For those of you who like going back and rereading letters, one is in chapter 7, the other in chapter 3.


She couldn't stop herself from going to the practice range to vent off some steam. She was afraid of running into him there but then consoled herself that he was with Parker.

It was dinner time and therefore the last open hours of the practice range. She felt the letter she had snatched burning in her bag. She viciously but with a fierce smile, more savage than joyous, shot a few rounds. However, her marksmanship was so poor that her distraction finally drove her to collapse, panting, into a pile.

She begrudgingly pulled her ecosensible bag - ugly in its army green glory - towards her as she sat, chest heaving with ire and the adrenaline still pushing cruelly and relentlessly through her veins.

The envelope was crumpled by her impatient shove as she had packed thoughtlessly. She pulled her knees up to her chest, propping herself between the stall walls of the shooting range, her last soundproof vestige from the world. She smoothed the letter hard on the top of one of her quadriceps.

She felt her heart free fall at the title.

Letter to a Daughter.

It was from Max then. She steeled herself but still swallowed hard. She was an adult, she could handle a silly sentimental answer to a long ago letter. She opened it.

Dear Temperance,

Even the salutation and her name were all wrong. She glanced at the date. It was written only a week ago. She wondered if her father was holding his breath, waiting for her to read it. She scoffed, chastising herself for her outrageous and unfounded musings. No one could hold his breath for a week.

Although Booth says I'm only supposed to answer my letter, he also gave me the letter to your mother. Tempe, you broke my heart with her letter – written when you were only 15 years old. The translation and change in your voice, your personality, all those years in between that I missed became apparent in your letter to me. I was glad you told me what you were doing; we never talk about those years in person.

Brennan could hardly remember what she had written to Max. She had completely forgotten she had written to her mother. Fifteen? She had started her letterbox so young as fifteen? She ground her teeth at the innocently penned "Booth says." Booth had quite a lot to say, evidently. She sniffed, feeling her mouth twitch with quick contempt and stared back at the page.

And though I respect Booth, and especially you honey, I also feel that it is so very unfair to both you and your mother that you don't get an answer from her letter. So I wrote this letter from both of us. Mostly from me, because I'm still around, but I tried to answer all the questions you asked your mother that you haven't yet answered for yourself.

Brennan thunked her suddenly leaden head against the sound proof perforated steel. The adrenaline from Angela's video letter, the discovery of Booth's further transgressions by actually mailing out her diary, and her terrible run with target practice had exhausted every mental barrier she possessed. Her arms felt too heavy to hold up the letter. She dropped them by her sides in defeat, letting the letter fan itself like a squirming infant in her lap. She finally managed to drag one hand to weight the paper down in order to read.

Of course it started with changing our names – your names – and moving. But then there was a long time when your mother and I thought we were safe, that we got away clean. We really thought we could make it, to start new and have a family. To be a family.

But then, the summer right before you were 15, there was a summer carnival. Do you remember that?

She did not.

You came home with one of those henna temporary tattoos that last a week or so.

Oh, Brennan realized, a smile lurking beneath the paralyzed surface of her face. Yes, she remembered now. Her mother had been furious.

Your mother was so angry. At first I tried to reason with her. "Christine," I told her, "it comes off. Let her have some fun," I said. Then your mother showed me your back. You had this flowery disc on your shoulder blade. At first I didn't see it.

Brennan felt her skin growing cold in the wake of a startling burst of air conditioning. This was a newly discovered happy memory – a normal life with normal problems like a mother who hated tattoos. She hadn't realized at the time, or for 15 years after, that her mother didn't like easy identification.

But then I realized the dots in the disc were code, and the disc was a coin. You know now that my calling card was a Columbus Coin, and the rest of the people from that life – an age ago, it seems to us old men – used similar coins. Your mother and I were being sent a message through the skin of our 14 year old daughter. It simply said "we are watching you."

Brennan felt sick on top of her chill. The signs of her parents leaving were there long before they were gone. Why hadn't she seen them?

We took more precautions. We made Russ drive you to school instead of you riding the bus.

Brennan remembered that too. Russ had hated that. She had been glad the ordeal of the bus was no longer her problem to face. She was dizzy with all the signs.

We figured that as long as you were together or in crowds they would leave you alone. Then Russ' car was keyed in the parking lot. I was furious, mostly because it was another threat against my children.

Max had yelled at Russ for his irresponsibility for hours. She had felt smug, sneaking cookie dough in the kitchen with her mother as they giggled about boys. It was only now Brennan realized her mother had been distracting her, keeping her safe. All her laughter had been false.

