Echoes True and False

by Lesera128

D.C. Halloween 2007. In a moment of weakness, Brennan makes a mistake and finally contravenes Booth's free will, breaking the spell that has kept him from remembering his life as Angel. He regains his memories and confronts Brennan, forcing them to deal with the fallout of her actions. Bones/Angel crossover. AU. Sequel to stories like "Toe to Toe"-"The Price to Be Paid." Complete.

2. Part II: The Facade Cracks

Echoes True and False

By: Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

Rated: M

Disclaimer: Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from Bones or Angel... or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then moving on―

Summary: Please see Part I.

Logistical Notes: Please see Part I.

A/N: Welcome back, folks. The ladies of Dharmasera wanted to take a moment to remind you of a few things before we dive back into the story (because it's about to get really, really wacky).

First, if you skipped some or all of the first six stories in this series (which covered the first 150 years of Brennan's love affair with the vampire Angelus/Angel), what follows may be quite confusing. No, scratch that. It definitely, most assuredly, we absolutely guarantee that it will be. You will have absolutely no idea what in the hell is going on. Even for those who have been reading (or scanning, which we really don't get, but okay) everyone needs to keep in mind that the Booth of this story is partly the Booth you know, and partly a different Booth, a Booth who has a parallel past as the vampire Angel(us). Two separate lives, both lived in the real world, accumulating real memories, real experiences, real thoughts and feelings that have been grafted together into a single life lived, just as two separate plants are grafted together and thereafter grow as one. That mystical grafting occurred in the weeks before Booth walked into that classroom at American University. So, even though he didn't at that point remember his vampire past, it's still somehow a part of him. (Make sense? No? Good.) In any case, the man who walked into Brennan's lecture in our story is a bit different than the man you know from canon even if he seems really similar to the Booth you know and love from the series (at least, so far). We really suggest, both for your sanity and ours, that you please keep that in mind as you read.

Second, as you can tell, this series presents a complex story of a supernatural nature. Things happen that can't be explained by science or the laws of nature as we know them to exist. Furthermore, things happen that will raise questions in your mind as readers: you'll find that sometimes the answers to these questions have already been given in earlier installments and sometimes they will be presented going forward, which in either case is why the story must be read carefully. This story is like a puzzle for the readers. It's not an easy read, and we know that, but we hope you enjoy the challenge of the puzzle as you read and conclude in the end that it was worth the effort. We think you will.

Third, and we said this at the end of Part I, the next few parts of this story are very alinear. Like Joss Whedon did to the viewers of BtVS and AtS, we're tossing out bits as they come, not as they happened (if that made any sense). You're going to get information and explanations, but most likely not in the way you want because the piece starts, like the flood of memories that returns to Booth, as a messed up flood of thoughts and feelings and recollections. So, when we say alinear...we really, really mean it. Events are quite purposely presented in a non-chronological order. It may not be clear when things are happening, how or why they are. In fact, we'd be quite surprised if most of you read this and don't feel confused, bewildered, and not sure what in the hell is going on. That's okay. It's as you should feel. As you read, it will probably seem like it's all a random gush of memories and experiences. Indeed, this is by design, since this is how Booth perceives them.

The best we can say is, sit back in your easy chair (or other reading furniture of choice), relax, open the proverbial Third Eye and just read, paying close attention to italics (which, as ever, denote a flashback) and regular font which indicate present time. Sometimes the shifts come hard and fast, but try to take it in, soak it up, consider what you've read, and (as Booth told Brennan in the Vegas episode "The Woman in the Sand") just try to keep an open mind. Eventually, it will all make sense. We promise. Just be patient, and carry on.

UNF Alert: Oh, yeah, that. Well, we told you at the beginning of Part I that there was unf in your reading future, and we gave you an IOU. Part II is our first installment payment on that note that we gave you. Consider yourself duly warned that some serious unfness follows. And, on that note, if you are not of a legal age to be reading this (and we know that some of you who are minors are reading this anyway even though you shouldn't be), please don't tell us. You shouldn't, but it's a free country, so we just don't want to know. Thanks.

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Part II: The Facade Cracks

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Booth's eyes suddenly snapped open, his face blanched, and his mouth fell open as he panted for breath. His wide eyes stared off in the distance at some indeterminate spot over Brennan's shoulder as he shook his head again and again in slight jerks as his lips moved even as no sounds passed from his lips.

Oh, shit, he thought as the room seemed to spin around him, and he felt the trapdoor in his gut open up. Shit, shit, shit.

A sickening wave of nausea washed over him as he felt light-headed, a raw tingling in his hands reminding him of the time the brakes on his ten-speed locked up and failed as he was coasting down Germantown Avenue in Philly at a much higher speed than he should've been riding at given the incline. It was just all too much for him to even wrap his mind around—all the images, sounds and smells, the memories and experiences, all of them real enough and vivid enough it was if he could reach out and touch them. They came at him all at once, in a tidal wave that knocked him over, inundated by memories that washed over him, swallowing him up as he choked and struggled to keep his bearings. He felt himself caught up in a rip current of feeling that tugged at him from just below the the surface of his memories, and the harder he struggled to stay upright and close to the shore of the familiar, the farther and farther out the current seemed to drag him away. The more he fought it, the more exhausted and disoriented he became until he was gasping for breath. Somehow, amid the mind-rending panic he felt at being sucked under by the crushing weight of it all, he felt his St. Christopher medal hanging there beneath his shirt, the metal cold against the flushed skin of his chest, and he heard the familiar murmur humming faintly in his ears.

Brennan, her own head spinning as her heart raced and she realized the gravity of what she'd just done, glanced over at Booth with her pale blue eyes wide. She saw his hands begin to tremble, his fingers curling into a claw-like grip as his chest heaved with every breath he struggled to force into his chest.

Oh, God, she thought. No...oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. What have I done? She sensed the terror and confusion radiating off of him in waves as she felt herself suddenly get light-headed as she watched her normally-steady and even-keeled partner begin to spiral deeper into panic with every passing second. Oh, God, Booth—no...

Booth stared into the distance, unable to focus his gaze on the stainless steel and glass interior of the Medico-Legal Lab as his eyes darted around, desperately seeking some kind of anchor as a surge of images, sounds and feelings overwhelmed him. He turned around, his head swinging from one side to the other until he found her, watching him intently with her pale blue eyes that glistened under the lights of the lab. For a moment, he blinked and looked away, then brought his gaze back up to hers. His eyes narrowed, then widened again as he felt himself falling into her cool blue eyes, holding himself there as if he were looking for a fixed point of reference in the middle of an impossible navigation exercise and she was his horizon. He felt a wave of emotion wash over him as he felt his belly swirl with affection and warmth, an almost buoyant sensation that lifted him up, then dropped him again. It was as if he had in his arms everything he'd ever wanted, and his chest was bursting with happiness, then the very thing he wanted with every ounce of his being was suddenly ripped out of his hands and he could only watch helplessly as it was wrested from his grasp.

"No," she told him, her eyes brimming with tears that shook loose with every blink of her eye.

She shook her head and stared at him, her chest aching as she felt her heart crushed at the prospect of losing him, and this time she knew it would be for good. She knew she'd no choice, and that she would have to give him up, but she refused to give up more than she had already. As he stammered to bring forth the words he wanted so badly to say, she seethed in anguish and begged him to stop, wanting nothing more than to silence him, lest it be said she'd attained everything she ever wanted in the last few moments and hours before she lost it all when she lost him because he'd lose his memories and his old life in L.A. because of the bargain she'd struck with The One.

"Don't tell me you love me," she pleaded with him, her voice raw as she choked out the words, each one she managed to utter cutting her as she spoke. "Not today," she almost begged him. Tilting his head at her in confusion, he didn't have to ask before she instantly clarified. "Wait, " she explained. "Please," she breathed. "Just wait. Wait until you can say it, and I can hear it, and we can be together to and be happy because of it?" She looked into his brown eyes, glistening with the moisture of his unshed tears, saw an abiding warmth in them, even as she saw his pupils dilate in a sudden flash that made his chocolate irises darken. His mouth fell open and gaped at her, his tongue hanging over his teeth as he breathed, his eyes blinking slowly and deliberately, and she could tell he was trying to hold himself together for her benefit despite the sadness and uncertainty that flickered behind his gaze. "Please? Please, Angel? I know I have no right to ask that of you after everything I've done, but...please. Just wait."

Angel sat there, staring at her, as his nostrils burned with tears he refused to let her see him shed. his jaw hardened for a moment as he felt a flash of indignant anger—not at the woman who sat beside him whose soft, plaintive lips parted slightly as her pale blue eyes watched his face expectantly—but rather at the vengeful forces of darkness that sought to rob him of every possible happiness he'd sought with this woman, however fleeting or incomplete. He craned his head back and stared at the textured white ceiling, wanting more than anything to howl in bitter anguish with every bit of breath he had at the prospect before him of losing forever the only thing that had ever made him really, truly happy:

Her.

His mouth fell open again as he squeezed his eyes shut, trying desperately to hold back his tears, and he grunted as his hands formed fists so tight, his fingernails dug into the palms of his hands. He took a deep breath and lowered his gaze, closing his mouth as he looked deeply into her shimmering pale eyes. He felt an aching in his chest, a slow shearing sensation almost, as he yearned to say to her the three words he'd been holding inside of him for so long. But as he looked into her eyes, he saw the pain in them, and it nearly undid him. Then, as he looked just a bit deeper, there was also something else, something else that told him that, whether she said those words aloud, she felt them as deeply as he did and maybe saying them wasn't the important thing in that moment if that's what she needed from him. He felt his stomach clench again in his belly as the full picture of what he was about to lose finally came into sharp focus. Finally, reluctantly, he nodded his head.

"Okay," he said quietly. "I won't tell you—"

Even as the words tumbled from his mouth, he saw Brennan let out a giant breath of relief. She tilted her head towards him and opened her mouth to speak. Angel knew that she was going to thank him, but for some reason, he knew he couldn't bear to hear such words come out of her mouth. Quickly, he lifted his index finger to her lips and sadly shook his head.

"I said I wouldn't tell you, Bren," he said. "But I didn't say anything about not showing you how I feel about you." He studied her face for a moment, her blue eyes enthralling him as they always had, and he felt a new warmth blossom in his chest as he realized he'd made a good decision even if he needed to convince her of his plan. "Please, Bren? Let me show you what you are to me, that you will always remember, no matter what happens after this, what you mean to me, long after I no longer remember you, or us, or what we had, or what we gave to each other these last hundred and fifty years." He felt a tingling in his jaw as the tears threatened once more. "Let me show you, Bren. Let me prove to you what you are to me. Please..."

