For Nicola, because of reasons.

Wind battered the window in its frame, rattling it like a live body trapped in a coffin. At first, Brennan thought that was what had woken her but then she felt herself being shaken and Booth's delighted whisper hissed in her ear. "Bones! Bones, wake up, it's snowing!" She squinted towards the window, were the curtains were drawn wide open and a glow of moonlight splashed the bedroom floor in a faint silver. Outside, she could see swirls of snow drifting through the darkness.

Brennan turned towards her husband with a frown. "Why did you wake me up to state an extremely obvious fact about the weather?"

"Because it's snow, Bones and it's fun." He rolled away from her and she heard his feet hit the floor before the blankets were ripped away from her. "C'mon, we're getting Christine and we're going sledging."

She sat up, the blanket tumbling from her shoulders. "Now? Booth, it's 4.47 in the morning."

"So? It's Christmas Eve, we don't have to work and we'll have the hill to ourselves."

"What hill?"

"The hill we're gonna find. Call Angela and Hodgins, they can bring Michael Vincent." Then he was gone. A wave of cold swept over Brennan's bare arms as the door swung open and shut again.

She sighed and reached for her phone, tapping the buttons almost without thought. Her head was still clouded with sleep. If they were going out, she was going to have to take a thermos of coffee, unless she wanted to spend the next hour feeling like a person of only average intelligence.

Angela picked up after a long succession of rings, sleep and a note of panic on her voice. "Bren?"

"Hi, Ange, it's Brennan. Booth says we're going sledging."

…

One hour, two coffees and several layers later, the yawning group stood at the top of a long slope of snow. Booth had driven them around for over thirty minutes searching for the perfect one (it's more fun if it has a little drop at the end, he had insisted). Now they gathered at the top with one sledge and a trash can lid in tow and a baby on each mother's hip. Their breath coiled in tendrils around them and Angela jiggled her son in her arm, as if he was the one complaining of the cold and not wrapped head to foot in a thick woolen scarf.

"Remind me who's ridiculous idea this was," she groaned.

"It was Booth's," Brennan frowned at her. "I've told you that twice."

"C'mon, Bones," called the man in question, jumping onto his sledge and patting the left space behind him. She took her seat, kicking snow from her boots before tucking her legs around him, Christine perched between them like a bird in a nest. Brennan did not express her anxiety about her barely two year old daughter. She trusted Booth.

In the seconds before her husband sent them hurtling down the hill, Brennan was struck with a sudden image of Russ in front of her, his fists curled so tightly around the reins that his knuckles were white as he turned his head to check one last time that his sister had a good hold on him before he pushed off. He had been protective back then of his dorky and unpopular little sister, and although his friends had tried to drag him away to try standing up on the sledge, he had never once left her.

Now, with her arms filmy wrapped around her daughter, Brennan felt the same rushing exhilaration as Booth toppled them over the edge. Flakes of snow sprinkled across her face as speed gathered, the silhouettes in the dark becoming blurs of black. There was time to feel only a flutter of panic at the waiting drop before the sledge hurtled over the edge and sent the three of them sprawling into the mounds of glittering white.

Christine's delighted shrikes broke through the darkness and Brennan clutched her tighter to her chest in a rush of maternal love. She too felt the exhilarating surge of adrenaline and laughed up at the clouded sky. The stars were hidden by flurries of snow soaked clouds, but the gleaming flakes fell instead, cold but somehow warm on her skin.

Booth would tell her it was her heart that was warm.

"You all right there, Bones?" he called on cue and she shouted back her reassurances, her voice laced with laughter.

He appeared suddenly, his hands buried in the snow on either side of her head as he hovered above her and their daughter. "Let's go again," he muttered, faintly. Brennan nodded in agreement as he sunk towards her. His lips felt like a further flurry of warming snowflakes against hers.

A burst of snow exploded on his shoulder, sending a tiny blizzard swirling around them both to the increased delight of Christine. "Get a room!" came a distant cry.

Booth grinned down at his wife. "And I thought coming so early would mean we'd get away from that annoying group of kids." He rolled off her, scooping a fistful of snow to launch back at Angela.

Brennan and Hodgins settled their children down in the snow to join in, Hodgins jumping in with a snowball down his colleague's neck, which she quickly avenged. With a bright red faceful of snow, Hodgins turned on his wife, the lines of teams obliterated altogether as Booth's next one sailed past its intended target and exploded on Brennan's forehead.

The fight only broke when Angela launched herself down the snow covered hill to avoid a snowball and Brennan leapt down too, rolling down the hill in a fit of laughter as she followed her best friend with the in the moment joy of a child.

