Author's Note: Thanks again to all of you who review. This one...it's a bit more angsty than the rest. Not necessarily 'angst', more like reflection on Brennan's part, but still something not as fluffy as the rest.

Reviews are amazing, so please feel free to leave one as detailed as you'd like (because yes, I appreciate every review I get, but the more detailed the better). And if any of you have any suggestions or prompts you'd like to give, feel free to send me those as well.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

She had everything planned, the order in which things were to occur. She'd even factored in an allotted amount of time for things that couldn't have been foreseen.

Yet somehow, she failed to take this one into account.

She'd imagined them as friends, going through the process together. It wasn't a surprise that he'd want to be there for the baby; she wouldn't have expected anything less. Truthfully, she didn't have a problem with it.

They'd been having a good time, relaxing at her place after work and eating a generous amount of take-out. Nothing really out of the norm, even with her growing abdomen. It was getting late, and after a bite of particularly spicy food, she'd felt the baby move. He felt it too, but in that instant, everything culminated in a way even she couldn't have anticipated. He started talking to the baby, despite her telling him there was no way it could hear her.

Maybe it was the word 'it' that set him off, or the fact that she just didn't want to be touched. Whatever it was, she saw a hurt flash through his eyes like nothing she ever remembered seeing before.

"Her, Bones." He said. "Now that we know what our baby is, you can stop the whole "the fetus" and "it" thing you've got going, alright?"

Brennan argued back that it didn't matter how she referred to the child growing inside of her; for the remainder of her pregnancy, she would be the one responsible for its safety, and she could do as she chose.

In retrospect, she guessed she should've seen what was coming next. Booth started going on about relationships, and how they were in one, that having this baby-their daughter-changed everything. Brennan refused, saying it didn't change those things he was saying, at least not for her. They were still partners, still friends, but that was all she could offer.

Didn't he know how hard it was for her? She was going through enough changes as it was, adjusting to more lab hours than field work, and no working on weekends. Her world was changing and he had always been the one stable thing, so why did that have to change? Why did anything have to happen? She'd agreed to let him be there for the baby, couldn't that be enough? Couldn't he be happy with what she was offering?

The trouble was that he wasn't sure he could. Of course, he said, he'd be there for the baby as much as she'd let him, but he wasn't entirely vague when speaking of how much he wanted to be there for her as well. They were a family after all, and it wasn't like he was proposing, because he knew she'd refuse anyway. All he wanted was the chance to be there for them both, his daughter and her mother.

But she wasn't ready, not yet. There was still so much to think about, so much to consider. Her whole world was changing, adjusting to better suit this being growing safely inside her. The changes were necessary; the addition of certain items such as a crib and changing table in her guest room, and Angela was already asking what color she wanted to paint the room. Changes were happening for the child, not for her.

"You promised me, Booth." She cried. "You promised when this whole thing started and you agreed to contribute, you said nothing would change. You promised me nothing would change between us."

"It didn't." Booth declared, his words falling like lead between them. "At least not for me."

He wanted a relationship, a ready-made family, and it wasn't something she could bring herself to offer. A family, in the sense of a mother, father, and child, almost always ended in some form of pain or hatred. One needed to look no further than the cases they solved to see what happened when things went wrong. If something happened between her and Booth, if they were to ultimately terminate their relationship, what would happen to their child? She couldn't risk damaging her any more than necessary. The last thing she wanted was to have them end up hating each other with a baby stuck in the middle. Couldn't they agree to just raise it the way things were, just like she'd planned all along?

A tear trickled down her cheek as she watched a car pass by her window. It was late, but the baby was up and moving, which meant she was, too.

How had she let things get this way? How had her carefully laid plans turned into such a mess? She had a plan, and in Brennan's experience, plans were what worked best.

She told him to be happy, that he was more than welcome to find someone else to satisfy any needs he might have had. She might have been lying when she told him it wouldn't bother her, but she thought it was what Booth needed to hear. He deserved to be just as happy as she would be when things panned out the way they were supposed to. The problem existed in the fact he didn't want just anyone else, he wanted her.

"You're asking for something I'm not prepared to give, Booth. I'm sorry." Brennan spoke softly, her hand absentmindedly rubbing against her stomach.

Booth rubbed a hand across his face and sighed. "Yeah," He muttered. "Me too."

After that, he stood and got ready to leave, citing a need to be up early for Parker the following morning. Brennan knew about his weekend plans, so it wasn't entirely a lie, but something told her it was something more than that. The way he left, the look on his face...it wasn't something she could bring herself to think of lightly.

There were so many things, so many conflicting emotions, that battled in her mind for attention. What he was asking, what he wanted her to give, was something she'd allowed herself to indulge in several times over the course of her pregnancy. She supposed it was normal, thinking of what society considered normal. Still, something had shifted, and Booth had clearly noticed it too. Seeing them sitting there, watching a movie on television while eating dinner with their feet propped up on her coffee table, Booth talking to her pregnant stomach. It all seemed so frighteningly real, like everything he'd been talking about already existed.

But she shot him down.

As if on cue, their child stirred and started kicking from within, reminding her that even at such a lonely moment, she was still not alone.

She eyed the phone on the table and knew how easy it would be to call him and amend the situation just as quickly as it had begun, but Brennan knew it would take more than that. Time and effort, and perhaps a little honesty on both parts, but she knew they could never go back to how they were before. They were stuck in an awkward limbo, so much more than just partners it wasn't even funny anymore, and yet not partners in the life sense either. There wasn't a definition for what they'd become, a set of rules or expected behaviors, and that was part of what scared Brennan the most.

Still, as she felt the baby move again, she knew she could never bring herself to regret the decision she made. Everything might be more complicated and tipped on its axis than it had ever been, but Brennan felt herself believing that somehow everything would turn out the way it was supposed to, whether it was how she planned or not.

A few minutes later, the baby finally managed to calm down, as did she. She flipped off the living room lamp before finally settling in to sleep.