Disclaimer: I do not own these characters; they belong to Kathy Reichs, Fox, Far Field Productions, and Josephson Entertainment.
The view was magnificent, the deep green of the trees slipping into a foam of white as snow encompassed the entirety of the land. They watched in silence as they passed over the Canadian wilderness, the length of dead or dying trees standing knee-deep in the glaring white. Brennan sat with her face nearly plastered to the cool glass of the helicopter's window, Booth watching contently as child-like excitement flashed across her features, his own heart fluttering with emotions he didn't care to delve into with regards to Bones. Leaning over her shoulder, his left touched her right, his eyes glued into their surroundings. Drawn from the ground that swept along below to her features booth studied her face as slight shadows slipped over her skin as trees reflected onto the helicopter's window.
"Wow…" subconsciously he leaned in closer to the window, his eyes back on the land as his view widened.
"I thought you'd like it." She had turned to look him in the eye as she spoke and as he turned to do the same he found himself face to face with her, their noses barely an inch and a half apart. For a moment nothing moved. Blue stared into green and the sound of the helicopter's blades seemed to die away. His eyes were fixated on hers, his breath becoming stale in his throat. Then he noticed her lips were moving and sound crept back into his conscious. The helicopter blades whirred back to his ear drums, a voice shouting his name above the roar. Bones was speaking to him.
"Booth, you're smashing my arm."
"Huh?" he looked at the space between them, or rather what space was left between them, his wide shoulder pinning her smaller one against the helicopter's door, her arm smashed against it.
"Oh…" He leaned back, releasing her arm.
Just as he began to apologize the pilot turned to the, his glasses dark and headset bulky.
"The landing area is about two miles away; you can see it from here. I'll circle around once so it's easier to take off after I drop you two off."
They nodded in unison, their eyes scanning the horizon for the pad.
Snow flakes flitted past their noses and towards the ground as the helicopter's blades began to twist once more. They stood huddled, their eyes following the helicopter's ascent as it lifted into the deep grey winter sky. The pilot planned to fly back with M. Dumas in about two hours. He would then stay on the landing pad until his services were called for again.
"Let's get to it, we have about a half hour walk from here to the body site." her voice barely sounded over the wind and fading helicopter.
He nodded as he walked past her and towards a small trail leading from the landing area. Pulling the GPS from her pack Brennan studied the light signal, typing in the coordinates written on the map she had received by mail from M. Dumas several weeks earlier.
"Uh Booth." She looked up to find his back to her, his hands waiving in speech. God, Did he ever listen?
"Booth!" this caught his attention and he finally turned around, surprised to not find her following on his heals.
"What are you doing Bones?" he enquired.
"You're going the wrong way Booth."
"It's the only trail that leads from here Bones, how could it be the wrong way?"
"The GPS says otherwise Booth." She raised an eyebrow to the tracker, turning in the direction. She could hear him turn to her as he spoke, his voice becoming louder as it aimed towards her.
"Well Bones, maybe the GPS is wrong."
She turned abruptly to look him in the face, calmly she began to speak.
"I understand your alpha male view of the situation Booth. I get that you, as a male, feel that your sense of instinctual direction is superior to that of a machine, however," before she could continue his hand clamped down over her lips, his skin salty and cold against her own.
Immediately she began to protest, his grip only becoming heavier over her lips the more she tried to speak.
"Bones," he called over her muffled aggravation. "Bones, I'll make you a deal…"
The muffled protests abruptly halted.
"But, you can only respond by nodding or shaking your head."
An eyebrow rose defiantly.
"Ok listen in Bones. Are you listening?"
A muffled "yes" began to sound, his eyes growing wide.
He watched hers roll as she began to nod.
"Ok good. Here's the deal Bones. I'll take my hand off of your mouth and try not to complain on the walk to the site if, and ONLY if you swear not to pull your analytical B.S. on me."
Her expression became pensive, her brows furrowing slightly. Looking him in the eyes once more she raised her hand as though she was his student.
Starting at her in disbelief for a moment he spread his fingers allowing her the short term ability to speak.
"For what amount of time?" she asked, his eye catching the slight movement of her opposite hand as she raised it ear her side, ready to pounce.
Just as she moved his left hand caught her right shoulder, turning her around and bending her forewords, his right hand staying planted on her mouth the entire time. Now holding her in a headlock he smashed his knuckles into her, twisting them in a noogie.
"OW! Okay! Okay! I won't express anything analytical pertaining to your need to feel male dominance."
"And?" he asked, his knuckles rubbing harder.
"Or anything else analytical?!" she questioned.
Releasing her he smiled. "Exactly!" he beamed at her, her brown hair tousled and knotted.
"You're a sick Man Booth." She returned his smile. "Let's get going I'm anx-" she stopped her sentence before it came to a whole, her shoulders turning as she began to walk towards the GPS indicated location.
"You're what, Bones? Were you going to say anxious? The great Forensic Anthropologist anxious?" he smiled as he caught up with her, her lips pursed into a fake frown to keep from smiling.
"So what if I'm a little…" she paused looking for the right word "excited." She finished, the tiniest bit of a grin spreading over her lips.
"About a dead body?" he raised an eyebrow to her as they entered the thick woods.
"It's not a dead body; it's an anthropologically historical finding."
"Sure, if that's what you want to call it Bones."
"Whatever." her smile had yet to fade, her eyes locked on the GPS' small screen.
"It says were about two miles away from the site."
