"Jesus Christ, Bones, what the hell do you think this is?"

Bones looked at the crime scene and grimaced. Even this was a little bit too...grotesque and bloody for her. The victim had been dipped in oil and burned, sliced with a knife, and been through a beating until the only distinct features were the eyeballs, which were bathed in a pool of blood and flesh, and the bones, awash in crimson liquid. But squinting at the bones, she could make out the basics of the victim. "Female, late 20's to early 30's, of Caucasian descent; based on the blow to the head, which caused—"

"Yeah, yeah, save that stuff for the lab, Bones. The thing is, how the heck did this corpse end up in a forest?" Booth knelt down, only to stand back up immediately and wrinkle his nose from the smell. "Whew! Smells worse than ten-day gym socks."

"First of all, socks in sweat wouldn't be so...smelly unless they were stored in a damp enclosed place, where there's no ventilation, and send all remains the victim to the Jeffersonian, would you?" she first turned to Booth and then directed the second clause toward a man who nodded respectfully at her.

"I've got something!" a woman police officer called from a thousand yards off. Booth and Bones headed toward the woman, who pointed at what was unmistakably a hand, chopped off.

"No wonder I thought there was a part missing," Temperance murmured quietly to herself. "Send that back to the Jeffersonian as well..." When she noticed Booth, at first glance he was fine, but a quick look into his eyes showed her that he was repulsed and disgusted by the chopped-off hand. She grinned at him; she had always been able to keep her head in these types of situations. "A little too much for you, Booth?"

Booth swallowed. "Okay, if you're done, I'd like to get back before I possibly vomit here."

"What's so bad about a missing finger, let alone a missing hand?"

He turned to her. "I don't know about you, Bones, but almost anybody normal would be throwing up at this sight, or at least grossed-out about this. So why aren't you?"

"That's only because I'm the exception," she answered cryptically. "I'm always the exception. Now, let's go to your car and drive back to the Jeffersonian. I'm sure Angela and Zack and Hodgins are waiting for us."

They drove back nearly in silence, except when Booth asked, "How can you stand this life?"

"What life?"

"Having to solve murders practically every week—don't you get nightmares about it?"

It was a habit for her to answer coldly when she didn't want to fully answer a question, and Brennan certainly was not obliging to reply to this inquiry. In truth, she'd had some nightmares about past corpses, and always she had woken up with a cold sweat. A look around her room, though, usually restored her sense of safety and security, but if she could not go back to sleep, she stayed up until it was time to go to work. "It's a simple question that only requires a simple answer: it is only the unconscious mind which retains the most jarring memories, and in this situation, it's easy to re-train the unconscious mind to not release them." It wasn't the most logical answer, but it was all she could think of on the spot.

"Bones." Booth sighed and resumed driving.

Angela and Hodgins, sure enough, were waiting to greet Bones and Booth. "So," Angela started, "any goodies, any easy victims for me to reconstruct their faces?"

"Sadly, the victim suffered a blow which fractured the skull and crushed all recognizable facial features, as far as I'm concerned. I'm having those people ship the corpse here, since it's a three-to-four-hour drive and it takes time to transport a corpse."

Angela's face fell. "Damn. There are no more goodies anymore. Lately, it seems like every face I've reconstructed has to be done out of reconstructing the bone fragments." She turned to Hodgins, who was standing besides her. "So...ask Bones."

Hodgins raised an eyebrow before saying, "I presume there are bugs for me to work with."

"Yes and there should be maggots and other insects, Hodgins, to have your every whim granted," Brennan said quickly. "And Angela, you are aware that Zack and I will have to reconstruct bone fragments, am I correct? It takes painstaking skill to reconstruct a skull." She groaned inwardly as she checked her watch. "Now it's time for Sweets—it's 4:00 P.M., and Booth and I have to get there by 4:05." At times she hated those sessions; at times she delighted in sessions which made Booth look sheepish and ridiculous.

