Stretching his back as he rose from the uncomfortable make-shift bed he'd made on his couch, Booth walked as quietly as possible toward his bedroom. He felt like a little kid again, avoiding the creaky floorboards to keep his dad from hearing him sneaking down out of his room to get a snack from the kitchen after they'd been sent to bed without supper. He'd learned that trick from his mom before she'd left. She'd told him it was a special game, that the creaky floorboards were lava. Maybe it was what had made him such a good sniper. He could get in and out of almost anywhere without detection.

What he hadn't been prepared for was the squeaky dresser drawer he opened in search of a pair of jeans. Hannah rolled over, flicking on the lamp and looking at him through red-rimmed half open eyes. His gut wrenched at the sight of her pained face. She'd clearly cried herself to sleep. "I have to go meet the squints." He told her softly. "Heather Taffet, the uh, Gravedigger, she was granted an appeal. Caroline just let us know. We gotta run through all of the evidence. Make sure we didn't miss anything that she caught." He explained further when she remained silent, staring at him blankly.

"Will she be there?" She finally asked, and he realized exactly why she'd been hesitant to ask. She probably knew it was a stupid question.

"Bones? Yea. I mean… she's basically queen of the squints, so anytime I say I'm meeting the squints, it's safe to assume I mean her too." He snapped back irritably. He understood he had fucked up pretty royally, but he couldn't let their relationship problems interfere with his job, and certainly not this case in particular. "Look, I am sorry. I know that what I've done has put us on shaky ground, but this is the woman who kidnapped me, she buried Bones and Hodgins alive, not to mention dozens of kids. I can't see her walk on a technicality. This is my job, no more, no less."

Hannah nodded slowly as he sat on the edge of the bed and tugged his jeans up his legs. "Speaking of jobs…" she started. "I wanted to talk to you tonight about this but we sort of got derailed." She told him, speaking very carefully and he wondered what she was getting at. "I've been offered an opportunity to go on the campaign tour with the Press Corps. It's, uhm, it would mean I'd be gone for three months." She explained, and he watched her face for any indication of where she was heading with this. "I thought that maybe, given the current state of our relationship, maybe you could come with me."

There it was. He listened as she told him he could take vacation time, and she supported her idea by explaining how when they'd been in the desert, they'd been really connected, enjoying their little bubble. She went on about how they'd lost something with his unfaithfulness and they needed to put in the work if they expected to last.

"I just think we could really use the time to gain some perspective and remind ourselves of why we love each other." She explained, and he nodded. She made valid points, and he recognized the need for some repair time to their relationship.

"I don't know if that's something I can do, Hannah. My job—" he started to say, but she shook her head.

"You're not understanding me. It's not a request. I'm telling you that we need this. If our relationship is going to survive what you've done, we need to get away and regroup." She told him, and he felt like he'd been punched in the gut. Was she really giving him an ultimatum?

"I can't leave my job and my son for three months to follow you around. It's not realistic." He told her, shaking his head as he got up to yank his shirt on.

"I'm not asking you to come for the full three months. One at least, and then a few days here and there. We can figure it all out so that you don't miss any time with Parker, and you can still telecommute for some aspects of your job." She told him, and he realized she'd put a lot more thought into this than she'd have been able to in the last few hours.

"This feels like an ultimatum, Hannah. That's not a good foundation for a relationship." He told her solemnly. He loved her, but was he really going to let her make demands like this?

"It's not an ultimatum, Seeley. It's a damn life preserver for our rapidly sinking relationship." She replied defensively. "I picked up my entire life, changed my career, just to be with you. If you can't even think about taking some time to join me while I'm away–"

"I will think about it." He told her truthfully. "You might be right. Time and space could do us some good." He added when her face fell at his initial response. He wasn't in the mood nor did he have the time to get into it with her while he was on his way out the door. "Let me get my ducks in a row, all right?"

She nodded and he hesitantly leaned in to press a kiss to the top of her head. "I love you, and I want to do what we need to do to make this work," he told her. She simply nodded, and he was glad that the conversation was put to rest for the time being before he left.


