More Than One Kind

By: dharmamonkey
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply.

A/N: This chapter won't be quite as Kleenexy as the last, but still. By now you know what kind of yarn this is. So, those among you inclined to get misty, well—you might want to have them handy. Thanks for hanging in there with me on this one. Enjoy!

Chapter 4

The wedding and the reception were as beautiful as we expected that they would be, and everyone—Mom included—teared up a little when Celia walked down the aisle of that church on my father's arm.

Something happened when the priest turned to Celia and Caleb with a droopy-jowled, twinkly-eyed smile and said, "You have declared your consent before the Church. May the Lord in his goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with his blessings. What God has joined, men must not divide." It wasn't simply that my friend and her new husband were now, officially, one before God and His sacred Church. It was something else, something I saw in my father's eyes when Celia and Caleb leaned into one another and kissed.

It was as if I could see a weight lifted from my father's shoulders. He sat next to Mom in the front pew, and during the last part of the ceremony, I saw him reach for her hand. Then, just before the priest said his short benediction, Dad turned to her with a soft, closed-mouthed smile. When the bride and groom kissed, I saw him gently squeeze Mom's hand and his shoulders seemed to relax, as he'd been carrying a heavy weight and suddenly had that burden removed.

I saw him look up at the ceiling of the church, purse his lips firmly together, then look down again as his mouth fell open slightly and he nodded, seemingly at no one or nothing in particular.

I can't be sure, but I think in that moment, having seen Lou Bastone's youngest child—the beautiful little baby girl who Lou never got to hold in his arms before he was taken away from this world—married to a wonderful young man with whom she would begin her own family, my father felt he had done his duty. He'd finally fulfilled that one last unspoken promise to his fallen comrade.

So when I saw my father look skyward, then down again as he nodded and breathed a quiet sigh of assent, I think it was his way of telling Uncle Louie, "She's all set now." And she was, of course. In that moment, as she kissed Caleb with a happy smile that nothing in the world could have wiped away, a page was turned. Lou Bastone's baby girl was all grown up. No longer the tiny baby Dad cradled in his arms at her father's funeral, Celia was everything a father would have wanted his daughter to be—a strong, smart woman with a good education, a rewarding career, and a wonderful husband who loves her more than life itself. By opening their home, their hearts and their lives to Celia, her mother and brother, Mom and Dad helped Lou's family achieve the dream he had for them, even though he didn't live to see it through.

So, while it may seem a bit odd, that, that, was the moment during the ceremony when I began to cry.

After all the speeches were spoken, toasts were toasted and dances were danced, the wedding celebration wound down and everyone went their respective ways. Celia and Caleb boarded a United flight the next morning bound for a week in Kauai, where she promised me they would leave their hotel room for at least a couple of hours a day to enjoy the quiet, relatively uncrowded beaches at their resort. Parker, his wife and sons headed back to Charlotte, where he was due to testify in court first thing Monday morning on an interstate banking fraud case he'd worked during his rookie year with the Bureau. Darleen returned to Brooklyn along with Michael and his family. Angela and Hodgins, and Michael Vincent and his girlfriend all headed back to Washington.

Mom, Dad and I decided to take advantage of the time and the distance from the demands of home. We caught a puddle-jumper to Alamosa, a small city of 10,000 or so located in the southern part of the state, about two and a half hours north of Santa Fe, and from there drove an hour west to the tiny hamlet of South Fork, where we'd rented a cabin on a west-facing bluff overlooking the Rio Grande River.

I was sitting out back, underneath the deck next to the fire pit watching the last rosy fingers of the sunset fade into twilight when my parents came down from the house. (Dad and I had laughed when we pulled up in front of the property, which had been described in the marketing materials as a "rustic cabin" but was, in fact, a 2,300 square-foot, three-bedroom, three bath chalet. "Some cabin," my father observed before the two of us dissolved into a fit of snickering.) I'd managed to plan my fire-making efforts perfectly, so that by the time the sun set and the warm thin mountain air began shedding heat, the roaring fire was giving off enough heat that one could sit there quite comfortably in a pair of shorts and a light fleece vest and feel perfectly toasty.

