Disclaimer: Bones isn't mine. Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev, is also not mine.

Very Long Note: This took a very long time to get up, and I'm very sorry! I think I began this way too close to the airing of the finale, and I don't want to get into a speculative story that turns out to be wrong, and then find myself not wanting to finish because I know it's wrong. I was also very excited about seeing the preview for the finale when The Solider on the Grave aired, but then the tape I recorded it on ran out about five seconds before the teaser aired, so I wrote this chapter in front of the muted TV on Fox while hoping that they'd air a commercial for it so that I could get a feel for the episode and get a few details. No such luck!

Anyways, I went back to the drawing board and made a lot of changes to the plan of this story. It's going to be a lot more about Tempe dealing than about the case details or whatnot, and a lot of it will be about her as a young woman, as well. I hope you all enjoy it, and please drop me a line!

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Temperance gripped the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles turned white as slowly let her foot up off of the brake. The car inched forwards slowly, and she bit her lower lip in worried concentration.

"Good, good. Try going around the parking lot in a circle."

Tempe nodded nervously, feeling queasy, and began her way around the empty lot, eyes constantly darting around to make sure no one came anywhere near her car. On her second time around, two girls rode their bikes across the far end of the parking lot. Tempe let out a surprised gasp and slammed her foot on the gas.

A laugh came from the passenger seat. "It's okay. You're nowhere near them. Go around again, and this time, use a little gas."

Nodding weakly, she slowly pressed her foot to the gas and circled around the lot again. She started gaining confidence, pressed her foot down lower, and loosened her grip on the wheel.

"Very good, you're getting the hang of it. Go around the other way now."

Half an hour later, Temperance was comfortably gliding around in figure eights. Mr. Brennan leaned forward and sighed. "Want to try going on the road now?"

"Do you think I'm ready?" Tempe asked, eyeing the quiet residential road suspiciously.

"Of course you are. We'll go around the neighborhood, not too far. Just keep your eyes on the road ahead of you, don't look at the cars coming towards you."

She nodded determinedly and set out onto the nearly empty street. Every once in a while Mr. Brennan would give her directions in a calm, soothing voice. It was the voice of a man who was in control, and Tempe found it comforting as she drove for the first time.

It happened when she was turning onto the last small street before a larger intersection. There was a metallic thunk and the sound of glass cracking, and slender spidery lines of white appeared in the corner of the windshield closest to Mr. Brennan. Tempe gasped and slammed on the breaks, but her father was suddenly a different man.

"Go! The gas, Temperance, damnit!" he commanded, and she did as she was told, heart hammering in her chest as she accelerated, turned sharply, and ran a stop sign. Her father was a livid red, then a ghostly white.

"Do you want to drive now?" Tempe asked weakly, afraid to add to the tension in the air.

"No. We'll get home faster if we don't have to get out and switch," he muttered, almost as if to himself.

They reached home a minute later, and Mr. Brennan instructed her to park in the garage. She stepped out, legs wobbly beneath her and feeling dizzy, and he told her to go inside as he shut the garage door.

A moment later, he entered the house, asked her if she was okay, and then picked up the phone and spent the rest of the night talking too softly to be heard with a dark look in his eyes.

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"Mrs. Wilson," Temperance began, hands clasped behind her back, "I need twenty four more hours of driving in order to get my license, and I have to go with a licensed driver over the age of 21 in order for it to be legal. Do you think you or Mr. Wilson could take me sometime?" she asked, loathing herself as she did. Driving was supposed to be the key to her freedom, not another thing that forced her to depend on someone she barely knew.

The older woman looked up from her magazine. "Of course, Temperance. But haven't you already been out driving?"

"My father took me once, but he… disappeared two weeks later," she replied, hating the hesitation that had crept into her voice.

"Oh, of course," A look of pity snaked onto Mrs. Wilson's face. "I'll have my husband take you out next week, dearie."

Tempe nodded, and then left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the study that doubled as her room.

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Tempe leaned back in the front seat of her sports car. It still had that faint new-car smell clinging to the seats. She turned her head and buried her face into the headrest and inhaled deeply. It always reminded her of her parents' cars when she smelled that rubbery chemical scent. They had changed cars often, as well as license plates. Tempe had never understood why, but her mother always laughed and said that her father was a great car lover, that the DMV kept getting their records messed up, that the transmission in this one was faulty or that the brakes in that one kept giving out.

Russ had asked her once, if she thought that it was strange how quickly their parents went through new cars. She had shrugged, what did she know about cars? He turned away from her with a strange expression on his face, and had simply shrugged when she asked him what was wrong. She didn't press it. They had formed a fragile alliance, now that they were both older. She listened to the music he did, got rides from him from time to time, and actually talked to him. Asking annoying questions would alienate him, she rationalized, and dropped the matter.

Well, now she knew why they went through cars so quickly, she thought bitterly. She had always regretted the fact that she had never gotten to know her parents as more than her parents.

But her parents were the kind of people she despised. What had they left her? Money that wasn't theirs to begin with. A million questions. No home to go to.

Even her name wasn't hers. Brennan. Half the people she knew called her Brennan. Even Angela, even her best friend, called her Brenn, because the first name her parents had given her wasn't exactly the most conventional, either. But at least it wasn't a stolen name. At least it wasn't a lie.

The press would have fun with this one, she thought. Dr. Temperance Brennan, acclaimed author, top forensic anthropologist, was the child of criminals. Paid for her schooling with money that came from God knows where. Had the name her parents had assumed to hide from the law.

And it was a name she couldn't simply change, couldn't simply shed like a snakeskin. It was printed across millions of books. It was at the top of too many research projects to count. It was scrawled across all of her diplomas.

It was the name she knew herself by.

She sighed and stepped out of the car. She had promised to call Booth, and if she didn't, she knew he would be worried. He was being so… there. That was what she really needed, she knew. Someone to be there, to not disappear, to not slip off into the West, to not fight and leave.

She dialed his number.

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