~Welcome to Part Two!~

Author's Note: We're changing gears now that the foundation is set. Shakespeare wrote in the second act of the Tempest, that what happened before was the prologue for the remainder of the play. Same goes for this story: what you've read in the first 20 chapters sets up everything that follows next. I'm going to begin skipping forward at higher speeds because there's a lot of ground to cover.

~Q~

~The Past in the Prologue~

~Q~

We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again
(And by that destiny) to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue; what to come,
In yours and my discharge.

The Tempest, Act II, Scene 1, Lines 251-254

~Q~

"You don't have to see them anymore," Angela offered softly. "You've got me. ... I had to learn how to embrace death, so you could have a chance to embrace life."

Stunned, Brennan looked between the skull and her friend, hesitating.

Angela stepped in front of the skull, blocking her view. "Take it."

~Q~

September 2006

"So, Booth picked you up at the airport again." Angela breezed into her office with two cups of coffee and deposited one on Brennan's desk before promptly depositing herself on the sofa and awaiting what she hoped would be a story worth getting up this early to hear. It was just past seven, still cool and dewey outside, and yet she counted the lost sleep a worthy sacrifice because the last time Booth had retrieved Temperance Brennan from an airport, someone had gotten bruised. "How did that go?"

"Fine." Having only just gotten in herself after a brief rush home to toss her bags, shower and rush right back, Brennan slid her messenger bag onto the floor and suffered Angela's enthusiastic greeting with a tired smile and a single explanation that was quite effective in quelling Angela's romantic hopes for her. "He took me straight out to the train wreck."

"What a way to welcome you home: rain, mud, corpses and mangled metal." She shook her head in disapproval and added with a knowing sigh. "I suppose you were thrilled."

Frowning, Brennan wondered at the wry disapproval she heard in Angela's comment. Relieved to be back in DC, back in the Jeffersonian, back in her life...? Yes. Thrilled over a derailed train that had killed several people, including a senator? No. What kind of monster would be glad that people had died? The work at the site of the derailment had felt normal but not thrilling in the least. In fact, more than one aspect of her work last night had proved unsettling. "Don't forget the new boss. I'm not thrilled about that."

Flopping backwards with a dramatic sigh, the artist rolled her eyes. "Oh, you met Dr. Saroyan, huh?"

"Why didn't you tell me Goodman hired a pathologist and put her in charge?" Brennan tossed a reproachful glance at her friend as she unpacked her laptop and set it up on her desk. Finding out she had a new boss through Booth, in front of said new boss, had been humiliating.

"You were out of the country and out of contact," Angela reminded her. "Darfur, three weeks, no email. How was I supposed to tell you?"

"I didn't go to Darfur." Angela had implored her to start living, and with the bones refusing to give up their secrets so easily as they had before, she'd decided to spend her time somewhere less extreme. Perhaps, in her haste to rush off and try something new, she may have forgotten to let Angela in on the change of plans.

Surprised, Angela lifted herself back out of her reclined position on the couch. "What? When did you change your mind?"

"After you dropped me off at the airport." Brennan sighed as she recognized her error. She wasn't used to thinking about other people caring where she went. No one ever had before.

"So…?" The artist prompted. When information failed to issue forth quickly enough to satisfy her, she demanded impatiently, "Then where did you go?"

"North Carolina." The laptop was plugged in and charging, leaving Brennan with little else to occupy her hands. She grabbed up the waiting coffee cup instead and sipped the fresh brew appreciatively.

That came as a second surprise this morning and Angela didn't bother to hide her delight. "To visit Russ? Really?"

"Yes." Another sip. The coffee was fresh and very hot, a perfect gift. Not for the first time, Brennan found herself wondering how she had come to have a generous friend like Angela.

Another unfilled silence had Angela sighing in bemusement. At times, the skulls she worked on were more forthcoming about personal information than the anthropologist was. She always had to work at it with Brennan, sliding bits of personal information around like puzzle pieces. What she'd learned just before Brennan left was that Brennan's fugitive father was alive and knew her home phone number. He'd called and told her to stop looking for him.

Russ was as much in the dark as his sister, maybe. Their fifteen-year estrangement was only just now coming to an end and it would have been easier for Brennan to trust him if he hadn't abandoned her and withheld her birth name for over twenty years. "You must have worked things out with him, forgiven him. How did it go?"

"It was fine. When did Dr. Saroyan get here?"

Not about to be diverted so easily, Angela waved that question off. "Two weeks ago. Did you two get caught up?"

