I most certainly own more than two-hundred and six of them, but the ones, I write about, I don't.
Set sometime in the late middle of Season 2.
Mummy in the Mausoleum
Chapter 1: Another Day at the Lab
An agitated forensic anthropologist was running through the big open Anthropology Unit of the MedicoLegal Laboratory of the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington, DC. This was one of her court days again. And if she hated something about her work, it was having to testify in court, explaining her work to the jury. So she stalled as always. Giving her opinion on her colleagues' work, collecting information from each of her team members, whirling around the lab, grabbed by the shoulders and directed in the right direction again and again by some Special Agent Seeley Booth causing her to protest half-heartedly with an occasional "But...", "I just...", Dr. Temperance Brennan was finally nearing her office and put down her Prussian blue lab coat with the yellow emblem of the Jeffersonian, pulled the pencil, she had used as a hairpin, out of the bun on the back of her head and her auburn hair flowed down onto her shoulders in soft waves. She gathered her papers under the impatient gaze of her partner. "We'll be late already, now come on," he pushed harder. She finally had found the right file, turned the lights off and closed her glass office door behind her.
Only to come back seconds later, pick another file from her desk and hurry outside again.
From the opposite side of the lab, just in front of the Holographics Lab, Dr. Brennan's best friend, forensic artist Angela Montenegro, watched the scene with a smile tugging at her lips. No one else was allowed to push Bren around the way Seeley Booth did. It was his privilege as it was calling her 'Bones'. He was good for her, that was evident. Well, at least it was to Ange.
Turning her attention back to the task, Brennan had given her on her whirl through the lab, she looked down at the human skull in her hands. "Now, girl, let's find out who you are then." The empty orbits of the Caucasian girl in her early twenties stared back unblinking. The remains of the girl had been found off a seldom used path of Rock Creek Park under a thick branch. Her ribcage inside the synthetic jogging shirt was crushed. No signs of foul play. Supposedly she had been surprised by one of the heavy storms that had raged half a year prior. Angela would do the last step to close the case: Identify her, so she could be returned to her family.
By the time Dr. Brennan and Booth returned from court – the bad guy would be rotting in jail for the rest of his life, thanks to the Dr.'s analysis – the girl had a face again, at least virtually.
When the two partners entered Angela's Holographics Lab, a short up-rising sequence of computer generated tones laid itself over the soft humming sound of the Angelator and the printer sprang to life.
"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" Angela looked at both of the newcomers with sadness in her dark brown almond-shaped eyes. "Poor girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She should be studying the law with her friends now." She sighed, as they all watched the hologram slowly rotating in the Angelator, illuminating their faces with a soft yellow glow.
"You found a name to the face?" Brennan shortly averted her face from the image.
Angela nodded and gave the printout to her friend. "Abigail Jones was twenty-two and in her third semester at Georgetown, when she disappeared last year in November," she read from the computer screen. "Two days later, on eleventh she would have turned twenty-three. It's sad, isn't it?" The other two just nodded.
Finally Temperance shook herself from the silence that had settled over them. "Thank you, Angela."
"My job, Sweetie." She smiled sadly. "My job."
"Anyway." With that Brennan left again, trailed by Booth. Her purposeful steps were directed at Cam's office to inform her about Angela's findings.
When Booth had caught up with her, he asked, "Are we going to celebrate at Wong Foo's tonight?"
"I have to ..." Temperance started, but was interrupted by her partner. "I can wait. I have nothing else to do today."
"Fine. Wong Foo's then." She knocked on the door to Cam's office and stepped in handing her the file. "We finished the examination of the girl from Rock Creek Park. Angela identified her as Abigail Jones, twenty-two."
Dr. Camille Saroyan studied the contents shortly, then looked up again. "How was court?"
"Fine. We nailed the bastard." Booth glanced sideways at his partner, who frowned confused by the metaphor he had used, but said nothing. "After she confused the jury with science talk, Bones was nevertheless able to convince them of his guilt, thanks to US Attorney Caroline Julian's asking the right questions." He got an elbow in his side. It was Brennan's olecranon that came into close contact with his costae. Not that he'd put it that way.
An amused smiling Cam informed Dr. Brennan about a new set of bones to be analyzed. She dismissed the two in front of her desk with the words: "I have a call to make." She picked up the phone and typed in the number, she found on the file. After informing the responsible police station, it was another call to parents who had lost their child. Poor Mr. and Mrs. Jones. She sighed. This wasn't an easy task. It never was.
And never would be.
Never should be, if she wanted to stay in her job.
Outside Brennan walked to her office, exchanged her jacket for the lab coat and stuck the pencil from before into a newly wound bun to keep her hair out of her face. "Don't you have a scrunchy?" Booth looked at Brennan's makeshift construction.
"Broke." Was all he got as an answer, as the scientist was already moving out of her office again, and sliding her identification card seconds later through the security port of the work platform at the center of the lab. She clipped it to her coat again as she moved up the steps and then snapped on surgical gloves. "What have we got?" she asked her young assistant Dr. Zach Addy.
