A/N: Although Booth clearly tried to keep his emotions neutral while in the car with Brennan, how did her latest brush with death really affect him?

Chapter 2: The Omen (?) in the Outburst

After Booth dropped Brennan off at her apartment, he tried to sort out his emotions before he reached his own place. Now she realizes she made a mistake. What I am supposed to do about this now? She looked more emotionally honest and vulnerable than I've ever seen her, and I just left here there, alone. Because she asked me to, and because I can't comfort her the way I would like to, the way I should, because I'm not free. He laughed bitterly. She doesn't want me to, anyway. She'll be 'O.K.' she said. How can she be O.K. if she won't let anyone help her?

His thoughts were still swirling around the events and conversation of the last thirty minutes when he walked into his apartment. Hannah was sitting up, apparently waiting for him to come home.

"Seeley, I thought you would have been home a while ago," Hannah said, her concern clearly evident in her voice. Then she noticed his stormy expression and became more worried. "What happened? Why are you so wet?" He was clearly soaked but didn't seem to be aware of that fact.

Hannah's voice snapped him out of his trance. Hannah, he sighed inwardly, why do things need to be so complicated? "What happened? I'll tell you what happened." The anger in his voice grew as he remembered what he had saved his partner from earlier in the evening.

"Bones decided to go down to Woodland, by herself, at night and in the rain, to try and solve the case. She was looking at something in the street, and she didn't even notice that a car was heading straight for her! How could she be so careless!" The dominant emotion he had felt when he saw her in danger was gut-wrenching fear, but it was easier to be angry with her, especially after what she had said to him in the car afterward.

Hannah was surprised by the fierceness of his emotion toward Brennan and was momentarily speechless.

Booth continued his rant: "You'd think she was a little kid, always getting into trouble, never paying attention when she could get hurt! Parker knows not to hang out in the street, especially at night when it's raining, and he's only 10!" Booth was shaking his head now, the possibilities of what might have happened if he hadn't been there only increasing his anxiety.

Hannah could see that Booth was clearly upset, and perhaps not only by tonight's incident. She reached a tentative hand out to touch his forearm. He shrugged off her attempt at comfort.

"One of these days or nights she's going to get herself into trouble and I'm not going to be there to pull her out! Then what's she gonna do?" He tried to keep the rising fear out of his voice, and partially succeeded.

"Booth!" Hannah almost shouting, bringing his attention back to her. "You need to calm down. Relax—you were there to save her." Booth looked at his girlfriend, realizing that he was making a spectacle of himself in front of her. He allowed her to put her hand on him now, accepting her calming presence. "You took care of your partner. It's one of the things I love about you." She smiled up at him, hoping his emotions were now spent—it was getting late and she needed to get some sleep.

At her use of the word 'partner,' Hannah thought she saw an almost haunted look creep into Booth's eyes. "But have I really been a good partner to her lately?" Booth asked, his voice now devoid of anger and filled with sadness and regret. "Maybe if I had been more observant about how much this case was affecting her, and checked up on her more often, she might not have gone down there alone."

Hannah considered this, wondering how she could respond to make him feel better. This was the most emotion he had shown regarding Brennan in some time. "Seeley, you've told me that she does her work in the lab, and you do your thing at the FBI—and if she needs your help she calls you. There's no way you could know what she's doing all the time—that would be impossible."

Hannah stopped, pondering what she had just said. If Temperance hadn't called him, how had he been there to save her from the car? She looked at Booth, seeing a level of sadness in his eyes which had not been present since he had left Afghanistan. I knew he cared about his partner, his friend, but this level of emotion is usually associated with someone you love.

"How did you happen to be there, to pull her out of the street," Hannah asked, trying to keep her tone neutral and not display the tug of jealousy she was starting to feel.

If Booth heard anything in her tone, he didn't acknowledge it as he answered matter-of-factly: "I realized she had been acting oddly, even for her, and remembered that she'd said she hadn't been sleeping much, so I was on my way to the Jeffersonian to check on her." His eyes got a far-away look as he remembered how he had felt leaving the FBI building, a sense of urgency building in chest. "When I saw her come out of the building and get into a cab, I wanted to follow her to make sure she was going home."

Hannah had never believed in premonitions—she was like Dr. Brennan and far too practical for that kind of nonsense—but it certainly sounded as if Booth had had some kind of feeling that Temperance had needed him. She shook off that notion as being ridiculous—it was just as Booth had said: he had observed several deviations in Brennan's normal behavior and decided to check up on her, like any good friend would.

"Let's go to bed. I'm tired, and we both have lots to do tomorrow," Hannah said, drawing closer to Booth and putting her arm around his waist. "Oh, you're still wet!" she commented.

Booth looked down at his sodden clothes as if seeing them for the first time. "Yeah, I guess I am. Why don't you go to bed, and I'll take a warm shower and put on some dry clothes." He gave her a quick kiss on the top of her head before leaving her staring at him as he went into the bedroom. Hannah had hoped to do some more comforting of her boyfriend before they went to sleep, but Seeley's mind was clearly elsewhere.

Hopefully things will be back to normal tomorrow, Hannah thought to herself and she climbed into bed. But in the back of her mind she started to think about all the ways in which Brennan and Booth had an atypical relationship for people who claimed to be only friends and work partners. Her last thought before drifting off to sleep was that she should use her investigative skills to look more closely into Seeley's relationship with his 'partner.'

A/N: If Hannah is as good a reporter as she claims to be, surely she'll start putting the pieces together about the true nature of Booth and Brennan's partnership? Thoughts, anyone? Thanks.