A/N: This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Sara (a_mistletoe), fellow Bones fan and dear LJ friend, who passed away two days ago. I'm grateful that I got to share something you loved with you, Sara, and I'm going to miss you very much.

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It's fun to tease Bones about her fruitless attempts to get a gun permit from him, and Booth hopes she won't catch on to the underlying reason why he doesn't want her to carry a concealed weapon. He knows that she's brave (more than is good for her, sometimes), and that she's used to taking care of herself, but it's his job to keep her safe when they're working together, and he doesn't want that to change.

He starts wishing he hadn't made fun of her, though, when Amy Morton shows up and coaxes him into re-opening the April Wright case that was one of the first he got to work back in his rookie days. He's still certain that Howard Epps killed the girl, but Amy has a point about the unanswered questions that were ignored during his trial, and Booth has too much blood on his hands to stand by and let the guy get executed if there's even a shred of a chance that he might be innocent after all.

He's pretty uncomfortable about approaching Bones and asking her to sacrifice her weekend for an off-the-books wild goose chase just a few hours after the gun debacle, and his discomfort grows into full-blown mortification when she not only agrees, but even offers to let Parker stay at her place with the nanny again while they're working the case.

She seems curious about Amy, and Booth finds himself looking for a hint of jealousy (although his past relationship with Amy never went beyond mild flirting), but of course that's too much to hope for – a little light needling about his "thing" for lawyers is all he gets from her on the matter. She makes it very clear that she's doing him a favor and not Amy, but Booth figures that's mostly to twist the knife after he refused to do her a favor about the gun.

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Brennan wonders why Booth seems so uncomfortable with the idea of her and Amy working together. She respects the woman's determination to do everything she can for her client, and she finds it commendable that she's is trying to get to the bottom of the questions that have remained unanswered so far. Amy isn't objective, of course; she's trying to find proof for what she believes to be true instead of gathering all the facts and then drawing her conclusions, but that's Booth's usual approach as well, so Brennan is getting used to dealing with it.

She's a little nosier than Brennan would have preferred about the nature of her relationship with Booth, but being friends with Angela has made Brennan very good at deflecting questions she doesn't want to answer. She isn't overly bothered by Amy's interest in Booth – Booth keeps insisting that he neither has been in a sexual relationship with the pretty young lawyer nor wants to start one now. Besides, it's none of her business who else he's sleeping with – it's not like they're in a relationship, after all, and she has made that very clear to him, so she doubts that he'd feel obliged to hide any interest he might have in Amy from her.

Booth's alleged remark about her "mania for the truth" sting a little, though – not only because she would have expected him to appreciate her dedication to the truth, but also because the idea of Booth mocking her behind her back to create a rapport with a woman he wants to impress is an uncomfortable reminder of her high school days. Then again, there's a chance that Amy related his words incorrectly, so Brennan decides not to make assumptions until she has all the facts.

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When Booth gets called into Cullen's office, he fully expects an order to drop the investigation immediately, and he braces himself for worse considering that he's freelancing on a case that the FBI closed seven years ago. The Deputy Director seems indeed prepared to rip him a new one, but as soon as Booth mentions Bones' name, Cullen changes tack. He makes it very clear that everything that goes wrong will be on Booth's head, which coming from Cullen is a tacit permission to basically do whatever he pleases as long as it gets results, and Booth realizes with no small amount of astonishment just how much weight his partnership with Bones carries in the eyes of his bosses. Cullen may not like her, but he respects her enough to let her get away with it when she stands up to him – stands up for Booth – while they're talking to him together a few hours later, and Booth can't believe his ears when she actually gets the manpower and equipment they need from him.

They're racing against the clock now, and even Bones is getting testy when she ropes him into helping her dig. Therefore, it comes as a surprise when she suddenly decides to make small talk and asks him what he would be doing on a normal weekend, and Booth would like to remind her that she knows damn well given that they've been spending much of their weekends together with their kids lately. He figures that's not what she wants to hear, though, so he evades and just tells her that he'd try to relax and have some fun, and she asks him a little too casually if that includes Amy.

"I'm not having sex with Amy, and I have never cheated on any woman I have ever been with!"

His outburst makes her raise her head and give him a bewildered look, and Booth realizes too late what he just told her by admitting that he would consider sleeping with Amy cheating. He tenses all over because he might just have pushed her too far given her skittishness when it comes to the topic of relationships, but she just shrugs and goes back to digging.

They work in silence for a while, and Booth gradually allows himself to relax. He wishes she'd talk to him again, though, so he finally asks her what she would usually be doing now, and she rattles off a long list of possibilities – spending time with Christine, doing consultations for colleagues or other government agencies, working on a few papers that are due soon, or writing peer reviews for one of the academic journals that have her on their review board.

It reminds him how much is going on in her life that is completely unrelated to her work with him, but there's no way to tell her why the thought makes him uncomfortable, so he makes light of the issue and quips that he's wondering how she ever found the time to write a best-selling novel in the middle of all that. She shrugs again and informs him that she had plenty of time for writing during the last trimester of her pregnancy because she was on strict bed rest due to a partial placental abruption, and Booth almost drops his shovel in shock.

"Bones, I had no idea – I mean, you're both okay, aren't you?"

"We are." Her tone is clinical, and she doesn't look at him when she continues. "It was very uncomfortable at the time, and Christine was still born prematurely in spite of all the precautions I took, but neither of us suffered any lasting damage."

