I DO NOT OWN THE ORIGONAL IDEA OF THE BONES STORY. THAT CREDIT LIES WITH THE TALENTED HART HANSON AND THE CREATIVE KATHY REICHS!

Chapter 1

Booth sighed as he climbed from the suv with Brennan complaining about how Sweets had tried to tell her to stop working until after the baby was born. Every week for the last month, Sweets tried to talk Brennan into take her maternity leave, and it always turned into a fight to calm her down later. Brennan pulled her case from the back seat as Booth walked around the truck and over to her before they started on the tiny snowy trail to the group of lab techs, cops and agents.

"There is still no reason for me not to be able to work. I am very capable of taking care of myself even if I am pregnant. He has no right telling me I can't work." She argued.

"Sweets…. He's a kid, he's never dealt with any of this. he's worried about you and wants to make sure you and the baby are okay, that's all."

"He's being overly protective. It is unnecessary, especially since I've already been dealing with you and your protectiveness." He sighed as he walked closer to her.

"Here, let me take the case."

"No Booth."

"Well, be careful. It can be really slippery out here." He said before he saw her shake her head and walk over to the remains.

"Women have been having children and still working in the fields for thousands of years. There is no reason to be so worried." She said as she bent down to look at the body with a sigh.

"A family came out looking for a Christmas tree and when they started moving the branches back to cut it down they found the body." An officer read off to Booth. "We have statements from the family and we'll send them over to your office."

"Yeah, thanks." Booth turned back to Brennan as she paused taking a slow breath. "You okay, Bones?" He asked as he saw her lean back.

"I am having an emotional moment due to the hormones from the pregnancy." She said as she started to calm herself.

"Oh, I gotta get a picture of this." Booth chuckled gaining him a glare from Brennan.

"Booth." She scolded as she turned back to the remains. "It seems the victim is female, approximately 30 years of age. There seems to be no damage to the bones, but I will be able to discern more when I examine the remains." She glanced up at him before looking back over the remains.

"Okay, so we'll take the tree, dirt and body back to the lab."

"Booth?" He heard making him look back at Brennan as she shifted closer to the body. "She was pregnant." She looked up at him as he paused. "The remains are still here also."

"How far along?"

"I can't be precise but she was very far along."

"Alright, box it all up and ship it to the Jeffersonian." Booth said as Brennan pushed herself back to her feet packing up her things up before walking with Booth back to the SUV. Booth glanced over and saw Brennan staring out the window watching the snow covered scenery as it flew past. "Bones, you okay?" he asked softly making her turn to look at him.

"Yes, I'm fine, Booth." She said looking back out the window as the rest of the trip back to the lab was spent in silence.

The two walked in, heading straight for her office as the rest of the lab worked busily. Booth shut the door behind him as Brennan sighed and grabbed a file from her desk. Booth walked over placing his hand on her back making her glance at him but not stop looking through the papers.

"Bones, there's something wrong; you need to talk to me." He said softly making her stop and look at him. "Come on, tell me what's wrong." He watched as she searched his eyes for a moment before sighing and looking down.

"I… I find that it is more difficult to separate myself from the victims as I progress through the pregnancy. I find that I have little to no control over my feelings and I do not like not being in control of myself. Especially when we are investigating a murder." She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "Booth, I cannot understand how someone would be able to kill a woman and an unborn child. The child hadn't even had a chance at life at all to be called a good or a bad person. It shouldn't have had to be harmed for its mother's problems if she had done anything to begin with." Booth reached out pulling her to him and holding her as she fought to control her emotions once again.

"It's okay. Just relax, okay?" He asked pulling back slightly. "We'll find out who did this and we'll make sure he's locked up and not able to hurt another person again. And uh.. Maybe I'll let you get a few hits in in the process." He said with a smirk as a smile spread across her face. Brennan shook her head and couldn't help but laugh softly, whipping the tears from her face.

"How do you do that?" She asked shaking her head looking up at him as he gave his confused look she knew all so well, seeing it every time he listened to the team talk about evidence in the lab. "I'm an emotional wreck and you just… take it all away." Booth shrugged with a smirk.

"I'm gifted what can I say." Brennan shook her head giving another soft laugh. "Besides, I know you." He said pushing a strand of hair behind her ear with a soft smile. "We'll get this case going and we'll go to the appointment. Have you thought about finding out what it will be?" He asked as he slid his hand over her swollen belly.