Brennan dropped her knees to flatten the letter on the floor, nauseated and freezing. Max was murdering all of her happy memories. They were all a sham. A time she had often reminisced upon as a golden age was actually a gilt veneer over seething lies. She folded her arms up under her armpits as she continued reading.

That was when your mother and I had decided it was time to leave.

Brennan looked up, gasping for air as if surfacing from being underwater too long. It crossed her mind that she could protect herself. She could stop reading. She could refuse. Deep down, she knew she could never stop reading. Hidden under that realization was the barest spark of another. She understood, finally, the draw Booth had faced. It seemed impossible to stop.

I wanted to keep the family together. I told Christine how terrible the foster system was. She argued that Russ was of age. He adored you. He would watch out for you.

But he didn't, Brennan bitterly remembered.

That he didn't still shocks me, but I guess although your mother and I planned for every possibility it never occurred to us how different it would make you two. We knew it could change you, but please believe me Tempe, we never meant to break you. You were right when you said we were the family nothing bad could happen to. Your mother and I made it that way, carefully created this world for you. You said you cannot hate me, but I hate myself. If I had known what I do now, and especially after reading your letter to your mother about feeling like we killed you, well I would have never let your mother convince me that you two would be better off alone than running away with us.

She urged met to think how tough it would be on you especially, Temperance, a teenage girl, a new school every month, a target every minute, so much more tantalizing, easier, than Russ. She wanted you to have a normal life. To go to prom.

I didn't, Brennan seethed, her sickness at heart curdling into the slowly stoked embers of anger.

She said you wouldn't have any benefit from our lifestyle.

I would have had you, Brennan cried to herself.

We wanted to protect you.

"You didn't," Brennan whispered, her rage driving her to speak. Max echoed her uncannily.

But we didn't, did we? On my 50th birthday, I sat alone in a bar and drank. Your mother had died less than a year before. It was one of the lowest moments of my life. If I had known where you were, how unhappy…I may have sent you a postcard, or a sign, or an anonymous note…But it wasn't safe. Not with McVicar still out there hunting for me. He tried to kill your mother and then succeeded by accident when the bruise on her head became a slow bleeding aneurysm in her brain.

Brennan felt sick again, her anger boiling into hatred and sharp, brittle grief.

I didn't want you to wake up, strapped to a table, only to see the world to go dark. You were on such a good path. So bright. So happy. You were doing everything your mother and I had ever hoped for. A good school, a good career. When I saw you again, for the first time after all those years with my new face at the church, I finally felt like your mother and I had made the right decision.

Brennan curled in on herself, her stiffly locked fingers digging into the spaces between her ribs. Maybe she was holding herself together; maybe she was trying to rip herself apart. All she could think about that night when he left with Russ in the car was that she couldn't remember his voice. She would have given anything to remember his voice, those long nights in stranger's homes, and when she finally heard him speak again, he was a stranger. She couldn't remember what him saying "I love you" sounded like.

I thought we had done right by you. Until now.

Until I got those letters. I hate myself for doubting. I knew you. We were so close. I knew leaving you behind was a mistake. It got even worse when your brother walked away. I never thought that would happen. I never thought we would break you. Your heart? Yes. But your soul? My God Temperance, you're a beautiful young woman and I'm proud to call you my daughter but you're right. I don't know you. Snickerdoodles are all we had left of those days.

That Christmas, agony for you, was twice as terrible for your mother and I. The car, with the blood, we had left it on purpose. I didn't think they'd find it so quickly. I didn't realize, I suppose, how horrible Christmas must have been for you. Your mother spent it crying, hanging by the phone. She wished, I think. She wished a lot. I didn't speak. There were no presents. We kept running Christmas day. Even other criminals don't like working Christmas day. They've got families too, you know. We didn't. Not anymore. Honey, no matter what you put beneath the Christmas tree, we would have loved it. I never needed to see awards to know how exceptional you were. I never needed gifts to know you two loved us. But you couldn't love us as much as we loved you.

Brennan raised shaking fingers to her mouth and surprised herself by finding it gaping open. She pushed her chin up with a numb palm.

It's my fault it all happened this way. I doubted myself. I believed your mother mostly because I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe you'd be happy because I knew how hard our life would be on the run. The constant threat. Distrust. I didn't want that to be your life.