"No, we didn't talk."

"You didn't talk? Uh, then how did you manage to work it out?"

Brennan regarded Angela curiously, clearly thinking the artist wasn't making any sense. "She told me to look at the burned body in the car."

A blank look was followed by mental backtracking as Angela attempted to figure out where one of them had gotten lost. Finally, a clarification. "I was talking about you and Russ."

"Oh." Brennan shrugged then, following the switch in topic easily enough and sidetracking it as quickly as possible. "Yes, I suppose we've caught up. I met his girlfriend, Amy."

Figuring she'd pried enough, Angela accepted the nudging off-topic gracefully. "Oh, that sounds good. Is she nice?"

"I … have no way of objectively knowing that."

"Well, did you like her?"

"Yes."

Angela nodded. "Then she's nice. It's completely subjective, Bren."

Brennan had slipped into her lab coat and now she paused beside her friend as she quickly twisted her hair into a bun. "Is Dr. Saroyan nice?"

One of Angela's best qualities was an abiding sense of humor. She raised a brow and reminded, "I have no way of objectively knowing whether you, subjectively think she's nice."

For her effort, she received a withering scowl, which only made her laugh. "A certain anthropologist I know would insist there's no knowing without evidence. So let's go. Give me evidence and I'll give you a verdict on the nice factor of Camille Saroyan."

"I think Booth and Dr. Saroyan already know each other," Brennan volunteered quietly. She watched Angela for a reaction because this was the sort of thing the artist always seemed to detect.

"Biblically," Angela agreed with a smirk.

"Dr. Saroyan is Catholic?"

"No," she chuckled and corrected the mistake. "Those two have knocked boots in the past and they're thinking about it now."

"Knocked boots." Forming various mental images of kicking shins, dancing, throwing boots at barn walls, she finally gave up when nothing made sense.

Brennan's bewilderment didn't clear up on its own, so she decided it was time for blunt. "Sex, Sweetie. They've had sex."

Brennan halted, a stricken look blooming before she could uproot it. Angela glanced over at her and wondered if this nudge might finally propel some soul searching. "Why do you care," she asked carefully. "You two are just partners, remember?"

Gathering her composure, she strode forward and clipped out her confirmation. "Of course. I don't care, I was just surprised by Dr. Saroyan's unprofessional behavior last night."

Yeah, I'm sure that's what it is, Angela thought as she followed a step behind.

~Q~

"Grab your coat, Bones, we're going on a stakeout."

"We are?" She turned in surprise as Booth slammed into the lab wearing off-duty jeans and a T-shirt.

"Got a lead on that heroin; DC Metro thinks it's being sold by a dealer named Eddie." He slipped a palm against her back and propelled her towards her office. "We want to get out there just after it gets dark."

Brennan stalled, confused at his urgency given how early it still was. Late afternoon sun still spilled amber light into the western windows of the lab. "But that's in two hours. What's your rush?"

"Dinner first," he grinned. It was the friendly, I-know-you-won't-say-no grin she was coming to know almost as well as the charm smile. (And that charm smile, she'd decided, was best described as 'I know you want to say no so I'm giving you a grin that will weaken your knees as well as your will.' It was quite effective.)

Of course, she reminded herself. Some things never changed and Booth's perpetual hunger was one of them.

Telling herself he was only inviting her as a means of conveying important information regarding proper stakeout procedures, Brennan made certain her face betrayed none of the adrenal excitement her heart was pumping through her body. It was just Booth and business, not a date. Still, it was hard to focus on anything else when he stood so near and smiled at her that way. Sweeping up her jacket and bag, Brennan started back out and stopped when Booth's palm at her shoulder gently pushed her back.

He was smiling still, a teasing glint flashing at her as his fingers curled around her forearm just long enough to halt her forward momentum. "Whoa, there. Aren't you forgetting something?"

Frowning, she glanced around and noticed nothing amiss.

He laughed at her then, fully amused at her evident lack of focus and tweaked her collar. "You're still wearing your lab coat."

Oh. Brennan groaned, chagrined at the lapse and worried he'd misinterpret the cause. Or worse, that he'd correctly interpret the cause. "I've had a lot on my mind," she defended. The coat came off with an impatient tug and found its place on her coat tree.

"You thinking about your dad?"

"Yes." But that wasn't all. Thoughts of Biblical knowing and Camille Saroyan stomped through her head and made her wonder what else he knew about the woman she now reported to. "Booth?"

"Yes, Bones?"

