She didn't get very far. Her office was always a sanctuary after a fight…or a discussion? Or whatever that had been with Angela. Whatever it had been it had made her bone weary. Bone-weary. She was becoming too reliant on Booth's puns even in her spare time.

She dropped into her chair without a second thought and opened up her laptop zooming her fingers over the track pad impatiently trying to resurrect some glimmer of life onto the screen. Her inbox was dead; she liked to keep it tidy and she kept up with it on her phone. Her case files were easily sorted within minutes. She reclined, arching her back and unbuttoning her lab coat to rest over the back of her bouncing swivel chair that bucked beneath her movement.

It was staring at her.

She resolutely attempted to find something else to do.

She opened up the word file with her story on it. She had been stuck at the same place for days. She was lying to herself. It had been weeks. She was ashamed to be looking in her inbox in fear of her publisher's emails, gentle as they were, probing for updates. She was one of her publisher's biggest clients, so they were always very polite about it, and huge fans nonetheless, eager to find out what happens next, but Brennan always felt vaguely guilty when real life got in the way and she would open up her word document, staring blankly at it and eventually close her laptop concluding to herself she was just too depressed to write that day, or too exhausted, or too busy, or too stressed, or too overworked, or too unmotivated, or too uninspired, or most of the time, too fed up with Booth.

Out of the corner of her eye, it kept staring at her with its bright familiar colors and all the wrong textures.

Brennan irritably clacked out another sentence. It was flat and dull and not even close to the kind of polish she demanded from herself. Her characters wouldn't do that. She deleted it with a curl of her lip and tried not to look through her hair. She focused harder on Agent Andy but the word 'agent' was just too familiar under her fingers from countless real reports on this very keyboard that her fingers kept inevitably typing Agent Bo- and then having to go back and then backspace and retype Andy in its place. She hated herself and slammed her laptop closed pettishly.

It was unavoidable really.

Her phone dinged with a message. She almost swooned at the intrusion and eagerly clicked it. She felt a deep gut sinking sense of guilt. It was her publisher. She could see it even from the first few lines of text before she opened the email. She deleted it without reading. How was she supposed to explain the predicament of her partner reading her diary, her world falling apart and then the inconvenience of accidentally typing his name every other word when she tried to write? It was all too much.

The letterbox was looking like the best alternative by this point, and with a very unladylike invective, Brennan gave in and stalked over to rip a letter out of the bottom door.

She sat back down at her desk and sighed running a finger over her eyelid delicately. She could feel the point of her nail digging into the sensitive flesh on the inside of her nose; she needed to cut them. She peered out of the other eye at the handwriting.

Another letter from the outside world.

It had a return address from Evanston, Illinois. She swallowed. She knew who this was from. Northwestern was located there. She slit it open quietly, her heart the loudest thing ripping besides the paper under the letter opener and unfolded it with two careful hands, creasing the crevices with her nails.

Dear Temperance,

It's strange to write this to you, to look back. It's like looking into a mirror, looking into a mirror. I remember the day Sarah died. I even remember the day you came to Northwestern and sat down in that first classroom. You wore a white button down and a ponytail and no makeup; I remember because it was so unusual.

She blushed and smiled into her shoulder. She was almost surprised to find the soft touch of cotton there against her cheek. Her dress was a colorful floral print, if blue and white could be deemed colorful; it was for her. She had expected herself to still be wearing an oxford button down; Booth had changed her. Even her wardrobe was unsettlingly disconcerting in the face of a past passenger.

I remember when you used to drop by my cubicle and we would talk about your experiences in college; they seemed so funny, small, wonderfully distant, easily solved and mostly surreal to me. Surreal is a strange word I suppose. But when you had walked across your college campus for the first time, I had just married Ally.

When you declared you anthropology major Asher was born.

When you walked across your college graduating stage, we had just built Daphne's crib.

When you came into my classroom I had just buried them all.

Brennan had trouble drawing the next breath.

