This takes place in Season 6 from here on out, and Season 8 for NCIS.

Booth had moved on. Of course Brennan understood that logic entailed that he seek out a mate that was compatible with him, that could give him what he desired.

A woman who could give him everything that she never could.

So it was completely irrational for her to feel that twinge of pain in her chest when Booth had showed her a picture of Hannah, with her flowing blonde hair and bright blue eyes. It seemed that Booth had reverted back to type, she thought with a bitter twang, but Brennan knew that hating Booth wasn't the cause of her current malaise.

'Looks like you started the party without me,' Tony's voice echoed behind her and Brennan twisted around to regard him with a smile. It was a smile that she had spent the majority of the case scrounging up from somewhere deep inside her, a smile that had only been genuine when Angela had told her about being pregnant.

'Scotch on the rocks,' he told the bartender, glancing around the Founding Fathers with interest. 'So this is where you go to unwind? Didn't think it'd be your kind of…ambience.'

'Booth and the rest like it,' Brennan replied simply, lifting a shoulder sluggishly. She sipped at the red wine deeply, feeling the liquid burn down her throat. If she closed her eyes for a moment, she could pretend she was back in the forest away from civilization.

Away from people.

'Why so serious?' Tony questioned, grinning slightly. His lips faltered however when she didn't answer, taking in the hunched shoulders and pursed mouth of the woman beside him. Brennan felt him nudge her shoulder gently, the gesture feeling like a question.

'Do you think it was selfish of me to leave?' She finally blurted out, feeling the harsh slap of Cam's words anew. Brennan had never thought her taking the position would have such a detrimental effect on a foundation she had considered too solid to crumble, people who had been through too much together to let the slip of time drive them apart.

'You want the truth?'

Brennan gave him a look and wasn't surprised to see Tony chuckle wryly.

'You know why you left right?'

'Of course. Being offered the chance to discover the first true signs of-'

'No, not that,' Tony waved away her explanation. 'The real reason.'

'I don't understand.'

Tony rolled his eyes and Brennan felt herself bristle in response.

'I was pissed as all hell when Gibbs hauled his ass over to Mexico, tried to pretend that he wasn't an NCIS agent. Just vanished without a word,' Tony said, running a finger over the rim of his glass tumbler.

'That was different,' Brennan protested. 'Our situations were entirely-'

'The thing is the both of you ran away,' Tony interrupted, looking her dead in the eye. 'You ran away Tempe. Don't even try to deny it. You wanted to escape the blood, the guts, the gore. You told yourself it was becoming too much. So Maluku came along and you jumped on that row boat without a second thought.'

'It was becoming too much,' Brennan countered, remembering the weight that had pressed down on her the weeks leading up to her decision. The neverending carousel of murders that would come through the Jeffersonian, the way Booth would sometimes look at her as if he couldn't quote decide whether he wanted to be around her any longer.

'It was Booth, wasn't it. You needed your own headspace to figure him out,' Tony said, only this time his words were gentle, too knowing. Brennan angled her face away from him.

'He's found someone. Someone who makes him happy,' she whispered and she heard Tony inhale sharply, felt a warm press on her shoulder. 'And he deserves to be happy with Hannah. If anyone deserves to be happy, it's Booth,' she repeated the words she had uttered in Tony's living room all those months ago.

'Yeah well, Ziva managed to find herself a friend in Miami,' Tony remarked caustically before finishing off the finger of amber liquid left in his glass. Brennan watched as he signaled for another, wondering whether she should reach over and squeeze his shoulder the same way he had done.

'It seems our situations have remained remarkably the same, considering the passage of seven months,' Brennan observed. Tony snorted rather inelegantly in response.

'Everything's changing,' she said rather distantly. Hodgins and Angela were having a child, getting ready to raise a family. Cam had a teenage daughter and was apparently involved with Michelle's OB/GYN. Wendell was fixing school buses instead of devoting himself to what he loved because she had left without a thought. Sweets had attempted to grow facial hair and suffered heartbreak because of Daisy's desire to follow her to Maluku.

And Booth had walked into a warzone, something she had never thought he would do again, simply because she wouldn't be around. It was rather conceited of her to think that he had accepted the post in Afghanistan because of her, but Brennan thought that at least her selfishness had managed to make at least one of them happy.

'Change kind of sucks,' Tony's voice pulled her from her thoughts.

'I dislike change.'

'I figured,' Tony replied, quirking his lips into a smirk. 'People change and forget to tell each other.'

Brennan curved her mouth, recognizing the quote. 'Growth is a painful process.'

'I can drink to that,' Tony raised his glass, Brennan clinking her flute against it.

'Hannah huh?'

'Yes,' Brennan answered. 'She's beautiful and apparently as serious as a heart attack.'

'Did you find what you were looking for in Maluku?'

Brennan remembered the dreams she'd had of her and Booth, shades of things that could have been. The two of them curled up on her couch, his hand running through her hair as he watched a hockey game while she read a book. It was domestic, comforting.

Now nothing but a fantasy.

'I thought I did,' she said. 'But it seems I was mistaken.'

Booth had replaced her because she was selfish. Booth had found someone better.

Brennan felt fingers trace the lobe of her ear and pressed down the urge to shiver. Green instead of brown eyes regarded her intently, as if he could see down to the very depths of her soul.

'What are you doing?' She said, so softly that she thought her words were lost in the noise of the bar.

'Something I've always wondered about,' was all he said before he pressed his lips against hers. It wasn't hard, demanding. It wasn't two people forced to do something under a mistletoe for five steamboats. This kiss was soft, sweet, as if he was afraid she would pull away.

Brennan felt her fingers reach up to splay across his cheek, felt his breath fan across her face as he pressed his forehead against hers.

'Are you going to break one or more of my bones now?' Tony joked and Brennan shook her head.

'That was…'

'Yeah,' Tony replied. Brennan had never noticed just how green his eyes really were.

'Do you wonder about kissing me a lot?' She wondered and Tony simply smiled cryptically. She wanted to ask what this meant, what this would mean.

'You want another drink?' Tony asked and Brennan nodded, felt his shoulders brush against hers when they separated.

When they left and she felt herself looping her arms around Tony's neck, slowly melting under the softness of his touch, Ralph Waldo Emerson flashed through her mind.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.