A/N: It's funny to me, how the chapters that are the most depressing are always the most highly reviewed. You're gluttons for angst, all of you! Anyway, I'm glad you felt the last chapter. I won't say "enjoyed" even though many of you said you did, because it's hard to really enjoy something like that. Relish, maybe, or appreciate, or 'feel' but not so much enjoy. It's hard to enjoy writing something like that, and I know it's hard to enjoy reading it. You can enjoy the way it's written, but the subject itself... it's hard to do.

But as much as you are gluttons for angst, I know what you are even more ravenous for... and you'll get at least a nibble of that in this chapter. Also, as many of you have probably noticed by now, I love repetition. Symbols, motifs, thematic concepts... it's something I really enjoy inserting into stories. There is a lot of that going on here, and if you are a careful reader you will find the "easter eggs" littered in this chapter, both from previous chapters of this story and from other Bones stories I've written. Enjoy, and let me know what you think! :)

We're coming close and then even closer
We bring it in but we get no further
We're separate, two ghosts in one mirror, no nearer

Later on if it turns to chaos
Hurricane coming all around us
See the crack, pull it back from the window
You stay low, say when

And my own two hands
Will comfort you tonight, tonight
Say when
And my own two arms
Will carry you tonight, tonight...

- Say When, The Fray

Brennan knocked lightly on the apartment door, shifting the weight of the brown paper bag under one arm. It was a full minute before she heard anyone moving inside; she almost knocked again, thinking that perhaps she hadn't been heard the first time. When he did finally open the door, she thought to herself that he looked like hell, and decided against voicing that opinion. His face seemed to sag—in fact, his entire body did. His shoulders were slumped, and he just generally appeared as if he had been carrying a rather heavy weight around for a long, long time. Part of her wanted to drop the bag and hug him, but she decided against that too.

"I brought you dinner," she blurted after a moment of being stared at as if he could not remember who she was. As if she were a stranger at his door, intruding on a very personal life. She shifted the bag again, holding it underneath with one hand and gripping the top with the other. "Macaroni and cheese, I know you like that." Finally Booth seemed to register who she was, why she was there. He gave her a half-hearted smile, which appeared more like a grimace than anything, and stepped aside to let her in.

The suit he had worn the day previous to the spreading of his mother's ashes lay crumpled on the living room floor still, tie flung over the coffee table. There was a nest of blankets and pillows on the couch, and the TV was blaring. No other lights were on in the house, and since the sun was beginning to set it was growing rather dark. Brennan got the feeling she was stepping into a cave—even the temperature in the apartment seemed too cold, though Booth looked unfazed by it in his boxers and wife-beater.

"Sorry," he said, watching Brennan survey his living room.

"Don't apologize," she said, stepping over the pile of clothes and setting the bag on the dinette table. "I understand that the past few days have been difficult for you." She had been at the spreading of his mother's ashes, at a Maryland pier. Someone at the group home had spoken with his mother during one of her bouts of lucidity about her death arrangements, and a witness's signature at the bottom of the sheet corroborated her desires. In the event of a life-threatening illness or injury, the hospital would be under strict DNR orders—Do Not Resuscitate. The paramedics began CPR on the way to the hospital, but as soon as her records came forth, all hands were removed. She died in minutes.

Her second order was that she would be cremated, and her ashes spread at the pier her father used to take her fishing at. He had been there, and Jared, and Brennan—the four of them, that was it. Five if you counted the contents of the urn.

The day had been beautiful, as hot and sunny and blue as one could ask for a day on the water. They went at sunrise, before most of the families and lonely fishermen had shown up, for a little peace. Booth's grandfather prayed, and Brennan watched a group of pelicans soar overhead as the three men bowed their heads observantly. As unreligious as she was, she thought they might see a lot more of God from that perspective, than with their eyes shut and their heads down. You couldn't see much of anything that way, not really.

Then the three men each took a handful of the ashes and waited for a salty morning breeze to come. It came, and they released her, crying unabashedly as they watched her go. Brennan had begun to feel extremely uncomfortable standing in their midst, and wondered why Booth asked her to come at all until she felt his hand grab onto hers. Then she knew, and she quietly thanked what might have remained of Booth's mother for everything she did in Brennan's life, without even knowing or meaning to.

