{Hope you're enjoying things so far! This scene has a place somewhere between the last two episodes. Enjoy! :D}


Angela's first test had been a false positive.

Brennan pulled into a parking lot at the hospital, repeating the fact to herself over and over. Angela's first test had been a false positive, no need to panic.

Anyone who saw her wouldn't know she was panicking, of course. She looked cool, calm, and perfectly collected as she stepped out her small Toyota and headed into the Outpatient lab.

Inwardly, however, she felt jittery and unsettled. There was a kind of dread boiling around somewhere, but she tried not to focus on it.

No need to worry yet – right? False positive. False positive. False positive.

It was her lunch break, but she had decided to skip eating that day. She felt positively awful, her stomach churning in a raging coup against her body. She attributed it to her nerves, the sick feeling that her world might be about to change again.

But she'd been feeling this way for more than a week. By evening she was so exhausted she could hardly function, and she was weak from hunger because she could not bring herself to eat when she felt so ill. It was a virus she'd caught, that's all. A virus that was stirring up her stomach and making her extraordinarily tired.

Still, objectively she knew her symptoms could be evidence of something else. Something that had aroused her suspicions enough to take the first test. Objectively, she knew the possibility was very real. But objectivity was frightening, and so she chose to believe it was just a virus.

The little incriminating stick lay buried in the bottom of her purse. She couldn't seem to go anywhere without it. It had been in there, wrapped in a little plastic zip-loc baggie, for days now. It's two pink lines glaring brightly at her whenever she took it out to look, just to convince herself she hadn't imagined it.

When Angela was with Wendell, she had a scare too. A false positive.

That's all this was.

She walked into the hospital, immediately assaulted with scents she'd never noticed before. Antiseptic, sterile scents that were reminiscent of the lab, but not an exact match. Scents had become so much more noticeable to her now, probably since many of them made her nausea worse.

At the counter, she gave them her name and said she was here for a blood draw. It took a bit of explaining, but finally she convinced them of who she was and why she didn't have a doctor order the test. She was perfectly capable of understanding the results herself. She showed them her Jeffersonian I.D. to convince them she knew enough about the medical field to read the test.

With great reluctance, they agreed and took her back. The phlebotomist was a young girl, chipper and friendly and reassuring, even though Brennan wasn't afraid of a little poke. She located her vein easily and in a swift, well-practiced move she had the needle gently buried beneath Brennan's skin. She was good at her job, it hadn't even stung.

She complimented Brennan on her nice bleeding skills. Good heart, she said. Brennan said an awkward thank you, and watched the vial fill with deep crimson.

Scarcely two minutes later, she walked out of the hospital with a bandage on her freshly poked arm.

They said they told her to come back in a couple hours if she wanted to read the results.

Booth called her while she was out. They weren't working on a case right now, so he hadn't talked to her yet that day. He wanted to know why she wasn't at the lab.

"How do you know I'm not?" she asked.

"Because I am. I wanted to see if you would come with me to Sweets and Daisy's karaoke party with me tonight. I'm sure as heck not going alone. But Cam said you went out to lunch."

"Yes, I'm out," she replied. "Why do you want to go?"

"What are you doing? I'll come meet you."

"No," she said hastily. "I'm… it's… something to do with my dad." She winced. It was difficult to lie to him.

"Is he in trouble?" Booth's voice was low.

"No, he's fine. He just wanted the two of us to get some lunch. That's all." She leaned her head back against the seat, fighting another wave of illness.

"Oh. Right. Okay. So do you want to go?"

"To the party?"

"Yeah."

"No…"

"Come onnnnn. Let's at least show up for a few minutes and give the kid a little support. Then we can split and go grab dinner."

She sighed, not really in the mood to argue with him about it. "Fine. Just for a few minutes." Hopefully she'd feel less sick by the evening. She needed food, but at the moment she could not even entertain the thought.

There was a moment's hesitation. "You okay, Bones?"

"I'm alright, Booth," she replied, hoping that it would turn out to be true. "I just haven't quite recovered from that illness I contracted week."

"Oh, yeah, okay." He seemed to accept her answer well enough. "Well Angela's worried. She wants me to put her on the phone."

"Alright," she agreed quickly.

There was a brief sound of fumbling and then came the sharp demanding voice of her friend.

"Brennan! Where are you?"

"Ange, are you alright? Are you going into labor?" Brennan asked anxiously.

"No, sweetie, I'm not. But I could be, you know. And you wouldn't be here. I thought we were supposed to have lunch together?"

Brennan sighed. "I'm sorry. I can't today. Maybe we can tomorrow, if you aren't having your baby."

"You better have a good explanation," Angela sulked.

"I'm with my dad," she lied again. "I'll tell you about it sometime." Maybe. Depending on the results.

"Alright. Well, at least bring me back some fries from the Diner. I'd kill for some of those right now."

"I'll get some," she promised.

"Okay. See you in a bit."

"Bye."

There was another static exchange and Booth got back on the line. "So I'll come by and get you around seven. Good?"

"That's fine."

"Take something to feel better. You can be a little grumpy when you don't feel good. Daisy makes everyone grumpy, so, you know. Take precautions."

