A longer chapter this time :) This story is shaping up to be a... bit longer than I planned on it being. I'm working on getting it under control, though. Which isn't easy. Apparently my tired muse is happy with this story, and wants to keep it rather than going back to What Brings Them Together. Oh well, for now I'll let it run its course.

"Where's Bones?" he asked, frowning as he looked around the lab. There were still plenty of lab workers around, busily going about their jobs, but her office was dark and she wasn't on the platform. Angela looked up from the sketch she'd been doing when he spoke, and hastily hid it from him before standing up to come and face him directly.

"Well, what brings you here?" she asked. The cold tone didn't go unnoticed. Clearly she was not pleased with him for what had transpired between him and Brennan. Well, she was Brennan's best friend... it wasn't like he shouldn't have expected something like this.

"I, uh... wanted to see her."

Angela gave a slight humorless laugh, and he winced.

"She's not here, Booth. In fact, thanks to you, I'm not sure she's even coming back."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, his voice firmly edged, but the fear starting to reach him as he tried to grasp what she could possibly mean by that statement.

"You've been avoiding her for the past few days. After you pretty much told her you were going to move on without her."

"Whoa, whoa! You definitely didn't get the full story," he tried to defend quickly. "I told her that I wanted to try. That I wanted to have a relationship with her. And she told me, that she couldn't change who she was. Ange, if she had been willing to try, I would have done absolutely everything to make sure that-"

"No," Ange was shaking her head. "I already know all that. I got a word-for-word replay, in fact."

He stared at her for a long moment. "Ange, where is she?"

"Gone."

He gritted his teeth. "Gone where?"

She shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

"We both know that's a lie. Ange, I need to find her."

She raised her eyebrows. "Convince me."

He groaned and tilted his head back. This was a waste of time. What if she was already on her way out of the country? Was Ange trying to delay him? He turned away from her, yanked out his cell phone, and dialed a friend at the FBI, asking him to look into whether or not she'd booked any flights. Then he turned back to Angela, who, frustratingly, looked amused.

"Do you really intend to move on?" she asked before he could say anything.

"What?"

Angela sighed, and then continued as if she was speaking to a small child. "You told her that because she couldn't love you, you were going to move on and find someone that could. Do you actually intend to do that, or were you trying to get some sort of reaction from her?"

"If things don't work out with us, then yeah, I'm going to move on, Ange. I can't chase her for the rest of my life, not if she isn't willing to try."

She raised her eyebrows and then said cryptically. "She isn't? And what gave you that impression?"

His mind raced. "I... she told me that she couldn't change."

"Really? And what else?"

He pushed back, to recall her exact words. "That she didn't know how to, and that I..." he gritted his teeth and said irritably, "That I needed to be protected from her."

"Hmm," Ange murmured, her eyes lit with a bit too much interest, but also dark with what he realized in wonder was actually some form of... anger. "And what did you tell her when she said that, since you clearly don't agree?"

Who was she, Sweets?

"I wasn't really focusing on that, I was focusing on the fact that she wouldn't say yes and just make a... I don't know, an attempt. She means everything to me, and I... I really thought I meant that much to her, too."

"What did you say, though? What did she hear, in response to everything she said?"

He cast himself back again, trying to remember the full details of what she'd said, even though he already knew his own response.

"I... I am not a gambler. I'm a scientist! I can't change; I don't know how... I don't know how." He just stared at her blankly, and the tears on her face sparkled sorrowfully. "Please... don't look so sad."

He turned away, and leaned against the nearest supportive feature he could find. "You're right." He looked away and shook his head. "You're right."

She was still tearing up as she asked, a desperate edge to her voice, "Can we still work together?"

He looked away, caught up in what that meant. Could he still spend all day with her, still be the same partner she needed, after she had turned him down?

"Yeah," he sighed at last, as he saw the tears continue to build up in her eyes. He could tell she wanted to still work with him. That she was helplessly hoping that they could still keep that relationship, even if she didn't want another one. Maybe there was some hope, even if it was only a faint glimmer.

"Thank you," she half-whispered.

He took a deep breath. She had to know, and now, that he wasn't going to spend forever on a pointless mission. If she didn't want this, he wouldn't keep chasing it. "But I gotta move on." She continued to stare forward, her face unreadable except for the deep sadness that clouded it. "Y'know, I gotta find someone who's... who's gunna love me in... thirty years, or forty, or fifty..."