When I pulled out that picture of you from the yearbook it's strange to think that at that time I used to drink myself to sleep at night, remembering when I was three weeks into Ally and my relationship having no idea that this was the girl I was going to marry, the woman who would bear my children, or the family that would break my heart into shatterglass dust.

It's why I liked you so much Temperance; I saw so much of myself in you. I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable. I know we've never been quite this honest with one another. I won't tell you my life story, nor will I ask if the whispers I heard of yours were true – though I will confirm the ones you heard of mine were. But all of the professors…we knew what you were.

What I was? Brennan thought, confounded and not a bit put off. She was shocked and confused. Mr. Meradin's – Caleb's – honesty was bracing, the way ice water was bracing, which was to say shockingly icy in a gust that knocked the wind out of her lungs. She couldn't quite gasp for air and tried to swallow.

A foster kid. We weren't supposed to know, but it follows someone like a malaise, something that can't be shaken. It was obvious in the way you ate, the way you spoke, the way you never had anywhere to go, not just for the big holidays but for the little ones, the three day weekends. I would ask where you were going for President's Day Weekend, Labor Day Weekend, Fall Break and you would always smile sweetly and say "oh catching up on laundry," or "managing some chores I've gotten behind on" or even the most outrageous "getting ahead on my dissertation" as if you were anything but. The most startling, obvious and glaringly painful truth that we all could see and tried not to point out to one another was that you simply had nowhere to go. But our programs were – are – small Tempe. You remember that.

Tempe. It had been years since anyone had called her that. It was alien.

Frederick Douglas once wrote, "It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."

Brennan knew that quote. It was one of Booth's favorites. It was his inspiration to make Parker better.

But what do you do with the broken children?

I don't suppose I'd ever offend enough to suggest you've gone to therapy.

She laughed bitterly.

"Oh God," she muttered aloud. "If anyone needs therapy though, it's me." She glanced quickly around, half afraid Sweets might hear and jump down her throat, and more than wishing Gordon-Gordon was around so that he could give her some food and really listen.

So when it became apparent that you had nowhere to go, I began to take a more…personal interest in your welfare. It started with your lab partner Asha. That was a mistake; she was a silly, easy girl that I fell into bed with out of like you said, a philandering wanderlust eye because I was – am – easily distracted. But I wanted to know you more, better. I was desperately disappointed to realize she was a stupid pettish little thing that knew you very little and was off put by your shyness.

Brennan felt bruised inside because she remembered how rent in two she had been when she had thought Mr. Meradin preferred Asha's company to hers. Not in that sense of course. Not yet. But he had blown her off when she had lingered behind after a lecture, eager to discuss some esoteric point with him instead to flirt with Asha who had been puzzled but flattered by his interest. Brennan soon realized why when Asha had come to class with more than notes in her bag; she had seen the condoms when she had asked to borrow a pencil. She had never dreamed he had only been using Asha to get at her. She felt like her brain was overcrowded. Stop thinking, stop thinking she chanted to herself. It was an old habit she had picked up from foster home number four when her foster father used to yell at the not four, but five foster children they had in their home: "Stop thinking! Stop thinking! You don't get to think!" Whenever Brennan felt that her brain was overripe with whirling confusion, for better or worse a tiny little drill sergeants voice floated up the stairs of her cerebral cortex: stop thinking, stop thinking!

She read on, just to distract herself.

Sarah wasn't in any of my classes, or else I might have felt a greater degree of guilt at her death, but like I said earlier, ours is a small community. The tragedy affected us all. I was struck in particular by one fact though: no one seemed to remember, though you say everyone got the two of you confused, that you two were best friends. The day after she died –

Brennan noted sardonically Mr. Meradin – and she still couldn't bring herself to call him Caleb even though they had shared a bed together – couldn't quite bring himself to say that Sarah had killed herself.

-everyone returned to school grieving and wailing about their loss and you stood in the eye of the maelstrom, dry eyed and confused, looking lost. No one approached you. No one offered condolences.