"I will." She smiled a little, despite herself.

"Alright."

There was a click and she knew he'd hung up. She looked at her watch. How to kill time for the next hour and forty-five minutes?


{...}


The phone ringing woke her up. She startled, fumbling around in her reclined seat to find the little vibrating brick. Her head felt foggy and disoriented, still struggling to come out of her deep, coma-like sleep.

"Doctor Brennan," she answered when she finally found it.

It was the hospital lab. Her results were in if she wanted to come take a look.

Suddenly her mind was razor sharp. She glanced up at the clock. It had been two and a half hours. She was still in the parking lot.

Her heart began to drum uncertainly in her chest as she told them she'd be right in. She got out of the car again, and once again made the long walk back into the outpatient lab.

It was going to be false – it had to be. She did not even wish to consider the implications of any other result. That little stick in her purse was wrong. It weighed so little, but having it the bag made it feel somehow heavier. It was a loud presence, and she determined that after she read the negative results, she was going to throw the thing out.

Her stomach still ached, but it seemed a little less queasy, if by a degree. She tried to rally herself, tried to drag her mind back into objectivity. Whatever the outcome was, she still had to return to work. She needed to get a hold of herself.

So, with a valiant attempt at stoicism, she approached the desk where they gave her a sheet listing the hormone levels they found in her blood.

She took it with thanks and walked over to a chair to sit down and read through it. Her hands started to tremble a little and all her resolve to remain cool and collected began to crumble.

She skipped over the other hormones, seeking out only that telltale hCG.

522 mIU of hCG found.

Silence enveloped her entirely – all the sounds of the hospital were sucked into a void. She was perfectly alone, starting down at those little black letters burned into the sheet of white.

522 mIU of hCG found.

About twenty days. Almost three weeks. She was already almost three weeks…pregnant.

A baby. She was going to have a baby! Even now it was becoming a person. A little heart had already formed. A child. Her baby.

The sounds came crashing back down around her and suddenly she was back in the world. She realized there was a tiny smile on her face and quickly killed it.

She quickly glanced through all the other hormones, just to make sure she was otherwise alright. Her other levels seemed to indicate she was exceptionally healthy, and the pregnancy was progressing normally.

Folding the paper carefully, she tucked it in her purse, pushing it down to the bottom next to the home pregnancy test – not a false positive, after all – and stood up to leave.

A curious sensation swept over her, a change in her perception of the world. She was now guarding an important secret. It separated her from the other women she walked past on the way to the car. She was creating life, right now, deep inside her. Nobody could see it yet – they didn't know. Right now, it was all her own.

For a brief moment, she felt a sweeping sense of joy and triumph and protectiveness, and a girlish laugh escaped her. She got into the car, buckling her seatbelt over her now precious cargo, and started the engine.

But just as quickly as the gladness had come, came now a crushing sense of disaster. This was going to change everything. She had tumbled off some irreversible cliff. She wasn't ready for this.

They weren't ready for this.

As she drove away from the hospital, for the first time, she thought of the other person involved. Her baby's father. How on earth was she going to tell him? Was she going to tell him yet? Eventually she'd have to, but she was suddenly scared. Nervous to tell him. Would he be upset?

They'd only been together a few times – and that time after Vincent's death was apparently when she had conceived. The day after, when he killed Broadsky, they'd gone to dinner with their friends and afterwards he'd driven her home. They didn't talk about it. She kissed him lightly on the cheek, telling him she was glad he was alive tonight, and went inside. He went home.

A few nights later, at her place this time, they gave in again. There was only one other time after that. They were together, but they hadn't really defined it yet, so they tried to keep things under control. And then she got sick – or, as she now understood, her symptoms started to take over. She was so tired at night that she was barely on her bed before she was out cold. She felt sick during the days, and her breasts were unbelievably sore, so that effectively killed her desires during the waking hours.

He hadn't said anything about it, but sometimes she wondered what he thought.

Now she really wondered.

One time. One time was all it took for their lives to jump its track and go spinning wildly out of control. Would he be angry? Would he ask her why she hadn't been on the pill? Would he panic and… what had he said? Panic and run into walls?

And what about her? Was she, herself, on the verge of that too? After careful thought, she decided she wasn't. Shocked, perhaps, and made dizzy by the sensation that someone had pulled the world out from under her feet. But this was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? So long ago, before they were together, before Hannah, before Maluku, before Sweet's book, before Booth's coma. She wanted his baby. Right? ...But that was a rational decision, made in a time when her life was under control and still going as she had planned.

Now, nothing was as she had planned. It was breathtaking and exhilarating, speeding off on this unknown trajectory, but now it had accelerated even more. She hadn't even grown used to the idea that she and Booth were together. Now they were irreversibly linked, so much more than together. Everything was so, so far out of her control.

This was something she had never imagined.

As she was driving back to the lab, she remembered Angela's request and stopped at the diner.

The moment she was inside, her stomach roiled once again in protest to all the smells that assaulted her. The smell of fried fish and burgers and chicken and potatos and every other awful thing that made her gag. She couldn't stand it – she wanted to run.

