The FBI had vending machines, and I had successfully found them on one of my first trips to the building. Vending machines were about half of the reason I was even still alive, since I used them instead of actually eating balances meals most of the time. I could sustain myself for an entire day on about five dollars, so why not? I was just munching on a granola bar and reflecting on how I should change that, considering that the man stocking the machines had recognized me in seconds and greeted me by name. Clearly I was getting a bit of a reputation for being a vending machine regular.

I preferred the reputation where I had shot someone in the leg.

My phone started to go off in my jeans while I was walking down the hall back towards Booth's office. I had it set on vibrate so that it didn't disturb others or draw attention to me, but I felt it just fine. I moved my granola bar to my non-dominant hand and answered my phone after a brief glance at the caller ID screen.

"You kill it, we ID it, how can I help you?" I greeted sardonically into the speaker.

Brennan hesitated to answer, unsure she'd gotten the right number. I could practically hear her asking aloud who she'd reached, but explaining to herself that she had gotten my voice in response. "What?"

I shook my head and resumed walking. I probably should've reserved that greeting for Hodgins or Angela. "I was being funny," I explained.

"Oh," Brennan answered unconvincingly. I don't think she got why it was funny. "Um, I need you to come back to the lab. Bring Booth, we need him, too."

"What exactly are we doing?" I asked curiously. It wasn't weird that I was wanted back, but needing Booth for something in the Medico-Legal lab was unusual. He hung out because his partners worked there, but he had very few skills with the lab equipment.

"I need you to stab the body," she explained.

I stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and counted to three. No, I was still pretty sure she had said stab the body. I rubbed my forehead and hoped no one saw me looking dumbfounded and asked what my conversation was about.

"… Did the murderer not do enough of that already?" I asked unsurely, hoping that we were, at the very least, talking about the body in our lab that was already dead. Maybe I was high. Was I high? I didn't think Booth was very likely to have laced my water bottle.

Evidently, my inquiry was enough to make Brennan realize that I needed context a lot more than I needed to stab anyone. She hurried to explain after it dawned on her that I was missing a lot of the necessary information. "Hodgins and Zach have created a replica of Carlie Richardson's height and weight and added sensors to measure Newtons."

"Oh," I said, making sure to vary my tone upwards in pitch so she knew I got it that time. Actually, that sounded pretty cool. Continuing back to my FBI friend's office, I swung around to Booth's door and knocked. Then I opened it without waiting. "Okay, see, future reference, you should really lead with that. Hey, hey, Booth, take the phone." I crossed to his desk and offered it to him, hoping that Brennan would lead with the same opening line that she had with me. "Dr. Brennan wants you for something."

He should've questioned why I was so eager for him to take my phone, but he seemed pretty absorbed in something else that he was up to on his desk, chewing the cap of an ink pen between his teeth. He capped the pen and took the phone, holding it between his shoulder and cheek while he leaned back in his chair and stretched.

"Hey, Bones. What's up?" He greeted with a lazy grin. That grin lasted less than five seconds before it fell, to be replaced with an expression of abject horror. "You want me to what?!"

I sat down in the chair opposite him, snickering into my hand. Next time he would think twice about my motives. One leg kicked up over the other and I made myself comfortable, shifting to find a better angle to lean back at, elbow up on the wooden armrest.

Booth dropped his pen and rubbed his brow with a pained frown. "Okay, I'm stabbing the body," he agreed uncomfortably. "You know what, that's great. I'll be there in twenty. But, in the future, you're just going to have to ask me differently, Bones, because you know what? Come over to my place to stab a body – that is just freaky!"

I snorted at his paraphrasing. Booth glared at me over the desk. I put my hands up but had to keep looking down. I wasn't ready to act like I was completely innocent yet.

Through Booth's open office door, we heard a lot of noise coming in from the surrounding agents out in the bullpen at their cubicle desks. There was a public printer and fax machine, chatter for both work causes and for personal mingling, computer sounds, footsteps and pens and rattling coins and pencils in mugs. The FBI wasn't solemn, like a library, the way I had thought it would've been. In fact, the more time I spent there, the more it seemed like a comfortable place to be. A teenager whose parents shadily disappeared, who had a job handling alcohol she wasn't legally old enough to touch, who lived illegally on her own through some craftily-made lies and copied signatures… well, I wasn't exactly at home when I'd been a suspect. Then things came into the open, I was accepted instead of punished, and I became more of a normal fixture. Just like the lab which had seemed way out of my league, I had grown used to it over time. Sometimes I still felt displaced and surreal, but I never felt threatened.

I had grown familiar with the noises, the sounds, the voices of the agents I didn't necessarily know by name but that would recognize me on sight. I'd become a consultant, and a regular one, at that – like Shawn Spencer, who spent a ton of time at the SBPD. My parentage had been kept under wraps, exposed only to Cullen (since my biological father was technically my primary partner in the bureau, that could've gotten messy if someone found out we'd hidden that from the higher-ups), but no one was ever surprised if I was there without an active case.

So that was why it was just plain strange to see the attention being sucked up in the direction of the office I was in while Booth explained to Brennan that he didn't know what Newton-meters were as patiently as possible, and a blonde loudly storming down the hall, red-faced, straightened hair swinging and her face set in a furious scowl.

"Seeley, you son of a bitch!" Parker's mother shouted. Anyone who hadn't already noticed the signs of an impending catfight caught on quickly enough when Rebecca's voice boomed around the bullpen.

Well, I did want to see you, but not when you were this pissed. I'd fight anyone threatening someone else's safety, but Rebecca's fights with Booth were probably the exception. Aside from being reasonably confident she wasn't one of the exes who would stab their pencils through their co-parent's throat, I wanted to stay on good terms with her, and that meant not actively siding against her in personal arguments. If nothing else, then Parker needed to have someone advocating for him; it was entirely possible that both parents would focus on themselves in a passionate rage, which was fine, as long as someone, whether it was a mediator or one of them, eventually brought Parker's needs back to the center of attention.

My concern for Parker was interesting to me. I'd started thinking of him as my little brother months ago, when everything was surreal and strange and Booth was my dad and, what, why would Hodgins voluntarily share his wealth to add a troublemaking kid he barely knew to his insurance plan? I didn't adopt people into my fold easily or rapidly, but Parker had been an easy transition to make – if I transferred that bewilderment to a new brother who was too little to abuse me, who was dependent on my compassion instead of the other way around, then I didn't have to face my daddy issues head-on.

Booth and Brennan were still a class of their own, as was Zach, and Hodgins and Angela had their places, too. No one set was necessarily favored, just trusted in different ways, friendships different, reliant on different things and forged through different contexts. Parker hadn't been a big part of my life or my relationship with Booth. Would I have been so thoughtful to him in this situation if I still only thought of him as my coworker's son? I liked to think so; I knew better than anyone how hostility between parents could convert into hostility towards children.

The FBI agent stood up from his chair quickly, nervousness covering his face like a dark cloud. Rebecca's visit was not a planned one. He passed the phone back to me. Normally I wouldn't have reciprocated the action and let him hastily give it back, but I recognized something important when I saw it.

"Who was that?" Brennan asked when I told her that I was back on the line.

"Um, this ship is sinking quickly," I answered, unwilling to give out too many details. I winced. It was Booth's problem to handle, and while I would figure it out for myself just by being there, Brennan was generally a little less tactful about what she tried to talk to him about. If he wanted her to know about it, then he would tell her. "We'll… probably be more than twenty minutes."

"Oh, I – Rebecca! Wow. You look great." Booth beamed at her unconvincingly, holding his arms out in invitation for a friendly hug.

She stormed into the office. I melted to the side, backing up to the wall and being as physically unobtrusive as possible. The streaks in my hair naturally drew attention to the color, and my height was another factor, yet, regardless of these things, Rebecca didn't so much as glance in my general direction, the fury in her stance propelling her right over to Booth's desk, standing in high heels with a leather purse over her shoulder.

"Yeah, okay, save it," she snapped. Booth hurriedly lowered his arms before he annoyed her any further. "Because I'm gonna need a lot more than compliments from you right now!"

I could hear the worry in her voice when Brennan asked, "What's going on?" I hadn't forgotten I was talking to someone as much as I had gotten distracted by the proceedings and it hadn't yet occurred to me to hang up.

I grimaced and slipped to the left, closer to the doorway and further from the arguing adults.

"Don't worry about it," I whispered, bringing a hand up to cover my mouth. Not even Booth cared enough to look over when I regretfully had to open my mouth and make sound. "It's a – it's a monogamy thing. I need to go."

Although she still didn't have an answer that actually explained anything, Brennan said okay and she hung up her phone first. I hoped that Booth would confide in her later on, since I wasn't sure I wanted to be asked about what a 'monogamy thing' meant in the context of Booth's public FBI office.