"Aw, Jesus, why does he insist on giving us these...psychotic sessions?" Booth complained, walking with Bones to Sweets's office.

"For your information, Booth, it's psychological—not psychotic, which is another term entirely—and they're a requirement, which means it's mandatory."

"Ah, whatever, Bones."

She stopped. "Excuse me, but I do not wish to be treated as a nonentity."

"How've I treated you like a nonentity?" He shrugged but accidentally stepped on her foot when they were turning a corner. "Sorry."

"You know, this is a perfect example of how you treat me like a nonentity," Bones said as she stopped to rub her sore foot. "And I'm getting rather annoyed at your behavior." They stepped right into Sweets's office at that moment, and Sweets greeted them.

"This is exactly why I have you into my office," Sweets snickered lightly, and then his face returned to a genuine smile. "Ah, this drama never gets old. Anyway, you have some activities you're supposed to do to further help your work relationship. I devised them in the middle of the night, when I had a spark of inspiration."

"Oh, great, 'sparks of inspiration' usually don't bode too well, do they, especially when they come from you?" Booth groaned. "Jeez, I had to spend days scrubbing the clay out of my hair." Bones and Booth sat down on a sofa and settled in the sofa comfortably.

"Okay, but this time, it's..."—he paused for dramatic effect—"drum roll, please." When nobody complied, he went on. "It's a dinner and a movie."

"Oh." Booth perked up at the idea of only a dinner and a movie. "I'd been expecting something a lot worse." He smiled and tried to high-five Brennan. "You hear that, Bones? Sweets has got something decent planned out!"

Brennan's stomach dropped when she heard "dinner and a movie." She knew that her tastes were eccentric, as only several ex-friends had been too quick to reply to her question of "What movie?" She raised her eyebrows when Booth tried to high-five her just to buy herself a little more time to think. She wasn't used to being struck dumb in a conversation more than twice; she didn't want to appear speechless before her workmate. "Well, I'm not sure that...a dinner and a movie would be the best choice. After all, we are repeating what we just did two months ago." She felt a wave of heat rise to her cheeks.

"Yes, I know, but this is another opportunity, don't you think?" Sweets tried to persuade her to go.

"Fine, we'll go," Booth agreed, grudgingly. He tapped Temperance's arm. "C'mon, let's go, all right? As long as it's not tonight, I'll be fine."

"What? Booth, why did you agree?"

"Let's get out."

"Oh, but the event's tonight," Sweets challenged them. He leaned back in his swiveling chair and rubbed his hands together.

"Oh, man." Booth put a hand to his forehead and groaned again. "Why did I ever say that?"

"You know what, Booth; let's just get out of here before you say something that leads us into a ditch that we can't get out of." She walked out of the office and headed right to Angela, who was busy reconstructing a face from one of the minor cases that had come in today. "Wow," she said to an amazing sketch of a beautiful woman. "That's fantastic."

"Oh, did you see this?" Angela held up a disk. "Cam found this out, and God, is it...well, you'll see." She grinned mischievously.

"Knowing you, it's probably indecent and inappropriate, isn't it?"

"Watch it." She thrust the CD to Brennan.

"No thank you, but I have to get back to work. I'm leaving at seven, and I want to get as much work done as possible. I only have two and a half hours before it's done, and I have a lot of cases and documents to sort through." She gave an apologetic smile to Angela and headed back to her office.

"Booth, what on earth are you doing here?" Temperance asked in surprise. She tried to get through Booth's outstretched arm that blocked the doorway, but she had no intention of walking under someone's armpit. "You should go—now. I have cases to finish up, and we'll get to it at seven, okay?"

"Wait—hang on a second. Booth asked you out?" Angela came behind her. She put her water bottle on a metal table. "Sorry, but I couldn't help dropping in on the conversation. Ooh, I bet there's something going on."

Brennan blushed, her cheeks turning a slight shade of pink, but she distracted herself from embarrassment by keeping her mind on what to say next. "There is nothing going on at all," she insisted, "and it's only because Sweets had us go to a dinner and movie."