No one saw me, Brennan thought and her eyes popped a bit at the next line echoing her mind so uncannily even after all these years.

No one really saw you, did they?

You said Sarah was a good girl, a quiet girl.

Were you so different?

Are you?

Brennan swallowed, dry mouthed. Am I?

What saved you and not her? Temperance it's a question that I didn't realize I've been asking myself all these years until this very moment, this very sentence that I penned. But it's come clear to me, dear God. What saved you? It could have so easily been you, and I don't think I could have lived with that. Not you too. I'm not confessing my undying love for you, but I had just lost my wife. My wife. My daughter, my son. I buried them all. You were the first person I had truly cared about in a long, long time, and it's because you were unhappy. I cared about you because you made me feel less unhappy because I felt like I could solve some of your problems.

But it could have been you.

Brennan was breathing fast now. Sarah's death was something she had never discussed with anyone. Not with Booth, though he doubtless knew of it now having read the letter, nor Angela, nor Sweets. She had certainly never brought it up with Max. She had grieved, a little, but in private and in tiny increments in far apart years. But she had never once thought of Sarah's death in this light; that it had been a toss up between the two of them, a twist of fate. Nothing but a coin toss. Heads or tails? Sarah or Tempe?

You were so similar. It was no wonder people were getting you confused. You looked, acted and dressed nothing alike, but superficially none of that matters anyway. Right? Window dressing.

Is that where she had picked up that phrase? She couldn't remember. She could hardly breathe.

You spoke of Sarah's past with an egomaniacal father, an addicted sister and a depressed mother. I don't know where you came from Tempe but I'm pretty sure that Sarah's past was a lot more run of the mill than yours. What stayed your hand? False hope? Hope that they were coming back for you?

Brennan felt like Caleb had slapped her across the face so suddenly she couldn't breathe. The switch to first name basis was casual, easy with his transition so sharply into her personal life. She coughed suddenly as if her psyche was gasping for air and her eyes watered despite the fact she knew Max and Russ were only a phone call away.

Mom isn't, a nasty little voice whispered.

Stop thinking!

I'm not trying to be cruel Temperance.

"But you are," she croaked to the page, and a drip fell on it. She wasn't sure whether it came from her nose, mouth or eyes and didn't want to know.

Sarah died because she was desperately unhappy…but so were you. Did you live because…can I be so narcissistic in thinking it was because of me? Because someone cared enough into saving you?

No, she wanted to whisper, but her throat was too tight.

You said you used to make excuses to stop by my office; I used to make excuses to try to find you on campus. I didn't have to tolerate your company Temperance; I enjoyed it. You were a joy to be around.

Joy. How ironic.

Brennan suddenly spasmed curling around her middle like someone had staked her to the floor. She clutched the paper into a fist; it made a tearing sound. She made a tiny grunting sound that was more a squeak. It wasn't a cramp; it was a thundering realization.

Joy.

There was no more of Joy left in her. There was no more of the little girl her parents had left so many years ago. Her eyes welled with tears of physical pain through her gut. She remembered another letter; one to herself in the Maluku islands. One from Tempe. Joy. The little girl.

She was gone for good. Mr. Meradin had made sure of it. Sarah had killed herself, but Mr. Meradin had pointed out the obvious…it could have so obviously been her. Why hadn't it been? Because of Joy. Because there was a little piece of her holding onto her childhood, hoping against hope it would come back. Brennan unfolded the letter, struggling to breathe. This time, just thinking the words wasn't going to be enough.

"Stop thinking," she chanted, and her voice sounded shuddery and precariously close to tears. "Stop thinking, stop thinking. Just read."

She obeyed.

I wish you the best in life; I see the position worked out for you. I hope that you aren't so unhappy anymore. The pain will ease with time, Temperance.

She would have believed him only thirty seconds before.

I promise.

If you ever need anything, please don't hesitate to call.

