(The Hole in the Heart)

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Horrified, she watched her intern bleed out on the platform while her partner pressed his hands firmly against Vincent's chest in a vain effort to at least slow the bleeding. She had known that Vincent's blood was pumping out too fast and that he would exsanguinate before help could arrive, but she was desperate to be wrong. Just this once she wanted to be wrong.

But she wasn't.

Sad that a young man had died, Booth stood up and stared at the lifeless body on the floor. He had thought the English squint had been an odd one, but he was harmless enough and Brennan had liked him. "I'm sorry, Bones."

Her eyes on her intern, Brennan felt tears drip down her cheeks. "You did what you could. You were very brave. You did everything you could." More tears fell as she continued to stare at the body of her intern. "His aorta must have been severed. Nothing you did would have saved him."

"Hey Bones." Booth moved closer to his girlfriend and placed his right hand on her sleeve. The blood on his hand transferred to the sleeve of her lab coat, but he needed Brennan's attention. Afraid she was in shock, Booth knew that he needed to intervene. "Hey, this isn't your fault . . . okay? This is Brodsky's doing."

Well aware that Brodsky had meant to kill Booth, Brennan turned and moved her arms around his chest. "His target was the user of the phone. He thought that Vincent was you." The thought of her lover lying dead on the platform instead of Vincent was frightening. While she liked her intern and appreciated his zest for life, the thought of losing Booth was almost too much for her handle at the moment.

Booth had considered Jacob Brodsky a friend in the past, but the assassin had killed a young woman as collateral damage and now Vincent. The rest of his victims had been the scum of society and Booth wouldn't shed a tear for them, but Brodsky needed to be stopped. "If I hadn't handed him the phone, he'd probably be alive now." A sudden thought hit him and it made him feel nauseous. "Or I could have handed you the phone and you'd be dead . . . I'm sorry. I should have killed Brodsky when I had the chance."

"Don't Booth." Brennan pressed her face against his shoulder. She knew that her lover was probably blaming himself for Vincent's death, but he hadn't done anything wrong as far as she was concerned. No one had expected Brodsky to shoot through the skylight. "Brodsky planned your murder and he didn't succeed. He did kill Vincent and you will make him pay for that."

He held her against his body and stared at the shattered panel in the roof. "You bet I will . . . you can count on it."

Running steps told them that someone else was now on the platform with them. Turning his gaze towards the staircase. Booth witnessed Cam place her hand over her mouth and shake her head in disbelief. Vincent's death was going to affect a lot of people and Booth knew that they were all going to be fired up to bring down Brodsky. Jacob had made a big mistake coming after him and he'd pay for that.

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With Jacob in the hospital and being guarded by an FBI Agent and Vincent's body on the way to England, Booth felt that Brennan needed a chance to grieve. He knew that she'd seen a lot of herself in Vincent and Booth knew that his partner was grieving about what might have been. "Bones, would you like to go to the funeral? I can try to buy some plane tickets and we can go if you want to."

She thought about it and decided not to go. "I think it would be better for Vincent's family if I wasn't there. Vincent was working for me at the time of his death. I never wanted the dangers I face in the field to affect the people I work with in the Lab, but clearly, I have failed and now Vincent is dead. I'd rather give his family time to grieve . . . I think I will set up a scholarship in Vincent's name. He had a promising future in forensic anthropology and it makes me sad that he won't be able to fulfill that promise . . . Like Zach, another bright future destroyed. They both had the potential to be the best in our field, but that potential was obliterated."

It was times like this that Booth was reminded why his mate was a successful author. To many people Brennan appeared to be cold and distant, but the people that knew her knew that wasn't true. She guarded her emotions and felt awkward in most social settings, but when she was among friends she felt comfortable enough to lower her guards. It was times like this that allowed him to see her kindness, her compassion. He loved her and felt honored that she could express herself in front of him. "The scholarship sounds great Bones, but I don't think you should blame what happened to him or to Zach on yourself. You probably don't want to hear this, but Zach was naïve. He thought that having a high IQ made him superior to everyone around him, but he didn't have a lot of common sense and all he did was isolate himself from everyone. He found someone with a higher IQ than he had and he thought that meant that he had found an authority on everything. That made him susceptible to a bunch of malarkey. All he had to do was come to you and talk to you about what Gormogon was telling him and you'd have straightened him out, but he didn't do that and that's all on him. As for Vincent, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Brodsky killed him because he thought your intern was me. You had nothing to do with that."

"I know." She knew that Booth was telling her was the truth, but she still felt that the fact that they were working for her meant that she was partially responsible for the loss of their brilliance. "Cam is going to the funeral. Hodgins and Angela are flying in his private jet to England and Cam is going with them . . . I will be in charge of the Lab until Cam returns."

Booth walked into the kitchen, retrieved a bottle of beer and a bottle of water from the fridge and carried them into the living room. Sitting down on the couch, he handed her the water and opened the beer. "You know, I've been in the same position you're in right now. I had a spotter working with me that was killed. For years I blamed myself, but his death was really caused by his own carelessness. I kept telling him to keep his head down, but he wouldn't listen. He only needed to raise his head far enough to see what I was aiming at, but he insisted he needed a better view. He was shot in the head . . . his name was Teddy Parker."

"Parker? Did you name your son after him?" She had never heard Booth talk about Teddy Parker and found this information to be quite surprising.

"Yeah . . . Like I said, I blamed his death on me for a long time, but . . . But a while back, I realized that Teddy was responsible for his own death just like Zach's behavior caused his own downfall." Booth took a sip of his beer. "Vincent should have been safe in the Lab, but Brodsky found a way to make a shot through the skylight and that means that Vincent's death is not your responsibility and it's not mine. Brodsky killed Vincent. It's that simple. We have enough crap in our lives . . . we don't need to take responsibility for things we didn't cause."

She placed her bottle of water on the coffee table, leaned back against the couch and stared at the fireplace. "Vincent was eccentric, but I will miss him. He loved knowledge for the sake of learning. The facts he learned didn't need to have relevance they just needed to be interesting. I found his tangents to be irritating sometimes, but it was harmless . . . I will miss his enthusiasm in the Lab. Some of my interns are very serious and rarely show enthusiasm like Vincent did . . . I need to step back and not become attached to my interns in the future. It can be quite painful when I lose them."

Worried, Booth placed his arm around Brennan's shoulders and leaned against her. "Hey, you don't have to do that, Bones. Those interns of yours fight to get where they're at. You can only have a few interns each year and they know that. They want to be where they are and that is in the Lab with you. Most of them don't care about risks and dangers. They want to be forensic anthropologists and you know that some of them will face dangers in the future out in the field. Those that can't handle that kind of risk will work in Labs and coroner's offices or where ever else they can get jobs. You don't need to keep your distance just because something might happen to one of them. Hell, life is a risk. One of them could get in his car and get killed in a car wreck or slip in the shower and break her neck. There are no guarantees in life that things will work out, but you can't cut yourself off from the human race just because someone could die . . . Just treat them like you always treat your students. You know you love teaching and you're always telling me a story about something they did that was stupid or funny. You love that stuff. Just be you. It will be okay."

"You're a good man, Booth." Brennan appreciated that her boyfriend knew the right things to say to her to make her feel better. "I will consider what you've said . . . I do love teaching . . . I wish I could have a beer, but I know I shouldn't . . . We have had a very stressful year so far, Booth. It is my hope that the rest of the year is much calmer."

"Me too." Booth sipped some of his beer and sighed. "Of course, I won't count on it."

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