"Okay, just… keep it down a little bit, because I'm at work, alright?" Booth's eyes flicked up to the open door Rebecca had come in through, pushing it widely open and leaving it that way. He gestured around his office indicatively.

If anything, Rebecca only raised her voice in response. "You sent agents to investigate Drew?" She accused. I cringed and inched further over towards the door. I had warned him that something like this might have happened, that his precautions might be taken as an offense. He would have to handle the consequences, but they didn't need to be expanded upon where everyone he worked with could have an ear into his private life. "Because you're going to stop that, now!"

"Listen, I'm just being cautious," Booth defended himself. I made another face while I pushed the door shut and guided it the last several inches with extreme caution, ever-so-careful not to let it click too loudly. "What do you really know about this guy, anyway?"

I made another longing stare at the door. I wanted to be on the other side of it. Yet this entire fight was, if I was correct, being caused over a problem with me. Booth never would've looked into Drew if he was having the normal amount of time with his son, time which was being taken away because Rebecca didn't want Parker to be around me. I was at the root of the problem, and I expected that I would have to fix it, but not before Booth acknowledged the repercussions of going behind Rebecca's back.

"I know – I-I-I know that he has a good job," Rebecca said the first thing that came to mind, annoyed that she was the one answering the questions, and astounded that Booth would turn it back around on her when she was the one whose privacy had been violated. "And I know that he fixes stuff around the house when he says he's going to, and I know that Parker is crazy about him, and he's not terrified every time he goes off to work that he's going to get shot!"

I sucked on my tongue. I hadn't considered that… Parker wasn't sheltered. The television didn't hide how dangerous being an agent could be. It exaggerated it, though that didn't exactly help. Parker liked me pretty well, I thought. I knew he thought Booth had hung the moon. How many times had Rebecca had to assure Parker that Booth would be safe, even though she herself had doubts? Was it really fair of me to expect to be permitted to be part of the boy's life when I had the same risk associated with my life? Someone working for the mafia had tried to murder me, for God's sake. If I were Rebecca, then those priorities would've been my first considerations, too.

Booth didn't think of it like I did. Instead of seeing it as Rebecca looking out for Parker, he saw it as a slight against his parenting; keeping the streets safe, but at the expense of his son's concern. Putting his hands on his waist, he turned from Rebecca, looking at the bookshelves with his jaw set firmly.

"And I know that I love him!" Rebecca said to Booth next. An expression of shock flew over her face, but she didn't take it back. Booth's neck snapped around to look at her, face going unreadable. My desire to leave increased. "I love him," Rebecca breathed, not taking it back. "And now everyone at work thinks he's a criminal."

Booth leaned into his desk. "Well, he's been spotted with explosives." I didn't have a word to describe his voice, but I thought there was a touch of jealousy and more than a little bit of resentment.

Rebecca threw her arms up with exasperation, her right hand catching in her hair and flipping blonde strands up. "He is a construction foreman. He does demolition. You must have figured that out when you were doing all your snooping!"

I rubbed my forehead. Booth really hadn't done himself any favors. When he took things out of context like that, it was no wonder his ex looked homicidal. He carried a gun, which sounded like it could be bad if it wasn't included that he was also a field agent. I regularly handled human bones, but that was because of the context in which I handled the bones. I was a scientist. The acceptability was reliant on the surrounding information.

"Okay, well, I have a right to know who's around my son, alright?" Booth rose to the challenge and refused to back down, no matter how badly it was going for him. The closed door definitely helped with the volume getting back out, but I doubted it had soundproofed them completely. "He spends more time with Parker than I do!"

Rebecca's eyebrows went up. "Okay, and you think that I would put Parker in danger?" Her tone went tetchy. I nixed an imaginary line over my throat to Booth in indication. He did not want to go down that road. For that matter, neither did I.

This is getting out of hand.

"I hate to insert myself here," I meekly coughed and held up a hand hesitantly at my eye-level. "I really do, but not only are people biased and subjective, people lie." I swallowed my anxiety about getting in the middle of it and risked making eye contact with Rebecca. Booth was torn between relief at not being the sole focus of her ire and reluctance to include another person in a personal argument. Rebecca looked testy, daring me to try to disagree with her in a discussion I had no place in. "Someone I trusted put me and people I care about in a lot of danger." I made sure she knew Kenton was someone I had put my faith in. I'd been fallible. "Wanting to know who Parker's around is a natural thing. Biologically, it's the imperative to protect the longevity of your offspring's life."

With Brennan, that would've worked and been a welcomed bullet point. With those two, it… was not appreciated by either of them.

"Less objectively," I added, staying very close to the wall. "I think it's the imperative of any attentive parent."

Rebecca turned back to Booth, holding a hand up to point at me, but then realized that I was capable of coherently explaining myself to her face. She turned back, putting her hip out and focusing her weight onto the heel of her left shoe, driving the stiletto into the short carpet. "Thank you for your input, but you are not his guardian," she reminded me with flinty eyes. "And I don't understand why you're even in this office!"

"Because neither of you remembered to close the door and this is a public place, so I figured you'd appreciate your personal issues remaining somewhat private," I snippily replied, not responding well to that scolding, maternal tone. She could be mad at me if she wanted, I knew I had risked that, but she did not have the right to sound like my parent. Even Booth hardly had that right. I was not her child, and I was not close enough to being a child for her to use the excuse of it being an old habit with Parker.

"Let me ask you a question." Booth moved around the side of his desk, taking away the barricade between himself and his ex-girlfriend. "Why is it that you keep all the men in your life such a secret?" He cocked his head tauntingly, and not in a friendly way.

I groaned. "That is not supposed to be the next approach," I said to him.

Rebecca held her hands out, motioning to Booth from his shoulders down. "Because you are always interrogating or intimidating them, and it – it freaks them out!" She exclaimed bitterly.

"Well, I mean, c'mon," he chuckled, finding the reminder funny. Rebecca looked particularly ticked off that he was taking it lightly. I could see that he took the situation seriously, but didn't think very highly of the others that he scared off. I sighed. That right there was a prime example of why I didn't want to bother with the typical teen relationships. Rebecca wasn't a territory to defend. "A lot of them are a little strange. I mean, the guy with the tattoos on his neck?"

What's wrong with tattoos? I wondered, sending Booth a disgruntled look. I liked tattoos. Most of the time they looked really cool, and as long as the only person making the decision to get the tattoos is the person wearing them, then what's wrong with having some ink under your skin?

Rebecca held a hand up to stop Booth before he went any further past a line. Much as I hated disagreeing with Booth on important matters, I had to take Rebecca's side on that one. He had proved to himself with Kenton that not everyone he trusted was exactly golden, so acting as though his judgment was great where Rebecca's was lacking was hypocritical of him. He had no right to intimidate the people she wanted to spend time with away from her. It was immature and disrespectful.

"I don't even have to let you see Parker, okay?" When she reminded him of how their custody arrangement had come to be, Booth went still and his face darkened. I was not eager to see how this would end. "Not legally. That's one of the upsides of not being married."

He took a fast step into her space. "Don't," he growled. Rebecca pretended to look sarcastically surprised, as if she was just realizing, oh, so that's what it takes to get you to discuss this seriously. "I'm a good father," Booth said lowly with conviction. "You know that."

Rebecca shut her mouth with a click, holding her head up to face him rebelliously. Her mutiny didn't seem as stressful or as powerful when she didn't have words to back it up, and the woman seemed to be having a bit of difficulty formulating an effective argument for her case that Booth couldn't refute.

Finally, she looked down to his chest. It was easier for her to speak to his chest than to his eyes. "You're going to stop trying to run things," she stated with finality, both of them quieter and calmer. "I've got things in my life that have nothing to do with you."

Booth reached for her arm, catching her elbow with a loose hand before she could fully turn away. She looked back over her shoulder, biting on her lip. "Look, we are always gonna have something to do with each other, because we share a son."

Rebecca shook her head as if to argue that Parker didn't give Booth the inherent right to influence her life. I agreed that Booth had a right to access Parker, but he needed to go about it in a way that didn't affect Rebecca's personal relationships.

"Drew's a good man." She said, sticking up for her boyfriend and holding her chin up proudly. "And you need to back off, or you're never gonna see Parker again, I swear." I didn't have to know either of them to see the alarm in Booth's face as he took the threat for what it was. I hadn't ever seen him appear more frightened, save for maybe when I'd passed out from blood loss, but that was a memory hazy and blurred at best and I didn't think it was safe to rely on my observations from then. "Back off," Rebecca repeated less forcefully, seeing as it hit home.

Too shaken to stop her again, Booth let her pull her arm out of his grip with hardly any effort and she hoisted her purse further up onto her shoulder, tucking her hair behind her ears and leaving the office. I made a wide step to the side to get out of her way while she opened the door, and she brought it swinging shut after her.

