Disclaimer: Bones is property of Fox, Hart Hanson, Kathy Reichs & others, not me. No copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: God knows where this one came from. I was kind of thinking about season four spoilers I've heard, so you have been warned on that front (nothing too spoilerific though). Mainly, this is just for giggles. Thanks to Space for the beta and encouragements, lubya babe :)

What Dreams May Come

Angela hears her best-friend calling, her voice strained with fear. “Angela. Angela!”

Brennan has her hand on her shoulder, fingers digging into the flesh, the bones.

Ow, Bren.

“Angela!”

She swims from a sleepy darkness, pulled by the voice, the hand shaking her gently now.

“Angela?”

She blinks her eyes open. The familiar sight of her room greets her. Jack is hovering over her. Oh. It was his voice, his hand. She was dreaming.

She rubs a hand across her face. “Jack, what time is it?”

“Time to get up, sleepy-head,” he says fondly, bending to kiss her cheek, his blue eyes smiling. “I thought you were never gonna wake up.”

She glances at the clock. “Oh! We’re late for work.” She looks back, but he’s gone; just like that. A magician’s trick: vanished.

The shock makes her sit up in bed. There’s no way he got out of the room without passing her. She brings a hand up to her throat, disconcerted, and feels beaded chains at her neck. Glancing down now, she is fully clothed, sitting in bed.

“O-kay,” she breathes. “Very, very weird.”

She pushes the sheets aside and stands, blinking down at her flats a moment. Shoes too?

“Jack?” she calls, looking up.

The room has changed. She’s no longer in their bedroom, she’s in hers. And she remembers. She’s not with Jack anymore. Her heart sinks as the memories rush in. They broke up weeks ago. What is wrong with her? She fell asleep fully clothed? Dreamed? Did she only just wake up?

She shakes her head. “Get a grip, Montenegro,” she mutters, crossing to the dresser and studying her reflection in the antique mirror on top of it. She has a huge bruise on her right cheek, and gasps, pressing fingertips to the mottled, purple mark. She feels no pain, and frowns.

How’d that get there?

Feeling the need to call Brennan, to see if she can shed some light on what’s going on, Angela crosses to the door and pushes it open. Her bag will be in the hall, she thinks, just as she steps into Brennan’s living room.

The door to her bedroom closes behind her and she flattens herself to the wall beside Brennan’s bookcase, her heart suddenly hammering in her throat.

Taking a deep breath, she straightens her back and steps away from the wall. “Okay, Alice,” she murmurs, “welcome to Wonderland.” Making a mental note to check what she’d been drinking last night, just as soon as she wakes up, she clears her throat and calls, “Bren?”

She listens to the quiet of the apartment; the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the clock on the wall, but tries again: “Bren?”

She is rewarded, this time, with a soft giggle, from somewhere down the hall, and instantly gravitates towards the sound. “Bren?”

As she treads carefully down the hall, two voices become clear, in softly uttered communication: her friend’s and a man’s, very familiar. As she nears the room he chuckles. Her friend’s bedroom door is ajar, and Angela lingers in the half-light of the hall a moment, not wanting to disturb.

Behind the door, Brennan gasps, in a good way. “Booth!”

Despite the weirdness going on, Angela’s curiosity gets the better of her, fingertips pushing at the door even as her eyebrow rises.

She peeks through the gap. Sunlight streams across Brennan’s bed. Her friend lies beneath cotton sheets, her back to the mattress, her face up-turned to her partner (lover) as he strokes fingers through her hair and moves slowly above her.

Angela’s cheeks burn and she steps back with a sharp intake of breath, walking backwards to the living area. Even so, her chest is warm with more than guilt at what she has witnessed: happiness is the feeling that blossoms there.

She turns to make for the front door, to see what madness awaits her outside the confines of this maze she has found and finds herself falling, landing with a soft bump and sinking into warm leather.

“How are you feeling?” the young man sitting opposite her asks, and she groans.

“Sweets. I should’ve known you’d turn up.”

Lance Sweets raises his eyebrows and gives her one of those confused, dorky smiles of his. “You came to me.”