Booth nodded his thanks as the British intern approached the table he and the Squints, along with Sweets and Caroline, had been occupying for the last 10 hours. The kid placed a fresh pot of coffee down on the table and began filling their cups. This was probably not what he'd imagined when he, a student at the top of his class, applied for and earned the opportunity to intern under the world renowned Dr. Temperance Brennan, but he sure was taking being an errand boy in stride today– fetching coffee, making photocopies, digging through Bones' purse for a damn throat lozenge for Caroline at one point. The kid hadn't even blushed when he reached in and liberated a handful of tampons by mistake.

They'd pored over every case file, reviewed every x-ray and chemical test; they'd recreated every scenario, digitally enhanced to see if there was something, anything they could have missed, but they'd continually come up with all of the same evidence they'd already had.

"Time for me to head out, Chers. Anything you find, bring it. I'll see you all there in an hour." Caroline announced, draining her coffee and rising in from her seat.

It was only another thirty minutes before Sweets announced that they were out of time and suggested they head over.

"Booth…" Bones whispered, following him hesitantly as they all made their ways toward their cars. "I— I can't drive." She told him, holding her hands out in front of her. He watched as they trembled uncontrollably between them for a moment. There hadn't even been a thought process before he was reaching out and pulling her against his chest, wrapping his arms firmly around her.

"It'll be fine. She's not going anywhere, okay?" He promised her, despite his own concerns. "C'mon. Get in the truck." He told her, placing his hand on her back and ushering her toward the passenger side of his SUV.

As they drove, he watched her from the corner of his eye, knowing he had to tell her before they arrived at the courthouse. Hannah would be there in a professional capacity, but now that the cat was out of the bag, he didn't want to see Bones blindsided.

"I, uh, I told Hannah." He told her, aiming for casual when it was anything but a casual conversation. He glanced over at Bones, but it was hard to place her expression when he had to keep glancing back at the road.

"Did she– I mean what— what did she say?" Bones asked, and he could hear the anxiety seeping through her voice.

"Just, you know, that maybe we shouldn't be alone if we can't control ourselves in each other's presence." He explained, giving her the cliff notes version.

"That's probably wise." Bones had said at the same time he'd voiced his opinion that that was completely ridiculous. He whipped his head in her direction at that, and she looked away quickly.

"Bones, we're adults. We've been friends for years. There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to control ourselves. We made a mistake. It's not ever going to happen again." He told her firmly, trying to get her to agree that they were going to be fine. They had to be fine, right?

"Yes, you're right." She finally agreed quietly. "You're with someone. It would be wrong to cross that proverbial line under those circumstances." She stated pragmatically, and he had to take a moment to absorb what she'd just said. Was she only agreeing about the line because he was with Hannah?

"What? You'd— you'd wanna cross that line again? Under different circumstances?" He asked, and glanced toward her in time to catch her noncommittal shrug.

She was quiet for a long time, and he wondered if she was lost in thoughts of their predicament or the trial. "We can be professionals." She said quietly, staring out of the window at the passing traffic. "I've always prided myself on my ability to compartmentalize. It will take some work, but I'm confident we can manage." She added, and he nodded, agreeing with her assessment and glad they were on the same page. "Although, I do find I'm slightly disappointed. I've always imagined we'd have very satisfying sex, and I now regret not having experienced that." She added, her tone as casual as if she'd been talking about the damn weather forecast.

"You gotta stop saying shit like that, okay?" He told her firmly, despite wanting to agree with her assumption, because, fuck, he had always thought they'd have great sex too. The fact was he was with Hannah, and he'd made a promise to her that he wouldn't let something like this happen again. He'd promised himself too. He wasn't about to be that guy. "That's one of those inappropriate line crossers." He explained, hoping that she was just being Bones, saying whatever popped into her head regardless of if it was polite or appropriate.

They rode in silence for a while before he decided to plow through his next issue at hand. "So, listen, Hannah and I talked about something else, and it sort of affects you too." He started, waiting for her to look over at him and acknowledge that she'd heard him before he began explaining the job opportunity she'd been offered and how she'd asked him to devote some of that time to joining her to work on their relationship.

"Yes, that's probably wise." She agreed, though she sounded resigned and sad.