Caleb Meradin

I can't do this, she realized and balled up the paper, sick like she hadn't been since she had eaten four red delicious apples in a row on a dare just to prove to Booth she could, forgetting of course that apples were acidic, and paying for it dearly later when she had felt nauseous for hours in his car riding back from Kentucky. She almost smiled; it was before she had been angry with him. Before a lot of things.

Because if things were how they used to be she would call him now and he would know something was wrong even though she wouldn't tell him and they would go out for French fries and talk about something else for hours and hours until she finally got around to it and then they would maybe talk about it for five minutes and then talk about something else.

But not anymore.

She felt sick again.

It hit her with a sudden striking clarity that she was hungry.

For meat.

She hadn't eaten chicken nuggets since her foster parents had been too lazy too cook dinner.

Joy ate meat.

And Brennan realized with a half sob she desperately, desperately needed to find her. Joy. That little bit of herself she had lost because she felt that if she didn't, then Mr. Meradin – Caleb – was right. What was to stop her from following Sarah? Certainly not Booth. Who was standing between her and death now that Joy was gone?

She hadn't felt blackness this deep so languishingly pleasant since high school. This sharp sweet agony was a flautist keening highly in vibration in the back of her skull. She stood and smoothed her dress flat, crumpling the letter into the wastepaper basket by her desk.

She grabbed her car keys and knew even before she left the office she was going to regret this.

Sweets had been enjoying a moderately normal day. He had eaten lunch alone in his office, but had skyped with Daisy who was visiting her family in Florida, so that was all right. He had three patients, consulting work, and some case files. He was out of the office by five thirty which was not unusual but unusual enough to make him smile. It wasn't enough to make Agent Booth smile who had seen him leaving and then marched him back into his office with a totally unfair crapload of paperwork to do. But he had jammed to Lime in the Coconut on replay really loudly just to spite him and it had forced Booth to leave before him. Sweets was stuck with the short end of the stick but a feeling of bigger man syndrome and a sense of winning that he wasn't used to feeling with the tough FBI agent. So all in all, a moderately normal day for a guy.

Sweets pursed his lips at the light. It was red. He stared down the completely empty street in the ten o'clock darkness and contemplated running it but just breathed out heavily and satisfied himself with smacking the wheel a few times to let off some steam.

Not that, in all fairness, Booth was on his A game. But in all fairness, there was no way Sweets would ever have a snowball's chance in hell of beating him now would there? So he took his victories were they were given, and gloated while he could, because he knew when Booth was feeling better, he couldn't get away with so much smirking.

He also knew he should be more accommodating for his friend, who was, after all, down on his luck, but the letter from Dr. Brennan had been shocking and actually quite horrifying. Sweets was feeling a bit vengeful all in all, towards both the partners for dragging everyone into their muck all the time. Why wasn't it like other jobs, where everyone just came in and did their work and went home?

You wanted a family, a snide little voice reminded him. You wanted to care about them. So don't pretend now that you don't.

The light finally changed and he floored it just to feel like accelerating was going to do him any good. So he almost missed the car in the ditch and had to leave skid marks with the screeching stop he pulled. He winced at the sound of squealing tires and something horrible grinding deep inside his car. He wasn't a motor guru, but that couldn't be good.

He backed his car onto the shoulder just in case, though the road was deserted this time of night and sprinted to the other car.

"Dr. Brennan!" He banged on the window desperately, his heart thundering. He wondered what Booth would do in this situation. Not forget his gun like an idiot, that snide voice remarked. He wondered if all therapists had snide voices, or just him. He ran back to his own car, hands shaking and yanked open his passengers side door, rifling through the glove compartment. He heard a groan from the other car.

"Thank God, thank God," he muttered to himself, checking the safety and sprinting back to her car. He stepped in something wet and almost slipped; he managed to catch himself on the door handle ungracefully and the gun went skittering into the grass somewhere as he awkwardly twisted both hands around the handle and skated both feet backwards and forwards trying to find a balance. The door popped and Sweets realized someone was opening it from the inside. He looked down to see what he was slipping in and groaned.