Finally, unable to resist him, not able to fight him any longer, she whispered with an almost imperceptible nod, "Yes." She paused for a beat, and then a tiny ray of hope broke through the overwhelming sadness he'd felt, as she smiled a small, sadly happy smile at him before she added, "That is...if you want me? Want me to share that with you? Then, yes. I want to feel it. Feeling it is more important than hearing it right now. So, you can show me, Angel. Let me feel it. Let me feel you. Please? Show me."

"I will," he said simply, feeling the hard, deep ache in his chest lessen somewhat as a warmth tingled through him, a wave of positivity washing over him and soothing the raw pain he'd been feeling inside.

The burning in his eyes and nose faded as he looked at her, and he felt his skin flush warm as he saw a bright glimmer in her eyes when her lips closed together, her words hanging in the air between them. His decision made, Angel stood up from the small sofa and looked down at Brennan, giving her a soft, gentle smile as he extended his hand to her. She accepted his hand with more than one reason for the gratitude she felt as he helped her to her feet, then led her back to her bedroom. No sooner had they walked through the doorway when he turned around abruptly and, releasing his grasp on her hand, and brought his hands up to cup her face and kissed her. Brennan's lips parted as Angel's tongue slipped between them, and he stroked his tongue along the inside of her lips before pulling away slightly. A frustrated murmur sounded from her, and he leaned in again to kiss her, his hips pressing against hers as she suddenly realized he had backed her up against her bedroom door. Once again his mouth claimed hers, and his tongue slid into her mouth, exploring and glancing against hers as their mouths came together and parted, then came together again in a wet, grasping dance. He moaned into their kiss as his hands roamed lower, sliding down the sides of her arms to her waist and finally resting on the gentle swell of her hips as he pulled away from her kiss, sucking on her lower lip for a moment before releasing it with a panting breath.

"I could kiss you all day," he whispered with a hushed sigh, leaning in and brushing his lips over her cheek to the flat space in front of her earlobe. His lips began to trace a path of feather-light touches along the sharp line of her square jaw to her chin, his tongue just barely making itself known as he worshipped her ivory skin with his lips. "All damn day and die a happy man," he told her in between kisses.

With each touch of his lips and tongue on her neck, Brennan felt her skin flush and tingle as if it was on fire. She craned her head back and sighed as Angel's mouth moved to the notch at the base of her neck, his tongue darting out and drawing a soft, wet circle there before he moved on to drop clutching, damp kisses all along the length of her collarbone.

"God, Angel," she breathed as his fingers slid under the spaghetti strap of her dark colored camisole, sliding the strap over the round edge of her shoulder to reveal a long, sloping curve that he promptly reacquainted himself with the soft pads of his fingers as his mouth moved southward from her clavicle to the warm, fleshy cleft between her breasts. "Take it off," she whispered, waiting for him to raise his head and pull a few inches away before raising her arms. "I never should've put it back on. Please?" she asked him. "I need you. Help me? Please?"

Angel smiled faintly at her plea and then reached for the bottom hem of her camisole, pulling it up over her head before tossing the garment carelessly to the side. As soon as she was rid of the camisole, she gently pressed him away from her and towards the bed as a feral grin cracked his handsome, rugged face. His brown eyes glittered with silent want and had, in just a matter of seconds, darkened to the color of pitch, and his mouth fell open with a scarcely audible sigh as he reached out for her again, this time hooking his thumbs under the waistband of her yoga pants as he twirled her around so that her back was to the bed. He glanced up at her once, licking his lips and narrowing his eyes as he tugged her pants over her hips and slid them down her thighs. Brennan smiled and wiggled her legs as she let the black pants shimmy over her knees and fall into a silent crumple on the floor before stepping out of them.

Angel bent his head down and, cupping the soft, round underside of her breasts with his palms, brought his mouth to one of her nipples. The pebbly, rosy-colored flesh hardened the instant his lips closed around it, and he murmured into her skin as he teased the hard point of her nipple with the tip of his tongue. He pulled his mouth away, glancing up into her gleaming blue eyes for a moment before returning to his work, closing his lips around her other nipple and laving it with the broad flat of his tongue before drawing it into his mouth with a hard suck.

"Oh, God," she groaned in pleasure as his tongue wrapped around her nipple, causing a flash of pleasure to shoot through her as her head lolled to the side. "God, Angel, you..." But, her thought remained unfinished as he gave her one last hard suck in response, causing Brennan's eyes to squeeze shut and her head to loll to the side as he breathing increased.

He only murmured in reply as he nipped the hardened point of her nipple with his teeth, then soothed away the faint sting with a swipe of his warm tongue before tugging at her flesh with a gentle, wet suck. He suckled her this way for a couple of minutes until the gradual peaking of her sighs and moans and the vague swaying of her stance left no doubt that she was very close to release. Angel opened his eyes and released her nipple from his mouth, flashed his eyebrows with a sparkling, toothy smile and urged her towards the bed.

Brennan allowed herself to fall backwards onto the bed, crawling crab-like towards the head of the bed as she watched her dark-eyed, dark-haired lover follow, stalking towards her on all fours as he made his way across the bed to cover her body with his. As Angel nudged her legs apart with his knee, and quickly took his place between her thighs, Brennan brought her hands up to his waist, caressing his smooth, olive skin under her fingers, leaning her head back a little and taking a deep breath, soaking in the sensation of feeling his body, warm and deliciously heavy, covering hers.

His heart ached at the thought of forgetting her, but he knew from the gravity of her earlier words that there was no doubt but that she was right, and that everything he knew and everything he'd been for two hundred fifty years, including the century and a half of their own on-again, off-again but ever-deepening affair, would vanish from his mind. All he had was this one day to show her what she meant to him, that she would never forget him. In the emotional tempest that roiled inside of him, Angel wasn't sure why it was so important to him that she not forget him, or how he felt for her, even though he would surely forget her and everything they'd shared between them, but as he stared into her eyes, he knew what he wanted to do.

He brought his hand up and held her face gently against his palm as he leaned in, his mouth hovering over hers for a few moments before he kissed her. Murmuring into their kiss, his lips grasped at hers as their tongues grappled for dominance in the wet, warm space they shared between them, and he pressed his lips hard against hers with a soft, almost inaudible grunt as he drew a circle around the tip of her tongue with his and then pulled away again.

"Angel," she whispered, her voice peaking plaintively as her brow creased with frustration. "Please..."

But still, he didn't say a single word.

He dropped feather-light kisses on her chin and down the side of her neck to her collarbone, pausing at the base of her neck as she sighed at feeling his delicate touches, then continued to move down, his lips brushing over the space between her breasts and on down to her belly button, which he kissed gently, letting the tip of his tongue dart out and glance lightly against the rim of her navel for the briefest possible second before moving on.

Angel's chin passed over her crisp curls as his hands drew along the insides of her thighs, his thumbs hooking under her knees as he took his place between her legs. He took a deep breath, filling his nostrils with the sweet, musky scent of her arousal and the tangy, vaguely saline, almost mossy smell of their earlier joining before bringing his hands up to touch her most intimate flesh, peeling apart her folds with his thumbs and allowing himself several long moments to admire the way she glistened in anticipation of his touch. He made a humming sound in his throat and then dove in, drawing his tongue along the length of her opening and tasting the tart, sweet cream there, flavored as it was with his own sweet and slightly salty essence from before. Brennan gritted her teeth and sucked in a sharp breath at feeling him tuck the point of his tongue inside of her, then withdraw again with what she swore was a snicker.

"Oh, my God, Angel," she sighed as she felt him curl his tongue and penetrate her as deeply as he could, a low growl sounding in his chest as he lapped and sucked up her juices.

"Ohhhh, fuck, Angel," she groaned. "Ohh, shit...fuck..." She gritted her teeth again at the intense sensation that surged through her at his attentions. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

She squirmed, twisting her hips against the sheet beneath her as she arched her head back and grunted as a sharp jolt of pleasure rolled down her spine and curled her toes. Just when she swore she couldn't take it any longer, he pulled away, lifting his head and looking up at her, his chin glistening slightly with evidence of her desire as a grin spread across his lips.

Yet even then, he didn't speak.

Brennan saw a flicker in his dark eyes and his lips purse for a moment, then he narrowed his eyes and lowered his head again, closing his lips around her hardening clit, applying the briefest touch of suction before flicking the point of his tongue over her flesh.

"Ohh...fuck...ohhhh...ohhhhhh..." she moaned at him again as her back arched off the mattress and she jerked her hips forward, pressing against Angel's mouth as she cried out in release. She fisted the sheets and leaned her head back, realizing she was falling over the edge and couldn't do a thing about it even if she'd wanted to, not that she did. She stared at the white knockdown texture of her bedroom ceiling for a moment, clouded as it was by the familiar haze of bright blue light as the last wave of her orgasm inundated her and then gently faded away as she once again became aware of things around her once more.

Angel's eyes were there waiting to meet hers as she brought her gaze back to the handsome face between her legs. Brennan smiled faintly as she tried to decipher the expression in his deep brown eyes as he pressed his lips into a firm line, as if he had just decided something important. As her powers of reason seemed to filter back to her in the moments after her release, her brow furrowed and she puzzled why her once frustratingly loquacious lover remained silent as he brought himself up once again to hover over her.

He leaned heavily into his hands as he looked down at her, his chest filling with warmth as he felt a faint burning sensation in his nostrils. Her chest heaved as her breath rose and fell, and for a moment he was transfixed by the sight of her dusky nipples moving with each ragged breath. She sighed, and the sound of her voice snapped him out of his daze, bringing his attention back to her eyes which glittered brightly as he felt the vague electric charge prick at his skin as her eyes flashed brightly one last time before she seemed to sink a bit into the pillows.

Angel propped himself up on one arm and reached down, closing his hand around his rigid arousal and pulling the skin back taut. He glanced up at her, swiping his swollen tip over the length of her opening a couple of times, then drew his hips back and looked deeply into her eyes as he pressed into her. He bit the inside of his lip at the incredible sensation of being inside of her, a feeling he'd experienced countless times over the years he'd known her but which struck him each time as unexpected, the all-encompassing pleasure of it always catching him unawares no matter how many times he knew her this way.

