Summary: If Booth were the serious scientist and Brennan the tough-yet-romantic FBI Agent, what would their first meeting have been like?

This AU role reversal prompt is from tempertemper, during one of Live Journal's comment fic memes. I believe it came from something DB said, suggesting he and Emily reverse roles, after he came across a blurb that mistakenly labeled his character as the forensic anthropologist.

Author's note:Thank you to jsq for beta work back in the winter!

I started working on this last year but had to let it go due to real life concerns. Recently I finished a scene that had been left hanging, so there are several chapters after this. The current end is not a cliffhanger, but it's not quite an ending either. It might be the beginning to an AU saga, or re-writing the early episodes.

Dr. Booth and Agent Brennan

Part 1

Brennan

I was studying for midterms when the police came to our door. I remember sitting on the sofa with Russ, looking at the bare Christmas tree. We hadn't had a chance to decorate it yet.

The cops said that our parents, Matt and Christine Brennan, were not who we thought they were. They were Max and Ruth Keenan, one-time bank robbers. Their past had caught up with them today, in the form of a criminal named McVicor.

Russ had his arm around me, and I could feel him shaking. McVicor had murdered my mother. Dad killed him in revenge, and ran, but got caught at the state line. Even with a sympathetic jury, he would be in jail a long time.

Russ went to visit him there. But I couldn't. He made Russ promise not to leave me, and I suppose I should thank them both for that.

We couldn't keep the house, but moved to a tiny apartment. Russ got a mechanic job, repairing things like cars and electronics that he had a knack for.

Those last years of high school were when I learned to lie. To classmates, pretending my family was normal. To Russ, telling him things were fine. That I had friends; that I didn't need those trendy clothes the other kids wore. And even, when I was mad, telling Russ I hated him, when he was all the family I had.

I went away to college. Threw myself into studying: law and martial arts. I'd seen Army recruiters there, but didn't pay them much attention. Not until my senior year, and I found out where Russ had been getting that extra money he'd saved: working on stolen cars.

I stopped answering his calls, and I signed up with the Army right after graduation.

It wasn't very rational, I know. I planned to be in law enforcement, as if to redeem my family. I had to do better than they had. And keep my mother's fate from happening to others. But at the time, I was angry. And restless to get away. I wanted to shoot guns and follow orders and not have to think.

And I didn't, not until I'd been trained and tested and shipped out. Still wet behind the ears, stationed in Albania as part of the support and supply for road repair teams on the route to Kosovo.

The less said about that, the better. Those years in the Army, I found a few friends, a few fuck buddies, and more action than I wanted.

I've been over it a hundred times, whether it was bad luck, bad intel, or my mistakes in map-reading. But our convoy ran right into a train of Serb militia, fleeing the NATO air strikes.

The fight didn't last long, although it seemed to. Our enemies limped off into the night. We bled into the mud and waited for help.

Half my unit died in that confrontation, including our C.O., Kate O'Clare. She wasn't old enough to be my mother but I admired her like she was. Despite her kick-ass, get-it-done attitude, she'd surprise you with quick humor or gentleness.

Back at the base, I called Russ. Doctors had dug a bullet out of my shoulder blade. With my arm in a sling, doped up on pain meds, I don't even know what I said.

"Come home, Tempe. They'll send you home now, right? I promise, I'm back on the straight and narrow."

So I went home. My brother's running a chop shop seemed like a small thing now, and I forgave him. I recovered; I served the rest of my enlistment. Then I set the next goal: FBI academy. I threw myself into that the same way I'd done everything else. Work hard, play hard.

On break one weekend in D.C., I ran into an old college friend, Peter. Damn, he'd looked good in a judo uniform. We'd pinned each other on the mats a few times, but never actually dated. Now I had the chance to try the rest of his moves. He was leaving in a month to travel… but it was one hell of a month.

We weren't very prudent, however. The day I found out I was pregnant, I wandered the Mall in a daze.

An artist was drawing caricatures next to some flower beds, and on a whim, I sat down in front of her. She had the most beautiful eyes.

"I'm Angela," she said. "Who are you?"

"Temperance Brennan."

"That's an interesting one." She started sketching on her pad. "So, do you live here in D.C.?"

"I'm at Quantico. Studying—"

"You're going to be an FBI agent?" She smiled. "That's kinda hot."

Two days later, we were dating. Two weeks later, we were lovers. I still have the drawing she did, framed on my bedroom wall. It wasn't a caricature, though. She said my features were too nice to exaggerate, and she just had this… feeling... that she wanted to capture. She drew me more lovely than I've ever seen myself. Mysterious, too. A little haunted around the eyes, with the hint of a Mona Lisa smile.

In bed, she touched the scars on my shoulder. I felt safe with her. Like I could slow down for the first time, and sample art, museums, music. I could tell her about my parents, and some things I'd done in the Army.

Angela was there when my daughter was born. She held my hand and helped me breathe, through pain that made me swear like a sailor. I named my girl Clare Christine Brennan, and Angela knew who I honored with those choices.

