Three weeks later...
Brennan walked past the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab security guard and gave a little wave. It was not unusual for her to show up at all hours of the night and Thomas was not at all surprised to see her at this hour of the morning. He smiled and waved back as she swiped her car to open the glass entry.
It struck her at that moment that she would not know his name though he'd been standing guard over the lab for at least five years, if Booth had not accompanied her on several occasions. Booth made it a point to get to know everyone he interacted with on more than one occasion. Prior to his consistent badgering for her to make a spot in her exceptional memory for people she had previously considered unimportant, she remembered very few names. It wasn't that she considered them so unimportant before, it was just that she preferred to focus on details that were pertinent to whatever situation she found herself in and often times, the names of people who were not directly involved were not stored in her memory.
Booth had changed that. Now she made an effort to remember the names of people she encountered on a fairly regular basis, regardless of how pertinent they were to whatever she was working on at the time. Today, Thomas was only pertinent in that he was a witness to her entry into the lab at 4:00am.
This was just another in a string of nights in which Brennan found sleep elusive. It has been about three weeks since she'd returned from Maluku and a lot had happened in that short time. Everyone had returned, but everything had also changed since her departure more than seven month previous.
In the past three weeks, they had used their considerable and combined skills to take down a powerful lobbyist who committed murder and saved Cam's job in the process. Hannah, the woman Booth had fallen in love with while in Afghanistan had requested an assignment in Washington, DC, had surprised Booth with her arrival and and subsequently moved into his apartment. Jack and Angela had announced they were having a baby and Cam was getting somewhat serious with her Doctor friend even as Michelle was nearing completion of her Junior year of high school and looking at visiting several college campuses in the summer months to come.
Brennan walked into her office, turning the lights on as she slung her bag off her shoulder. She shed her coat and hung it up on the rack just behind the door. She was torn between working on her latest novel and heading to limbo to work on identifying another set of bones. She took a seat at her desk and stored her bag in it's customary spot.
She opened her laptop and decided to check her email before making a decision on how to proceed with her early start to the day. There was one from her publisher, one from and someone she hadn't heard from in a long time as well as a couple of spam messages that had made it past the filter.
One of the messages made her choice for how she would spend the rest of her day rather easy. There would be no identifying bones in limbo this day. The timing was perfect, actually. Since Hannah had arrived, she'd found herself with a lot of free time and not much inspiration for writing. She replied to both email messages and deleted the spam.
Several hours later, after gathering several texts and tools, she left the lab. Her departure coincided with the security shift change and occurred just prior to any one else arriving. She waved at Thomas and his replacement, Larry, as she walked out.
