Author's Note: You've seen who Brennan was before she met Angela. You're seeing the small ways that knowing Angela is changing her. Now brace yourself for the power of one very unforgettable man who is going to change absolutely everything.

Thank you to all of my readers and I hope you all have a very happy and healthy 2013.


~Q~

~The Intern in the Pond~

~Q~

O, answer me:
Let me not burst in ignorance! but tell,
Why thy canoniz'd bones, hears'd in death,
Have burst their cerements! why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd.
Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again.

Hamlet, Act I, scene 4

~Q~

"Why is Zack here," she finally asked him.

After determining there was indeed a skeleton in the pond at Arlington, Brennan had regained the shore with Special Agent Seeley Booth and disdained the chivalrous hand he'd offered as she clambered out of the boat. Once ashore, she'd taken in both the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal forensic truck and her assistant standing by, then cut a sharply accusing glare at Booth. The false rescue, his concession to her, and the truce they'd sworn did not blunt her irritation at his presumption.

At least he didn't pretend to misunderstand why Brennan might be annoyed to find her own graduate student had been summoned without her input. "I got in touch with Dr. Goodman and informed him we had skeletal remains at Arlington National Cemetery. He sent Zack and the truck straight over because you were still on the plane."

"When?" she demanded, trying to understanding his motive via his timing.

"When what?" Booth avoided her eyes suspiciously.

Brennan stepped closer, directly into his space. "When did you put in the hold for questioning order?"

Letting out a small confessional hiss, he allowed one of those angelic grins in evident hope that it would soften her up. "Right after I got off the phone with Goodman."

That damn charm smile was not going to work on her this time. "Don't even try it," she snapped and stormed off.

They avoided each other as much as possible. It was made easier by the fact that Brennan didn't mind getting dirty, whereas Booth's fastidiousness kept him well away from the muddy waters. She hastily dressed in a water-proof Tyvek coverall and gumboots and plunged into the water to document the context as much as possible. As she pushed deeper into the murky pond, slogging through waist-deep water, she darted a coy little grin back in Booth's direction. "Aren't you coming in for a swim, Agent Booth? I'm sure there's a suit in the truck that will fit you."

His eyes sparked and an echoing smirk curled one lip. "So you can drown me? No thanks, Dr. Brennan."

"'Such antics do not amount to a man,'" she offered with a shake of her head, and turned back to her work in triumph when he scowled.

The retrieval was slow, hours rolling by with nothing but a damp chill and stale, bitter coffee from the truck's overtaxed coffee urns to sustain her. As night fell, Brennan knelt under floodlights while the components of the body were brought to her piece by piece. Some of the bones were still articulated by sinewy ligaments. She assembled them in order, studying what landmarks she could see so far. What she felt, shivering in the night's cool air, was that something vital was missing.

The bones cried out for completion, restoration.

All that remained of the skull was a sizable chunk of the occipital and one edge of a temporal. The rest were retrieved from the pond in tiny shards, like a shattered vase. They crackled and squeaked when she touched them, vibrating with outrage at the injustice they'd suffered.

"What can you tell me?" Booth asked, finally daring to approach her once the retrieval technicians had declared their job finished.

"Not much. She's a young woman, probably between 18 and 22, approximately 5 foot 3. Race unknown. Delicate features."

"That's all?" Was that sarcasm? What did that tone mean? Was he expecting more based on what she'd given him before: a life story that might include hobbies, place of birth, maybe even a social security number. The first time, he'd been surprised and impressed by what Brennan could tell him. Or maybe he was surprised this time as well. But the second time he'd laughed and dismissed her conclusions as so much fiction. Even if her attention wasn't funneled onto the bones at hand, reading Booth was a daunting challenge.

So she shrugged, unable to perform miracles like correctly reading Booth on demand. Reading bones took experience and patience, but that was something she could do, and there was one other detail she could share. "Tennis player."

He was scoffing again. "How do you get a pretty tennis player out of that yuck?"

"Epiphysis fusion gives age, pelvic bone shape gives sex."

It was Zack who answered, because Brennan was grinding her teeth together and debating whether or not to acknowledge the idiotic question, not to mention the insult to the young woman who hadn't wanted to be murdered and disappeared into the depths of a pond. She knew what Booth was after, the 'junk that will convince a jury.' Finally the professor in her won, always on the lookout for a teaching opportunity. Even if Booth didn't pay attention, Zack was her student, so Brennan leaned forward to swipe away more of the mud that clung to the proximal humerus. "Bursitis in the shoulder. In somebody this young it must be an athletic injury."