"What are you doing?" I heard my dad ask as he and Mom made their way across the yard, crunching their way over gravel, twigs, stones and pine needles.

"So much for sniper stealth," I snorted as I swung my phone's camera around to catch my folks' fire-lit faces in the video, ignoring for the moment my father's query.

Mom laughed. "Your father's always thought himself a lot quieter than he actually is," she said with a crooked grin as she slapped my father on the bottom.

I saw Dad's eyes roll as he moved closer to the firelight. "Yeah, whatever," he huffed. "Miss 'Damn Near Got Us Kicked Out of the Courtroom During Her Father's Murder Trial.' You're definitely not stealth." He took a seat in one of the Adirondack chairs next to me, then glanced over at my phone's screen. "Oh! Hey, Justin."

"Hey, Mr. Booth," squawked the voice on the other end of the line. My boyfriend waved through the phone as my mother took a seat on the other side of me. "Hi, Dr. Brennan."

"How's Aitape?" Mom asked him, angling her head to one side and narrowing her eyes as she watched him on the other side of the video call.

"Well," Justin began with a smile, "I'm actually closer to Pagwi than I am to Aitape, which is where the 41st Infantry made its amphibious landing on April 22, 1944. I'm about an hour west of Wewak and from there ninety minutes inland by four-by-four, though that's probably being generous since the roads here are a bit of a mess. We're lucky we got here before the worst of the rainy season really set in. The nearest village is about two kilometers from the dig site."

Mom smiled, and I suspected from the shimmer in her eye that she was thinking of the last time she spent months on a dig—more than twenty years ago when she worked on a project in Indonesia's Northern Maluku province, the summer before the helicopter crash.

"You think those are our guys?" Dad asked.

Justin nodded. "From the material found near the remains—helmets, brass buckles from rifle slings, rusted steel components from M1 Garands, .30-06 shell casings, bayonet lugs and so forth, and what little remains of their boots and uniforms—no question that these are American soldiers. Six men, with approximate height and body morphologies consistent with the MIAs from that squad from the 41st Infantry."

"Ninety years later," my father said, "it's still good we can bring them home. Let their grandchildren or great-grandchildren know what happened to their granddads and see to it that they get a proper burial. Good for you, kid."

"Thanks," Justin said with a grin. "Dr. Brennan, although our primary mission here is the recovery and preliminary identification of these soldiers' remains, you'll be happy to know that we've catalogued some interesting findings with regard to some of the tropical diseases these men acquired in theater. Early indications of hyperostosis and synosis in the lower extremities suggests to me that one of these individuals suffered elephantiasis that—"

Justin suddenly stopped and stared at the screen with a frown as his phone beeped to signal an incoming call.

"Crap. Sorry, but I've gotta take this. It's the JPAC lab in Honolulu. I've been waiting for dental records to come through on one of these guys for two days, so—"

"Do what you gotta do," my dad said. "And stay safe over there, alright?"

Justin grinned, then his eyes flicked over to meet mine across the thousands of miles separating us. He scrunched his nose and shrugged in a silent apology for cutting our call so short.

"I love you," I told him, my cheeks blushing a little as I felt my parents' eyes watching us. "Talk tomorrow?"

"I love you, too," he said with a smile, reaching his forefingers up to touch the screen. "I'll try call tomorrow around this time when we break for lunch, okay?"

"Okay," I said. "Keep your boots dry, babe."

"Okay." He laughed and winked. "I will."

"Goodbye, Mr. Forsythe," Mom said just as the call disconnected.

Four years my elder, Justin was a Ph.D. candidate in Physical Anthropology and had been one of my mom's grad students interns when we met. I didn't know when I met him that he was not only a forensic anthropologist in training, but also an Army Reservist, which of course immediately endeared him to my father.

We had mixed feelings about his current project when it came up. On the one hand, from a professional standpoint, it was a tremendous opportunity to put the skills he'd been honing at the lab to work in the field, in the service of a cause—the recovery and identification of servicemen missing in action—that was not only meaningful to him as a soldier but obviously to me and my family. On the other hand, the fact that he had to go right away meant that he would miss an important family event, but when we told my parents about the find in New Guinea, my parents encouraged him to go.

