First and most importantly: Thanks to Kay for betaing and thanks for the reviews! I am bad at replying to reviews because I am always feeling dumb just writing "Thank you". The more detailed a review is the easier for me to reply.

Then, because this is getting important now, I'd like to say that I am neither a forensic anthropologist, a doctor nor anyone else who knows some medical stuff. I did research, I hope that I used correctly what I found. If not I am sorry and I hope you can ignore it for the sake of the story, it won't be overly important in the end.

This chapter shows a bit of the town that was my home for 6 months, the beauty as well as the annoyances. I hope you like it, I hope you review, I hope you'll read the next chapter when this story gets tricky.

Take care

p.s.: All the places and streets are real and you can look them up on google if you like ;)

Chapter 1: The Woman Who Fell

8:00 p.m. Tuesday, Hilton Hotel, Souissi, Rabat.

"There you are! I've been running around the dining room for ten minutes looking for you. This place is enormous," Booth said and sat down across the table from his partner.

"It's the Hilton Hotel. What did you expect? They even have their own forest and park here. I've never seen that anywhere else," Temperance replied. She dipped a piece of bread in some salad dressing and ate it.

"Unlike some people, I've never stayed in a Hilton hotel before," he said, looking curiously at her salad. "So what's for dinner?" he asked as he placed a napkin in his lap.

"The buffet is over there. You can choose for yourself. There are several different salads, pasta, couscous, chicken, fish…lots of things," she replied with a shrug.

"There are lots of things and you chose the salad?"

"I like salad," she said simply.

"You know, you shouldn't eat salad or fruit in a country like Morocco. Oh, and don't drink the tap water, either," Booth said, rising from the table and replacing his napkin on the table.

"Booth, I identified people in Congo. I know about diarrhea and I brought medicine to prevent it, so don't worry," she told him earnestly. She grew irritated as he leaned over the table, his face mere inches from her own.

"Please don't mention the word diarrhea when I am about to get something to eat ever again," he murmured before marching off to the buffet.

He returned a few minutes later, carefully carrying a plate overflowing with food. He gingerly set the plate down on the table, hoping nothing would fall. "If one of us is going to get diarrhea, it'll be you," Brennan said, pointing to his plate.

"What did I tell you about that topic and food?" he asked, raising his eyebrows in exasperation as he sat down in his chair and spread the napkin in his lap once again.

"Okay, then let's talk about the case. Were you able to ship the remains back to the Jeffersonian?" she asked.

"Eventually. At first the local police refused to let the body out of the country, but you should have seen how quickly they changed their minds with a few dirham here and there," he smirked.

"You bribed the police?" Brennan gasped.

"Don't tell me you didn't do it occasionally in Guatemala or Africa," he retorted. "That's the way things work over here. The wages of the police are so low they can't survive on that alone. So they blackmail a person here and there to get some money." He shrugged and started shoveling food in his mouth.

"But you're FBI," she insisted. "You're the law; you shouldn't bribe someone. It's against the law."

"Yeah, well, the law is different here, Bones. Look, we're in Morocco! The remains are on their way to the Jeffersonian. The weather is great, the food is good, and life is awesome! So what did you find?" he asked, flashing her that disarming smile of his.

"I found compound fractures on her left leg and arm, anterior fractures of her fifth, sixth, and seventh ribs on her right side. Left humerus fracture, left orbital floor fracture, zygomatico-frontal suture fracture. Central frontal fracture of the skull," she listed and took another bite of her salad. "The hip was fractured as well. I think I'm forgetting something, though," she murmured to herself as she chewed. Booth only raised his eyebrows and she realized that he had no idea what she was talking about. He needed a Brennan-Booth translation. "She broke her neck, that's what I forgot! Several bones in her face are fractured. There's a fracture in the middle of her forehead. Her hip is broken and so are her left leg and arm, along with three ribs on her right side. All of them are traumatic injuries," she added.

"Was she beaten?" he asked, face scrunched.

"No, I don't think so. It appears that she fell down some stairs," Brennan replied, taking some couscous from his plate.

"That must have been one hell of a fall. Accident?" he asked, picking some of the shrimp out of her salad.

"I can't eliminate the possibility yet, but I don't think so. She must have fallen forward on her face and I couldn't find any indications that she tried to shield herself or that she tried to catch herself. Usually when you trip or get pushed, you try to catch yourself or you use your hands to shield yourself. It's instinct, but she did neither of those things. And judging by her injuries, the stairway must have been a long one," Brennan said, shaking her head lightly.

"Could she have been unconscious or dead before she was thrown down the stairs?" Booth asked.

"I don't think so. She had to have been standing upright and then fallen face-first down the stairs. Maybe she was drugged. I hope the tox screen and Angela's reconstruction of the scenario will tell us more. Did you find anything out about who she was?"

"Not yet. The embassy is currently searching through the database of missing foreigners in Morocco. The local authorities insisted on helping somehow, so I gave them a copy of the dental records so that they have something to do and we can do our work," he replied.

"It will take at least 14 hours for the remains to reach the Jeffersonian and another six hours for them to be able to tell us something. Factor in the time difference and we have nothing to do till 5:00 p.m. tomorrow," Brennan sighed.

"Of course we have something to do," Booth protested wholeheartedly.

"What could we possibly do without any results?" she asked, tilting her head to one side and challenging him with her steady gaze.

