Chapter 11: Just Remember Me

Enjoy. This was so satisfying, and almost sad.

They walked in silence for a while, Brennan savoring his warm arm over her shoulders. Booth, in turn, kept glancing at her calm, unruffled pristine white face. She was staring thoughtfully at the ground, not in anger but with a quality he couldn't quite put his finger on.

He remembered the last time he was walking through a cemetery with her; he had begged her to visit his grave should he die. He smiled and she immediately looked up.

"What?"

"I was just remembering our last conversation here. You agreed-"

"-to visit your grave," she finished with a little smile of her own. Her face, while clear and untroubled didn't match her faraway eyes.

"What were you thinking about?" he frowned. She looked around slowly.

"Ripley," she confessed, "the dog-"

"I remember Bones." His voice was deep, understanding. He also remembered her speech, her eulogy, over the grave as he held her while she sobbed, shovel in hand. His eyes tightened, "I'm sorry, Brennan, really."

She smiled at the ground and bumped her hip into his.

"S'Okay," she said. He staggered.

"Easy there Bones," he chuckled, "watch the donuts."

"Uh! Booth!" she scowled furiously but he could tell she was laughing. He took the opportunity to poke her in the ribs and she squealed, the daffodils waving furiously as she tried to bat him away.

He grabbed her from behind and pinning her arms behind her back he swooped his mouth down to her delicious, savory neck. He froze, millimeters away and grinned, his hot breath spreading into an elongated smile along her skin as she shivered. He cold see the goose bumps.

"What are you doing Booth?" Brennan had been going for irritated and patronizing, but it came out breathy and excited. She shook a little as he took a step closer, their bodies aligning and his mouth hovered a breath away from her skin.

Laughing against her neck, he blew a giant raspberry into her skin and let her go, bounding away.

"BOOTH!" she shrieked and chased after him, running. They darted through the gravestones, neither finding it a bizarre playground. She caught him around the middle and managed to whack him in the face with flowers. They laughed and he twisted around, backing her slowly against a grave until her knees hit the back. Possessively taking her hips in his he went in smiling for the kiss, but she turned her head in a panic, his lips stopping a hair from her proffered cheek.

"Sorry," she whispered, their playfulness evaporating, "Sorry. I just…are you sure Booth? Because I don't want to start this if you aren't sure, I know we already have gone much further than this, but it doesn't seem that different between us and although I can compartmentalize, you-"

He covered her mouth with her own hand and gently kissed her, her hand between their lips.

"I only kissed your hand," he grinned cheekily when he pulled away. Her pupils were widely dilated, the black eating the blue with lust. She staggered a bit.

"Sore, huh?" he laughed evilly. She blushed and he put his hand back on the small of her back and guided her just a few stones down to her mother's headstone beneath a wide branching tree.

"You are rather devious," she accredited him with a private smile.

"Yeah, what does that mean?" Booth wrinkled his nose. "What, like…a bank robber? A cowboy?"

"Cowboy!" laughed Brennan. He tipped his head in his imaginary hat.

"Am I testing your limits ma'am?" They stopped a few feet from her mother's grave, just toeing the line of serious a step away. She looked up at him, blissfully letting her love in her scratched glass heart beam from her smile, for once not hiding it away.

"Every day, Booth. You test them every day." He grinned his perfect little boy grin, and she couldn't help but grin back, her whole face flooded with love for him, feeling it even on the grass curling around her boots. His smile slowly faded as awe replaced it and his brown eyes, instead of just staring into hers, began flicking over her face as if reading a book. A bit panicked, she swallowed and pulled in some of her control. The light dimmed from her features, and she heaved a sigh of relief and let her own gaze focus on a point over his shoulder. He looked behind him and sighed as well.

Together, they both stepped over the imaginary line that marked that plot of grass as Christine Brennan. Their faces, while not smiling, each held a quiet joy. Brennan looked down at her grave and gently put the flowers down. She looked cursorily back at Booth.

"Do you want me to wait over there?"

"No," she said a little too quickly, and his face softened.

"I know you hate this," he said under his breath.

"Why are you whispering," she said impassively, "she can't hear you. She's dead."

"Bones," groaned Booth, "It's out of respect for the dead." He hurriedly crossed himself.

"She. Has. No. Auditory. Capacity. I should know, I found the body," she shrugged dismissively. Booth dragged her a step back from standing over her mother's feet.

"Shh, just….quietly. Bones…just, talk to her. It was her birthday."

"How many times do you go out to your mother's grave?" sniped Brennan, but she felt a deep flood of shame when she saw the look on his face. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, "that was uncalled for." He forced a brazen smile.

"Pssht, you underestimate me Bones. Come on. Just…talk to her."

"What do I say?" He lowered his voice to better modulate hers.

"Anything you want. She's your mother. Tell her about Russ. Tell her about your dad. About donuts. Deep dark secrets," he smiled smugly, but he sobered up as his eyes tightened and she felt her heart stop and her lungs run out of air. "Just…remember her. Is that too much to ask?" Brennan swallowed. Yes, she wanted to say. But she simply bit her lip and cocked her head to the side the way she did when examining a fresh set of remains.

"Um…Mom. I don't think you can hear me. I don't think…actually I think this is stupid. Booth, this is stupid. I feel stupid. What am I supposed to say?" she asked desperately. "Could you show me?" Booth blinked.

"Pardon?"

"Just…do what I have to do. Say something. Some weird thing about your life or secrets or something so I can learn." He cleared his throat.

"Fine, but you have to wait over there, out of earshot."

"Booth!" she exclaimed, "that would be completely counter-productive because then I couldn't tell what I needed to do. I'm asking you to teach me." Booth smothered his sigh in his hand wiping over his jaw.

