A/N: Out of the 3657 songs on my iTunes, this song is number one on my Most Played list. I adore it. This chapter is dedicated to anyone who has ever ended a relationship without actually being in a relationship to begin with. If you've been there, you know.

Time to tell me the truth
To burden your mouth for what you say
No pieces of paper in the way
'Cause I can't continue pretending to choose
The opposite sides on which we fall
The loving you laters, if at all
No right minds could wrong be this many times

Cam strode into Brennan's office to witness a scene that she had never seen before. Brennan and Angela were in a stare down, Brennan's arms were firmly folded across her chest and she was holding a note in her hand. Angela was throwing her arms in the air in frustration, trying to convince the anthropologist of something that she wasn't willing to hear.

"Honey, I'm telling you, things are getting serious between them. You know that all you have to do is say the word and he'll be back here so fast your head will spin. I don't know why you aren't willing to take the chance! If you don't fight for him now, you might miss your only shot at happiness!"

"We've missed hundreds of chances, Ange! Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason that we kept missing the chances is because it wasn't supposed to happen?" Brennan said. Angela fell silent. "Everyone, myself included, believed that it was just a matter of time. If and when the time was right, it would all fall into place and work out. But clearly, that's never going to happen!"

"You don't know that unless you try!"

"I did!" She finally yelled, taking both Angela and the still unnoticed Cam by surprise. "I told him and it didn't change a thing." She said. "Actually, that's not true." She corrected herself bitterly. "Now, he can't even be in the same room with me. He has stopped talking to me altogether outside of a case. We communicate through texts and these silly pieces of paper left on each other's desks." Brennan said as she slammed the piece of paper down. "He chose Hannah. He wants Hannah. The faster you get used to that idea, the easier it will be on everyone."

My memory is cruel
I'm queen of attention-to-details
Defending intentions if he fails
Until now, he told me her name
It sounded familiar in a way
I could have sworn I'd heard him
Say it ten thousand times
If only I had been listening

"But you do admit that love is an idiot, right?" She said, wanting him to at least agree on that point. They were walking side by side after solving their chocolate case and despite the tension, Brennan was hopeful that tonight would be a Hannah free environment for at least a few hours. Everyone had been all too aware of his lack of presence around the lab lately and she had defended him to the others, stating that he had just been busy getting back into the swing of things and then he had been busy helping Hannah adjust to life back in the States. She had told them all the things that he would have said to them, had he actually been around to say them. However, his excuses were running low as they had been home for almost six weeks now. This could finally be a time to sit around a Founding Fathers table with the rest of their makeshift family and celebrate, just like old times. Her dreams were shattered at the ringing of Booth's cell phone.

"Oh look at that. Hannah's back." He said, waving his cell phone in his hand. He glanced at it before turning around to face her. "Um, you know, this whole thing that we're going to here?"

"The official announcement that Angela is pregnant?" She said, hoping to convey the importance of the event.

"Yeah. I feel, um, I feel pretty stupid pretending." Unlike love, Brennan wasn't an idiot. She knew what he was trying to do.

"You're trying to find a justification so you can go home and have sex with Hannah, right?" She said.

"Yeah." He said only feeling slightly guilty. "Plus, we already all know anyway." He validated his point in his own mind.

"But Hodgins doesn't know we know." She told him, knowing that Booth might be persuaded to do it for Hodgins' sake.

"Yeah, but Angela says that if you can't pretend not knowing then you shouldn't go, so I shouldn't go." Getting frustrated, Brennan tried one last trick. She played to the basest of his weaknesses, his own guilt.

"If you want, I can lie to all of our friends and say that you have pressing FBI business." She offered, assuming that it would trigger his Catholic guilt and make him stay. His face twisted for a second and she thought that he had come to his senses.

"I don't like the idea of lying to our friends," he started "but I'm going to go with it. Thanks." Brennan stood there, dumbfounded.

"Uh, tell Hannah 'Welcome home'." Brennan said as she watched an unrecognizable man walk away down the dark street. Brennan walked into the bar and sat down at the table. Cam looked around before realizing that Brennan had arrived alone.

"Don't tell me…." She said, not wanting to believe the worst in one of her oldest friends.

"He had pressing FBI business." Brennan said, covering for him once again, but this time, not bothering to sell the lie. Sweets looked at Cam and Brennan. Cam sighed and leaned back in her chair, disappointed in his choices. Sweets was brave enough to say the name out loud.

"Let me guess, Hannah?"

Hannah. Brennan knew that, for Booth, it was the name that had now become synonymous with his dream life. It was like it had always been there, whispered latently, lingering just below the surface whenever he spoke of his future perfect life. But now, that unknown entity finally had a name, a face. Hannah was everything that Brennan could never give him. Hannah was simple. Hannah was uncomplicated. Hannah was beautiful and smart and easier to love. More importantly, when Booth looked at her, he believed that he could have that perfect life, have it all, with her.

For everyone else, however, Hannah had become a four letter word. Brennan had been so consumed in Booth's recent abandonment of her that she hadn't realized that he had abandoned them all. He had let them all down in one way or another and that hurt almost worse. At least she had done something to deserve it, the others were just paying for her crimes against him.

