My first venture in a new fandom. This will be a set of character studies.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
-- Confucius --

I love watching her work. The focus, the intensity.

There's something magical about it.

She'd throw a fit if she could hear me think that. Magic doesn't exist in her universe.

Maybe it's that she has a stunning amount of ways to find out information about the completely wrecked remains of a human life. Every time I see a body so badly damaged and decomposed that it's hardly recognisable as human at all, there is the moment that I know that there's no way we'll ever find out who they were or what happened to them.

Then she comes onto the scene, and proves me wrong.

In this case it's not even a whole human. It's just an arm.

Humerus, radius, ulna, scaphoid, capitate, metacarpals, proximal phalanxes, middle phalanxes, distal phalanxes.

I know these names because once upon a time it was important that I knew how to break each and every one of them.

She collects the bones and reassembles them on her lighted table. To me it's part of a skeleton, kind of like the one we used to have in biology class back in school, but more eerie. It's part of a person with a story and a name. She is better at distancing herself from that. In her labs, the name is 'the victim' or 'the remains'.

At first I found that cold and distasteful, but I understand now. She needs that distance to be able to do her work. A person has to have those shields to be able to excavate mass graves. I could never do that.

She's not so much cold as well-shielded. Anyone wanting to call her lacking in passion? Try stealing some of the bones she works on.

We're different, but that makes this partnership work. I see the big picture, the human side, the murky psychological stuff. She uses her relentless logic on the details, the tenuous connections, the stuff everybody misses because we're too busy fitting the evidence to our theories. Together we've all the angles covered.

She likes to make things complicated. Words, as well. I asked her once why she spent her holidays working, and her explanation needed subtitles. I'm beginning to understand, though. She's really not that complicated – and she's really not that different.

You do what you can. She can't stop the suffering, but she can help find justice for the victims. So she does – in her work, even in her holidays. I mean, who excavates mass graves in her time off? Identifies hurricane victims? She does. She can, so she does, and it's that simple no matter how complicated her reasoning is.

I can help her with finding justice, so I do, because I can and because it's right, and it's just that simple.

God, New Orleans. She called and all I knew was that she was hurt and that I needed to be there. I dropped everything to get to the airport. Would she have an anthropologically sound reasoning to explain that behaviour as well? Probably. To me it was simple. My partner needed me.

But simple isn't always the same as easy.

"This is the right arm of a male, in his mid-forties. Humerus length indicates someone between six foot and six foot two. The Pronator Teres is unusually well-developed. The arm was severed from the body at the top of the humerus; there are marks made by some sort of blunt blade. Zach?"

"Like an axe, but not big enough. I'll compare it to our database of instruments."

She nods to herself.

"Whatever did this must have left markings on the scapula as well. Tissue oxygen saturation indicates that the owner of the arm was still alive at the time of separation."

"No sign of crushing or bondage," Zach adds, poring over the X-rays. "No indication that the arm was somehow trapped, necessitating an amputation."

"Could he still be alive?" I ask.

Bones blinks as if she's forgotten that I'm even in the room. I smile a little.

"If he applied effective pressure to the wound and so limited blood loss, yes. The location was close enough to a road that he might have found help."

"So I'm looking for a tall guy, mid-forties, missing his complete right arm since around 2001. Not necessarily dead."

She doesn't look up, that laser-like focus on the markings on the end of the humerus bone.

"Who used to play the violin."

Like I said, magic.