"Maybe we'll go to a bar afterwards," Booth suggested.

"Oh—I have an impersonation," Angela said excitedly. She grabbed her water bottle from the table and pretended to drink it quickly while Booth shouted, "Chug, chug, chug." Angela set the water bottle down again and faced Bones. "What does that remind you of?"

"I don't know," she replied, irritated. "Might I remind you that my temper has already been worn short and you might not wish to say anything that I might take as insulting?" She could feel already a low flame flickering inside her, the heat running through her blood.

"Ah, Bones, you're so naive. It's a drinking contest," Booth drawled. "Your naïveté astonishes me."
"You should take your leave," she interrupted icily—which was the only way she knew to handle these situations without egging Booth on—"because you have a lot of work to do, don't you, to ensure that the transportation of the corpse goes smoothly while I work on other cases?" Booth backed up respectfully and let her through to her computer. She turned back. "Oh, and unless you start to correct your behavior, Sweets's idea of a dinner and a movie might not happen at all."

"But—"

"Let's go, honey," Angela suggested. "C'mon, leave her alone for a while."

"Okay, fine with me." Booth slouched as he walked off towards the FBI section of the Jeffersonian.

Brennan sat down at her computer and started typing at a word document. She had some cases to do, but they weren't major, and she could always get Zack to power-drill those minor cases while she worked on reconstructing the bone fragments tomorrow. All she really wanted to do was get in half an hour's relaxing typing at her new novel before she had to go to a dinner and a movie tonight. She didn't care what she was typing on the screen as long as it had to do with her novel; it was all about letting herself unwind at the end of the day.

"You ready, Bones?" Booth asked at 6:59 P.M. "It's nearly time for our dinner and movie."

"There's still a minute remaining," she reminded him, logging off her computer and shutting it down. Then she grabbed her purse and her black coat. "Now we may proceed toward the exit." Temperance nodded towards the EXIT sign at the front of the Jeffersonian.

They were mostly silent when they were in the car except when Booth was lost in his own thoughts and the light turned green. "Go," she urged him. "The light's green." When he didn't respond, still thinking, she reached over to the driver's side with two hands and one foot, and pressed the pedal and turned the steering wheel for a brief second before Booth took over the controls.

When Booth suggested they should go to La Bella Fontaine for a restaurant, she didn't disagree. She just looked at him out of her cool eyes and raised her eyebrows.

"What, are you going to start talking about osteogermensis impernfecta?" Booth posed the question rudely.

"It's osteogenesis imperfecta, Booth' it's a simple translation of Latin. Osteogenesis means bone creation, and imperfecta means imperfect or imperfection. It simply means that the bone growth is imperfect, brittle bone."

"Oh, no, Bones, no complex terminology tonight. What movie do you want to watch, Rent or Elizabeth? Those are the only two decent ones."

After a second—"The former," she jumped at the interesting title. Then she calmly resumed eating her pasta and light white wine. "The phrase isn't even complex."

"Okay—weird choice though." Booth sighed, and then he kept eating his linguine with suddenly great appetite.

Bones tried not to flinch when she heard "weird choice." She had heard those two words frequently in her teenager-hood and, because she had chosen movies or books according to her own tastes, she didn't have many friends. She knew she tended to be cold and distant; several of her rare friends that had stayed with her for a few years had accused her of being too cold and aloof.

Booth seemed to notice her flinch and treated her gently for the rest of the evening, asking only gentle questions and not insisting that she needed to answer his interrogations. "Hey, I'll take you home," he offered after the movie. They were walking out of the theater, and the night was crisp and cold with no clouds to taint the deep blue sky above them. "It's a nice night," he muttered, looking up. He had his arm around her shoulders, and he had to admit that he was enjoying it.

"Yeah," Bones softened and murmured in response. When he was walking her up to her apartment, she noticed that it was eerily quiet. She glanced at her apartment door and stepped back in shock.