"I know." Her voice was choked and... broken.

Angela was still waiting patiently for an answer.

"She said she didn't know how to change... and I told her I knew."

"And how do you think she took that?"

"She asked if we could still work together. But you already know this, right? Why are you asking me?"

"Because you haven't figured some things out quite yet," she said with a sigh. The psychologist manner that she'd taken on suddenly faded away and left her as just the sad best friend. "This is the part I'm not supposed to say... but I just can't stand by," she explained.

"Ange, what are you talking about?" he asked in bewilderment. He had taken just about all he could today of the confusing stuff she was spewing to him. And he still had no idea where Bones was, or if he was... if he was ever going to see her again.

As if his phone read his mind, it chose that time to beep with an incoming text. He glanced at Angela, and then pulled it from his pocket and flipped it open.

'Your lady scientist hasn't had any credit card activity in the past few days. Couldn't find her on any flight rosters either.'

'Thanks,' he sent back quickly, and then snapped the phone shut and gave the woman in front of him all his attention, waiting for a further explanation.

"Booth, I like you," she said finally. "You've been everything to Brennan. And as you know, I barely knew her when you two first met. But after that... beyond being the reason that she has been so happy these past five years... you're the reason the two of us stayed so close. You brought the cases that kept us working side by side... and somewhere along the way I decided not to go to Paris at all, like I'd originally planned to.

"Brennan would kill me if she knew I told you this, but I know that there are worse things that could happen. The two of you... if I let you fall apart, keep going on the way you are, I'll never have a free conscience again. And I'll have to live knowing that my best friend is miserable forever because she lost out on the greatest thing that ever happened to her. And no, before you even say it, this isn't just her fault. She might have turned you down, but she had reason. And the fact that you didn't see it hurt her a lot more than I think she's willing to admit to anyone, even me."

He stared at her in surprise, waiting for her to continue. What exactly did she mean? What did she have to say that would get Brennan so furious with her? What was he missing here?

"She told you that she couldn't have a relationship with you. Booth, what was the first reason she gave you, after she pushed you away?"

"That she... she claimed that I needed to be protected from her." He hated the way those words sounded.

"And why was that?"

He took a breath, looking away, "She said she didn't have my kind of open heart."

"Uh huh. Exactly. What do you think about that? Do you agree with it?"

"Of course not," he scoffed. "Bones has the most open heart I've ever found. She just doesn't like to show it much... but she knows how to open herself up."

"Right. So... when she went on and told you that she didn't know how to change, how to be anything but a scientist, how to have that open heart like you do... what was the next thing you told her?"

"I said... I told her that she was-" he stopped abruptly, and Angela grinned in triumph.

"See, the light has finally dawned," she said calmly.

"She can't possibly think that I believe she's incapable of changing."

"Why would she think otherwise, Booth? What else could you have been referring to when you said she was right?"

"But she wasn't willing to try," he said desperately. "I wanted her to change that, and realize that she could change! If she just tried... we could start something great. And she knows that I'd be there for her every step of the way. I always have been, through everything we've done together. She must know I love her!"

"Of course she does. Why else would she be so confused when one second you're telling her you knew she was the one, and you look so hurt when she turns you down... and the next you're informing her, just like that, that you're going to move on, and find someone that can love you. Someone that's capable of giving you what you need. Since, well, clearly she isn't..."

He stared blankly, reading double-meanings into every single word he'd said to her that night. He'd been hurt, and lost... wondering why she didn't even want to give him a chance. And all along she'd been worried about hurting him... protecting him from herself... and he'd said she was right.

"Ange, where is she?" he asked desperately.

"Hotel," she answered simply, pulling a piece of paper from her pocket and passing it over to him. There was a hotel named scrawled in Angela's curly handwriting, along with a room number. "She called me twenty minutes ago with the information, because I made her promise she would. I wasn't having her running off to Guatemala. No way."

He grinned, and pulled her into a tight hug. She gasped, and then let herself relax in his arms.

"Glad to see you're happy," she said, her voice muffled against his shirt.

He released his hold on her, and then grinned as she stepped back. "I don't think I can thank you enough. I've gotta go."

Without another word he turned and half-jogged out the doors, vanishing from the lab and leaving Angela to smile in satisfaction at where he'd disappeared.

All hope was not lost; the future looked brighter than it had in far too long.

The next chapter is written and ready to go. I think I'll put it up in a few days.

Let me know what you thought of this one?