"When did she die?"

"Eh…" It was a verbal shrug. The bones didn't know that.

"Ehh?" he sneered. "What does that even mean?"

Brennan scowled at the bones, growing increasingly annoyed with Booth and his contemptuous attitude.

Zack was snapping close-up photos. Again, he sensed Brennan's rising temper and intervened. "It means, let our bug and slime guy take a look."

"No clothing," Professor Brennan remarked to Booth, giving a more definite answer to the question of how long. No clothing suggested this woman had been in the pond for more than a few months. Cotton and linen clothing disintegrated at a somewhat predictable and very rapid rate, often leaving nothing but plastic and metal findings behind, such as rivets, zippers and buttons. A pair of jeans could completely vanish within 60-90 days in the right environment. In a pond, they might have lasted a bit longer. But of course, she should have realized he would not understand the significance.

Because Agent Booth started speculating. "Well, in my line of work, no clothes usually means a sex crime."

This isn't your line of work, she thought irritably. He was barking up the wrong branch, exactly why he needed to listen if he wanted this murder solved. Tartly, she corrected him. "In my line of work, it can also mean the victim favored natural fibers."

Brushing past Booth, Zack dug in an intentional slight. "Your suit, for example, will outlast your body by decades."

The polyester in a cheap business suit would not decay for decades because it was plastic, which made it unpalatable to microorganisms. That's what Zack meant, though Brennan knew Booth was currently wearing an expensive woolen blend. Zack's cryptic comment was an implication of cheapness, bad taste, poor judgement; but Booth's befuddled stare meant he hadn't caught on to the insult yet. Once he did realize it, he would be angry.

Standing, Brennan issued instructions on what evidence she would take custody of, and what she would leave to the FBI's criminalistics lab. It was late (or rather it was early morning), she was tired, and she hoped Agent Booth would back off and go back to the FBI with the plastic sheeting and chicken wire. Before he realized Zack had insulted him.

~Q~

Brennan slipped into her office as soon as she returned to the Jeffersonian. Carefully, she removed Mario's skull and set him on a shelf near her desk. It wasn't ideal, but there would be light and people nearby. "At least you aren't alone any more," she reassured him.

"Who are you talking to?" Angela inquired from the doorway.

Brennan turned sharply away from the skull and sighed. "Just talking to myself, thinking I'm glad to be back."

Angela quirked a brow, glancing from the skull to Brennan, who clearly had no intention of admitting she was talking to an inanimate object. Time to change the topic, and there was another very juicy one beckoning. "So, how did you go from being arrested by Homeland Security to spending all night at a crime scene with Agent Booth?"

A wry twist of her lips and flick of her wrist sent off the simple answer. "Booth."

"Booth?"

"He's the one who had me arrested."

"Oh." After a pause, she suddenly lit up with understanding. Angela's grin was infectious. "Oh... That was inspired. Kind of hot, if you ask me."

"Being arrested is not hot," Brennan protested.

"Having a man go to that much trouble to be with you? Definitely hot."

She shook her head, frustrated and too tired to dance to Angela's music. "He wanted me to check out a body in a pond. Show me the romance there...?"

"He could have settled for Zack, but went out of his way for you. That is the romance."

"I'm the best," Brennan countered impatiently. "And Booth is smart enough to go after the best. That is not romance, it's logic."

They stood squared off, always connected and always at odds. Angela laughed joyfully and folded Brennan in a welcoming hug. "Someday you're going to see the living as well as you see the dead."

"I missed you, too" Brennan confessed with her own brilliant smile.

~Q~

After catching up with her coworkers on projects, paperwork and emails that were left in limbo during her two months in Guatemala, Brennan finally received the cleaned pieces of the skull just as everyone else was preparing to leave for the evening.

Angela lingered at the edge of the table. "Did you get any sleep last night?"

"A couple of hours in my office this morning after I met with Goodman."

"You're going to sleep tonight, though. Right?"

Brennan flicked her gaze up, wearing a smirk. "Yes, Mom. Once I get the skull put back together."

The artist sighed, taking in the shattered bits. It would take Brennan all night, but she knew better than to try and dissuade her. "What do you think happened to her?"

This kind of damage had come deliberately, judging by the completion of the rest of the skeleton. Though she did not routinely speculate, Brennan knew there was only one cause for destruction like this. "Someone doesn't want us to identify her."

