A/N: I'm glad so many of you are on board with this fic! By the way, I know I said it would be mostly light and happy... but there has to be a little doom and gloom here and there, right? I don't think this necessarily qualifies as doom and gloom, though... more like melancholy. But I think it's sufficiently feel-good at the end. :) Anyway, I won't bore you anymore up front on this... enjoy! (By the way, thanks much to Melissa for the help with the concept for this chapter. I think this worked a lot better.)

On the second day of Christmas, my dear squints gave to me...
Two long-lost siblings
and a skull topping off a tall tree

The wind picked up as she got out of the car, carrying shriveled leaves across the parched ground. Brennan looked out on the rows and rows of worn grey slabs, like nubbed teeth, and easily picked out her mother's. She looked to her right, expecting to see Russ standing outside of the car. Instead, he was still sitting in the passenger's seat, large bouquet in his lap, frowning into the petals. Brennan leaned down, poking her head into the vehicle and giving him a peculiar look.

"Aren't you coming?" she asked. He sighed.

"Give me a minute, Tempe," he asked, not looking up. She nodded, shutting the driver's side door and leaning against the outside of the car. She hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans, staring down at the gravel, then up at the bare tree branches. There had been frost on the car's windshield this morning when she left to pick up her brother, but by the time she got to his house the rising sun had turned most of it to slush. While Virginia would never qualify as the Deep South, it did stay moderate, even in the winter months. Her nieces would be lucky to have a white Christmas.

She heard the passenger's side door open and shut, Russ's shoes crunching the bits of stone beneath them. He pursed his lips together and nodded, walking in step with Brennan as they descended the hill. They passed many graves decorated for the holiday—small Christmas trees decorated with tiny plastic baubles, ribboned wreathes hung delicately over the backs of grave markers, tiny stone angels proclaiming messages of joy and good will. Other graves were bare—mold and Virginia creeper grew up the sides of the stones, grime coating the granite faces. All sending the same message: no one was home anymore. Nobody came to visit, to do house cleaning. Somebody, or everybody, had moved on.

Sometimes when Brennan came to visit her mother's grave alone—which, little to anyone's knowledge, she tried to do at least once a month—she would walk around the rest of the graveyard, reading the names and dates etched into the stoic slabs. Each of them was more than a name and a number; to her they were a face, a life, an imperfect skeleton with years of stories carved into its features. She would sometimes give each of them a story—perhaps it was the writer in her temporarily overpowering the scientist—with a family, a career, an ambition. Some of them would die heroes, of wars or smaller wars. Some of them would die alone, shriveled and small in a large white hospital room without family or friends. Some would be tiny skeletons, perhaps not even fully fused into the 206 bones of the human frame. They would wear tiny patent leather shoes and tiny suits and dresses, or worse, tiny christening gowns. A select few graves had simply one year, printed twice. They were the ones she thought most about. They were the ones she gave the best stories to.

"This is it," Russ croaked as they pinpointed the lonely grave with "BRENNAN" carved into the marker. The grass was winter dry and brown, wispy even, and crackled beneath their feet. The tombstone was clean, though—her father undoubtedly made sure of that. Her mother's name, or assumed name, told the world whose bones lay beneath this particular plot of dirt. Christine Brennan. Beloved mother and wife. Dead.

What it didn't say was that she loved dolphins. Loved them. Anywhere they went, she would look in the gift shops for anything with a dolphin on it. If she saw it, it was hers. She also had a thing for old films, Gone With the Wind in particular. She could rattle off every one of Vivien Leigh's lines, especially the ones exchanged between Scarlett and Ashley. When Brennan was Temperance her mother would sometimes, on lazy Sundays with nothing else to do, pull the tape down from the topmost shelf of the video cabinet. The two of them would curl up under the large red afghan on the couch and they would watch it together, her mother shamelessly shedding a tear or two when little Bonnie fell from her pony and died. Then, in the end when Scarlett had seemingly lost it all, Temperance and her mother would both proclaim the line with her—"After all, tomorrow is another day!"

But it could never say all that, and who would read it anyway? Some stories were better left untold.

"This is it," Brennan finally answered, after a long moment engrossed in thought. Russ held the bouquet of flowers limply in his hand, holding it up and then letting it drop as if he did not know what to do with it. He finally set them hastily against the marker, stepping back and wiping his hands on his pants legs as if he were trying to rid himself of something. His eyes were very wet.