Time seems to slow down to a crawl as the implications dawn on him. The numbers that didn't add up, the dates that were all wrong no matter how often he re-calculated… Christine was born prematurely.

What is she saying? This is Bones, who doesn't let things slip, who thinks twice about every tiny bit of personal information she shares – what is she trying to tell him, and why is she telling him now, in the middle of the night in a place where a young girl was beaten to death?

His mind is still reeling when her shovel hits a skull, and suddenly there's no time for their personal lives any more – suddenly he has to decide whether to let a ruthless killer die or to give his victims a chance to be heard, whether to go with his gut and send the bastard straight to hell where he belongs or to do what he's sworn to do, to uphold the law and to make sure that emotions don't replace justice.

He's tempted, he's oh so tempted to twiddle his thumbs for another half hour, but deep down he's grateful that she pushes him towards doing what he knows is right whether he likes it or not.

He's even more grateful when she breaks Epps' wrist a while later. It helps a little to think of that moment when they finally find themselves at Wong Fu's, sharing a glum kind of companionship for a while before they can bring themselves to go home, and even though he acts dismissive about her "Nobel prize speech", he's glad of the reassurance she's trying to give him.

He's still preoccupied with her earlier words, with the realization that it's suddenly not as unlikely as he thought that he might be Christine's father. She must have known he'd realize it when she told him, and he has no idea what he's supposed to do now. He remembers how, just a little over a week ago, Christine drooled all over his shirt when he held her, and how he was tempted to have her DNA tested so he could know for sure. Yet he ended up stuffing the shirt into the washer that evening – for the same reason he never asked about Christine's father again after that first evening in Bones' apartment. He's still afraid that the price he'd pay for knowing would be too high if he forced her into an admission she's not ready for, that their slow, careful dance around each other might turn into a bitter fight in which he has very little to gain and everything to lose.

His mind is a jumble of conflicting thoughts and feelings when he's finally back at her place to get Parker. Sid's toast to "simple pleasures" is still ringing in his ears, and the world becomes a brighter place when Parker runs towards him and flings himself into his arms. He holds his son close and feels some of the day's tension drain away, and from the way Bones is clutching her baby to her chest, her feelings are perfectly in synch with his for once.

The nanny passes him by on her way to the door, and Booth slips her a fifty for the hassle of watching an extra child. She takes it, but tells him that it's no trouble, that Parker is a very pleasant child and that he's lucky to have such a sweet son. Booth notices absent-mindedly that she's really very pretty with her dark eyes, wheat-blond hair and legs that go on forever, but the only thing she makes him feel is gratitude that Parker likes her, and it hits him just how much truth there seems to have been in what he let slip with his remark about Amy earlier.

Then Bones is next to him and asks him if he can watch Christine while she hits the shower, and Booth takes the sleepy baby from her and settles down on the couch. Parker, who seems perfectly at home at Bones' place by now, has already gone back to playing with the toys he brought along, so Booth is left alone with Bones' daughter and his own inner turmoil.

He wants to focus on the question of her paternity, but the longer he watches Christine as she dozes off with her tiny hands clenched into the fabric of his shirt, the more he realizes it's not what's foremost on his mind. He keeps thinking of April Wright, of a young life brutally cut short, and the sudden impulse to protect this tiny being in his arms from every danger that might ever come near her takes him by surprise in its intensity. Maybe he really is her father, but he finds that right now he can't bring himself to worry about it; whether she's his or not, he realizes that he wants to be around to see her grow up, that he longs to be a part of her life as well as her mother's.

"Stay."

He didn't even hear Bones come back, but now she's next to him with her hand on his arm, and he can feel something pass between them in the split second that it takes him to make his decision.

Parker loves the idea of sleeping on Bones' couch tonight (it may have to do with the fact that he's allowed to bounce on her couch, which is strictly forbidden at home), and even though it should feel awkward when Bones asks the boy if he'll be okay sleeping alone in the living room because the couch is too small for his dad, who will get to sleep in the big bed in her bedroom, Booth has to smile at Parker's eager reassurance that he's a big boy and will be fine on his own.

He reminds Parker three times that he can come and get him if he needs anything during the night, but that he has to knock because it's the polite thing to do before walking into a lady's bedroom. Parker scrunches up his face and tells him that Bones is a doctor, not a lady, which sends her into a giggling fit and finally breaks the weird tension between them as they all get ready for bed.

He tells himself he isn't going to have sex with her while his son is sleeping next door, but all his restraints fly out the window the moment they're finally alone together in her bed and the weight of the past two days comes crashing down on them. He's so tired of worrying and fretting and questioning his every move – he just wants something, somebody to hold on to, and there's no stopping as soon as she touches him. It's neither the frantic need of their first time nor the sweet, gentle exploration that he coaxed her into during that night in Aurora – this is something else, a new, powerful sense of urgency that makes it impossible for them to let go of each other, that leaves them clinging to what they have together without questioning what it might be, and when she finally falls asleep still wrapped around him, he can't help feeling that they made love for the first time tonight.

He struggles to stay awake for as long as he can because just like he did during that morning in the park, he wishes this moment could last forever – here in her home, in her bed, with her in his arms and their children safely asleep just a few steps away. He knows he may be setting himself up for disappointment by asking too much of a fate that has always been careful to keep his glass half filled, but he still allows himself to dream, just for a second, that there might be a future for him, for them that looks a little bit like this.