******SPOILER WARNING********
Ok, seriously, this is your last warning. The season finale aired a day earlier in Canada, if you don't want it ruined for you, please DO NOT READ this now. It'll still be here tomorrow, I promise. And I promise you, you don't want to know the end before you see the episode.
It's probably been almost ten years since I've published ANYTHING that I've written - and I'll admit that I'm rusty. Please review, but please be constructive. After watching the finale, I was initially pissed at how they ended. This is one of my own spins on how it can be used in a way that's not old and done already so many times. I'm sure there are other ways, all of which I have faith in the writers to make use of, I just hope beyond hope that they aren't seriously going to use the amnesia plot device for episodes on end in September.
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He remembers laughter. He remembers tears. It's all a jumble in his mind; lightness, darkness, and through it all, her voice.
"Booth? You're awake."
He's trying to focus. Can't seem to understand what's happening around him. One minute he's wrapped his arms around his wife, celebrating her good news. The next…his head is killing him, he's groggy as hell and he's sorting through conflicting memories. Bones…Bren….his partner….his wife….
"It was so real."
It takes him a moment to realise that gravelly voice is his own. And over it he hears her talking. Talking about anesthesia and comas….
"Who are you?"
Through the haze he sees her pull back, hears her gasp, but can't reach out to explain, still trying to sort through everything still in his brain, and fighting the foggy stillness threatening to drag him back under. Eventually he just succumbs to the fog.
When he wakes up some time later, she's still sitting in the chair next to him. She's been crying, though he can't quite remember why. He does know that he probably caused those tears, however.
"Bren…" he calls out to her.
She looks up at the unfamiliar nickname.
"Booth?"
"I'm sorry Bren…it's just a mess, it's all a mess, I don't know…I just don't know…."
She's up and walking towards him again, reaching out for his hand.
"Do you know who I am?" she asks, and he can tell she's trying not to cry, struggling to keep her voice even, trying to hold herself together and pull herself back from the brink.
He reaches for her hand, the one resting on the steel bars hemming him in his hospital bed.
"Of course I do, Bren. You're Iceland."
He grins a weak grin, and her confusion grows more.
"I don't know what that means," she says, staring at their hands, connected. Suddenly looking him in the eye she asks "Why do you keep calling me 'Bren'? "
Now he's feeling the same confusion from before, trying to sort the real world from the one that his brain created.
"It's what I've always called you," he answers, though there's no certainty in his words.
"No Booth," she says calmly, seeing the uncertainty and the panic starting to return to his eyes, "you always called me 'Bones'."
"It was so real," he mutters again under his breath, sifting through the wreckage of his reality.
"Booth?"
She looks terrified. The same look she had when he asked her who she was. He never got to explain, though he has his answer now. He mourns a little for what he's lost, though he understands on some level that it was never his, he mourns for the loss of the wife he loved.
"Bones."
"Do you remember me?" she asks, hesitant, her voice sounding a little breathless.
He holds her hand more tightly in his own.
"I could never forget you, Bones."
She smiles, but there's still a trace of fear in her eyes.
"It was just very real, Bones."
She doesn't understand completely, but for now, his answer is enough.
Thanks for reading. I'm sure there are going to be ALOT of these fics kicking around over the summer. I just needed to get this one out of me.
Please let me know what you think.