The deliberate parroting of her words only dimly registered. "How did you know Cam was my boss? You don't work at the Jeffersonian."

He had his hand ready to usher her forward as she passed him and the question didn't seem to bother him at all. "Word gets around," he answered. "If you'd look up from your bones once in a while, you'd have a better sense of what the living people around you are doing."

She paused and looked back at him curiously. "I wasn't looking at bones. I was with Russ."

He stopped only a few inches away, radiating the intensity that always sizzled against her skin. "Yeah, and the entire time you were there, you didn't get in touch with anyone here. You were all about Russ, right? You see, sometimes your focus is too narrow. You gotta step back a little and take in the periphery. Stop looking at the bark on the tree and notice the actual tree, not to mention the whole forest. You understand?"

She was starting to think there was a distinct lack of justice in the way Booth's mere proximity could stimulate her limbic system into overdrive. Take now, for instance. Booth's aftershave had been refreshed so recently that she could feel it brushing against her nose and mouth in a sweet caress and it had completely short-circuited her higher cognitive functions. All she could think of was how good he smelled while her abandoned intellect stumbled out an unintelligible reply. "People and trees, it's a metaphor."

"Ah, Bones," he sighed affectionately. "You've got a lot to learn."

"Like how to do a stakeout," she agreed. And how to understand you, she added mentally. And how in the hell was she going to survive the next few hours sitting right next to him in a dark, parked car?

"And why Cam got the job instead of you," he finished, mercifully misunderstanding why she was so damn distracted lately.

~Q~

In the following days, Brennan came to understand that nearly everyone around her had changed in some way. Or, perhaps, none had changed and it was she herself who had come to view them all differently the moment she'd stopped hearing the bones.

Angela and Hodgins were flirting with each other. When had that started...?

In a stunning act of cowardice, Dr. Goodman had waited until she was on vacation to withdraw his direct supervision and without even announcing he'd created the new position, he left a pathologist (beautiful, sarcastic and clearly enamored with Booth) in charge. Then he'd dashed off on a sabbatical, leaving Brennan with no recourse.

Asking Angela why Goodman would appoint Dr. Saroyan by stealth yielded an odd discussion that echoed what Booth had told her about seeing trees. "For example," Angela supplied near the end, "When's my birthday."

This was an excellent, concrete example Brennan agreed, even as she pointed out she could use a computer to remind her of birthdays. Why clutter up her brain with unimportant information?

"That's just one example," Angela insisted. She declined to offer more.

Dr. Saroyan, Brennan decided, was an alpha female determined to establish herself as the dominant force in the lab and Brennan, champion of pure science and the Truth, told herself she would not give in to office politics. The fact that Dr. Saroyan also had designs on Booth just made Brennan's antipathy all that much stronger. They clashed over and over while her friends tried to stay out of the crossfire.

Then there was Booth. He'd confused her most of all. One minute he was giving Brennan those intense gazes that rolled her heart like thunder; the next, he was standing millimeters away from Camile Saroyan and trading cool jokes and heated glances. Brennan watched from the sidelines, growing ever more uncertain. Had she been wrong? Had she misunderstood him once again? What she'd perceived as interest, had only been Booth charm liberally applied...?

Between Booth, Angela, Cam's performances and Brennan's reluctant honesty, she eventually saw the truth for what it was. Not for nothing had Shakespeare written, "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." Brennan, not a fool, knew she had a fatal weakness when it came to understanding people and relationships.

Camille Saroyan did not, and in the battle for interpersonal dominance, Cam was winning.

Somehow from the moment Dr. Saroyan arrived, the growing intimacy Brennan had shared with Booth had evaporated and left her parched, and before she fully grasped what she'd lost Camille was lifting the glass in her place. She didn't understand how the physics of relationships worked, it seemed, because despite her best effort at improving, Brennan felt herself being mostly acted upon by forces outside of herself.

In hindsight, it was the machinations of an old enemy that drove the biggest wedge in between them.

~Q~

On a cool October morning they walked together through a sun-dappled forest. For a while the scent of sweetly spiced earth and pine needles crushing underfoot nearly masked the decay that awaited them at their destination. Booth teased her about getting a puppy when she threw a pine cone to drive away a Doberman Pincer that was guarding a freshly discovered skeleton. "I'd rather have a (cleaner and far more intelligent) pig," she clarified but the subject was dropped when the dog departed and Brennan bent to take a look at the treasure it had guarded.

