Title: Bullets and Birthday Cake
Author: BlazeorFade
Rating: T
Summary: Pre-series. Drabble about Booth's feelings when he takes the shot. Spoilers for episode 1x21. My first Bones fic. Be Nice.
Disclaimer: I do not own Bones, Seeley Booth or anything else for that matter so please don't sue me.
Half of it was a waiting game. Waiting for orders, waiting to be told where to go. Waiting for that man to come out into the open. Waiting for the perfect shot.
Balloons and toys. A huge birthday cake, almost as big as the kid who grinned from ear to ear as his father carried him out on his shoulders towards the table where enough food to feed a small army was piled. So many kids around. They started singing, he could hear them even from where he was perched. It all seemed to slow down till all he heard was his own shallow breathing, his heart beating in his ears and that song, that damn song.
Three hours he'd been up on that rooftop just waiting to get a shot off on this guy. The pictures, branded into Seeley's brain, of all the horrors and atrocities this man had committed and ordered played out as he saw the little boy grin widely. One of his front teeth was missing. He stood on the edge of his chair, leaning down over the cake to blow out the candles. This was it, a clear shot. He had to take it.
A village burned to the ground. A little girl's broken body. A man who hadn't stood a chance against the cleansing squad.
Booth lined up the shot, his finger squeezing the trigger seconds before the little boy brought his head back up, clapping his hands, turning to look at his parents. But his dad was already on the ground, over in an instant.
Seeley watched through his scope as the scene played out. He saw the exact moment when the little boy's innocence was shattered, killed just as surely as the general had been, by a single bullet.
It was chaos after that, screaming and shouting, the children were pulled low to the ground and hustled inside. The general's men were searching for him. They wouldn't find him, he was already gone. A ghost.
He'd saved countless lives, followed orders, but that song, the look on the little boy's face when he watched his father twitch and die on the ground would haunt Booth for the rest of his life.
-FIN