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Breathe Again

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CRACK!

For a split second, she's convinced it's over. Her pounding head and fragmented thoughts have jumbled reality—she's not sure if it's Penny Hamilton or images of herself in her mind—but she has seen Kenton and seen the gun and heard the shot, and then her eyes have closed and her breath has frozen, and her heart has been paralyzed in her chest for that single second, that one moment, before she's opened them again to see him fall.

Then Booth is at her side, and she doesn't know why he is there or if he is really there at all and she gasps as he rips the gag from her mouth as that wheezing sound pours from her throat as sobs and then she feels his hands on her wrists and pulling and jerking and suddenly she is lifted off the hook and falls onto his shoulders. She holds him tight and breathes him in and her muddled brain realizes that he really is there and she really isn't dead and Kenton must be on the floor because Booth has shot him.

She hears him speak, "It's okay, I'm right here. It's all over."

His arms are tight around her, and her breathing continues catching and that wheezing sound is loud in her ears, and she can hear him repeating those words to her over and over.

I'm right here. It's all right. It's all over.

She feels him shaking under her weight, and she remembers the explosion and the call to the ambulance and the medical records and then the drive that had put her here to begin with, and she inhales and exhales and pushes back and looks at him.

"How'd you get out of the hospital?"

"Hodgins gave me a ride," his voice is shakier than hers and he winces as he speaks. "Maybe—" he pauses, "Maybe you can give me a ride back though, huh? Could you?"

She nods and she smiles and pants, but she's not wheezing anymore, and he groans and she collapses back onto him and buries her face there while he groans again, and then they stay like that for a while, and she breathes and he breathes. She closes her eyes.

Her head is still pounding but her heart has slowed and she doesn't feel her pulse in her ears anymore and her breathing is slowly leveling. Her selective hearing starts to leave her and the sounds of groaning and talking and clattering and banging reach her senses, and then her partner's labored breathing reminds her of the pain he's probably in and she unwraps her arms and attempts to back up, forgetting her bound ankles and lost sense of balance, and falls to be caught from behind. When she glances back she sees Hodgins and she smiles wearily at him and he doesn't but asks her how she is and she says she's fine and he obviously doesn't believe her but offers in a quiet voice to untie her hands and she nods and mutters yes. His fingers slide clumsily over her wrists and with great haste but she doesn't pay attention because she's watching Booth now and it's obvious that he's in pain.

When the rope slides to the floor, her wrists pulsate angrily and she collapses beside her former captor to undo its pair, which has cut deep into her ankles. Her fingers are uncoordinated, but she eventually manages to rid herself of the rope and when she rises Hodgins holds her arm, and with his support she shoulders her partner and together they walk to some stone ledge where she doesn't have to see the hook nor hear the dogs that want her flesh, and then they sit there for a while.

Hodgins gets up eventually and he says that he's going to get the doctors and neither partner bothers to argue, but when he leaves they look at each other, and hard breaths shake his frame and softer ones still rock her own.

"You look like crap," he mutters and then he smiles.

"Yeah, well," she replies and smiles too. "So do you."

--

That should be the last of my "Two Bodies" Themes...

My apologizes about the ever increasing length of my sentences. I love long sentences.