The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.
Frank Herbert

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I sat on my grave for three years. After those long hours of the first night, time sort of faded away. Except for the changing of the seasons, I let it slip by without much notice.

Morning came and then night fell and then it happened again. Day after day. Night after night.

I didn't feel the cold or the snow or the rain. The hot Virginia sunshine left me untouched.

I had nowhere else to go so I never tried to leave my hill. I didn't know the rules of death. I didn't know if I were allowed to leave my body and the not knowing kept me chained to my grave.

And there I stayed, alone, until the dark haired lady and the handsome man took me away.

In this new place, in the part of the museum that wasn't a museum, I was definitely not alone. There were people everywhere, always moving, always talking, always busy. I watched them work with my bones . . . cleaning them, taking pictures of them, looking at them under microscopes.

Bits of what used to be me were scattered among Dr. Brennan's people. At first, I was afraid of losing them . . . afraid of losing what was left of me . . . so I tried to follow each small piece until I realized that even as a ghost, I couldn't be everywhere at once.

But as I tried to follow those tiny fragments of bone, I realized I could go anywhere.

And so I did.

I stayed with Dr. Saroyan for a little while and by listening to a phone call she made, I found out her name was Camille. When I was five, I had a doll named Camille. I loved that doll.

I watched her work for a few minutes. She seemed to spend a lot of time writing on forms and using her computer and I was soon bored.

So I drifted away.

I found Dr. Hodgins next. I could see the light that surrounded him stretching out in cobwebby threads, looking for Angela. He didn't notice. The dirt from my grave had arrived and he was sifting through it. He was so careful. So thorough and methodical. All for me. I was touched.

He pulled a single long blonde strand from the dirt and when he laid it down I saw that he had collected several of them and together, they formed a thin, pitiful lock of my hair. I felt an ache of regret as I stared at it. My hair used to be beautiful.

The light around him brightened just before Angela entered the room. He looked up and smiled.

"Hey, babe."

"Getting anything out of there?" She nodded toward the mounds of earth he had already worked through.

Dr. Hodgins waved toward the metal tray.

"She was blonde."

Angela looked at my hair, too, and her face was sad.

I eased back to watch them. Their lights were connected again and for a moment, I was transfixed in the shimmer. The pattern was different than the one that linked Dr. Brennan and Booth. The glow around Angela and Dr. Hodgins was calmer, I thought. The threads danced together peacefully without the explosions of brilliant color and the swirling flashes that surrounded the other couple.

"I bet she was pretty." Angela was still staring at my hair. "A pretty girl with long blonde curls. And she ended up all alone in a hole in the ground."

Dr. Hodgins walked around his table full of dirt and pulled her into his arms. As they hugged, their light formed a web that covered them in a glittering net of gold.

I couldn't resist trying to touch it. I stretched out my hand to the flickering bits of flame, just to see if it was as warm as it looked. When my fingertips were hardly more than a breath away, Angela suddenly gasped and straightened. The net fractured into tiny sparkling shards as she stepped back.

"Angie?" Dr. Hodgins' light hummed brightly as he looked at her with concern.

She was rubbing her arms again, chasing away goosebumps.

"It's nothing. I'll let you get back to work."

She looked for one last time at the threads of my hair, then kissed his cheek and walked out.

Dr. Hodgins watched her go, worry in his eyes. Then he, too, studied those tragic, thin strands he'd found lost in the dirt.

"I know what it's like to be buried in a hole," I heard him say quietly. "And we'll find out who put you there. I promise."

I could tell that I mattered to him. Even though he didn't know me, he cared about what had happened to me.

And so I claimed him as mine, too.