My Generation, The Who

"Maybe we shouldn't be partners anymore."

The words were enough to drive the fight out of him if he hadn't already slammed his opponent with everything he had.

"You don't mean that," he scratched out. "Tell me you don't mean that."

He couldn't read her expression. She was clearly distressed, but the mixture of emotions eluded him. And then his phone chirped. Then hers.

But they remained frozen a beat longer. Then another.

And his damned phone chirped again.

Then hers.

She fished hers from the pocket of her coat. "Brennan."

He reached for his.

Charlie Burns chattered in his ear and that part of his brain still functioning processed it.

He thanked Charlie or wished him a Happy Hanukkah or something.

She was still talking. "Ask Mr. Nigel-Murray to measure the. . . ."

He half-listened. He had learned enough over the years to have a fair understanding of what she was talking about. But nothing quite registered.

Nothing except, "Maybe we shouldn't be partners anymore."

oOo

He ushered her into the SUV seconds before the skies unleashed the rain that had been threatening all morning. She was still on the phone to the lab, her face a mask of concentration.

She thoughtfully pulled the umbrella from his seat before he slid in.

"Thanks, Cam."

She turned off her phone then leaned her head against the window. "Cam's tests show that Ariana Penny was pregnant. The size of the ground up pieces suggest that the body could have been shredded. . . ."

". . . In that dragon thingy," he finished.

It took a beat for him to realize that her voice had been drained of inflection something she did when she was tired.

Or defeated.

"We should get a warrant. . . ."

". . . To examine that shredder for blood and tissue." He already was dialing Caroline's number.

He watched the rain blanket the windshield, distorting objects into small prisms of color that held and then ran down the glass. He supplied the information for Caroline, peppered by additions from Brennan.

When he finished the call, he glanced over at the woman beside him. Her eyes seemed unfocused and the shimmer of light through the raindrops made her face look awash in tears.

But he knew it was only the light playing tricks.

"Please don't make a decision yet," he said as gently as he could. "Please."

"I won't, Booth."

The rain continued to beat against the truck sending up a thunderous roar before subsiding into a steady rhythm.

He could hear her sigh as her eyes remained on something distant outside the vehicle.

Perhaps Sweets had been right months ago. They'd missed their chance and when presented with a second chance and a third they only knew how to punish one another.

"I don't know," she said softly, her voice low. "Do we even like one another anymore?"

oOo

Years ago he had learned the value of a good partnership.

And the agony when everything was shot to hell.

He'd lost more than one partner on the battlefield and he had sworn by all the saints he could name that he would never put himself into that position again.

Until a certain forensic anthropologist with a penchant for seeking the truth and a hyper literal approach to the world entered his life.

And he had come to value their partnership.

It had become worn and tattered of late. Hell, he had taken it for granted in the last several months. Maybe they both had.

For a long time he had thought it was ultimately his decision as to whether they would remain partners. It had been reinforced that night on the steps outside the Hoover. He had granted her rights to their partnership—but at his discretion. He had used Sweets more and her less because he had judged her as being less. He had separated the investigation into her part and his part rather than their whole. He had ignored her awkward quips and squinty observations meant to elicit a reaction from him that would reassure her that he was still with her in the center.

And all he had been doing was pushing her off to the side.

"Bones," he said as the rain sputtered against the windshield and a black sedan pulled up next to the SUV, "I like you just fine."

He just wasn't sure about how he felt about himself.

oOo

Nathan Lloyd swung the pipe at his head and had he not ducked, Parker would have been less one parent.

The man was eluding them handily, sending Brennan sprawling into a pile of boxes while he waved that damned pipe like he was some sort of Ninja warrior.

He was almost hoping for an Indiana Jones' moment: maniac makes with weapon in fancy show of his artistic superiority while our hero waits him out, pulls out his gun and zaps the poor sap.

But that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Lloyd had surprised them both, a hard blow to his right wrist with that pipe sending the gun tumbling down a flight of stairs and leaving his arm buzzing as he clutched at the guardrail for support.

Brennan had aimed a kick at Lloyd's leg, catching the back of his knee and bringing him down. But he hadn't lost his grip on that damned pipe which he slashed at her legs. Normally, she was much more graceful, but in trying to avoid the arc of the pipe, she stumbled over her feet and landed with a thud on her butt.

And then he was off and they were off and the chase took them along the catwalk running between the molding machines and down a flight of stairs into a warehouse area where towers of boxes hid him from sight.

But not for long. Brennan caught sight of him at almost the same moment he did and the chase was on again.

The pain in his arm went from a screaming buzz to a throbbing ache and his fingers refused to do anything but hang uselessly from his hand.

They'd gone down separate aisles in that warehouse when he heard Brennan's distinctive scream, "Booth, duck."

