Maria Wallace noticed Dr. Brennan had crept back to the dig without telling anybody. One minute he was on the road, the next minute, the guy was popping up behind you and muttering about defragmenting the computers again, like he did just about every two weeks. Something about people putting too much junk in the memory and slowing it down.

He was an outdoors kind of person- it was obvious just by looking at him. She would never have pegged him for a techno-nut, but there he was. He had apparently built their cult-worshipped rapid prototyper with the Lex Murphy when he was doing his doctorate.

He was great with the thumper and the radar detection equipment too. Sure, he was happy to train anybody that wanted to operate the probe, but he had a knack for finding fossils. The first day of the dig, he'd have all the newbies line up and touch the computer screen to see if "they had any magnets in them." Some private joke she guessed she was never going to understand.

Dr. Brennan was always slightly weird. Like one time her third or fourth year at the dig, they had been eating lunch and fiddling with the old radio that always sat in the back corner. It never really played anything good. There was always public radio but Jesus, that was for old people.

"Stop."

They jumped. Dr. Brennan never talked at the canteen unless students came up to him.

"Go back. Go back to the news channel."

She flipped back to the public broadcast obediently.

"…survivors found floating in the waters around Puerto Rico. The locals call the area the La Cincos Muertes or The Five Deaths, which are reportedly the source of many urban legends. The three were picked up and taken to a military hospital early this morning."

Dr. Brennan was flying out of the tent, sandwich jammed in his mouth, pulling on his jacket. "Cheryl, you're in charge till I get back."

"Where are you going? Hey, Bill! How long will you be gone?"

Dr. Brennan stopped, swiveled around for a minute. "I have to- I've been…" He gestured helplessly and ran back to his trailer. When he'd called to check up on the dig, it had been from some military hospital. He'd come back oddly withdrawn and distracted for almost a week until Marty Dugan told a stupid particle physics joke during break and made him smile.

That one year- that one year it had been bad. He was gone for almost three weeks. He had come back tottering on a set of crutches with his right leg in a huge cast and about two-hundred plus stitches holding him together. Some of his injuries…Jesus, some of his injuries looked like he had been knifed. They had looked like claw marks. She didn't want to think about how much PT it had taken to get him out of that shape.

The Compy's parents had dropped him off at the dig two weeks later- it seemed totally unrelated, but her gut told her otherwise, and it was seldom wrong. What was the kid's name? Eric. Right.

He knew Dr. Brennan somehow. Of course, most of the kids that signed onto the U Montana summer program knew Dr. Brennan, but Eric seemed to know him personally. He was pretty self-possessed, and Dr. Brennan let him have free reign, so the kid had basically run around the dig asking uncomfortably relevant questions, poking into other people's projects, and generally being a completely annoying little snot.

It was awesome.

He pretty much worshipped them, boosting their little undernourished grad student egos just by the little light in his eyes whenever they gave him a high five or asked him to go get them a tool from the box. When Mute had split his sandwich with him during lunch once, the expression on Eric's face had been almost painful to watch. Mute still forgot and packed two sandwiches some days; he usually got stuck trying to pass the extra sandwich off to someone else, which didn't work unless he pulled the trick on some newbie volunteers. Eric had been the only one able to stomach Mute's lettuce, cheese, and curried goat sandwiches.

He was the little paleo-freak brother they'd never had. Okay, so she had a little brother, but she wanted this one. One that painstakingly put together dinosaur models and could rattle off the Theropoda taxonomy like it was the alphabet. They called him the Compy, and the little shrimp glowed even more and wore the nickname around like a gold star.

She had expected him to be pretentious and whiny like most of the other kids in the summer program that boasted they were "way into science." Surprisingly, the Compy knew his stuff. He'd read all of Alan Grant's books and was doing an impressive job of keeping up with Dr. Brennan's publications. Even the research papers, and she didn't know how in the world he could understand those. When she'd asked him, he'd just told her he went to Google and his mom for words he didn't understand yet. She knew when some of the "way into science" kids were going to change their minds and become…goddamn political science majors and when they were going to stick to their guns. And this kid was like Timothy Murphy, beta version.