"We're in Morocco, Bones! We'll go sightseeing!" he grinned as he picked another shrimp off her plate and popped it in his mouth.

1:00 p.m. Wednesday, Rabat Centre Ville, Avenue Mohammed V

"It's November, I get that, but why does it have to be raining all day when we have a day off? And it's cold! I never thought Morocco could be this cold," Booth complained as they walked through the streets of Rabat up to the medina, the city marketplace. "And what happened to drains on the streets and sidewalks? I have water in my shows. Now my socks are wet!" he whined. He lifted his right foot and waved it in the air for emphasis.

"The weather forecast predicted rain for at least another week. The infrastructure here isn't designed for heavy rain. Same thing happened in Mexico a few years ago and whole villages got swept away by the water; hundreds of people died," Brennan replied, walking around another deep puddle on the sidewalk.

"Not helping here, Bones," Booth grumbled, looking disgusted as he noticed yet another puddle blocking their way.

"Look, there's the medina. Maybe we can find some new socks for you in there," she said. She tried to lighten his mood by linking arms with him. The medina was surrounded by a large ochre wall that seemed to run through the whole city. In front of it was a huge parking space that was covered ankle-deep in water. It didn't seem to disturb the locals, who drove full-speed into the parking lot, not caring that other people might receive an unwelcome shower.

"This is crazy! They way they're driving, it's a wonder they haven't killed themselves yet," Booth grumbled.

"Approximately 4,000 people die every year in Morocco in car accidents," his partner replied as she pulled him to the right side of the medina. She had spotted some clothing shops.

"Now you sound like that one crazy intern you had a while back. The random facts guy, he creeped me out," Booth said, following his partner into the narrow alley. Small shops were set up on each side in what looked like open garages overflowing with merchandise.

"Welcome to Morocco," the first shop owner they passed yelled after them in English.

"Thank you," Brennan said, turning around.

"What do you need? Trousers? Shirt? Skirts? Shawls? I got everything," he told her and she turned back around to make her way through the crowd, her arm still linked with her partner's.

"A necklace for your wife?" The next merchant addressed Booth as they passed his store. Booth rolled his eyes and maneuvered around a small cage in the middle of the alley that held several small turtles and iguanas.

"Look, he has socks," Temperance said, pointing to a small shop.

The man in the shop overheard her comment and began hawking his wares almost immediately. "You need socks? I have all kinds! Blue, green, black; what do you need?" he asked.

They stopped to check out his selection and Brennan giggled when she noticed the blue and pink-striped pair. "Look, these must be missing from your collection! Or do you have some fuzzy toe socks that I don't know about?" she smiled as Booth shook his head. He tried to look offended, but failed miserably.

"Bikam?" he asked the vendor, pointing to the socks.

"Saba'in dirham," the man replied.

Booth shook his head. "Ashrun," he replied.

"Chamsin," the man shot back. Booth nodded and handed him fifty dirham. "B'siha," the shop owner told him, smiling, as he handed him a bag containing the socks.

"He was friendly," Brennan observed.

"I would be, too, if I'd just ripped off someone for a lousy pair of socks," Booth grumbled once they were out of the merchant's earshot.

"I didn't know you speak Arabic," she went on, impressed, as they continued their stroll through the medina.

"Just a few words here and there," he shrugged, stopping in front of a display of small silver tea cans.

"Did you learn it in Iraq?" she asked. They hurried away when the shop owner spotted them.

"Before we left for Iraq, we all had to learn at least a bit of Arabic so that we could make a bit of conversation with the locals when necessary," he told her as they entered a door that led to the old section of the medina. It had a flat reed roof and was even narrower than the new section of the market. The shops here were more traditional than their counterparts in the trendier new section.

3:00 p.m. Wednesday, Oudaya, Medina Rabat

"If one more person yells, 'Welcome to Morocco!' to me, I'm going to have to shoot them," Booth grumbled as he sat down in one of the small blue chairs in the coffee shop in the Oudaya, the old fortress in Rabat. It was situated on a small terrace that had a great view of the Atlantic and was frequented mostly by tourists.

A waiter arrived with a tray full of teacups. "Thé, madam? Monsieur?"

"Oui, merci," Brennan replied, accepting two cups of tea.

"Vingt dirham, monsieur." The waiter addressed booth, who took out some coins and handed them over.

"You order the tea and I have to pay. Nice," Booth joked before taking a careful sip of the hot tea. "Mmmm, that's good. One of the things I actually liked in Iraq was this sweet mint tea," he added.

"It's good. A bit too sweet, maybe. I wish I had my camera with me to take some pictures. The view here is amazing," she replied, shivering slightly.

"You cold?" Booth asked, none too warm himself.

"A bit. The wind is quite cold," she admitted, wrapping both hands around the small teacup to warm them.

"Here," Booth said and shrugged out of his jacket. He wrapped it around her shoulders.

"Thank you, but now you'll be cold. Just take your jacket. I should have thought of bringing one myself," she protested. She tried to take off the jacket, but Booth placed a restraining hand on her shoulder.

"We've had this discussion before. Take the jacket and let me be the knight in shining armor," he told her, squeezing her shoulder gently as he looked her in the eye. That look alone warmed her up and she knew she had lost.

"Thank you," she repeated quietly. She held his gaze and gave him a small, grateful smile.

TBC