Author offers humble apology: Oh dear readers, I've turned into one of those writers. You know the ones, they start out strong and then fizzle somewhere in the middle, switch to sprinkling random posts here and there all the while insisting that they'll get it done someday, don't worry. And then three more months go by...

Real life is a cruel task-mistress, that's all I can say in my defense. Maybe that's what happens to them, too.

Since it's been so unforgivably long, here's a quick recap:

A stalker has been leaving flowers, notes, phone calls, Egyptian jewelry and text messages for Brennan. The jewelry has an implied threat of watching and vengeance, but one that only is obvious to someone who knows ancient Egyptian culture & mythology. Brennan has been interested in Egypt since childhood. A long-distant sniper shot could have been aimed at either Booth or Brennan, with each one fearing it was meant for the other. Someone wired the Jeffersonian's sound system to play loud music throughout the entire museum when Brennan turned on her office lights, and then the whole museum to lose power when anyone attempted to stop the music playing. Brennan now has two agents escorting her for protection and admitted to Booth that her old professor/lover, Michael Stires, knew she'd gone to Egypt. He'd argued with her about why she really wanted to go there and that's why they broke up. So, Booth called Stires...

~Q~


Fan Mail - Nexus


~Q~

By the time the call ended Booth knew that Doctor Michael Stires' relationship with Bones had ended on an inappropriate tilt, one that was now tilting Booth's thoughts in an entirely new direction.

Releasing his grip on the telephone, the agent found himself gazing past where his hand still rested on the plastic device, staring straight into the cabinet of cases closed by their team. Thinking of teams would always bring his mind straight to hockey, Booth's favorite team sport, and the first rule of hockey is to "keep your stick on the ice," be ready for anything. That's followed by second rule, "keep your head up," because having your stick on the ice means nothing if you don't see the puck coming your way in the first place. If you're too busy looking in the wrong direction, the puck will spin right past you. Or worse, it might go airborne and smack you in the back of the head.

As if he'd been struck by the puck, Booth lifted a hand to rub against his scalp, scratching away his own annoyance at having missed the obvious. Why did it have to take Michael Stires of all people to draw his attention there, where it should have been all along? His eyes snapped more intently onto the file cabinet across the room and, out of his seat before he could think better of it, Booth had the drawer open, his fingers dancing across the tabs.

One came out, gripped tightly, his lips pursing as he imagined the best way to broach the possibility with her. The thought that what he was about to do smacked of open heart surgery briefly gave him pause, just long enough to look down at the label on the file in his hand. He couldn't help wondering if she suspected it already, or if she was just on the verge of sensing it and fighting that intuition with all the powers of reasoning at her formidable command.

Because it would make sense for her to try and logic herself out of this. It would make sense for her to deny it and resist the implications even with all the evidence staring her in the eyes.

Spinning, Booth was through the door and down the hall before he could lose his nerve, his heart thundering out a rhythm of fear for every step closer to the truth that only seemed to bring them deeper into danger. Ironically (given the lessening of risk that would accompany his being right), Booth hoped he was wrong. Given the choice he'd actually prefer facing a lust-crazed fan or deranged serial killer than what he was about to propose. Because this is not gonna go down well, not well at all. The mantra carried him all the way to the conference room door and he was so rattled over the prospect of confronting her that he got all the way into the room before realizing it was not going to happen at all.

The room was empty.

~Q~

"What. the hell. are you doing."

It wasn't even a question since he wasn't interested in whatever insane rationalization she was planning to hurl at him. The 'question' was intended more as a wake-up blast, the sort of shout a parent makes right before his kid is about to run into the street or climb out a window onto the roof. To startle them into stopping, make them see the lunacy of putting themselves in peril when, for whatever reason, they're too wrapped up in whatever they're doing to see how incredibly stupid their behavior actually is.

Perhaps it was his tone that narrowed her eyes. Bones stood her ground, defending her front door with her own brand of rising fury as she refused to relent or retreat. "Go away, Booth."

"Like hell."

This, what was happening, was hell.

That's probably why he kept saying the word so much.

