Often Quoted Quotes Quoted One More Time

By: Lesera128

Rated: T (for now)

Disclaimer: I own nothing... Obviously. Just playing in someone else's sandbox for a bit.

Summary: A series of linked but very AU one-shots that pose a glimpse at Booth and Brennan's relationship from perspectives inspired by famous BB quotes.

Chapter 1 – "Got the Signal"

Quote: "I got the signal, Booth. I don't want to have any regrets."

-OPEN WORD DOCUMENT-

The benefit of writing things down isn't because I want to make a record of what has happened to me in life. No, the real benefit comes in the process of actually writing my thoughts down. I find that if I write things down, as I put my thoughts into words, I can use the exercise to work through a problem that I am trying to analyze. That is one of the reasons I can say, technically, that I have never kept a journal. At the end of the exercise, once I am finished writing whatever it was that I was thinking about, I delete the file or burn the paper. There is no intrinsic value to maintaining an archive of my thoughts as the value is in the initial creative outburst. So, in this case.,. the 'delete' button is again my friend once I've finished the analytical exercise.

I started writing this document the evening I returned from the Maluku Islands… or approximately 12 hours after I left DC… or about 18 hours after I awoke to find a hallucination of my dead mother spouting prophetic mumblings of what was going to happen in my life if I showed up at the airport that morning. Whatever that thing was, as I firmly believe it wasn't my dead mother returned to life, it didn't convince me not to go to Maluku. After I finished listening to what the hallucination had to say, I calmly got up, got dressed, called a cab, took the cab to Washington National, said goodbye to Angela and… somewhat unexpectedly Booth, got on the plane, and left DC. Washington to Atlanta. Atlanta to San Francisco. San Francisco to Honolulu. Honolulu to Tokyo. Tokyo to Jakarta. My arrival in Jakarta would put me technically within the nation of Indonesia, and a series of boat and jeep rides from Jakarta would have brought me to our camp and dig site in the Maluku Islands approximately twenty-two hours after I left DC. However, none of that ever happened.

I only actually made it as far as the connection from Reagan to Hartsfield Airport. The flight from DC to Atlanta took a little less than ninety minutes…. We had to circle a bit due to inclement weather. If Booth were there, he would have taken that as a sign that I was acting in a manner that would adversely impact my life if I didn't make up my mind to end the 'insanity and 'go for a different outcome'. However, I took the delay to mean that I had extra time to contemplate all that had occurred to me since my hallucination had awakened me at 3 o'clock this morning, and to see if there were any decisions that I needed to consider altering...

She...? It….? *It*.

It *had* told me things that it correctly assessed as things I did not like to hear.

Seven months, it told me… 28 weeks was all the time I had to work with if I didn't want to end up with the series of outcomes the hallucination painstakingly and explicitly outlined for me. 28 weeks is not a lot of time. In fact… I had less than twenty weeks if I was going to do what I needed to do to be in a place to effect the most drastic change in the final eight weeks of that period.

When the hallucination had finished speaking, I allowed it the luxury of hugging me and saying goodbye... even though such indulgences were meaningless since I was hugging and saying goodbye to a hallucination. From a medical standpoint, I decided I would have to have a new MRI scheduled once I arrived in Indonesia. My last medical work up was completed by my doctor only twenty-two days ago, and the physical had come back telling my doctor that I was in perfect health, but still, something caused the hallucination, and at some point, I would need to find out what that something was… However, since this was the first and only time I can say I have ever hallucinated something, I feel less of a pressing need to seek medical information in light of the fact that I was supposed to leave for Maluku in only a few hours. If I had another hallucination, I would become more concerned, but, for now, the dig took priority.

I thought little of what the hallucination said as I got dressed and left for the airport. I didn't really ruminate on what is said as I gave hugs of goodbye to Angela. As Daisy pressed me to expedite our departure, for the first time, I felt a tiny knot appear in the pit of my stomach. I glanced across the airport, and there he was…. Just as she… just as *it* said he would be. Dressed in fatigues… looking that *look* that he has… that *look* that it said I should know by now was *mine* alone. There he was giving me that look, in the middle of the airport, and it drew me to him. We exchanged words of goodbye… but it was the continued lingering effect of that *look*… complicated by *that* touch… that one, last, final lingering touch which actually started to plant seeds of doubt in my mind. How could a hallucination know how Booth would look at me? How could it know how he would touch me? True, the touch was just a simple caress of hands… but how could it have known? How could it have known that no more accurate a description of it could have existed when my mother… *no*, my hallucination told me that was the last time he would look and touch me knowing that he was mine if I didn't do something? How could a hallucination know how I would *feel* when even I didn't possess that information at that particular point in time?

As I said, I was unsettled to say the least after I said my farewells to Booth. But, despite how I began to feel just a bit unsettled, still I said goodbye. Still I turned away from him. Still I walked to the terminal with Miss Wick. Still I got on that plane and left. What I didn't do was push that look, that feeling of his final touch out of my mind. What I did do was focus and begin to analyze the evidence of Booth's final look and last touch in juxtaposition with what the hallucination had said...

If I didn't stop things, if I allowed the current set of events to continue to play out uninterrupted, I would loose the very two things that I cherished and valued more than anything in the world… my work at the Jeffersonian and my partnership with Booth. True, the hallucination said eventually I would get them back… but they wouldn't necessarily be the same when I did… nor would any of the people involved. And how much pain would I have to experience in-between the loss and the reacquisition of the two things that meant more to me than anything else that I could possibly conceptualize?

Ultimately, it was Booth's final glance that was the reason that when I got off the plane in Atlanta, I didn't make the connecting flight with Miss Wick to San Francisco. Ultimately, it was Booth's final look that made me swear Daisy to secrecy about my change in plans so that everyone would continue to think I had departed for Maluku and would be spending the next year in Indonesia. Ultimately, it was my fear at losing the two most important things in my life that led me to book a first class seat back to DC on an evening flight that departed several hours later.

I spent the time in the first class lounge with my laptop and my brain as I pounded out the details of these events and considered the ramifications of my actions. No, hallucinations cannot foretell the future. I decided, as I completed writing in my word processing document, that I did not act in the way I did because I believed what the hallucination told me. I did, however, believe in Booth's final look. If there was even the slightest possibility that the significance of his look indicated that I could lose my place at the Jeffersonian… and that I could lose him, I owed it to myself to take all the proper steps I could to safeguard both of those treasured things. I would call no one, inform no one at this point of the change in my plans. Booth… Booth would be back on his base now, and shortly deployed to Afghanistan. I would only interrupt his work if and when it became clear to me that I had no other choice to do so. Until then, I would take the necessary precautions. I would fix things so that I would not lose the Jeffersonian or Booth. Not because a hallucination had told me I was working on a twenty-eight week deadline. No, I would do it because of his look, his touch, and the reason that it was the right thing to do. That much is clear, now, as I write these words. I have made the right choice, I will do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. I got the signal... and this time, this time I won't have any regrets.

-DELETE-

-TBC-