Booth went to his desk and put his hands on the edge, leaning over it with his head down. I stood awkwardly, unsure what to do. Was I supposed to suggest how to make amends? Tell him it was an empty threat, that Rebecca wouldn't actually do that? What if I was supposed to go comfort him by telling him lies, contradicting my own beliefs that he wasn't even a little bit in the wrong?

The one thing about the situation I knew was that I felt incredibly guilty. I hadn't picked up on the trend soon enough, and Booth had taken matters into his own hands, creating a problem between himself and his ex that hadn't even existed and wouldn't have, if I'd been more observant and done something about it. Now he was thinking that Rebecca was keeping Parker from him because she questioned his competence as the boy's father. Why hadn't she just come out and said that I was the problem?! That could be easily worked around.

Of course it would've bothered Booth, but that was nothing compared to being told that she wouldn't let him have a role in his son's life. I couldn't hold my tongue any longer. "Booth-" It's not you or Drew, it's me. She doesn't want Parker around me. Rebecca doesn't think I'm good for Parker.

He held up a hand and effectively shushed me. I was already antsy and uncomfortable about telling him, so I stopped talking and lowered my head, looking at the carpet with a frown.

"Don't," he said tightly. "Okay? Because I don't need to hear an I told you so to know that it blew up."

I looked up again. Did he really think I was feeling smug about what had happened, of all things? Pushing aside the offense I took at the assumption, I held my arms protectively over my stomach. "I wasn't going to say I told you so," I said pointedly, although I had. "I was going to say that you are a good father, and she knows it. She didn't even dare to contest it." I turned my head towards my right shoulder and sighed. There was an agreement that we didn't talk about his father or my foster families. We just didn't handle it well, but… "You're not your father, and that's a damn good reason to forgive yourself for making a mistake." His dad had acted badly to take anger out on his children. Booth made a poor decision in the interest of protecting his son, and that made all the difference.


Booth was in a mood even when we got to the lab, but we didn't have to go far before we found the conglomeration of scientists up on the main platform in the Medico-Legal center. Angela was farthest to the side, leaning against the railing and looking personally offended by the object of everyone else's fascination – a mannequin doll standing on a platform, raised by a beam and supported upright, dressed in modest maternity clothes. The jeans were pinned to stay up and the pant legs fell limply when the legs of the mannequin cut off. The fabric over the midriff was loosely gathered over the body's front.

"Here comes Kyle," Saroyan quipped as she saw us. The pathologist was the first to notice. I slid my card from the lanyard and Booth went up the stairs first. I followed more slowly, going widely around the mannequin, unsettled by how strange it looked. If it was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, and sunglasses, it would've been much less disturbing.

"Ha, ha," Booth sarcastically laughed, making a juvenile face at her. I was sadistically delighted that he was taking offense to something she did for once. "Funny. Don't we have something to stab?"

"This," Angela said in offering, waving at the mannequin with a nauseated look on her face. "I hate my job," she then glumly proclaimed.

I considered the mannequin again now that I was closer. A computer was on a rolling stand with the wheels locked to the left and cords were trailing on the floor to the base of the stand, then disappearing up the hems of the pants and shirt, red and white cords secured with tape to stay out of the way. A thick black cord connected the computer to what looked like a knife cut from actual metal. The handle was slim but had a hilt to prevent accidental hand-slicing, and the tip was a sharp point that arched out to a wider blade.

I looked at the electrodes and then the recreated knife and decided loudly, "I love my job." I made a joking motion like I was rolling up my sleeves to get down to business, but of course I actually left them down. Personal comfort combined with Saroyan's presence ensured that my arms and torso stayed covered.

Hodgins took a look at me where he was programming the computer and chuckled at the enthusiastic look on my face. That would be just what I needed to get a handle on the desires to commit violent actions. I had plenty to be frustrated about, and some things – like Parker and Rebecca – were too personal to people other than myself to share with Amy, my sixteen-year-old therapist.

"Yeah, yeah, calm down, Xena," he snorted. "You're looking a bit too excited there."

Zach stood by the mannequin like a demonstrator. "From the depth of the stab wounds, we can tell the approximate force required in Newton meters to inflict the marks we see on the bones." He indicated the general area where most of the stabs on Carlie's body were located, above her womb but very heavily centered towards the front of her body.

"So we have to measure the amount of force generated when we stab to give us the size, weight, and body type of the assailant." Brennan explained to Booth, who still looked more miffed and slighted than excited. I didn't even really need the explanation on how it pertained to the case; I would happily take the knife to the dummy for no reason other than that I had anger to spare and was getting sick of acting like I wasn't pissed at the world.

Booth eyed it suspiciously. "You had to dress her up?"

"The clothes she wore figure into the resistance to the blows," Zach defended against Booth's tone, looking again at the mannequin and seeing no real problems with how it looked.

Hodgins picked up the knife by the handle and tipped it up, so the hilt slid down to his hand. He turned it over, looked at it with fondness, and unwound the cord underneath it, dropping it down to the floor and giving it more slack as he carried the knife to Brennan, who stepped forward to take it from him, both of them careful not to touch the sharp cutting side.

"The knife is consistent with the one that caused the wounds." Brennan held it up after taking it from Hodgins, and the entomologist went to take her place between Saroyan and Booth. She touched the tip of her index finger lightly to the top of the knife, a light from the skylights reflecting brightly on the smooth side. "We fitted it with an instrumental blade that will give us a digital readout of the Newton meters of each stab."

"It's a dual-mass drop system." Zach said, expecting that to have a great meaning.

Saroyan held up a hand and made the annoying talking motion. "All I hear is blah, blah, blah."

"This is so awesome," I grinned, keeping my eyes on the knife eagerly. I also kind of wanted to see Zach stab the mannequin. In the entire time I'd known him, I didn't think he'd ever said anything that inclined himself even to hypothetical violence.

Hodgins looked at the vaguely disgusted stare Booth was sending the props, alternating between the knife and the dummy. "Cliff Notes version," he summarized, slapping Booth on the back, "We all stab, one of us is the killer."

"Thank you," Booth replied grimly, although going by his face, the sincerity of that was in question.

"Sort of like a real creepy party game," Angela commented, her lack of appreciation for this rare opportunity very clear.

Brennan turned to stand sideways, her left side to the mannequin and her right to the assembly line we made. Zach moved out from behind the dummy and came to stand on my other side, putting me between himself and Booth, and then held his hands behind his back. The anthropologist held the blade up in her dominant right hand.

"The violence of the attack shows rage, so everyone should stab as hard as they can," she advised, testing the weight of the replicated murder weapon by making overhanded motions, the kind of attack that felt most natural to her.

Booth just motioned for her to get on with it, he and Angela looking mutually pained by the sight they were about to bear witness to, both looking as though they'd rather be literally anywhere else but the lab while this was going on. Brennan nodded, shifted around to the body, surveyed it contemplatively, and went to work.

Brennan started stabbing suddenly. When the knife tore through the clothes and made the first impact, driving the blade through whatever it was shop dummies were made of, the ripping noise made Angela squeak quietly. Hodgins sent her a sympathetic glance, but was too amused for it to have the right affect, and she glared at him. I gathered from the woman's aim that it wasn't the location of stabbing that mattered, but the force that the device could measure. Her face was fixed with anger. It could've been at any number of people, and the first person I thought of would've been her new boss. The way she stabbed, though, with a contemptuous sneer on her face, brought another person entirely to mind – McVicar, whom she'd never gotten to have closure from, as he was murdered before his trial.

I wondered who I'd most like to stab. There were a lot of people, to be sure. McVicar, of course – he had killed Rose and Nick Kirkland, the couple that took me in for a brief time. He'd possibly threatened Aaron. I also knew he terrified Russ, whom I now considered a friend, and had slaughtered my roommate and mentor's mother, so there were plenty of reasons to hate the bastard.

Jamie Kenton was a second option. It would've been nothing less than what he deserved, after stabbing me with full intentions of first-degree murder; as far as I knew, he was in a super-max security, protected from the mafia family he had admitted to working for, but with no chance of ever getting out. Epps was another person who came to mind. Everything about him repelled me, but rather than dig up that stone, I'd have preferred to just let it lie. Epps was someone from the past, and I shouldn't have to ever deal with him again. Rebecca and Saroyan were both definitely components of my stress, but despite my aggressive disposition, I truly had no desire to harm either of them beyond some sharp words.

Brennan wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist as she finished, rolled her shoulders, smiled with satisfaction, and held out the knife towards the watching spectators. I stuck my hand up in the air and waved it excitedly. Hodgins rolled up his sleeves and went for it first. I still forgot sometimes that I was allowed to act like an adult employee rather than a student.