"Just go home." And she tried to shut the door, cursing softly when his large loafer lodged itself in the rapidly shrinking gap and it pinched.

"Leave you here alone? This is the last place you should be," he grunted, grimacing as the pressure against his foot made him briefly consider pulling it back after all. Too much pain, can't break through and yet to retreat meant losing all the ground he'd gained over the last few days. "Bones, you are hurting my foot."

Somehow, the grunted complaint registered with her, or maybe it was recollection of that night in the hospital a year back when she'd (correctly) inferred Falaca from all the healing fractures marring his feet. Bilateral beatings crushing the bones. And now she was adding her own injury to the insult and as realization registered she winced, too.

It was rapidly becoming too much for either of them to bear. "Ouch! Damn it!"

She sprang back as if pushed, and before she turned away Booth thought Temperance Brennan looked like she was the one caught in a door. Half in, half out — pinched in between and no way to escape the vise pressing downwards. A tear appeared on one cheek, one that she ruthlessly dashed away while biting her lip and avoiding his anger but not her own remorse.

"I'm sorry."

Taking the opening she'd left him, Booth slipped into the room and shut the door. Locked it. Locked eyes with her at last as her pained apology finally revealed itself as vague. Was she sorry for nearly breaking his foot, or for the damage she'd done to his heart when he turned around and found her gone? "It's all right, I didn't need that foot anyway."

The joke didn't register. Instead, an even more deeply pained patch of pale bloomed on her cheeks and he could only think she'd gone stark white at the thought of him being less than whole.

"You are attempting to be humorous. I don't understand why."

"Because it's either that, or strangle you."

"You're angry."

Understatement of the decade but as any panic-stricken parent can attest, the anger comes fast on the heels of relief, an outpouring of frustrated love for the soul he was sworn to protect. "Damn straight I'm angry." Stepping closer, looming over her and feeling a spark of satisfaction when her eyes narrowed but her body relaxed, he agreed that she'd read him right for once. "Why would you risk coming back here by yourself. Huh? I mean, this is classic divide and conquer stuff he's doing and you walked right into it. What were you thinking?!"

Her eyes flew up to his, watchful now because she sensed at last why the first words out of his mouth tonight had not ended on a questioning pitch. He already knew exactly why she'd come home alone. "If he wants us separated then logically, we should give him what he wants."

"How is that logical? Bones, for all we know this guy is trying to kill you!"

"No, what he's trying to do is scare me and it's working. It's not rational but I am…." She shook her head, shivering as the words stumbled. "…you're distracting me, Booth. You need to leave. Please, just … go."

"No." If she thought he was leaving without a fight then she thought wrong. If she thought he'd be leaving after a fight … still wrong. They eyed each other warily from across the divide, neither willing to be the one to risk crossing it.

"I don't want you here."

"Too bad. Leaving you here alone is not going to happen."

His arms crossed.

And his partner's eyes, most likely against her will, went straight to his biceps and curled around them before sauntering up the wall of his chest, scaling the height of his shoulders and finally, landing on his lips. She was looking at his lips when she suggested anyone else would ever do. "I'm not alone, there are agents right outside."

"Not any more, I sent them to keep watch around the perimeter."

"What? Why!"

"Because." A step closer, a reproach in itself as he closed the gap she'd opened and she, guarded, had to decide whether to let him approach or keep that distance maintained. She watched him come closer, listening, tense, torn. "They don't know you like I do, and that means they can't protect you like I will."

That's when he saw it, the glimmer of terror that flashed in her eyes before she dropped them away and schooled her features into the expressionless mask he hated. "Objectively speaking, their lack of emotional involvement makes them sharper guardians, not lesser. And, there's two of them."

Oh, he knew what she was doing, knew Bones had set upon a course to drive him away and she was pulling out all the stops on this one. Logic, insulting though it was, made a potent point. "You need to rest," she added. "You won't be capable of providing an adequate level of vigilance. Fatigue, Booth. We are both fatigued."

"I'll rest here," he countered, "on your couch. And don't worry, I'm not too tired to handle this. Sniper, remember? I can stay alert for days if need be."