His body reacted and he felt the rush of air around him and the whooshing sound as the pipe slashed at him. And he saw Brennan tumbling into a stack of boxes. Lloyd was swinging the pipe wide and hard and each swipe seemed to sing against the air.
Then he was on her and while she was able to regain her feet, she was stumbling badly. He caught her with a glancing blow on her leg sending her hard to the concrete. Another swipe landed wide, but just close enough to terrorize her.

She was scrambling hard to get away, to stand up, to dodge the attack when he found himself at Lloyd's rear, a large wheeled bin between him and the plant supervisor. He saw the flash of the metal swing upward when he jammed the bin forward hard and felt the satisfying thud of a heavy body fall inside.

The pipe clattered uselessly on the concrete floor.

He practically slid to where she was, half-kneeling on the floor.

"Are you all right, Bones?" he asked as he helped her to her feet.

"Yeah," she rasped. "Are you?"

Almost instantly she had captured his right wrist in her hands and gently began to probe the flesh feeling for the bones beneath. "Yeah, I think so," he said as she tested each finger.

The wrist was oddly colored and somehow the fingers seemed to belong to someone else because they didn't seem to work for him.

"You sure you're okay?" he asked again.

She nodded absently, her attention solely on his injury. Her fingers seemed to trace each bone from his wrist to the end point of each finger. "It's broken," she pronounced.

"Can you. . . ?" he cocked his head in the direction of his pocket and she fished out his cell phone and handed it to him. He tried to manage with his left hand, but his fingers felt leaden. "Could you? Speed dial three."

She took the phone from his hand and found the menu when she paused. Lloyd was thrashing in the bin and the plant's horrid sound system was trying to spit out another song.

"Do you have it?" he asked and looked over her arm at the menu.

She had paused at the speed dial menu. At number one was Parker. At number two was Bones.

She punched in the number then handed it to his left hand.

He gave their location to the dispatcher and watched as the bin shook with Lloyd's efforts to escape. The bin was deep and narrow and while not escape-proof, it was a deterrent.

Ending the call, he slipped the phone into his left pocket. Then he slipped down and located his ankle holster which he unsnapped. The movement jarred his head and his back and he quickly pulled the pistol from the holster and handed it to Brennan.

To her surprised look, he merely shrugged and offered, "If he moves, shoot to kill."

He had deliberately raised his voice and the movement in the bin ceased from quakes to tremors.

She gave him a look. "You're not serious, are you?" she asked.

"I need to sit down for a minute," he said as he sank to the concrete floor. On the floor his head didn't feel better, but as he watched Brennan sink down beside him, he could see the jagged cut Lloyd had made in her jeans and the darkening stain around it.

"You okay?" he asked again, this time pointing toward the injury.

She nodded tiredly and said nothing.

The sound system was sending out a song in a chaotic Morse code-like manner. He listened for some pattern to tell him what they were being tortured with.

"'My Generation,'" he said finally.

"The Who."

"The Who?" He turned to her. "You know The Who?"

It was one of her classic takes. "The Who, along with The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, are considered to be the holy trinity of British rock."

"Wow," was all he could say.

"I do have a wide and somewhat catholic appreciation for music."

"Catholic?" This felt like familiar ground. "It's 'My Generation.' It's not about religion. Don't make this about religion."

"I don't mean catholic as in religion," she explained, "I mean catholic as in uni. . . ." She paused and he could feel her eyes on him. "You're teasing."

He grinned. It was familiar territory. He looked at her. Their wild pursuit had left her bangs plastered to her forehead and a black smudge across her nose.

"How's your leg?"

She sighed and glanced down at it. The gun was propped up between her knees and she held it steady in Lloyd's direction.

"I might need a couple of stitches," she said. "But it's mostly a flesh wound." She paused. "How's your wrist?"

"Broken," he offered as he tried to move his fingers. They responded slightly. "At least that's what the good doctor tells me."

The sound system was trying to cough out another song when he decided he'd rested enough. His head was going to ache a while longer and his wrist would probably need a cast, but those injuries were slight.

"Are we going to be okay, Bones?"

He directed his question toward the bin, wary of her answer. It's large white letters spelled out its purpose: TRASH. The word itself seemed significant, but it did not register in his mind.

The seconds weighed down on him, but he waited.

He reminded himself that it took her mere microseconds to process some things while emotions required minutes if not hours to make sense to her.

"Yeah," she said finally. "I think so."

The knot in his gut loosened. "I think so, too."

He caught her eyes with his and he could read the wariness, the shyness. Cam had once accused him of taking one step forward, two steps backward when it came to Temperance Brennan and he wondered if there was ever a way to reverse the trend.

All he knew was how to take one step at a time.

He nudged her with his shoulder, "C'mon," he said as he scrambled awkwardly to his feet and held out his hand to her, "let's take out the trash."