Disclaimer: I own neither Angel or anything associated with him, and "Bones" is equally out of my reach control-wise

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Angel of the Bones

"Why can't you go faster?" Bones asked, looking inquiringly at him as they pulled away from the Jeffersonian. "I don't see why I couldn't drive."

"Because you're agitated," Booth countered, staring at the road before him, trying not to think about his recent conversation with Rebecca.

"I am not," Bones said indignantly.

"You know what," Booth said, taking his sunglasses off with one hand while keeping the other on the steering-wheel, "you've turned this into a competition between you and Cam."

"I just like to be first on the scene, that's all," Bones said. "To protect the evidence."

"She's not going to disturb anything," Booth said; sometimes he wondered if Bones thought that she was the only person who knew how to process a crime scene with this kind of evidence...

"No, it's all tissue and blood and DNA with her; she doesn't appreciate the skeletal system," Bones said, before she pointed out of the windshield. "You can take the I-70, it'll be quicker."

"Don't back-seat drive, OK?" Booth said.

"Oh, I think I know who's agitated," Bones said, smiling at him in a manner that would have been teasing from anyone else but inspired something he really didn't want to examine too closely when it came from her.

"Someone is annoying me, OK?" Booth said, trying to restrain the urge to scoff at her insinuation. "That's different."

"Your ex," Bones said.

"Huh?" Booth asked, confused at whether Bones had just changed the subject or guessed who he was talking about.

"That's who's annoying you," Bones said, a teasing tone entering her voice as she looked at him. "Because she has a new man in her life."

"That's funny, you know?" Booth said, glaring back at her. "OK, I am concerned about my son. I wanna know what kind of guy this new boyfriend is. And you know what? If she's not gonna tell me, I'll find out on my own."

He knew that part of the reason for his paranoia where Parker was concerned was how things had fallen apart with Connor thanks to Holtz, but he'd promised himself long ago that he'd never fail his children when he was human the same way he'd failed to protect Connor; if that meant that he had to be a bit over-protective, he'd deal with the consequences of it so long as Parker had the stable childhood from the beginning that should have been Connor's.

"You're going to run a background check on him?" Bones asked, looking at him in surprise.

"You have kids and we'll talk," Booth countered.

"That's a lot to ask for a little conversation," Bones said, the anthropologist indicating another direction when Booth simply scoffed at her comment. "If you make a right we can cut through Grafton."

"Fine," Booth said, turning in the indicated direction; at this point, he was just glad for a chance to end this awkward conversation.

"You want me to what?" Booth asked, not certain if he'd heard Bones correctly as he walked through the corridors of the FBI building while talking to his partner on his cellphone; he might have become more capable in its use since he was Angel, but that didn't mean that he didn't still have some trouble sometimes.

"Stab the body for me," Bones repeated. "We need to match force with the injuries recorded on the remains."

"OK, I'm stabbing the body..." Booth said, trying to work out the chain of circumstances that led to Doctor Temperance Brennan wanting to compromise evidence...

"Well, it's a replica," Bones clarified. "We're all going to do it, you're just the closest to Kyle Richardson."

"OK, you know what, that's great, be there in twenty," Booth said, satisfied that the most important question was answered; at least Bones hadn't suddenly suffered a mental breakdown or anything like that. "But in the future you're just going to have to ask me differently, Bones, because you know what? Come over to your place to stab a body; that is just freaky."

"Seeley, you son of a bitch," a voice said, drawing Booth's attention from the phone call, prompting him to turn around and take in the sight of a familiar blonde walking down the corridor in a purple top and a black knee-length skirt.

Rebecca...

God, this conversation was never going to be anything other than awkward; their relationship was so complicated to define for him at times. Even without the fact that they engaged in the occasional 'sexual liaison' when they weren't in any active relationships and needed the release- making their dynamic even harder to define than it would have been in some of his past relationships; he just was never sure how to fully break it off-, there was also the issue that he'd kept so much about his past secret from her when they were dating... the complete absence of information he'd provided about his vampiric history...

"Oh, I- Rebecca," he said, pushing those thoughts aside as he terminated the conversation with Bones. "Wow, you look great."

