A/N: This is the final chapter. Short and sweet with an ending specifically for Jenlovesbones. :D I hope you enjoyed this birthday fic! Speaking of, if y'all didn't see them yet, Someonetookmyname, Biba79 and JMHaughey wrote me (and DB) some lovely Bones bday fics and you can find them in my most recent favorite stories. They are awesome! Thanks for reading!

Booth propped himself up on his elbow and watched as Brennan slept peacefully next to him. His thoughts were heavy with the events of the last 12 hours. Last night had been great. Needless to say, he had gone to bed a very happy man. Yet he had woken up to the terrifying sounds of her screaming next to him. It was a sound he never wanted to hear again. It wasn't like her to be so shaken by something and he couldn't help but fixate on what might have haunted her thoughts so intrusively.

Booth felt his heart drop into his stomach at a more disturbing notion: maybe this happened as frequently for her as it did for him. It was entirely possible that she suffered from nightmares. He recalled her confession before the Gravedigger trial of experiencing them but at the time he had just assumed they were due to the stress of the case. Now, the thought of her waking up alone, screaming like she did, with no one to comfort her nearly broke his heart. It took everything he had not to wake her up just to find out more but Brennan seemed to have sensed his anxiety because she stirred awake.

"Good morning." Booth said as he laid down on his pillow again, evening the playing field as he came face to face with her.

"Hi." She smiled as she blinked, her long eyelashes catching his attention.

"How did you sleep?" The question was out of his mouth before he could help it but she took it in stride.

"Better." She said. "I'm sorry that I woke you last night."

"Don't be." Booth shook his head at her. "I'm not." She blushed ever so slightly at his words. "Do you want to talk about it?" He asked.

"The dream or what we said after?" She asked, unsure of what he was referring to.

"Both, either." She paused for a moment as she considered where to start.

"I have a recurring dream where I'm in a lab identifying a body for a case." She said. "I recognize facial features, injuries, and I slowly realize that the person I'm examining is someone I know." Booth knew it was because of her mother's case. How terrible it must be to realize that a Jane Doe on your slab was actually your mother. She was such a fighter that he sometimes forgot what she had been through. A lesser person would have broken a long time ago. "Who was it last night?" He asked.

"You." She whispered and Booth felt his heart clench in his chest. "I was on this base. There was a soldier standing in the corner supervising me, but he wouldn't speak, wouldn't acknowledge me. I started to work and I knew almost immediately it was you."

"By my bones?" He asked. She nodded.

"I saw the hole in your skull from your surgery. The rib pitting, the compound fracture to your T3, your metatarsals…" She paused for a moment. "I know your skeleton better than I know my own." She confessed. He pulled her close again, wanting to just hold her until she felt better.

"Do you have these nightmares a lot?" He asked, not sure if he wanted to know.

"Occasionally." She replied. "They come and go."

"I hate that I was the reason for you screaming like that." He said quietly.

"Don't do that." She said as she pulled away. "You have no reason to feel bad. You have no control over what I dream."

"You just looked so... terrified. I don't think I've ever seen you that upset." She sighed in frustration.

"Only you could take mybad dream and twist it into something for you to feel guilty about."

"It's a gift." He said dryly. He was more than aware he had a penchant for feeling needlessly guilty but that didn't stop him from experiencing it any less.

"Booth, you weren't the cause of my dream, but you were the comfort after it. You made me feel safe and secure. If you want to make something your fault, you can blame yourself for that." She told him, a small smile sneaking onto the corner of her mouth.

"Is that true?" He asked, a little too insecurely for his own liking. "That you feel safe with me?" Her playful countenance grew somber as she realized he was being serious.

"Yes." She said definitively as she sat up. Her analytical stare was relentless and with his current anxieties on display, he had to look away to avoid her reading too much in his eyes. "Booth, I trust you with my life on a daily basis. Can you think of anyone else I trust even half that much?" He knew that much was true. She didn't trust anyone to do something if she thought she could do it better herself. "You've never given me a reason to doubt you."

"I left." He said the words out loud for the first time.

"So did I."

"I hurt you."

"So did I." She repeated. "But even after all of that, I still meant what I said last night." She said as she reached out and touched his cheek softly, her thumb tracing the worry lines etched on his face.

"You love me." He stated the implied sentence for her. She nodded. He processed that thought. He had known it for some time, but experiencing it like this, he couldn't help but ask the question that was on his mind. "How long?" She looked surprised by his question and she removed her hand from his cheek. "You knew outside the Hoover. That was why you said no but how long did you know before that?" Her silence was frightening. He wasn't sure if she was thinking about her answer or if she was thinking about how much to reveal.

"Looking back? When you were shot." She answered. Now it was her turn to avoid eye contact as she played with her hands. Booth didn't believe her answer. After all, if it had been that long, he would have known, would have seen the signs. As if she could read his mind, she nodded to confirm that it was true. "I knew then that I couldn't deny that we weren't more than colleagues anymore. Although, I would have denied it to anyone else, including you." She confessed. Booth knew all too well what she meant.

"You said you knew from the beginning?" She asked, trying to turn the tables on him.

"I felt attracted to you from the moment I saw you." He said. "You were so different from everyone else I had ever met. There was this... pull," he settled on a description "towards you. It only grew as I got to know you." He replied. "But I thought that I could ignore it. We were professionals." He smiled as he shook his head at the unresolved tension that used to haunt him. "But when I woke up from my surgery, I knew that it wasn't just an attraction thing or even a partner thing. I finally labeled it as love." He spoke quietly but surely, wanting her to understand his own thought process. "I gave it a name, as Dan would say." He added and Brennan smiled softly at the mention of her friend. "I knew in that moment that I was done. That you were that woman that I had always talked about finding. And that scared the hell out of me."

"Because we were partners?" She asked.

"Yeah and because you were you and I was me." He said. "We were..."

"Improbable?" She offered, knowing what he was trying to say.

"To say the least." He agreed. "And so when you said no, I just gave up the thought of us ever working. I thought that with enough time and space, I would get over it eventually."

"Me too." She agreed.

"I didn't." He replied.

"I'm glad." She smiled. Her look of happiness made him grin in return and he tugged on her hand, pulling her down and closer towards him. She smirked as he kissed her before he rolled them over, effectively pinning her down underneath him. As he looked down on her, his heart overflowed with joy.

She loved him.

He loved her.

They were together.

He was certain that the giddy feeling in his chest would never go away. Years from now, he would look at her and still feel the ridiculous thrill that came with knowledge that she loved him and wanted to be with him.

"We're going to be okay, aren't we?" He said, realizing it for the first time. "If the FBI breaks us up, if we're attacked by criminals, if something terrible happens, the center is going to hold. We're always going to have each other." She looked deep into his eyes, a serious look crossing her features as she took in what he was asking her. When she made up her mind, she nodded slowly.

"Always." She promised with a smile.