Chugga Chugga Chugga Chugga...Choo Choo:-)


No, she can't
cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.

"I think you should go talk to Angela."

The lab was dark and empty, a few emergency lights at the doors and desk lamps at security stations were all there was to illuminate the large space.

Booth had garnered himself a key to Brennan's office about a year after they became partners should he 'ever need to get a file and when she was unavailable'. Well, he didn't need any files…but he did need her office. He came her to relax on days like...well, on days like he'd been having. Days when he got into fights with lab equipment and squints and was assigned to be partnered with an agent as green and cocky as he used to be. It was really a wonder anyone made it through days like these alive, and when they all miraculously did, Booth came here. He could almost hear her nimble fingers dancing across her keyboard and he could almost smell her dainty, understated perfume. And on days like these, almost was enough.

He sat back in her desk chair, rolling his dice between his palms, staring at her orderly cluttered desk, letting his mind wander for a while. When she spoke, he looked over at the couch to find Brennan stretched out on it, counting the ceiling tiles. He thought it funny to see her so relaxed, Bones was never not doing something.

"What?"

"I said you should go talk to Angela."

"I know what you said, why?" He rolled his shoulders and rubbed a hand through his hair.

Brennan bit her lip and looked thoughtfuly at the couch cushions, Booth watched her, deciding he probably should have told her more often how beautiful she was. Her eyes flicked over to him at this thought and he gave her a tiny smile so that she blushed.

Rolling her eyes, she sat up and folded her legs underneath her. "You and Ange are the two people I've ever…opened up to. The only two I truly, really call my best friends. Losing me…"

"You're not gone." He cut her off immediatly, "I wish people would stop acting like I've already lost you."

She pursed her lips, frowning at the floor, but didn't respond to his comment, instead continued with what she'd been saying. "This is hardest on you two. You need to support each other."

He licked his lips and seemed to think about it for a few moments, his eyes traveling over his partner's meticulous desk, three weeks worth of dust gathered on top. Wishing, believing that someday he would again see her through the glass, typing away on those very keys, lost in her world of bones. Hoping he would again someday get the chance to 'rescue her' from herself and drag her off to the Diner or Wong Fu's for a drink and a slice of pie.

His eyes came to the neat pile of manila folders on the right side of the glass desk and he sighed softly. Lifting one hand, he lay it on top, hoping maybe some of her determination and fire would leak out of them and into him. He seemed to be lacking those things these days.

"What?" Brennan asked, getting up and crossing the office toward him.

Booth smiled a lopsided grin but didn't look up. "You don't organize your files the way everyone else does."

"What are you talking about?" She leaned over the desk, her silver dolphin belt buckle banging against the glass top.

"Most people organize their files by month and year, or by name. You organize them by who's ass you want to kick most."

She looked appalled and came around beside him to get a better view. "I do not. I treat each case with the same amount of…"

Booth shook his head and moved a few files so she could see the names better. "Serial killers on top arranged from child crimes to hate crimes to rape crimes to just plain old creepy cult stuff. Then below that we've got the crimes of passion and the 'fleshies', Cam's kind. Then all the way on the bottom are the Civil War stiffs and anyone from more than a century ago."

He looked up with a self-satisfied grin, but she just crossed her arms, frowning deeply at the offending evidence of folders. Then, turning to him she did a pretty good imitation of pouting as she stalked back over to the couch, throwing over her shoulder, "What are you smiling about?"

---

At first glance Angela's apartment building was old and run down, but when one took a closer look, which Booth had a chance to do given the unbelievable amount of time it took her to answer the door, one got the feeling that the condition of the place was deliberate. Ugly burnt orange wallpaper had been torn off in places on the wall to reveal beautifully aged Victorian paper below. In some areas mid-eighties linoleum had been laid over, and then subsequently pulled up to reveal turn of the century Italian marble floors.

He smiled slightly when he saw the antique light fixtures in the ceiling side by side with cheap hardware store junk. This place had style and attitude, just like Angela.

Just then the door swung open revealing the tired artist wearing pink Capri pajama pants and a green slightly oversized 'I hate the term 'dirt'. Biological Studies Convention 2005' t-shirt.

"Hey Booth, what are you…" She suddenly gasped, her eyes widening as she grabbed his arm in near panic, "Is everything okay? Is Brennan alright? I knew I never should have left the hospital." She suddenly turned, running back inside her apartment and snatching the keys of the table near the door.