"I haven't made a decision yet, Bones." He told her, though he had a strong feeling he was going to try to make it work with Hannah's travel plans. He didn't want to upset her, but he also didn't want to give Bones false hope, so he continued. "I'm leaning toward it though. We'd be leaving in a few weeks. I just have to figure out how to manage my weekends with Parker first, so we can hammer down our plans."

"I assume you'll be assigning a new FBI agent to work with my team then." She suggested quietly. Her team? Not our team?

"It's just temporary, Bones." He assured her. "Just a few months, not even because I'll be back and forth for a week here and there." He explained, but she simply nodded, and he would have given anything to know what was running through that brilliant brain of hers.


The courthouse was surrounded by protestors and supporters waving large signs and holding cameras, causing all kinds of chaos as they arrived. They had just made it through the throngs of people when Taffet's transport vehicle parked as close to the entrance as it could get and her armed guards hauled her out of the back double doors.

She smiled cruelly when they made eye contact, and Brennan felt a chill run down her spine, radiating through her every nerve ending. "Don't even look at her, Bones." Booth was telling her, but she could hardly register his voice over the thunderous cheering and angry shouting surrounding them.

Taffet was saying something to her, but she couldn't make it out, and she began walking toward the enemy, attempting to read her lips. It was a split second, maybe even less that Taffet's twisted face had been there in front of Brennan's eyes and then suddenly it was not. The world was moving in slow motion as Brennan heard the shouts turn into screams, and people began ducking and running in every direction. Booth's gun was drawn, and he was turning around in circles, looking for something.

Something warm was on her face, and she lifted her hand to her cheek, swiping her fingertips against the hot liquid and bringing them down so she could examine it.

Red. There was blood on her hand now. Was it from her face?

Sweets' face was suddenly right in front of hers. He looked like he was screaming and she could see that his mouth was shaping her name. Dr. Brennan! He just kept repeating it, but she couldn't hear him over the ringing in her ears.

Where the hell had Taffet gone? Someone needed to detain her in all of this chaos. Something fell from her hair, catching her attention in her peripheral vision and she turned her head, following it as it hit the ground with a wet slap. She stared for a long moment before bringing her hands up to the sides of her head and feeling for her ears.

She still had two.

Whose ear had just fallen out of her hair? Why was it on the ground beside her?

"Bones!" Booth was suddenly grabbing her shoulders, shaking her and forcing her to look at him. "Are you hit?!" He was screaming. Hit with what? She shook her head, not because she was answering his question but because she couldn't wrap her head around what was happening.

"Dr. Brennan!" Hannah's voice. Why was she calling her Dr. Brennan? "Dr. Brennan, were you injured when Heather Taffet was shot in front of you? Did you see where the shot was fired from? Do you have any comments?"

Suddenly Booth's voice was booming, loud and commanding, instructing people to expand perimeters around the crime scene and keep the press out of the way.

Had Hannah just said Heather Taffet was shot?

"Agent Booth, she's in shock." Sweets was talking again; she could hear his voice this time, and she spun around to look for him.


"Bren, Sweetie, we're going to start processing you for evidence." Angela was telling her, and she looked around. When did she come back to the lab? Why were they standing in the decontamination room? Has there been a chemical spill?

"Dr. Brennan, you have fragments of Taffet's skull embedded in your head and face. I'm going to remove them very carefully with forceps and then we're going to help you rinse away the remaining particulates." Cam was speaking to her like she was a child, guiding her to sit down on a stool.

"The Gravedigger's skull is in my face?" She asked, suddenly feeling very aware of her surroundings. She saw Booth pacing outside the small glass enclosed space.

"Yes, Sweetie." Angela told her softly. She was wearing gloves and a crime scene jumpsuit. This wasn't her job. This was, perhaps, something Hodgins should be doing. "We need the fragments so Vincent and the interns can reconstruct the skull, and we can figure out where the shot came from."

Brennan nodded, suddenly acutely aware of the stinging feeling in her face. Skull fragments were embedded in her skin. She lifted her arm, needing to touch, but Cam gently grabbed her wrist. "You're not wearing gloves." She'd said, and Brennan nodded.

