Author's Note: Once again, I apologize for the lack of updating, but school started, and with that comes homework. Lots of it. So, updates may be a little slow over the next few months, or longer. I'm sorry. Thanks for all the reviews, favorites, and alerts! It really means a lot.

Disclaimer: Bones belongs to Fox, not to me, and most likely never will.

She was being chased along a trail in the middle of a forest. It was pitch-black, and she could barely see half a foot in front of her face, but she somehow knew that he was in front of her. There was something wrong about this; he should have been right next to her, his hand in hers, pulling her along so that if whoever was following them caught them, that person couldn't hurt her. He should be right there to protect her.

The heavy breathing coming from behind her was getting closer, and she felt, rather than saw, that the trees on either side of the trail were getting closer. Branches were whipping at her from either side, and she knew that soon she would have to slow down to pick her way through to find her way without running into something. Her only consolation was that whoever was chasing her would have to slow down too.

But the footsteps behind her didn't slow, and neither did the ones in front of her. What was going on?

"Booth!" She screamed as she forced herself back into a running pace, despite the fact that she was now in the middle of a dense patch of trees. The heavy breathing was almost exactly behind her now, and she tripped, an exposed root halting her escape. She fell to the ground, and closed her eyes, waiting for the fatal blow, but nothing came.

The silence of the forest had been replaced by the panicked noise of many people clustered together, and she opened her eyes to find that she was lying on the ground in the middle of a too-bright airport. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, squinting as her eyes struggled to adjust after the darkness of the forest. She looked down to see that she was covered in dirt, like she had tripped, but had somehow been transported here instead. What was going on? Her mind echoed as she stood, wincing a little as she put her weight down on her left ankle. She must have sprained it when she fell.

A huge mass of people were gathered in front of the windows that looked out onto the runway, and she began to make her way, slowly, over to them. She was forced into stopping, however, when Angela ran up to her with a solemn expression on her face.

"Sweetie, what happened to you?" Her friend's expression changed to one of concern when she noticed the dirt staining her clothes. "I thought you said that you were just going to the bathroom."

"Yes, of course." She shrugged off Angela's question, and leaned over to try and peer around her. "Ang, what's going on?" She asked, when she met her eyes and saw that a mixture of horror, disbelief, and grief had replaced the concern that was there only seconds before.

"You might want to sit down." Angela said, leading her over to a chair. She sank down into it, and Angela plopped down into the one next to her. "Look, Brennan, the plane…it was landing, coming down the runway, and all of a sudden…all of a sudden, it just…exploded."

It felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. It was his plane. He'd been returning from Iraq, and the plane…the plane…

"Brennan? Brennan, are you all right?" Angela was peering into her face, and she bent her head to look down at the floor.

"That's not true, Angela. That can't be true." She was still speaking to the ground, and a small portion of her just knew, but she couldn't believe it. He'd made it through six months in Iraq. He couldn't be gone now. Not again.

"Maybe you should look outside." Angela said quietly, and stood up, holding out her hand to Brennan. She took it, and Angela led her through the crowd with a mixture of "Excuse me" and "Coming through", which was enough to earn them a good view. And what she saw in front of her was unbelievable.

The plane was in pieces, which littered the runway, still burning despite the firefighter's best efforts to put out the blaze. Tears filled her eyes, and she began to breathe heavily, gasping for air as though there was none left in the world.

"Ang…I have to go." She managed to gasp out before she turned and shoved her way through the crowd, pushing through until she was back out into the clear portion of the airport.

And she ran until she found an exit, throwing it open and dashing out before she realized that she was back in that forest, being chased by some invisible enemy.

And so she ran…

Her eyes flung open, and she quickly took in her surroundings in the half-light of early dawn. She was at home, in her bed, not out there in the middle of the woods. She told herself this over and over, but she still trembled, and she found that she was covered in a cold sweat.

And he's okay, Brennan, she thought to herself. You just saw him take off yesterday.

But it wasn't the takeoff that had been jeopardized; it was the landing.

Shaking her head to rid herself of that horrible thought, she sat up, pulling the blankets around her. Looking over at the clock, she saw that it was seven-thirty in the morning. If she was still scheduled to meet his replacement (the word made her shudder involuntarily, as the images from her dream were still so fresh) at nine, she had to get up out of bed and get herself ready.

But she was loath to move, and so she lay back down, dragging the blankets up to her chin, despite the fact that it soon became unbearably hot. She stared over at the empty spot next to her, and sighed. Here she was, turning into some weak woman, pining away for the man who had left her to defend his country only the day before. But that didn't change the fact that she missed him.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

She stepped through the doors of the Medico-Legal lab at the Jeffersonian at 8:59 in the morning. Despite the fact that this would be on time for most people, it was nearly over an hour late for her. She liked getting to the lab no later than eight; most of the other employees didn't show up until at least eight-thirty, so she had nearly the whole lab to herself for a while before it began bustling with activity again.

