AN: So this came to me at three in the morning and wouldn't leave me alone until I finally wrote it down in my Wonder Woman notebook. (My Fanfic Notebook LOL) Anyway, not my usual style, blame it on the crazy California heat.

Magic Show

Once upon a time there were two magicians, they had two very different styles of magic. He could coax the truth out of someone. Sit them down and pull their secrets from their heads like so many scarves. She talked to the dead. She could pull the truth from their bones.

Now the man believed in the magic of love and he performed this magic with many beautiful assistants. Even once performing one of love's most beautiful magics by creating a life. But he never found that true magic, that one that would transform him.

The woman on the other hand disdained the magic of love. She preferred the just as ancient magic of lust, She had her share of lovely assistants, but their time together was always limited. For that was the nature of the magic she practiced.

One day these two magicians crossed paths. They were both without assistants at the time and thought that they had found an assistant in the other. Little did they know that they could never be each other's assistant, that they must be partners. Together they practiced their magical arts to find truth, and at first they worked well together, but when it came time to practice the more powerful magic of love and lust, it all backfired.

With one kiss they felt that this was no ordinary magic. The man would later describe the rain-drenched kiss as black magic. It frightened them this new all-powerful Magic and they balked and went their separate ways.

Nevertheless, the Magic changed them both. He stopped performing magic that was beneath him. He stopped the card tricks and he stopped making colorful balls disappear into holes along with his money. She on the other hand, learned a new magic. She learned the magic of story-telling and created two characters who lived the life she and her magician couldn't.

So for the next year, they lived their lives, sharing them with two new assistants. But the man found that he was in need of her magic again. He needed her to talk to the dead and discover the truth. At first they fought each other as well as the Magic, but they soon agreed that the search for truth was too important to set aside. So they formed a partnership and ignored the Magic that had frightened them both. They tried to make it disappear, but the Magic was more powerful than them both.

The Magic worked quietly on them. It forged a friendship out of a partnership. it contented itself with small acts of love. Guy hugs, a mistletoe kiss, rescues, disguises, and even a dream life shared. But it was always there working on them. It waited for five long years, finally growing to a size that neither magician could deny, at least from themselves. For they still denied it to each other.

They had brought together a troupe of magicians to help them in their search for truth. A man who could reveal the truth from insects, dirt, and slime. A woman who gave faces to the dead. And even an old assistant to the magician, a woman who could also talk to the dead, although her real talent was keeping their little family together. The magicians even had many apprentices. Everyone in their troupe could see the love that existed between the partners, but they believed that the partners would soon see the truth.

Now the man's apprentice was skilled in reading people, but he didn't have the experience of his master. One day, the magicians told him the story of how they met, and he came to believe that they had missed their moment. This couldn't be! So he did what he never should have done and meddled in the Magic's matters. He challenged his master to confess his love for his Partner, and in a moment of desperation, the man accepted the challenge. He did what he hadn't done since he'd met his partner, he gambled. He gambled and just like his money and those colorful balls he used to play with, the relationship they'd been building disappeared. They sought to maintain it, surely what they did was too important to lose over a stupid mistake, but it was to no avail. It wasn't the same and so they came to believe that they could serve the world better by searching out the truth separately. They would look for separate truths on different sides of the earth. Their troupe of magicians was scattered to the ends of the earth and it seemed that their family was destroyed.

However, they all came back, called by a wise woman who saw that what they had could be repaired and must not be lost. The man and woman met at their sacred place, and rejoiced in seeing each other again. But not all was as it had once been, the man had come back with a new assistant. She was pleasant enough, just like her predecessors, but it was never meant to be. She had her own truth to find and she soon learned that he could not be her partner in her own search. And so although it hurt them both they went their separate ways.

The Magic had never before had any qualms about working on the partners while they were with others and it hadn't any this time around. So while the man had been trying to build a life with another woman, his partner had time to regret her choice. Not only that but to see what it would be like to give in to her partner and the Magic between them. She learned what it meant to put another person before herself. So that's what she did, despite coming to the realization that she felt that all-consuming magic called love, she valued his happiness more and left him in the hands of his assistant. Then when he was alone again, she was there to heal him and he saw what she did for him and began to have hope again.

They became closer than ever before, there was but one secret between them and that secret was soon brought into the light. They were at their sacred place when they finally revealed their truth.

"Bones…"

"Booth…"

"I love you." The magic words were said in unison and they lived happily ever after.