DO NOT GO FURTHER IN YOUR INVESTIGATION. YOUR LIFE IS AT RISK.

X.

It was written in capital letters in red paint on her door. She didn't know how to react; fear didn't make her heart pound, it made her heart cold and still as well as her exterior, but anyone who knew her well saw that she was frightened. She swallowed nervously once and collected herself before turning to face Booth.

"What the...Bones, you're coming home with me." He tightened his grip on her shoulder protectively.

"I can't go home with you—what'll Parker say, or Cam? I insist on going to my apartment." She tried to fight her way out of his grip, but he proved to be too strong and forceful.

"Shit, Bones, your life is at stake. Do you honestly think that I'm going to let you be in danger?"

"Yes...no..." The words seemed to just come right out of her mouth without running through her brain. She looked at him glaringly. "Fine—if that's the way you want it, then it's okay. It's going to take a long time to scrub the paint off my door, anyway." She turned around and started walking down the hall to conceal her fear.

"Hey, you ought to appreciate my actions," he shouted after her before jogging to catch up with Brennan, who was walking briskly even in high-heeled shoes.

"I am a sentient human being, Booth, I was so when I came into this world, and I had originally planned on expressing gratitude, but you have made me change my mind." She knew he hated long speeches; she was in a bad mood tonight, because everything had been going well in little flashes, but for the majority of her day, it had been terrible—the threat, the dinner, the way Booth had teased her, the fact that she hadn't had a good night's sleep for four days in a row. Temperance yawned, which was a good excuse to wipe off the tears forming anyway.

"Trust me, you're not human if you aren't scared or at least pissed off about the way I treated you, Bones." His voice softened so she looked up. "I would be, but knowing you, you probably have it under wraps in your mind. Come on—we're going to my house, for your safety and mine. Besides, Parker liked you, you know?"

She was surprised to find herself softening as well in the car ride to Booth's place. She began nodding off, her head settled in a comfortable spot somewhere as the red light stayed on for three minutes; she felt as if she could finally get some sleep. She jerked herself awake with difficulty, to find that her head had actually been resting on Booth's shoulder. "Sorry—I haven't slept in four days," she mumbled finally at his surprised look.

"Why?" he asked as the light turned green.

"Drive! Last time, I had to take over the wheel!" She pointed to the green light, not to mention the cars that were honking at them.

"Right." He hastily stepped on the gas pedal and made it through the now-yellow light before it turned red again. "Bones?" he said after a while. "If you haven't gotten a decent night of sleep in four days, then how come you're standing?" When she didn't answer, just gazed off steadily into the distance, he added, "Just a rhetorical question."

They came up to the driveway of Booth's place and they got out of the car. "Parker?" Booth shouted into the house as he opened the door. "Parker? Mrs. Offenheimer?" He began looking frantically in every room until he emerged with a look of panic in his eyes. "Parker's missing."

"Not only that, but look"—and she pointed to the message on the wall. Her whole body was frozen with fear, a fear that was not unlike when she was held captive and nearly died.

YOUR SON REMAINS A CAPTIVE UNLESS YOU CEASE WORKING ON THIS CASE. MRS. OFFENHEIMER IS SAFELY RETURNED TO HER HOME. YOUR PARTNER, DR. BRENNAN WILL WANT TO WORK WITH YOU. THERE IS A BOMB IN THIS ROOM. IF YOU CONTINUE WORKING, THE BOMB WILL GO OFF.

X.

Those words, heard uttered often in my childhood, instilled a paralyzing fear that both chilled and burnt me alternately. Ostracizing is methods of letting a child know that she is not wanted. It would be much easier if one spoke it directly to the person intended to receive the treatment than to do it in such a way that it baffles the receiver and does lasting harm. Sadly, no one will dare take that action; either they are too afraid, disgusted, ashamed, or standoffish to admit that they are ostracizing the victim.