I looked at my phone's blank, blackened screen for a minute, then slid it into the thigh pocket of my cargo shorts and buttoned it shut. I propped my legs up on the stone wall of the fire pit and crossed them, then leaned back in my chair as Dad handed me a cold bottle of Fat Tire beer.

"Thanks," I said, accepting the bottle gratefully. "You guys should get a place like this—in the mountains, you know. Maybe in North Carolina, or southwestern Virginia. Northern Georgia, perhaps?"

"What are you talkin' about, huh?" Dad said with a smirk, bumping my arm with his elbow. "You trying to plan out my retirement for me?"

I blinked, surprised by what I doubted was a Freudian slip. "You finally going to retire, Dad?"

Mom swung her head around and smiled. "It's only taken five years and endless discussion, but—"

Dad narrowed his eyes and took a long sip of his beer, glaring at my mother over the top of the bottle as he tipped it back.

"Everything with you requires endless discussion, Bones," he told her, the gleam in his eye belying his irritation. "That's why my hair's turned gray. You talked the color right out of it."

Mom just rolled her eyes.

"Yeah," he admitted, turning back to me. "I'm not cut out for all the politics bullshit or administrative claptrap that comes with being an Assistant Director. Plus…" He nudged my calf with the heel of his running shoe. "It's high time to get your mother out of the lab."

"My hours at the lab have been sharply reduced in the last five years," she protested. "I offered to go emeritus when you left the field office, Booth." She swirled her Pinot Grigio around in her glass, then cocked her brow and added, "It's not as if we need the money. We invested the proceeds of my book sales very wisely over the last twenty years."

"Umm, okay," I said with a laugh. "So you're really gonna do it, Dad? I mean, retire?"

"Damn right I am," he said, grinning proudly as he raised his bottle and tilted it towards mine. "Your mom and I have busted our asses long enough. It's time for me and your mom to spend more time on things for us. Travel the world a bit. Besides, with your brother down in Charlotte, it'd be nice to see the grandkids more than three times a year."

I smiled and nodded, then drew my legs up closer to my body as I leaned closer to the fire.

Mom raised her glass in the air. "To retirement," she said. Dad and I joined her, lifting our bottles up and clinking them together, then gently clinking Mom's wine glass.

"To freedom!" Dad said with a chuckle, suppressing a grin as he took a sip. "Cheers." As he brought his bottle to rest on his thigh, lip curled up and he shot me a strange look. "What's wrong?" he asked me. "I thought you liked Fat Tire." He looked down at his half-empty bottle, then frowned. "I bought it 'cause it's the kind you like, Lucy."

"I do," I said, turning the bottle in my hand. The Fort Collins-brewed ale had been a favorite of mine since making my first trip out to Colorado after Celia took the job with the prosthetics company. "But I've been trying to cut back..."

Mom's eyes narrowed first as she studied me, her pale gray eyes reflecting back the fire's amber flames as the twilight around us darkened. I saw the glint of recognition in those eyes as she realized I'd had only a single tiny sip of wine during the rehearsal dinner (just one to taste the Amarone), and none whatsoever at the reception. Seeing the shift in my mother's expression, my dad's brows knit low over his eyes as he gave me a puzzled look.

"I'm pregnant," I said, unable to bite back a smile as I watched both of my parents' eyes light up and smiles widen their faces. "I'm ten weeks along."

For a second, they grinned like fools but neither of them said anything.

"Why are you being so quiet?" I asked them, happy but marginally unnerved by their sudden silence. "Dad?"

My father set his beer on the ground behind the leg of his chair, then leaned over and put his hand on my shoulder. "If it's anybody's but Justin's," he said with a broad, toothy, grin, "I'm gonna kill him. The father, that is. Unless it's Justin." Dad winked. "If it's Justin, I'm taking him out for beer and wings as soon as he gets back from Wimbly-wombly, New Guinea."