He slid into her until he was seated all the way to the hilt, holding himself there for several seconds, his mouth falling open in a lazy grin as he shut his eyes and withdrew, pulling nearly all the way out of her before taking a deep breath and stroking into her again. He opened his eyes and watched as her enchantingly beautiful face slackened as he slid into her, his way made incredibly easy by how impossibly wet she was for him.

With each driving stroke, Angel tried to bury himself as deeply inside of her as he possibly could, so deep that he would never find his way out of her again. He wanted to lose himself in her, to dissolve himself, body and soul, into her completely, so that she would know that he was irretrievably part of her just as she was a part of him, a part of her soul so tightly woven into his that he had trouble remembering what it was like before she was cleaved to him.

He rolled his hips back and thrust hard into her, his jaw held firm as his eyes closed again, and he felt her begin to tighten around him. He jerked into her with a soft grunt, unable to shake the feeling that he wanted to mark her somehow the way he felt himself marked by her. Though he understood what she had told him—that he would not remember a thing of her come morning when the single twenty-four hours that they'd been granted ended—as he lost himself in the exquisite feel of her each time he came into her felt her warm, moist folds open like a flower to accept him, he felt certain that the way she had marked him was something that not even her mystical bargain could erase. As he came into her, again and again as he had a thousand times before in the century and a half he had known her, he was hopeful that he would always know her, somehow, even if he didn't know who she was.

He made love to her that afternoon with everything he had to give so that she would not forget him, but a voice deep inside of him murmured and he hoped that the time would come that they would cross one another's paths again and that when that happened, he would somehow know her. He felt his heart racing as each stroke came harder and faster on the heels of the one that preceded it, and he felt as if everything was in flux around him, the room spinning around his head, the bed beneath him vanishing as he felt suddenly weightless, the entire universe collapsing into a space only as big as their two bodies, merged into one as he drove into her, again and again relentlessly as his silence gave way to a soaring swirl of peaking groans and low, rumbling growls. The hairs on his arms stood on end as the energy between them crackled again, filling the air with a positive charge that pulsed and throbbed each time he sent himself into her. Finally, as he felt her body clenching around him and quiver wildly in the wake of her second release, he himself fell into a tightly-coiled spiral towards his own orgasm, that energy cast its familiar blue light and pricked at his skin before flashing brightly as he smiled faintly, jerking up into her one last time before he shattered, flooding her with his hot seed as a long moan passed between his lips.

As he surrendered himself to the mind-numbing weightlessness of his release, he finally spoke, murmuring her name as if it were some sort of sacred chant:

"Bren...Bren...Bren...oh God, Bren...oh, Bren...Bren...oh, Bren..."

He held himself as deeply and firmly inside of her as he could as the last pulses of his orgasm faded, and after a few moments, he collapsed onto her, crushing her beneath his weight until he regained his senses and rolled off of her.

He sucked down a deep breath as he felt his heart racing in his chest in the wake of their love. Angel turned his head and looked at her, his dark eyes glistening with feeling as he gazed into her blue orbs. Her forehead was faintly creased as she stared back at him, and he could see her thoughts flickering behind her eyes. Rolling onto his side, he drew his hand up and gently cupped the side of her face, slowly stroking his big thumb over the delicate line of her cheekbone.

"Oh, Bren..."

The warm, chest-filling sensation of attainment in one moment and of emptiness in the next gave way to another rush of feelings and images, his mind echoing with the sound of two voices speaking, one of which emerged from the muffled memory and resonated in his mind for a few seconds before Booth realized that one of the voices was his own. The somber tone of his voice ate away at him as it rang out in the sudden gush of the memory, and he felt his throat tighten, a hard lump resisting his anxious swallow as he looked down and saw a pair of hands—large, strong, olive-skinned and veiny like his own—close around fistfuls of stiff fabric.

"You don't have to go," she said, her voice a quiet plea as she stood there leaning against the doorframe at the entrance to her bedroom watching him back his meager belongings into a large canvas duffle bag.

"You know I do, Bren," he replied, reaching his hand into the top of the bag and mashing its contents down before cinching up the seabag's drawstring and double-knotting it. He picked up the bag to test its heft and balance, then set it back down on the floor. "You know I have to go. You have to go, too. You want to go to Mexico."

"I never said that," Brennan told him with a frustrated sigh. "You know I never did."

"You didn't have to...," he smiled sadly. "You don't have to. I know you want to go. And I know if I stay here, you won't go, and I can't go that to you, Bren. I don't want to hold you back anymore. You've got to follow your dreams, Bren, even if that path takes you away from me."

He sighed as he saw her pale blue eyes glisten with unshed tears. He'd been thinking about it for not quite a year, ever since she'd come home from the university one afternoon, her eyes alight with excitement about a series of excavations underway on the Yucatán Peninsula of southeastern Mexico. It wasn't the first time she'd talked about Mexico, but that afternoon, as she walked into the apartment, the emotion he heard in her voice wasn't a passing wistfulness, but a genuine excitement. A few months after that, a letter had come in the mail from a colleague, Edgar, postmarked in Mérida. She'd read the letter to him, her voice curious but yet constrained somehow, edged with a jealous frustration that became clearer to him as she read the last page of the missive.

He could tell as she read that she missed her fieldwork. In the five years since he'd moved into her Chicago apartment, she'd only participated in a handful of short field activities, each of which had lasted no more than two-to-four days long apiece. Each time, he'd joined her, and he'd been able to see firsthand how happy and how excited she became when she was around other archaeologists and anthropologists doing what she loved.

He could tell from the way Brennan's voice wavered when she talked about Mérida as she read the letter that she yearned to be back in the field again for more than just a long weekend. He'd asked her about it, but she dismissed his concerns. As the months went by, Angel realized that she had stopped talking about the Mexican excavations, and about field work in general, but he could feel the tension as it became clearer with each passing day that she was deliberately avoiding the subject as if she was trying to put it out of her mind.

After a few months, Angel had confronted her about it again, but Brennan had shrugged it off, insisting she was happy with the way things were, doing what she did during the day and spending her nights with him. Five years it had been since she'd pulled him off the cold, windblown streets of Chicago and taken him into her home and her life. That Halloween night, they came together as two disparate people joined in a bed sharing the pleasures of one another's flesh, but when they pulled apart again, a part of her soul was cleaved to him forever. The part of her soul that hummed and murmured inside of him gave him the self-awareness and insight to work his way to the other side of the mind-rending despair that had driven him to the very brink of suicide the night she'd found him rummaging in a pile of wood scraps behind a meatpacking warehouse on Halsted Street. But as the weeks and months ticked by, he knew that, as happy as she was with him and what they shared between them, a part of her wanted more. He knew she was holding herself back—he could feel it in the way she touched him, the faint waver in her voice, the almost undetectable tension in her limbs as they made love in her bed. He knew there were things she wanted from her life that he could not give her, and as he watched her suppress her desires for those things, he knew what he had to do. He had to let her pursue her dreams. And he knew the only way she would do it is if he forced her hand. So, with a heaviness in his heart, he did.

"You can come with me," she said, cocking her head to the side as she watched him lean his heavy duffel against the foot of the bed, the bed they'd shared for five long years. "Me going to Mexico doesn't mean you have to leave..." She sighed. "You've lived all over the world, Angel. We've been a lot of places together, you and me, and even more in the times we were apart. What's the big difference about this one? We can just add this to the list. You don't have to go. You don't have to leave me."

"No," he said. "I'm not going back to sleeping under the stars, Bren. When I did it, before...I'm not going back to that—sleeping out in the open, scrounging around for animals to feed off of because there's no butcher shops or slaughterhouses from which I can get blood, curling up under bridges, in caves and barns to escape the sun during the days. I did that in Montana, when I was in Missoula, and I did it here in Illinois, when I made my way up through the countryside from St. Louis." He paused, shrugging away a memory before he continued. "I slept on the streets, here in Chicago, for years. Looking back, I'm not even sure how I did it. Guess I really didn't do it very well. I damn near starved to death doing it." He shook his head and sighed. "It's too hard, Bren—living that way, being what I am. I have to live in a city, a real city, and sleep in a bed between four walls."

"Angel," she said, her voice edging higher as she felt a ball of panic settle into the pit of her stomach at the thought of him leaving her after they'd been together so long, and she tried desperately to find a way to dissolve it.

For five years, she'd fallen asleep each night with his arm curled around her naked waist, and woken up each morning to the sound of the tiny murmurs he made in his sleep. She'd grown used to sitting with him at their dining room table, eating her dinner as he drank his own, a couple of tall glasses of pig's blood or cattle blood—whatever she could pick up from the Ukrainian butcher around the corner from her apartment—and discussing her day or current events over a nightcap, be it a glass of Irish whiskey or a glass of amaretto, before crawling into bed, making love once or twice before falling asleep in his arms again. Their lives became had become woven together almost as tightly as their souls in that five years, and the thought of going back to the life she had before that—when she woke alone, dined alone, drank alone, and slept alone—made her ill with sadness and dread since she didn't want to be alone anymore...and wasn't really certain she knew how to be alone anymore even if she did. They'd built a life together, somehow, and even if they'd stumbled into it by accident, she realized in that moment that she didn't want to let it go.

"They have cities in Mexico, Angel," she tried again. "I know Mérida isn't Chicago or London, but it's big enough. You could rent a pensión. I'll have to come in from the field from time to time for supplies, and we can see each other then. And, besides, the work will stop when the rains come in the summer, so we'll be able to—"

Angel rolled his jaw from one side to the other as he thought about it, about what she was saying. He'd never been to Mérida—his own travels through Mexico over the years had taken him through the more western parts of the country, through Mexico City, Guadalajara, Juarez and even as far as what was then the brand-new town of Mexicali, just across the border from the Imperial Valley where a land development company was trying to entice farmers to settle in what was otherwise a rather desolate desert basin several hours' drive east of San Diego. The eastern part of Mexico seemed interesting to him—so green and lush compared to the dry, rocky wastes of the west—and a part of him thought about whether he could made a life for himself there.

It was a tempting thought, at first. Very tempting.

