Part Two

The Jeffersonian

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The next morning he walked through the Jeffersonian towards her office.
He didn't know what he was going to say to her.
Part of him wanted to ignore it. He wanted to ignore the fact that for the last twelve months, for the last five hundred twenty five thousand and six hundred minutes she was always on his mind.
He wanted to forget that she didn't show, and forgive that she broke their promise.
He wanted to just give her a "Hiya, Bones!" and introduce a new case.

More of him wanted to be angry.
To raise his voice and ask her why she didn't come see him.
That he thought they were closer than that.
That he wanted to push through this distance that had surface between them and force things back to the way they were.
Nothing really had to change.
He wanted so badly to have a drink with her after a case, pie and french fries at the diner, bickering in the car and hot blooded air guitar.

But the most of him wanted to be furious.
He wanted to yell at her, to make her hear his feelings.
To understand them this time. To really hear them.
He wanted to kiss her passionately, almost violently, telling her that after a year he still felt the same.
He still knew.
He still believed in 30, 40, 50 years.
And he would wait a lifetime for her to realize it.

xxxx

He halted when he turned into her office. The lights were on, her jacket hanging on the coat rack in place of her labcoat, her laptop on and silently glowing on top her desk, purse neatly tucked beside her chair.
He was taken aback.
He had almost been expecting the room to be empty, for the walls to be bare of art, shelves free of her books written in six different languages, two of which he had never heard of.
He hoped that when she didn't come see him, that maybe she just hadn't come home at all.
He was saddened when he realized that that she was here, somewhere, wandering around in a blue lab coat, hair tied neatly in a bun, working. Moving on. Unaffected.

He entered the room cautiously, feeling as if he shouldn't be there.
It seems that she had come back, started her life again right where she left it - except without him.
He wondered if she was planning on even working with him anymore, or if she had abandoned that as well.
Sighing, he placed the stack of letters on the center of her desk.
Dragging his fingers accross the smooth surface, he studied them.
They looked intimidating, messy, and out of place in her otherwise polished and organized office.
It appeared that he didn't fit into her life at all.

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