"Yes I have, and I think I would like to know." She watched him smile. "It would help us be better prepared for when I go into labor."

"Which should be in a few weeks." Booth smirked as she smiled. "You still want to work all the way up to when you go into labor?"

"Yes. I see no reason that I wouldn't be able to perform my job around here. We've already discussed me staying here during investigations until after the baby is born. I can still work."

"If you say so, Bones." He saw her give her 'I win' smirk before walking out into the lab where the remains were being brought in. He followed her onto the platform and watched her get to work, quickly separating the bones of the child from the bones of the mother before working on finding injuries and anomalies.

Booth stood beside Brennan who sat on an examination table talking softly as they waited for the doctor to see them. The door opened and Doctor Bano walked in with a smile.

"Good after noon. How are you feeling?" She asked Brennan.

"I have begun to feel slight discomfort but I feel fine otherwise." Brennan said with her one hand resting gently on her swollen belly.

"That is normal. Being 38 weeks along your body will be adjusting and getting ready for the birthing process. Have you been having false contractions?"

"No, I haven't felt anything but the baby moving and kicking."

"Have you given more thought on if you would like to know the sex of the baby?" She asked looking between Booth and Brennan. "I know you have been undecided for a while." Booth stood watching Brennan as he always did at each appointment. He would stand by her and be there but let her talk.

"We've decided to find out." Brennan nodded as she glanced at Booth who gave a small smirk.

"Alright then, just lay back and we'll take a look at how everything is going." Brennan instinctively laid back while pulling her pants down under her belly and her shirt up above it letting doctor Bano apply the blue gel and start her probing with the ultrasound wand. Booth and Brennan watched as the images came on the screen, even after seeing the images over the last eight months they still couldn't help but smile knowing that was their child. "Okay, it looks like the baby is very healthy and has started to move farther down. Getting ready to drop into the birth canal."

"So the labor should start soon?" Booth asked curious.

"Once the baby has dropped it could take as little as a few days or the labor could never fully begin, in which case we would induce labor. But as far as I'm seeing everything is progressing perfectly."

"Are you able to see what the sex is?" Brennan asked as Bano looked back at the screen with a smile. Moving the wand around for another several minutes, she shook her head.

"Come on kiddo…" She said as she tried to maneuver around more.

"Being difficult like it's mother." Booth said making Brennan give him a small glare.

"Stubborn like it's father is more like it." She shot back as he smirked proudly as she rolled her eyes and looked back at the Doctor as she smiled brightly.

"Took some time but it looks like you're having a healthy little girl." She looked over as Booth's smirk turned into a bright grin and Brennan smiled still watching the screen. "I'll get some pictures printed out for you while you get cleaned up and we'll have another appointment in one week if you haven't gone into labor yet." Brennan nodded taking the paper towels from her as she left. Brennan wiped the gel from her belly before resituating her clothing. Booth offered her his hand to help her sit back up and climb off the table before they walked out to set up their next appointment and get their new pictures.

Later that day Booth walked into the lab to find Brennan and talk about the case. He stopped at her door seeing her leaning back in her chair with a smile as she looked at the pictures with one hand on her belly just above a pair of headphones. Booth couldn't help but smile at the sight before he walked in making her look up at him, pulling the headphones off.

"I have read that it is good for the baby's brain development if you play music for them while in utero." Booth nodded as he leaned against the desk looking at her.

"I heard that too. What are you playing, some Mongolian rap garble?" He asked making her smiled and shakes her head as he reached over taking the case from her desk to look at it. "Classical music…. Now this is surprising. I would have thought you'd have the baby brainwashed with your Tibetan throat gargle music by now." He laughed making her sit up.

"That is very interesting music, if you would only try to listen to some other cultures' music rather than your strange taste in music."

"I have very normal taste in music I will have you know."

"Dr. Brennan." They heard looking over at Wendell standing at the door. "I was able to map out the injuries to both victims." Brennan nodded before she reached out making Booth help her up from the chair.

"What, you're finally big enough you can't get up without help?" He joked as Brennan narrowed her eyes.

"No, I am just having issues with the low sitting chairs." Brennan said before turning and following Wendell out to the platform with Booth not far behind. "It appears a stab wound was forced through the mother and child and stopping in the mother's vertebra twice." She said looking at the diagrams and the wounds on the bones.

"I was able to finish the reconstruction." Angela said as she walked over handing Booth the picture. "I have the picture running through the database now."

