Disclaimer: Bones is not mine. No copyright infringement intended.
It's funny, he thinks, how something so small can change everything in blink of an eye. One question, one decision. Too many drops of water fall from a leaky tap and a sink overflows. You take a right instead of a left one morning and a stranger saves you from accidentally stepping into oncoming traffic. God always had a funny way of connecting everything in life, no matter how big or small, and Booth has faith that this is no exception...
Booth groans, his head swimming as he struggles to sit up in the backseat of a tiny car. There's a woman clamoring over him, cramping herself into the tiny spot near his feet, the smell of her perfume familiar and comforting even as her small hand touches his leg and sends tendrils of searing pain shooting up his calf. He really wishes she wouldn't do that.
"Booth. Booth, are you alright? Can you talk?" she picks at the bloody mess of his dress pants, her voice wavering, "Your legs. What happened to your legs?"
His teeth grind together. Bones. The woman is Bones. God, what the hell happened? Why did everything hurt so fucking bad?
"Where are we?" he mumbles.
"We're buried alive. He must have got us."
Booth blinks, trying to process what she's just told him. His vision is still blurry, there's two of her in floating back and forth in front of him, but he can clearly see the terror in her eyes. Buried alive? Legs? Kidnapped?
"Who?"
She turns and looks at the blackened windows, and she finally snaps into focus, "The Gravedigger."
His heart sinks. He remembers Hodgins calling him with a lead just as he sat down to dinner with Cam in a restaurant downtown. He had apologized to her and paid for her meal, speeding back to the Jeffersonian before Brennan could leave for her Karate class. Everything is a bit fuzzy after that.
"I'm really confused, what happened?" his brow furrows, "Where are we?"
"Underground. Buried. The last thing I remember is being at the lab,"she says as she turns and sweeps her hair away from her neck, "I have a burn..."
Booth reaches up and caresses the puffy, red marks before he realizes what he's doing. She hisses softly, but doesn't shy away from his touch.
"Zack was trying to figure out what kind of stun gun was used," he whispered, "I remember that much- at least, I think so anyway."
"It has to be the Gravedigger. I think he ran you down with his car, and then pumped you full of drugs to ruin your short term memory- same as Ryan Kent."
His eyes widen. The bastard hit him with his car, drugged him and then buried them alive?
"Wait, what? How long have we been down here?"
Brennan looks down at her watch, "Um, it would be two hours, I think."
"Two hours? Okay, we can work with that, right?"
"The Gravedigger is very consistent," she argues, meeting his gaze, "If we started out with twelve hours of air, we'll be unconscious in ten. After that, if-if no one pays the ransom..."
"We're dead."
He sighs. How in the world are they going to get out of this one?
"...We have water, towels, my mini kit, ibuprofen, two cell phones no batteries, a digital camera with a back up battery and uh, a handful of pens."
"That one's a laser pointer," he butts in.
Brennan ignores him, grinning proudly as she holds up a thick book, "And a copy of my novel."
"Hey, we can read it to each other if we get bored," he offers, she simply rolls her eyes and opens a little black pouch, "What's that?"
"Deep Rhapsody," she explains.
"Fancy."
"Hodgins is thinking of giving it to Angela. He asked for my opinion."
He wasn't expecting that one, "Wow, I knew the bug-guy had a crush, but never in a million years did I think that he was in love with her."
There's that look again. The one that she usually gives him when he mentions Mulder and Scully or some other random pop culture reference.
"How did you come to that conclusion? It's just perfume, a gift."
Booth pulls the stopper out and smells the heady liquid, "A man gives you a bottle of perfume like that, and it says, 'I Love You.'"
Brennan sighs, but doesn't argue.
"I'm worried you have compartment syndrome," she says out of the blue some time later, passing him two pain pills and an open bottle of water.
"Is it terminal?" he asks, downing them in a few gulps, "I mean, within the next few hours?"
"No."
She's being far too shifty for his liking.
"But?"
"It's gonna get painful."
Oh, God.
"More painful than now?"
