AN: This was an incredibly challenging chapter for me, and I couldn't have pulled it off without the help of Covalent Bond to talk it through, even though she had no idea of what exactly the chapter was about for much of the conversation. Are you reading all of her stories? Get on that.

Music is always important, but I really, really suggest you listen to this song. Hit YouTube and find the full five minutes and change version instead of the radio edit.

I don't own Bones or Shuffle. Consider me disclaimed. Dialogue borrowed from episodes is strictly for context and continuity; no infringement intended. Mind the quote from Arthur Schopenhauer as well.

"You pray to stars that can help you get by
And all at once, you forget to try

I'd go there if you let me
They're never gonna find me now
My life is always empty
and in and out of doubt

You're not coming back for me; these things they will never be
I'm so used to being wrong, so put me where I belong

I'll get back to you
God knows I try, but I still lose
And I get back to you
These days run by, but I still lose

Angels say they can make you suffer
They give and take like a vicious lover

When all this loses meaning
You'll never want it back somehow
Awake but still I'm dreaming
And never waking up..."

The Grace - Neverending White Lights

The ringing of his cell phone is nails on the proverbial chalk board. A pillow is pulled over his pounding head as it shrilly beckons him once, twice, three times. Go 'way, he thinks bitterly as he waits for the fifth ring to signal the automatic boot to voice mail.

A minute later, it begins again. A second pillow over the head and a growl as he desperately fights to shut out the din. Five rings and then, silence.

The house phone rings next.

Christine stirs in the next room, whimpers emanating from the monitor as Booth concedes defeat and rolls over. Fumbling with the buttons of the cordless phone, he barely manages to get the receiver to his ear when he first hears the weeping.

"Bones?" he asks softly.

"It's Angela," the caller manages in a breathless rush before choking back another sob. "Booth, you need to... Oh, fuck!"

An empty bottle of scotch hits the floor as he hurries to his feet. The familiar ache runs through the soles as he hits the light switch in the corner and suddenly, it clicks: Age 42.

"Angela, what's wrong? Where's Temperance?"

"She... The blood! Oh my God, oh my God... Booth, she..." A shaky, loud breath is drawn on the other end as she struggles to pull herself together. "They said George Washington."

"I'm on my way, Angela. Can you get there safely?" he asks, stripping off his sweat pants.

"Security called a cab... I'm waiting outside... They said it's a... cr-crime scene."

On his dresser, a pager begins to vibrate. He stares at it incredulously. Surely, they don't expect him to... investigate?

"I'm on my way," he affirms. "I'm coming, Angela."

She breaks down into quiet sobs, ending the call without another word.

His head spins as he bends to grab a pair of jeans off the floor, his stomach rolling. It's already happened. She's been shot. Again and again, those two sentences echo in his skull, his vision blurred with rage and inebriation. Why am I drunk? Why the hell am I too late? It has to be a cruel joke. It has to be.

This... shuffling life... It wouldn't force him to endure it anew... Would it?

Christine breaks into a wail and Sweets is there before Booth can manage to stumble to her side. He lifts the distraught child into his arms, rocking her gently.

"Hey Christine," Sweets murmurs. "Everything's fine. Bad dream?"

My life is a bad dream, Booth thinks bitterly. "Sweets, I need your help."

The kid turns around, taking in his disheveled clothing and nodding. "What's wrong?"

"Bones. Something's happened and she's being taken to the hospital. I... I can't drive," Booth confesses guiltily.

"Say no more. Here, take Christine; I'll throw on pants."

Booth cradles his daughter to his chest, pressing light kisses all over her face. She knows, Booth thinks sadly. She feels something is wrong. "Shh, Daddy's here... I'm going to make this okay, Christine. I promise."

Her whimpers soften as her tiny palm pads at his chin. "Ma?" she asks.

Booth feels the first tear sliding down his cheek. "We're going to her now," he murmurs.

"Booth?"

He glances up at Sweets and smiles gratefully. In the kid's hands are Christine's jacket and shoes. They work together to dress her in haste, the two of them rushing her off to Booth's vehicle. Lights. Booth flips the switch. not giving a damn. This is an emergency - his emergency. The government, the cops, they can all go to hell.

Christine is lulled to sleep by the rhythmic motion of a vehicle speeding to its destination, mercifully unaware of a father clutching his head in his hands. To his credit, Sweets expertly picks a route through low traffic backstreets and main thoroughfares to George Washington. Twice, he calls Angela, but each call goes straight to voice mail. Radio silence. He sees little of the drive, aside from a nasty accident at an intersection near the hospital. An ambulance stands sentinel and Booth chokes back bile, thinking of his Bones on a gurney.

