Sooo. I really wanted this to be up before the finale, but I got busy and then I actually SAW the finale and I've been literally trying to recover ever since. I've experienced just about every emotion I think a single person could feel about a fictional tv show, but PLEASE is Hart Hanson trying to kill me? wow. So anyway. Here's the chapter anyway. The End in the Beginning really doesn't have any effect on this part seeing as how it's taking place in Critic, but it does pose some problems for the third part of the story I had planned.. I might have to re think things before I get that chapter up. Anyway, THANKS to all who reviewed/alerted this story. I'm glad that I seemed to capture Brennan's voice okay for the most part. Let's see how well I do with Booth... again Reviews are helpful to my improvement. :D

And PS, I don't own anything, If I did, well, I could go on for days about what I'd do differently. *cough*real!sex*cough*

It's taking forever. The tests, the poking and prodding, drawing blood, it's all customary, and I'm fine with that. I can handle all of that—but it's taking forever for them to finish and I need them to be finished so that I can go back to her.

They wouldn't let Bones come into the room with me while I got my CAT scan, wouldn't let her come with me while they took pictures of whatever is inside my brain. She was frustrated, fighting with the doctors, and so was I, but they hardly cared. I feel helpless, I, Seeley Booth—surrounded by two doctors, four nurses, countless medical instruments and machines and all I can think is that without her, I feel lost.

It's a tumor they inform me when the scan is completed. A God damned tumor.

I'm scared, and not at all embarrassed to admit it. I've lived though many hardships in my life, hell, I've seen death, I've taken lives and I've lived through torture and lived through war. I've been buried alive, and blown up, tortured some more and the thought of my life ending where I am now, without admitting certain feelings to a particular forensic anthropologist, who I'm sure is pacing impatiently outside the door, is quickly making its way to top the list of the aforementioned casualties in my life. Losing her—leaving her, without telling her the truth about everything, about the way I feel, would be my greatest loss.

Knowing that I left her, is an inconceivable possibility I'm not prepared for. I promised her I'd never betray her. But my dying would be the ultimate betrayal. The thought of leaving her is killing me faster than this brain tumor seems to be. Okay, so maybe the tumor isn't killing me at all, but I can't help but try to make a joke. I'll keep my mind off of it for as long as I can.

But soon they return me to my room where Bones is waiting for me. I can't tell what she's feeling. The look on her face isn't an emotion I've ever seen her feel before. Maybe she's trying to cover up her fear for me, masking her pain and fear for my benefit. I appreciate it, but I think I need her to be scared with me; I don't like being scared alone. The doctor enters and begins telling me the exact medical name for my tumor and that they want to perform surgery as soon as possible to get the damn thing out of me. I don't understand any of it, and I look to her for any kind of reassurance at all. She smiles, and she's so damn beautiful it's enough to knock the wind right out of me. And yet somehow, I feel like for the first time since we got here that I am actually able to take a full breath. How exactly does she manage that?

She excuses herself for a few minutes, explaining that she's going to quickly tell the others how I'm doing. When I ask her to please stay, she says she'll only be gone a few minutes and that she wants to talk to the doctor more about the specifics of the surgery anyway. I really wish she wouldn't leave me. I'm supposed to go into surgery. A surgery I may never come out of, and all I want to do is look at her for as long as I can.

More doctors and nurses pour in and out of my room for what feels like hours while Bones is away. Somebody's taking my blood again then they start hooking me up to even more machines. Though all the chaos, all I'm looking for is her, and I realize, that's how it's always been. Our job is chaotic, madness, but at the end of the day when she's there with me, nothing else matters.

The bustle of workers seems to move around me in a haze, everything is in slow motion around me while I search the windows to the hallway for her, hoping that any sign of movement through the glass is her, my Bones. I seem to be holding my breath until I finally see her, it's like the room around me goes cloudy and she is the only thing in focus. She smiles at me through the window and everything is lost. For a moment I forget why I'm actually here and imagine the only reason is simply to look at her.

She mentions that the surgery is going to take about two hours and before I can even think coherently, I ask her to come into the operating room with me. It just poured out, I couldn't stop it. She says she's not a surgeon, but that's not why I need her there. The coward in me forces out some line about her being a genius, but my heart knows that's not why I asked her. If entering that operating room is the final thing I do on this earth, her face is sure as hell the last thing I want to see. She says she'll ask.

So, here I am, being wheeled down a long, cold hallway, quite possibly to my demise, and none of that matters because she's with me. Suddenly I get this aching feeling inside of me, the one that's encouraging me to say something, anything, to let her know that no matter what happens, I love her. Though being in love with her was never simple, or something I'd ever been able to explain, it is the single greatest emotion I've ever known and she deserves to know that. But the coward inside my soul gets the best of me again, and I manage to spat out something about wanting her to have my sperm, you know, for a kid. But she looks at me, I mean really looks into my eyes, and tells me I'm going to be fine, and I am suddenly filled with all kinds of hope.

But it still scares me, more than anything I've ever been afraid of. I try to be strong, but tears threaten to fall when I tell her she'll make a really great mom. What I don't say, though, is that there is a hole forming in my heart just thinking about her being a mother to her child—our child, without me. But again, she says I'm going to be just fine, and that she'll be there. And I want to cry. I'm a grown ass man, yet somehow I feel a lump form in my throat and wetness in my eyes threatening to spill over. I tell her I'm ready. If I don't do this now, I'll blurt out something stupid about how much I love her and that I always have and always will. That she's beautiful and exceptional and infuriating and the most wonderful partner and best friend I could ever have asked for. But I can't, because I know that if I say those things, and never come back, I'll be just one more person to leave her, and I can't burden her that way. I can't put that on her only because I want to clear my conscience. So instead I swallow it down and I absentmindedly put my hand into the air without thinking and before I even have the chance to look at her, she's got her hand in mine.

When we make it to the operating room it isn't anything like I thought it would be. I try to hang on to her hand, but some ass hole is telling her she can't stay with me. We frantically give each other one final look before they tear us apart, one that cuts so deep into my soul I'm not even sure how to really explain it. But her beautiful blue eyes bore into mine and she smiles one last smile and it hits me, right in the heart. I can't be positive but I think what I feel, she's feeling too. And I'm the luckiest bastard in the world if it's true, if she loves me, too.

But the next thing I know, my head is becoming cloudy from the anesthesia and Bones is being pulled away from me to the back corner of the room. Everything around me is slowly starting to blur, and I try to see her, try to get one last look at her before everything goes black, but she's too far away now. I can't see her. I'm alone again and I find myself sending up one final prayer. Please, God, send me back from this. It can't end now. Not when it's only the beginning.