"There's no need…" Booth said making Angela and Brennan look at him. "This is Natalie Roth; she was the girlfriend of an Agent at the Hoover. An old friend of mine worked the case before he transferred to a police officer outside Philly, I'll see if I can get a hold of him." He turned pulling his phone out as he walked off into Brennan's office as Angela and Brennan looked at each other.

"Wendell, I want you to gather everything you possibly can from the bones and let me know when you are finished." Wendell nodded as Brennan pulled her gloves off and started walking with Angela across the platform and down the stairs.

"He looked a bit shaken up, Bren."

"Yes, I know. He doesn't like cases involving children, especially babies and most defiantly dislikes cases that he knows the victim."

"Well this case hits home a little closer than most. I mean a woman was killed before she gave birth to her child."

"The only similarity that could be connected is that I am a week farther than the victim had been."

"And the fact that she was the girlfriend of an agent and you're the girlfriend of an agent." Angela added. "Bren…"

"I know Angela. But there is no reason to think anything will happen just because of the little similarities." Brennan turned to walk towards her office before she stopped turning with a small smile. "Oh, we decided to find out what the child is going to be."

"And? What is it?"

"A girl."

"A girl? Oh that's great, I bet Booth was ecstatic. I mean men and their little girls…." Angela smiled as Brennan nodded. "We are defiantly going out shopping this weekend." Brennan smiled as she walked into her office as Booth hung up.

"The lead agent that worked the case is going to be here in a few hours, we'll be able to find out more about the case from him, but I'll start pulling the records and try to track down the agent she was with."

"Track him down?"

"Yeah, after she went missing he couldn't take working cases or doing much of anything for that matter and he took off." Brennan watched Booth shift and look at the picture again.

"This must be hard for you. Knowing the victim is never easy to handle." She said softly making him look up at her and shake his head.

"I never really knew her. I met her a couple times but not enough to say I knew her. What's hard is knowing what her disappearance did to everyone who was involved. The Agent… Steven Greenfield, I worked with him a few times back before we started working together. He was a great guy. He was talking about asking Natalie to marry him just before she disappeared."

"We should tell him what happened." She said softly, walking closer to him as he gave a nod. "I will try to find everything I can before we tell him. We may be able to find something that will help us find the person who did this."

"Yeah. I'll go dig up what I can on the case." Booth took several steps before kissing Brennan's cheek and leaving. She sighed before feeling a stiff kick making her look down at her swollen belly.

"Let's get our work done and then we can rest all you want. Although your father will most likely try to make you listen to that stuff he calls music if we do that." She smiled rubbing her belly before walking out to get to work.

Brennan stood leaning over the table with the remains of the woman laid out anatomically correct as she heard the doors to the lab open. She looked up seeing Booth walk in with a tall man next to him. The man looked around amazed with his gray eyes as his closely cut hair was reviled as he pulled his hat off. Booth swiped his badge letting him and the man walk onto the platform and over to Brennan as she tried to stand up straight feeling her muscles in her back all protest. She pulled her gloves off and tried to rub her lower back slightly relaxing the muscles as the two men stopped in front of her.

"Wow, this place is amazing." The man said with a smile. "I bet I would have been working here if I stayed."

"More than likely you would not have been able to work properly with myself and my team. We have had similar issues with others who have tried to work with us." Brennan said as kept her hand on her lower back.

"Jay, this is Dr. Temperance Brennan."

"Nice to meet you…. I thought I read somewhere that the famous crime-fighting author had gotten pregnant. Looks like the papers were true."

"Yes, although I don't understand why that would be news for the world to know about." She said confused.

"Bones, this is Jason Fareno. He was the lead on the case eight years ago." Booth explained.

"Bones? Seeley, that's really not the proper way to be addressing a beautiful woman, especially not a beautiful pregnant woman." Jay said with a smile as Booth rolled his eyes and Brennan gave a small smile.

"He has been calling me Bones since we first started working together seven years ago. I don't think he'll ever stop calling me that." Brennan explained.

"I was able to pull particulates from the remains." Hodgins said walking over and handing Brennan a file. "I found traces of wood dust, Ferrum, and cement flakes. I was also able to pull a fiber and we are working on matching it to something. I think it belongs to a car since I also found traces of hydrocarbon, polyalphaolefin and polyinteranl olefin on the clothing."

"Good work Hodgins." Brennan said looking at the papers in the file.