He imagined Brennan in a flowy white sun dress and broad-brimmed hat going to the mercado, visiting the local carneceria and asking the butcher for pig's blood: "¿Tiene usted algo sangre de cerdo?" He imagined what it would look like to wake up with her in the pre-dawn twilight in a room with white-washed adobe walls, snuggled in bed with the mosquito-netting waving gently in the breeze. He thought of what she would look like, coming in from the field in her long-sleeved cotton field dress, a bit of dust from her journey clung to her sweat-damp cheeks as she chattered excitedly about what they'd uncovered in the six weeks since he'd seen her. Then he wondered what he would do with himself, an Irish-American vampire, living in a small city in the jungles of southeastern Mexico, waiting week upon week upon week for his archaeologist lover to return to him.

"No, Bren," he said firmly. He opened his mouth, inclined for a moment to tell her that if anyone could get him to go to such a place and to live in such a way, it would be her and only her. But he then thought better of it since he knew if she knew of any weakness in his resolve, she'd be merciless in her tenacity to break him down until her submitted to her will. And, on this one thing, that was something that he knew couldn't happen. He needed to be strong for her so she could do what she needed to do and travel down the path that fate was pushing her down even if it meant he couldn't go with her for that part of the journey. "You and me—we each have a destiny," he said. "Yours is taking you to Mexico to learn about ancient civilizations, and mine...well..."

He stared at his stuffed seabag, the white fabric of which was soiled and worn from the dozens of journeys it had seen, slung over the shoulder of the old merchant seaman, O'Reilly, who'd sold it to him for a quarter at the Irish pub a few blocks from Brennan's apartment. He scraped his fingernail over the stiff fabric and thought of the journey that he was about to embark on, but how the bag had been filled with things he'd bought because of or by Brennan.

"I don't know what mine is, exactly," he said, "but it's calling me to New York." He fussed with the drawstrings as he tried to explain himself. "I spent some time there, when I first got to America, you know—after I came through Ellis Island. I don't know why, Bren, but I have this gut feeling...like I have unfinished business there." He looked up at her hopefully. "Maybe you can come visit me, when things wind down for the season there, though? I think I'd like that if you came up to see me in New York. New York is great in the summertime, Bren—we can take walks in Central Park after sunset, see shows on Broadway. I can take you into some of the neighborhoods. I gotta take you to this pub, McSorley's, where I made my first friend here in America. Paddy McKeegan—he's still tending bar there today. They serve this great brown ale, just like back in the old country."

Angel smiled at the thought of the last time he was in McSorley's and how Paddy had given him all his drinks for free. But then he looked up and saw the sad look in her pale eyes and shook his head as the long look on her face chased away his smile and replaced it with a frown. He bit down on the inside of his lip as he felt her uncertainty. He heard the rhythm of her breathing shift and the speed of her heartbeat flutter, and he saw her moist eyes brimming with tears. He swallowed and took a step towards her, but did not reach out to touch her.

"Bren," he said quietly. "It's not that I don't want to be with you. Or that I don't want you. God, no. It's just..." He swallowed again, looked away as he tried to gather his thoughts into an articulable package. "It's just—you have things you want to do, that you have to do, places you want to go, discoveries that you want to make. And...well...Bren, I don't think you can do those things , you know, that you can live out that destiny you deserve, if you knew I was sitting there in Mérida, waiting for you. You deserve a chance to have the life you're fated to have, and not to have me hold you back from it. I believe in us, Bren, I do—I swear I do—and someday, I know we'll find our way back to being in the same place at the same time, sharing a single life. I don't know how or why I know that, but for some funny reason, I do. I just don't think that time is now. You need to go out there into the universe and make your destiny, Bren. I'll always be with you, even if I'm not actually with you. And I'll always be here, waiting for you, when you're done. I swear."

He watched her pale eyes flicker and darken as her lips formed a tight pursed line. She looked away for several long moments, then brought her gaze back up to meet his with a quick nod. He picked up his duffel and slung it over his shoulder with a quiet grunt.

"You know it has to be this way," he said, walking towards her. "You're an amazing woman, Bren. You have an incredible gift, but, just sitting around here with me, it's killing you. I can see it with mine own eyes, lass. You need to get out there and do your thing. Let that talent of yours blossom as we both know it can and go off and do what you need to do."

She shook her head in response to what they both knew was a very valid point before she looked away without saying a single word.

"Come on, Bren," Angel said, his voice low and even though he felt a painful ache in his chest, tearing at him from the inside out. "You know what we are to one another. We're bound forever, you and I, no matter what happens, lass. You know that. No matter where we go or what happens. We may be two people, with two bodies, but we're one soul. You know it. Don't you?"

He stared at her for a long minute, but still remained silent.

Trying again, he reminded her, "Think, Bren. If nothing else I know that you felt it—even just this morning, aye? When we made love? I felt it, and I know you did, too. We always do because it's always been that way for us. You're a part of me, Bren, and I think you know that more than just a simple part of me will always be with you. You know that. No matter how far apart we are or how many miles separate us."

He brought his free hand up to cup her square, slender jaw and pulled her lips to his.

Brennan enjoyed his kiss for a minute and then reluctantly pulled away before she parted and rested her chin against his shoulder before she whispered with a slight sniffle, "I won't do it."

He felt his chest tighten as he heard the tears scraping at the edges of her voice, and he felt the tenuous hold he had on his resolve crumbling just a bit further. "Bren—"

"I won't do it, Angel," she said, a flash of the stubbornness that he'd always simultaneously adored and been infuriated by over the years brightening her eyes. "I don't...I just..."

Brennan's voice trailed off as she looked at him. Her eyes skimmed the contours of his face—his high cheekbones, his heavy brow that hung over his dark brown eyes, his strong, faintly pock-marked jaw, the dimples in his cheeks as he gave her a forced smile, the cleft in his chin—and she remembered how this same face had looked so drawn when she found him that first night, his now-full cheeks sunken with hunger and dark circles hanging below his sparkling eyes. He was stronger now, both in body and in spirit. She'd nursed him back to physical health and, long after, watched him as he grew into himself again, finding his voice and his confidence that at first seemed irretrievably lost. Brennan watched him as he stood there with his canvas seabag, blinking back at her as the silence between them slowly began to unnerve him a little. She thought how the man she'd once known as Angelus, who had challenged her and infuriated her, had evolved into a different man, a better man, a man who she'd come to care for deeply. She felt the ache inside of her, but she couldn't deny the resolve she saw in his face as he stared back at her. Still, she knew that she couldn't let him go without some type of fight.

"I'm not doing it," she repeated, her jaw set firmly as she dug in her heels. "I'm not losing you again, Angel. It's not happening. I'm not doing it."

"Bren," he sighed, as he recognized her tone of voice. "Come on, now. You—"

"No," she repeated with a firm shake of her head. "You can leave me if you want, but I won't go—"

"Bren," he tried again. "Please don't make this any harder than it has to be. Please?"

Looking up at him, a thought occurred to Brennan. "Fine," she said.

"What?" Angel asked, his head jerking as he looked at her and a look of confusion crossed his handsome face. "What do you mean 'fine'?" After a moment, he narrowed his eyes suspiciously, quite certain that her apparent acquiescence came at a price. There was always a catch with her, he knew. She never really gave in, and never retreated all the way. He knew that morning was no different.

"You want me to go," she said. "I want to stay unless you come with me. So the only thing I can see that solves this is we have to compromise."

"Compromise?" he asked. "Bren, I know we've both learned to compromise these last five years, mmm? It's in no small part how we've managed to get through it, sharing a space and a life the way we have. We're both too hard-headed to have gotten through it any other way, but..." He brought his hand up and tousled the back of his hair. "So, what's the catch?" he asked warily.

"We both know that to compromise, we both have to get something and we both have to give something up," she replied. "Right?"

"Right," he nodded tentatively. "I guess. But we both know you've got to do this thing, and I've got to go so you can do it."

"So, since you want me to go, I'll go...but I'm not going unless you promise me," she explained. "You have to promise me..in six months? If you promise me that you'll come to me in Mexico, then okay. I won't like it. But, okay. But, if not, I can't...I can't go away not knowing when I'm going to see you again. I just can't. Okay?"

He was quiet for a minute and then nodded his head with a slight smile softening the serious look that had haunted his handsome face since they'd first begun the difficult discussion earlier that morning. His smile fell open into a laugh and he ran his hands through his hair again as he felt a wave of relief wash over him. He cocked his head to the side and looked at her, then took a couple of steps forward to close the last couple of feet of distance between them. He brought his hands up to cradle her face between them as he leaned in and kissed her gently.

"Okay."

Booth's back straightened a little as a flash of duty-bound pride fluttered in his belly in the fleeting half-second before a heavy, surging wave of regret crashed over him, slamming down on him as he felt a the distant pulse of a familiar ache, not unlike the dark swirl of lightheadedness that had visited him from time to time over the years as he remembered the faces of the men he had killed behind the scope of his sniper's rifle or on the other side of his FBI-issue .40 caliber Glock 23. This time, he could swear there was something vaguely intimate about the kill, as if he could actually taste the blood of the life he'd taken.

But there was something else that struck him as familiar—the thin-lipped mouth, square jaw, and soft, fleshy earlobes weighed down by gently-swinging silver earrings—before he recognized the one thing that set this particular face apart from all of the others.

Her eyes.

Her cool, dark-rimmed blue-gray eyes that seemed unspeakably expansive, like a wide, rippling sea that made him feel as if he were drowning in them.

"You got drafted?" she asked him, her voice a bit incredulous as she watched as he plopped himself down in the dark brown leather easy chair in the corner of her living room, the one she'd had made for him in Mérida and had kept in her apartment for him for almost twenty years, and leaned his head back with a heavy sigh.

"Not exactly," he replied as he looked up and met her curious stare as her bright blue eyes looked at him in askance. "Kind of more like press-ganged."

Brennan arched an eyebrow. "I don't know what that means," she said, her brow creasing slightly as she tilted her head at him. "What happened?"

Angel grunted and lowered his chin, leveling his gaze to meet hers. "They came into my apartment," he explained. "I'm not sure how they found me, or how they got in. After there were all those break-ins in my part of the East Village, I changed my locks."

"Again?" she asked. "You got double-deadbolts put on the last time that happened. I haven't seen a wooden door that thick since I moved out of my home in Cheapside, Angel. I still can't believe the New York police can't get that situation under control."

Angel shrugged. "I figured my next-door neighbors, the Ostrovskys, having that big snarly dog would help keep people away, since he starts barking every time someone walks near my door, but I dunno. They still managed to get in."