Hodgins stabbed meanly, but he was enjoying it. Brennan looked like she'd been imagining sinking the blade into an actual person, but Hodgins had a light in his eyes and a grin on his face. He struck the mannequin over and over again, bringing his arm down as heavily as he could.

Saroyan reluctantly went next. In spite of her grudging compliance, she had a hell of an arm, and went right for the area where the heart would've been. She rolled her eyes and stared at the wall past the dummy's shoulder while she stabbed hard. Instead of making swinging motions, she thrusted it in and out, barely taking the take to remove the blade in its entirety before plunging it back in.

"This better work!" She furiously exclaimed, refusing to watch what she was doing.

I got to go next. It wasn't foreign to hold knives, especially not when I had spent a lot of time at the lab working out murder weapons with Zach and Brennan in the past. I still remembered stabbing a surgeon's tools into clay blocks to take molds for comparison purposes. Most of them were just different, and the knives I held most frequently were of the pocket or kitchen variety, whereas this one may have had the shape of a kitchen knife's blade, but the hilt and handle were different.

When throwing a Frisbee, the flick of the wrist was vital. When stabbing someone – which I had done once, though I didn't like to remember the events that surrounded it – it wasn't a conscious decision to rotate my wrist. It just kind of happened with or without intentional thought. Knife or not, my body recognized that I was hitting someone, and angled my wrist so my fist would have hit fairly flatly on their body if my hand made it all the way. The knife went in at a downwards angle with every hit, but I plunged the knife viciously into the chest of the raised body in a place that would've been fatal after just one stab.

Hodgins cheered me on. "Yeah, get your revenge, Xena!" He was the one person at the lab who sometimes acted like me being stabbed still greatly bothered him. I knew Booth was frustrated whenever he had to recall it, but he tried not to talk about it, just like we didn't talk about my biological mother or his abusive father. As for me, I tried to be impassive. No matter what I felt, it had happened. I appreciated that Hodgins cared enough to still be upset by it and have a grudge against Kenton, but personally, I was stabbing no one in particular.

I was stabbing the universe. What had I ever done to it? So I wasn't the nicest person. I accepted that. I never really tried to be. What mattered to me was that I was loyal to the end for the people I did care about. I'd stayed with Booth for his sake even when I wanted to be anywhere else when a friendly fire incident was exposed after a cover up. I went hiking around in the New Mexican deserts for hours several days in a row just because Angela had wanted help. If anyone ever tried to attack Zach or Hodgins, God help them. I had never killed anyone and I'd never done harm without a very good reason, so I thought I was meeting the requirements for being an okay-ish person.

It was everything else that pissed me off. My mother gave me up and didn't bother to tell my father I existed. It was better when I thought neither of them would've had anything to do with me. It meant that I was just another case of irresponsible sex or failed contraceptives. With the revelation that she had kept me a secret, I felt like I'd had a childhood stolen from me. This woman who was either too dumb or too irresponsible to keep herself from getting pregnant had not only failed to abort, but then had given her baby up to a string of families that would abuse her and condition her into fear and pain and secrecy, when, if she'd shared with her boyfriend, then I might've not been forced through hell after doing nothing to deserve it.

I didn't know what really would've happened. Booth had been in high school; his father was more likely to get custody than he was as a minor, and for all I knew that had been before his grandfather stepped in and kicked his dad out, so maybe I would've been mistreated either way, but at least I would've had family members that were trustworthy. I could've known my father, grown up with my uncle, and been taken under my great-grandfather's protection sooner or later, and instead I got to grow up feeling unwanted and unloved and unsafe.

I had had to teach my little brother that he couldn't touch me without making sure I saw him moving to do so. My father had had to grab my hands one day and hold my arms up so I didn't punch him. I considered Hodgins and Zach to be some of the best friends anyone could have ever asked for and it took an adrenaline rush and a sense of scarce safety just to touch their hands. How was I supposed to hug someone when I wasn't injured? How was I supposed to have a normal relationship with someone if I fell in love – how was I going to kiss or hug or hold hands or have sex when I didn't like it when a four-year-old touched my leg?

She had never hit me, but it was easy to blame her for everything I'd suffered, and the luxuries that teenagers got to take for granted that I had been deprived of.

I stopped stabbing just as quickly as I'd started as my mind blanked out. Her. I'd started just for the hell of it but it became personal and private very rapidly. It was impossible for anyone else to know what I'd been thinking, but I swallowed and was antsy to move on.

Add my mother to the list, then.

"Your turn, Zach!" I declared, holding both hands up, knife still in one of them.

Zach's turn was uneventful, but probably the funniest. He understood the mechanics and what he was supposed to do, but when the time came, he looked at the spear-like end of the knife, looked at the mannequin, raised his arm with purpose, and then poked the dummy passively in the chest with a bemused frown. The knife hardly even penetrated the mannequin.

Booth raised his eyebrows, Saroyan hid a smile behind her hand, and Hodgins and I both shared an exasperated but fond grin behind Zach's back.

The FBI agent got the job over with quickly, jabbing the mannequin while looking to his right with a very annoyed face on. He tapped his foot while he did it half a dozen times, enough for the instrument to really get an accurate measurement of his strength, and then shoved it out to whoever was left to go next. When Angela stepped up and took the blade like it was infected with something insidious, Booth wiped his hands on his slacks and huffed.

"That was weird," he complained.

"I feel so much better about everything in life," I lied, plastering on a serene grin and looking at Booth cheerfully.

Angela held her hand weirdly, looking away and closing her eyes while she stabbed at the prop, groaning the first time she heard the tearing material. She shuddered while she went at it, like someone would sweep at a spider up in the corner of the ceiling. Hodgins rescued her from herself while laughing.

"Okay, okay," he said, relieving her of her pain. The artist couldn't get the knife away from her fast enough and was relieved to turn it over to the entomologist and get back to Brennan's side.

Hodgins coiled up the black extension cord between the computer and the knife, then put them both on the tray shelf underneath the top that the computer rested on. "Results?" Booth asked impatiently. The exercise had not been as cathartic for him as it should have been.

Zach went to go read the results while Hodgins started to take care of the cords on the mannequin, which now looked like a Halloween decoration with all the rips in the clothes and holes in the torso. The entomologist started to detach the electrodes that had been taped on with white medical tape and gathered them up in his hands, draping the cords over each other.

"The force used to make the injuries on the bones was twenty-four Newton meters." Zach started telling the computer to compute the data and hit the enter key. The actual results generated much faster than any of the stabbing activities had been. "And the winner is, with twenty-four Newton meters…" Zach paused, distracted by Hodgins' mocking air drumroll, but was pushed back on topic by Booth's glare. "Angela."

Angela opened her eyes and looked around. "What?"

"Congratulations," Hodgins said with way too much delight, considering that Angela had been the most freaked out about the experiment.

Still finding it hard to believe, she looked at Brennan for verification. "Really?!"

Brennan shrugged. "Height and weight?" She asked for the record.

"Oh, God." Angela covered her eyes. "Uh… five eight." She put her hands on her hips and looked away, lowering her head as her voice trailed off. "One hundred and… mm…" she got incomprehensible.

"What?" Brennan asked for clarification while Hodgins smirked at the artist's discomfort.

"One thirty-five," the woman snapped, embarrassed. She caught sight of Hodgins' expression and scowled at him. "It's all muscle," she swore. I just blinked. She did realize that was a perfectly normal weight for her sex and height, didn't she?

"Doesn't fit Kyle," I told Saroyan in particular while biting the inside of my cheek to keep from celebrating. The more evidence that proved her wrong, the better.

Brennan opened up a folder and checked the information on the health records. "Karen Tyler is five seven and one hundred thirty-two pounds." Or, at least, she had been last time anyone had officially checked. The one inch and three pounds wasn't going to have a very dramatic effect on how her strength compared to Angela's.

"So Kyle's girlfriend kills Carlie, so they can be together," Booth put together, drawing off of the photograph that Carlie's parents had supplied us with. Karen had known Kyle Richardson beforehand, and lying about knowing him while his wife was around certainly pointed a finger in that direction.

I envisioned the bawling blonde over the kitchen sink committing cold blooded murder, but couldn't really see it. She looked too torn apart just from getting a hit from her boyfriend. Sure, that would probably shake most people, myself included, but a bloody lip was nothing compared to the blood and gore of stabbing someone as many times as Carlie's killer had.

I was reluctant to think that Karen had been the vicious and bloodthirsty killer that we'd figured the bad guy would be, but I couldn't argue with proof. I just had to consider the variables. "Makes as much sense as anything," I reasoned slowly, looking over at Angela sympathetically as I prompted everyone to recall her moment of weakness. "Maybe most of the stabbing was less in fury and more in panic – Angela looked pretty freaked."

