Booth sat in the tiny cubicle that served as his office, looking over a case file. Another conviction. Working with Bones had done wonders for his career. Booth wanted to stand out from the crowd of FBI agents in all the other little cubicles, and he intended to use all of the tools at his disposal to achieve that success.
He thought about Bones. Her work was meticulous. She was never satisfied with doing things halfway. Her science was exact, and she strived for perfection. He'd wondered from time to time what drove her to be so single minded. It was like she was haunted by the spectre of failure. She had to succeed to survive, it seemed. Nothing would keep her from achieving her goal once she set her mind to it.
But there was something else...under the woman's seemingly cold exterior he knew there was a sad, scared little girl trying to prove her worth...trying to prove that her parents were wrong to abandon her. He tried to imagine how she must've felt when she realized her parents and brother were really gone and she was alone in the world. She'd relied on her intellect to get by, and her emotions had been stuffed down inside of her.
Booth sighed, wishing he could get Bones out of his mind. He liked his life the way it was...relatively uncomplicated. He had a beautiful girlfriend, was well-liked by his co-workers, and tolerated by his boss. He didn't want to become involved with Bones' life. It would be too messy. And yet….he knew he couldn't walk away. Not because he needed her to solve crimes with him, but because she needed him to be a friend.
He'd help her because she was his partner, and that's how partners treated each other.