Still … she had to do something in order to feel she was contributing to finding him.

Picking up the phone, she dialed Rebecca's number. Parker answered on the first ring.

"Dr. Bones?"

Rebecca had Caller ID. Brennan had not been expecting to speak to Booth's son and her uncertainty of what he did and did not know flustered her. She sat down on the couch.

"Hello, Parker."

"Have you found my dad yet?"

So he did know. It made sense—neither Booth nor Rebecca was prone to lying to their child.

"Not yet," she admitted. "I'm sorry, Parker. We're working very hard to locate your father."

"You'll find him."

Parker's hopeful voice added a layer of nausea to Brennan's already decidedly queasy stomach.

"Why aren't you doing some scientific stuff?" he inquired. "To help find my dad, I mean."

"I—" Brennan stumbled over the words. What was appropriate to share, without upsetting him even more than he already must be? "This investigation is somewhat beyond my area of expertise."

She could almost hear Parker frown through the phone. "You're my dad's best friend."

Brennan closed her eyes, trying to hold back the swell of grief. "Hannah is your father's best friend, Parker."

"No," he insisted. "She's just his girlfriend. She doesn't even know he hates figs, even though she keeps buying them and he secretly throws them away."

A tear broke free from Brennan's iron self-control and she let it fall without wiping it away. "Parker," she began. "I can't promise that—"

"We're supposed to go see a game this weekend," Parker interrupted, with undiluted optimism. "Maybe you can come see it with us after you find him."

"Is your mother around?" Brennan asked, choosing the coward's way out of the conversation.

"She's in the shower." For the first time, a note of worry injected itself into his voice. "Are you not looking for my dad because you're mad at him?"

She opened her eyes in confusion and blinked away the haze of tears. "Why would I be angry?"

"My best friend kind of forgot we were friends for a while too. He was hanging out with this guy from another hockey team and didn't even come to my birthday, but we're cool again now."

Brennan scrubbed her hand over her face, simultaneously irritated at her lack of self control and surprised by how perceptive Booth's son was. Then again, perhaps his ability to read subtle kinesthetic and vocal signals was something he had unwittingly passed on to his progeny. He'd repeatedly proved to be an excellent teacher. She grimaced as another tear sneaked by and got up to grab a tissue.

"I'm not angry at your father, Parker. Even if I was, it wouldn't prevent me from doing everything possible to find him. I care about him—" her voice snapped and she struggled to regain control of it, "I care about him a great deal."

"He likes you too," Parker confided, sounding reassured. "Dad says sometimes friendships change, but you and him, you know everything about each other. That makes you an expert on how to find him."

She was at a loss for how to answer, but he solved the problem for her with his next, confident command.

"Go find my Dad, Dr. Bones. He's probably getting impatient. He doesn't like to wait."

Brennan smiled, thinking of all the times her partner had hovered irritably nearby, urging her to hurry so they could get to a crime scene. "No," she agreed, raising her eyebrows at Angela, who had just walked into the room and was assessing her emotional composure without any pretense of subtlety. "He doesn't."

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