"Sweets," Brennan gasped and though Sweets was disgusted, he immediately felt only concern for his friend and instant contrition, shame and anger at himself for being so ungainly as slipping and letting his gun fall. He was sure Booth would have never let that happen.

"Dr. Brennan! What happened to you?"

"I was just being really stupid."

Sweets realized they were both shouting and he gingerly stepped out of the pool of vomit by the drivers door and gestured for her to turn down her loud rock music. She looked surprised and turned it off.

They stared blankly at one another.

"I thought…" he started. He cleared his throat. "I thought the man who had….with Cam…I thought he had come after you." Brennan put the heel of her hand to her paper white face, which was covered, Sweets noticed with growing concern, with a light sheen of sweat.

"No…no…I'm sorry that I misled you…that I've worried you…no I'm just being very stupid…"

"Dr. Brennan…maybe you should sit down." Sweets declined to mention she was shaking on her feet like an aspen tree.

"I'm just a little sore. I decided to go play soccer."

"Soccer?" Sweets was skeptical as he walked her the short distance to his car and helped her sit in his passengers seat, noticing in the light of his overhead the grass stains on her knees and the cuts on her skinned elbows.

She nodded.

"You got sick from playing soccer and listening to…what was that…the Backstreet Boys?"

Brennan burst out laughing but it sounded like she was about to cry.

"God you're so young. The Beastie Boys. And they didn't make me sick. It was the chicken nuggets."

Sweets didn't speak for a minute as he processed.

"But Dr. Brennan. You're a vegetarian. You've been a vegetarian for…"

"Fifteen years. Yes. I know."

"To suddenly eat meat would be-"

"Bad?" she suggested dryly. Sweets sat back in his seat and puffed out his cheeks full of air, unaware they made him look even more chipmunkish than usual.

"You got sick?" he guessed.

"Not at first," she sighed. "But yes…somewhere down this road…I got very ill. So ill I couldn't drive anymore. I thought I would lie down until the nausea passed."

"And has it?" She looked at him weakly and then closed her eyes for an answer. They were silent a moment, the distant sound of traffic their only company.

"What brought this on?"

Brennan shook her head back and forth on the seat rest.

"It's stupid."

"Try me," Sweets commanded. His tone was so imperious Brennan slit an eye in actual surprise at him. She heaved a huge sigh, her ribcage expanding so large for a moment Sweets thought she might be sick again.

He listened in silence. He tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully. Both of their doors were still flung wide open, letting the hot summer air flow through.

"It's not stupid to want to reclaim who you were." She smiled wanly.

"I realized I think...sometime between the music I missed growing up, and the soccer I used to play and the meat I used to eat that it's you...not just you..." she amended hastily but made an all encompassing gesture to include what Sweets understood as the Lab. "You are what I care about now. Not Joy. Not that life. That lifetime. And I guess...she's gone too." Sweets could tell she was holding a lot back from her explanation. That there might be someone else who was gone besides 'Joy'. Brennan shrugged blasély.

"It's terrifying how little I care about now. How little I truly care about now. I used to care so much about my work. Now it hardly holds any meaning at all."

Sweets looked over at her in surprise. She shrugged.

"It's true. It doesn't bother me to admit it."

"Dr. Brennan," Sweets wasn't sure if he was sounding wise, but he was sure trying like hell to do so. "There's more to life than a lot of things." He winced at how bad that sounded but she seemed to catch his drift.

Her eyes teared up.

"Booth took that away from me." She stopped speaking a moment to look out the open door and swat a mosquito to gain her composure. He let her. "He took it all away and I'm not even sorry." She breathed out. "I'm feeling much better. Thank you."

She climbed out of his car and left him to stare out at the space where he had dropped his gun, wondering if he would ever be the kind of man he both hated and admired.