"Smells good," Booth said, snapping her back into the present. She nodded, taking a deep breath and letting it out. He rubbed his face with the heels of his hands, an action he had repeated over and over again in the days since his mother's passing. "I'm gonna put it in the fridge for now though, I'm not really hungry."

"You need to eat," Brennan insisted, gently putting her foot down. "You probably haven't eaten since yesterday." Booth refused to look at her directly, and she knew she was right. He sat down in his nest on the couch while she dug around for something a little more sophisticated than the stack of Dixie plates on the counter. When she realized nothing else was clean she settled for the paper plates, dishing out mac and cheese for the both of them and taking a seat beside him.

"Thanks," he said, and he sounded thankful. They ate slowly, basking in the glow of the Food Network and learning about how Twizzlers were made. She kept casting sidelong glances at him as they ate—his face glowed from the light of the television, but it was blank. He opened his mouth, he chewed, he swallowed. He might have been listening to the TV program, but odds were that he wasn't.

There were so many questions she burned to ask—every time she did, she shoveled more noodles into her mouth to prevent her tongue from slipping. When was the last time he saw her? Did he know she was in poor health? Why was she living in a group home? Why didn't his father come to the spreading of the ashes? There were so many things, she realized, that she simply did not know about her partner. She knew he had parents, that he was estranged from them and they had little or no contact, but she did not know why. She knew he grew up in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but she didn't know what his childhood houses were like, or what he did for fun, or why they moved from one city to the other. She didn't know what had broken his relationship with his family, or why, at the spreading of the ashes, his grandfather kept apologizing. Over and over again—I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He sounded like the gulls crying out at passers-by once the sun rose.

Instead, Booth asked her a question.

"Where's Jamal?"

"Russ and Amy's," she said, caught in the mire of her own thoughts and taking a second to remember the answer. "I had Russ approved by the court to keep him when I couldn't, for whatever reason."

"That was a good idea," Booth said half-heartedly.

"He was happy about it," she said. "He likes it there. They have some game system the girls are always playing, like the Super Nintendo we had as kids but without wires. I forget what it's called… a Woo maybe?"

"Wii," Booth said, and he finally cracked a smile. "It's a Wii."

"Ah. Well, he really seems to enjoy that. I think I might buy him one if he keeps progressing in his tutoring sessions like he has been."

"He's been doing good, then?" Booth asked, grateful to talk about something completely unrelated to his mother's death, or life, or anything at all about it. Brennan nodded.

"Great, actually," she said, scraping the last of the cheese off of her plate and eyeballing Booth's half-eaten helping. He handed it to her, and she smiled gratefully. "His reading is on grade level now, and his math is improving exponentially."

"No pun intended."

"Oh, I didn't even notice," she said. "Anyway, yes, he has been doing well, I'm very impressed with his progress and his tutor's patience. They meet three times a week after school, and I know Jamal can be trying when he doesn't want to do something."

"You said it," Booth agreed. "That's good, though. That's good to hear. He seems like he's acting out a lot less too."

"He is," Brennan agreed. "I actually discussed it with Sweets, who told me that Jamal's feelings of failure and frustration were being channeled into aggression in his home life. Now that he doesn't feel like a failure, he doesn't feel the need to act aggressively."

"Sweets came up with all that?" Booth asked. "Now I'm the one who's impressed." Brennan laughed.

"He certainly earned his degree," she said. There was a brief lull in the conversation, during which Brennan polished off Booth's leftovers. Finally she decided to pose the question she had avoided asking for almost three months.

"So," she said carefully, leaning forward and setting both plates on the coffee table. "How have your appointments with Sweets been?" She saw Booth's jaw stiffen, and immediately regretted having asked. He must have seen it in her face, because his features softened.

"They're alright," he conceded. "Not great. We've talked about a lot of… gone over a lot of stuff."

"How much longer will you be in therapy for?" she asked, relieved that he had not been angered by her question.

"Not much longer," Booth said. "Last time we met he said, 'I think we're really close, Agent Booth'. You know, that way he does, like he's playing X-Box with his geek friends or something and they're about to win. He thinks it's a game or something."

"I don't know what an X-Box is," Brennan said. "But I don't think Dr. Sweets views your past as a game, as some kind of secret to unlock. He respects you, Booth. I think he could help you." She chose her words one by one, resting on help you almost as if it were a question. Like maybe she could help too.