"Yeah, okay, save it 'cause I need a lot more than compliments from you right now," Rebecca said, glaring at him in such a manner that Booth didn't feel capable of even looking away from her as he backed towards his office.

"OK, just... keep it down a little bit," he said, making shushing motions as they passed through a crowded area, Booth turning around only long enough to walk through the door of his office before he turned back to face her. "'Cause I'm at work, all right?"

"You sent agents to investigate Drew?" Rebecca asked, as they walked through the door of his office. "Because you're going to stop that now."

"OK, listen, I'm just being cautious," Booth said, holding up his hands defensively. "What do you really know about this guy, anyway?"

"I know- I know that he has a good job," Rebecca said, still glaring at him as Booth was forced to walk backwards to the other side of his desk as she continued to rant. "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. And I know that I love him."

That last comment was enough to get Booth to turn around; whenever the mother of his son started using that word to refer to someone else, he felt that a bit of concern was natural...

"I love him," Rebecca repeated, a brief smile on her face at the statement before she resumed glaring at him. "And now everyone at work thinks he's a criminal."

"Well, he's been spotted with explosives," Booth pointed out.

"He is a construction foreman, he does demolition," Rebecca countered. "You must have figured that out when you were doing all of your snooping."

"OK, well, I have a right to know who's around my son, all right?" Booth countered. "He spends more time with Parker than I do."

"OK, you think that I would put Parker in danger?" Rebecca asked (Booth could never decide if Rebecca's lack of knowledge of his past was a good or bad thing at this point; if she didn't know how his relationship with Connor had been so difficult, she had no reason to be concerned about his experience as a father, but on the other hand it meant that she didn't understand the reasons for his caution when his son was concerned).

"Let me ask you a question," he said, trying to focus on the questions that he could answer without compromising his secret past as Angel. "Why is it that you keep all the men in your life such a secret?"

"Because you always interrogate them or intimidate them, and it freaks them out!" Rebecca retaliated.

"Well, I mean, c'mon... a lot are a little strange," Booth replied, trying to make a joke about this increasingly awkward topic. "I mean, the guy with the tattoos on his neck?"

"I don't even have to let you see Parker, OK?" Rebecca interrupted. "Not-not-not legally. That-that's one of the upsides of not being married."

"Don't," Booth said, staring firmly at her; they might not agree about some issues, but he couldn't cope with what she was implying...

"I'm a good father," he said firmly. "You know that."

"You're got to stop trying to run things," Rebecca said after a moment's silence. "I've got things in my life that have nothing to do with you."

She turned to leave, but Booth grabbed her arm before she could reach the door.

"OK, look," he said, turning around so that they were facing each other again, "we are always gonna have something to do with each other because we share a son."

"Drew's a good man," Rebecca said firmly. "And you need to back off or you're not gonna see Parker again, I swear. Back off."

As Rebecca walked out, Booth could only stare after her, trying to conceal the fear he felt at just the thought of the scenario she'd just suggested.

"I don't know how they can do it," Bones said as they drove back to the Jeffersonian after their last meeting with Carlie Richardson's friends.

"They're self-obsessed," Booth said with a shrug. "They have no conscience."

"I don't know..." Bones muttered.

"They destroy anything that gets in their way," Booth continued. "They're not even human." (He acknowledged that he was exaggerating that last bit, but after spending so much time around demons he sometimes wondered if he'd developed an 'idealised' version of humanity as a whole and forgotten just what people could be capable of when they were just people without the supernatural in their lives).

"The mothers?" Bones asked, looking at him in surprise.

"Huh?" Booth said, confused at his partner's sudden change of subject.

"I was talking about the mothers," Bones clarified.

"I'm talking about the killers," Booth responded.

"I understand killers," Bones said. "I just don't know how mothers can do it. I mean, dogs can be trained in a couple of weeks. With kids, mothers have to give up their lives for years."

"No," Booth corrected, remembering his own experiences holding Connor and Parker for the first time; everything that happened to Connor after the fact had been hard, but he wouldn't have changed it for anything. "When you're looking at your kid, you don't feel like you're giving up anything."

"So you would do it again?" Bones asked.

"What?" Booth asked, looking at her in confusion.

"You'd have Parker even with everything you're going through?" Bones elaborated.