Today, however, it had taken a little more than the promise of an empty workplace to get here. There was no chance that he was going to be here, with coffee and a new case file, waiting in her office, or arriving later to take her out to lunch. It also didn't help that she was being forced to meet a new agent today; couldn't they have waited at least until there was a new case?

She made her way through the lab towards her office, hoping that this agent was late. She didn't know if she was up to dealing with someone who was surely going to be disappointed and angry that he had to work with a bunch of squints for six months.

She walked through the door to her office to find him sitting in the chair across from her desk. He was flipping through one of the many books she kept on her coffee table, and didn't seem to have noticed her come in. Cam had sent him here?

She must have sighed or something, because he closed the book he'd been holding, and got to his feet.

"Special Agent Aaron Douglas." He introduced himself, holding out his hand for her to shake. She did, and he sank back down into the chair in front of her desk as she hung up her coat and purse.

He was tall, taller than Booth, but not by much, maybe only one or two inches, with blue eyes and blond air. And although she felt extremely annoyed that he was here, sitting in her office, touching her things (couldn't he have left the book alone?), there was something about him that made her feel almost immediately at ease.

"Do you always barge into other people's offices when they're not there and read their books?" She asked, sitting down and pulling out a manila folder from the pile on her desk.

"Not usually, but my meeting with Dr. Saroyan ended early, and it was either wait in there while she did an autopsy, or wait in here. I got bored, so I decided to read. Is it really that much of a problem?" He smiled easily, and she had to fight a smile of her own.

"Yes, it is. Now, do you have a case or something? I have work to do." She scribbled her signature on the last form in the case file, and set it aside.

"Of course you do." He stood, drumming his knuckles on the edge of her desk. "I'll just come by if we get a case."

"Fine." She replied, never raising her head from the next case file.

When she heard him leave, she leaned back in her chair and sighed. It wasn't supposed to be like this; he was supposed to be obnoxious and annoying, someone she could hardly stand to be around for more than five seconds. But he wasn't, or at least didn't seem to be, and she certainly wasn't supposed to find him attractive.

Especially since Booth had flown out to Iraq less than twenty-four hours before.

These were the thoughts that were swirling around in her head when Angela burst into her office a few minutes later.

"Did you see him?" She looked over to see her best friend framed in her doorway, her arms wrapped around a manila folder of her own. "Geez, Sweetie, he's like a mixture of Anderson Cooper and Aaron Eckhart."

"I don't know what that means." Brennan replied, sitting up to shuffle some of the papers around on her desk.

"Of course you don't." She watched as Angela plopped down into the chair opposite her. "But he even came and introduced himself to me. How crazy is that? Even Booth hated us at the beginning."

"Maybe Booth threatened him with bodily harm if he wasn't nice to us."

"No, Bren, that would only be you."

"You don't know that, and besides, he probably just wanted to make a good first impression." She leaned back in her chair, and crossed her arms over her chest.

"None of the other agents ever cared about that before." Angela pointed out.

"Fine, Angela!" She threw up her hands. "He's perfect! Even though you only met him for two seconds, now he can do no wrong." She was breathing heavily, and her brow furrowed as she sent a glare towards Angela. "Booth hasn't even been gone for twenty-four hours yet."

"Brennan, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

"Well, that's what it sounded like. Like you're so excited that Booth's gone, you're going to go out and throw a party for this new agent."

"I wasn't planning on doing that, and you know it. You're not the only one who misses him."

"You're certainly not acting like you miss him." Brennan retorted, feeling (irrationally) angrier by the second.

"Well, I do, even if you don't believe me. I was just trying to say that it might not be as bad as you think-as we all think. Oh, and by the way, it's not wrong for you to find him attractive." Angela stood, making her way over to the doorway.

"That's not what's bothering me."

Angela smiled a knowing smile, and shook her head. "I've known you for over ten years now, Bren. I know when something's bothering you, and it's not just because you miss him."

"Yes, it is." She insisted, but Angela just gave her another smile, and walked out of the office.

Brennan sighed again, for what felt like the tenth time in as many minutes, and stood, reaching for her labcoat. Angela was right about one thing; something was bothering her. But it wasn't because she felt attracted to Aaron Douglas. While it had bothered her at first, she knew that, although she may be with Booth, she would undoubtedly find other men attractive. It was simply inevitable.

No, it was because Angela had been wearing the same exact outfit she'd been wearing in her dream last night.

And Booth had died.