For one instant, before she could prevent it, another flinch twitched her muscles. Shaking her head again, her pitch scaling upwards into desperation, she denied his willingness to endure deprivation on her behalf. "That's not rational. You can't do your job properly if you're exhausted—"

"I can do my job just fine."

"As an FBI Agent you are exceptional, yes. But—" She stopped.

Bones stopped speaking because the exceptional FBI Agent she was trying so hard to dissuade missed very little and at that moment, he'd zeroed in on the one thing she must have been hoping he'd miss. Arms dropped and he was stalking towards it, stalking her as she belatedly moved to block it, intercept him, stop it from happening.

"What's in it."

Divide and conquer; he should know better than to accuse her yet suddenly it seemed his own partner had begun conspiring against him. What was in that little blue box that shouldn't be there, the one that wasn't anywhere in this apartment last night. Where did she find it and when? Did she come home to find it or was it in her office this afternoon? And why was she trying so hard to hide it from him now... Spearing her with a glare, he added, "Is that why you came home alone?"

Dread gave way briefly to confusion, her lips parting on a query that she probably would have asked if he didn't keep going. Literally. He kept walking, his momentum pushed all questions aside and she acted quickly.

"There was a piece of paper in it," she blustered, rather too hasty a capitulation for it to be anything other than an effort at diversion or further denial. Whatever it was, she didn't want him to see that box. "Here." A hand thrust forward opening to a curled strip of paper half-damp and hidden within her palm, her eyes half wild with torment. "I don't know what it means."

The avenger of blood may execute the murderer on sight.

The avenger of blood... That phrase tickled and teased at an ancient, catechismal memory but it was a more literal notion that chilled him to the core. To avenge is to take vengeance over harm done to another. Who was the harmed one and who had done the harming?

A few weeks ago Bones shot and killed the murderous creep Lappin to save Booth's life, but there didn't seem to be any way Lappin's supposed family could know her so intimately that they could engineer a campaign of targeted terror. No, the timing there had to be a coincidence, right? Gingerly relieving her of the burden, he stared down at the typed words, worrying over the question of whether it was not meant for her ... but for him.

He'd killed plenty and it was well known. And the way she'd flinched when he said 'sniper.' The fact that she'd gone home without him, tried to keep him out…. The file forgotten in his other hand, Booth felt his paranoia ratcheting upwards.

"It's from the Bible. Did you look this verse up?"

Judging by the chalk-white cast of her cheeks, he'd asked the right question. Of course she did. It was Bones, she wouldn't just stand there helplessly staring at cryptic words when the Internet with 1001 interpretations was right there at her fingertips. She knew exactly where it came from and what context the verse was set in, even if that didn't tell her precisely what it meant.

"It ... it starts out talking about cities of refuge set aside for those guilty of causing an unintentional death — I think, maybe, what we would call manslaughter — but then, right before that verse, it talks about lying in wait. About throwing something and causing a death. Murder. And members of the bereaved family can kill the murderer as soon as they see him. There is no place of refuge for a murderer."

Horror clenched tight as her explanation sank in. Temperance Brennan had no place of refuge left — everywhere she went was violated. On the heels of horror came panic. "We need to get out of here, now."

"No." She was shaking her head. "No. I'm staying here."

The threatening little scrap fluttered again between his fingers before he slapped it and the file down. Dumbfounded, Booth could only shake his head and wonder what it was going to take to pry her out of here. "Why?"

"He's not going to hurt me, Booth. It's you."

"Then that's all the more reason—"

"No." Sharply, jerking herself into action with a near frantic rejection of his plan to evacuate them both, she pushed harder. "You can't protect yourself if you're worrying about me. Just go. Please."

"What good does protecting myself do me, if you're dead? Huh? You ever think of that?"

"He thinks you're a threat to me," she insisted again, and this time her eyes darted involuntarily to the table, to the little blue box. "But if you back off…"

"Then you're a sitting duck, damn it! Every place you might have considered a refuge, he's been there." Booth flung a hand out to take in her surroundings, then brought it back to scrub the fear off his own face. "I can't lose you. God, please, if you won't think of your own safety then please think of mine!"