"Brennan, this isn't something you teach. This isn't something you learn. You just…speak from the heart." Her ice blue eyes bored into his, supplicating, pleading. He hated to see her beg.

"Please Booth," she begged. He took a deep breath and crossed his hands in front of him, spreading his feet at shoulder width angled to face the headstone, across from Brennan. She immediately mimicked his position. Irked, he looked up.

"Bones, you don't have to stand like this. Stand however you like." She shrugged and shook it off, standing with her arms tightly over the hole that was ripping through her chest. Booth didn't know it, couldn't see it, but it was killing her to stand there. She needed him.

He cleared his throat, and looked awkward. He opened his mouth, shut it, and finally opened it again.

"Mrs. Brennan…Uh, Christine…Ruth…To you – to…I mean," he stumbled over the beginning, acutely aware of Bones' eyes on his face. He took a breath and started over. "Mrs. Brennan, although I never knew you-"

"She would have liked you," interrupted Brennan. He glared at her.

"Thanks for your vote of confidence Bones, but when you talk to the dead, it's an unspoken rule that you don't interrupt their confession or "talk.""

"Well I didn't know that rule!" she said defensively, "See? I'm learning."

"Unspoken rule, unspoken, as in I shouldn't have to tell you." She looked dourly at him, but when he was sure she wasn't going to interrupt again, he resumed.

"Although I never knew you, I've gotten to know your daughter very well." Bones froze, thoughts of interrupting just to tease him gone; his sincerity rang clearly and lowly in the clearing. "Temperance," he smiled at the ground; he seemed to have forgotten she was there. In Booth's world, he was calm again. Talking to the dead was a comfort; they didn't talk back, and they always listened. He let himself go, and flow into the talk. "Temperance is a beautiful woman. Not just as you knew her, but…she's grown up since you've seen her. Changed. I just wanted you to know that, although I know you probably do already. I want you to know so you can be proud of the woman she's become. Because," his eyes softened to a place far away as Brennan watched, a smiles spreading sweetly over his face. "Because I sure am, I'm so proud of her. I have no right, no claim to her, but she's a fine woman. A beautiful woman, a magnificent one. Smart, funny, ingenuous, ingenious," he chuckled on the word play as Brennan's throat was closing. "She makes a hell of a scientist. Excuse me, I meant she's very competent at her job. The best, actually. The best of the best of the best. And," Booth's voice almost hitched, "the best partner a guy could ask for. Anyone could ask for. And I don't know her half as well as I'd like. I could spend the rest of my life learning to lo-" Booth quickly rearranged his words, "the rest of my life learning her inside and out. She's an incredible woman, your daughter. Great company, a little irritating, she can grate on your nerves," there was a choked laugh from Brennan, whose eyes were overflowing. "But lately…" Booth's voice became hoarse, and his hands unclasped in front of him, and although he was still in his own world, his own eulogy, he was hyperaware of the woman across from him.

"But lately Mrs. Brennan, I…I've been struggling." Brennan's muffled sniffing stopped suddenly. "Struggling with a problem that's been with me…as long as I've been awake from my coma. And I'm not sure, but I think I even went into the surgery with it weighing on my soul. But it grows heavier every day." Brennan's fingers snaked around his wrist, squeezing, unsure of where he was going, but touched by the veracity, sincerity, and the emotion he was giving his speech. It would have been easy to make something worthless up; but Seeley Booth never left anything half done, or went at anything half-heartedly.

Brennan chose that moment to interject.

"Mom," she said, and the word tasted alien and sweet and salty sad, "Mom, I'm not sure what to say, but…" she laughed weakly, "Trivial gossip is Russ is getting married. And…" her voice grew thicker, deeper, "and Dad stopped by today. But really…mostly what Booth said but…but…" she breathed deeply. "I'm sorry," she said with composure to the headstone, but the tears slipped over her cheeks regardless. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I forgot you. I lost you and so I shut you out, and I…forgot. But this man," she wrapped her hand tighter around his arm, as if her mother could see them standing together, "this man," she laughed brokenly, "this man is incredible. He thinks I'm the best partner, but…he's wrong. I wouldn't be anywhere near where I was without him. I wouldn't have written my first book," she blushed slightly, "or gone into the field, or found a profession that while at first I resented for seeming insignificant after the pursuit of anthropology seemed narrow, now is my life." She took a deep breath and looked timidly at him, "Sorry…sorry for interrupting. You had a confession?" His eyes burned into hers as they stood across the grave from each other, but he addressed her mother.

"Mrs. Brennan…I have to confess that…this weight…I can't decide whether I just want to shoot up the world in frustration or…or just float away because the truth is I'm in love with your daughter. I…I am. I'm in love with you Bones. Brennan?"

She couldn't hear him anymore. She had known it, but for him to confess the words to her, they rang in her ears like the stars had all fallen from the sky in a grand cacophony of bells.

The truth is I'm in love with your daughter. In love. In love with you. The Truth. Bones. Love.

"I…" she stuttered, locked in his gaze. She tore it away and looked at the engraved epitaph on her mother's grave. "Mom…I…I love him," she sobbed happily. "I've known it for years Mom," she was crying now, shaking now. Booth was now the one stunned, afraid to move, to breathe, to stumble forward.

"And I knew," she laughed through her tears, still boring her gaze into the yellow daffodils. "I knew because he told Dad last night, and I heard him. But still I…I had guessed. I know him; I love him. But he didn't really, doesn't really….I don't know what's real, what's….I…" she flew into his arms like a bird being set free from a dark cage of ugly memories, of a sordid past, of empty promises and rags and his arms hugged her so tightly, she felt herself coming apart.

They sank to the ground together, both on their knees, the only unquiet thing on a quiet grave in a peaceful cemetery.