A/N: I'm honored that I got so many story alerts after Ch. 3! This chapter's on the long side, but for reasons that will become clear, I just couldn't bring myself to break it into two. I'm a bit nervous about posting it, that it might be too OOC, especially at the end. Please, please let me know, do me a favor and write me a note! Thanks so much for reading!

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, just the ones in my body.

Chapter 4: The Scientist

The couple walked down the stairs, the Washington Monument ahead of them with the Capitol Building in the distance. Brennan linked her arm around Booth's, and laid her head on his shoulder. She turned, as she always had done, to him for comfort. She was surprised, though, that he let her—and that he laid his head on top of hers as they walked slowly towards the monuments. Their movements seemed friendly, a closeness belying the intense emotions each had shared only moments before. Neither spoke anymore of going to the diner for food. She felt the strength of Booth's arm as she leaned against it, and she felt his arm trembling slightly. She wished, more than anything, that she didn't have to be the reason for his distress, but those were the facts as she knew them.

"I'm the gambler." He looked at Brennan and a small smile crossed her lips, a light in her eyes.

"I believe in giving this a chance. Look, I want to give this a shot."

"You mean us," she whispered breathlessly. Her eyes flitted to his lips and back to his eyes. He nodded, still uncertain, waiting for her to say more.

Brennan had known that Booth was going to say something from the moment Sweets reminded him that he was the gambler. The conversation had gone as well as she could have hoped, given the difficult emotionality of the circumstances. Booth's kiss—how desperately she wanted to be free to kiss him back, and she'd started too, naturally, happily—until she remembered that she shouldn't, not when she needed to tell him "no."

"Well, then let's go for a different outcome here, alright? Let's just - hear me out, alright? You know when you talk to older couples who, you know, have been in love for thirty or forty or fifty years, alright, it's always the guy who says 'I knew.' I knew. Right from the beginning." Booth's words weighed in her mind. How could he know? How could anyone know the future with any certainty?

Brennan could only fall back on what she knew best, the logical thinking had guided her as she'd decided, a while ago now, what to say to him. "Your evidence is anecdotal," she'd told him. "I am not a gambler; I'm a scientist. I can't change. I don't know how." Brennan's tears had surprised her, but the emotions they sprang from were genuine and for once she didn't try to hide them.

Brennan had known for quite some time that Booth was going to say something to her about their relationship. She'd been fairly certain for a while that his "atta girl" declaration of love was more than that.

"For once, make that work for you," Sweets had said to Booth, and realization dawned then in Brennan's mind that the moment she hoped she'd never have to face would come soon. Her mouth had opened slightly in surprise as she glanced at Booth to see how he took Sweets' words, and she saw in his face acceptance of the challenge.

Brennan could feel Booth sighing beside her, shaking a little, and her body felt much the same way, shaken despite the friendly pause in their conversation. He'd agreed to be her partner, which was all she could ask at that point. Even Brennan could see how much it pained him, though, to have her ask that. He'd seemed so sad, and truth be told, Brennan felt sad too, deeply sad that she had to hurt this man, that she simply couldn't give him what he asked.

Brennan had already dealt with her own sadness a couple of months before. One apparently ordinary night when they'd parted ways after drinks at Founding Fathers, she realized something. She'd gone home, tipsy from their drinks, and made herself a calming glass of tea that she intended to drink while sitting on the couch, but when she sat down, all she could think of was why wasn't Booth there on the couch with her, teasing her about her healthy hot beverage. And in that instant, she knew, too. Brennan realized that she cared for Booth as more than a partner, and the thought scared her half to death.

She didn't fear his betrayal, but she did fear hers of him. She spent the next several weeks analyzing his and her behavior, replaying in her mind all the conversations they'd had about love and marriage versus biology and social contracts, and the logical conclusion she came to was that no matter what her feelings were, she could never be what Booth wanted. She knew that for certain, but she hadn't predicted how difficult it would be to say the words, with him there looking at her so earnestly, with so much passion as he'd kissed her suddenly on the lips only moments before.

Above her head, Booth spoke, and she could feel his voice resonating in the bones of her cranium. She found she liked the sensation, but she knew she needed to hide it away in the growing box where she stored all such pleasant feelings and emotions pertaining to her partner.

"Bones, look, I respect everything you just told me. Including working with you. You know that, right? And I'm not going to push you on this, but... I need to know something."

"What is it?" She nodded her head under his, and again she felt his wobble. Her arm grabbed his a little tighter.

"Listen, Bones. I kind of sprung all this on you, I think. I need to know that you're not just making a quick, spur-of-the-moment decision. Not only for how bad this feels for me, though, which I'll admit is pretty bad. … It's just that I don't want you to regret what you say tonight. I want you to be sure—to be certain—that you're making the right decision."

Brennan stopped walking and looked up at him, turning to face him. They were almost to the Reflecting Pool with its benches. A few cars moved past them, but otherwise the evening was surprisingly quiet. She found that as she moved that her fingers slipped down his arm and as they passed over his hand, she took his hand in hers.