"We can go, if you want," he said, looking up at the sky. "I know you think this is stupid, so if you want…"

"I don't think it's stupid, Russ," Brennan said.

"That's what you said before," Russ pointed out. Brennan shook her head.

"I think talking to the dead is a little pointless, yes," Brennan explained. "And I think coming here like… like mom can see us here, thinking she can, is wrong. Because she can't. She's dead, she's gone. She can't see us. But I don't think being here is stupid."

"Now that we're all together again for Christmas, it doesn't feel right without her," Russ said quietly. "It feels like something's missing."

"Something's been missing for sixteen years, and you're just now feeling it?" Brennan said bitterly before she could stop herself. Russ looked up, somewhat shocked. His shock quickly faded into sadness, though, and he reached his hand out and touched his sister's arm.

"You're right," he said, letting his hand drop back down to his side. "I'm sorry. Everything that happened, everything you had to go through… it was my fault, Tempe. I shouldn't have left you… and I'm really sorry for it, still. I can't forgive myself for it." Brennan sighed, chewing the inside of her cheek momentarily before deciding on the right words. It was something Booth had tried to teach her—think before you speak.

"It wasn't all your fault," she offered. "I kind of ran you out."

"But you're my sister, I shouldn't have left you. No matter what, I shouldn't have left. I was supposed to take care of you."

"You were only nineteen, Russ. You were just a kid, we both were. We were just kids then."

"It doesn't matter," he said darkly. "I let you down. I abandoned you. You're my little sister and I should have done better for you."

"You're right," Temperance said. "But that was a long time ago. It's over now." Russ looked up and she smiled hesitantly. He ran his hand over his face, taking in a deep breath and blowing it out loudly.

"I always thought about you," he said, even his voice sounding less burdened than before. "Always. Every single day, I wondered where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. Sometimes I wanted to drive back to town, to the house, to your school. But I just… I felt like once I left, the door was shut. There wasn't any coming back."

"I thought about you too," Brennan said. "At first I was mad, but then I was scared. I wanted to know you were okay. I wanted to know you weren't dead somewhere, or…"

"Or?" he said, sensing the loaded quality of the 'or' in question.

"… or with mom and dad somewhere, without me," she finished lamely. "I know it sounds stupid but—"

"Oh my God, you didn't think we were together somewhere without you, did you?" Russ asked, his voice rising. Brennan shrugged.

"Sometimes I wondered," she said weakly. "You think about a lot of crazy things when you're…" Her sentence was cut off by the fact that Russ had closed the gap between them and pulled her into a tight hug, taking her quite by surprise. She slowly wrapped her arms around her brother's midsection, settling her face on his shoulder and closing her eyes.

"Temperance, I am so sorry," he said, his voice shaking. "I am so sorry you ever thought that for a second."

"I…" Brennan opened her mouth to speak, to say something, but her breath caught in her chest and all she could do was force it out in a shaky exhale.

"I'm so sorry," Russ repeated, holding onto his sister like she might disappear. "I'm so sorry. I never… I'm so sorry. If you can forgive me and know that, after everything I've done… I don't deserve a sister like you. Please forgive me." She wrenched his jacket between her fingers, letting the tears roll down the sides of her cheeks and soak into the canvas material. She sniffed, forcing the bulge back down her throat.

"I already did, Russ," she said. "I already did."

A/N: I don't think enough stuff is written about the Russ/Temperance dynamic. I mean, I know he abandoned her when she was 15 and yada yada, but they're still siblings, and they still have more history together than just about anyone else on the show. After all, you'll always have a special bond with the person you whacked upside the head with a Chatty Kathy doll. :)

Being in Brennan's position (the younger sister of an older brother) I can definitely comiserate - you have to stand up for yourself! Otherwise you'll end up like me... who, when I was seven, was somehow cajoled into sitting in a closet for hours. And had the mystery of Santa ruined for me when I was five. And had my Barbies taken and run over in the parking lot with his bike. And was often told while watching America's Most Wanted that he was "best friends" with the fugitives on the show, and that if I didn't leave him alone he would call them to come over and get me. Really sweet kid, my brother! We're close now though, which is why I enjoy writing Russ/Brennan and I hope to explore that relationship a lot more in the future.

So, your thoughts on the second chapter? Write a review and let me know! I will be updating this a lot more frequently now that exams are (mostly) out of the way and all I have to do is work. And work. And work.