Angela just gave me a duh, of course I was look in response and looked up at the ceiling. She was probably telling me silently that just because I had appeared to enjoy it didn't mean that I represented the normal demographic, and she considered herself the most normal squint anyway.

"Well, then why did Kyle run?" She debated back.

Saroyan surprised all of us by speaking up. She'd been so quiet that at least half of us had almost forgotten that she was there, busy off in her head considering the facts presented in front of her. "Maybe he didn't," she said suddenly, getting everyone to look at her. I bit my tongue, not to prevent myself from saying anything, but out of confusion. She couldn't argue with the fact that Kyle had gone in the wind. "It sounds nuts, but if she's the killer, maybe Karen got rid of him, too, to keep him from talking."

Angela frowned with worry for someone she didn't even know, but I kept watching Saroyan. I saw that she was sincere and I nodded slowly to her. She didn't see the sign of my approval and I didn't see a reason why it was important that she did. She still had a ways to go – Kyle wasn't the only person she'd wronged in this lab.


Booth paced by the exam table. "Okay, so you're sure there's no way Richardson could have made these wounds?"

Brennan shook her head, sticking firmly to the theory supported by all of the evidence, both from the in-depth analyses of the bones and the experiment that we had all just played parts in. "With his strength, the blows would have sliced deeper into the bone."

Hodgins picked up a piece of rib bone and held it up in front of me, looking at my face over the broken end. "Well, these seem to go right through," he said, widening his eyes as he turned the break towards his face to look at the uneven cut.

"Well, those were delivered after she was on the ground," Brennan explained, leaning over the backlit table and demonstrating a hard downward motion with her arm. Gravity and the lack of a place to twist away to would have helped the knife to sink further and deeper into the victim.

"Trust me, that helps," I mumbled, staring at the bone Hodgins was holding without realizing that my vision was losing focus, staring more into space. My eyes dulled and my voice dropped.

I remembered lying on my back, arm burning, body sore, mind racing and head aching, scalp stinging from my hair being pulled, back popped from being sat on and attacked. My hair tangled and in my face, sweat sticking my fringe to my forehead, heavy weight on my hips and the initial pause between he's going to stab me and holy hell that hurts, that split-second where my nervous system didn't quite seem to know what to do with the newest sensation of a knife making a home in my abdomen.

Hodgins stilled, lowering the bone he held. He wasn't the only one whose mood was killed. Brennan leaned on the edge of the table, hands against the silver steel edge, and looking down with her lips tightly pressed. The FBI agent stopped pacing, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes, a look of pain on his face as he mouthed something. I looked back to Hodgins, apologetic, wishing I'd just kept my mouth shut. I had to stop saying things to upset them. If I'm going to be sad about something that happened to me months ago, I should keep it to myself; it had been long enough. They should be able to live and talk and go about their jobs without being reminded of it just because I couldn't forget it.

Hodgins set down the bone on the table, dusted off his glove, and awkwardly started to offer some form of concern. "Hey, are you okay to hear this?" He asked with a concerned and upset frown, putting one hand on his hip and the other gesturing to the door as if inviting me to go somewhere with him. "Because if it's too much-"

"I'm fine," I interrupted swiftly, well aware that I didn't sound fine. I'd been hired to do a job and I needed to earn my keep. It was bad enough that I was basically freeloading off of Brennan and Hodgins, leeching off of her rent and utilities and taking up money from Hodgins through prescriptions and physical therapy and phone bills.

How had I gone from being in poverty and having no one to being the ghetto version of Little Orphan Annie, just without the curly red hair? A bestselling novelist and an heir to a successful company were paying my living expenses. I didn't have a Manhattan or San Francisco skyline out my bedroom window, but I lived very comfortably, and I hardly paid anything out of pocket. Not that I had all that much in my pocket to pay with until very recently, but still…

In reality, I definitely wasn't fine. I was bitter. I was angry. The exercise in venting anger hadn't been venting, it'd been a therapy session, and now my mental Freud was telling me that I hated my biological mother, this woman I'd never met, and I was thinking about her because I was ticked at Parker's mother, Rebecca, another important woman in Booth's life who didn't want me, didn't care about me, and didn't see what I was worth. I had to convince myself I was worth something every day. Now I had a permanent reminder on my body, like a tattoo, a scar that I had gotten not through being useless or a smartmouth, but because I had been making a difference, solving murders and helping families. I had an injury that was never going to heal, an irreparable flaw that would always remind me of one of the most traumatizing incidents in my entire life, because I was trying to be a good person. And all Rebecca could do was hurt Booth because she didn't trust me with Parker and wouldn't talk about it with Booth or I like an adult.

I was the one most eager to get on with it and pretend I hadn't said anything, but Hodgins seemed unwilling to just flip the switch and let me continue to stay in an environment that clearly wasn't doing much for my mental state. Booth, however, was good at knowing when some things needed to not be addressed, saved for a later date. Of course he knew. He hadn't been stabbed by a dirty FBI agent, but he'd been tormented in the Middle East. No matter how compassionately he was asked, he wasn't going to start talking about that just because he was having a bad day.

"So Karen does the killing because she knows everyone will be suspecting Kyle," he theorized productively, brusquely changing the subject back to what it was supposed to be, coming up to the table on the other side.

Brennan followed his lead after a last uncertain glance she shared with Hodgins. I pretended not to feel either of them looking at me. "I'd prefer not to make any more assumptions," she told Booth correctively.

"Oh," he said, snorting.

Hodgins skeptically followed everyone else's direction. "There are particles in the knife marks," he reported his findings, leaning over the edge and holding his hand up, fist wrapped around an invisible knife. "When she was on the ground, the knife passed through the body and picked up sediments from the dirt." He stabbed down and lifted his arm again. "The next stab embedded that into the bone." He made a downwards motion again, then aborted the mimicked stab and lifted a rib bone with a big chip out of the top. "If I can get enough information from these particulates, I might be able to locate the site of the murder," he said optimistically.

Saroyan entered the bone room waving a sheet of paper. It made the flapping sound that never failed to make me want to send it through a shredder. "DNA results came back – it was Kyle under her nails."

"So he was there, too," Booth drew from that, pointing at her to elaborate.

I had no real reason to think that she wasn't going to correct him, but I was doing it first. I have to stay in the game, I told myself. I have to show I'm important to the cases. "Not necessary. He had scratches on his arm, right? Epithelial cells can stay under the nails for a while." I held up my right hand and turned it so my palm was towards my face, showing Booth my fingernails. "That's why the hospital tried that when we were attacked in New Orleans." We referred to Brennan and I, not Booth and I, but he knew that already.

"And he already admitted that he'd fought with her previously in the day," Brennan added, moving for a dismissal of those DNA results to the current likely scenario.

Saroyan coughed to get the attention back on her so she could finish what she'd come in to say. She flapped the paper again. "Fortunately, there was also the skin of somebody else." Booth looked at her as if asking why she didn't come out and say it. The responding stare almost made me snicker – he was the one who had interrupted her to pin Kyle at the crime scene. "Tests showed it was a woman."

Booth snapped his fingers. "Karen Tyler," he presumed, smiling as it came together.

Saroyan nodded her agreement. She'd come to the same conclusion. At least she'd moved on from Richardson. "We should get her DNA drawn as soon as possible," she advised. I held my chin a little higher and looked over to Brennan, but the anthropologist wasn't watching me. She was listening to Booth and Saroyan. I was just more satisfied that Saroyan was seeking out a case that fit physical evidence instead of the other way around.

"Smart," Booth complimented, smirking at her. I rolled my eyes and wished Angela had been wrong about their history. It was just weird to see him flirt. That's one normal thing about my relationship with my parents, at least… That wasn't as uplifting as I had thought it might be. "Let's go, Bones, Mini."

"I'm still not miniature. You can't keep calling me that…"


Brennan and Booth took care of the interrogation of Karen Tyler when they brought her in. I could have been involved, but she was already watery-eyed and stuttering, so she wasn't the kind of interviewee I preferred. I liked the ones that were typically mean so that I could hit their buttons without the waterworks starting. She lawyered up before she was even in the building, and after about an hour of waiting, we had a Harvard graduate named Michael Jules toting around a briefcase and counseling her for a short time independently.

Sure enough, when I listened on the other side of the one-way mirror, her lip was wobbling before she was even accused of anything. Booth just asked a question about what she was doing with Carlie and Karen started trembling.

"I-I didn't do it, I swear, I would never hurt her," she promised, rambling. Her assurances meant very little in the investigation, but I wasn't sure I was sold.

"Hmm." Booth looked at her cynically. "And the other day, you said you and Kyle didn't know each other until after Carlie disappeared." He pulled out the chair directly across from the blonde woman, but Brennan didn't want to sit down. She stayed to the side of the room, watching the proceedings with her bag over her shoulder.