Angela squeezed Brennan's shoulder affectionately and then left.

"But I'll put you back together," Brennan assured the anonymous bits of bone.

She spread the pieces out, feeling their texture and heft to help her determine what type of bone. The slightly curved flat bones of the cranium went to the outer edges, and the lightweight, pumice-like facial bones were drawn in closer. Music played softly in the background, the night passed in a blur. Brennan fitted and discarded, searched and fitted and glued, all the night through. Zack had counted the bone shards and recorded their number: 947 pieces of the three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

Brennan saw a face waver over the half-completed right maxilla and orbital. Sorrowful brown eyes, full lips, high cheeks, creamy mocha skin. Familiarity rustled through Brennan's mind, a shock of recognition that was most astonishingly rare. This beautiful face had been erased, her head destroyed. Find me, the bones seemed to sigh. Or maybe it was the Jeffersonian's HVAC system churning into life to circulate the air.

"I know who you are," Brennan realized with surprise. Because she had seen this face before.

When the skull was complete, Brennan set her head on her arms and closed her eyes for a few minutes. Two nights without sleep had finally caught up to her and she didn't wake until Zack set a cup of coffee in front of her two hours later.

~Q~

They began the moment she entered Angela's office. Booth's disapproving smirk caught her as she walked past, noting her tardiness without knowing the cause. Brennan self-consciously brushed her still-damp hair aside, torn between justifying herself and letting him think whatever he pleased about her working hours. If he thought she routinely stumbled into work at 11 am, what did she care?

"Does Booth know how this works," she asked instead.

Angela explained the concept behind the machine she'd dubbed the "Angelator," and at Brennan's nod she powered up the projector.

The bony features had strongly suggested African American heritage, so Brennan had placed the tissue depth markers with that in mind. Angela ran the reconstruction program, her attention split between Brennan's intensity and Booth's skepticism. Booth, she noticed, kept darting small glances at Brennan, as if he were trying to figure her out. But Brennan had eyes only for Angela's work.

A dark face appeared in the projector, floating translucently over the bones that served as its foundation. Brennan frowned, tilting her head. She glanced back at the skull resting on Angela's desk, resisting the lure to go over and touch it while Booth was standing there. In her mind's eye, she recalled the familiar face she had envisioned the night before. No, this face Angela had created wasn't right.

"Run Caucasian values," Brennan instructed.

Booth was still watching her, not the reconstruction. Brennan ignored him, waiting for Angela to finish typing in a revised, standard set of Caucasian measurements. The skin brightened, the nose narrowed, lips shrank. Brennan frowned, studying the face. It looked closer. They might be able to recognize her now, so she asked.

"Does she look familiar to anyone?"

She'd asked the general room, but there was only one person who she expected to answer. She and Angela traded glances. Angela tipped her head in a nod, as if agreeing to an unspoken question. Brennan told her, "Split the difference: mixed race."

"Lenny Kravitz or Vanessa Williams," Angela asked airily, as if it mattered.

"I don't know what that means," Brennan replied absently. She was still tracking the face as Angela altered it yet again.

Angela shrugged, knowing already which option would produce the correct result. She tweaked the variables, and the face shimmered. The features returned almost half way to the African American states, but slightly more on the Vanessa Williams side of things. Slightly more Caucasian than African.

With that face floating in the holographic projector Brennan studied it intensely. Still not quite right. "Reduce tissue depths over the cheeks to the jawline."

Once that was done, the face slimmed down and it was right. This was it. She glanced again at Angela pointedly, expecting Angela's affinity for pop culture to assert itself at any moment. "Does anyone recognize her?"

Zack made a noise, the start of something tickling his memory. But as expected, it was Angela who spoke up, the familiar face striking her on more than one level. She stared at the young woman and felt surprise overtake her, because she realized Brennan expected her to actually know who this was, to know her name. And she did... "Is that who I think it is?"

Zack's memory kicked in also, making him be the one to ask if she was the girl who worked for a senator and went missing. Brennan felt absolved of the guilt from having remembered this face from the news, but not the young woman's name.

The name was provided by a stunned Seeley Booth, who surprised them all by admitting he knew exactly who it was: Cleo Louise Eller…. Her disappearance was one of his unsolved cases. It was his job to find her.

"Congratulations on your success," Hodgins muttered.

Cleo, Brennan thought sadly. We found you. Now came the more difficult task of figuring out who had wanted her hidden.

