A/N Health issues forced me to go on temporarily hiatus and then to the hospital. But I'm better now and more important, back to a computer with internet, yay. So hopefully I should be able to finish posting this in the next few days. Hope some of you are still reading :-) Hope you enjoy this chapter.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush.

Brennan looked like a mess. The usually so calm and collected anthropologist had obviously been crying, her eyes were red and puffy and upon seeing him she sniffled somewhat pathetically. Her normally neatly done hair was tied back into a messy ponytail and she wore a tank top with a pair of sweats.

Wordlessly she stepped aside to let him in and he made his way to her kitchen setting the takeaway on the table.

"Do you…do you want something to drink? Coffee, maybe? I could make some. Or would wine be better. I have that, too." Her voice was hoarse and his heart constricted at the pain so openly visible in her fragile appearance. She tried to pass him but he caught her arm and turned her around to face him. The expression in her eyes hit him like a brick wall and before either of them could say anything he caught her in a gentle hug careful as not to hurt her. She may have been his strong and stubborn partner on a normal day but now she was the woman with whom he had the probably most complicated relationship of his life, always more than a friend but never as close as a lover.

And she was in pain.

At first she stiffed with his arms around her but slowly she relaxed and he felt her hands moving on his back while her head settled into the crock of his neck.

After a while he felt her starting to shake slightly and he realised that she was crying, her hands holding tightly onto his suit jacket.

He pressed his face into her hair and savoured the scent of her shampoo, some herbal thingy with an underlying scent that was undeniably her.

As quietly as her tears had been she calmed down again and pulled back, one hand coming up to stroke over the now slightly wet front of his jacket almost apologetically. He caught her wrist with one hand and with the other he lifted her chin making her look at him.

It's all right, he said with his eyes; conveying things he wouldn't dare to say out loud, at least not yet, not at this point in their relationship and she answered with a tired almost not quite yet smile, letting him know she understood.

Pulling out of his embrace she went to get some plates and a bottle of red wine and they started to prepare their meal.

Dinner was a silent but comfortable affair. He tried to distract her with trying to steal from her plate and she answered with flicking rice corns at him.

Before they could brake out into a fully – fledged food war however they'd finished, he was still astonished that she had actually eaten everything and she finally started to speak.

"Booth?" she asked in a timid voice.

"Hm?"

"When I show you something, do you promise not to interrupt me before I'm finished?"

"Of course." She smiled and got up motioning him to follow her. They came to a halt in her bedroom and she crouched down and pulled a small wooden box from under her bed. Wordlessly she sat down on the warm red duvet that covered the large double bed and moved to sit crossed legged against the headboard. He watched her puzzled and she rolled her eyes at him and patted the space next to her a small smile creeping onto her face. He toed of his shoes and sat down next to her, mirroring her position.

Slowly she lifted the lid of the box, which was covered with an intricate carved pattern. A beautiful piece of work.

Inside where officially looking documents and upon seeing them an uncomfortable feeling settled in the pit of his stomach.

The first looked like a birth certificate.

She took the single sheet of paper and placed it in front of them on the bed. She then carefully lifted the stack of photos that were hidden beneath from the box and handed them to Booth.

"Seeley Booth, meet Emily Marie Brennan." He wanted to say something but she shushed him and he remembered his earlier promise to stay silent until she finished her story.

And so he listened while he carefully took in each photo. He listened to the tale of a young, twenty something anthropology student who had found herself unexpectedly pregnant.

He listened while she told him of late night studies and morning sickness and the single most frightening and most beautiful moment of her life.

The birth of her daughter.

But while she told him all this he dreaded the end of her story because he knew this hadn't been a fairytale. There would be no happy end, no rainbows and no sunshine.

And so he listened when she told him about the diagnosis and the hospitals, the chemotherapy and the months of uncertainty. And when she came to the end of her tale he noticed that sometime during the last minutes she had gripped his hand and was now holding onto it tightly. He squeezed it, reassuring her and she finished the story with the funeral of the little girl he would never get to meet, Brennan's daughter, a beautiful, innocent child who had been taken before her time.

"It's not…it's not that I'm not happy for them. I am. But I thought I had dealt with this a long time ago. And now it seems that I didn't. And it hurts, Booth. I never thought it could feel like this again, so painful and…just painful."

Speechless for a few moments Booth gathered his thoughts and tried to find words he hoped would help his partner. When he'd come to her this evening he certainly hadn't expected this. But it explained a few things, he thought. It explained her reluctance to have children and the initial awkwardness she sometimes presented around them.

He turned her hand and rubbed over the palm with his thumb, tiny, circular, soothing motions.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that, I'm sorry that I'll never get to meet that little girl on these photos. She must have been amazing; she was your daughter after all. And if you need anything, if I can help you in any way, tell me." She looked at him and smiled through a mist of tears in her eyes.

"You already do Booth. You being here helps more than you can possibly imagine." He answered with a smile of his own and she lowered her forehead against his chest prompting him to drop a kiss to her hair.

"I think I need to tell them. I want to do it tomorrow. Will you be there with me?"

He tightened his hold on her.

"Always."

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