"Because we both knew what everyone would think!" Karen tried to justify.

Jules looked down at the table and sighed softly. "Karen, please don't say anything," he advised wearily.

Booth hummed again and gestured to the Harvard guy. "Even your lawyer thinks you did it," he told Karen with a snort. Jules held his tongue, but his aggravation at the comment made him look up to the ceiling in a desperate attempt not to roll his eyes.

I looked down at my phone while Karen argued over whose advice to take: her lawyer's, or Booth's, who advised that full cooperation made things much smoother. I looked over the draft of a text message and reread it.

To: Rebecca Stinson

Can we meet sometime? Preferably without Parker, definitely without Booth?

My thumb hovered over the 'send' button. Just one press and I'd be being an adult. I didn't want to have that meeting any more than Rebecca probably did… but I owed it to Booth. He'd been so good to me and all he'd asked in return was that I not completely disappear off the grid. Now, because he was trying to look out for me, his ex was threatening to stop him from seeing his son. There was more to it, but the problem wouldn't even exist if I could just get through to Rebecca, convince her to concede to revert back to the old custody arrangement.

Although it probably wasn't the best time to be handling stressful personal problems while simultaneously trying to pay attention to an interrogation, I touched the 'send' button and watched the text disappear from the box, reappearing in a conversation bubble a second later.

Like most people we interviewed, Karen might as well have hired her lawyer for no reason, since she went against Jules' advisement. "Kyle thought we should separate and meet up in a few months, so, you know, it wouldn't look so bad."

"Well, that didn't work out now, did it?" Booth smiled. Karen frowned and opened her mouth to object.

Brennan stepped up to the side of the table, holding up a Q-tip to take a DNA swab, and cut the woman off before she could object to Booth. "Open your mouth," she instructed coolly, as distanced from Karen as she could be while still being within reach to get the sample.

Karen bit the inside of her cheek, eyed the buccal swab kit Brennan was holding, and turned her head away from the anthropologist. "Do I really have to do this?" She asked her lawyer.

"They have a warrant," he answered reluctantly, unable to stop the two associates from getting their sample.

"When you were sleeping with Kyle, didn't it matter to you that you were destroying a family?" Brennan asked, quietly angry.

"We were in love," Karen replied defensively, glaring at the anthropologist while she unhappily crossed her arms and dropped her jaw, opening her mouth wide. Brennan leaned down over the table and pressed the cotton tip into the woman's mouth, swabbing the inside of her cheek.

Karen and I both winced when Brennan's swabbing got unnecessarily aggressive. "Ouch!" Karen yelled, pulling back.

"Oops," Brennan responded apologetically. Irritated, Jules looked at Booth, asking him with his eyes if the agent really condoned that. Brennan sounded like she was being about as truthful as a pathological liar. "Sorry, I didn't realize you were in love. Now it's a beautiful story."

I checked my phone while snickering at Brennan. There was no responding answer from Rebecca. I told myself that it didn't necessarily mean anything. It hadn't been very long since I'd sent my message to her; she might not have seen it yet.

"Kyle was going to tell her," Karen huffily retorted at Brennan, less tearful and more indignant now that she'd been attacked with a Q-tip. Brennan dropped the Q-tip in to a sterile, marked vial and screwed the top on for Saroyan. "We were going to be honest."

Booth sardonically added, "Because, you know, you do that so well."

Flustered, Karen looked from Brennan to Booth, unable to combat both of them coming after her for her actions at the same time. "I would never hurt her," she reiterated, sounding like a broken record. She swallowed. "And neither would Kyle!"

"Kyle. Right. The love of your life, who no one has seen for two days." Brennan held Karen in contempt and looked over to Booth. "Can you see why I'm leery of relationships?" She asked him agitatedly, holding the vial with the DNA sample in a worryingly tight fist.

That was one interrogation that I was actually glad that I had stayed out of. I wasn't sure I'd want to be on Brennan's bad side by saying something wrong, lest I got jabbed in the mouth, too.


When Hodgins found something out about a case, he got excited. When he found something too exciting for him to text, he called on the phone, and sometimes he talked so quickly he needed to be reminded to slow down and to use laymen's terms. When he called, talking quickly with long entomological words and sentences hard to distinguish from each other, Brennan, Booth, and I all went up to Angela's office to meet the two of them. Some of his excitement transferred to us, so we hurried to find out what he must've found.

"We hit pay dirt!" He and Angela were at a big computer monitor with a large map of New Jersey on the screen. "Actually, we hit silt containing the feces of the gypsy moth, some quartz, and mica. That and the zinc levels in the dinoflagellates from the freshwater, as well as the pinaceae pollen…" Booth started nodding his head impatiently, waiting for Hodgins to get through the scientific terms and make his point. "… Led us to a patch of pitch pines outside of Gloucester City, New Jersey."

Angela emphasized a yellow dot on the map, a very small circle. Half was over green land, and half was over a small body of water that looked like it represented a stream. "She was killed right here."

Brennan looked at Booth in question, then to Angela again for answers. "Then when did they move her to the bay?"

"They didn't," she said, pointing out the line of water and zooming in. The line moved on. "They left her in New Jersey in the Rancocas Creek." The creek ran towards a larger water body that eventually met with the nearby bay where she'd been found. "She made it to the bay on her own."

"What, did she take the shuttle?" Booth asked sarcastically.

"It's getting all Walking Dead in here," I warned, wiggling my eyebrows.

"Basically," Angela smiled. "Two days after Carlie disappeared, there were thunderstorms in central New Jersey. Heavy, heavy rains. The body must have been flushed down the Rancocas and into the Delaware River." The yellow dot that illustrated the crime scene where she was killed went down the thin stream, joined the broader river representation, and followed downstream. "Then, she slowly made her way down the Delaware and into the bay."

"The movement and the battering on the rocks loosened her weight, so she floated to the surface and washed ashore," Brennan explained to Booth, which gave an answer to the question of how the body had stayed hidden for so long.

Booth smirked at the results showed on Angela's computer. "I'm pretty sure Karen didn't see that coming."


The first time we'd investigated water, I'd gotten to suit up and go diving. This time, the FBI was a little more impatient, and because we'd had to travel a short way to get to the site, Booth had enlisted FBI teams who were closer to the location to collect samples. I was the first to admit that I was no entomologist or botanist, and Hodgins' credentials were insanely out of my league, but he seemed to enjoy having me around to tutor, so I stayed by his lab equipment, set up on a collapsible table. The equipment was sparser than it would be once we were back at the lab, and several of the pieces were cheaper or older versions than the ones he had in the Jeffersonian.

I sealed the vial on some water after Hodgins took a sample for observation on a microscope, put it in an airtight evidence bag, and marked it with a Sharpie while the scientist looked at it through the lenses. Booth walked between people, eager to leave. For someone who claimed to dislike the lab, he wasn't too happy outside of it, either. Everything about this case was bothering him in one way or another. If he wasn't beating himself up for letting Richardson walk from charges when the victim originally went missing, then he was feeling guilty about assigning the blame to someone who may not be responsible. If neither of those were the issue, then he felt bad that Carlie's parents had no answers while he waited around for his consultants to give him results.

"Are you sure this is it?" Booth asked, pacing back to us.

Hodgins looked up from his lenses but kept a hand on a magnification dial to the right of the microscope. "Zinc, mica-"

"We got the list the first time around," I interrupted, seeing the expression on Booth's face and recognizing it. It was rarely directed towards me, but I made a point of watching other people's behavior, and Booth made that face fairly often at the lab when he got annoyed by things going over his head. I didn't pity Booth, exactly, but I did feel bad for him, and didn't think he needed any extra stress. As if the personal feelings tied to the murder case weren't enough, he had Rebecca threatening to separate him from his son.

I have seriously got to do something about that, and soon, too.

Hodgins pouted up at me from his foldable chair and slumped forwards, shoulders falling. "You're supposed to be the fun one, Princess," he complained.

My eyes rolled on habit. I halfheartedly protested, "Don't call me Princess."

I had never appreciated the sentiment no matter who it came from, so it surprised me that I wasn't irritated when it came from Hodgins. I supposed that it had a great deal to do with how it was an inside joke. He called me a princess after Xena because of positive memories that had been true to my character, not after some Disney movie or a stereotype. I had a definite soft spot for everyone on the team, though Hodgins' was the one that surprised me the most, aside from Booth's. Obviously I had some weird feelings for Booth. Hostility had given way to concern and empathy, which had deepened into some… something, which I didn't have a word for but was more than I'd felt for anyone else before. Hodgins, though – Hodgins had played parts in the many incidents in which the team rescued me from bad situations, but especially since I hadn't spent very much time one-on-one with him before being stabbed, it shocked me to stop and consider how close I felt to him.