"Bones?" Booth asked at her touch, his voice so low and tired it almost held a note of warning. But his hand clasped hers back tightly as their other hands also joined.

Brennan looked him full in the face, trying to formulate the words she needed him to hear. "Booth, I am certain." Despite the redness and the damp of recent tears, her eyes felt clear now as they looked straight into his. "I'm not making a decision that isn't well thought out. You didn't surprise me. I have known for quite some time you might speak of your feelings for me, and have spent a good deal of time trying to determine my response. This is the conclusion I've come to." She let his eyes go from hers but their hands were still joined.

"I want you to look me in the eyes again, Bones, and tell me you won't regret this."

Brennan looked past him toward the monuments in the distance that had figured so prominently in so many of their conversations. "Look at me and say it," he repeated.

"This is the only logical choice, Booth." His eyes bored into hers, and she knew she hadn't said what he'd asked her to say. She glanced down once more but looked up again. "I won't regret this." She breathed the words out in a rush and tore her eyes away from his. She released his hands and started walking quickly, trying to shake off the tears that had come, unbidden, once again to her eyes.

"Bones!" he called after her. "Wait." She paused.

"It's okay. It will be okay," he said, touching her shoulder. She nodded and wiped the tears away. "I can't promise to understand, though, I'm not sure I'll ever quite understand your reliance on logic, but I know it's who you are and what you do."

Brennan nodded again. "Thank you." They resumed walking side by side, and Brennan noticed how their bodies bumped slightly as their hips swayed with the motion of walking.

"Did you act rashly?" Brennan asked quietly. "That's important, too."

"I hadn't meant to say anything to you tonight… about this, if that's what you mean." She nodded imperceptibly. "But yeah. You're right. I would have said something eventually, Bones. I think I'd always regret not trying. I couldn't have gone my whole life without knowing if there could be something between us, and if so, what it would be like. "

"Because you dreamed it about it during your coma?"

"No, because I feel it in my gut, Bones, that you and I, we could be something wonderful together."

"I wish I had your kind of faith, so that I didn't have to do this to you. I wish I had your kind of open heart."

Booth laughed gently next to her, and it was a sad and bitter sound. "Or that I had your kind of logic, so that I could simply put this night away in my mind and let it go." He sighed. Brennan glanced to her side at him. Did he really think this was so easy for her? No, she'd been crying and he'd seen it; surely he'd know she wasn't as cold as his words made her sound.

They'd arrived at the Reflecting Pool. The white glow of the monuments shimmered with the movements of the water, made more dramatic by the contrast with the darkness of nighttime.

"Booth? This won't be easy to compartmentalize, but you're right, I expect I will do so. And Booth?"

"Mmm."

"You're not a gambler anymore."

"You mean why did I let Sweets talk me into this, now?"

"Yes." She nodded. He sat down at their old familiar bench by the coffee cart, and Brennan joined him.

"Well, they say at meetings that a recovering gambler is still a gambler. You don't ever really lose it. It's always there, even if it's under the surface." Brennan nodded.

They had settled into their usual spots; Brennan to the right of Booth. She remembered how she'd nearly kissed his hand when he brought her coffee so long ago. To this day, she wasn't quite sure what had happened in that moment. They were sitting farther apart now than they had been in that long-ago morning.

Booth continued. "Just look. This is more than a gamble. That was Sweets' language, not mine. I know this in my heart. I just know it. I also know that you mean what you said, and I'm not asking you to change your mind. I'm just glad we can, you know, talk, clear the air." He paused. "I've got to ask you something else, Bones."

"Okay." She knew they'd both talk as long as they needed to in order to regain something of their equilibrium, and this bench was the perfect place to do that.

"Bones, I asked you years ago, when that guy came along and asked you to be with him, for real, for decades, I asked you to give it a shot. Did you think about what I said?"

"I didn't know it would be you, Booth."

His face pulled back into a grimace. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"What I mean is that I didn't think it would ever happen, Booth, not with you, not with anyone. I didn't consider that it might ever even be an issue." She looked at him, remembering his words to her on her couch so long ago. She really hadn't thought they'd ever be spoken again.

"So it's not just me, then." Booth's head slumped to his shoulders, looking away from her.

She shook her head. "Of course it's not, Booth. If it ever would have been anyone, it would have been you—you, the dreamer who lives widely, despite everything you know about me. And I'm honored by that." She glanced at him, and saw that he'd visibly blanched, as if stunned by her words, which sank in slowly. His face lifted. His eyes returned to hers with just the slightest bit of hope, the slightest softening in the depths of brown.

"Booth, I've already told you that I just can't do this." I am not a gambler, I'm a scientist. I can't change. I don't know how. She felt the tears again. "It's not that I don't care about you, really, it isn't. You, with your gut, you must know that I do, more and differently than I've ever cared for anyone. But what you want, the thirty, forty, fif"—Brennan's voice broke as her tears spilled over yet again that night—"a committed, married relationship, children... It's just not who I am, Booth. You know my history, you know how terrible I am at relationships, and you know my thoughts about everything you hold dear."

