Author's note: Whoa, where the dickens did all those amazingly cool reviews come from? I'm thrilled beyond words!

These last two chapters have really been a challenge, but I have a confession: I'll always consider Pluto a planet, and I actually wrote the Pluto chapter right after writing Chapter 3. It was the most fun to write out of the entire series, by far, and I hope you'll agree. I'll publish it within 24 hours, promise.

Chapter 8

Dr. Temperance Brennan scowled at the bones on her table. The century and a half on the ocean floor had not been kind to the remains, making her work even more of a challenge. Add in having to sort the bones from at least two dozen bodies...

The manifest from the slave ship had been a great help. With its almost-obscenely casual list of details of its human cargo, carefully sorted by age, sex, height, and degree of blackness, along with presumed familial ties, it became more of a puzzle than a mystery. Each bone could not only be compared with others to match up, but then compared with the manifest. In very short order all had been tentatively identified.

But "tentative" wasn't a word Dr. Brennan cared for. She insisted on personally verifying each individual bone, making certain was associated with the right victim. She'd already swapped out six ribs, one radius, and several wrist bones, making each match as closely as she could.

Special Agent Seeley Booth strode into the lab. "Hey, Bones, come on. Let's grab some dinner. Wong Fu's is waiting."

"Sorry, Booth. Just give me five more minutes."

Booth frowned his concern. "Come on, Bones. These aren't going anywhere. It's not like they have next of kin waiting for identification, or their killer's escaping. They can wait."

Bones looked up at him. "I don't think you quite understand, Booth. I - we - owe them this."

"I know, Bones, but still..."

"Booth, you may not believe this, but in many ways I think I am at least as patriotic as you are. I love this country. And a large part of that is because of my work around the world."

"You're starting to lose me, Bones. You love our country because you spend so much time away from it?"

"Booth, I've been all around the world. I've studied genocides on literally every continent. The vast majority of them were ordered and committed by governments. I've seen so much inhumanity that it has literally sickened me. And in nearly every country I've been in, I've compared it to our own - and been tremendously grateful that I am an American."

Booth sighed sympathetically. "I know what you mean. I've felt the same thing, in a lot of places. It's good to be reminded, every now and then, that we're damned lucky to be here, and to take a bit of pride in the good we, as a nation, have done around the world."

"Exactly. But these people... they're as much a part of our history as defeating the Axis in World War II, or going to the moon, or all the medical miracles we've produced. They're victims of our own form of genocide, of our on systemic exploitation and destruction of the people of Africa. Our nation was literally built on the backs of slaves - of these people. And we owe them a debt of honor to in some way compensate them."

Booth carefully considered the matter. "That's true, but we also have to note that we put an end to it. And a lot of people died to put an end to slavery, and we've spent a lot of time trying to make that right."

"That's what I'm doing here, Booth. These people were stripped of their identity and very humanity, then left to rot at the bottom of the ocean. If I can identify them, and we honor them and give them a proper burial, we can at least give them back that much. It's not much, but it's the best we can do. And it's something that we, as Americans, owe them."

Booth looked at her with new respect. He was used to these kinds of feelings from both the FBI and the Army, but in both cases it was almost never stated out loud - it was one of those things that was simply shared tacitly among the select few serving their country. That sentiment was expressing itself in a completely different way than he was used to seeing, but he recognized it nonetheless. "You know what? I'm not really that hungry. I can wait a little longer."

Bones looked up with an appreciative smile. "No, you're right. Give me another ten minutes, and we can go." She then returned to the skeleton before her. There was something that didn't seem quite right about the left calcaneus. It could be an old injury, or a birth defect, but she wasn't quite certain it belonged with the rest of the bones...