He looked up at Booth with his eyes narrowed. The sun wasn't directly behind Booth, but it was angled in such a way that there was a glare being sent into Hodgins' and my face. "In short, this is definitely the right place." He put his hands on his hips and looked past Booth to the small, dirty beach. "And it's beautiful," he admired.

Rancocas Creek was… well, a creek, obviously, so it wasn't the prettiest place in the world. Humans had left trash, rain had left mud that clung to shoes and made icky squelching noises, and the water was colored some mix of dirty dark blue and pale green from algae and moss. Still, we were far enough from civilization for the place to be tranquil. There weren't buildings, there wasn't a ton of loud noise, and there wouldn't be cars if it weren't for it becoming our crime scene. It would be a nice place to go fishing or camping.

Booth looked down at Hodgins and turned his nose up at the sentiment. "Yeah, because, you know, that's important for a murder." I rolled my eyes again. I wasn't exactly keen on the idea of being murdered, but it had almost happened before, and I'd rather be almost-murdered at the beach than in an old, dark warehouse. Having been in the latter position, I felt qualified to comment on the desirability of murder sites.

"Agent Booth!" Hodgins, Booth, and I all looked to see who it was. The male voice wasn't one any of us recognized, and it turned out to belong to one of Booth's agents, not our squints. He had on a windbreaker and FBI baseball cap. The sleeves were too big for his arms and made him look even thinner. He was knelt down with gloves over his hands, brushing at the ground. "Over here!"

The three of us, as well as Brennan, who had been nearby enough to hear the summons, went to investigate. The younger FBI agent moved out of the way so that we could check it out. I got a closer look at him. Freckles dusted his face, his eyes were a sort of pale green, and his strawberry-blond hair stuck out from under his hat. He had to be eight to ten years older than me, yet he still moved out of the way when I was the first one to jog over. It still boggled my mind – I was so sorely out of place, yet still given the respect of any of the Jeffersonian employees. Well, I suppose I was still an employee, but I had a hugely different educational background that pretty much everyone knew about, thanks to my popularity.

A little faux leather suitcase was half-buried in the ground several yards away from the shoreline. The brown was peeling back and cracking, and a yellow residue was left around the edges by the lock where adhesive had dried out. Fabric embellishments were held to the front, colors muted with age and edges frayed from abuse, but they still clung determinedly to the case. I had gloves on already from handling evidence with Hodgins, so I reached to the back of the suitcase, dislodged it from the wet and crusty sand, and moved it out of the depression it had made.

"Look at that," Booth remarked over my shoulder, walking around to my left side. Brennan came to look down from the other direction while Hodgins stood between Booth and I and checked it out from behind us. "C.R. – Carlie Richardson's initials."

I observed the front. The silver lining around the opening of the case was old, dinged up, and rusted. I highly doubted the suitcase had been worth very much. There was a clasp lock that turned up, hooked a piece of metal over a notch, and then forced pressure onto it to stay closed. The lock was rusted browns and coppers. I wouldn't have dared touch it if I hadn't already gotten tetanus boosters.

"There's a lock, but it's all rusted." I smacked the bottom of the lock lightly. The pressure from the metal hook flipped the switch up and as the lock changed position, flakes of rust and peeled paint came flying off. The suitcase was easily opened after that.

Even though I had held my breath preemptively, I was still nearly overpowered by the odor. The suitcase wasn't waterproof or airtight, so even though it had presumably been closed tightly for the last year, there was still dirty fabric, congealing hygienic products, and lotions whose tops hadn't been screwed on tight enough that had since started to break down into liquids and cloying, clumpy goo.

I covered my nose with my wrist where the glove ended.

"You don't pack face cream and a night gown if you're being abducted," Brennan pointed out, looking over my crouching figure to Booth.

Hodgins' footsteps moved and his voice changed as if he was looking backwards. The road we'd taken to transport ourselves and our miniature lab to the banks had been rough and gravelly, passing hiking trails, campsites, and older temporary lodgings.

"A lot of vacation cabins nearby," he contemplated. "If she was upset, this would be a good place to unwind."

"Karen Tyler said that she liked Carlie. She could have befriended her to lure her up here." Booth pushed his hands into his pockets. I slowly closed the top of the suitcase, mostly so that a sudden shutting motion wouldn't sent a huge whoosh of stale air at my face. "Maybe Carlie's friends knew that she and Karen were getting chummy."


I thought it seemed kind of weird that they were at the same park at the same time every day, but it couldn't hurt the kids to have a routine, and I didn't know what their schedules looked like, so I didn't say anything. The toddlers were happy enough and no one was getting hurt, and it was convenient for us in that it was easy to seek them out.

Booth gave Mary and Tina both the photograph from the Campbells. Mary was the one of the two who didn't have her child in her arms, as Tina's was asleep with his head against her shoulder, so she took the image and held it so both of her friends could see.

"Did Carlie know her?" Brennan asked, the three of us standing in an uneven line.

Mary frowned at the picture uncertainly, not knowing why it was important or what made it the subject of more questions from the FBI. "I thought they'd just started going out," she said, handing it back, looking sorry that she couldn't say anything else.

"No," Booth denied, storing it in his wallet so that he could return it to Carlie's parents. It had Karen in it, but it also featured their dead daughter. "They knew each other from before."

Tina scowled. "Bastard," she accused quietly, fuming at Kyle.

Mary touched her friend's shoulder that wasn't occupied by a tired little baby. "Carlie knew Kyle was cheating on her, that's why they were fighting," she said with an amazed and sad note of realization.

"And why she didn't want the baby," Faith sighed, looking over to the sandbox where one of the kids was playing. Tina's kid had blonde hair like Mary's, and those two were harder to tell apart (babies looked like each other, no matter what infatuated parents said), but Faith's was not only female, but set apart by her darker skin.

I raised my eyebrows. This was the first I was hearing about any sort of resentment for her pregnancy. "Did she say that specifically?" I asked, attempting to discern the truth from an exaggerated recollection.

"Yeah," Faith said emphatically, nodding her head sharply. "She was really upset at the time, but I don't care what's happening. To say you don't want your child when you're getting ready to give birth? It's not right."

I thought that was kind of narrow-minded. Obviously you shouldn't say something like that to your child, but it wasn't like Carlie's baby had been out of the womb to hear it said, much less been cognizant of the meaning of the words. Any woman was entitled to feel however they liked about their bodies and their situations when they were pregnant (and at any other time). Plenty of women got pregnant when they didn't want to be, expressed that regardless of how far along they were, but took care of their children anyway because they were responsible people. Assuming that Carlie would either fail to ensure her child's best options growing up, or taking away her right to her emotions regarding her life's changes, was closed-minded and heavily biased on Faith's own feelings about being a mother.

"A lot of things aren't right," I reminded her. The world wasn't black and white. I liked punching people, but that didn't make it right. It also didn't mean that I was going to impulsively hit everyone I felt like smacking. "But given the circumstances, I have to ask: is there any chance the baby was conceived non-consensually?"

I winced as I asked. I couldn't even imagine being raped and or coerced and then left with that permanent effect. I definitely wouldn't want a baby under those circumstances, even if I was an avid fan of children.

Faith's eyes softened and she shook her head. "No way," she promised, sounding completely convinced. "She was so happy when she found out. It was just later that she…" She trailed off. Carlie's marriage got rougher and she got more troubled. A baby added to the complications, so it made sense that Carlie hadn't been thrilled about it twenty-four seven.

Mary bit her tongue. "You know, I think I did see that woman," she remembered in surprise, making a vague pointing motion at Booth's pocket where he had shoved the wallet and photograph. "I was driving home from work, they were in front of a Starbucks. I'm not sure if it was the day she disappeared, but I'm pretty sure it was around the same time."

Booth raised a hand to her gratefully. "Thanks."

If Karen and Carlie had been seen talking to each other before she disappeared, then it only looked that much worse for Karen Tyler. I wasn't a big fan of Richardson, going off of what I was hearing about him and his treatment of his late wife, but I hoped he would turn up sooner or later. I didn't want to be finding more people dead.

One of the children started wailing. It was coming from Mary's toddler, sitting with his bowed legs spread in the sandbox, clothes covered in grainy sand with a bright red toy truck in front of him. The kid stuffed his fist in his mouth after grabbing up a handful of sand, getting even more caught in the creases of his shirt. His face was red and teary.

"Your kid's eating sand," Brennan stated warningly to Mary, who made an alarmed face and went scrambling to go stop her child from poisoning himself.


Brennan didn't last very long in her discontent quietness before she started to complain out loud. "I don't know how they can do it," she admitted, frustrated with herself for not understanding and with them for not making sense.

"They're self-obsessed," Booth told her in explanation, hands tight on the steering wheel and tone firm. "They have no conscience."