"Who?" she asked, her confusion growing since she'd rarely known Angel to ever be put successfully in any position to do anything he didn't want to do unless the compulsion was significant. "I don't understand."

"I don't know," he muttered, raking his hand through his hair in frustration as he felt his eyes drawn to the wrinkles that creased her white forehead. He felt a tingling in his fingertips as he wanted to reach out and stroke his fingers across her brow, to smooth it and to feel her warm, silky skin. "Said they were with some damn government agency calling itself the Demon Research Initiative. There were a bunch of them, two of them big guys, armed with stakes, and the way they were holdin' 'em, I had a pretty good idea they'd used them before. Then there was this general or whatever, and he says to me, 'Sit down, son—we need to talk.' Then he goes and proceeds to tell me how my country needs all the able-bodied men it can get to fight the war. My country? I mean, what the fuck, Bren?"

Brennan considered his question for a moment, not knowing if it was rhetorical or not. As Angel continued to look at her, his brow furrowed and his eyes wide in expectation, she decided she needed to say something even if she wasn't certain she was saying the right thing given the tense and edgy mood he seemed to be in since his arrival an hour before. The glass of Jameson's whiskey she'd given him seemed like it hadn't done much to take the edge off, though it did seem to settle him to the point where he could finally form complete sentences and stay in one place for more than ten seconds as opposed to just growling, grumbling, and pacing restlessly as he had done when he'd first walked into her apartment.

"You have lived here for the better part of forty years, Angel," she said. "I can see their point." She fell silent for a moment, noting the way his eyebrows were knit low and hard over his dark, deep-set eyes. "But, that's not what this issue was, was it? Because we both know you've never shrunk away from a fight, Angel, in all the years I've known you. You've defended my honor on more than one occasion when we've been in a tavern and some smart-ass decided to horn in between us and make a move on me. Never mind the bar-room fisticuffs you've gotten yourself into in my absence, mmm?" She paused and a smile came to her face. "Or, even the pugilistic sports you've enjoyed over the years." She felt a shiver run down her spine at the memory of the fight she'd watched at Covent Garden in 1860, the first night she'd laid eyes on him. Her face sobered again. "You've gone to war before, Angel. You fought in the Great War, didn't you? I remember you telling me about the time you spent in the trenches on the Western Front. At the Somme, wasn't it?"

"Royal Engineers, yeah," he sighed. "252nd Tunneling Company. I spent six months underground, digging tunnels under German trenches and fortifications and blowing them up." He rolled his eyes. "I'm not even sure why I signed up," he said. "One minute, I was in Londonderry, on one of my walkabouts, trolling from pub to pub, trying to drink away the pain, you know, and the next thing I know I'm on my way to France. Maybe I was bored, I dunno. I guess I just wanted to break up the monotony and it seemed like a good idea since it was what everyone else was doing at the time..." He shook his head. "I just wanted to feel normal," he said with a heavy sigh. "But this war—I just want to stay away from that world, you know. Europe. And all the shit I did there. All the memories. Every inch of it reeks with bad memories for me, Bren. Every time my heel hits the ground when I'm there, a dozen memories come to mind of what I did in that place when..." He closed his eyes and sighed. "When I raged there—before. I figure I've seen enough dead bodies crumpled on the cobblestone to last me a few more centuries."

She watched as his eyebrows knit even more firmly over his eyes as he spoke. "Look, Angel, I know you didn't want to go fight the war...this war...but—"

He interrupted her with a sharp sigh. "Bren, you know that I came to America to get away from Europe, the Old World, and make a new life for myself. New life, with new memories, right? I don't want to go back or to have to look back. I've spent the last forty-five years trying to forget that world, back there, and all the...all the things I did back then." He leaned his head back and sighed. "So, no, when they came and said they wanted me to go help 'em fight the war over there in Europe, I didn't want anything to do with it. I like my life here. I'm finally starting to not be sick at the mere thought of the man who I am today. But if I go back, I risk losing all that. I mean, honestly, If I'd have wanted to throw myself back into that cesspool of shit, I'd ha' done it long before now, and we both know that you know that already."

"But that's not what's really bothering you, is it?" she said. "What happened?"

Angel's jaw shifted from one side to the other as he shook his head, his eyes gazing over Brennan's shoulder to something outside of the window of her apartment. He watched the rain as it came down in heavy, rhythmic sheets, intermittently splattering against the window as the wind gusts picked up and faded again. The sound of the rain swelled loud as it fell so hard and in such a heavy downpour that it obscured the roiling gray surface of Lake Michigan in an opaque curtain of water. After a few moments, the wind let up a bit, and the rain seemed to lighten, and the cold, dreary surface of the giant lake emerged once more to dominate the view from her living room window. His eyes were glassy and unfocused as he began to speak again.

"I did it," he said grimly, unable any longer to hold in the secret that felt as if it was burning a hole in his chest. The pain had been eating at him for four long weeks, and he'd felt it, sour and acrid, eroding him from the inside out. As ever, in times of trouble and distress, he'd sought her out and come to her, and now he came there for the real reason that he'd always sought her out time and time again through the years—for comfort and absolution. Her voice, low and sympathetic, and her unfailing insistence, finally pierced his reluctance and, after a moment of sharp burning, began to draw the poison out of him, like bloodletter's fleam. "I fucking did it," he snapped with a self-disgusted rasp. "I didn't want to, but...I didn't have any goddamn choice in the matter. If I didn't do it, they'd all have died, and the, well, I'm not supposed to get into details, but, the enemy intelligence they'd captured would have been lost, too, and—"

Brennan took a breath and spoke carefully, each syllable falling slowly and evenly after the one that preceded it. "What did you do, Angel?" she inquired, her chest tightening as she saw the tension in his chiseled features. Seeing his reticence finally collapse under the weight of a guilt she didn't understand, but which she knew tore raggedly at the edges of his voice, she sat back and prepared to listen as he unloaded the burden that he carried. She tried to read the emotions in his face, but the overwhelming feeling that rolled off of him in dark waves was that of self-loathing the likes of which she had not seen him exhibit since the first night she saw him, huddled, freezing, half-starved and despairing on the streets just a few dozen blocks away. "What happened?"

"I turned him," he said in a broken voice as he met her inquiring blue eyes. "Lawson," he told her. With each word, more of the story started to stumble from his lips in a way that allowed Brennan somewhat to piece together what was happening. "I had to...the German...he stabbed him...gutted him, really...and Lawson...see, he was the only one who knew how to get the sub's propulsion motor going again. None of the other sailors had a damn clue, and..."

Brennan pressed her lips together firmly as his voice trailed off. Once the words had tumbled from him, she felt a sudden light-headedness wash over her as she realized the reason for his paralyzing self-hatred. A part of her wanted to run to him and pull him into an embrace, but as she watched him, his jaw tensing and relaxing as waves of emotion seemed to wash over him, inundating him the way the heavy, loud sheets of cold rain doused the city outside, she held back, wanting to give him a chance to shed the burden of his emotional cargo.

"You did what you had to do, Angel," Brennan said gently, trying to alleviate some of the guilt and pain she knew he felt over his actions. "Isn't this the way of war?" she asked, her voice soft as she hoped that she wasn't going to say the wrong thing that might send him further into a spiral of brooding melancholy that she knew he had a tendency to drown in at times if she wasn't there to pull him out of it. "You know that as well as anyone. Sometimes one man must give his life that others might be saved. You saved the lives of the other sailors on that submarine, didn't you? It's no different than an officer who has to order his men to charge up a hill knowing that he's going to lose some of them to enemy fire in the process." She paused for a beat, considered what she'd just said, and then added with a firm nod, "You did the right thing."

Angel shook his head defiantly.

Narrowing her eyes as she sensed her lover's inherent stubbornness, Brennan repeated, "Yes, Angel, you did."

"How can you even say that?" he asked her. "It's not like you know all the details even."

Shaking her head, Brennan responded, "It doesn't matter. All I need to know is you, Angel, and I know that you always do the right thing, so that's good enough for me."

"No," he growled. "No, Bren. I didn't do the right thing. Not this time. It's...well, it's just different, okay?"

He covered his eyes with his hands and rubbed them with the heels of his palms as he sighed loudly. Dropping his hands to his lap, he arched his head back and swallowed hard, then shook his head. "You know," he said sardonically, "I knew I was in deep shit when I get onto that submarine and who's the first person I run into? For fuck's sake, I should have seen that as an auspicious sign, you know. Right off the goddamned bat."

"What?" she asked, her voice tinged with suspicion as she sensed in his voice an edge she heard only in regards to one person in all the years she'd known him. Still, she asked for clarification, "Who are you talking about, Angel?"

"Spike," Angel growled. "It was fuckin' Spike, Bren."

"Spike?" she said with a furrowed brow. "I don't understand. What was he doing there?"

Angel's eyes narrowed and his jaw hardened instantly as he answered. "He was wearing an SS officer's leather jacket when I saw him," he said. "A fucking SS uniform, with the swastika and everything. 'Cause he thought it looked cool, I guess. You know, this is why I wanted to stay outta this fuckin' Old World war, to stay away from all the scum and derelicts from that Old World. But we all know I've always had no fuckin' luck at all. But I mean, it fuckin' figures, right? The first time I even take a single fuckin' step back towards Europe, I end up finding Spike of all fuckin' people." He paused, letting some of his anger dissipate as he tried to retain a tight control on all the anger he felt, and when he finally look backed to meet Brennan's eyes, he added with a shake of his head, "You know, the last time I'd seen him, in Jinan, in Shandong province in 1901, he was riding off into the sunset with Darla and Dru after he'd just bagged himself a Slayer, leaving my sorry ass stuck in the middle of a rebellion with a big fuckin' target on my head 'cause I was a foreigner. What a fuckin' mess that was."

"I'm sorry," she said, only just beginning to understand the toll of the events that he'd started to tell her about. Longing to bring him some ease, she tilted her head as she asked, "Tell me what I can do to help."

He pressed his lips together firmly as he clenched his jaw, shaking his head as he tried to blink away the unpleasant memory. "There's nothing, Bren. I-I...it's fine. Really. I just never should've gotten involved in the fuckin' first place, when those assholes came into my apartment in New York," he said. "I should've fought 'em off, when they came to me. Maybe I could've..."

"I'm sure you did the right thing, Angel," she said, trying to bring the conversation back on the rails. "You're a good man. You did what you had to do, the way men have to do in times of war."