~Q~

An hour later, Booth glanced from the holographic projection Angela had printed out for him to the photo he had on file. Then he looked at Brennan curiously, noting this was the second time she and Angela had worked together and given him a face that seemed more like a portrait than an approximation. Brennan had started asking if the others recognized Cleo long before anyone else, almost as if she'd known ahead of time whose skull she'd been handling.

"How did you recognize her before she even had her own face?" She had. He was absolutely certain that Brennan had entered Angela's office already knowing who they were going to see.

Brennan shrugged, hoping he wouldn't pursue it. "I recognized the underlying architecture of her features. The rest is just window dressing."

For one moment, he looked as if he'd just witnessed actual magic, and the admiration in his eyes warmed her. Ten minutes later that warmth vanished when Booth informed her he needed his ducks in a row and that was going to mean "cops in the field, squints in the lab." She wasn't one of his ducks. He broke their truce and their agreement, and only Brennan's fast thinking and ruthless blackmailing prevented him from ditching her right there.

She wouldn't abandon Cleo to political maneuvering.

The urgency for justice increased when Hodgins announced that Cleo was depressed and taking anti-nausea medications. And as Brennan had touched the pelvis, a tiny wail pitched in her ears. She checked and discovered those tiny bones they'd recovered, the ones that had been dismissed as frog bones, were in fact fetal bones. Cleo had died while pregnant.

Though she would never approve such baseless speculation, Jack Hodgins indulged gleefully. Cleo's boyfriend worked for a senator, a senator who'd gotten Cleo pregnant and then killed her to avoid a scandal. Furthermore, unless Seeley Booth was the kind of guy 'who knows where his bread is buttered,' he wouldn't be allowed to head up the investigative task force. If Booth was an honest agent, Hodgins declared, he'd be shut out. Cleo wouldn't get justice, no matter what.

Cleo's bones told Brennan the story of her end. Estranged from her parents, pregnant and sick from it, distraught that the man who'd fathered her child wanted nothing to do with her now, she'd grown depressed. Then the attack, stabbed from behind and brutally stabbed several more times while she struggled and succumbed. The scoring on her distal phalanges came from a knife, cutting off her finger tips. Then the final, barbaric act: smashing her face and skull.

It sickened her, to think of the final, terrifying moments; to think of the desperate attempt to survive that Cleo had made. Brennan stood hopelessly at the edge of the lab, caught between despair and the sense that there was more she wanted to do for Cleo. She had the skill to identify Cleo, but not to bring her justice. For that, Cleo needed someone like Booth.

"Wanna get a drink?" Angela stood next to her with a slender brow raised in inquiry. "Non-topical application. Glug, glug, woo-hoo!"

In no mood for levity, Brennan couldn't muster even the will to answer, just a dismal glance that oozed pain.

"Come on, Sweetie." Angela took her by the arm and led her down the side 'alley' toward a bench tucked under the loft.

"What if Booth's right? What if I'm only good with bones, and lousy with people?" He'd said that to her this afternoon, when she'd asked him a question. "Getting information out of live people is a lot different than getting it out of a pile of bones." He wouldn't give her any information, not even the directions to hell after he advised her to take the trip.

"People like you," Angela reassured her.

"I don't care if men like me."

Angela laughed. "Okay, interesting leap from people to men, but I'm sure it means nothing." She suspected Brennan meant one man in particular.

"I hate psychology." Arms crossed, Brennan dispatched that little tease completely. A breath later she heaved a sigh, acknowledging the bitter truth about not just men, but just about everyone. "My most meaningful relationships are with dead people."

What about me? Angela frowned but then reminded herself Brennan was undoubtedly reacting to something that she'd just been told. "Who said that?"

Brennan laughed, sounding of hopeless desolation. "It's true." Hadn't Angela just said it this morning, that someday she might see the living as well as the dead?

They sat together on the bench, and Brennan knew Angela would listen to the proof. "I understand Cleo, and her bones are all I've seen. When she was seven, she broke her wrist—probably falling off her bike—and two weeks later, before the cast was even removed, she got right back on that bike and broke it all over again. And when she was being murdered, she fought back, hard, even though … she was so depressed she could hardly get up in the morning. She didn't welcome death. Cleo wanted to live."

Brennan trembled again, feeling an echo of that kind of desperation, and falling again into the despair of knowing she couldn't help Cleo enough. The bones would whisper into eternity, always pleading to be heard.

"Honey, you ever think that maybe you come off a little distant because you connect too much?"