Wispy blond hairs still clung to a badly damaged skull. The teen girl was buried face down, and something about that pose struck her as significant. Brennan fondled the bones longingly, wishing she could still sense what they might tell her. The only sounds that she heard came from the early autumn breeze, the muffled chatter of police radios, and Booth quietly questioning the dog owner who had called in the find. The bones themselves were as quiet as an ancient find, faceless and lifeless.

Not until they'd returned the young woman's body to the lab and Hodgins discovered traces of adhesive on the girl's wrists did Brennan put the clues together. Killed over seven years ago. Wrists bound, buried face down. Blond, young, blunt force trauma to the head from a tire iron.

"Epps."

Howard Epps.

Was this what Booth meant when he talked about feeling things with his intestines? Though she had no empirical proof that Epps had killed this girl, Brennan's intestines seemed to have twisted themselves into tight and painful knots at the prospect of facing that manipulative monster again. Everything with Epps was intentional.

Booth went alone and returned to report Epps was keenly interested in seeing Brennan, and "he really … needed his wrist." The one she'd broken when he'd touched her. The one he would use to ...

"Ah, chronic masterbation!" Zack exclaimed.

The right wrist. She looked down at the teen girl, looked where the clue pointed.

As if they hadn't already learned how deep the game he could play was, Brennan found a single Hamate bone in the young woman's right wrist that didn't belong there because it didn't belong to her. Epps had taunted Booth to bring in Brennan when she found it so she went, submerging her discomfort and distaste under the higher goal of finding out who else was dead, which in the grand scheme of things was probably more important than avoiding an awkward afternoon with a sociopath. If he gave her any trouble, she would simply break the cretin's other wrist.

"Dr. Brennan, you came." He smiled a sickly grimace, the words oozing double meanings right from the very beginning.

Brennan sat in silence, listening to his ramblings with an intensity that even Booth had never seen before. She watched the killer carefully, noting facial expressions that meant almost nothing to her as Epps muttered about washing his hands in ammonia and he should have killed his mother first, putting her under a stone cross.

"Okay," she said softly. There was a message hidden in his random utterings. Ammonia would be important, and a stone cross. A first victim, perhaps the owner of the wrong wrist bone. A cross, something about religion, Christianity. She used mnemonic devices to segment the messages for later reproduction to Hodgins and Zack. Maybe Angela, also. Brennan nodded briefly to Epps. "Okay."

She was up and out before Booth knew why. He chased her out of the interview chamber with a questioning glance. "You understood all of that?"

"Not really," she admitted, intent on making her escape just as her finely tuned sense of self preservation had been insisting for the last hour.

"Then, why did you leave?"

Because I couldn't stand to be in that bastard's presence even a moment longer. And, "He expects me to solve his riddles." She glanced up at Booth sideways, surprised he didn't realize her capacity to understand was greater than it appeared. "The clues were specific, but I don't know what they mean yet. I have to go back and look at the evidence again."

"Do you think you can figure them out?"

They were approaching the exit to the prison. Brennan crossed her arms and shivered slightly. Though freedom beckoned just beyond the heavy doors, she knew she was already trapped in Epps's game. "I have to."

~Q~

She had to, because there was a young woman being held upside down and tortured by an accomplice right at that very moment. Epps knew who had her, maybe even knew where, and he left the trail of stones and bones for Brennan to follow in the dark with only the barest hint of hope that she could reach Helen Majors in time.

"For all your faults, you never made your victims suffer," Brennan told Epps, brandishing psychology as a desperate weapon of last resort when nothing else seemed to work. "She's an innocent girl."

He leaned forward, his flat brown eyes penetrating her while the low sound of longing and lust growled out of him. "There's no such thing as an innocent woman." Though her instincts with people were not sharp, Brennan felt his desire coating her unpleasantly: the way he looked her over, the way his eyes drifted to places that were covered and off limits. Whatever he desired of her, Brennan suspected Epps had convinced himself she was entirely the one to blame. His feelings were her fault.

The fact that she wasn't his type confused her until something one of the victim's parents mentioned floated to the surface of her mind. Epps had said the young woman reminded him of his mother. And Epps had told Brennan he wished he'd have killed his mother first and buried her under a stone cross.

I don't look like his victims, Brennan realized. Did his obsession with her mean she reminded him somehow of his mother? Did it mean something else? Why had he singled her out to play this game? This is why she hated psychology, she reminded herself. It didn't make sense and really, who cared why he liked to bash in the heads of teenaged blond girls.