"Faster," he pleads with Sweets.

The kid pulls into the Emergency entrance in record time with a squeal as he jams on the brakes outside the main doors. "Go to her. I've got Christine," Sweets orders him.

Booth breaks into a run.

The waiting room is crowded: broken bones, wounds clutched in kitchen towels, flu-ridden seniors sitting miserably in the seats of cracked and torn leather. He searches them frantically for a familiar face, finding none. Where's Angela? Why isn't she here yet?

He seizes a nurse by the arm as she passes, yanking his badge from his coat pocket. "FBI. Where is Temperance Brennan?"

She shrugs off his touch, pointing to a desk across the room. "He'll know."

He doesn't know. But he does know that Angela is in the waiting room down the hall and that's a start. He ignores the pissed off security guards as he runs the entire way, calling for Angela. Her head emerges from a door on the left.

"Booth!"

They embrace tightly, a mess of tangled hair and bodies wracked with sobs. Angela is emotional, a loving creatures, while he... he's desperate. There's something here that changes it, that saves her, he tells himself as he leads her back to her husband. He wants to believe it, has to believe it. A transfusion, he guesses. I can do that. I can do anything for her.

And then, there is a doctor at the door and he knows - he fucking knows - what the guy's going to say. It's written on the worry lines on his brow and the splashes of blood on his scrubs. Her blood. He's going to be sick.

"The family of Temperance Brennan?" he asks gingerly.

"You tell me she's okay," Booth demands, rising to his feet. "You tell me that Temperance is okay."

"Are you her husband?" the doctor asks.

"Yes," Angela lies immediately, joining Booth. "Please, how is she?"

The doctor hesitates. Angela begins to weep. And Booth... Everything begins to spin.

"She's okay," Booth insists. "Tell me. Tell me she's alive!"

The doctor shakes his head slowly. "I want to assure you that we did everything we could, but the blood loss - "

"NO!" Booth screams. "NO! That is the mother of my child! You... you go back there and you try harder!"

"Sir, I am so very sorry for your loss - "

Booth waves him away, pushing past him into the hall and glancing around wildly. "Bones is not a quitter. She would never quit on anyone. You just have to... You have to help her," Booth pleads. "I can help her. I can. Tell me how and I'll do it!"

"Booth!" Angela wails.

"Where is my partner?" Booth pleads. At the other end of the hall, he sees Christine, Sweets clutching her tightly. "Where is her mother?"

"Sir, if you sit down with me for a moment, we can discuss that," the doctor tries again.

"I NEED TO SEE HER! I don't believe you!"

"Booth, man, come sit down," Hodgins pleads hoarsely.

"She's not gone!"

Things are a haze: crying, shouting, vomit-swirling-in-stomach, stumbling, agonizing pain. He can't breathe. He can't see, even as he blindly paws at metal doors, searching for her. Looking for a ghost. Because she is still dead and all of this hell, all of the days, it's been for nothing. Nothing. His chest aches and he clutches at it, knowing now that whatever he thought when Rebecca left him, when that plane flew off to Maluku, when he was captured and tortured, he'd never known devastation. He'd never endured a broken heart.

Until now.

Arms are grabbing and limbs are flailing and the shouting and wailing, it is so goddamn loud and he understands that it is him, that he is screaming and crying and nothing can make this okay, no one can make this right except her and she is dead, and she died alone. There is a stab to his arm and the molasses encases his limbs as he comes shuddering and sobbing to a full and complete sedated stop at the foot of the operating table, where she lies cold and pale.

Age 23

He awakens in a cold sweat, clutching his chest with a gasp. Beside him, the alarm clock barks its warning at him. He's late for the first day of class. Again.

He's already (re)lived this day.

"What the hell is going on?" he mumbles as he rises to his feet.

This is a first in this chaos and as he steps under the spray of the shower, he is suddenly struck with the image of her lifeless body. He buckles forward, bracing himself against the shower wall. I don't understand. Seeing this... it's not a gift. It's anything BUT a gift. He's powerless to stop it; he understand that now. To be brought so close to an opportunity, only to be denied - it speaks volumes. God is punishing him for the lives he's taken, for the mistakes he's made. He has inflicted grief on men, women and children. It is now his turn.

A harrowing thought: Am I the one who's dead?

Purgatory... Could it really be possible that all of this is a lie? That the themes of betrayal and losing her are echoes of the sins he's committed against others? Was he the one shot, perhaps in the line of duty?

Then why am I back here, on this day?

He's powerless: whether this is death or life or time-travel, he's not the one at the helm. He can only go with it. So when he reaches the campus, he heads to his Introductory Sociology class, where the only empty seat is next to a young woman studying him with a piercing gaze, her skin a soft expanse of mocha.

