When he woke, Brennan was no longer entangled with him, and he could hear the noise of an enthusiastic toddler coming from the porch outside. Thank God we didn't have to do the awkward morning after thing. Sweets thought, on remembering the night before. He'd been partially terrified of waking up with an erection pressed against her or something. And had that happened, he wouldn't have needed to wait until he got back to D.C. for Booth to kill him. Brennan was fiercely capable of doing that on her own.

He went over to their supplies and pulled out some pancake mix, adding water and shaking. There was a dingy hotplate in the room, next to the kettle, so he made them both some coffee while he waited for it to heat up. They didn't have a lot of condiments, but Brennan had packed honey and he figured that would do. He normally made shapes with pancakes, but then again, he normally didn't make them with pre-mix batter on an uneven hotplate.

He served them up with a squirt of honey and chopped banana, and headed out to the porch.

"Morning." Sweets smiled cautiously, handing Brennan her pancakes and putting down Christine's smaller plate. "There's coffee inside. Do you want me to feed her?"

Brennan was feeling a little shy after the night before, an uneasy feeling she was unused to associating with Sweets. His age and profession had always given her an assured sense of her own superiority in his presence, and even when she had realised his social, emotional, and evaluative skills in the field exceeded her own, it had never made her uncomfortable. Her skills were more valuable. But having gone to him last night for a sense of comfort and protection...it seemed to recalibrate their power balance of their relationship.

And that made Brennan wary.

"Yes please." She said, accepting her pancakes and retreating inside to the coffee.

Getting the combination of pancakes, banana and honey in a toddler's mouth without getting the rest of her face dirty was an impossible challenge. By the time Sweets had finished, and brought Christine inside, his own pancakes, sitting on the table, were cold.

Brennan crouched down to clean her up and hand Christine some plastic blocks. As she stood up, she saw Sweets sit down to his cold breakfast and sighed.

"I'm sorry Sweets. You shouldn't let me do that."

"Do what?" Sweets asked, shoveling in another mouthful of pancake and honey.

"Use you like that." Brennan insisted. "When I need a break, you take Christine for me. When I'm upset, you sooth me. When I have a childish nightmare, you hold me."

Sweets shoveled in another mouthful, and pushed the plate back now it was empty. When he swallowed he answered "There's nothing childish about nightmares."

"But don't you see? You don't have to try to be Booth for me." Brendan implored.

A dark expression shadowed Sweets' lips for a moment.

"I am not trying to 'be Booth' for you. I'm being myself." He said in very measured tones.

He straightened up in his chair. "Didn't I babysit Christine for you, and cook for you and Booth when I stayed with you?"

"Yes."

"And haven't I spent most of our professional and personal relationship comforting you when you were upset, worrying about your emotional needs, your relationships and your family all by myself, without having to 'emulate' Booth?" Sweets pressed. "Did you think you were using me then?"

Brennan looked stricken. "No, but..."

"Then what's changed? I spent time with Christine because I like her. I try to be considerate of you because I worry about you. I suggest that if this is making you uncomfortable now, when it never did before, it has more to do with your issues with Booth than your issues with me."

Brennan had her head cocked to one side, as she often did when she was trying to process emotional information. "I didn't mean to upset you. You're a good friend, Sweets."

"As are you, Dr Brennan."

Brennan seemed relieved. "I am, however, beginning to see why Miss Wick calls you Lancelot."

Sweets gave a wry smile. "Hey, feminism doesn't mean chivalry is dead."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Brennan spent the rest of the morning examining the fully-developed image of the polaroid. Although only Wendell's torso was visible, propped up against the statue's base, with his head lolling on his right arm and his left arm hooked backwards, she was sure it reminded her of a painted depiction of Christ she couldn't quite place.

"I'm going to the library." Brennan declared.

"Does Hopkinsville have a library?" Sweets asked.

"It did when our street atlas went to print." Brennan pointed at an icon on the map.

Sweets peered closer. "It has an airstrip and a heliport. It should have a library. Won't there be surveillance though?"

"It depends on the library. If it appears to have security cameras, I won't go in."

"We should go with you." Sweets added. He didn't think adding 'Booth would want me to.' would help. Instead he said: "Libraries usually have a kids' section. Christine could play, or at least look through some picture books."

"We'll be more conspicuous as a group." Brennan argued, clearly not wanting her wings clipped.

"If there are no cameras, it won't matter. And you said if there were cameras, you weren't going in." Sweets countered cheerfully.