All the old hands at the dig still asked after him from time to time, but the Compy only came to visit once or twice a year nowadays. He had other stuff during the summer; 4-H camp, the YMCA. She guessed his parents had finally freaked about the whole dinosaur thing and enrolled him in stuff normal boys did so that when he went to prom he stood the chance of getting a date.

He looked so different every time he came. His hair was messier now- no longer soft and round and boyish. He had glasses, the beginnings of an impressive jaw, and his voice was getting kind of awkward. She felt oddly proud. Whenever she sent out cool news about the dig to her friends, she always made sure to CC him. He talked to Dr. Brennan too- when she had emailed him about the saurid, he had already known about it. That saurid, man. Best day of her life.

The day they had uncovered the rest of what had started out as a bit of vertebrae in cell C2, all the students had gone into town to celebrate at Stockman's Bar for Maurice's famous deep dish chicken pot pie and a bottle of Fort Peck's crisp locally brewed beer.

She knew for a fact Dr. Brennan had spent the night drinking in his trailer- she had passed by heading out with Rick and his buddies. She had seen him lean out the window to look at the fresh grid; he didn't seem to be enjoying himself, gulping the beer down like it was cough medicine. He was outlined a little by the blackness and stars and backlit by his old dim fluorescent lights.

He waved the bottle a little. "Cheers, Alan."

It was so faint. No, she must have imagined it.

She wondered why he never came with the students when they went out on the weekends unless he was asked. He was always on the dig or in the trailer. The only person on the dig he seemed vaguely close to was his assistant Cheryl Logan-Weiss.

She liked Cheryl. She was tough and efficient and great with the students. She knew her pretty well, and since they were the only two old girls still on the dig, they hung out together regularly during breaks. Not that she had anything against guys, but sometimes you just needed a little girl time.

They usually teamed up to put away the equipment at the end of the day. It was kind of relaxing, checking the tools, cleaning off the dust, and keeping up a constant stream of quiet undemanding small talk.

Today though, she was feeling thoughtful. Maybe it was the news crew from the beginning of the week.

"Cheryl, how long have you known Dr. Brennan?" She cleaned off the fold up bench and began loading the boxes of tools back onto it.

Cheryl was absently clicking out of a computer program. "Mm, we went to school together. He was a little older than me, actually."

"Why do you think he became a paleontologist?"

"Why?" She turned around. "Well, he majored in it. Went for his graduate degree, worked on this dig for so many years. I guess he can't imagine doing anything else."

"It just…doesn't seem like he enjoys paleontology, really," she said apologetically in a rush. "I know that's-"

"-No," Cheryl cut in. She sighed and rubbed the back of her sweaty neck. "You're right. He…he hates the bones, now. He didn't used to. God, if you could have seen him before. He was…he was…"

And the way Cheryl's eyes kind of melted made her think Cheryl and Dr. Brennan might have had something once.

"Are…were you…" God, this was such an awkward thing to ask.

"What?" Cheryl's eyes widened and there might have been a little blush under her tan. "No, he and I…we just worked together in grad school. We never…I thought maybe we could have…but he was never around for long- always at Dr. Grant's heels." She grinned a little. "Dr. Grant's second shadow. We made fun of him a lot about it. He was the dig assistant back then. Teaching us newbies about the difference between fossil and rock." She waved her finger in the air. "Smooth and rough. Smooth. Rough." Her hand lingered in the air a moment, tracing out phantom bones. Her expression was vague.

She could have kissed him then, for all that they were down on their elbows and knees in the dirt. Things were still good between Adam and her- he was a good guy. But Billy Brennan, he was…man, she was almost afraid to say he was worth sacrificing her four year relationship. That was dangerous. She felt that space between them become palpable.

And then she heard that telltale rattling, and an old beat up truck pulled up in a small cloud of dust.

Just as quickly, Billy was gone- she almost felt the air empty out as he ran across the site whooping Dr. Grant's name and yelling for Elliot to warm up the rapid prototyper they had just finished debugging.