But you distrust anyway. There was no way to win. I wanted to believe, to beat the odds, but deep down I didn't. And that's why I stayed when Booth arrested me. I stayed for you because I was wrong Tempe. I was wrong to leave, and I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

Love, always love,

Mom and Dad

Brennan realized she was silently crying both because she was disgusted her father was begging and because she remembered everything she had gone through, all she had achieved for the sake and sacred memory of her parents. And it was a sham. The letter sullied it. It took her memories off their pedestal and made them profane, unloved, and imperfect.

She hated him. Her father.

She hated herself.

She hated Russ and the foster care system.

But mostly she hated Booth. She knew, intellectually, she was picking the least offensive and most accessible target for her rage, but she didn't care. She staggered up, leaving the letter on the ground to be trodden beneath her clunky shoes and the dragging hem of her long unused jeans.

The brisk sound of gunshots were both wonderful and horrible. There was a power, a heady rush of glory but also the flinching sound of flesh breaking like the paper target, her mother running, slipping at the last minute to avoid the death given to swine. Brennan tried to smother all thought by pulling the trigger harder, harder even though she knew on a physical level there was, like a neuron synapses, only one point of firing. It didn't matter how hard she squeezed, so long as she squeezed past the point of no return.

No return.

She felt like choking; she was choking. She realized it was her swollen throat, closed from unshed tears of unlived lives. She hated Booth. He had done this. He had brought out the secrets like ants from the woodwork, swarming over her itching skin, biting, biting, biting all the sensitive flesh.

She glanced down and realized she was sweating heavily. So heavily that the trickling drops of sweat, down the front of her shins, in the creases of her elbows, snaking down her spine explained the ridiculous feeling of all the little ant feet.

She opened her mouth to pant in more air. She felt her face screw up, it hurt how hard it folded its skin against itself. Her lips were peeling back, any farther and they would recede into the flesh under her cheekbones. She realized she was wearing the anthropological grimace of pain. Her gun, held so steadily for minutes, the empty cartridges littering her feet, smoking near the paper, all went blurry. She grunted a soft cry and forced her hands even farther forward, jamming her elbows locked in an effort to keep it from shaking.

"No," she coughed a sad little sob trying harder than ever to keep the barrel straight. "No – No- I—" she accentuated every little sound, words instead of the sobs she so desperately tried to hide, with a shake of her arms trying to shake out the tremors. Her gun went off. Again. Again. It was hitting other targets. It wasn't even close to straight. Sideways. She gasped, grunted and pulled the trigger again, and again. Something was wrong with the gun. It wasn't making sounds. It was silent. Please don't be silent, she thought hard at it. She squeezed harder, the metallic bite of blood in her mouth creating a sense of urgency when she knew, rationally speaking, she was nineteen years too late.

"It's empty, Temperance," someone said softly. She whirled, still sobbing, to point the gun at the intruder. It wasn't an intruder though; she knew who it was. Of course. Of course he would come at her lowest moment. She laughed a tiny, burbling, hysterical laugh. Of course.

He had called her Temperance. She frowned at him, the end of her pistol weaving so badly in her vision she closed her eyes. You asked him not to call you Bones, her mind reminded her.

"What?" she coughed pathetically. He reached one, slow hand towards her gun. She yanked it back like he was another kid reaching for her toy. She realized it was empty. She glanced down at it dully as it hung limply from her hand.

"We need to talk," Booth said, glancing quickly down at the crumpled letter under her shoes.

"Maybe later," she muttered. He swallowed.

"Now would be good. We haven't seen each other in weeks."

"I said later!" she screamed suddenly. Her hate broiled abruptly over her skin. The horrible beads of sweat intensified. She dropped the gun thoughtlessly and rounded on him, hands clenched into fists. She was feeling. Feeling a damn lot at the moment. She was…raw her mind supplied. She was raw. Couldn't he see?

"That's it," he coaxed. She was flummoxed by his tone. He backed her to the side of the shooting range stall, up against the cold steel suddenly stealing her sweat away. She realized this was one of the first places they had ever fought. She wondered if this was it: the last place they ever fought. If this was the end of their friendship. Partnership – everything..ship. How poetic it was here in this stall.

"Don't touch me!" she snapped as he bent his fingers as if to place them on her arms. She shoved him, hard, trying to get away. His fingers closed.

"That's it. Hurt me back. You know you want to."

