(The Killer in the Crosshairs / The Change in the Game)
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I don't own Bones.
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Alone again, his nights were restless and his sleep fitful. He had thought he would never be alone again once Hannah had moved in with him, but his inability to find someone that loved him enough to commit to him meant that he would probably always be alone. At least, that was how it felt at four in the morning when he couldn't go back to sleep.
His dream had been vivid and pleasurable and when his alarm clock had gone off he had reluctantly awakened to reality. Dragging himself from his bed, he entered the bathroom and began his morning ritual with a bath and a shave. While he was busy scrapping the heavy beard from his chin, he thought about his favorite dream and wondered why that one never left him. He didn't dream it very often, but when he did he remembered it and found it comforting that he had at least one dream that gave him so much pleasure.
He had first dreamed of the nightclub and his life with Brennan while he had been in his coma. The surgery had been successful and his brain tumor had been removed, but he had reacted rather badly to the anesthesia and had slept for four days. When he had come out of his deep sleep he had been able to remember his dream. All of it.
Oddly, the dream had seemed real and he had confused that make believe world with reality for days. It had taken numerous conversations with Sweets and Cam before he let go of that dream world and accepted the life he had. A life where he was just partners with Temperance Brennan. A world where he wasn't married to her and they didn't own and operate a nightclub. Instead he was forced to accept that he was an FBI Agent and he wasn't married to anyone. It was a cold life he was forced to accept, but accept it he did. What choice did he have?
After deciding to move on with Hannah while he was in Afghanistan, his life seemed to take a happy turn. At the time, he had felt that he might not be alone ever again and he felt lucky to have found someone that wanted him. Now he knew that he had set himself up for a fall by ignoring Hannah's warnings about marriage. She had told him on numerous occasions that she didn't want to get married, but he had ignored her and asked her anyway. After she had turned him down, he had been filled with rage. He wanted the life his nightclub dream teased about. He wanted someone to care so much about him that they were willing to marry him. Why did that dream haunt him and make him yearn for more?
"Why does that dream seem so real?" He couldn't understand why his coma dream was so vivid and so filled with detail. Every time it appeared it was as if he had stepped into a movie or a book and that it had played out like a murder mystery. "Wait . . . it is like a novel isn't it? A novel . . . a murder mystery?"
He spent the day thinking about the dream when he had time. There was something mysterious about that dream and he was determined to understand what that mystery was about.
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"Bones, I have a weird question I want to ask you." He had been debating asking Brennan about it for a few days and the problem wasn't going to go away by remaining silent. "Um . . . you know about that dream I had during my coma, after my brain surgery? . . . I told you about it and Sweets and Cam. Hell, I think I told everyone about it that I know . . . anyway, look, that dream wasn't like my normal dreams. It was vivid and very detailed and it was centered around a murder investigation." He paused and watched Brennan to see her reaction.
Not sure where Booth was going with his question, Brennan kept her face as emotionless as possible. "Yes, I remember. We were nightclub owners." She decided not to say anything else that might incriminate her.
"Um, yeah." He was still hesitating and he wasn't sure why. "The hell with it . . . Did you have something to do with that dream? I don't know . . . did you read me a book or tell me a story?" He stopped. He knew he was sounding foolish, but he wanted answers. He wanted to know why the dream wouldn't let him go.
She had assumed that no one would ever ask her about the book she had been writing during Booth's coma. Whenever anyone had asked her what she was writing, she told them she was working on an idea for a new novel. She hadn't elaborated further and she always stopped writing whenever anyone entered Booth's hospital room. Afterward, no one had questioned her about what had happened to the story since it was never published and Brennan had been grateful for that. Now Booth was questioning his dream and he was placing the origin of the dream at her doorstep. "It's possible I may have told you a story while you were asleep. I didn't sleep very well while you were in your coma." Her answer was evasive and it could possibly be considered a little white lie. Her partner had told her once that these kind of lies were common with average people. It was the closest she had ever come to telling Booth a deliberate lie.
"You told me a story." Wary of what may come next, he sipped some of his coffee and placed the cup back on the table. "A story about a nightclub called the Lab?"
She debated about whether or not telling a lie would serve a useful purpose and decided that it wouldn't. "Yes, it was called the Lab."
He felt conflicted. He now knew where the dream had come from, but that left so many unanswered questions. Questions he couldn't ask, at least not yet. "I see. Thank you." He left it like that.
She was relieved.
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Sitting in the Rose Garden outside the Jeffersonian, Booth stared into the distance not really looking at anything in particular. He and Brennan had been moving closer in their relationship for the last few weeks and had even gone on a few dates. They seemed to be comfortable with each other and that made both of them happy. It had been a long time since they had been that comfortable together and they were enjoying the closeness.
"Bones, I have a question for you." He had tried to talk to her about it in the past, but now seemed to be a good a time to finish that conversation. "That story you told me while I was in my coma . . . we were married and in love . . . you told me a story about us being in love."
"Yes, I did." Brennan had wondered if Booth was ever going to ask her about the dream again and now that time had come. She felt a certain sense of relief. "There was a possibility that you were never going to wake up from your coma. Your reaction to the anesthesia was sever and your surgeon was very worried . . . I was afraid that you might stay in your coma or worse . . . you might die . . . I needed a distraction and I started to think of a life where we were together. What that would be like. I started writing it on my laptop and while I wrote it, I read it out loud. It was our story and I wanted you to hear it . . . I wrote about owning a nightclub with you. It was safe to place it in another setting since we were not nightclub owners and it wasn't really about us."
Booth interrupted her. "But it was about us."
She wouldn't lie to him. "Yes, it was . . . I wasn't strong enough to admit that I was in love with you at the time. I was impervious remember?"
He remembered. "So, you made up a world and you put us in the middle of it."
"Yes." Brennan placed her hand on his thigh. "Yes, I did. To make it interesting I had a murder committed in our night club and we helped solve it. We weren't in law enforcement nor were we attached in any way to the FBI. It was supposed to be an amusing story, but it was more than that. We were married. We had a wonderful sex life and I was pregnant . . . things I didn't believe I was really interested in at the time, but apparently I was." She laughed. "It was very confusing."
"You wrote me a love story." Booth placed his hand over her hand and squeezed it gently. "You've never written a love story before, but you wrote one for me."
Her gaze upon their united hands, Brennan smiled. "Yes . . . we couldn't be more than friends at the time. I was afraid of the idea of love and I wasn't sure if you loved me as more than a friend. If you died while you were in your coma, I wanted you to know that I loved you, at least in our dream world. I wanted you to know that you were loved."
Booth's throat was tight and he had to swallow a few times before he could speak. "Thank you, Bones. It was a really nice thing to do . . . when I woke up, I knew I was in love with you. Once I realized that that world was just make believe I was sad, but that's because I knew that you weren't in love with me in my real world . . . That dream gave me hope, Bones. I remembered that dream and I thought about it sometimes while I was recovering from my operation. Afterward, when things were tough I could count on the memory of that dream helping me over the rough patches. I still dream parts of that dream once in a while. It's the best dream I've ever had and it . . . it gave me hope when I needed it. It still gives me hope. About us, about the possibility of there being an us. Do you understand?"
"I do understand, Booth." He loved her and she loved him. "It's just a matter of time before parts of that dream may become reality . . . not the married part and not the nightclub part, but perhaps the rest of it."
"Yeah?" Ever since their talk during the night of the blizzard, they had both been working on a way to become more than partners. "I think it won't be long, Bones."
She thought the same. "Yes, I am sure you are right. It won't be much longer."
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I hope you liked this one.