She realized maybe not then but later, much later after she'd had time to think about things and got a few good beers in her, that she wanted to accept that ring Adam was doing such a bad job of hiding in his apartment. Maybe she wanted to come home and have someone there run towards her, glad to see her and hoping she wouldn't leave again too soon.

---

The first time he drove up, Maria noticed him coming up from the main road right away from all the black he was wearing. Ian Malcolm- she knew him primarily as the San Diego guy, though apparently he was also a chaos theorist. She'd tried reading his books one time only because she'd once seen Dr. Brennan wandering around campus with a copy tucked under his arm. Malcolm came to visit the dig once or twice a year, usually with his girlfriend. She was a paleontologist too.

They all came once in a while. Ian Malcolm, Sarah Harding, the Deglers, the Murphys. The Compy with his family from Enid, Oklahoma. Such a strange mix of people. She sometimes wondered how they ever got along, what had brought them together. What made them keep coming back to each other.

Ian grinned lazily. He still had those boxy 50s sunglasses just because he knew they drove Sarah crazy. "How are you, kid?"

Dr. Brennan huffed a little, but he didn't look annoyed. Just tired. "Hey, Ian."

Ian Malcolm made a noise. "Hngh. I thought so."

"Ian," Billy grumbled.

Ian popped his shades down and looked over at Billy incredulously. "You're getting more like him every day- Jesus, it freaks me out."

Dr. Brennan had gone rigid. "Can we not talk about him here?" he said softly.

"Sure, kid. Sorry, didn't mean to…"

"I know."

Ian coughed uncomfortably. "Hey, so since you couldn't make it to our little bash last weekend, we decided to come to you. Sarah's here too. Brought some beer. You got a place we can crash for a few hours? Hang out?"

"Yeah. Trailer's back…" He gestured. "It's kind of messy, though."

"Yeah, right. Don't think I haven't heard about the laundry and dry cleaning from Lex and Tim." Ian cracked a grin at him. "Sarah's in the car- we're parked out front. Come on."

And then they were gone, and she wondered for the hundredth time what they sat around and talked about, what kind of things they saw in the smoke of Ian Malcolm's cigarette.

Dr. Brennan had shoved his hands in his pockets and was trailing behind Ian a little reluctantly.

"Sarah's going to be thrilled to see you."

"Sure. Haven't seen her in a long time. How is she?"

"She's getting on, yeah. How's the dig?" Ian looked back and cackled a little. "Hey, is that Alan's shirt?" He reached over, grabbed the collar, and tried to flip it up to see the label.

"No," Dr. Brennan lied a little too forcefully and shrugged off Ian's hand.

Ian let the matter go and put his hands in his pockets. "We were all kind of disappointed you didn't show. We were hoping you would come hang. Ellie says you don't call much anymore. You should get out more, kid. You're looking kind of grey around the hair."

"Yeah, well it's been busy between the dig and my job at U Montana. I don't get to see old friends as much as I'd like." It sounded so perfunctory, so mechanical.

Ian sighed. "Ellie...man, kid- Ellie thinks you blame her."

"What?" Dr. Brennan's head snapped at that. "She thinks that I- no way. I would never, I mean, you two have families. I'm glad you were- I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't found you. How can she think…"

"Well, what was she supposed to think? She and you." Ian twisted his fingers. "You two were like this. Double-teaming and ganging up on Alan- remember how he hated that?"

Dr. Brennan was smiling a little now. "Yeah. And Charlie called him Dinosa- hey, how is Charlie?"

"He's in middle school now."

"Wow. Charlie? Plastic spinosaurus Charlie? I…I never…"

Ian clapped him on the shoulder. "It's okay, kid. Stuff happens. Hey, getting your doctorate is a personal hell- I was seriously M.I.A for six years with mine."

Dr. Brennan shrugged. "I know. But…"

"Kid…this is going to sound real shitty, but it's been a long time, and you've got to let it go. It's just pure randomness of life. You never see stuff coming. God, shouldn't I know about that!" He barked out a laugh, but his eyes were kind of stiff.

Dr. Brennan smiled weakly. "It's all chaos, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Ian said softly. "Yeah, it is."