Day 4: Monday

Booth heard the alarm but it wasn't his, somewhat disoriented he slowly woke as he forced his eyes open then let them fall closed. He repeated the process over and over until the world came into focus. He was in her bed. She was still in his arms, though now they were loosely entangled. It had been a hard night but eventually they had both found decent sleep.

He was trying to figure out where her alarm was so he could stop the incessant buzzing when she leaned across his chest as she reached to turn it off. He couldn't control the deep satisfied groan that escaped as her body slid over his sensitive morning skin. His hands rose up to shadow and support her waist and hips.

She pulled back from turning off the alarm and stared down at him, her hair falling around her face. He tried to hold it back, his hands smoothed and tucked so he could see her eyes. They were stormy, always stormy, but what started out as a soft appreciative look turned quickly to embarrassed and panicked. He tried to stop it, stop her from running, but it was too late, she was gone before she ever left the bed.

"Bones."

She buzzed through the kitchen, focused on making coffee, getting breakfast, routine, routine, routine. Nothing broke her intense focus. He stood in the middle of her living room in his boxers and t-shirt as she passed frantically back and forth from one end of her apartment to the other getting ready.

"Bones."

"I'm getting ready for work, Booth, you should be getting dressed too. I hate being late, you know that."

"Bones. Dammit. Stop."

"I'm not going to stop, I have to go. If you have a problem we will have to discuss it later." She brushed past him again.

"If I have a problem? Seriously?" He'd had enough. Finally he caught her. Holding her by both shoulders he tried to make eye contact. "I don't have a problem. I am fine with what happened last nig-"

"Nothing happened last night." There was an honest confusion spread across her delicate features.

"I meant the nightmare, Bones, I know nothing happen, happened last night. I meant that you shouldn't be embarrassed or upset that I saw you like that, vulnerable, just waking up from a nightmare."

Instantly her walls were back up. "I'm fine."

"You won't even look at me – if it's not the nightmare tell me what it is. Please, I want to know. I need to know."

He stared straight into a stunning wall of blue, her eyes fixed, stubborn, and unyielding. She tried to move away from him, soft but firm she reiterated her mantra. "I have to go to work."

"I'll call Cam. I'll tell her you're running late. That I needed you to come by the Hoover to finish some paperwork or something. This is more important." He could be stubborn too.

"My work is important. Are you saying my work isn't important?" He could see her mounting fear as she twisted his words into something unrecognizable. Trying a different tact he made one more attempt at getting past her walls.

"I'm not saying it isn't. Of all people, I'm your partner, no one knows more than I do just how important your work is. What I'm trying to tell you is you aren't alone in this. I have them too."

She didn't know how to process that. He saw the confusion written across her face

"I have them too." He said it again hoping it would sink in. "Nightmares, night terrors, whatever you want to call them. I have them too."

Her eyes darted across his tender face, he looked like he'd just rolled out of bed after a horrible nights sleep. Dark circles under his eyes, thick stubble, he looked exhausted.

"I have them too." He said it again. "I wake up in a sweat or screaming. Someone's died, I've killed them or I couldn't save them." He nudged her chin as he tried to pull her focus. "Look at me." Closing his eyes he put it all on the line. "Sometimes it's my unit and I watch them all get blown to hell. Sometimes it's my mom and brother and I can't stop my father. I can't save them." His voice lowered, softened. "Sometimes it's you. Sometimes Kenton has you and I'm too late." Barely a whisper now. "I have them too."

"Booth."

"I'm not done, listen. Sometimes in the middle of the night when I can't get back to sleep I text you or drive by to make sure you're home and safe. I just never told you, I've never told anyone."

"Booth." They leaned on each other, foreheads touching. "I need to think. I just need to think."

"Okay." He let her go. He got dressed, gathered his belongings, and went home to shower.

He didn't hear from her all day. He called and left messages, texted, and got nothing in return. By the time he was done at work he was done waiting to hear from her. Screw the experiment, he thought. He'd only agreed to it because he thought – hell, he didn't know what he was thinking. At the moment he felt like a dumb-ass for ever agreeing to that damned thing. He knew they'd be a hot mess if they had a meaningless fling. He'd always known that. He knew going into this it was risky, too risky, obviously. Some people you just can't sleep with, he'd told her once. There's too much at stake, too much to lose. Right now he felt like he was about to lose it all.

The dings and sliding doors greeted him but when he went to her office it was dark and empty.

"She's not in there, big guy."

"Oh, hey, Ange." He shuffled a bit having no idea what Bones may have shared with her best friend about their experiment. "Do you know where she is?"

"Limbo, all day. You know her, she gets in these snits and has to disappear for a day or two to find herself in her bones." Angela seemed accepting and casual of Bones' behavior. This led him to believe she didn't know anything about their experiment. He was pretty sure if she'd known she'd have slapped him or lectured him on being an ass for agreeing to Brennan's lightly veiled excuse to get him in the sack.

He nodded in agreement. "Did she eat?"

She shook her head, no. "I tried, I took her down food at about 2:00 but I'm betting she hasn't touched it.

"Thanks." He motioned over his shoulder, pointing towards limbo as he turned to walk away. "I'll try and get her to eat and see if I can't break her free for the night."

Angela chuckled. "Good luck with that."

When he got down to limbo he couldn't find her at first, not in the obvious places anyways. Long isles and what seemed like endless dark corners later her silhouette came into view. She had stacks of bone bins out. They surrounded two sterile work tables. One table covered in what seemed like random bones. The other, a carefully laid out skeleton. An instrument tray, pushed off into the corner, held her untouched lunch.

He paused to watch her almost hoping she hadn't seen him yet. He loved watching her work. There was an elegant fluidity to it, like she was in a sort of graceful dance with the bones.