"I don't need help," Booth said roughly, taking a sudden mood swing and rising from the couch. Shit, she thought silently. That had been the wrong word after all. He took the plates into the small kitchen with him, stomping on the foot pedal of the trashcan and tossing them in. He took a cup from the draining rack and filled it with water, holding it to his lips briefly but not drinking from it. Then he dumped the water out, dropping the cup with a plastic-on-metal clang into the sink.

"He keeps saying that," Booth said, leaning on his hands against the edge of the counter with his back turned towards Brennan, who stepped hesitantly into the kitchen after him. "Saying he can help me, he wants to help me, I need help before I can go back to work. Damn it, I don't need help; I got this far, what the hell do I need it for now?"

He wasn't quite yelling, but he was close, and Brennan felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand alert. He had never yelled at her before—he had certainly raised his voice at her during their many arguments, but never yelled. He didn't yell, not really. Now he was very close to yelling and she found that it scared her. She realized just how scary of a man Booth could probably be.

"I didn't mean…"

"You never say anything you don't mean," Booth said, turning to face her. He was closing the gap between them, and she felt the unusual urge to backpedal away from him. Usually she felt just the opposite. "You've never said anything to me you didn't honest to God believe, Temperance. Don't tell me you didn't mean something you said—if you said it, you meant it. Don't lie to me."

"I've never lied to you," she said, stung by his words. He sighed, turning his back on her again and leaning his weight against the counter. Thank God it was marble, or quartz, or some kind of solid stone—anything lesser might break beneath him.

"I know," he said. Now he was far from yelling, but his words still rung in her ears as if they were loud. "I'm sorry. I know." He suddenly pushed himself away from the counter and stormed into his bedroom, not bothering to close the door behind him. She heard the springs of his bed squeak under his weight, even from the other room. She took a deep, settling breath and made the decision to follow him—it wasn't a hard one, she just didn't know if it was the right one.

"Booth." She paused in the doorway, watching him in the dark. There were still no lights on, and she could just see his silhouette sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, face in his hands.

She approached him slowly, one foot in front of the other, just like she had walked on the tightrope as he stood watching beneath her. Careful step after careful step, distributing the weight just right so she would not fall. This was not the time to fall. When she reached the foot of the bed she slipped her shoes off and crawled onto the mattress like a cat—left hand, right hand, knee, knee. She made her way to the far edge where he sat, and when she reached him, settled herself on her knees directly behind him. She held her hands hesitantly in the space over his back, feeling the heat roll off him. Swallowing, she touched her fingers to his broad shoulders, and felt them tense.

She recoiled slightly, then settled her hands on him, feeling where the thin fabric of his shirt ended and his bare skin began. In the dark she could hardly see him, even so close—all she had was the feeling of him under her fingers. She ran her hands along the length of his upper back, moving up to his neck and shoulders, then down to about where his ribcage ended. Up and down in slow, smooth strokes.

She saw Angela painting—the brush resting gently in her grasp, as if she wasn't even holding it, but it was holding onto her. They were holding onto each other. She dabbed it into a color, then touched it to another, mixing them until they had created something else entirely. Maybe purple, or green, or orange. It would be something very bright—with Angela, it always was. Vivid, bold, outstanding. But in her mind's eye the colors were dull and unsaturated, almost shades of gray rather than her best friend's typical palette. Angela dabbed them together, darkening the shade. Then, seemingly satisfied, she picked an arbitrary location on the broad, blank canvas before her and began.

Long strokes, back and forth. Smooth, gliding, seemingly without friction. Nothing in the world was without friction—only in deep space, in the absence of force, could an object truly experience friction-free movement. It could roam the universe indefinitely, and if it never came in contact with another object, it would. Frictionless, fluid, forever and ever. Millions of years could pass and it would never slow, never change course, never stop suddenly in its tracks. Nothing could stop it.

Impossible in our universe, but watching the slow strokes, back and forth, you wouldn't know it. You might think, for just one second, that you could defy the forces of physics. That you could defy friction, defy gravity, defy logic. That you could be fluid and unending, could continue seamlessly for eternity without stopping. That you could never stop.

When she felt him crack, she wrapped her arms around his middle, bridging the gap between their bodies and resting her cheek on his shoulder. She felt him rock, and she rocked with him.

Smooth strokes. Back and forth. Never stop.