"You have no idea, Bren," he snapped. "No idea. This was different. What I did, what I did to him? It wasn't the same." He sighed, staring at his hands as they gripped the arms of the chair, then looked out the window again. "See, Bren? What I did, to this kid, it wasn't Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade,' alright? There was nothing romantic about it. Not a fuckin' thing. Look, the men who fall in battle charging up that hill, their suffering is short-lived, if they suffer at all. Most of them just get waxed, you know, just like that." He snapped his fingers sharply for emphasis. "Vaporized by exploding mortars, torn in half by machine guns, blown to bits by flak in their B-17s." He blinked, then added grimly, "Or like the thousands of men I blew up in the last war—just gone." He didn't bring his eyes away from the window but let his gaze linger there, distant and unfocused, his almond-shaped brown eyes blinking slowly as he continued to speak. "But, no, this man, Lawson...he was just a kid...maybe twenty-one, twenty-two years old...a brand-new ensign..."

She watched him for a moment, aching to reach out to him, but not certain in that moment if he would accept her touch or reject it. Still, desperate to bring him some comfort, she knew she had to try something even as his words trailed off, and he left his sentence unfinished. "What happened to him?" she asked, though the grim gravity in his voice left little doubt as to the ensign's fate. Angel's eyes swiveled away from the rain-splattered window and towards the mantel above Brennan's fireplace. Various artifacts were displayed there: Egyptian perfume jars, a scrimshawed walrus tusk from Greenland, a curved Berber dagger from Mauretania, a copper misericord from 15th century Bretagne, and a reproduction of a panel from a Guatemalan temple depicting the Mayan king Dah 'Ag Txhaun. "Tell me..."

He closed his eyes, rolling his jaw to one side as he tugged at his upper lip with his teeth. "Oh, God," he sighed, covering his face with his hand.

For several moments, he said nothing, but then he looked up at her, his warm eyes suddenly rimmed with tears as he stared back at her, his face drawn with anguish. He knew he had to tell someone, and that the only person he could tell who would understand what he had done and the way it ate at him was her.

Only her.

But still, the ache that tugged at him from deep within his chest made him afraid, afraid that despite everything, she, too, might reject him for what he'd done. He closed his eyes, trying to silence the niggling voice of doubt. He felt the murmur in the back of his mind grow louder. He had to tell her.

He breathed a heavy sigh, then opened his mouth to speak. His voice was even and firm, though the words came stumbling out. "I didn't...I just couldn't think of any other way, you know...there wasn't any time..."

Brennan narrowed her eyes slightly as she watched the man she'd known, in one form or the other, for eighty-odd years, grasp the arms of the handmade leather chair he adored with a stiff, claw-like grip as his eyes shimmered in the dim light of her living room. "Angel," she whispered. "I want to help you, but...I can't help you if I don't know what happened. Tell me, please."

He swallowed and turned to level a hard stare at her. His mouth fell open slightly as he seemed to struggle to find the words, craning his head back and grunting quietly. "I made him," he said in a dark, heavy tone of voice. "I made him into...into..."

His voice trailed off and he turned away from her and stared out the window, squinting as he tried to make out the lake behind the heavy rain. Angel rubbed his hand back and forth over the brown leather arm of the chair, pressing his palm into the smooth, carefully-tanned and generously-conditioned hide as he remembered the first time he saw the chair, sitting in the corner of the room, years after he had commented casually to her about how much he liked a similarly-fashioned chair in Sr. Cavantes' workshop. He looked at his hand, the way his skin contrasted against the leather, and his eyes moved up his forearm, skimming over the web of veins as his mind went back to the dark engine room and how he sliced open his arm with a jagged piece of pipe.

Shrugging, he tried to push away the image in his mind as he swallowed the hard lump in his throat and sighed. "I made him into...into one of, well you know. I made him...like me. I damned him, as I myself am damned. I did this to him. Forty-five years I've lived with a soul, a conscience, and I've never―never, not once―made anyone. But he was just laying there, on the floor of the engine room, and there...I tried to think, as quick as I could, of any other way to get that sub running again, but...I just couldn't, Bren. I couldn't fix that sub. Hell, I can barely fix the plumbing under my own kitchen sink when the line gets clogged up, never mind the battery- and diesel-powered propulsion system of a German submarine." He paused and blinked as he realized he'd probably violated a half-dozen laws with his slip. "None of the others on that ship had the...you know, the engineering background or mechanical aptitude to..."

"Angel," she said in a low, firm voice. "You did what you had to..."

It was almost as if he hadn't heard a single word she'd said as he continued. "I just couldn't, in the five or ten seconds I had before he totally bled out there on the engine room floor, figure out another way. So..." He brought his hand up and covered his eyes, rubbing the moisture from them with the heel of his hand. "So, I did it. He would've died on that floor and been a hero. Killed in action. He'd get a Purple Heart. It'd have been an honorable death...one to be proud of. But...but now, I took that from him...stole it, really, his hero's death. Because now he's definitely no hero. He's...dark, hungry, and...he'll see no death but those he causes himself. And never his own."

"Angel," she whispered, walking over to him and placing her hand on his shoulder, this time not resisting the urge to touch him. "Angel, please―"

"No," he said, wresting his shoulder from her grasp, unable to imagine why she'd want to touch him after what he'd just told her. The thought of what he'd done made his own skin crawl, and he was certain that it had to do the same to her. "No, Bren. Don't you understand?" he asked with an anguished cry. "He's doomed forever, until somebody stakes him or cuts off his head or shoves him into the sunlight to put him out of his misery. What I did was way, way worse than killing him. I took his death away from him."

"Angel, please, you can't do this to yourself," she pleaded with him as she took several steps back. "Please?"

"You don't understand," he croaked. "I can still taste him, Bren," he said, his mouth hanging open as he averted his eyes from hers. "That sweet, tingly metallic taste that only human blood really has. It's unique, you know. There's only one thing that tastes like that and...for decades I'd gotten used to not tasting it. Then, when I had to..." Angel sighed. "I bit him, and I felt his blood flow onto my tongue, and that way it feels when it hits your taste buds, first with a vague tingle and then a sweetness, then a lingering tartness that kind of varies a little from person to person." Angel glanced down at his lap and scraped his thumbnail over a worn, thinning spot on the thigh of his jeans. He gave a faint shrug, then continued explaining, "Men are tarter than women. The young ones are less sharp, more smooth-tasting than older ones. He was a young man, in the prime of his life, and I could taste it in my mouth when I drank him dry. I could taste all of it, everything he might have been able to be in his life, but won't be able to be because it was all over for him. He'll forever be a young man who never lived his life, even though he gets spend the rest of eternity living. I could taste it, Bren, every fucking bit of it, with every drop of him I drank. And I fucking drained him dry."

"Angel, don't do this," she pleaded, coming towards him again.

She watched him fuss with his jeans, his hand quivering as he jerked his leg up and down in an agitated motion. For a moment, he stilled his shaking leg as he heard her approach, but he refused to raise his gaze to meet hers. She knew he was sinking into one of his dark moods, but as she moved towards him, she sensed that this was the darkest, bleakest of his brooding moods that she'd ever seen. She knew she had to do something and do something quickly to keep him from spiraling out of control and into a place where she could never reach him. Unwilling to accept such a possibility, again, she reached out to touch his arm.

"No, Bren!" he shouted, pushing her away from him, holding his hand up in front of his face as if in so doing he could shield his hideous visage from her gaze, silently begging her to look away and let him be. "Can't you see?" he rasped. "I can't get it outta my head. I can't get the smell of him out of my nose. It's been a month now, but I can still smell him, you know, the way they always smell after they've been sucked dry. I'd almost gotten that smell outta my head, but..." He shook his head numbly and clenched his fist. "I can still feel how it felt when I cut my own wrist and had him suck my blood..."

"Don't do this, Angel..." she said again, moving even closer towards him so that almost no space separated them as she reached out to him. "Enough," she said firmly.

"No," he said shaking his head. "It'll never be enough. Don't you get it? I'm a monster. I've been lying to myself for twenty years, Bren." His lips curled back in repugnance as he spoke, and still he refused to look her in the eye. "Ever since...since that night, with you." His mouth hung open as he remembered that night, just a room away, when everything changed for him—for them. For a moment, no words came, and he just sat there, open-mouthed, staring into his lap. "You know, ever since then, I've thought, maybe, just maybe, that I thought I could be different. But I was wrong. I tasted him...and now I want more, Bren. I want more, and God help me, I don't think I can stop until I am what I really am."

A flash of anger colored her eyes. "What's with you?" she snapped, realizing that if she wasn't responding to her attempts to comfort him perhaps he'd respond to how she baited him since in all the time she'd known him that was one thing he could never resist. "Why does everything always have to be so melodramatic with you, Angel? You're a vampire. Vampires drink blood. Of course, you've been fighting your nature by not feeding on humans, and for the first time in a long time, you slipped. Hell, you didn't even really slip. It wasn't like you fell off the wagon because you had a sudden lapse in self-control. You did what you had to do."

"Don't," he warned her, his voice rough and low as he spoke with a shake of his head and finally lifted his eyes to meet hers. "Don't make excuses for me, Bren."

"I'm not," she told him, her voice hardening again as she stared at him. "I'm simply saying that you are what you are—"

"A monster!" he snapped, interrupting her.

At his exclamation, Brennan stopped and leveled her gaze at him, her tone changing as she realized that softly-spoken, soothing words of comfort would not help him. He had to accept what he had happened, and what he had done, and she just wasn't quite certain how to get him to do so except by confronting him with the truth of what had happened, what he'd done, in as plain a set of terms as she could muster. "A part of you is," she calmly nodded at him. "Yes."

He stared in wide-eyed disbelief at her simple and matter-of-fact agreement with a statement that he'd expected her steadfastly to contradict. "You think I'm a monster?" he asked, a touch of the incredulity he felt creeping into his voice when he spoke. While he recognized that she knew better than anyone the darkness that lived inside of him, and the thin, brittle wall that held that darkness back, it took him by surprise that she would call out so plainly what he spent so many years seeking to forget.

