Author's Note: You all are lovely people. Thank you so much for reading.

Chapter 2 – Brennan

She felt her phone buzz and knew it was just Booth texting her to say Christine was safely at the Jeffersonian daycare. She had never known anyone as reassuring as Booth. Her mother, perhaps, might be comparable. Unfortunately, with how things turned out, she might not be the best example. Booth was the here and now, and however much she might wish that he didn't feel like he had to fix everything and make everyone feel okay, she couldn't deny how remarkably successful he was at it.

Before she and Christine abandoned him, Booth had made a promise that everything was going to be okay.

"That was Hodgins," Cam said, consulting her own buzzing phone. "They found more of what probably belongs to the victim up about 300 meters or so. He's collecting more dirt and… whatever... samples and overseeing the forensics team with the other fragments. I'll stay and finish up here if you want to join him and keep looking for the rest of the victim."

"No," Brennan replied. "We have what we need to get started. I'll head back to the lab."

Booth didn't like her to use the word, "abandoned". He assured her that he'd understood, and that he trusted her and her decision. She mostly believed him on this. They were a cohesive unit. Conversely, when Max also insisted that she not use "abandoned", she became much more uneasy. How could it be that his "reassurance" felt so much different than Booth's?

"Do we have the X-rays we need so that we can get the skull to Angela?" Brennan asked Wendell once she was back in the lab with the remains.

"Yes, Dr. Brennan. I'll go bring it to her now."

Logically, she'd made a sound decision for keeping herself and Christine physically safe while protecting Booth from making a decision that she didn't want him to have to make. She knew this. But being away from Booth turned out to be much more emotionally difficult than she could have imagined. For almost three months she had experienced a kind of isolation she hadn't felt in a very long time.

"Based upon state of decomp," Cam had joined her by the remains on the lab platform, "I'd place time of death about 17-19 days ago."

"That would suggest that either the victim was caught somewhere along the creek for over two weeks before becoming dislodged or that he was dumped into the creek well after decomposition started," Brennan mused aloud. "Upon visual inspection, I believe it was the former, but I'll have Mr. Bray run some additional tests."

Booth frequently made "promises". Brennan used to unceasingly point out to him the ones he couldn't possibly control, and even though he more often than not did keep his promises, she no longer called him out on all of them. He believed he would and could keep the promises he made. Inside his head and in his heart, the promises and outcomes were facts. Absurd as that notion was, she discovered she could not ever convince him otherwise. A tiny part of her – ridiculous as it was – felt glad of this. Faith, of a sort, seemed to exist after all.

"Given the condition of some of these organs that still remain, I would agree with your first suggestion," Cam said. "As soon as you're ready, I'll take the body in the autopsy room to get what I need and let Wendell clean the bones."

"Hodgins will want more time to gather what he needs, too, upon his return from the crime scene.

"Of course," Cam acknowledged.

If Brennan could recognize the fact that she may have, in fact, been a bit irrationally hasty in her departure - in letting her father convince her that it was best - then she accepted the idea that her faith in Booth brought her back. His promise that all would be okay proved to be one he could keep.

Wendell re-joined her on the platform and together they studied the X-rays and the other visible markings on the remains and began cataloging everything. Occupational markers indicated a desk job with likely a great deal of time on a computer. The victim had broken a toe when he was young, at about age eight, and broken a finger more recently, perhaps two or three years ago.

More valuable data rested in their findings that marks on his phalanges pointed towards offensive force on someone. There were fractures in the seventh and eighth ribs on the victim's left side, and a cracked hyoid, leading them to determine that cause of death may have been strangulation, but until Cam finished her examination of the organs – namely the brain matter in this case – and Angela had what she needed for the reconstruction, nothing definitive could be stated. Strangulation usually resulted in a full break of the hyoid. She decided to let Wendell continue to study the X-rays while she went to write up some notes in her office.

Just a few months ago she would have taken this break to go check on Christine, but when the daycare had agreed to take Christine back, Booth had convinced her that she needed to relinquish some of her control. She surprised him by readily agreeing. Being away and on her own with Christine had made her realize how many of her own anthropological lessons she had been allowing to lapse from her mind. First and foremost was that she could not and should not be everything to her child. It is natural and healthy to provide for all of a child's physical and emotional needs when she is young, but socially and cognitively it is necessary for her to experience a wider range of experiences. The daycare was imperfect, but she recognized the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages. Christine was safe, nearby, and her caregivers had an obvious affection for her.

Brennan had not been at her desk long before Wendell appeared at her door. "Dr. Brennan?" His tone was uncertain.

"Yes, Mr. Bray? Do you have new information about our victim?"

"I'm not sure. Dr. Hodgins came back with more of the remains. The victim had a pin at the base of his left tibia."

"That's a very common occurrence Mr. Bray. Something I would have thought you'd had learned as an undergraduate anatomy student."

"It's not the existence of the pin, but what we found on the pin. I think you should come take a look."

Brennan followed Wendell back to the platform to find Hodgins pacing nervously. Wendell directed her to the microscope where the pin showed the enlarged engraved numbers: .

"I don't understand. Why did I need to see this? Isn't this just a product serial number?"

"That's what we assumed," Hodgins broke in, his voice at an odd volume. It sounded like his conspiracy whisper. Brennan looked at him with a skeptical frown.

"Don't look at me that way," he retorted. "Yes, we assumed it was a serial number, except it didn't match up with anything. Then we just put it into a standard search and we got back some sort of server error code. What if this is another guy we didn't know about working with Pelant?"

Brennan re-routed the momentary flicker of anxiety that this scenario caused to run through her. A nightmare of images real and imagined threatened to crowd in. "We need to talk to Angela."

"Dr. Brennan, she's gonna freak out—"

She heard the catch in his voice, but continued brusquely, determined to not let herself jump to conclusions again. To not make the same mistakes. "We need to talk to Angela."

If it was Pelant, they would figure it out faster this time.

He was not more intelligent than she was.