She nods, "Yes. Slip into shock and die, painful."
"But it's not even that bad," he whines, trying to hide the fact that she was really starting to freak him out, "Are you sure, Bones?"
She frowns, watching him speculatively, "If I find out that you're lying simply to save me from worrying about you in the last few hours of our lives, it's not going to work."
"Yup," he groans, "that makes me feel so much better. Thanks, Bones."
"What? Don't feel like you have to hide your pain, Booth. I can see from here that your soleus and tibialis posterior are severely swollen."
"I was hit by a car!" he screeches. She's unbelievable, "And since when did you get so damn perceptive?"
Brennan shrugs vaguely, still glancing worriedly at his injuries.
Shit, she's scared.
"Why don't you check if you don't believe me?"
He shifts and brings his most injured leg between the front seats, letting her fuss over him. Her examination is thorough and as gentle as possible. Yes, it hurts, but not nearly enough to worry him as much as she seems to be.
"Wait..." she frowns and pulls something out of his wound.
Grimacing, he shifts forward to examine the tiny piece of plastic, "What the hell is that?"
"Evidence of what happened to you. Let's- let's worry about it later."
She grabs her book and slips it in between the pages for safe keeping, declaring him not as close to death as she'd previously thought.
"See, Bones? Good as new."
"I doubt that, Booth."
"You're not gonna get rid of me that easily," he jokes.
Brennan smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes.
The air is starting to thin.
Booth gasps, startling awake, and it feels like he's breathing through a straw. It's uncomfortably warm, and his chest feels tight. It's such a foreign sensation that in those first few moments, he almost panics. Then he remembers where he is and who he's with, and forces himself to calm down. There's no time to freak out.
"Bones?"
She's busy in the driver's seat, working on something in her lap.
"How long was I out?"
"For a while," she strips a wire and looks back at him, "How's your leg?"
"Better," he waits a second, taking stock, "Lots better. What are you doing?"
Finishing, she carefully snaps the front of her mangled cellphone back on and holds it in front of her like she's afraid that it will break, "Hot wiring the phone to the horn so we can send a message."
Booth grins and leans forward, hugging her awkwardly around the seat, "That's my girl!"
She smirks, "We get radio reception, so it might work long enough to send a single burst transmission."
"Won't the car battery fry it, though?"
Brennan pauses, tilting her head to the side, "That's smart, Booth. I'll have to build some kind of resistor."
"What message should we send?" he asks, "Goodbye? Nice to know ya?"
"What are we surrounded by?"
Booth looks out the window and he swears that the light in the car dims a little, or maybe that's just him. Either way, it's not good.
"Pain. Despair."
"Dirt," she corrects, "and it's what's going to save us."
"What?"
Now he's really confused.
She picks up a handful of this 'magical' dirt and passes it to him, "Tell me what you smell."
"What I smell?"
Lifting the small bit of earth up to his nose, he takes a tentative sniff.
"Well?" she prods impatiently.
"All I smell is dirt."
Brennan purses her lips, glaring at him, and for the tiniest second he was tempted to say something else just to piss her off again. If he's going to die in an hour or two, he wants to go out a happy man. She's absolutely stunning when she's angry.
"Ash," she supplies, "nitrogen, sulfur."
"English, Bones."
"Coal. Bituminous coal, to be exact."
"I don't know what that means," he huffs, very aware that their roles are completely reversed in this situation, "Do you know where we are?"
She nods, "Virginia."
"We need more than that," Booth's shoulders sag.
"I know. That's the good news, though," this time when she smiled, her eyes danced, "I think we're in a quarry."
"This thing you found in my leg," he studies it carefully, "I think it's a bumper sticker."
"You mean like, 'If you can read this, you're too close?'"
"No, like a prepaid toll pass..." he pauses, really thinking about it, "Someone ran me down with a car."
Brennan looks up at him like he's suddenly gone crazy, "We already knew that."
"Yeah, but now we've proved it, and I find that I'm really annoyed."