Thankfully, the public library was a small, dusty place that only had two security cameras, one trained on the loans desk and one on the two public computer terminals. There was a college library not too far away, and clearly most of the community relied on that one.

Sweets found some wooden puzzles in the kids' section and laid them out on the floor for Christine, his eyes following Brennan as she paced around their Dewey Decimal system. They hadn't even dared to use the computer catalogue to search for 'religious art' or ask for help at the front counter, so Brennan was trying to look like she was simply browsing as she wandered the shelves.

When she found the Art History section, she sat down on the floor and started leafing through.
Over an hour later, Christine had grown bored of solving puzzles, then of chewing on puzzle pieces, then of throwing them. Sweets dutifully collected them back up and then took Christine over to her mother.

"You almost done? Chrissabelle's gettin' restless." Sweets asked in character.

"Almost, darlin'. Look through this pile, would ya? I'm tryin' to pick one to print on a mug for Momma." Brennan pushed a pile of books towards him, as he crouched down and let Christine go so she could cling to Brennan's side.

After scanning three more books, she said. "Bingo. Whaddaya think?" She handed the book to Sweets. Inserted like a bookmark into the page was the polaroid she'd taken.

"The Decent from the Cross. That's real nice." Sweets said quietly. Then suddenly, loudly, he sneezed. Brennan's eyes widened a little as she realised he'd torn the page out of the book, covering the sound with the noise of the faked bodily function. Part of her was horrified that anyone would damage a book, part of her was impressed that Sweets, of all people, would take the initiative by stealing.

"D'ya reckon we could go now? Have some lunch?" Sweets smiled cheekily.

"Sure thing, hon." Brennan stacked the other books away as Sweets folded the page and slipped it and the polaroid into his pocket.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

They'd grabbed some take-away macaroni cheese in tin-foil containers from a mom-and-pop greasy spoon to bring back to the room with them.

"No wonder middle America is obese." Brennan had scoffed when she recalled what they'd eaten lately. "I hope Christine doesn't develop a palette for this kind of food."

"Hey, at least we didn't make our pancakes with bacon grease this morning." Sweets smiled.
"Besides, you and I can both eat our weight in Chinese takeout, so I'm not sure the east coast has any right to be snobby."

Brennan smiled, caught out, but said pointedly: "I don't eat bacon."

"Right. I've always wondered about that." Sweets said through a cheesy mouthful. "You say you're not a vegetarian for moral reasons but merely because it's a healthier lifestyle."

"Yes." Brennan confirmed.

"But I've seen you get pretty wound up over issues of animal cruelty. Are you sure you don't just use health reasons as a cop-out because it's easier to argue?"

"It's very easy to make the moral argument for vegetarianism." Brennan countered. "First, it is unnecessary for human diets to be carnivorous, and so to eliminate meat from the diet does us no harm but reduces the net pain and suffering of other species on the planet. Secondly, vegetarianism has a much lower carbon footprint, because herd animals are responsible for methane emissions and pastureland inefficiently ties up arable land that could be used for other crop production. Thirdly, human knowledge of the internal experiences of other species has increased dramatically in the last hundred years and we now know that the sentience and emotional experience of domesticated species at times rivals the complexity of humans. Pigs, for example, are capable of experiencing clinical depression."

Sweets raised his eyebrows at this.

"Fourthly, the emotional and aesthetic argument against cannibalism is also applicable to domesticated mammals, since the organs of cows, sheep and goats taste identical to those of human beings, although their flesh is different. Except in the case of porcine flesh, where the surface proteins of the pig are so similar to humans that we use them in organ transplant experimentation."

Sweets stopped eating. "You're telling me pigs get depression AND they taste like humans?"

"Many cannibalistic tribes have made that comparison, yes."

"God...I'm never eating bacon again."

Brennan laughed. "To accept the notion that Homo Sapiens is entitled to domesticate and eat other species less advanced and intelligent than ourselves is to implicitly accept the idea that it would be okay for you and I to eat a less intelligent member of our own species, or that a technologically advanced and intellectually superior alien race would have the right to eat us, should they so choose."

Sweets looked at her with big, brown horrified eyes that reminded her somewhat of a cow's, which she found ironic given their conversation.

"But in answer to your initial question, I am a vegetarian because of its health benefits."

Sweets pulled a face. "Yeah. Right."

Brennan only grinned.

Once their take-out containers had been disposed of, Brennan spread out the stolen page and the Polaroid while Sweets opened the book he'd been making case notes in.