"Can I get you something, hun?" said the waitress with a smile. She knew Brennan. She knew everyone from the team. They came here so often.

"Fries," she managed to say, despite her revulsion. "To go."

"Alrighty." The waitress glanced at her at she was walking toward the kitchen. "You okay? You don't look so good?"

"Fine." Brennan didn't want to talk, she just wanted to get the fries and escape quickly before she lost whatever meager offerings remained in her stomach.

A few minutes later, she walked back out into the fresh air, clutching her bag of hard-won fries. She breathed deeply, gulping the air desperately.

This time she didn't wonder what bug she'd picked up that was making her so sick.


{…}


Back at the lab, she sought out Angela to give her the fries, feeling slightly less nauseous.

Angela was huge, that's all there was to it. She didn't puff up like some pregnant women did – no fat face or swollen cankles, but her belly protruded from her like a mountain. She seemed to be struggling with the burden more and more these days, hobbling around as if every movement made her uncomfortable.

Brennan watched her with anxiousness now, acutely aware that this would be her own fate in just a few months.

"Thanks Sweetie, I've been dying for these," said Angela, gratefully taking the bag.

Brennan sat down on her couch, suddenly seized with the desire to be near her best friend, even if she had no intention whatsoever of revealing the secret she now possessed.

"How was lunch with your dad?" Angela asked.

Brennan shrugged. "It was fine. He just wanted to talk about Russ and Amy and the girls. And my mom."

Angela glanced at her, searching for something. "Are you okay after a conversation like that?"

"Yes. I've come to terms with everything that happened. It's alright." How easily the lies came. And how strange, the sudden twinge she felt when she mentioned her mother, and thought of the little life forming inside her.

"Well, Booth was pretty bummed you weren't here." Angela slid the fries out of the bag, snagging one quickly. "You guys doing the whole girlfriend/boyfriend thing now?"

"No," said Brenna quickly. "I don't think that's what we're calling it. I don't know for certain. We haven't… been together since that first week. And even then, it only happened three times."

"But it's been over two weeks!" Angela protested.

"I know." And she did know. Oh how she knew. Twenty days, to be precise, since the first time.

"I thought we were over all this complicated nonsense."

Brennan looked down at her hands. "It's more complicated than I realized."

Angela snorted, chomping on her fry. "Well, I just hope you get it sorted out before this baby comes."

Doubtful, considering Angela could have it any day. Brennan watched her friend eat, wondering how on earth she could even entertain the idea of ingesting such odorous things. She wanted to ask if it got better – if the desire to eat returned after a while, but she didn't. She didn't because she knew the answer, she knew the facts about pregnancy, and she didn't because she didn't want her friend to suspect anything.

"Are you nervous?" she asked quietly.

Angela seemed surprised by the question, but she answered truthfully. "Terrified. Sometimes I get panicked when I wonder how on earth I'm going to get this giant baby out of me. Sometimes I think it wont be possible."

"It will," Brennan assured her quickly. "Your hips and pelvic area began to shift a long time ago, early in your pregnancy, to prepare more room for both gestation and birth. Besides, when you go into labor your cer-."

"Thanks, hun, I took the class," Angela interrupted. "I know how it's supposed to work, but sometimes it just feels impossible. It's kind of scary, you know. I have no idea what I'm doing. I've never done it before."

Brennan understood. She was scared too. She'd never done it before either, and she was hoping to learn from her friend's experience.

"But you know…" Angela's voice grew soft and a luminous, gentle smile tipped the corner of her mouth. "Most of the time, I'm more excited than scared. I just can't wait to meet him, or her. Even though I know our baby might be blind, I just want to hold him in my arms, kiss his little face, sing him a lullaby."

Brennan listened with quiet wonder, spellbound by the portrait Angela painted with those words. She couldn't even imagine it for herself yet. The idea was still too foreign. But it made something inside her grow warm and tender. She smiled. "You keep referring to it as male. Do you know for certain?"

"No," Angela laughed. "We didn't find out. But it's easier to just give the baby a gender. I hated calling him 'it'. If it's a girl, it's alright. She wont know that we referred to her as a boy before she arrived."

"That's reasonable." Brennan grinned, feeling at least a little better after the conversation. "Do you have everything you need for him?"

"Yep. Hodgins got the whole nursery put together a couple months ago; he got too excited. We're ready, as far as the physical needs go."

"I am happy for you." She looked down at her hands, a softer smile on her face. "It's so close now."

"Yeah, I have a hard time not thinking about it every second, day and night."

There was a brief silence as Brennan considered her own situation. She was a master at compartmentalization, she was confident that as soon as the novelty of her situation wore off – after she found the courage to tell Booth – she'd soon be able to think of other things. She hoped it wouldn't consume her every thought. Angela had managed well enough until the very end.

She shook her head. "You know what we need right now?"

"What?"

"A case."

Angela laughed. "Yeah, we need somebody to get killed so we can get our minds off the baby. No wonder we don't have friends outside of work."


{So finally, next chapter will be the post-finale scene. I haven't decided if I'm going to break it into two chapters or leave it as just a great big one. Anyway, should be up later today! R&R, please my lovlies. :D}