Author's Note: This second story takes us away from the alternative universe I've created for Booth and Brennan and back into their past. Set during the season five Christmas episode, "The Goop on the Girl," I attempt to answer the question, "What was Brennan thinking while on her way to the bank after Santa explodes?"
Her heart pounded in her ears. Each step was taken with purpose, each breath held just a few seconds longer than needed. She found herself starting to panic.
But she wasn't a woman who panicked. She knew this. Rationally she told herself to calm down. He was fine. She had heard his voice over the radio. Therefore he was fine. Santa was dead but Booth was just fine.
Repeating this seemed to help as she dressed in her black Jeffersonian jumpsuit and laced up her gum boots. However, once she found herself trapped in the back of a van with Cam and Hodgins, stuck in rush hour holiday traffic, she was unable to sit still. The increases adrenaline and cortisone were beginning to take effect despite her best efforts to calm her raging nerves. When she noticed that her right leg was shaking she tried to force it to stay still. Concentrating so hard at that task that she didn't notice when her left foot began to wiggle of its own accord. Her eyes constantly darted around the vehicle. She looked from her watch to her feet to the back door of the van and then back to her watch again. Had it really only been two minutes since the last time she had checked? Maybe it would be quicker if she got out and walked.
Cam assured her that he was fine. Then she heard the chatter over the FBI radio that was in the front of the van. They were talking about explosions and body parts and causalities. She knew what happened to the human body would exposed to a denoted bomb. Limbs were torn from their sockets. Bones were splintered from the impact of being thrown against hard surfaces at high velocities. Vital organs were punctured by flying debris. She had seen all these things far too many times. After all, it was what she did. She had pieced victims of explosions back together more times they she wished to remember. Now she shivered involuntarily as she pictured Booth's body laying cold and broken against the steel of her labatory table, waiting for her to put him back together again.
No, she couldn't believe that he was fine until she saw him.
Cam tried to send a reassuring smile to the anthropologist. Brennan was good at hiding her feelings but in the close confines of the van Cam had a close view of Brennan's struggles. Cam knew he was all right, she had spoken with him and that was more than enough evidence to convince her that nothing was wrong. As much as Cam had good intentions, her words didn't go far in reassuring Brennan. She wished that she could be as calm as Cam was being. Then again, Cam wasn't in love with him, maybe that was the difference.
But she wasn't either, she quickly told herself. He was just her partner.
He was her partner that she was becoming increasingly more desperate to see. Her heart beat seemed to increase in intensity with each moment that she was kept from him by the horrendous DC gridlock, made worse by the holiday traffic and an early season snowfall. She kept seeing his face marred with abrasions and lacerations. She'd close her eyes to escape the concerned looks from her boss only to be met with images of Booth with blood seeping from gaping wounds in his thorax and abdomen.
Hodgins hadn't stopped talking for the entire trip to the crime scene. He was excited about the new magnetic gloves he had brought with him. Other than that, she had no idea what he had said. She only knew that she needed him to stop talking. How was she supposed to concentrate on not being worried if she couldn't even hear herself think? On the other hand she was somewhat relieved that he didn't seem to be nearly as attuned to her emotions as her other companion. She didn't need both of them realizing that she was waging an internal battle with her emotions.
It wasn't until she saw him, as she sprung from the back of the van before it had even came to a complete stop, that she could finally let herself believe that he was in fact, fine. She stopped, standing by the opened back door of the van, surveying the scene. She felt her entire body relax as she watched him walk the perimeter, controlling the situation. When she could take a deep breath and watch him doing what he did best, then she started to calm down. Cam smiled as she saw the visible change in her friend, going from the edge of breakdown and slipping back into the hyper rational, completely compartmentalized professional demeanor that she usually portrayed.
Once she was free from the confines of the van and had somewhat managed to pull herself together, she ran toward him. She stopped short of jumping into his arms. Mentally and physically holding herself back. She wanted to hug him. Actually, hugging him was the very least that she wanted to do to him. But this was the scene of an active criminal investigation and there would be no hug.
Besides, it's not like she loved him.