"Someone found these bones at the bottom of a small cliff in Anacostia Park, thought they were human and informed the police," the mumbled answer was. "No cranium. Just small costae. Some ossa longa, probably femur..."
"Erm," Booth cleared his throat. He'd been behind Dr. Brennan all the time, though mainly ignored by her. "Care to speak English for the non-squint around?"
"We've got ribs and long bones. Probably a thigh." Brennan answered without looking up, leaning over the steel autopsy table, the bones lay on. "You see that?" She pointed at one of the long bones. Zach copied her posture. "The tuberositas?"
"Yes." He positioned a camera above the spot, Brennan indicated.
"Tuberosities are the places were the muscle is connected to the bone via a longer or shorter tendon. Newborns have only very small tuberosities, if at all. They grow with time and to the extent of the pull of the muscle," Brennan explained to her non-scientist partner.
"This one here...," Zack said and looked up at Booth, "It's far too prominent to be from a human skeleton this size. More typical for species canis. Fits with the form of the costae, too."
"My thoughts, exactly." She snapped the gloves from her hands again and looking at Booth commented, "Definitely non-human, probably a dog. Case closed." The gloves landed in one of the red bins marked with the biological hazard sign. And off she went again. Finding nothing else to do in the lab, Brennan retreated to her office, Booth still with her. It had already grown more silent in this part of the institution. She sat in front of her computer screen, while Booth sat on the couch waiting for her to finish for the day, slowly dozing off.
It was almost seven, when Angela came into the office and said her goodbye. "Don't work too long, Sweetie. See you tomorrow."
"Won't, Ange. See you tomorrow." Brennan said, averting her gaze only shortly from the screen.
Angela shook her head slightly and then waved to Booth, who had been woken by their short exchange. "Bye. Get her out of here early, okay, Booth?"
"I'll try." He, too, waved his right hand and then gave Brennan half an hour, before he stood from the couch and moved over to her desk. "Come on, Bones. Let's get going. You've done enough for the day." He took her jacket from the hook and held it out to her. "These reports can wait. Shut your computer down and come on."
"I just...", she objected again, but as always did what he asked her to. Saving the newly written paragraphs to her next book (it would be called "No Bones About") on the hard drive of her computer. Clicking on several x-es, Brennan closed the different programs that were running on her computer and then, while the computer shut down, gathered some papers. "Okay, I'm ready", she stated finally and took the jacket from Booth. "Let's go."
Wong Foo's was quite full. All their favorite booths were already occupied, so they sat down at the bar and ordered their drinks. Temperance just asked about Parker, when Sid – the owner of this place – returned from the kitchen with two steaming bowls of noodles. While eating, Booth told her about how his five-year-old son was looking forward to finally getting to school after the summer. "He wants to learn everything and get as smart as Daddy."
"Good for him."
A few minutes later Sid returned with the drinks and Brennan asked him once again in amazement how he always knew what meal to serve. It was a rhetorical question. She knew the answer: he just knew. Sid shrugged.
"Hey, Bones. It's his sixth sense. Leave it at that." Booth looked at his partner and smiled. "Pity he can't talk to ghosts. Then solving our cases would be so much easier."
"I don't believe in such things as ghosts or sixth senses," she snorted, lifting some noodles from the bowl with her chop sticks. "There's no prove they exist. And there will probably never be." The noodles disappeared in her mouth.
"Come on, Bones. You got to believe in something."
She just thought for about a second, while swallowing, her brow furrowed in concentration, before she replied: "You know very well that I'm an atheist. But I guess I do nevertheless." She smiled. "In science and in physical proves. And-" she added pointing the chop sticks at Booth, "-I'm living quite well with it. Anthropologically, a god was always a way to explain those things that couldn't be explained scientifically at the time. There were gods for thunder, sun, fire, death, fertility and so on." She counted off on her fingers and then shrugged. "Take your pick. So..."
"Okay, okay. I've got it," Booth interrupted her. "But, as you might remember, I'm a Catholic and I do believe in God."
"You can't discuss about believes and religion. Either you do or you don't believe in any higher power. You do, I don't and that's all there is to it."
Booth would have liked to know, if she was raised in any religious way by her parents. But instead of asking he took the last noodles from his bowl and kept the question to himself. It would only have taken her into an emotional turmoil. Remembered her of the fact that brother and father had left her once again, that her mother was dead. And right now she seemed to be almost happy and content. He didn't want to destroy that.
If he asked, Sid would have to serve her a new meal.
At that thought he smirked to himself.
"What are you grinning about to yourself?" an amused forensic anthropologist asked.
"I just realized once again how different we are." Booth shook his head.
"Yeah, but we complement each other somehow perfectly. Or we wouldn't be that successful as a team," Brennan pointed out and pushed her empty bowl to the side.
Booth lifted his glass. "So here's once again to us."
Brennan lifted her glass as well. "And to our success."
The glasses met in mid air between the two smiling partners.