"I'm Cam," she tells him as the professor enters.

"Call me Booth," he tells her.

Her eyebrow raises. "Only if you tell me what your real name is."

The flirting continues between the syllabus rundown and the opening definitions the professor drones on about. It's subtle - something he comes to learn is uncharacteristic of Cam - but it's welcome. He belongs here now, at least in one person's eyes. He remembers that he'd nearly changed his mind about college before Cam befriended him.

Mental journal: if this is all still... the gift... does this mean that Cam is important to making things right?

Lunch arrives and Cam urges him to tag along with her to the pizza joint near a sprawling expanse of grass where students love to linger beneath the sun's rays. He grabs two slices of pepperoni and a Coke and follows her to a shady tree in the centre of the action. People watching, she explains with a grin. It's what Sociology demands.

It's clearly an excuse to create an 'Us Versus Them' bond, but it's kind of cute, so he lets her get away with it. He admits his name is Seeley, and she confesses Cam is short for Camille, and they agree to respect each other's wishes.

"Your first day, huh? How'd you score Mondays off?" Cam asks.

"I'm guessing I chose the department with profs who hate them as much as I do," Booth replies, gnawing on a crust.

"Monday mornings begin at eight for me. Biology." Cam groans. "Instructor's got her head rammed so far up her ass, I'm pretty sure she's studying her own esophagus."

"Ouch. My condolences."

"On the bitch or the early morning?" Cam quips.

"Both!" Booth chuckles. "I've got an early Friday morning for Intro Politics, if that makes your day brighter."

"Ew. That's just cruelty, especially with Thursday pub nights. You paid attention at Frosh Week, didn't you?"

Booth shakes his head. "I skipped it."

Cam side-eyes him briefly. "Are you a social recluse or just disgusted by 'Go! Team! Go!' school spirit?"

"I'm actually in School Spirit Anonymous. There was an incident involving a mascot..." Booth shakes his head sadly, laughing as Cam slugs him in the arm. "Anyway, I'm sure you can get me caught up."

Cam winks, stretching out her slim, bare legs along the grass. Well aware of her assets even in youth, she's wearing a short skirt that belongs in a nightclub more than the campus. Scanning the throng of students, she points to a building diagonally across the street.

"Well, over there, I happen to know you can get a fantastic burger. It's also where you'll find the offices for peer tutoring, should you fall behind." Booth rolls his eyes and she nudges her head to a group of behemoth jocks kicking around a Hacky Sack. "And those would be the veteran football players. One of them tried to get me too drunk to say no. Idiot. I dumped a beer down the front of his jeans and slugged his nuts."

"Nicely done!" Booth replies. "And what about that building over there?"

"Prayer room, club offices, study space that most of the students employ as a sex haven. Mind the sticky spots."

Booth feels her before he sees her crossing the street, his eyes gravitating to her. Temperance Brennan. It strikes him now how very young she appears to be, how small and yet stoic. Her backpack is worn, the straps frayed, and in her arms she clutches a large leather-bound book of some sort. Her auburn hair falls in long, loose waves mid-back, tucked neatly behind her ears. She would be the centre of male attention, were she not concealing her curves beneath a grey, oversized sweater, which hangs off her pale shoulder just enough to reveal a red bra strap. It's the mid-90s and grunge is fading from the fashion forefront, but Booth understands why she's wearing the garments: armour. He remembers her telling him at some point that the sweater was once her brother's, that he'd left it on the foot of her bed the morning he'd taken off and called Protective Services to take custody of her.

His heart aches for her, knowing what his younger self did not at first sight. And yet, he averts his gaze guiltily as he has a sudden thought: She would be alive if she'd never met me.

An awakening within. The evidence is suddenly so very clear. Without him, she never enters the field, never solves murders. Without him, she remains a research anthropologist, studying her ancient remains and undertaking digs in exotic places. Without him, she can still make the world a better place. Their eyes briefly meet, hazy blues that fade to grey in his mind's eye as her body lies motionless on a metal table and the knife twists deeper in his gut.

"Hey Seeley, who's caught your eye?" Cam asks, jabbing his arm.

"Don't call me Seeley, Camille," he deflects.

"Don't call me Camille. Seriously, whatcha looking at?"

I understand now. I understand why I'm here again, why I'm still leaping through time. The memory of her body against his, the joy her laugh brings, their child - it all rushes over him as she crosses in front of them, oblivious. The bottle of scotch hitting the floor as he got the worst call of his life from Angela... We must have fought, he realizes. She went to the lab to get away from me. The first time this day happened, he'd asked Cam for her name, mesmerized and suddenly shy.