She winced as Cam gingerly removed a long shard of bone from her cheek, quietly apologizing as she pulled it out of Brennan's tender flesh. Glancing up at the window, she focused on Booth's pacing feet, watching them walk five steps one way, five steps back. She watched as his shoes repeated the pattern with military precision until they'd suddenly stopped at three steps and turned.

She followed the line of his legs all the way up to his torso and over his crossed arms until she reached his face. His brown eyes were hard and worried, etched with pain and she wanted to fix that. "Booth." She tried to call him through the door, but her voice was unexpectedly hoarse.

She was grateful when Cam glanced up and waved him in before returning to her meticulous task of recovering the remains. She'd had to do this to him before, though the bulk of the remains had been recovered from the actual bomber, his clothing had been saturated in brain matter and bomb particulates. She'd had to strip him of those clothes. She'd enjoyed that much more than she should have at the time, and now she regretted feeling anything but empathy.

She gasped as Cam attempted to remove a particularly stubborn piece of bone embedded in her temple. Reaching out on instinct, she grasped Booth's hand, squeezing as she gritted her teeth. He stroked his thumb over the back of her hand soothingly until the fragment was freed.

After what seemed like hours, Cam was putting her tools down and telling Booth to step outside, but Brennan couldn't convince her brain to instruct her hand to release his. Instead, she squeezed tighter and looked up at him, silently begging him not to leave her. He made a weak attempt to pull his hand free, but she tugged him closer. "Stay. Please." She whispered, and watched as he swallowed nervously before nodding.

"Ange, get the blinds." He instructed, and she watched as Angela walked across the small room and began pulling the shades down over the windows.

"Dr. Brennan, very carefully, outstretch your arms, I'm going to remove your jacket." Cam instructed her, and Brennan complied. Numbly, she allowed her body to be manipulated and contorted as Angela and Cam meticulously removed her clothing. Booth's hand remained gripped in hers, leaving only when absolutely necessary to pull her arm from a sleeve before it returned to her grip immediately afterwards, but his eyes were averted, staring unseeingly at some random corner of the room as she stood there, now clad in only her underwear.

"Let's get you into the shower and rinse any loose fragments from your hair." Cam murmured, ushering her onto the large metal pan they'd placed over the drain so they could collect anything that washed away from her body.

She released Booth's hand then, only because he remained planted firmly in place when she'd been ushered into the antechamber within the decontamination room and under the warm spray of the high pressure shower.


"You wanna change out of those?" Booth asked, nodding at his sweatpants and hooded sweater that she was currently cocooned in. She shook her head. She'd been grateful when he'd sent an intern to his car to get his gym bag from the trunk. She didn't have her own bag in her car today, and her only other option was the dress hanging in her office that her dry cleaner had dropped off that morning for her. "You sure?" He asked with a nervous chuckle. "I, uh, went jogging in those the other morning and haven't taken them out of my car to be washed." He explained. "They're probably ripe."

She wrapped her arms around her waist, tucking her chin to her neck and absently inhaled. His sweater didn't smell ripe; it just smelled like him– warm, welcoming, soft. Those weren't smells, she knew this, but that's what the sweater smelt like.

"C'mon, you wanna lay down?" He asked her, ushering her toward her bedroom. She nodded, and allowed herself to be led to her bed. She watched as Booth pulled back her covers and patted the empty space. "Let's go. I'll tuck you in." He said with a smirk, and she smiled at him, climbing into the bed and letting him pull her covers up to her neck.

"Don't go." She murmured when he turned to leave.

"I was just going to go sit out in the living room for a bit. Gotta write up my incident report for today." He explained, nodding toward her bedroom door.

"Please…" she felt stupid for begging him to stay, but she was overwhelmed, and she'd given into her need for comfort over her need to seem calm and collected in the face of disaster for once.

She hadn't realized she was crying until he was sitting on the edge of her bed swiping away her tears with the pads of his thumbs. "It's okay, all right?" He murmured, leaning over at an awkward angle to hug her against his chest. "It's fine now, all right? It's over. You're safe." He was whispering against her hair, gently rocking her in his arms.

By the time she'd calmed down again, and her sobs had subsided, she registered their new position. Booth was sitting up against her headboard, cradling her head against his chest as she lay nestled into his side.

