Brennan awakens. Her first instinct is to jump up, as her nerves have taken quite a beating the last few days. But in a moment, she feels a warm breath near her ear. Booth is asleep. She revels in this. His arm is slung around her waist and he is holding her closely, protecting her in slumber. She smiles at this. Booth is a hero in every sense of the word and his heroism even transcends his consciousness. Brennan wishes to stay like this, with Booth with his beating heart and steady breath. He had died. He had actually died and they had to restart his heart. At that moment, her heart stopped as well and it was bruised and swollen, attempting to recover from this.

She was surrounded by death every day. Death made her famous and wealthy and the moment death overtook Booth, she cursed it. She cursed the natural order of things. Her entire adulthood she preached rational thought and science, but for the first time, she turned to something intangible and something she could not measure in a beaker, as Booth once had told her. She prayed for his life, bargaining with the unknown and promising to change her life if she could just have him survive this. "How can one event shake the very core of all that I have stood for," she thought? It wasn't rational and it started to eat away at her. All of a sudden, she felt the need to bolt from the bed and get away as quickly as possible.

That's when she felt the blood on her back.

"Booth, wake up. Booth," she shook him. Booth opened his eyes and immediately held her tighter. "Five more minutes," he mumbled. Brennan giggled. It wasn't particularly funny, but Booth was bleeding on her, he was injured, and yet he acted as if this was just a normal day. "Booth, you're bleeding. I need to redress your wound."

Booth looked at her back and down at his chest. "Oh Bones, I'm so sorry. I ruined your shirt," he stated sheepishly. "It's fine, but let's get you up and redress it."

She pried herself from him and went to find the medical supplies the hospital had given him to tend to his wounds. It's funny that just a moment ago she wanted to get away from him, but as soon as she left his grasp, she felt cold, as if her body missed him immediately, as if her heart didn't beat as strongly without him. This was not an emotion or physical reaction she had ever had before. She was too independent to have ever felt it. She stopped in her tracks and willed her brain to process this revelation, but instead she decided to continue to the supplies and deal with it later.

When she returned to the bedroom, Booth was propped against the headboard. He was bare chested and despite the dribbles of blood, she was very aware of the muscles that comprised his chest, shoulders and abdomen. Booth was a fine specimen of a man. He was an alpha-male but his heart was of the purest composition and his body, well, Brennan could not argue with its perfection. He was chivalrous, without being demeaning, he was affectionate, without being greedy and he was humorous with just the right amount of cheesiness. Brennan's lack of social skills and her lack of immersion in popular culture made her unable to understand how rare Booth's existence really was in the world. She had no idea that any other woman would not believe that he existed.

Almost as if he could only exist as a fictional character in a book or in a television program.