"The Descent of the Cross by van der Wayden is a Renaissance panel dated at about 1430...as Christ's body is removed, the Virgin Mary swoons at the foot of the cross and Mary Magdeline weeps..." Brennan skim read. "The body is distinctively positioned to resemble a crossbow, the feet still nailed together, the back arched and the arms taut, to represent the patronage of the Greater Guild of Crossbowmen who commissioned the artwork." Brennan stared down at the polaroid. "The picture is blurry and I can't see the feet, but look at the torso."

Sweets wrinkled his nose in disgust as he looked, but nodded. "They look like they match to me." He peered back at the stolen page. "What does the artwork mean?"

"It has come to represent the Virgin's suffering along with Christ...see how she adopts a similar 'crossbow' position...the mourners weeping over Christ's body evoke the sentiment associated with early Flemish painting."

"Who are the other mourners?" Sweets asked suddenly.

"Mary Cleophas and Mary Salome, the virgin Mary's half-sisters, John the Evangelist, Nicodemus, a young male servant, Joseph of Arimathea, a bearded servant with a jar and Mary Magdalene. Why, is that important?"

"It might be. The paintings that Pelant references usually have only one central image or character. This is the first tableau."

"You think the mourners signify the Jeffersonian team mourning Wendell?" Brennan blanched.

"I don't know, maybe. Does this room have a Bible in it?" Sweets asked.

"In the bedside drawer."

Sweets spent the afternoon in the middle of the bed, pouring through the King James edition and scribbling notes into his book which he leaned against his knees. Brennan was feeling strangely deflated that this clue was spurring Sweets' profiling on, while she could not get her hands on Wendell's remains, or even any closer to material evidence from Chloe Campbell's or the Texas man's murders.

She began looking up circuitous routes from Hopkinsville to Houston. When she exhausted that, she re-packed their things into the car, so they could make an early getaway in the morning. Then she and Christine went for a walk.

Sweets was still hard at work when she left.

She found herself kicking at loose gravel as she walked towards the park. She let Christine climb on the play equipment, staying close enough to catch her if she fell, but not partaking as she had the other day. It had been more fun when Sweets had been with them.

Brennan found herself resenting Sweets for burying himself in his work, not coming to the park, and thus ignoring Christine and her.

But didn't you complain this morning that Sweets had no business trying to emulate Booth? No doubt he is trying to give you space. Which is a good thing. Living so closely with others in confined spaces almost always leads to conflict.

But if she was honest with herself, Brennan didn't feel irritated sharing her space with Sweets. The simple acts of living together, looking after Christine together, hunting down clues together, these were intimacies she had been missing ever since Booth had turned her proposal down months ago.

It hit her in the face so hard she stopped moving, though Christine was reaching out to her. She hadn't missed Booth any more than usual in the last two days, because she'd been missing him for months.

Earlier, she had not been annoyed because Sweets was filling in for Booth, but because Sweets was filling in for what Booth used to be.

Because, just for a moment, she had liked Sweets better.

Of course there was no sexual motivation behind this, Brennan rationalised. Sweets was a handsome young man, granted, and occasionally she'd found her eyes lingering. He seemed a little younger and sexier in street clothes than in his terrible suits. When he'd put his arm around her in the park and breathed into her ear, yes, she'd had goosebumps for a moment. But it was simply that by taking care of her and Christine so attentively, he had played on her maternal instincts, which during the early stages of infant-rearing were honed to recognise and create strong bonds with 'familial' males. That was all.

That, and the surprising realisation that Sweets attained a kind of masculinity that was different to most other men she knew. His strength was in staring down trauma. His own. Brennan's past. Booth's Past. Their line of work. Zack. Vincent Nigel Murray. Wendell. He had taken one look at the body of one of their mutilated friend and turned to see if Brennan needed comforting. She had woken up screaming from a nightmare and he'd respected her fears.

Brennan suddenly felt very lonely without him. She half-wished there was someone with whom she could talk out her feelings, and bitterly pined for a glass of wine and a conversation with Angela.

It had fallen dark while she was thinking. Calling over her daughter and placing her on one hip, she headed back to the motel. She was sure everything would make more sense once Pelant was dealt with and they were back in D.C.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Brennan expected that Sweets would still have his nose buried in his papers, but when she got in, he was serving up what looked like a vegetable stir-fry.

"Hey, you're back. I was starting to get worried. Our ingredients are a little limited, but I took your 'middle America' comments to heart and raided the supplies."