I rolled my eyes. "It's Wewak, Dad," I sighed in feigned annoyance. "And yes, Justin's the father." Mom was beaming, clearly thrilled about the news—more happy, in fact, than I'd actually expected her to be. "This wasn't how we planned to do things," I told them. "It really wasn't. We were hoping to talk to you guys after Celia's wedding about us, you know, but, well, the Army caught wind of the find site and asked Justin to join a team they were sending to New Guinea, and then two weeks later, I was late, and…"

"It was the antibiotics," Mom said, her gaze focused on the fire as she worked through the problem in her mind. "The National Zoo had an outbreak of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and bacterial meningitis among some of the primate populations earlier this year, didn't you? You were put on a prophylactic course of antibiotics since you work in close contact with the animals."

"Yeah," I confirmed with a nod. "Rifampicin's been around for sixty, seventy years? You'd think with a degree in Biology from Cornell I'd freakin' remember how Rifampicin works and to use enough common sense to…" I couldn't help but laugh. "It's okay, though," I said. "We were planning on getting married then getting pregnant, but hey. That's life, right? We'll just need to accelerate the timeline a bit."

That's when my father's dark brown eyes (which had glazed over when mom and I started talking about mycobacteria, meningitis and antibiotics) suddenly widened and he laughed out loud, almost despite himself, knocking his beer over in the process. He waved off the ruined beer as the sudsy brew soaked into the loose dirt at our feet.

"Wait, you mean—?" Dad couldn't even formulate the question, he was so happy and flustered.

"Damn dental records," I sighed. "We really wanted to tell you together, Justin and I, tonight, but..."

No force in nature could have wiped the smiles off my parents' faces, and a part of me felt bad that Justin couldn't be there with me to see their reactions.

"He says he'll be back stateside in a couple of weeks," I told them. "We want to get married, and we don't want to wait too much longer to do it. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but—"

Mom leaned closer to me, bathing her face in the orange glow of the fire as she placed her hand on my thigh. "There's no hurry," she said, cutting me off the way I'd seen her do a thousand times with Dad. She thinks faster than the rest of us, and while she's gotten better about it over the years, she's still apt to interrupt when she gets excited. "Really, Lucia, it's—"

"If we don't do it in the next couple of months, well…" I handed my beer, which was thankfully still cold, to my father. "I'll be huge, and if we wait until after…"

Dad tipped my beer back and took a long swig, then grinned back at me.

"You won't be huge, Lucy," he told me. "You're gonna be beautiful. Gorgeous. Just like your mother was when she was pregnant."

Mom's eyelashes fluttered at hearing my father's compliment.

"Hmmm," I murmured, unconvinced by my father's romanticized admiration of the pregnant female form. "Maybe. Seeing as how big I was, Dad, when I was born, and how big Parker was, and how big Parker's boys were, even though they were a month early…" I hesitated for a moment, then leaned back in my chair again so I could see both of my parents' eyes. "With twins, once I start showing, I'm gonna get pretty big pretty quick. And two babies will be twice the handful that one would be, so if we don't do this now…"

"Twins?" my mother asked, her apple-shaped cheeks full and high as her entire face smiled at the news. I nodded. "The tendency to hyperovulate does run in families, and so while it's certainly unexpected, it's…"

Mom went on about the heritability of twinning and reproducing in multiples, but neither Dad nor I were really paying much attention at that moment. He was too stunned to do anything more than grin, and I was quite sure I'd never seen him happier than he looked right then.

He turned and stared into the fire for a few seconds, then raised his chin and looked up at the crescent moon that had just climbed over the San Juan Mountains in the distance. He closed one eye and studied the moon with a sniper's focus for a moment, then grunted a quiet laugh and nodded as he wagged his finger at the rising moon.

"You didn't have to do this, hmm?" he whispered at the sky. "But we'll take it." Dad gave a little shrug and turned his gaze back to the fire, which crackled and popped as he murmured in quiet communion with his long-dead friend. Mom just shook her head at his sentimentality and what she calls superstition, then reached for my hand and smiled.

"You crazy little bastard," Dad said to the flames with a sloppy, happy grin as Mom squeezed my fingers in her hand.

"We'll take it."

The End

A/N: That's how it ends, and so the tale of the intermingling of the Booth and the Bastone clans winds to a conclusion. I hope you enjoyed this piece, sentimental though it was—sorry!

I can't bribe you with another chapter, but I hope you find it in you to let me know what you thought of this piece. Share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Please consider leaving a review.

Happy new year to all, and thanks for reading!