"No! I don't!" But she realized with a rush of hot hatred, she did. He had taken what was most sacred to her and given it to the world. He had patiently waited for her to trust him – waited years – to rip it apart and smile smugly at her. He had been cheeky, cocky, and arrogant. He had taken her life and looked at it like an interesting set of remains, stinking in the sun and tried to solve it. He had the audacity to try to put the bones back where they went. Didn't he know, only she knew about bones?

She shoved him. He let her. She pounded a fist weakly against one arm, but stronger now as reason and hate surged potency in her fragile fingers. She kicked him, hard, in the groin. His face went white, but he didn't say a word as he staggered, and she kicked his knees out from under him. He went down. A crash. He was on his back. She straddled him, victorious, breath coming hot and fast with the conquering. She had waited for this, she had needed this. She raised her fist to hit, to hurt, to crush without mercy. As he had done.

He turned his jaw a little, softening it as his eyes tightened and he concentrated somewhere over her shoulder. He didn't resist. He didn't make noise. She realized suddenly with frozen tension, he was good at this. Practiced. His resigned face but steady resolve not to cry out was from years ago. She started to shake, her arm still frozen comically above her. She couldn't hit him. Not a little boy who had been thrashed so many times he took it without question. He was letting her beat him, as he had let his father beat him. She couldn't see him anymore. She couldn't see anything, only grey blurs as scalding tears, lava erupting from the cornea broke her sight.

"Fight me!" she screamed. She tried to scream. It came out a whisper, a guttural ugly sound. "Fight back! Damn it, fight back!" He continued to look at the spot over her shoulder. He let his big hands clench and unclench. She could feel the muscles of his shoulders rippling beneath her. He cranked his jaw up enough just to say:

"No."

She dropped her arm in despair, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt.

"Fight back! Fight back! How can I hit you if you don't fight back?"

She stood shakily and hauled his shirt with her. He came easily into a sitting position, his dark eyes wise with things she did not understand, could not understand. She hated him for that. Why was he so wise after all of his struggles? She only felt tired. She only felt used. She never felt wise. Why did he triumph? Was she so broken as that?

She dropped to her knees, pushing at his shoulders, slapping his collarbone half heartedly, crying unrestrainedly.

"I can't," she finally sobbed, wrenching her eyes from his understanding, patient face, upturned to her for a beating he thought he deserved.

He did deserve it.

But even as she told herself, she knew she didn't believe it. He had done the unforgivable, but…she still loved him. Hated him.

"I can't," she sobbed again, withering into herself, folding up against her hips, digging her own hands into her own skin, settling to bruise herself if she couldn't bruise him. She couldn't love him. She couldn't hate him. She couldn't hit him. She couldn't touch him.

But he could touch her.

His face changed in the corners of her vision. He frowned, concerned, scared even. He pulled at her clawed fingers, he pried open her viselike arms. He inserted himself in the space that wasn't meant for him, but she wished she had left it.

"It's okay, I've got you. I've got you," he murmured as her fingers dug into his skin, finally injuring as he was healing. She was out of control. Why couldn't she put it back? Why couldn't she snap the lid shut, as so many times before? Booth had dug too deeply this time. He had gone past the light into the dark. She hadn't wanted him to ever go here. She hadn't wanted to ever go here herself.

"I hate you," she sobbed. She felt her mouth, still grimacing in that gasp of pain, hit him over and over with her teeth, her hard chin. She consoled herself she was hitting him. He deserved it.

He held her regardless, tighter.

"I know," he sighed, his sigh a rumble. "I know."

"I hate you," she repeated, her tears unstoppable, a flood, a force, a levy snapping tiny twig like trees.

"I know."

"I want to fight back," she assured him. She clenched every muscle she had more tightly. She would crush him. She would be the anaconda. She would smother him and splinter him. He was rock steady. He didn't waver from her touch, from her trembling, from her spasmodic strangling.

"I know," he said, his voice too sweet for someone who should be dying from her poison.

"I can't hurt you," she finally realized in a broken whisper. "I want to. You hurt…you hurt…" she touched his back with suddenly whispery fingers. He hurt. He hurt her. But he hurt everyday. He was hurt. She ached.

"I know." Her sobbing had depleted her. Her muscles were not strong enough to crush him, a solid rock in a storm. She felt herself unwind, go limp. He did not let go. He held her up.

"I hate you," she sighed, weeping out the last few hot tears. His hand finally left her back, the bar of iron removed and she sagged as it came up to cradle her head as gently as an infant. He whispered in her ear and finally let himself lean up against the soundproof wall.

"I love you too."