Booth caught her mid-flight as she headed back out the door. "No, Angela everything's fine." He assured her quickly. Immediately her body began to relax and she pulled herself from his grip.

"Oh." Deep breath, "okay." She nodded, her right hand resting on her chest as she waited for her heartbeat to come back down. "Good. I, um, I just get so nervous, you know? The doctors keep saying…"

"Believe me, I know what they're saying." He sighed and settled on the couch, having invited himself in earlier.

Angela, still nodding and swallowing hard in an attempt to breathe normally, came to sit beside him, immediately wrapping up in a red afghan she pulled from a nearby plush suede chair.

"Do you want something to drink?" She asked absently, reaching to the end table to pick up a half empty bottle of Jim Bean.

Booth opened his mouth, caught the eye of Brennan standing near the fireplace mantle, and then closed it again. He shook his head.

"So," He began slowly, realizing that now that he was here…he really had no idea what he was doing here. "Where's…Hodgins?"

Angela motioned with her head down the hall. "He's in the den, there's some National Geographic Special on…bone eating beetles or…something." Her miniscule shrug and heavy sigh told him she really had about as much interest in bug shows right then as Booth had in Professional Ice Skating.

Brennan on the other hand, jerked her head up from a magazine at the mention of it and got that bright eyed, excited little girl look he loved. She 'oohhh'ed and made a beeline down the hall for the den.

"What?" Booth looked over to find Angela eyeing him, a partly confused, partly amused smile on her face. "What's so funny?"

He shook his head, running his thumb over the yellow poker chip that had somehow found it's way into his palm. "Just thinking…about Bones. She would've loved to see that show." He said hoarsely, meeting but immediately turning away from Angela's eyes.

Angela nodded, wordlessly passing him her drink. She smiled as he stared at it.

"Go on Booth, just a sip, it'll take the edge off." He raised his eyebrow at her and she returned the gesture. "And don't tell me you haven't got an edge, I could drop a piece of paper over you right now and it'd slice in two like butter."

To his annoyance a smile quirked his lips and so, with a small roll of his eyes, he took the glass, downing the rest of the liquid inside before Angela could make a sound of protest.

"Hey! I wanted that."

Booth shrugged, "You offered."

"I believe the exact words I used were 'just a sip'." She said, snatching the glass away with mock irritation. In response Booth raised and lowered his eyebrows and looked away, a smaller, smugger version of his cocky smile playing softly on his lips. He settled back into the couch and adjusted his coat to avoid meeting Angela's undoubtedly displeased gaze.

"Brennan used to hate that smile."

Booth looked up, surprised to see tears shining in Angela's eyes, where there had previously been teasing. Angela didnt' look up from where she was peeling the label on her bottle of Jim Bean.

"What smile?"

"The one you're wearing. You always wore it after you won an argument or did something she 'disapproved' of. She said when you wore it she couldn't stay mad at you. And she hated that."

Booth nodded and turned away again, closing his hand around the poker chip as the familiar, uncomfortable tight pain returned to his chest. He closed his eyes.

"Why are referring to her in the past tense?" He whispered hoarsely, hardly audible over the sound of a space heater and soft jazz music coming from somewhere in the room.

"I didn't…"

"Yes you did."

He heard her sigh heavily and shift around several times on the other end of the couch, but didn't open his eyes.

"I…" She began quietly, but couldn't seem to finish right away, tears and perhaps a bit of shame, evident in her voice. "I didn't mean to it's just…It's been three weeks, you know? And the doctors say she might never…"

"The doctors don't know Bones, Angela." He cut in abruptly; swallowing to rid himself of the tell-tale sobs working their way up from his aching heart. "They don't know her the way we do. So what if she's a vegetable? She's Bones, for Christ's sake! She'll come out of this. She has to. She's fought too long and too hard and she's too much of stubborn smart-ass to let this beat her. She doesn't want to die. She won't leave me."

The burning in his eyes must have blinded him for a moment because he never saw Angela move, or hear her place herself beside him, but suddenly her arms were around him, squeezing him for dear life.

She sobbed into his shoulder and he instinctively reached to hug her back. The afghan fell to the floor and her body shook violently, or perhaps it was him doing the shaking. Either way it hurt, pain like neither of them had ever known before and Booth tried to gasp for air and found there was for him to breathe in as one, solemn, silent question tore through him like the proverbial dagger to the heart.

What if hope and faith aren't enough this time?

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