Brennan smiled. "Smells good."

"Garlic makes everything smell good." Sweets beamed. "Except people's breath."

Brennan grabbed a bowl. "That's really only an issue if you're planning to kiss somebody."

"Or, you make sure your date also eats the garlic." Sweets quipped. "Problem solved."

Brennan looked at the garlicky bowl in front of her and started at the implication, but Sweets was busily dishing up a smaller serve for Christine and didn't notice.

For all his love of psychoanalysis, it seems Dr Sweets can't see a Freudian slip when he makes one. Brennan thought. Or perhaps I'm being hypersensitive.

"Did you make any progress on the case?" Brennan asked.

"I have some theories." Sweets said guardedly. "I believe you'd call them guesses."

"Since we have limited access to tangible evidence, I have nothing better to do that engage in the speculative."

Sweets chewed on the inside of his cheek, but decided not to bite back: "I am trying to connect the tableau in the Descent of the Cross to the anti-religious message in the Jefferson memorial. I believe the tension in the crossbow pose signifies to Pelant the way a rigidly applied moral code can bend us out of shape. Not that he's truly a Nietzschean, but that's the ideology his playing with this time."

"Like when he pretended to be a Libertarian hacktivist?" Brennan asked.

"Exactly. At first, I thought Wendell was supposed to represent Christ, given his posing, but then, Christ is the centre of his religion, and at the Jeffersonian, Wendell is more like your acolyte, in religious terms."

"So I'm Christ?" Brennan asked.

"No, Booth is Christ. You're the Virgin Mary."

"That would make me Booth's mother." Brennan screwed up her nose.

"No, you're being wicked literal. The Virgin Mary is the only one to truly share in Christ's suffering and sacrifice. So much so that she swoons. That's the point." Sweets eyes were animated and he leaned back in his chair. "She's also the one who just dropped the skull."

Brennan picked up the picture. "So who are you?"

"John the Evangelist – he writes the Gospel of John." Sweets pointed a red clothed figure catching the swooning Mary.

"You wrote a book about Booth and I." Brennan suggested.

"Yeah, and at the Last Supper, John is about to drink from a poisoned chalice, but he blesses it first and the poison rises as a serpent from the glass."

Brennan looked confused.

"He escapes death. Last time, when Pelant tried to kill me, I escaped, and now, he wants me to be his disciple." Sweets added.

"Are you sure Pelant intended you to read the painting so deeply? You said yourself he was rushed." Brennan queried.

"There are thousands of images of Christ as a solo character. He could have picked from any one of them. The mourners are important." Sweets nodded, confident.

"What about the rest of them?" Brennan looked at the picture again.

"Well, these two? Mary Magdalene and the bearded servant with the jar? Angela and Hodgins."

"That jar most likely contains myrrh, the burial ointment, not insects." Brennan countered.

"A bearded guy holding a jar is not specific enough for you? Really? Okay...well, Joseph of Arimathea is the man at the crucifixion who was dying but, since he was a good and loyal disciple of Christ, gave up his tomb so that Christ could be laid there instead. It's a bit of a twist, but at the crime, Wendell was lying in the position that Booth should have occupied, according to Pelant. So Wendell is Joseph of Arimathea."

Brennan looked intrigued now. "That means that Pelant has already begun to kill the people depicted in the painting."

"He's feeling wrathful." Sweets supplied.

"So who is Nicodemus?" Brennan asked.

"He's clearly an important figure, someone who supports Booth. Nicodemus was a holy man and spoke up for Jesus when he was arrested, saying 'Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?' So it's someone who supports Booth and loves the law. It could be Caroline but given the moral implications of the Jefferson quote, I'm inclined to believe it's Cam."

"She used to be a police officer." Brennan agreed.

"And she believes in the system." Sweets added. "Tyranny over the mind of man."

"And the rest?" Brennan asked.

Sweets exhaled a puff of air, still thinking. "The half-sisters and the young male servant are probably your interns."

"I have five remaining interns: Ms Wick, Mr Fisher, Mr Vaziri, Mr Abernathy and Mr Wells. There are only three remaining characters in the picture."

"They could be representational." Sweets shrugged.

"No. Pelant is a code writer. He has a strong relationship with numbers. He would not have left indeterminacy in his message." Brennan argued.

Sweets clicked his fingers. "You're right. Who are your three favourite interns?"

"Favouritism is unprofessional." Brennan scolded.