"I am. That's why I want you to go."

"If you're staying here then I'm staying here, too."

"No!" Furious, she pushed him back with an actual shove. "You're worried about your safety? Then stay away from me."

"Like hell. That is not going to happen."

"Why not?!"

"Because protecting you is my job, damn it!"

"No it isn't! You are not my self-appointed savior!"

Furious, stabbing a finger at her, Booth stepped in and drove her backwards. "You appointed me this role, Bones. You."

Astonishment stalled her, let him get close enough to hiss her own words right back at her. "'Anthropologically, men are programmed to protect their mates.' Isn't that what you said?"

The impact of those words, her anthropological inevitability, struck her mute for a moment. Brennan's mouth opened to refute him but could only stall in that position as the implication of his argument became clear.

"You are mine." He'd been claiming her long before even he understood what it meant. Protecting her from that gangster goon, Ortiz; flying down to New Orleans and risking his entire career on an earring; breaking out of the hospital when he realized she was at risk from a rogue FBI agent; hell, even that first case in Cullen's office when he defended her for confronting a Senator in the Capitol rotunda. If she'd been transparent in writing, then he'd been just as obvious in action. "I love you."

Fluid agony flooded her eyes. "Don't."

"Don't love you? Too late." The smile he sent her way might best be called a grimace, a bitter tightening of lips exposing both teeth and truth.

"Then just stop."

"Why." They were getting closer, Booth pressing her backwards, pressing for answers, pushing until her truth emerged as well. "And what makes you think I can? I'm never gonna stop. Never."

"Hyperbolic statements—"

"No." A dark laugh, a grim flash of determination. "Doesn't matter that you don't believe in forever. You know what — I'll even let you have that argument. Okay? You win. I might stop loving you someday."

It was a dangerous wager, he could see her tides shifting precariously as his undertow swept beneath the foundation he'd begun to build and threatened to wash her away. The anchor Booth sent after her splashed down noisily, pinning her in place. "But it's not gonna be tonight."

Her eyes widened again as her back hit the wall and Booth's body anchored her.

"Not gonna be this week or this month. Probably not gonna be this year." Every breath brushed against her ear, every pulse between them pounding out matching rhythms. "As long as we're mated, this is how it's gonna be."

Tension, taut and taunting, held them both in place. Her head tipped back and she drew in a gulp of air the way a drowning woman might. From his vantage point slightly above, he watched her pulse throb just below her jaw, felt her muscles drawing tight, felt the ghosting of her breath as her surrender signaled itself with a sigh. "Booth."

Sweat burst out under his arms, their hot breaths panted and swirling between them, their hearts thundering one after the other. "Say it," he urged.

God, he just needed her to admit it.

"Say it, Bones."

Her throat moved, a convulsive swallow of what sounded suspiciously like a sob. "I don't want you to die over me."

"Because you love me."

Close. God, they were so close now. He could feel the heat of her flaring against his front, smell traces of perfume and perspiration as he nuzzled closer and waited her out. His own blood was rushing so loudly he barely heard it when it came.

"Yes."

Whispered.

His body jolted as if she'd struck him, as if that hissing sound heralded the poisonous bite of a viper. That's how it felt, his heart immediately thundering, lungs collapsing on a gasp, palms shaking out drops of sweat. A thunderous roar seemed to drown out everything after that, until he fell forward, let himself fall into her.

One palm came up to cup her jaw, to still the trembling as he held her steady and brushed his lips against hers. "Say it."

"Booth…" He heard the terror as whatever she was feeling threatened to overwhelm her, the way her body bunched itself and he knew she was fighting an instinct to flee.

His hand drifted backwards, palming the base of her skull as he stepped into her and drew her next words directly into his mouth. He devoured anything else she might have intended to say, every sweep of his lips and tongue dissolving the last of her resistance. Over and over he lapped against her, water caressing the shore where the boundary between fluid and solid melts one into the other.

~Q~


Author's Note: Whew! Hope this was worth the wait.

PS: The verse quoted above is from the Holy Bible, Numbers 35:21.