He nodded slowly, and Brennan saw that the brief light had passed again from his eyes. He looked up at her, and the sight made the tears start to fall again, he looked so sad and lost. Please don't look so sad.

"I don't want things between us to change, Booth. You're the most important person in my life, and I can't lose you. I can't," she repeated for emphasis. "I'd rather be your partner than risk… than risk what might happen were we to become something more."

Booth took both her hands again and said slowly, quietly, as he rubbed his fingers over hers, "You know that what we have goes way beyond work, way beyond partners. You're not pretending you don't understand, and I… that honesty means the world to me. Yet you say you can't be with me. I accept that, I have to. But why do I feel like we're having an ending before we ever really had a beginning?"

Brennan tried to smile at him. "In anthropology, we'd say that we're currently having a liminal moment, Booth. We're between different states of being. Earlier today, we were just partners. Right now, right here," she took a hand from his and wiped away the tears, but placed her hand back in Booth's big palm, "we're betwixt and between. We've left one state, and we have to rest here a while before we move onto… whatever comes next."

"So it's kind of like the Catholic view of limbo, then, except we're not dead, of course."

Brennan couldn't help but laugh. "Well, yes, if you include the 'not dead' part. And who would identify our bodies?" Booth laughed at her words too, and for a moment, his eyes were free of pain.

She moved closer and laid her head on his shoulder. Brennan found that even as she said no with her words, she wanted to feel closer to him just this once, just in this brief moment while she could. After the night had passed, she'd move on with her life. She'd take this evening and close it up in an ever-growing box deep within her mind. Booth didn't move away, but put his arm around her shoulder and held her close. She felt him kiss her on her hairline, and a shiver ran down her back at his touch. His arm squeezed her closer and Brennan felt protected, safe. If only she didn't have to do what logic dictated was the most proper course of action.

"Look at us, look at where we are," Booth whispered. She looked around at sparkling scene before her. "Partners don't sit on benches holding hands and crying, Bones. Can you truly not see or feel what it is you're giving up, what we could have?"

She turned to look at him. Emotions flitted across his gorgeous face, the face she'd spent so much time studying, but she couldn't keep up with everything she saw. Sadness, yes, a touch of anger, perhaps, and an intensity that had clouded his eyes to black, plus something else that she'd seen there before and which she suspected Booth would name as "love." She looked into his eyes and even though it made so little sense, she wanted to believe him, wanted to lose her logic in what she saw in his face. "Booth," she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. His hand smoothed her hair back as it blew in the wind, and lingered on his face. She put her hand over his and held it there, looking deeply into his eyes and face as he looked back at her.

Booth moved as if to say something, but Brennan cut him off. Without thinking, she kissed him, fiercely. She pressed her lips against his and her hands reached to grab his, but then she, too, knew the feeling of being pushed away.

"What the hell Bones! No, please! Don't do this to me!" He pushed her away, but as he did so, he enveloped Brennan in a huge, crushing hug. "Don't break my heart again and then kiss me! I don't know what you're doing!"

"It's not like kissing my brother at all," she whispered after a moment. "It's not a guy hug at all."

"I know, Bones, I know." His hand stroked her hair as they rocked back and forth. "Just don't do this."

"I'm sorry. I guess I needed to … before I can't anymore… before we move on to…" she wasn't sure what to say, and she hated being so incoherent. She felt her cheeks burn red under the moonlight. She'd wanted to taste his lips once more, before they became truly forbidden to her, but she hadn't realized the extent to which, in Booth's mind, she'd forfeited that right already.

"A break-up kiss. Of all the ironies, Bones…" He leaned back against the bench. "You know why I need to move on, don't you Bones?"

"I know. You want that life. You're almost in your forties, Booth, and awareness of your own mortality makes you want to fulfill your hopes and dreams. I truly want you to find that, Booth. I want you to be happy."

"Yeah. You've made your decision, and if I know you, you'll stick with it. You'll stick with it, even if I'm not sure I'll ever understand it. Especially given all of this, here, tonight." He gestured to the two of them on the bench, the Reflecting Pool, the monuments. She saw in his eyes that the white shimmer reflected in a pool of tears that had gathered there.

"That's why this is so hard to say, but Bones, I want you to… I need you to know … I don't know if I'll ever meet someone else, Bones. Maybe it won't happen, but I guess I just need you to understand… what might happen. You'll always, I mean, I'll always—" And with that, Booth's tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, but he didn't hide them from her.

Next to him Brennan had started crying too. "I do understand, Booth. And, for what it's worth, I… I'm sorry." As she spoke, Booth wiped his eyes, and passed her hand over her eyes as well.

"I know. I love you, Temperance Brennan. I'll always love you, even if… "

"I know, Seeley Booth."

R&R please! (Pretty please?) Short or long, critical, constructive, or just commentary, I'd love to hear it! Thank you in advance!