"I think...that there's a demon inside of you, and that shapes the darkness that you hold at bay with your soul, Angel," Brennan told him. "We all have darkness in us. The reasons, whatfores, and whys...those vary from person to person. But, the darkness? It's still there...it's still there, and it never ever goes away. You have your darkness...and I have mine. But, still we fight the battle we have to fight, because the alternative is to just stop, to quit. And, you and I...we made that agreement twenty years ago. We made that agreement not to stop. Not to quit. Not to give up. To keep fighting. You and I. Both of us. Remember?"

He was quiet for a minute and then jerked his head in agreement. He looked away from her. "I know what you're saying," he said, his voice gravelly. "But...it's more than that, Bren. I can still smell it, I can still taste it. And it makes me want it. I want to so damn badly."

She considered his statement and then took a tentative step towards him. "Fine. You still want it. That's okay, Angel—"

"No, it's not!" he roared, stomping his foot on the floor and pounding his fist on the arm of the chair. "It's not okay," he said, pushing himself up from the chair. "I can't keep the memory of Lawson's blood in my mind and hope to keep things straight, to be able to do what I need to do. I'm not that strong, Bren. I'm just not."

Hesitantly, she reached out and finally touched her hand to his arm. "Angel—" she said quietly.

"Don't," he whispered, weakly trying to pull away from her. "Please, just...don't Bren. I-I..."

"Let me help you," she said quietly, her low voice trying to tempt him, to lure him away from focusing on his pain and onto something else. For a moment, she fell silent, unsure of what to do. Then, a distant memory rang out in the back of her mind as she remembered a night, twenty years earlier, when he'd pressed firm, wet kisses along her collarbone, sucking at her sweat-damp skin as he murmured how she was the best, sweetest thing he'd ever tasted. Blinking away the memory, she knew what she had to do.

"Angel," she said. "Let me help you, please." His cheek twitched as he looked back at her, his hands shaking as he stood there. "I know how. You just have to let me help you, let me wash it all away," she said vaguely. "The way he tasted."

His head snapped around, and he leveled his intense brown eyes at her. "What—I don't...what do you mean?"

"You say you can't get the memory of Lawson's blood out of your mind?" she asked, her eyes darkening a shade as she licked her lips and studied him intently while she waited for a response. When none was forthcoming, she prompted him again. "Is that it?"

He stared at her for a minute, and then slowly nodded. "God help me, yes," he confessed, his voice low and breathy. "Yes."

Brennan held his gaze for another minute and then slowly nodded her head. "Okay, then, you need to replace it with the memory of something stronger...something better," she said tentatively. Coming up to him, she pressed her body up against his and twisted her head so that her long auburn hair fell away from the side of her neck that had never been marred by Darla's fangs. Exposing the smooth, creamy curve of her neck to him, she said, "I can give that to you, Angel."

He shook his head firmly, again and again as he waved his hands crosswise in the air. "No," he grunted. "Just...Bren, no...I won't do it. I can't—" His words said 'no', but he felt a prickling energy tingling through his limbs at the thought of taking her the way a part of him—a part of him he'd long held at bay, suppressed and buried deep inside—had always yearned for. After eighty-three years of hunger, he felt his self-control slipping with each passing second even as she continued to press him mercilessly.

"You know I can," she insisted as she looked into his tortured gaze. "You know it, Angel."

"Bren—"

"Angel," she tried again. "Let me."

"No," he told her, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to ignore the tingling he felt in his mouth and throat and the twittering in his belly at the thought of feeding on her. Though he'd tried to ignore it, the thought had flashed through his mind over the years, in fleeting moments as he worshipped her body with his mouth and could feel her pulse against his lips. It was something he'd wanted, wanted desperately, to taste her in every way possible. But she'd never offered, and so he'd never asked. Instead, each time, he'd driven the thought, and the temptation, from his mind until this very moment that she'd dangerously brought it back into his mind when he knew his resolve was even weaker than usual. "I can't," he said, his mouth watering as the sound of her beating heart warbled in his ears and he found his gaze drawn to the minute way her pulse throbbed beneath the silky, translucent skin of her neck. He winced as a sharp tugging low in his gut mocked him for denying with words what his body wanted so badly. A frisson of excitement buzzed through his limbs as he felt his resolve crumbling and hated himself for it all at the same time. "You know I shouldn't," he managed to finally tell her.

"Why not?" she asked in clear surprise. "It's not as if you can turn me, Angel," she reminded him. "You know that others have tried before and because of certain...arrangements I've made, that can never happen. Don't tell me you've forgotten already? That first night, I know you remember I told you that. You can't turn me."

He thought back to the first night he'd known her, and how he had hung from her rafters, his mouth tingling with want as he imagined what she'd taste like, and the sassy way she'd told him that Darla had bitten her in a futile attempt to make her. He remembered how her stubborn resistance to being turned by the woman who'd turned him made his balls tighten even in that moment at the thought that such a woman had wanted him.

"I can still drain you dry," he muttered. "I could kill you, Bren."

She laughed her infuriatingly lyrical laugh as she lifted her eyes to his. They already crackled with the faint but rapidly growing stronger blue static charge that he'd come to know so well in the years they'd been sleeping together. "Angel," she said. "Do I really need to remind you that I can stop you whenever I want to? And, quite easily, I might add?" He was silent, and she took that silence as a sign that he was considering her offer. "In the eighty-three years we've known one another, you've tasted me in just about every way possible," she said, tilting her head to the side and raising her chin, once more exposing her neck to him. Her lips parted and she clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she leaned in close enough that he felt her breath on his skin. "Don't you think it's time to remove the remaining quantifiers on that statement? You can taste me...and then, I promise you, Angel...you know that what you'll get from me will make Lawson's blood seem like a distant, vague if unpleasant memory. It will. You know it will."

"It's not right," he muttered, his nostrils flaring instinctively at seeing her long, slender neck bared this way, her life-force laid out before him as he watched her carotid pulse throb beneath the porcelain skin on the side of her neck, and it made him hate himself even more because of how much he wanted her—to taste her in his mouth and to be inside of her, to feel her inside of him and swallow him up as he swallowed her—and he wanted it, all of it, so badly in that moment. He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to ignore the rising tide of want that welled up inside of him as he let the familiar scent of her tickle his nostrils. "No, Bren," he insisted with a shake of his head. "I-I...I won't...I can't do it. I just can't."

Undaunted, she narrowed her eyes as she said, "You're going to make me fight dirty, aren't you?"

Angel's eyes narrowed. "Please," he said. "Don't. Don't do this. It's not right, Bren. Please." He swallowed hard and then asked her as she continued to stare at him with her temptress's gaze, "Why are you doing this?" He turned away, not looking for an answer to the question but in asking, pleading with her to stop pushing him, fearful that if pushed any farther, he wouldn't be able to stop himself. "Why are you making me do this?"

A part of her hated that she had to entice him in such a way, but she knew she'd long ago passed the point of no return and that they both needed for her to ensure they saw this thing between them through to its natural conclusion. Tilting her head, Brennan licked her lips as her pink tongue darted out of the corner of her mouth before she answered his question. "I'm not making you do anything you don't want to do, that I don't want you to do, that we both don't want you to do," she told him in a sultry and alluring voice. "Free will, free choice, Angel, remember? But, we both know you came here because you needed me. You came here because you needed something from me. Something that only I can give you—" She paused as she reached between them, quickly unbuttoning his jeans and letting her fingers sneak inside his pants. She dipped her slender fingers into his boxers as she sought out his half-hard dick and closed her fist around it. "Something that isn't just about sex, either," she breathed.

Angel leaned his head back and hissed at the contact. "Bren," he sighed, squeezing his eyes shut as if by closing his eyes to the sight of her bare neck and flickering eyes he could cut off the hunger inside of him that made his nose tingle and his mouth water. "Please..." He felt his cheeks twitch and familiar, if dreaded, itching sensation in his gums, and he knew that only a rapidly fraying thread of willpower kept the demon inside of him from tearing away its mask and revealing its face as his own.

"You've always held back," she murmured, enjoying the feel of him, firm and smooth, in her hand. "And, I've always been content to let you hold back...until now."

"You don't know what you're asking for," he said to her, his voice having dropped a half-octave and suddenly taking on a peculiar metallic edge to it. "Please, Bren."

She tilted her head so that he could feel her warm breath on his cheek. "You may have a demon inside you, Angel, but we both know there's more than just a taint of demon in me that goes beyond what you and I've shared over the years. You know it. I know you do. Remember? You said it. That very first night. You didn't know what I was, what I could do. Remember?"

"No," he rasped, his groin tightening as he remembered one of the very first glimpses he'd had of her, wiping the co-mingled blood of two slain men off the blade of her silver dagger. "You're right. I didn't know what you were then," he admitted, hissing at the arousing feel of her touch combined with the memory of how her dangerousness and rebellious arrogance had enthralled him that first night. "I didn't...but I knew what you were capable of once I saw what you did—" His voice trailed off for a beat before he hastily amended, "Or what was left after you'd done it."

"I've kept that darkness at bay for a long, long time," she told him, her voice soft as she spoke of something she rarely discussed with anyone, not even him. "I like to think I'm not the same woman I was back then, for better or worse. But, it's still there, Angel. It's still inside me. It never goes away. Usually, I just ignore it these days even if I never forget it's there." She paused for a beat and then asked, "But you know what?"

"What?" he barely breathed.

"Tonight, Angel? Tonight, I know you can feel it," she told him. "I know you can...can't you?"

"Yes," he growled back. "I feel it. I can sense it. I can smell it." He'd always been able to smell it, the darkness—a smoky, spicy scent, like fire-roasted chile peppers, that clung to the sweetness of her sweat—in a way that was uniquely her, swirled as it was with the smell of her lust and her laughter, lacking the one thing that filled his nostrils every time he smelled a human: the tangy, citrusy smell of human fear. His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply and smelled the darkness in her, filling his sinuses and warming the back of his throat in a way that made him want her even more in that moment than he'd ever thought possible. "I can smell it," he said again.

"That darkness, Angel?" she told him. "It's more than capable of handling you...all of you." She paused and then whispered, "Trust me."

"Bren," he said, his voice low and broad. "How do you know that what you're asking for isn't going to unleash the darkness in you, or in me?"

"It might," she said. "It very well might. But, it's a part of who we are, Angel. And, if that does happen, then we'll cope. We'll deal with it. I'll find a way to deal with it. Because, I know what I am and that's how I cope with that knowledge. It's been that way for a long time now. I made...I made peace with it a long time ago. Sometimes, it's true, I forget that I've made my peace with it...that I forgave myself for what happened because of me...because of how I came into this world. And, what I've done since. But, it is as it is. I know what I am. I know who I am. And, I know that in my duality, there is always balance that must be sought. It's that balance, Angel, that let's me know that whatever happens, I'll be able to handle things."