Brennan turned her head to look at him, her eyes a little wider in surprise. I frowned while I watched them go back and forth. She seemed surprised that he'd taken it that far. I wasn't even sure what they were talking about, because Brennan's brain worked very quickly and she and Booth weren't always on the same page. Hell, there were a few times even I hadn't been able to keep up.

"I don't know," she said uncertainly, not positive she wanted to attribute such terrible qualities to them.

Now that Brennan had started him on it, Booth couldn't stop. "They destroy anything that gets in their way," he swore. "They're not even human."

Brennan leaned towards the window and shuffled her body around to face Booth. I chuckled and received Booth's questioning eyebrows in the rearview mirror. "I don't think you're talking about the same things," I snorted into my hand.

"The mothers?" Brennan offered what she'd been referring to.

A shocked and disbelieving Booth took his eyes off of the road to stare at her, aghast. "Huh?"

"I was talking about the mothers," she elaborated awkwardly.

"I'm talking about the killers!"

Yep, there had definitely been a bit of confusion. Glad as I was that it was under control, I also kind of wished it had continued longer. It would've been interesting to see what they'd have said if one was talking about parents and the other murderers, especially what they said in reaction to the other's stance.

Both puzzled me, sometimes. I wasn't sure what it was about mothers that bothered Brennan so much, but at least killers made sense most of the time. Motivations for committing murder are generally straightforward, if irrational. Parenting is much more complex, especially because, unlike pulling a trigger, having a child is not just a one-and-done deal.

"Killers are understandable," I remarked from the back, looking down to my fingers and picking at my cuticles. Around other people, I'd have hesitated to say such a thing, but they must've understood what I meant. "Sometimes. When they're not like Epps," I added. Even Kenton had had motives that made sense, even if they were highly objectionable. Epps just did it for fun, because he liked it, because it got him off to bludgeon young women to death.

The anthropologist shook her head, soft curtain of brown hair unsettling and catching on the loose shoulder of her jacket. "I just don't know how mothers can do it," she scowled at the dash. She didn't like not understanding something. "I mean, dogs can be trained in a couple of weeks." I covered my mouth and snickered. Comparing kids to dogs… nice. "With kids, mothers have to give up their lives for years."

Unless they don't keep the kids, I thought privately. The smirk fell off of my face and I dropped both hands down to my lap, looking at my thighs somberly. My mother sure hadn't given up much to have me.

"No. When you're looking at your kid, you don't feel like you're giving up anything." Booth shook his head, chancing a longer look at Brennan and reaching for her hand as he slowed the car. He touched the back of her hand before the light changed back to green abruptly and he hurried to get moving again.

I cocked my head. I knew he adored Parker, but was Parker the only one that applied to? He may not have planned on Rebecca getting pregnant – neither of them had – but he'd had nine months to prepare himself, and then he'd chosen to stick around. With me, I was suddenly thrown at him. Even when he first met me, he didn't have a choice about looking after me, thanks to Cullen deciding I needed a babysitter.

In my head, I tried to make a list of things he'd ever done for me. He went out of his way for me – traveling to New Mexico, then to New Orleans, taking cases he might not have normally because I asked him to. He was having strains with Rebecca because he wanted me to be involved in his and Parker's lives. Surely there was more than that? Not a ton was obvious, but there had to be more that I didn't see. There had to be things that were primarily mental, not physical or materialistic.

Brennan considered this and asked a follow-up question to measure the validity. "So you would do it again?"

"What?"

"You'd have Parker again, even with everything you're going through?"

At first, he just seemed shocked, as though Brennan had asked something completely incomprehensible. Then he realized that he was hearing her correctly, and he reeled back as much as he could in a seat, the belt across his chest slackening. "What kind of question is that?!"

"Wouldn't it be easier if Parker wasn't caught in the middle of this drama of yours with Rebecca and the new boyfriend?" She questioned reasonably. I nodded slightly from where I sat, yet kept my mouth shut. That was one line I didn't want to cross with Booth.

"God, no," he whispered, horrified. He sounded like he'd been physically hit in the gut. "No, Bones, no. He's my son. Whatever we're going through, it's not about him. He knows that."

Unsatisfied, and maybe a little concerned for Parker, Brennan crossed her arms and looked out the passenger window. "That's what parents say when they want to justify themselves," she debated quietly.

Normally, I'd have been inclined to agree, but I knew Booth, I had a pretty good idea of how Rebecca sized up as a mom, and I had been around Parker when he reacted to both of his parents. Parker was too little to disguise how he felt, and there were no pretenses between he and his parents. Either he was oblivious (which I doubted, because for a four-year-old, he was surprisingly observant) or he was assured that his mom and dad would take care of it soon.

Booth took it as a jab. It might have been – Brennan had always been a little sensitive to the topic of parenting, especially when negligence was a concern. Booth exhaled deeply to keep himself from responding with the knee-jerk answer and targeted what he knew she was thinking.

"You know, I haven't walked out on Parker, alright? I would never have done what your parents did," the agent vowed. He then seemed to remember that he had more than one child (not that I cared whether or not I was included in the conversation – Booth hadn't had the option of raising me, and we'd all established that my foster families were complete garbage; a little neglect was way below the usual paygrade). "If I'd known Holly was mine," he started, voice to Brennan but eyes locked on me through the mirror. I could feel his stare at my hair where my head was bent to look at my legs. "I'd have never let her in the system to begin with. Ever, you hear?"

The distress in his voice bugged me. Exactly why was he upset now? Still about Parker's part in the discussion? The fact that I'd been in the foster system? That he'd been deprived of the decision to be my dad? That the idea he would leave his baby in foster care was even a consideration? If anyone was going to be upset, I still thought I should be the one who sounded angry. Booth obviously had a right to be mad and sad and all those other things, but I was the one who had really suffered from it.

Even as I thought those things, I clenched my teeth and glared at my shoes. Did I make sense? Would anyone else agree that my abuse was worse than Booth's choice being taken away? I was definitely never going to be like the majority of people, let alone the majority of people in my age group, and I was probably going to always struggle with interpersonal relationships of all kinds – platonic, romantic, familial, and, possibly in the future, sexual. How was I supposed to even have that kind of relationship, which society markets as vital to growing up, if I couldn't manage to tolerate someone touching my face?

These things had never used to bother me until the Jeffersonian team took me in, and while I knew it was wrong and illogical and ungrateful, a small, dark voice in my mind was furious with them. I'd been miserable, but at least I hadn't ever felt like I was completely screwed up. Before I'd had people to demonstrate healthy relationships and prove to me that they were good things to have, I hadn't been concerned with future relationships I may have to look forward to, nor my inadequacy and unpreparedness to build them.

"Look, this is almost exactly like the argument you had when Donovan Decker was kidnapped," I told them both, a little brisk with my words. I kind of regretted sounding harsh, but I just wanted to change the subject. It was sending me down a dark path I didn't want to get lost on – not when I had other things to worry about, including Parker and Rebecca. "No one's questioning that you love Parker, okay? But Dr. Brennan has the point that it must be stressful. Now, you, you think it's worth the stress to have your son. And that's an understandable thought. Dr. Brennan just doesn't see the point in inducing all of the stress, and maybe it's because she doesn't have a child, maybe it's because she thinks about it differently, maybe it's a mix of both. And how we grow up influences how we make decisions."

I should've cut myself off then. Everyone in the car knew fully well how my decisions would have been influenced.

"… Being a kid sucked so much for me that I don't get joy out of the thought of having my own," I murmured quietly over the air conditioner. Both adults had gone silent to let me speak and to mull over my succinctly-stated mediation. "And that's okay," I coached calmly. If I couldn't be at peace with myself and my approach to life, then they deserved to be. "Because all of our experiences are valid, and we are all entitled to our own desires." I paused, blinked, and shifted my legs, knocking my knees and pushing my thighs together while spreading my feet further apart. I leaned forwards on my legs to look between the front seats. "Can we just not fight about this, of all things?"


A/N: Well. Yikes.

I'm going to try to keep this brief because I know I don't really like long A/N's, but basically, this is what happened: college, other projects demanded my attention, and my email screwed up and stopped letting me know when I was getting reads/favorites/reviews, and I only just realized it was odd that I hadn't gotten any a couple of days ago.

I've realized that it'll be hard to commit to an update schedule on this story while I'm having trouble picking up the swing of it again. That said, I do intend to keep working on it when I get the chance, and there definitely shouldn't be any more two-month gaps in updates!

Speaking of updates, update on my work: this is an in-progress story, I'm publishing a new White Collar story tomorrow (Nov. 25, 2016) which is already almost entirely written, I'm working to get in gear and finish up "Supernatural," and I have "Far From Home" and "I Need a Hero" in progress and unpublished, which are based on BBC Sherlock and The Avengers respectively. For more info, these things are expressed in more detail on my page.