A/N: So I know that it's all dark and twisty and that's not everyone's style, but I appreciate the amount of story alerts and would still like to hear people's opinions, good or bad. Don't be afraid to review! This chapter is dedicated to Silvertounge, for the awesome review that spurred me on to get this chapter written.

Recap:

"That's not what I meant." Booth said as seriously as he ever had. When he finally allowed himself to look Hodgins in the eye, Hodgins couldn't help but be surprised by the certainty that lay in the agent's gaze. "I can't do this anymore."

Hodgins stared at Booth in shock for a minute before shaking his head.

"No. Booth, you can't make any decisions right now. You're hung over, you just got dumped, and you had one of the biggest fights since Ali vs. Frazier with your best friend and partner." Hodgins said. "Trust me when I tell you that you need to wait a while and think this through." He requested.

"Face it Hodgins, 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome'." Booth said sourly. "I need a different outcome." He said quietly before standing up and starting to walk back to his bedroom.

"If you make a rash decision, you're going to hate yourself for it later." Hodgins called after him, causing Booth to pause.

"What can I say? Apparently, impulsivity is what I do best." Booth said before slamming his bedroom door shut.

OOOOO

"Angela, this isn't going to help me." Brennan said as she shut off the television. "What I need is to process and I can't process sitting on the couch." She said.

"You're not going to the lab." Angela refused the upcoming request before Brennan could ask it. "Sorting through bodies in limbo is not going to help you process, it's going to help you ignore your situation until you've completely forgotten why you were upset in the first place." She said, knowing it was true.

"You don't have to worry about me forgetting, Ang." Brennan said sadly, the tears welling up in her eyes again.

"Oh, honey." Angela said, wrapping her arms around her friend and pulling her close again.

"How are we ever going to work together again after this?" Brennan asked. "Irreparable damage has been done."

"Nothing is irreparable." Angela said, believing it to be true.

"The last time we were even close to arguing, we didn't see each other for over a year. This is…" She paused to take a deep breath. "That didn't even come close to this." She said. Angela just held her tightly on the couch until she finally fell asleep, the lack of sleep and emotional exhaustion finally catching up with her.

OOOOO

Angela had just covered Brennan with a blanket when Hodgins returned from his visit to Booth's.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?" He asked Angela as he glanced at the sleeping Brennan and motioned for the hallway.

"How's Booth?" Angela asked as they shut the door behind them.

"Booth," he paused, still unable to believe what he was about to say "is threatening to quit." Hodgins said.

"What?" Angela said in a harsh whisper.

"Actually, he told me that he is quitting." He said. "He said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results and he said that he couldn't do it anymore; he needed a different outcome." He said with a sigh. "He was a total wreck, Ang, I've never seen anyone look that defeated before."

"This cannot happen. It would destroy Brennan forever, you know that right?" She said, a fire in her eye as she thought about her friend's pain. Hodgins simply nodded.

"You should go home and rest, take a shower, get some lunch…" he rattled off the list of things for her to do as he handed her the keys to his car. "I'll stay here with her for a while."

"Are you sure?" Angela asked. He nodded. "Okay, but not a word about Booth. You know that as soon as she wakes up and figures out I'm gone, she's going to press you for information." She said as she gave him a kiss goodbye.

"We'll be fine. Go." He said.

OOOOO

Twenty minutes later, Booth had emerged from the shower just in time to hear keys in his door again.

"God damn it." He muttered as he threw on some pajama pants and headed out to greet the next wave of visitors. "Hodgins, when are you going to take the hint and keep your squinty ass out of my…" He asked as he walked out into the hallway. "Oh Ang." He said, suddenly feeling scared by the look that was in her eyes.

"'Oh Ang' is right." She said as she walked into his apartment. She was still wearing the same outfit she had on the day before and Booth knew that she was probably coming off of an eighteen hour shift with Brennan.

"What are you doing here?" He asked her.

"I'm here to check up on you, and to hear your side of the story." She said.

"I figured you would just take Bones' side and start hating me." He said honestly.

"There are no sides here." Angela said, the annoyed tone in her voice staying put. "And if there are, we all work for the same side. We might have been Brennan's people first, but we're your people now too." She said. "So spill…"

"What is there to say?" He asked as he sat down on the couch.

"For starters, why don't you explain to me why you are thinking about quitting the best thing that ever happened to you both personally and professionally?" She asked.

"You talked to your husband."

"Brennan took a break from crying long enough to take a nap." The comment was meant to sting and it worked. Booth felt the knot in his stomach clench a little tighter. He hated that he had caused her pain, but she had caused him pain too. They were at a standstill in that department. "You're not a quitter, Booth." She said. "Something else is going on here. There's absolutely no logical reason for you to walk away."

"It has nothing to do with logic." He said. "Of anyone, I hoped that you would understand that."

"Maybe I've been in the lab too long." She said. "But when you are threatening to walk away from your job, your best friend, the love of your life…" she paused dramatically "you must have a reason." He thought about that statement.

"When did my entire life start revolving around Bones?" He asked her, honestly wanting to know. "I thought about it last night and I couldn't figure it out. One day, she's just my partner and then she was my best friend and the next thing I know, she's everything." He said.

"It doesn't happen overnight Booth." Angela said. "It takes years. You two have been in love with each other for years." She said, knowing it was true. "You two just never did anything about it."

"I did!" Booth said. "I went there and she didn't." He clenched his jaw. "If she wanted to be with me, she could have just said something. Anything!"

"Why would she?" Angela wanted to know. "She hasn't had a reason to think she could be with you."

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Booth was starting to get angry again.

"Six years ago, she asks if you're seeing anyone, you tell her yes. Besides that, you inform her that there is a no-dating policy at the FBI."