Angel shook his head and ran his hand through his hair with a groan of frustration. "I thought I had," he said. "I thought I'd found my way to the other side of all of it, that I'd...that I found a way I could sleep each day knowing what I'd done. The scope of everything I've done. It's worse than anything you ever did, Bren. You know it. But, Lawson...what I did to him, and what I had to do to him, it's all..." He swallowed hard and looked away, averting his gaze from hers. "The darkness, I can feel it bubbling up again inside of me, as if it's right there, under the surface, burning under my skin. I can feel it, Bren. I'm afraid—I'm afraid that I can't keep it in any longer, and that it...that I'm not strong enough to hold it off anymore."

She reached up with her free hand and cupped his jaw while she dragged her fisted hand over his flesh as much as she was able to given the confines of his boxers and jeans. "Trust me," she said. "Trust me. Trust us."

"Nnnnnngth," he murmured as he felt her fingers close even more tightly around him. "You...I trust you...but...I don't trust myself...and so I don't...I want to trust us...but—"

"No buts," she demanded. "Either you trust me...you trust us...or you don't. But, I know you already do, Angel." She paused and then sighed, "Think...have I ever made this offer before? To you...either in our time together as Angelus or since you were ensouled?"

"No," he groaned after a few seconds of silence, the sudden wave of want that surged inside of him temporarily distracting him from the fact that she was making an unprecedented offer. The haze cleared somewhat as he looked deep into her bright blue eyes and he nodded. "You haven't."

She looked at him for a moment and then slowly nodded. "So," she said, her voice still low. "What does that tell you?"

"That tells me..." he grunted. "That I need to trust you like you trust me. I-I...I need to I trust you...us," he said, a low growl sounding in his throat. His decision made, he then nodded, "Fuck, yes. Please. I-I want...please, Bren. I need it. I...need...you. Please."

Her answer came not in words, but in actions.

She dropped her hands away from him before she brought them up again and wrapped her arms around his chest. She nodded as he grunted at her, lifting her up as she folded her legs around his waist. They stumbled back as far as they could until they hit an exposed brick wall on the far side of her living room. After a couple of seconds, he separated them enough to shove his boxers and jeans down around his knees, while she tugged up her skirt. Their faces crashed into one another as their lips met in a desperate kiss.

Angel felt a surge of desire pulse into his limbs from the base of his spine, sending a wave of warmth spreading through his chest. His cheeks twitched again and his nostrils flared as his nose filled with the sweet smell of her sweat and her growing desire. He met her kiss with his own, quickly covering her mouth with his own as he hungrily grasped at her lips, his tongue invading her mouth as a deep, aggressive growl rumbled from his chest. He felt a raw, insistent tugging behind his navel, and he felt himself growing more and more aroused with each sweep of his tongue inside her mouth. He began to struggle, his attention divided between kissing her and trying to line himself up at the entrance to her warm, wet folds that already dripped for him, soaking her panties. He pushed her panties to the side even as he hesitated from sliding into her.

"Trust me," she murmured against his cheek. "Ooohhhh...I want you." Already a crackle of tell-tale blue energy was encasing the pair, like a cocoon. "I know you...I know what you are, and I still...I want you. I...want...you. You won't...hurt me. You...can't." She twisted her head away from his greedy mouth, and once again exposed her neck to him. "Do it, Angel. Trust. Do it."

Angel's eyes opened wide as he felt a flutter in his belly at the sight of her neck, exposed to him. "Bren," he whispered as he felt the static energy pricking at the skin on his arms and on the skin of his chest. He took one last look at her long, unblemished neck and closed his eyes before he grunted and felt the muscles of his face suddenly tighten, his cheeks drawing tight and his lips curling back, exposing jagged rows of teeth and sharp fangs. His field of vision narrowed as his brow thickened, and all he could see through the haze of his blood lust was the long plane of Brennan's neck, arched and ready for him. Distracted as he was, he didn't hear her mumbling a string of strange, almost incoherent words as she chanted at him. He opened his mouth with a snarl and, hesitating only slightly, leaned in, sinking his teeth into the silky skin of her neck at the same time he thrust up inside her.

His fangs pierced her delicate skin in an instant, and after a moment, the blood began to flow into his mouth, covering his tongue and pooling in the space between his teeth and his lips. His nose filled with the coppery scent of her blood as his tongue savored the taste of her before he began to brutally move in and out of her. Though most of his mind's focus was on the taking of her blood and the taking of her body, a tiny sliver of his consciousness registered the observation that her blood was, without a doubt, the sweetest and smoothest he'd ever tasted, like nectar. As he jerked up and into her, filling her tight warmth with his rigid flesh again and again, his mind began to swim in the all-encompassing pleasure of knowing her so deeply and completely, as her blood filled his mouth, her scent filled his nose and his cock filled her up.

"Ooooh," she moaned as she struggled to match him, losing the ability to say anything coherent beyond his name and the random word of approval. "Ahhh...good...so...good. Ohhhhhh."

With each stroke, the sensation of being surrounded by her tight, wet warmth soon eclipsed the taste of her, and each time he rolled his hips back and entered her again, he loosened ever so slightly his jaws' grip on her neck. Again and again he pounded into her, and after a few dozen strokes, his teeth no longer held her flesh between them. He released her, taking one last suck with his lips on the twin wounds that pulsed faintly with each beat of her heart before he let go entirely, licking the last few drops of her blood from his lips at the same time he pushed into her one last time and felt himself start to fall apart.

He threw his head back and cried out, his twisted grimace making his utterance completely incomprehensible except for the long, choked groan that signaled his shattering release.

"Angel," Brennan groaned as she felt him spend inside her before she too cracked. "Ohhhh."

"Guhhh," he grunted as he jerked into her one last time, holding himself as deep inside of her as he could as his release pulsed into her, filling her with his hot fluid, coating her with his essence just as her blood had warmed the inside of his mouth just moments earlier.

After it was done, his knees wobbled briefly then gave out as they slid down the wall until the floor came up and cradled them. Brennan opened her eyes and watched as the twisted, tense features of his face relaxed, his lips no longer curling back and his mouth slowly closing over his rounded, white teeth, his brow smoothing into a shape that revealed his warm, almond-shaped brown eyes again. He closed his eyes and sighed, but said nothing. She struggled for breath before she let her mouth curve into a breathless smile. She blinked at him several times, while no words were exchanged between them.

Eventually, when he opened his eyes, her smile grew as she murmured, "See?"

"Yes," he whispered.

"I...told...you," she panted.

"You..." Angel shook his head slightly as he blinked a couple of times. "You did."

"I...was...right," she added playfully. "Tell me."

His mouth fell open as he reached his hand up to draw his fingertips over the red, bruised marks he'd left on her neck. "You were right," he whispered. "But, Bren, I've—"

"You didn't hurt me," she reassured him, her voice calm. "You didn't. I swear."

"But—" he said with a nod at her neck.

"They'll heal," she cut him off. "And more quickly than you'd think. The, ummm, the charm—it should...I think...I'll be fine."

Angel smiled faintly. "I don't understand your magicks," he said. "I never have." He paused for a beat and then asked, "I can't deny I'm curious, though. What was it?"

Brennan arched an eyebrow at him asking for clarification.

"The charm?" he asked her. "What was it?" His eyebrows were knit in confusion as his hazy mind tried to work out the problem on its own. Blinking a couple of times as he realized she was staring at him with a knowing grin, he said, "Or is this one of those times I'm better off not knowing?"

She gulped down another mouthful of air and said, "Protective...you didn't get as deep as you might've...at least, not with your teeth." She gave him a saucy look as she winked at him.

He blinked a couple of times as he considered her words, then laughed. "You saucy baggage," he snickered. He smiled and looked at her, sobering for a minute before he said, "You'd better not use such a charm so as to keep me from other...well...ways of penetrating you." He grinned and added, "Surely you know that's not necessary, lass. We know each other too well for that, don't we?"

"Pretty well," she agreed, her breaths still labored in the wake of it all. "But...in all the times we've fucked...none was...like this." She paused and reached over to brush her lips against his before she pulled away and smiled. "It was so good, Angel. So very good."

"Was it really?" he asked, his eyebrows flying up in surprise. "I mean, for you? For me, it was...well...it would be difficult to explain, but...really? It was good?"

"Yes," she said as she gave him another kiss. "Now, tell me...tell me that you've any memory but me in your mind."

Angel leaned in and kissed her back, holding her bottom lip between his for a moment before releasing it. "No," he said. "Right now, you're the only thing I can think of. After that, I'm not even sure I know my own name."

"Excellent," she laughed merrily at him. "That's excellent."

Booth swallowed hard as he walked himself around in a circle, blinking erratically as he saw the lab scenery around him—the stainless steel pillars, railings, floors and beams, and all the open, glass-walled offices, all of it brightly illuminated by halogen lights that sparkled in his hazy, tear-rimmed gaze—but he found himself unable to even see straight, his mind was so flooded with images and sounds that, even with his eyes wide open, the visions before him flickered in and out as his thoughts were tossed about like a rudderless craft on the rough, wind-scoured seas of his chaotic mind, listing and taking on water as each memory knocked him sideways like a rogue wave.

Brennan watched him in horror as she saw him stumble around the lab in aimless circles, his arms raised as he pawed uselessly at the air. His normally olive-skinned face had waxed pale, almost ashen, and the confident laughter in his warm brown eyes was nowhere to be found as he stared, wide-eyed in panic. For a moment, their eyes met and locked, and as she held his gaze, she couldn't help but feel that his eyes stared back at her as if she were a stranger.

My God, she thought, what have I done? She felt her stomach clench and twist as her mouth opened and she called his name.

"Booth..."

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-tbc-

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A/N2: So, there we have it. How was that for a zany trip down the rabbit hole into Wonderland? Does everyone feel as tripped out as poor Booth does? If so, then good. That's exactly how you're supposed to feel. But, for better or for worse, we're not done with poor Booth's deluge of memories. There's more to come. Still with us? Then, we'd love it if you could let us know what you think so far. Coming up next: more memories and finally Booth and Brennan recovering enough to do something about everything that's just happened. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!