She didn't look up or acknowledge him in anyway so he thought he'd gone undetected. Then, without saying a word, she motioned for him to come over. She shoved a pair of gloves at him. He put them on. In all their time as partners he'd never really handled bones. Hell, he wasn't even allowed to touch the table. It was her thing, everything here was her thing.

He stood strong and silent waiting for her directions. She didn't offer any at first, just a lecture.

"These bones, right here, all came from soldiers." She motioned to the table with multiple bones on it. These must be the bones she was talking about last night. Her collection of remains from various wars and conflicts.

"All of them died of their injuries. I know that, do you know how I know that?" He didn't speak, he knew her, it was more of a rhetorical question. "No remodeling. Their wounds never healed." She shoved a bone into his hands. "Feel that? That is damage from a cannon during the American Civil War." She exchanged the bone in his hands for another. "And that? From and IED only a year or so ago. See how different it is. And this? A bomb from world war II. That's why we keep these bones. The wounds alone can date a soldier's bones. They can tell us almost everything about how they lived, what they experienced, and how they died."

He was her captive audience. Bone after bone, lesson after lesson. He held and felt each mark, each wound. Some were harder to hear about than others. She saw him flinch more than once at her description of injuries. He knew them, he'd seen them, seen the effects of them first hand as a soldier himself. He'd never shared the details with her of his combat experiences. He didn't have to, she knew.

She was trying to tell him something. He was trying to hear it, pull it from between the scholarly lecture and object lessons. All these soldiers, all with wounds that never healed.

She turned sharply, like he imagined she would with a group of grad students. "This is Sir Edward. I call him that but really I don't know his name. He is from the middle ages. He must have been an amazing warrior. She picked up a bone and handed it to Booth guiding his fingers to where she wanted him to feel. "Do you feel that?" He shook his head, no. "Well, I know you can see these." She pulled him over to the bones. Bent over, she pointed carefully and precisely to different marks on the bones. "See, these are all remodeled and the amazing thing is they are all from different battles, all these wounds show different stages of remodeling. All those battles, not one of them killed him." She turned her attention back to the table with multiple bones. "Where those young men, most of them didn't survive their first battle." She turned her attention to the bone in his hands. "Can you feel it?"

He didn't. He ran his gloved fingers over and over the spot that she showed him. She was frustrated that he wasn't feeling it, frustrated that he couldn't understand what she was trying to say to him. "Try to run your finger lightly, barely skimming the bone. You may be pressing too hard. Can you feel it?" She asked him again.

Swallowing hard, he shook his head, no.

She looked almost desperate for him to understand. Reaching for his hands she peeled the gloves off then put his hand back on the bone. He gasped and looked almost panicked at what he knew to be an offense.

"It's okay, Ed is one of my teaching skeletons. Sometimes you have to feel the bones, really feel them with your bare hands to realize there is something there that the eye can't see, that you can't feel through the gloves.

Gingerly she set his fingers back on the bone and ran his calloused fingers over the bone. He still couldn't feel it.

"Close your eyes." He looked at her confused. How was he supposed to see or feel what he was looking for with his eyes closed. "Close them." It was a command. He shut his eyes as she guided his fingers back to the section of bone where she wanted his attention. "Just feel it." And he did. The smallest of ridges, barely noticeable at all. His eyes popped open in wonder and awe. He got it, he understood.

"See, you felt it." All day she'd avoided him. Now she stared directly into to his eyes. "You found what everybody missed."

"I see it, Bones, I do. I see it." He set the bone down carefully with the neatly ordered skeleton and took a step towards her. She stepped towards him and somewhere in the middle they met.

"I see it." Stepping a little closer he pulled her in. "I've always seen it." He carefully placed one hand on her chest over her heart the other wrapped lightly around her, holding her close. It was warm and calming. She closed her eyes and let herself feel the weight of his touch. "You know what I see? I see you, a warrior, injured but never broken. You're here and you're strong, so strong that no one sees how badly you were hurt."

"But you saw it."

"I did. I do, Bones, and I'm not going anywhere. I saw it and I'm still here."

He let his forehead fall to hers, held her loosely in the middle of her world, surrounded by her bones.

Booth watched as she methodically put each bin carefully back in bone storage. Then she closed the metal cage that surrounded these specific bins of bones, her personal teaching collection, slipped a lock through the latch and closed it.

She went willingly to dinner, they laughed and talked. Their normal banter floated in through the air around them at the diner and in the truck as they drove. There was no further discussion of her nightmare or her cryptic message given to him through a lecture on bone injuries until he stood with her outside her apartment.

"Do you need me to stay?" The look in his eyes, the deep concern, she knew what he was talking about.

"No, I'm fine, Booth." She was still held captive by his eyes. They searched hers to make sure, to double check. "I'm just tired."

"If you need me-"

"I'll call, but really, I'm fine." And maybe she was after all, there was a sense that as she set all those bins straight and locked them away she was pushing it all back under lock and key. Regardless, he had to accept it. They made plans to grab dinner and spend the evening together the next day. He lingered, not wanting to leave. She let him, not ready for him to go. But in the end a quick kiss and he was gone.

It felt like they were moving backwards. The door closed, he stuck his hands deep in his pockets, his thumb rubbed the casino chip over and over as he walked back out to his truck.

A/N I can't believe we are already four days into Crafty's birthday season! Time flies when you're having fun and I am definitely having fun! :)

Thanks again to all those reading, and those leaving reviews. I am a nervous writer, as my dear friend Craftyjhawk can attest. Your reviews mean the world to me!

Special thanks to Snowybones and Givesup as well as my twitter friends and my husband for enduring my nervousness about this particular chapter well! Hope you're enjoying reading this as much as I am writing it!