Friend of the author's note: Hello there, my little penguins! Gosh, I'm feeling so great today! It's summer, and even here, it's warm! The sun is shining; the birds are singing! Truth, it rains occasionally... And well, it was 0° Celsius a week ago, but... Who cares! Anyway, I hope you are all fine, happy and healthy! Sooooo... I'm afraid I have to inform you, that we have finally reached a critical point in the history, where everything is about to get really gross and torturous, heart-breaking and crying-on-the-floor-like-an-infant. Actually, my friend is sure that we will receive death-threading emails, which is also another reason why I am the one who have the guts to post the story and not she. It's not that she likes seeing people in pain or likes writing about Booth being tortured (she loves him!); it's just... She knows these stuff well, as she has family members who... Horrific things that you are about to read in this chapter and in the 4-5 upcoming ones, are real stuff that occur there. And she only wrote the harmless version of it. Anyway, she says that she is undescribly thankful that you all sticked to the story until now and hopefully you will continue to read the upcoming chapters. She apologizes again for any mistakes; it's just so hard, because she writes the story in German first and then translates it in English. Trust me, it is a hell of a work! Enjoy the chapters, and feel free to review! We are harder than rocks... We can take it! Just try to focus on the fact that there is a happy end in eight chapters from now! At least that kept me from throwing my head on a wall, when I was reading the story. Disclaimer: No, nothing belongs to my friend, except of this story. If the show did belong to us, we would at least have proper season finales! So, don't sue as we can't afford for lawyers!

Chapter 11

It smelled alluring when Brennan arrived at the house of her brother. Different scents mixed, meals, candles, fir sprigs…All at once she noticed how hungrily she actually was. As always, she had almost eaten nothing the whole day. Otherwise, Booth reminded her to eat. – "Aunt Tempe, finally there you are!" she was stormily greeted and embraced by the two girls. "I am sorry, that I have been late but I have simply forgotten the time." she apologized to the rest of the family after she had greeted them all. Amy answered: "It`s okay! Meals have just become ready." "You should not work at the holidays as well, dear." Her father rebuked her and put his arm around her. "However now you are here and we can celebrate a beautiful Christmas together," he added. Everyone knew that she suffered from the absence of Booth, though she would never admit it. -

"Do you also have a tree, Aunt Tempe?" Haley wanted to know. "No, I haven`t a tree, darling because I intended to go on a trip." replied Temperance. "That is really too bad, Aunt Tempe, but you can look at ours, come along!" the girl called, took Brennan on the hand and moved her into the living room so that Bones could first admire the decorated tree. "Isn`t it beautiful, we decorated it all together!" the child explained to her. A moment Brennan thought how it would be to decorate a Christmas tree with her partner. Probably it would degenerate into a substantial discussion again. "Yes, it is really beautifully!" she answered the girl. -

Amy`s voice got her back to the present again: "Will you come? Otherwise, the meal will become cold. Afterwards you still have sufficiently time." Soon all of them sat down at the festively decorated table and enjoyed the dinner. – No one of them suspected that Booth was ferociously tortured miles away in a subterranean oubliette. -

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They indicate Booth to get up. Unstable he got on his legs. Like a piece of cattle they urged him before themselves and when he wasn`t sufficiently fast enough in their opinion they pushed him the gun barrel in the back. He grimaced of aches. The pain hammered in his skull as if the seven dwarfs were looking for gemstones. He was nauseas, dizzy and he had gaps in his memory. Probably a concussion, he assumed, caused through the impact after the explosion. -

The pain raged from his pierced shoulder down to his hand, a feeling like pulverizing glass-splinters in his muscles and bones. Fortunately the projectile hadn`t met an artery, the wound stopped bleeding. With the next push in the back, the agent stumbled and felt. The attempt to not intercept his injured side remained unsuccessful because he stretched out both of his arms in pure reflex. The pain roared like a glowing poker in his shoulder. With effort, he suppressed a cry of pain by digging his teeth into his own arm. Roughly, they pulled him up and pushed him forward. -

Soon he could saw a group of approx. 30 soldiers on a free space that had been jammed together like animals. With horror, he recognized that also women were under the survivors. Booth became sick when he thought of what they would do with them. He couldn`t discover Marisa and the other four soldiers. Maybe they were still alive. Maybe they had succeeded with the escape and they could hide. He didn`t gave up hope.

In the meantime, the rain had stopped; the sun emerged and burned unmerciful from the sky. It had to be already over an hour since they let them kneel on an edged log, with the hands behind the heads. -

Finally, the leader paced the rows of the low-kneeling soldiers. On his sign, the prisoners were pitilessly killed by a shot into the neck without any hesitation. Booth spoke a quiet prayer in behalf of their immortal souls. Then the steps fell silent behind him. He felt the cool metal of the weapon on his neck.

He closed his eyes yielding, he wasn`t afraid of dying. His dried up lips moulded even a mute prayer for himself. After he heard the commanding sound of the commander, he expected the deadly bullet. But the steps continued. They spared him. However, the FBI agent wondered whether it would not have been better to die now and here. -

Meanwhile his feet had fallen asleep and a numbness feeling stretched in his legs. Still the pain raged in his penetrated shoulder like a wild bunch of children, reinforced by the raised arms. Let alone his head that felt like it would immediately explode. Blood still gushed out of the wound at his back of the head, dribbled through his hair and oozed away in his shirt collar. The scrape over the right eyebrow had stopped bleeding. For no longer time he could hold the arms in this position. The agent sensed nausea rise in him and chokingly vomited into the sand beside him. –

Immediately the guards were over him and plagued him with hits and footsteps. In order to be as small target as possible he instinctively pulled up the knees and ducked his head. First heavy boots met his ribs, the pain in his right side cut off the air like a rope. After this, they hit his kidneys, the abdomen and the stomach. He squirmed in pain. Keenly he uttered the air between compressed teeth, but no scream emerged from his lips, he didn`t want to give them this satisfaction. As a step hit the ugly wound on his head, it became gloomily around him and he lost the consciousness. -

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Brennan`s stomach painfully convulse, when her cell phone rang and on the display appeared "Cullen". Instinctively she knew that something dreadful had happened. Why should otherwise call Deputy Director Cullen her, to wish her a "Merry Christmas"? "Brennan" she reported. Her voice strangely sounded in her ears. "Cullen", she heard a sonorous voice on the other end, "Dr. Brennan, please excuse me for the disturbance, but I wanted to personally inform you with the message before you will hear it from the news." "Oh, no, Booth…did he get…?" she panicked. -

Without circumlocutions and emotionless voice, he briefly advised her of the matter: "We don`t know exact yet. We only had gotten information that the camp was attacked. There are many dead people. The corpses are largely mutilated to unrecognizable condition." Bones lost all colour from her face and staggered easily. All conversations around her had suddenly fallen silent. Her brother and the others immediately saw that something terrible had happened. Russ jumped up in order to support his sister; she looked like she would faint each moment. –

"I wanted to ask you, if you would help with the identification of the corpses," requested Cullen the anthropologist. "Of course! Why certainly! When?" her voice sounded tonelessly. The Deputy Director informed her about the details. As soon as she had finished the conversation, she heavily dropped herself into the next chair. Her father was promptly at her side: "Tempe, dear, what happened?" "Booth…Director Cullen…" she stammered. Anew she began, but she couldn`t think straight. "Tempe, look at me!" she looked into her father`s eyes. She gulped down the dumpling that had refined in her throat and monotonous told what she had heard from Cullen. "I, I have to go, I am sorry, I have to pack, I will be picked up in 2 hours." –