I don't know what I would've done without her. She stocked up on diapers and baby food. She let me sleep when I was exhausted. And she could still make me laugh, in my first months as an FBI agent, when I'd get rattled by murder and disappearance.

But we broke up when Clare was three.

I remember coming home, putting my keys on the shelf and my gun in the safe, to find Angela storming around the apartment. Clare was crying in the next room, so I went to pick her up. "This is the last straw, Brennan." Angela pointed a finger at me as I balanced the toddler on my hip. "You said you'd be home two hours ago!" She kept yelling that I didn't appreciate her. That I just wanted someone to babysit and cook for me, while I ran around on crime-solving adventures. She had her own career to think about. She wanted to take classes and do something with her life, not just be a stay-at-home girlfriend.

The next day, she was gone. I spent a miserable couple of months, adjusting to being alone.

Clare was a joy, though a maddening one. I went to several Bureau meetings—when I couldn't do last-minute laundry—with my jacket buttoned over blotches of applesauce or fingerpaint.

Peter reappeared briefly in my life. He had no interest in being a dad, it seemed. And if he got angry that I hadn't told him about Clare, all I had to do was show him my gun, and he left with his tail between his legs.

I called Angela after that. We talked for a long time, and decided to remain friends.

Then, I got the unsolvable case.

"I'm not trying to sabotage you, Brennan," Cullen said as I stood in his office. "But you've made quite a name for yourself. You're smart, you're gutsy, and patient. I wish half my guys out there had those qualities.

"But, uh… it's not what I'd expect from someone with a small child. The job and the risks…" I'd heard it all before. Some people couldn't handle the idea of a woman, much less a mother, being a federal agent. "You're kind of secretive about your girl, aren't you?"

I knew Cullen had a daughter, too. "With some of the criminals out there, we should be. But I'm not purposefully secretive, sir. I just don't volunteer unwarranted information."

Cullen shrugged, and put the career-killing file into my hands.

That conversation told me what I already knew: with this case more than ever, I had to be twice as good an agent as the rest of them.

-.-.-.

Booth

I was always good at puzzles, even as a kid. My mom and I would sit at the kitchen table putting them together: pictures of mountains or tigers or fire trucks. Jared would help sometimes, and my dad—when he wasn't drunk, and could remember he was a dad.

One year they got me a Visible Man for my birthday. You could pop the plastic organs—heart, lungs, spleen—in and out of place. It helped me think in terms of units: cells and organs of the body. Bones of the skeleton. Individuals in a family, and cultures in the world.

Dad left when I was ten. He'd been drinking, of course, abusive to us and Mom. One night, she'd had enough. She threatened to call the cops, and she threw him out. I wished I'd had the courage to do it myself. To say that if he ever hurt my mom or brother again I would—

But I was just a kid. I was hiding upstairs, under a blanket with Jared.

Mom raised us after that, with Pops' help. I still wonder if he had something to do with Dad's leaving. Because Dad never came back. I don't know if he was ashamed, or sick; had left the country or jumped off a bridge. Mom never talked about it. I tried to find him, when I was eighteen. But I was too involved with school to pursue it very far.

At first I thought I'd be a doctor. But once I took my first anatomy course, I was hooked. I realized if I studied enough, was persistent and focused, I could find clues in someone's bones about how they'd lived and died. So, if I couldn't solve my own family's mystery, at least I could solve someone else's.

Studying was the way to go. I backpacked, hiked and learned my way across a couple continents. I stood knee-deep in mass graves. I discovered exotic food and customs, and went to bed with perky grad students or lovely local women. I did paperwork in tents. I even won some fistfights in foreign bars, thanks to college boxing matches.

Back home, I researched and wrote papers. I took planes to murders and mudslides, identifying bodies when no one else could. I landed a job in our nation's capital, at the Jeffersonian.

And that's when I met Bren.

-.-.-.

I was lecturing at American University when she came walking up the aisle. With a bit of a swagger, actually, eying me up and down. I ended my talk, and the sound of students packing up gave us a measure of privacy.

She was tall and powerful like an Amazon warrior (if they ever wore black trench coats).

"Excuse me." She gestured at the samples of de-fleshed bones I'd been discussing. "If you remove the flesh, aren't you destroying evidence? Bullets, stab wounds, poison…"

"All those indicators are written in the bone, if you look carefully enough."

She smirked at me. "You're Dr. Seeley Booth."

I met her confident assessment with one of my own. "That's right. From the Jeffersonian Institution. And you are…?" I stepped close to shake her hand. Damn, that was a grip.

"I'm Special Agent Temperance Brennan. FBI."

I couldn't help smiling. "That's a mouthful."

Her eyes flicked over me, as if thinking—in my dreams, at least—what else she could do with her mouth.

"They say you're the best in your field." She squared her shoulders. "I'm one of the best in mine. I think we'd make a great team."