She sighs. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

Sweets frown-smiles, and taps his pen on his knee, where his legs are crossed, one over the other.

Angela fixes him with her best, penetrating stare. “What is going on around here?”

Sweets shrugs. “You tell me.”

“Hmm, nice try shrink-boy, but if I had clue one I wouldn’t be asking.”

Sweets looks down at his knee a moment, picking at the cloth of his pants. When he looks back up, his eyes are so brimming with sympathy, she almost bursts into tears.

“Dr. Brennan is not going to cope without you,” he tells her, and she swallows hard, standing up to tower over him.

“What the hell is going on?” she yells.

“Angela?”

She turns her head to the source of the new voice and blinks at Cam, standing in her office doorway.

She looks back for Sweets but sees only her own desk, the bright cover of her sketch pad, the darkened Angelator.

“Huh?” she asks, turning back to her boss.

“We need you,” Cam tells her. “Are you ready?”

She doesn’t know. She says so.

Cam smiles gently and points at her desk. “You have your sketch.”

“I do?”

When she looks back down, her pad is open at a fresh page. She takes in another of those sharp breaths and stands, her chair shooting out behind her. Outlined in pencil and smudged-charcoal, a wry smile twisting her lips, she stares up at herself staring down.

“What’s going on?” she murmurs. “What’s happening? Cam, please?” she looks for her friend, close to tears, but the doorway is empty.

She bolts from her office, running through the lab, calling for her friends. On the platform, the machines that click and whirr throughout a working day are quiet. She stands forlornly, at a loss.

All is quiet for so long that the silence begins to buzz in her ears. And then the swish of the sliding glass doors, and she turns to find Zack standing at the bottom of the steps. He is wearing black gloves on his hands and those white scrubs they give him at the place where they’ve locked him up.

“Angela,” he says.

“What’s going on, Zack?” she pleads, gripping the cold metal of the railing so hard it warms beneath her hands.

“This makes no logical sense,” Zack agrees, nodding his head. Then he smiles. “I have a message from Dr. Brennan.”

Angela laughs out a sob, tears pricking her eyes. “What?”

“She says it’s time to wake up now.”

“What?”

“Angela?”

She blinks at him. “What?”

“Angela?” He frowns. “Angela, can you hear me?”

Black begins to crowd Angela’s vision, creeping in from all edges, swallowing the image of the lab. She sinks to her knees, then slips to her back, the floor cold and wet beneath her.

“Angela!”

Ow, Brennan. Enough with the shoulder, already.

“Angela!”

“Easy, Bones. She’s coming round. Come on, let go, you’ll hurt her.”

“Angela?”

Her throat is dry. “Bren?”

“Oh my God, Angela. You scared us.”

The darkness is slowly replaced with light. Shadows move across like blimps in the sky. Gradually she realizes it is someone’s hand, back and forth.

“Hey, welcome back. How many fingers am I holding up?”

She struggles to sit. “Four, Booth. I’m not stupid.”

“Huh.” The agent shakes his head. “Bad luck, you get to lie right there.”

“Two, Ange. He held up two,” Brennan explains, tucking something around her as Booth watches on. He’s in his shirtsleeves despite the chill in the air. This and the waft of his cologne she’s getting tells her it’s his jacket keeping her warm.

“You probably have a concussion,” Brennan continues. “Oh God…”

“Hey.” Booth reaches across her and brushes his partner’s hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering on her cheek. “She’s gonna be fine.”

“Oh my God, I totally dreamed that you two were in bed together,” Angela blurts. She chuckles. “I also dreamed I voluntarily went to see Sweets, so I guess the two are just about as unlikely as the other.”

Brennan frowns. “Angela, you were hit by a car… and this is the first thing you talk about?”

Booth chuckles, squeezing her arm. “Welcome back, Angela.”

Despite the rain-wet asphalt beneath her back, and the throbbing headache she feels coming on, she smiles. “Yeah, despite the endless possibilities presented by the notion of the two of you getting it on, I think I actually like it here much better.”

FIN.

Thanks for reading. I love ya, one and all :)