...

The sun had finally split between the clouds and leaked through the windows of the lounge as everyone gathered inside Booth and Brennan's home. A fire crackled in the grate, flames dancing in the morning sunlight in an attempt to warm everyone's frozen fingers. Puddles of melted snow glistened on the wooden floor that Christine and Michael were busy spreading across the rest of the room.

Brennan sat with her feet curled beneath her and sweet smelling mulled wine clasped in her fingers, because it was Christmas and apparently that made the first stages of alcoholism acceptable. She watched as her husband pulled their daughter onto his lap and launched into a pointless telling of the nativity story. Not just because she thought it was a complete work of fiction, but Christine's mind was not yet developed enough to allow her to retain memories into her later life.

But Brennan bit her tongue against saying any of that and turned her attention to Hodgins and Michael instead, who were engaged in a crawling race that the three year old was winning while Angela cheered on her son. They dragged yet more water across the wood and soon the entire floor would be soaked in melted snow.

It was an entirely bizarre scene and Brennan was certain she understood almost none of it, but she watched all the same with a lingering smile that danced like the flames of the fire. A few years ago, she would have believed it to be a scene from someone else's life. It had not seemed possible for her to ever have a family.

But somehow it had happened anyway. Everything happens eventually, Booth had once told her. She hadn't believed him of course, because not everything could happen eventually. Certain events were mutually exclusive and therefore many would not happen unless you entertained the idea of parallel universes. But they had. She even got the child she had so casually asked him to father two year previously in Sweets' office.

It was Christmas and she had a child, a husband, a best friend.

More than one kind of family. Even her father and brother would be there the next day for Christmas dinner.

She felt the seat cave beside her and blinked out of her trance of thoughts to see her best friend draining her own glass of wine. She smiled, a flush of warmth pouring through her that she thought might have something to do with the 'magic' of Christmas that Booth was always trying to convince her was real. She didn't believe in actual magic of course, but she was growing to the idea of a certain joy that made almost everyone she met just a little more willing to believe.

Angela's shoulder brushed hers as she sat. "Give me some sanity," Angela demanded as her eyes followed her husband 'drowning' in a patch of melted snow as her son clapped and laughed as if it were the most fantastic show he had ever seen. They traveled to Booth, whose wild gestures reenacted the Christmas story.

"One person cannot simply supply another with sanity," Brennan explained, but stopped herself from continuing when she saw the smile on her friend's lips. "Oh. You did not mean for me to actually provide you with the neuro chemicals needed for a suitable balance."

Angela shook her head. "No, sweetie." She paused. "But you can supply me with more wine." Brennan handed her the bottle with a sudden, seemingly irrational flush of warmth. She had once told Booth that she was standing right beside him, as she always would. She hadn't meant she would literally stand physically parallel to him for the rest of both of their lives, just that she would never walk away from their partnership, their friendship. And somehow, without asking her, Brennan knew the same was true for herself and Angela, but the words to tell her friend how much her loyalty meant would not form into anything coherent.

She'd found a way to tell Booth that he made her life wonderful, and she'd find the way fo this, too. The dedication of her next book was yet to be written.

"For many years, I spent Christmas with dead people," she announced.

Angela raised her eyebrows. "Cheery."

"I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore," she finished, lamely, but it didn't matter. Angela understood. She always understood. She and Booth were the only ones who saw far more in her than even Brennan herself ever could.

Booth interrupted them, carrying their daughter. "Christine says she wants her mommy to come and have a crawling race with her," he said, solemnly. "And she kinda said she'd run away from home if you didn't."

Brennan tried to frown at him, but the amusement still sparkled in her eyes. "I am sure she did not say that, Booth."

"Fine, then I'll run away from home."

She lost the fight with her smirk.

Angela leaned closer, her head falling against her friend's shoulder as she craned it upwards to look her in the eye. "So will I," she promised.

"I'll stay!" came Hodgins' threat from the floor and it was the final persuasion Brennan needed to haul herself off the couch and abandon her wine glass to her best friend's hand, even though she was sure there would be no drink left in it when she returned. She bit back her widening grin as she approached the improvised ribbon starting line that Booth had found and settled on her hands and knees, And before her daughter was even settled down beside her she knew, for once, losing would be far more satisfying.

I dunno if that was rather an abrupt ending, but it's Christmas Day and my family will probably soon be up and I'm a fail who didn't finish this last night. But I'm as happy with it as I'm ever gonna be.

Merry Christmas everyone!