Someone else was holding Helen Majors, and Epps was dangling clues that might help her save the girl. He laughed and told her Helen only had 24 hours left. "Better get going…"

~Q~

The wise woman knows she is a fool. Foolish Brennan found Angela in her office and begged for wisdom.

"What are you asking me for?" Angela asked. She set aside the skull she'd been working on with a grimace.

Bluntly, she reminded Angela that her own checkered history with men might have prepared her for this, and it was that experience that was now so sorely needed. "You said you've dealt with manipulative men before."

Angela looked slightly rattled. "Sweetie, this is a psycho killer, not some loser who wants you to co-sign for his jet ski."

"Epps is pushing me around, Ange. He's in control. I hate that." She was terrified and disoriented, actually. Most disturbing to her was the fact that even Booth seemed at a loss. This game was between her and Epps but she didn't understand the rules.

The wry observation was tinged with dark humor. "You know, Epps is acting kind of like a boyfriend."

Brennan huffed a small, disbelieving laugh. "What?!"

"Well, you obviously fascinate him."

This much Brennan had deduced on her own. Epps had fixated on her, for reasons she still couldn't quite grasp. Whether it was her appearance, her intelligence, the fact that she'd broken his wrist, or something else she had yet to recognize, something had caught his revolting admiration. He lured her to visit, implied he masterbated to fantasies of her, and gave her clues that might help her save a life, but only if she decoded them fast enough.

Angela continued thoughtfully, "He can't have you, and he can't kill you..."

Again, nothing Brennan hadn't already begun to understand. He wanted her; he wanted something out of her.

"...So, he wants to make you hate yourself."

She reacted with shock and disbelief, almost laughing again because none of her 'boyfriends' had ever behaved this way. The insight was rather horrifying, that Angela would be familiar enough with such twisted relationships to recognize what Epps wanted. "God, Ange, what kind of boyfriends have you had?"

Angela's own defenses went into play almost immediately. "Let's keep the focus on you and Epps, okay?"

"Okay," she agreed quietly. Now wasn't the right time to delve into it, anyway. This would be the sort of discussion that commenced after midnight, accompanied by mournful music and the consumption of two bottles of wine and a shared gallon of Cherry Garcia ice cream. (Angela's rules for girlfriend disclosures, indelibly ingrained in her when her relationship with Peter had started to turn sour.)

Serious now, Angela laid bare how well he had come to know Brennan in just those few interactions. In a way, Epps was an evil Booth, reading her and using his insights into her character against her. "Epps knows that you'll never forgive yourself if you don't find Helen Majors before she's murdered."

She knew Angela was probably correct. His last words to her, 'better get going...' demonstrated just how much he was capable of manipulating her.

He was tormenting so many people with his game. Did he grasp what it was doing to Helen's family, this not knowing? Did he understand how that felt? Brennan felt sick as the familiar depth of their suffering lodged itself in her head. "Not only is Helen being tortured but, her family must be in agony."

And so am I, she understood with horror. He knows. Epps knew her that well; God, had he Googled her or something? Read her books, read into her? Read Booth's protectiveness, read everything.

Angela broke in with compassion. "You see? This is what he's doing. He's putting pictures in your mind. He's messing with your objectivity."

"There's nothing I can do about that." Swallowing the emerging nausea with effort, Brennan wondered how Booth or Angela could function when the pain came from the living. All she could think of was the pain Helen's parents must be suffering, all she could imagine was Helen's terror and the looming weight of guilt when she failed to find Helen in time. Helen is still alive, still in pain, still in agony and terror and she couldn't stop it.

She couldn't stop it because in all the lessons on human interactions, she'd forgotten how to be rational. All that pain was a distraction.

And it was why he was going to win. She was already starting to hate herself, her weakness.

"You have to step back, okay? Let the rest of us deal with the families. You find Helen. That'll keep Epps from getting a jet ski out of you."

How did Booth do this, Brennan wondered in despair. How did he function with his compassionate heart? Why didn't the pain blind him the way it blinded her? Sensing Angela was correct, Brennan withdrew from the school of life she'd recently enrolled herself in and kept her focus on what Sarah Koskoff's bones could still tell her.

When she and Booth finally found young Helen still alive, Brennan hoped they would quickly arrest Gil Lappin and call it a night. But Lappin had slipped away from them...

~Q~

Author's Note: Mind games aplenty are in store in the next chapter. I never realized just how manipulative Epps was until I viewed his episodes as a trilogy over Spring Break. Wow, he left an impact (and not just on the pavement).