Leave unsaid unspoken
Eyes wide shut unopened
You and me
Always between the lines

I thought I, thought I was ready to bleed
That we'd move from the shadows on the wall
And stand in the center of it all
Too late, two choices, to stay or to leave
Mine was so easy to uncover
He'd already left with the other
So I learned to listen through silence

"How is Dr. Brennan handling this?" Sweets asked Angela later that night.

"She came home expecting to start a relationship with him and instead she found out he was in love with a beautiful blonde reporter. How do you think she's handling it, Sweets?"

"I would imagine she feels replaced." Sweets asked.

"I feel replaced and I'm not even in love with the man." Angela said honestly. "When was the last time you saw him outside of work?" She asked the table. "Not since Hannah arrived." She answered for them.

"I, for one, thought that the time apart would make them realize how much they belonged together." Cam said.

"It did happen. Just not for him." Angela said. Everyone fell silent as Brennan made her way back from the bar with a new round of drinks for everyone.

"Stop looking at me like that." She told them all. She knew that she was a topic of conversation lately, but she refused to be treated like some helpless lovesick teenager. "We all just need some time to get used to the way things are now. We can adjust." She promised them as she handed the drinks out. "Besides, if Booth's happy, then we should be happy for him." They all knew that she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince them.

Leave unsaid unspoken
Eyes wide shut unopened
You and me, always be...
You and me, always be...

Despite Brennan's assurance that she would be okay. Cam wasn't impressed by Booth's actions and so the next day, she cornered him in his office.

"Hey Cam. What are you doing here?" He asked with a smile. She shut the door behind her.

"You might want to stop smiling. I'm here to yell at you." She told him honestly. Booth frowned as he searched her for a reason. "You skipped out on Angela and Hodgins' baby announcement? To do what? Have sex with Hannah?"

"Cam…" He said, not sure what he was going to say to defend himself. What could he say? She knew that he had nothing so she called his bluff and waited for him to continue. He didn't.

"Look, I know that you are in that happy, stupid, honeymoon part of your relationship. Hannah just moved in and you're all adorable playing House, I get it." She said. "But you've effectively discarded everyone else in your life for her! More importantly, think about what you've asked your partner to put up with." Booth got a fire in his eyes at the mention of Brennan, telling Cam that it was clearly a sore spot for him.

"What's going on between me and Bones is none of your business." He told her, getting angry and defensive, a deadly combination for him.

"Maybe not, but you disappointed everyone with the choice you made last night, Booth. Myself included." She told him. "And for what? A few hours of sex?" She shook her head. "I hope it was worth it." She walked out of his office, leaving Booth sitting there wondering just how much damage he had actually caused in his selfishness.

I tell myself
All the words he surely meant to say
I'll talk until
The conversation doesn't stay on
"Wait for me, I'm almost ready,"
When he meant "Let go,"

Brennan was sitting at her desk when Booth tapped sheepishly on the doorframe. She glanced up but couldn't hide the shock on her face at seeing him in the lab. She had assumed that he wouldn't set foot in the place willfully anymore.

"Can I come in?" He asked, still standing outside the door.

"Yes." She said as she watched him walk in and sit down in the chair across from her desk.

"Look Bones, I owe you an apology." He said frankly. "What I did last night, what I asked you to do…" He sighed. "It was wrong and I'm sorry." Brennan examined his face. He looked sincere but not sorry.

"You asked me to lie." She said quietly, clearly hurt by that fact. He suddenly realized why Cam thought he should apologize. Bones was the most honest person he had ever met. Asking her to lie was like asking him to blaspheme in a Catholic church.

"I know." He murmured, letting the first trappings of guilt sink in.

"To my best friends." She added. He looked up at her and he could see what she wanted to say, but couldn't. He had asked her to lie, to her best friends, so that he could go have sex with his girlfriend, who wasn't her. He folded his hands in front of his mouth for a minute as the denial finally washed away and he let himself be fully aware of his actions. And that wasn't even the worst thing he had done.

He had tried so hard to distance himself from her for his own self-preservation that he had actually forced himself to forget what kind of woman she was. That was the point of self-preservation, he realized. There was a reason that he had fallen in love with her. These past few weeks since Hannah had returned, he had let himself believe that she was the socially inept anthropologist that she had been when they had first met. He'd gotten exasperated with her attempts at humor, rolled his eyes whenever she had made a mistake rather than correct her. The truth was, she couldn't be further from that person. She had cried herself to sleep when she realized that he wasn't available anymore. She had opened up and told him the truth about her feelings, despite the fact that it was so scary, even he hadn't been able to cope with it. She had covered for him when she hated lying more than anything else on this earth.

Brennan watched the realization dawn on his features and she finally saw what she needed to see. All this time she had thought that he just needed time to adjust, now she saw that he had already found his coping technique and it was shutting her out, and that included everyone and everything that reminded him of her. Booth noticed the change in her expression and he knew that she knew what he had really done that required the apology.

"Can you ever forgive me?" He asked, and they both knew what he was really asking. She nodded, letting him know that they were okay. "Bones, I..." He tried to explain himself but she held up her hand.

"Don't." She said as she stood up. "I get it, Booth." After all, no one knew about putting up walls more than she did.

Leave unsaid unspoken
Eyes wide shut unopened
You and me, always be...
You and me
Always between the lines