Didn't Angela connect with them also? Brennan's thoughts tumbled in confusion, wondering if that's what it was: that she saw herself too much in the stories the bones told her.

"I hate psychology. It's a soft science." Psychology had never given her answers, only misunderstanding and misdirection. She couldn't help that their life echoed hers, and it had nothing to do with psychology or ghosts, only bitter experience.

Angela took her arm affectionately. "I know but, people are mostly soft."

"Except for their bones," Brennan mused. The bones told her things, the information she could never seem to get from a living person. Booth had snarled he wasn't one of her skeletons. She wondered what she might discover if she ever had the opportunity to view Booth's bones. But then he would have to be dead, and even before she felt the little shudder rumble under her skin, Brennan knew she did not want Booth to be dead.

"Yeah." Angela was agreeing only because it was both true and completely not the point. "You want some advice?"

Brennan gave her a cynical, guarded look. "Glug, glug, woo-hooh?"

"Offer up a little bit of yourself once in a while. Just, tell somebody something you're not completely certain you want them to know."

Brennan chuckled without mirth. "That's the second time I've received that advice." Booth had said this earlier also, although it had not come out sounding nearly as helpful as Angela's suggestion did. But, maybe there was something to it, something she could use.

Angela grinned a bit of encouragement, please to see Brennan's mood lifting. "Well, you know, I give great advice."

Brennan nodded, her mind already back to the real problem. What she said next was all about Cleo, not Booth or Angela's advice. "I'm going to have to push this to the next level."

Booth didn't trust her, he wouldn't listen. How could she get him to listen to her, to accept her help on Cleo's case?

The pensive turn of her thoughts was unmistakable, forcing Angela to concede there might be more than one worry unsettling her friend tonight. "What's really going on, Brennan?"

She stared down at her fingers, thinking of the work her hands had done last night, all night. What she'd done the night before. Helping Cleo was worth it, but two nights of limited sleeping had her exhausted and running low on energy. Booth's arrogant dismissal was hitting her in a raw spot, and she wanted to be angry at him, tell him she had changed her mind and would renew her previous vow never to work with him again.

"I keep seeing Cleo's face," she said instead. Cleo's face, crying. Cleo's hands clasped over her abdomen, protective in the last moments. That was why she wasn't going to tell Booth off. She would work with him, push and shove and fight him to the ground if she had to.

Angela sat very still, knowing there would be more if she just waited.

"Booth is the only means of helping Cleo get justice. And her parents. I just … I can take their pain away. I can tell them what happened to her, I can maybe tell them who to blame. If I have to put up with Booth, I'll do it."

"What happened between you two last year?"

"It doesn't matter. It was my fault. I'm not good with people."

"Booth told you that, didn't he." Angela's flat statement barely covered the outrage that was starting to build. It might be about time to have a little talk with Agent Studley. "He doesn't know you."

"Booth is good with people."

"Yeah, well, he isn't good with you, okay? Deep down, Booth knows that too, or else he wouldn't have had to work so hard to get you back. All right? Just trust me on this."

"He doesn't even like me, Ange. He's just using me." Brennan felt tears stinging her eyes, knowing she'd earned his contempt last year. It was a rational decision he'd made to hold his nose - literally - and drag the expert 'Bones' to his crime scene. Everything else was forced, a peeling layer of politeness that didn't fully conceal his distaste for her, for what she knew, for who she was.

It shouldn't matter to her that he didn't like her personally. It should not matter that he was using her, that the moment she'd given him what he wanted, he'd reneged on their arrangement. It was logical. So why did it hurt so much...?

"But it's okay. I don't care about that," Brennan decided finally. "I only care about Cleo. She didn't deserve to be erased."

~Q~


Author's Note: I always thought that Booth had really hurt Brennan's feelings during the Pilot episode, yet she insisted on working with him anyway. In this story, it was a passion for justice that drove Brennan to forge the partnership with Booth. Before Booth, she could only connect with the dead victims in front of her, but when he introduced Brennan to Cleo's parents, Booth opened up the world of hurt in the living survivors. This is the beginning of Brennan's journey.

Angela's begins in the next chapter, which is finished and will post on Friday. Someone special will make an appearance...

Information about the degradation of textiles (how long it takes clothing to decay) came from Degradation of Clothing and Other Dress Materials Associated with Buried Bodies of Both Archaeological and Forensic Interest, by R C Janaway. All mistakes are mine.