"Anyone want to explain that in English now?" Booth asked making both scientists look up at him.

"He found traces of sawdust and iron in the wounds, and cement and motor oil on the clothing along with a fiber that quite possibly belongs to a vehicle." Brennan explained. "The wood and iron would have been left by the murder weapon as it passed through the soft tissue and cut into the victim's neck before leaving small traces in the soft bones of the child as it passed through it and into the mother's lumbar vertebrae." She said as she pulled another pair of gloves on, walking over to the tiny skeleton of the child and starting to examine the wounds on the bones.

"That's…." Jay said softly as Booth nodded.

"Yeah."

"Hey, Bren, the markers for the reconstruction of the injuries look off to me." Angela said as she swiped her badge and walked onto the platform seeing Brennan bent over the bones of the baby.

"Wendell gave you the measurements?" She asked her friend without looking up.

"Yeah, but when I put them in, it just doesn't seem to line up." Brennan furrowed her brow as she picked up a second bone and stared at it. "Is there any other way that can account for all the wounds?" she asked but Brennan continued to stare. "I lost her didn't I?" Angela asked looking at Booth who nodded. "Hi, I'm Angela."

"It's nice to meet you." Jay said shaking her hand. "Jason Fareno. So she ignores people in the middle of a talk often?" He asked looking back at Brennan as she sifted to another bone.

"Only when she's trying to make the victim talk to her." Angela smiled. "I'll be in my office when she's done making the dead talk." She said walking off leaving to two men to watch Brennan work. After five minutes, Brennan's head shot up and she took off as fast as she could to Angela.

"Guess she made the dead talk?"

"Yeah, you could say that." Booth smirked. "Come on, you can watch her brilliance at work." He led the way to Angela's office where they stood in front of the large screen as Angela put the information in. "What did you figure out, Bones?"

"The injuries looked like separate injures but we know the mother was only struck three times in the abdomen from the marks on her lumbar spine. We have been assuming that the child was stabbed multiple times all over but based on the age of the child the positioning would have been shifted and the child would have been curled in the uterus." She explained as they looked at the screen as the images started to show. They watched as a figure walked over to the pregnant figure and stabbed the abdomen three times.

"That's just wrong. Who could do something like that?" Angela asked as she shook her head.

"Someone that we will catch and send to jail." Brennan said as Angela smirked, enlarging the image for Brennan to look at. "The injuries match. Three strikes would have torn through and created each injury we see on the bones."

"I'm working on trying to find a match for the marks left on the bones. I'll let you know if I find anything." Brennan nodded as she turned to leave with the two men following her.

"From the evidence so far the murderer came from behind her cutting her neck so deep she was almost decapitated before pulling the weapon free as she feel to the ground and then proceeded to stab her abdomen three times."

"Sounds like a personal attack. Something about the pregnancy set him off." Jay suggested.

"There is no evidence that the attacker was a male, all we have at the moment is cause of death." Jay looked at her then at Booth as she turned around to look at papers that had been spread across her desk. Booth smirked as he stood leaning against the arm of the couch. "Perhaps Sweets will be able to guess who was most likely to have issues with the victim's pregnancy." She said turning around to look at Booth.

"You better not tell him that. You tell him he guesses and you two argue for hours and nothing gets done." Booth warned.

"Fine then you tell him to guess, but I believe he will be of help during this case." She turned leaving her office as Jay looked over at Booth.

"She's something else."

"You have no idea." Booth grinned before he stood up. "Come on, we'll head to my office and I'll introduce you to the shrink. Bones and him don't get along when it comes to psychology." He smirked leading Jay out to the lab before Booth swiped his badge and walked over to Brennan making her lean up from the remains. "I'll pick you up at seven."

"Let me know what you find out." She smiled and nodded before getting back to work.

"Always do." He turned and met back with Jay before they left.

"So, Brennan…. she's your partner?" Jay asked curious

"Yeah."

"Cullen let you take a squint out into the field?"

"Not like I had a choice. She blackmailed me into taking her out into the field and it's worked for the best ever since. Well after we straightened things out with her punching a federal judge in the face." Booth chuckled.

"She what?"

"Yeah, our first case together she punched the judge in the face a few times."

"Damn, wish I hadn't been locked in the National Security Division…. Never knew you took a partner. Thought you hated working with them."

"I did, she forced me to take her into the field and things change." The two climbed in the SUV and started for the FBI building to talk with Sweets.