Word Count: 785
Disclaimer: Please don't sue
Spoilers: Aliens in a Spaceship, Mayhem on a Cross

Beacon

The darkness envelops her like a Turin shroud.

It steals her breath and clogs her pores and eradicates all logic.

In this blackness, all that exists is the heart.

Because here, there is no faint light seeping through the cracks of a locked trunk; light that allows the promise of freedom to live on in her mind.

There is no Hodgins, needing her to think and to hope, and to keep her wits about her.

Here, there is only the stench of human excrement and savage fear.

Only the echo of unanswered prayers from all those girls whose faces Angela had recreated with her sad eyes and deft hands.

Here, there is only the scampering of tiny feet. Bold. Encroaching ever closer.

She wonders if she too will be picked clean to the bone before her body is ever found.

Before Booth ever finds her.

Booth.

When she closes her eyes, to replace an imposed darkness with an invited one, all she can see is his face.

It's too late now, but she wishes she had told him. She wishes he had known.

Then again, she thinks, he probably had. He always does.

***

By her estimation, she has been here for somewhere close to 48 hours. There is no way out.

Her captor has not come back again.

Not yet.

She has survived far worse. Booth will come for her; she knows this, as surely as she can name all the bones in the human skeleton.

Yet some traitorous part of her desperately hopes that the last thing she ever sees is anything but this never-ending black.

***

The sound she hears is one she is not expecting.

The air around her vibrates as heavy blows reign down from somewhere beyond. The sounds are muffled, but she knows, and the extinguished spark of hope dares flare once again within her chest.

She wants to shout his name, to guide him. But her lips are cracked, and her throat is raw, and her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth uselessly.

She does the one thing that she has never been very good at; she waits.

There is a rumble, a shout. Metal hinges squeak out their protest as something heavy is thrown back.

A light from above fills her world.

"Bones!"

She blinks back unexpected tears. The light is bright, jarring, but it is his voice…. his voice that is her beacon in the dark.

She moves, reaching a trembling hand toward it, and he is there, large form backlit by the glow of salvation.

"Bones, thank God."

He's saying it over and over again, and she still hasn't said anything, and he's moving towards her with a speed she can't fathom. He's a hair's breadth away, grasping for her.

"Booth," she whispers.

A second shape on the staircase, and the spark is snuffed out forever.

"BOOTH!"

Too late.

She is helpless to do anything but watch as the bullet tears through him.

He collapses into her waiting arms, shock permanently etched into his handsome face.

She puts her hands over his chest and begs him to stay, as the very essence of his life courses thick and bright between her fingers.

There is a harsh bark of laughter, the squeak of metal, and that eternal darkness once more.

She screams through the silence, but it is too late for him to hear.

She is alone with her anguish, and her bleeding, dying heart.

***

The screams echo in her ears and she realizes that they are her own. Her eyes are unfocused and blurred with tears, and there is still darkness all around her.

She is sobbing, and shaking, and a hundred horrifying memories and fears blended into one nightmare come flooding back to the forefront of consciousness.

Hands reach out to grab her and she fights, because this is not a dream and she is not helpless or paralyzed. The hands are strong, and steady, but it is his voice… his voice that brings her back from the brink of insanity.

"Shhh, it's ok. I've got you Bones. I've got you."

He pulls her to him and whispers soothing words into the skin of her back, interspersing them with peppered kisses.

She can't look at him. Not yet. But the hammering in her chest subsides and her breathing evens, and the faint traces of early morning light filter in through the shadows of her bedroom.

She inhales, breathes him in, real and familiar and only so recently hers for the taking.

He knows, she thinks. Of course he does. He always knows.

She sighs against him, and his arms around her tighten.

The nightmares do not have as firm a grip as he.