Title: In Time
Rating: T, because Booth didn't feel like using polite language.
Spoilers: Two Bodies in the Lab
Disclaimer: All of the characters, fortunately for them, don't belong to me.
Summary: Three different perspectives on events from Two Bodies in the Lab.
Notes: I scrawled this down the night that episode played, because I wanted to explore some different takes on what happened. Please leave comments, critiques, questions, angry flames, or notes saying, "I read this!", so long as you leave something! This is (yet another) one-shot.

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Booth and I don't always get along, I'll admit. But he had saved Brennan's life, most likely, and that's gotta count for something, right? Well, I was glad that I had gone to him, and I was even gladder that he had listened to my latest conspiracy theory. Not only listened- a light when on in his eyes at one point. He had realized something. Something important.

Five minutes later we where whizzing down the road in my Mini Cooper. I have to give him some major props for going in there while still so banged up from his first attempt to save our favorite forensic anthropologist- and I nearly had to prop him up in order for us to be able to get anywhere.

Everything was just like I'd always imagined- a corrupt agent, an inside job… somehow, it was much less thrilling now that I knew the victim. When I saw her tied to that chair with his gun to her head and a knife in his hand, my heart stopped a second.

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I could not, and still cannot, believe that I could ever have been so stupid. I had put her into so much danger, I had told the damn bastard to never leave her side, I had handed her over to a murderer. I tried not to think- her murderer.

We found her keys on the floor. Car, house, lab- morgue. I desperately hoped she'd still need that key to get in.

And then we found them, and she was tied back and gagged and he had the gun to her head. My heart stopped a second, but my hand did not.

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Over, over, over. I was going to be one of those collections of bone and blood. Would Zack, Hodgins, and Angela take me apart and put me back together?

I should have fought harder, I thought in despair, if only I had fought harder! Booth would never forgive himself, I knew. Never. I wished I could at least die knowing that he would.

As my (my!) murderer held his gun to my head, and gave me what I'm sure were his most sincere apologies, I wished at least I could have said good-bye.

Then came the shot.

But my heart never stopped.

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AN: Love it? Hate it? Let me know!