Booth blinked at Brennan. "Wait, what?" he asked.
Hodgins looked at Booth. "Hannah is dead?"
"That's what he just said," Brennan said. She sat in the back seat studying Booth. "Of course, I expected him to be more upset if something like that happened."
Hodgins eyes darted between the two of them. "Did her plane crash?" he finally asked.
Booth leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. "I should have just jumped," he muttered to himself.
Finally, he lifted his head and turned so he could see the back seat. "Why would you ask me something like that, Bones?"
She tilted her head. "You said she was gone and wasn't coming back. My father said that to me once when a cat died. I figured you were just trying to break it to me gently."
Hodgins laughed, and tried unsuccessfully to cover it with a cough. "I'll just," he said, pointing outside. He was calling Angela back. This story was too good to wait.
"Bones, Hannah isn't dead. At least I don't think she is," Booth explained. "She's gone and she's not coming back, but she's not dead as far as I know."
"Oh. So you two aren't together anymore?" she asked finally. "But I thought you were happy,"
"Yeah, so did I," Booth said. "We were, it's just, we had different goals," he finished finally.
Brennan just looked at him, trying to process what he was telling her. "So you and Hannah aren't together anymore?" she asked again.
"No," Booth said shortly, looking desperately out the window for Hodgins.
"Because you had different goals?"
"Yes, Bones," he said with a touch of impatience. When he didn't want the man around, he would't go away, when he wanted Hodgins back he was nowhere to be found. "I wanted forever, she wanted to go back to a war zone. Those two things aren't really compatible."