Disclaimer: I own neither Angel or anything associated with him, and "Bones" is equally out of my reach control-wise

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Angel of the Bones

As Bones stormed out of the lab towards her office, Booth wished that he was able to summon the energy to be as defensive about Agent Gibson's presence as he would have liked. In all honesty, he couldn't help but agree with her evidently negative opinion of having someone looking over her shoulder while she worked; after comparing Giles's abilities as a Watcher with Wesley's tenure in the role- before he'd relocated to Los Angeles, of course-, he'd recognised fairly quickly that Buffy's main reason for being so successful with Giles in charge was that Giles had generally allowed her free reign during her patrols even when he'd been monitoring her performance, while Wesley tended to keep trying to tell Buffy how to do things.

Of course, the situation wasn't quite the same here- Gibson wasn't exactly telling her how to do her job, he just wanted to be there while she was doing it- but the essential essence of the problem remained the same.

"This is my lab," Bones said as she walked down the hallway towards her office in frustration, Booth just behind her. "I'm a scientist, a doctor-"

"Yeah, so I've heard," Booth pointed out, allowing himself a brief smile at her now-familiar reference to her doctrate.

"Look, would you be able to do your job if someone was looking over your shoulder all the time?" Bones countered, turning around to face him with her hands raised in frustration even as she continued to walk backwards.

"You do; I've developed a tolerance," Booth retorted, his mind briefly flashing back to Wesley in his early days in the agency; the man had been great at research in the early days, but his poor combat skills had caused more than one problem at that time.

"I'm sorry," Bones said, as she turned back around and continued walking, "but I don't understand the 'advantage' of compromise-"

"This is a terrorist attack, Bones," Booth interjected, not wanting to get drawn into a debate about compromise after he'd spent almost a year doing that during his time in charge of Wolfram & Hart; even if he was confident he could maintain enough control not to mention that time of his life, he preferred to avoid thinking about it unless he had to. "It's bigger than you, and it's bigger than me."

"The job is the same-" Bones began, pausing in her office doorway as she turned to face him.

"No, it's not," Booth countered, walking forward slightly so that he was standing closer to her to better emphasise his words. "We're dealing with someone here who devalues an entire culture; terrorizing people by using God to justify mass murder."

Even as he spoke, his memories briefly flashed back to Darla's old enjoyment of religious wars; this kind of thing had always given her a sick sense of pleasure that he'd never fully understood even as Angelus (Which wasn't to say he hadn't shared her pleasure back then; he just hadn't quite understood what she'd been that excited about).

"You're making it personal," Bones said, looking silently at him; for a moment, Booth wondered at the fact that someone so apparently bad at understanding people could be that good at understanding him

"It is personal, Bones", he said simply. "All of us die a little bit on one like this."

Particularly when it reminds you of all the times you did the same thing yourself… he reflected grimly as he turned away to give her time to cool down on her own, once again facing the familiar feeling of being torn between his wish to forget the past horrors he'd committed and his refusal to forget the faces of those he'd killed.


As he stepped off an elevator inside the main FBI building, practically feeling Bones's smile without even needing to see it, Booth finally lost patience.

"OK, what is so funny?" he asked, looking at her in frustration.

"I just never figured you being in a relationship," Bones replied, a broad grin on her face.

"Why?" Booth asked, his mind briefly flashing back to Trevor Bryce's comment about him being a eunuch when he and the others interrupted his attempt to sacrifice Virginia. "Do you think something's wrong with me?"

"Not wrong," Bones clarified as they entered a nearby office area with only a couple of lower-level agents inside; it was at least more private than the corridor. "You just have alpha male attributes usually associated with a solitary existence."

"What, me?" Booth said in surprise; he knew that he still wasn't exactly a very social person, but compared to his life as Angel when you could count his close friends on two hands- back in Sunnydale Willow had been the closest thing he'd had to an actual friend in the gang outside of Buffy-, he liked to think that he'd improved since then. "You're solitary."

"No no," Bones retorted, her tone actually sounding slightly condescending, "I'm private; it's different, and we weren't talking about me-"

"Well, I was-" Booth countered.

"Well, I wasn't," Bones replied, before she spread her arms in a shrugging gesture. "Look, I'm happy for you. Relationships have anthropological meaning. No society can survive if sexual bonds aren't formed bet-"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Booth asked, looking at her in frustration; he hadn't been this exasperated with anyone since he'd last had to deal with one of Illyria's old pre-depowerment rants about how she'd been around when humanity had yet to crawl out of the primordial slime that created them…

"Booth?" another voice said from the side, prompting the two of them to turn around just in time to see Agent Santana appear from around the corner.

"Yeah?" Booth replied, glad to have sometime to take his attention off the current topic.

"You got that ID?" the other agent asked.

"Yeah; it was Masruk," Booth replied.

"Oh…" Santana said, his expression grim at that statement. "That's too bad."

"He killed four people and injured another fifteen," Bones said, the confusion on her face reflecting Booth's own feelings; why was this guy showing sympathy for a man capable of that kind of destruction?

"The report came back from ballistics," Santana said, passing the file to Booth as he spoke, giving Booth time to study it as he listened to the other man. "The explosives were placed under the care with the trigger connected to the odometer; Masruk was murdered."

"So Masruk wasn't a terrorist…" Bones said, her head nodding slightly as she studied the information before her.

"Somebody tried to make him look like one," Booth muttered.

Some ideas were constant wherever you went, it seemed; if it wasn't Darla setting things up to make it look like he was the one who'd attacked Joyce back when Buffy first learned what he was, than people were framing innocent men for terrible crimes…

"Any leads on who did it?" he asked, his mind back on track as he glanced up at Santana.

"That's why we're paying you, Booth," Santana replied, before he turned around and walked out of the office, leaving the two of them staring at the file before them.