"And I'm sure that you would never allow favouritism to cloud your professional judgment." Sweets indulged. "But come on, you must have favourites."

Brennan's suppressed smile told him he was right.

"Let me guess...Fisher? Daisy...and...Finn." Sweets said.

"They would be my favourites now." Brennan nodded soberly.

"Wendell was your third." Sweets winced. "Sorry."

Brennan sniffed. "Vincent Nigel-Murray was also my favourite. Two of them are gone now."

There was a pause while they both thought about that.

"If you were uncertain as to who my favourite interns are, I don't see how Pelant could know." Brennan remarked.

"You're right. How would Pelant rank them?"

"Mr Fisher, Mr Vaziri and Mr Wells are the most promising." Brennan supplied.

"Who are the most uncompromisingly moral?" Sweets asked.

"Mr Vaziri, and Mr Abernathy."

"Then I'd guess the young male servant is Finn – and these two sisters signify Aristoo and Daisy."

"Why Daisy? She's neither moralistic nor religious." Brennan noted.

Sweets tried not to smart on her behalf. "Daisy idolises and rigidly emulates you – that's her religion."

"And she's standing beside John the Evangelist." Brennan countered.

"That too."

"We should find a way to get your profiling to Booth." Brennan said, clearing away the dishes.

"Maybe we could get Max to deliver my notes? If there's anyone who can sneak in and out of D.C. without Pelant spotting him, it's Max."

"We can ask him when we get to Houston." Brennan agreed.

"I've been meaning to ask, where exactly in Houston are we going? Are we just going to drive around until we bump into somebody else with a disguise and a fake Texan accent?" Sweets joked.

Brennan gave him a playfully caustic stare. "I have an address."

"Care to share?" Sweets asked.

"Actually, no." Brennan teased. "I'm driving, so you'll have to wait and see."

She wondered whether it was wrong to engage in playful banter when Wendell had just been murdered, and she was far away from Booth and home. She did not want to be disloyal to Booth, but she could not help but feel that whatever it was that had been keeping him moody, detached and secretive for the last few months, his behaviour was a kind of disloyalty to her.

It had been good to laugh and smile, and to mull over a case with someone, even briefly. She showered with Christine, then put her to bed while Sweets was in the bathroom. Finally, he came out, damp from the shower, with only his gym pants on.

"I uh, forgot my shirt." He explained quickly, edging around the bed like a crab, looking for his night shirt without turning his back on Brennan. He saw it on the floor and bent to reach it, and Brennan realised why: the heat from the shower made his skin pink, creating contrast for the white keloid scar tissue that criss-crossed his back and part of his arms. Though he'd make frequent use of their tub when he'd stayed with them, she had never seen his back like this before.

"You don't have to cover those for my sake." Brennan said quietly as Sweets flushed with embarrassment, pulling the shirt over his head.

"I'm not. It just makes me feel a little exposed." Sweets reasoned. He turned off the lights and got into bed.

"Doesn't a reluctance to reveal your scars make intimate relations difficult?" Brennan asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

"Daisy knew about them." Sweets confided. "April too. As for short-term partners, you'd be surprised how long you can spend naked with someone without ever giving them a good view of your back." He smiled wryly.

Brennan smiled. Sexual humour she was well acquainted with.

"I understand the fear of exposure." Brennan said, rolling over onto her side so she could face Sweets in the darkness. "I had to practice exposing myself emotionally to one or two people at first, until I could accept the risk of exposing myself to a wider circle of friends at the Jeffersonian. Perhaps you could do the same thing with your scars? Allow yourself to go shirtless in front of Christine and I every now and then until it is no longer as frightening for you."

"Wouldn't you be worried about Christine seeing them?" Sweets asked.

"Why would I? There is nothing taboo or wrong about you, and the scars are a part of you."

Sweets swallowed.

"And what would you tell her if she asked about them?" he asked softly, scarcely trusting his voice.

"The truth. That not everyone in this world is a good person, and that sometimes, when people do battle with the bad people, they are left with scars."

"I'd hardly call 'being beaten' and 'doing battle' the same thing." Sweets muttered.

"You survived, Sweets. You use your own hurt to help other people. You don't think that's a kind of battle?"

Sweets was very quiet. Brennan had the worrying sensation come over her that if she could only see Sweets' eyes properly in the dim light, there would be tears in them.

Just as she was drifting off to sleep, he spoke: "Goodnight, Dr Brennan."

"Sleep well, Sweets."