"That blonde over there is competing with you in the short skirt department," he jokes, pointing out the group walking just behind the woman he loves.

Cam glares at him. "Yeah, but my thighs are far nicer, or haven't you noticed?"

A quote comes to mind, something some philosopher once said: "It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain." It's all so clear now. I can save her, he realizes with a heavy heart. I have to pay the price. His hand pats Cam's leg playfully as he grins to mask his pain.

"Oh, I've noticed. What was that about study rooms?"

If I never meet her, she'll be safe. I have to let her go.

With one final glance over his shoulder, he and Cam disappear into the crowd, her arm linked through his. It only reminds him of how good Bones feels by his side in comparison.

It is a long, sleepless night as he contemplates the gravity of what he's done.

He's changed history. Again. Already, the tattered threads of memory seem to be fading in his mind. He can recall brief snatches of conversations over studying and coffee at the all-night diner, but Atlantic City is crumbling like so many childhood sandcastles against the high tide of the shore. There's an airport... Maluku? No, another one... but not?

Booth no longer knows what's real. He simply knows the reason why he's done what he's done. He loves her too much to be the cause of her demise.

He tosses and turns violently, unable to make sense of the future now. Will he wake up tomorrow in the present - whenever that is? Will he wake up 23 and live his entire life all over again? Had he ever lived it in the first place? Will he remember her at all?

Maybe it's better I don't. Maybe it's better to never know a love like theirs. You can't miss what you've never had.

"Goodbye, Bones," he whispers to his pillow. "I love you."

2004

"I could get you Gemma's file, but you know the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome."

He is fast remembering why he broke up with Camille Saroyan in college. Her way of wielding verbal daggers in a way meant to exert dominance over every situation drives him up the damn wall. Right now, she's being deliberately vague, just so he'll do exactly what he's about to do.

"Okay, maybe I missed something?"

That damn little smirk... Yep, intentionally vague the first time. "How's about you get another point of view?"

"Partner up? No, you know that I don't do that."

"There's a forensic anthropologist at the Jeffersonian," Cam continues, much to his annoyance. "I've read that she solved how a Stone Age hunter was murdered."

He is way, way too hungover for this discussion. "How does that help?"

"If she can solve a 4000 year-old homicide, maybe she can help on Gemma Arrington. I could release the remains to her."

Her offer to release the remains, should he take her advice and hire this investigator of the world's coldest cases is a catch-22 of a sort. It means admitting he can't solve this murder and nail the damn judge he knows to be the killer. What about justice? his conscience nags.

"You know, Cam, I'll catch up with you later. Forensics don't solve crimes, cops do."

"Same activity, same results," she retorts as he begins to bail. "Speaking of which, you look like you've been up all night."

"I'm fine," he lies, the money burning a hole in his wallet.

With a knowing smile, she counters, "Meaning you won?"

He gives her a decided look, a shut the hell up before my bosses hear glare and she takes off for the elevator. And as she steps into that damn rickety elevator, his guilt, coupled with a desperate need to give Gemma Arrington her long overdue justice, is enough to break the stalemate between pride and compassion for the dead. He rushes to throw a hand between the doors, halting her haughty getaway.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey – what's that scientist's name?"

With a victorious smile, she answers him: "Temperance Brennan."

As the elevator door closes, he stumbles back into the wall as if struck. Colours and sound roll over him like a tidal wave and he makes his way to a nearby bathroom and locks himself in a stall.

Drinks in his office after a case. Coffee outside the courthouse, awaiting the day's proceedings in her father's trial. A night spent curled around her frame, sharing their grief and fear at what morning might bring. Tormenting Sweets in therapy. That first night of Christine's life, their slow dance to the radio as their daughter slept peacefully upstairs. He knows Temperance Brennan. He loves her.

I'm still jumping, he realizes in a panic. The jumps are real. This isn't real life. How did I not realize it? He resists the urge to punch the wall beside him in frustration.

Now what?

If he takes Cam's suggestion, he knows what will happen: Bones will find a passion in solving murders and giving voices to the slain. He will be unable to stay away from her. He will love her. She may love him. But either way, she'll be working in a lab one night and a killer will strike.

But without her, Gemma is never given justice.

"Checkmate," he whispers hopelessly. Someone will lose, no matter what he decides to do.

Checkmate, indeed... Ripples through time... Booth has undone the college years, but is it enough? What will happen if he never calls in the Jeffersonian for Gemma? I'd love your theories.

If you've ever wondered what I listen to while writing this story, I recently tweeted out the complete playlist. Find me on twitter (emptysthemepark) and I'll hook you up.

4 more chapters... Will Booth and Brennan get their happy ending? Nothing is certain. Pay attention - to everything. *wink*