She almost regretted tilting her head up to look at his face when the rhythmic stroking motion of his hand over her hair ceased. "The Gravedigger is dead." she told him flatly, and he nodded. "Do you think that it was Broadsky?" she asked, and he nodded again.

"Once your squints finish reconstructing the skull and we figure out the direction the shot came from, we'll have a crime scene to process." he explained, as if she didn't already know, but she understood he was simply talking it out because he needed to.

"I should go help reconstruct the skull." she told him, reaching to pull back the blanket from her lap. His hand gingerly cupped her chin, careful not to touch any of the scratches from the bone shrapnel, and turned her head back toward his face, halting her movements.

"You had her skull in your skull. Your job is to stay right here and rest." he told her, and she scowled. She was the best. It would be much faster if she was the one doing the reconstruction. "Don't give me that look."

"What look?" she asked, glaring petulantly at him.

"That one right there. The Dr. Brennan signature 'I don't fucking like you' look." he told her, flashing his own look– that infuriating charm smile. She increased the intensity of her scowl, hoping to convey that his smile wasn't going to work on her this time. "C'mon…" he murmured, cranking the charm up another notch with his tone. When she didn't budge, he simply leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her furrowed brow, right between her eyes. "You're cute when grumpy, but you're still not leaving this bed." he whispered against the side of her head.

A warm blush rose up her neck and heat pooled in the pit of her stomach simply from the tone of his voice. Leaning back, she studied his face until he met her eyes. She didn't know how long they'd stayed like that, sitting completely still and staring directly into each other's eyes. so many silent conversations passing between them. She also wasn't sure who leaned forward first, but she sobbed when their lips met – a mixture of relief and regret, of love and anguish, pain and comfort all passing through her and into him and then back again.

She opened her mouth when his warm tongue probed her lips, begging entrance which she granted without hesitation, and reveled in the feel of his tongue caressing her own. She moaned when he shifted, laying her back against the pillows and covering her body with his own. Caressing his leg with hers as she bent one of her knees and wrapped her ankle around his calf, she lifted her hips off of the bed, meeting his as he hovered just above her.

He cursed against her skin, pressing his erection into the apex of her thighs, grinding against her through his own sweatpants until the textured seam slid against her clit in an agonizing friction. She whimpered as he sucked the sensitive flesh of her throat, letting his weight rest more fully on her body as he slid his hand under the hem of her sweater.

"Booth…" she sighed, begging her brain to work. "Booth… wait." she whispered, reaching for his traveling hand. "Please." She half sobbed because she wanted nothing more than to shut up and let him continue with what he was doing, nothing more than to wrap her legs around his waist and grind against him until she came.

His face was flushed, and his breathing ragged as he leaned up on his hands, locking his elbows next to her head. "I'm sorry, Bones… shit." he said, though he made no movements to change his position.

She tried to focus, despite the delicious feeling of his penis still pressed firmly against her. She'd simply need to move a fraction of an inch, to roll her hips ever so slightly, and they'd both be back to experiencing that perfect ecstasy.

"I'm not." she whispered, running her hands up his biceps to his shoulders. "I just… please don't–" she paused, unsure of whether she truly wanted to say what she was about to say. "Please don't start this if– if you're going to stop it again." she begged him, staring imploringly into his soft brown eyes. "It hurts too much." she told him, and he stared at her for a long time, absorbing what she'd just said. She hadn't only meant herself when she'd said that it was too painful. It was, in fact, agony for her, though her concern wasn't only for herself. She knew that he'd carry this just as heavily as he was carrying their actions from a few nights ago.

Pressing his forehead against hers, he took a deep ragged breath, like he was trying to compose himself, to make the right and rational decision. She felt immediately bereft at the loss of his body weight against her when he rolled onto his back, breathing heavily as he lay there next to her in her bed.

"I wish I could take all of the pain that I've caused you away, Bones. I– I wish I could erase it all." he told her quietly. "I wish …"

"I know." she whispered back, rolling onto her side and tentatively stroking her fingers over the stubble on his cheek. She tucked herself back under his arm, laying her head against his chest, and felt him hold his breath for only a second before he relaxed into the pillows and tightened his arm around her, hugging her to his body and committing to the unspoken agreement that this was all it was ever going to be.