Removing the thick ring of keys from the pilots pocket he stared down at the lifeless body for a moment. He wondered what she would think of the blue, chilling skin of the man's forehead against the deep, liquid red of his blood. He wondered how she would describe the image in one of her books. The heroin would have known what he had just done, would have had some suspicion by now, but he feared she had no clue, and the end of the story was getting nearer and nearer. It would play out like no author would ever want his length of heroic adventure to go on, to come to a climactic end, but one in which the heroin would not make it through the battle for justice, but die in the face of evil. With this thought he only smiled, he was going to kill the heroin before justice could be served, a delight beyond no other.
Marching on ahead of her partner Bones stepped through crunching snow, her boots covered in the white powder as she trekked on in search of the victim, the heat of her partner's eyes on her back almost keeping her warm in the cool winter weather. Booth followed her, his eyes tracing her body, amazed at how elegantly and smoothly she could climb through snow and trees, her form long but stealthy. Snow flakes lightly fell into her dark auburn-brown hair.
Losing interest in the surroundings around him he watched her hair, his eyes taking in the white specks.
"Booth! Right here!" her voice brought him out of his trance. She was leaning over a small pile of what looked like dying leaves, the snow moved away by her own gloved hands. The woods had become thick, a trait he hadn't noticed till now, the snow less abundant on the ground, but stuck on the limbs of trees. Checking his watch it had taken then about an hour and twenty minutes to make the two mile trek, a bad time due to the amount of snow and terrain.
"Booth I'm going to need several of the large evidence bags." She motioned to him, pulling gloves from her own pack. "Young female, between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, Caucasoid. Her left tibia is smashed and…" she leaned in further to examine a small triangularly shaped hole in the right side of the skull.
Booth paid no attention to what his partner was saying, the glint of something shiny catching his trained eyes. It was about ten feet above them in one of the many tree's surrounding them. Dismissing it as snow reflecting the sun's light he turned back to Bones, who now stood, angered her hands on her hips.
"Booth, I need those evidence bags," she motioned towards the remains, the back of her hand a few inches from the trunk of a large tree, palm open. "We need to remove the-"
A loud twanging filled the silent air, then a sickening crack and thump, a brief yelp sounding as a climax to the symphony. Eyes wide he stared at her, blood dripping down the tree's dark brown bark, a hunter's arrow sticking straight from the tree, through her torn flesh, the latex glove that once completely covered her hand and into the cool air. She grasped the wrist of her injured hand, eyes reddening with the threat of unshed tears, silent oh my god's slipping from between her lips. Rushing to her, his eyes darting back to where he had seen the flash of light reflect off of the arrow that had struck her hand, he tired to aide her.
"Booth, go hide or something" was all she could manage between gasps. He didn't pay attention and put his hand on hers, his fingers making a pressured circle around the arrow, his other hand taking hold of the arrow's aluminum shaft.
"No, Booth, Don't do that! You can't pull it out like that; you'll only injure my hand further, just shoot the bastard or give me your gun and I will." A defiant smile crossed her lips for the briefest of moments.
Following her orders he took his position directly in front of her, his trained eyes watching the tree line, waiting for another glimpse of light on an arrow's tip. Seeing none he waited for as long as he could stand it, Bones' heavy, painful breathing behind him too shallow to ignore. Before he could turn he heard her voice.
"Booth, if we don't get the arrow out soon I'm going to lose a lot of blood."
Turning around he looked her dead in the eyes, her face a pale shade of off white, the tree red with her blood and her knuckles white as she gripped the wrist of her injured hand.
"How do we get it out with out hurting you more?"
"You have to brake or cut the arrow's shaft so we can pull it away from my hand. There's a pocket knife in my pack."
As he began to turn her eyes caught a flicker of silver along the tree line.
"Booth!" she called, his form turning back to her for an instant before the twang sounded and her partner fell to the ground before her, the bright orange and yellow feathers of a hunters arrow protruding nearly a foot from the back of his right shoulder.
"Booth!" she screamed this time, her uninjured hand taking hold of the arrow in her own body. Closing her eyes she took in a deep breath and pulled. In an instant a pain so strikingly bold sent her knees wobbling as the arrow slid backwards through the wound, tearing new muscle and cracking new bone.
Shit. He hadn't hit her partner hard enough, his muscles tired from the first shot. Though his aim was usually fantastic, a trait he had expressed merely moments before by shooting the heroin's palm, had faltered, his strength gone, perhaps not from the first shot but from pure excitement. Now he watched her as she rushed to her partner's aide, her own pain forgotten in an instant. Her selflessness only served as a trigger for his anger. She should be in pain, in searing, blood curdling pain, but the bitch wasn't. Something had to be done about that. Tensing for a moment the question of how the GPS had made it this far crossed his mind, a slight thud sounding as he jumped from the tree's branch.
Ignoring her hand she ran to Booth, her heart pounding so loudly she thought the Dumas would be able to hear it all the way back at the field lab. As though on cue their host appeared, his face glistening and pale, his appearance like that of a jogger, though his approach had been silent.
Moments passed between them, an awkward, heavy silence in which the realization of knowing came to each. It hung for a moment between them, each of their bodies slowly tensing. She felt like a caged animal. She was in the middle of the Yellowknife woods, with a man who had just shot her partner through the chest with a bow and arrow.
Taking a step forward he moved closer to her, her body rising off of the ground.
"Where'd you put the bow Dumas?"
"What? Is your partner okay?" he almost smiled, his eyes teasing her as he took another step forward.
"Okay. My Partner's doing just fine, but I think he might need some medical attention." She let a loose smile drift over her lips, her insides rumbling as she allowed herself to play his game.
"I have a kit at a station just a few miles that way." He kept his eyes locked on hers. "I just came from there…we can go get it if you want."
A/n: It's sort of a cliffy, but not really, sorry it took so long.