"That was our first case! It was years ago."

"Three years later, you say that you're never going to date a co-worker ever again because it's too dangerous. Two years after that, you tell her you love her and add the phrase "atta girl" to the end of it." Angela pointed out. "That's where you got it wrong. You said that she had years of chances. In reality, she had one chance to be with you. In the six years you've known each other, she had a thirty second window, and yes, she balked at the word 'try'. You can't really blame her for that. Science is always going to win out with the squints, Booth. They will always choose the answer with the biggest pile of evidence." She said. "Oh, and if you so much as think about quitting this job without trying to make it work first, the next time that you see the inside of that lab will be when squinterns are picking pieces of you out of a bone bag." She said as she walked out.

OOOOO

"How are you feeling Dr. B?" Hodgins asked as Brennan emerged from her bedroom after a nap and a shower.

"I think I've felt so much in the past twenty four hours that I've stopped feeling."

"You're numb." Hodgins said, knowing the feeling. "I felt the same way after Angela and I broke up."

"But biologically speaking, pain is important. It's the way we know that we are still alive, still functioning, without it, we're dead." She said, the slight lilt of panic in her voice didn't go unnoticed by Hodgins.

"You are not, nor could you ever be, dead inside." He said with a small smirk. "You're just in too much pain to process it all at once."

"You're suggesting that I'm in emotional shock." She said, wanting to get scientific so she would finally understand what she was going through.

"Exactly." He said. She thought about this a moment before turning to face him.

"You are a scientist. You understand probability." She stated. "Tell me honestly, do you think that Booth and I will be able to overcome this?" She asked. Hodgins looked down at his hands, unsure of what to say.

"I think that sometimes, you have to go through the pain in order to get to the happiness." He said.

"I don't know what that means." Brennan said.

"Like bones remodeling." Hodgins offered, comparing it to something she could relate to. "If a bone is broken and then re-calcifies incorrectly, sometimes you have to re-break the bone so that it can heal properly." He said. "You and Booth broke apart. You separated for almost a year and when you came back from your time apart…

"We re-modeled incorrectly?" Brennan asked.

"You both claimed to be happy and refreshed, but in reality, you two were even more of a mess than before you left. Maybe this fight will be the re-break that sets your relationship on the course to healing properly. I can't tell you what will happen, but I do know that if anyone in the world can find away to make this work, it's going to be you two. You're both so stubborn. Politics, religion, serial killers, brain tumors, nothing can stop you two." He said with a grin. Brennan smiled softly at his attempts to make her feel better and reached out for his hand.

"Thank you. That's much better than Angela's theory that ice cream can cure emotional pain." Hodgins smiled.

"I'm the brains of the operation and she's the heart. You need both to function." He said. "Between the two of us, we'll have you healed and digging through crime scenes in no time." Brennan faked a smile as she wondered what her 'heart of the operation' was doing at that very moment.

OOOOO

"Camille." Booth said as he held open the front door for her.

"Sorry to bother you, but it couldn't wait." She said as she walked in.

"What do you need?" He asked.

"I need to know how bad things are between you and Dr. Brennan." She said honestly. "I know it's not the right time and that you both must be going through a lot but if this partnership breaks up, my job and my lab are both gone. I need to know." She said again. Booth sighed and sat down on the couch.

"I don't know what to tell you Cam. Things aren't looking good."

"What happened?" She asked. As he filled her in on the fight, she couldn't help but think this was a good thing for both of them, despite the pain that they were now feeling.

"So, you basically told each other how you have felt for the last five years, but you just happened to be screaming at each other when you did it?" She clarified. Booth shrugged.

"I guess so."

"Wow." She said, unable to say anything else.

"Do you think that this whole thing was my fault?" Booth asked, suddenly feeling vulnerable.

"Entirely your fault?" Cam shook her head. "No."

"She thought it was." Booth said.

"Fifty percent of it is definitely your fault." She said unmercifully. "The whole "Bringing home a serious girlfriend as a souvenir" thing was, admittedly, hard to swallow after everything you claimed to have wanted before you left." Cam said.

"I told her I wanted more and she shot me down. What was I supposed to do?"

"Fight for her." She said, as if it were obvious. "And she didn't shoot you down. You assumed that she would shoot you down and then when she tried to explain her side of the story, you just heard the word 'can't' and stopped listening. I get it, your heart was lying there on the sidewalk and you heard what you expected her to say so you pulled back as fast as you could. And in true Brennan fashion, she followed your lead."

"What? When has she ever followed my lead?" Booth said. "Bones is the most fiercely independent woman I've ever met."

"When it comes to the heart, Dr. Brennan feels… unversed." Cam said, searching for the right term. "She watches you, like an expert witness of things she doesn't know, and trusts that you know what is best. She always has followed your lead on things like this."

"So this is all my fault." Booth said.

"No, she could have stopped it at any point in time and she chose to remain silent. She's just as much to blame as you. If she's loved you for six years, she should have said something."

"Thank you." He said, glad that someone was finally taking his side.

"Booth, from what I've heard, it sounds like you two are on the same page, you're just speaking different languages." She said. "You're both upset because you love the other and have felt betrayed in the past by that person. She's waited for you for a long time, and now the ball is in your court. If you want a relationship with Dr. Brennan, all you have to do is apologize and prove to her that you're willing to stick around."

"Turn the pile of evidence in my favor." He said as she stood up.

"Exactly." She said. "That's all she's ever needed."

"Thanks Cam."

"See you tomorrow?" She asked hopefully.

"We'll see." He said, still undecided. She nodded in concession.

"Call me if you need anything." She said before turning and leaving Booth alone to contemplate all that she had just told him. It was going to be a long night.