She sighs, and closes the faceplate to her phone once again, having MacGyvered some complicated doodad out of what little the Gravedigger had left them, "Four to six seconds to enter a message and hit speed dial."
"How's your text messaging?"
Brennan grimaces, "Sub-par at best. You?"
"Thumbs like lightening."
It almost feels like they might just survive this. He's hopeful, giddy even, and it's catching. Brennan grins and quickly scribbles something down before passing it to him. It looks like gibberish to him, but he's not stupid enough to question her.
"I've figured out a message using eight key strikes," she stresses, "Memorize it. Hopefully, Hodgins will understand what it means and be able to narrow down the possibilities."
He chuckles nervously, "So, no pressure?"
Taking a deep breath, he sets the paper down and delicately takes the phone from her, practicing pressing the buttons.
"What are you doing?"
"Dry run. You must've heard of muscle memory, Bones," he flashes her a reassuring smile, "Can't chance fucking this one up."
He does it a few more times, before nodding. That's her cue.
The horn honks. His fingers fly over the keypad so quickly that he's not even sure if he got everything right before the damn contraption is blowing up in his grasp. Quickly setting it down on a headrest before it burns his skin, they hoot happily, and he dares to dream- of quick escapes and never seeing their tiny, silver prison again.
"Oh!" Brennan grins breathlessly, "Did it go?"
Their gazes meet, quickly subdued.
"I think it went..."
Brennan leans against the back of her seat, reaching out to him until he twines their hands together, squeezing so tightly that he feels his knuckles grind together, "Me too."
Their ten hours are almost up.
Honestly, he doesn't know if their message got out or not, and if the squint squad even understood it. But as they lean against the backseat, a huge hole carved haphazardly in the middle of it, and breath in the small amount of fresh air that the spare tire provides, he can't help feeling like ha failed her. He can't save them on his own this time, he can't pull them both to safety. He needs help. He needs his people to do the saving this time, his family.
"How much extra time?"
"A little. There are four extra tires, but we can't get to them," she wheezes, "Is there anything else?"
"I-I don't know, Bones," a silent sob slips from the back of his throat, "I can't..."
Brennan's fingers press over his mouth. Her eyes are shining with unshed tears.
"We shouldn't talk right now- to conserve air."
It's this one simple gesture that changes everything for him- that leaky faucet, or the selfless stranger on a crowded sidewalk. Booth cries, not caring if it makes him look weak, and desperately presses a his lips firmly against her fingers and then her wrist. Their bodies strain toward one another, just like every other time they stood a little too closely or willingly allowed the other to invade their personal space, except this time- well, this time they don't stop it.
Brennan's lips are turning blue, but they still taste as sweet and warm as he remembers, their mouths fluttering together in a longing kiss. It's like coming home. Revisiting those first few weeks that they knew each other, that first case, when everything was new and exciting. Innocent. Simpler.
"Don't... wanna die, Booth," she whispers against him, and he can feel her body spasming as she struggles to breath.
His heart is breaking.
The world is closing in on them, and fast. He feels it, pressing closer and harder, suffocating them. Using the tiniest remnant of strength he can find, he tugs her into his lap, kissing her one last time. He's lightheaded and he can barely move. All he can see is a picture of himself swinging Parker around in circles, the fall trees swirling around them in the bright afternoon sun, and the only thing he can feel as is the softness of her skin beneath his touch.
Her forehead falls into the crook of his neck, tiny fingers going limp against his chest, "Love... you."
And then she's still.
He wants to scream out- to tell her that he loves her too, that she wasn't alone- but his final breath is silent. The darkness laps at his mind, and slowly drags him under.
The last thing that his conscious mind registers is the sound of heavy machinery grinding overheard.
Booth has always thought that dying would be more terrifying, but it's eerily calm. Kind of like sinking into an outdoor hot tub in the middle of winter, or sliding in between clean sheets just after getting out of the shower. He doesn't understand it or question it, he simply listens to his heart thunder in an awkward and painful beat, until it slows so drastically that he thinks it's stopped beating all together.
Salvation, at last.
End.