Damnit… Booth thought grimly.

He might be used to taking the lead, but there were times when he really hated it when people expected him to come up with all the answers…


As he and Bones entered the Hamilton Cultural Centre where the conference was being held, Booth wasn't sure what made him more sick; the fact that someone was planning to kill this many people for some petty religious reason that he couldn't fully understand, or the fact that he'd killed his own brother as part of his agenda.

God… he still had the occasional nightmare about Angelus's murder of Kathy back when he'd begun his reign of terror as Angelus; the thought that Farid had done that as himself just to protect his own sick agenda…

He shook off his moral disgust at the guy's actions for later; right now, he had to find the guy before he could set off a bomb, capable of killing or contaminating anyone in the blast radius, in an open area filled with people and no way of knowing where he was going to set it off.

"We'll start down here and make our way upstairs," he said, nodding briefly at Bones as they walked through the last glass door before splitting up to take in the people around them; he wished that he'd been able to keep her out of this- this kind of fanaticism wasn't something she should have to deal with on only her second active case with him, and the response team Homeland Security had on its way should be able to cover the rest of the building-, but with time the way it was, he'd just have to deal with the situation at hand and hope for the best.

"There are too many ways in," Bones said, her voice drawing his attention where the conference announcer couldn't as she reached the foot of the escalator and began to ascend towards the upper floor, Booth quickly falling into position behind her.

"Where are the reinforcements?" Bones practically hissed at him, her voice low as she glanced anxiously around them. "Aren't there always reinforcements?"

"Sure, they're downstairs tying up the horses," Booth retorted.

"Sarcasm doesn't help," Bones said, her own voice low as she turned to look at him before returning her gaze to stare at the upper floor.

"OK," Booth admitted, "they're mobilising SWAT teams and additional agents, but it takes time, and if Farid has the bomb and spots them, it could be bad."

"If you see him, will you shoot?" Bones asked as they walked to the balcony at the edge of the floor and began to walk along it, scanning the people below them for any sign of Farid.

"Well, he might not have the bomb," Booth responded, trying not to consider the consequences if that statement proved to be incorrect; the last thing he wanted was to be responsible for another death unless he was certain it was the only way to prevent anyone else dying…

"You don't believe that?" Bones said, voicing his own concerns on the matter.

"I'm not taking out a target, Bones, unless I'm sure," he responded, his gaze still fixed on the crowd below him.

"Is that how you make it easier?" Bones asked, her tone giving no indication of her feelings about the topic. "Calling him a target?"

"You know," Booth said after a brief pause as he continued walking, "you really picked an odd time to have this conversation."

For a woman who always claimed she didn't believe in psychology, Bones was surprisingly good at it when she wanted to be…

Forcing those thoughts aside as they continued to walk around the floor- including a brief encounter with someone who slightly resembled Farid in profile before a glance at his face confirmed that he wasn't the man they were looking for-, before Booth suddenly ran over to a corner of the balcony.

"There!" she yelled, pointing at something on the level below them. "That's Farid!"

Hurrying over to join her, his gun in his hand- it still felt so small compared to the sniper rifle he'd wielded at first and the sword he'd used in so many battles in his time as a vampire-, Booth glanced down in the direction that her finger was pointing, only to see a figure in a dark jacket and grey trousers with dark hair walking towards the main crowd at the conference, with a bag at his side that could have held camera equipment or a bomb.

"I'm not sure…" Booth said awkwardly; he might trust that Bones knew what she was talking about in the lab, but Wesley in the early days had proven all too effectively that there was a significant difference between what you could do at a desk and how you performed in reality…

"Look!" Bones said urgently, indicating the man's slightly dragging legs. "His walk is labored from the dioxin poisoning and the parietal bones in his skull match his picture-!"

"His back's to us," Booth replied briefly; she could recount the scientific reasons why it might be him all she wanted, but he wasn't going to fire his gun without evidence. "What if you're wrong?"

"This is what I do, Booth; do you really want to wait?" Bones asked, turning to look impatiently at him before she turned back to point at Farid, her voice now speaking at a more rapid pace. "He's carrying something heavy in his camera bag; see how the extra weight is causing his shoulder to-"

"No, I can't!" Booth cut her off, refusing to listen to any more of her science; the last time he'd relied on instinct without gathering all the facts, he'd ended up killing a demon who'd actually been trying to help the woman who'd been there at the time…

He'd acted rashly in dealing with the Prio Motu demon, and Jo and her baby had almost died; he wasn't going to make that mistake again…

"He has all the markers, Booth!" Bones protested.

For a moment, Booth hesitated, and then he raised his gun, taking aim for a moment in case she was correct…

"I need a face," he said at last, once he was certain the man was in his sight. "I need a face-!"

"FARID!" Bones yelled out, prompting the figure to turn and face them, providing the clear confirmation of identity that Booth had been looking for.

"On the ground!" Booth yelled, his gun now fixed on Farid's face as the man's hand reached for the bag…

Booth didn't even need to hear Bones's comment about the bomb to know what he had to do; almost without thinking, he sent a bullet directly into the centre of Farid's forehead, sending the Arab falling to the ground as people screamed and retreated from the fallen body…

He might not be doing it with his bare hands any more, but one thing hadn't changed; when he started killing people, everyone else around him started to run.

It was only when he saw Agent Gibson's brief confirming nod at the presence of the bomb in Farid's bag that Booth allowed himself to relax; the number of innocent people he'd killed hadn't increased.

If only the same thing could be said about the number of people he'd killed overall…

He might not be killing humans for his own pleasure any more, but every time he took another person's life with his soul intact, Booth couldn't help but wonder how much longer it would be before the line between him and Angelus stopped keeping his own worse nature where it should remain…