(The Feet on the Beach)

Keep in mind this story is rated T for a reason.

I really don't own Bones.

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A body farm was the last place that Booth wanted to visit, but their case pointed them there and he knew that he had to follow the clues as they came. Of course, Brennan was excited since she had never been to a body farm before and she considered it a golden opportunity.

Reluctantly, Booth had followed Brennan onto the grounds of the 'farm' and witnessed how excited his partner became seeing a putrid body lying in a barn and another body in a tub of water. She was unable to contain her enthusiasm when she and Booth witnessed a corpse lying not too far from the entrance explode. The gases in the stomach had erupted outward and intestine and other body parts rained down on them while they tried to scramble out of the way. He gagged a little since the smell was gross, but he'd seen worse in war and he just tried to keep downwind of the rotten bodies while his partner embraced the experience and actually laughed.

Brennan could barely contain her giddiness. She wished she'd had an opportunity to visit a body farm when she was getting her degree in forensic anthropology and she was now determined to send her brightest interns to one in the future. It would give them an idea of how bodies degraded under specific circumstances and it would add to their knowledge. After all, reading about experiments wasn't the same as actually witnessing such experiments and she knew they would be more memorable than something written in a book. If the Jeffersonian wouldn't pay to send her students to a body farm then she would pay for it. After all, obstacles should never be placed in the way of a student who was willing to learn.

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It became apparent to those that knew her that certain aspects of the case they were working on was aggravating Brennan. She hadn't been pleased when she'd found out she had to work with Canadian podiatrist Dr. Douglas Filmore, but the RMCP had claimed half of the feet found on the Canadian/American border and Booth wanted her to work with the podiatrist to get access to those feet. Part of the aggravation she felt was due to Dr. Filmore's skewed views about specialties in science. He wanted to be recognized as a forensic podiatrist by the Canadian Society of Forensic Science and the Board of Forensic Scientists, which Brennan had refuted in an article she had written in a scientific journal.

Though she had accepted his help grudgingly to get access to the feet, Brennan found that Filmore had actually been very useful during the case and he'd contributed to the discovery of the murderer. In this case, his specialty in feet had helped him to spot an incongruity in the feet of their murder victim and he was the one who realized that the man had been killed with a riding mower.

After the murderer had been arrested, Filmore had confronted Brennan about what he thought was her callousness towards him when she had written her article for the journal and Brennan had let the man speak unhindered. She had listened to his complaint and once he was done she admitted to him that she had been remiss in recognizing his talents in podiatry in the article and let him know she had been honored to work with him. Filmore had appreciated her honesty and felt he had been vindicated.

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Sitting in the Founding Father's having a celebratory drink, Brennan let Booth know about her conversation with Dr. Filmore and Booth appreciated that she had found a way to apologize to the Canadian for making him feel bad about his dreams of becoming a forensic podiatrist. He had felt that Brennan hadn't realized how her words had devastated the guy. Slightly annoyed, Brennan assured him that she hadn't apologized, she'd just stated facts when she talked to the man.

"Okay, well, I'm proud of you for stating the facts." Booth smiled, patted her hand and sipped some of his Scotch.

Not sure if this was the right time or place, Brennan placed her hand on his arm and cleared her throat. "Booth . . . I had a dream last night about you . . . about when you had the operation on your brain and . . . well, I wish to confess something to you." Brennan had been thinking about her dream off and on all day and she wanted to have this conversation while Booth was relaxed and in a good mood.

Curious, Booth placed his glass down and stared at his partner. "Okay, sure."

"While you were in your coma, I felt you needed something to anchor you to this world and I wrote you a story. You weren't showing any signs that you were going to awaken and that worried me. I needed you to know that I was waiting for you to wake up and . . ." She hesitated then shook her head. "I wrote a novel for you and you and I were the main characters. In that novel, we owned a night club and we solved a murder. We weren't connected to the FBI or the police, but someone was murdered in our club and we solved that murder. While I wrote the story, I read it out loud to you. I had read in the past that some coma patients are aware of their surroundings and some remember conversations that occurred in their presence while they were unconscious."

"My dream . . . that's where my coma dream came from?" Booth was a little shocked. He had told her about his dream in the past but this was the first time he was hearing about Brennan's story. "I thought, uh . . ." He didn't know what to say so he shook his head and stared at the glass in front of him. "Okay . . . thanks."

Worried that he didn't understand, Brennan placed her hands on her lap. "I should have told you about the novel when you were released from the hospital, but you were confused and you thought we were married and Sweets asked me to stay away from you while he tried to fix your issue with reality . . . I think that was a mistake. I should have ignored Sweets and told you about the novel. I think that would have cleared up your confusion much sooner. I apologize for letting Sweets influence me."

"The nightclub was your idea?" Booth stared at Brennan and felt like she should have told him about this before now. "In my dream we were married and you were going to have my baby . . . I don't understand. You don't believe in marriage. Why write a story about us being married?"

She wasn't sure she could explain it clearly, but Brennan tried. "While I wrote the story I tried to give you everything you wanted in life. You had told me in the past that you hoped that someday you would find someone to share your life with you and you would get married. You wanted a wife and a family and I decided to give those to you . . . I wanted you to be happy even if it was in a dream. I didn't want you to suffer since I know about your past and the terrible things that were done to you. I wanted your dreams to be filled with hope not horror . . . do you understand?"

He knew she had meant well, but that dream . . . her story had caused him a lot of problems. "Sweets knew about the novel? I don't understand why he didn't tell me about it."

"Yes, he knew." Brennan knew that Booth needed to hear the truth. "He asked me to go on a short dig while he helped you to accept the real world and to forget your dream world . . . I feel that was a mistake. I should have let you read the novel. It would have cleared up your confusion much sooner."

Angry, Booth blamed Sweets for keeping his partner from him when he needed her. She could have helped him if Sweets hadn't interfered and now that he knew about the novel, that just made him that much more frustrated with Sweets. "Do you still have the novel? Can I read it?" Booth was aware that Brennan didn't like him or anyone else to read her unedited novels, but he felt that reading it might help him.

Since the story had been written for her partner, Brennan nodded her head. "Or course, the story belongs to you."

Slowly nodding his head, Booth knew that he wanted to read that novel as soon as possible. His coma dream had left him floundering with reality when he had woken up and now maybe he could finally get the answers to a lot of unanswered questions. "Thank you."

"Of course." Brennan sighed. "Once you have read it, maybe you will understand why I wrote it . . . If you have any questions, I should be able to answer them."

"Thanks . . . the next time Sweets wants you to do something and you think it's wrong, just ignore him." Booth was angry with his younger friend and he intended to talk to Sweets as soon as possible.

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The idea for this chapter came from JBCFlyers19.