"What kind of question is that?" Booth asked.

"Wouldn't it be easier if Parker wasn't caught in this... drama of yours with Rebecca and the new boyfriend?" Bones elaborated.

"God, no," Booth said; parenthood might not be easy, but he wasn't even going to contemplate a scenario where he never had a second shot at being a father. "No, Bones. He's my son. Whatever we're going through, it's not about that; he knows that."

"That's what parents say when they want to justify themselves," Bones said, the grim tone in her voice less effective than it might have been due to the accompanying smile on her face.

"You know," Booth said, his temper momentarily overriding his politeness, "I haven't walked out on Parker, all right? I would never have done what your parents did."

"Well, I didn't say you would," Bones responded, her casual tone at least suggesting she hadn't taken offence to him bringing up her parents like that. "I just... I don't know."

She sighed in frustration as she stared at the road in front of them. "You're the father. I don't know anything about raising kids, so-"

"Parker's fine," Booth said firmly, ignoring his partner's sceptical glance at him as they continued driving.

He had failed Connor in so many ways, but he would not fail Parker.

"I wonder if he'll even care, you know," Booth wondered, as he and Bones drove in his car away from the Jeffersonian, their minds filled with the implications of their latest discoveries. "Finding out that his wife is dead."

"He didn't kill her," Bones pointed out.

"No, but he ran," Booth interjected; he wasn't going to accept any excuse for someone abandoning his family like that. "How do you just cut your family out of your life like that?"

"Well, what about Abraham?" Bones asked.

"What, you're going to throw religion in my face right now?" Booth countered, leaping to the most obvious statement he could make when faced with such a drastic and unexpected change of subject.

"I thought you found answers in what you believe," Bones asked.

"Well, I mean, that's just one Bible story that I just don't like," Booth said; regardless of what time in his life he'd been at- whether Liam, Angelus, Angel or Booth-, it had never felt right to him (Even if Angelus had just not liked it because he felt that God should have let Abraham kill his son anyway). "I mean, God commands Abraham to kill his own son, and he does."

"No," Bones corrected. "Abraham did not kill Isaac."

"But old Abe, you know, he had the intention-" Booth began.

"Well, I thought what he had was faith," Bones asked.

"Look, I have faith," Booth interrupted; this wasn't the time to get into a theological argument, so he was just going to say what mattered and leave it at that. "But if God himself came down, pointed at Parker and said, 'I want you to... you know'; that ain't gonna happen."

He might have had to kill Connor, but that was only because he had made the kind of deal with Lilah and the Senior Partners that even they couldn't cheat on without jeopardising their new desire for him to take control of the company; even they couldn't 'trick' him into killing Connor unless they were genuinely going to bring him back to life afterwards without suffering consequences.

"But God's messenger stopped Abraham?" Bones asked.

"Yeah," Booth conceded. "Grabbed his hand at the last second right before the knife was about to go in."

"OK," Bones said, looking thoughtfully at him. "Then the lesson I would learn from the myth-"

"Myth?" Booth repeated; he might not be certain about the specifics of the Bible, but he still didn't like comparing it to myths.

"Well, it fits the definition," Bones clarified.

"OK, fine," Booth said; he didn't have the time or desire to argue that point right now, and he wanted to hear Bones's final point anyway.

"That when it comes to your children," Bones continued, "your love has to be absolute. The messenger represents goodness, what you know to be right. Ergo, you have to remain open to what you know is true."

Despite the grim mood of the conversation, Booth had to admit that what he'd just heard was the most positive thing he'd ever heard Bones say about religion.

"Are you sure you're not religious?" he asked.

"Science all the way," Bones replied, smiling slightly at him. "Hey, even an empiricist can have a heart, Booth."

"Too bad Richardson doesn't..." Booth said, as his mind turned back to the task awaiting them.

"He's fine?" Kyle Richardson asked, looking uncertainly at them as he paced around Booth's office, clearly shocked at the news that his presumed-dead son was still alive over a year after his mother's death.

"He's perfect," Booth said, looking at Kyle with a neutral expression; considering Kyle's obvious shock at this news, he'd give the other man a chance to step up before judging him for his past.

"And you're sure?" Kyle asked, slightly stammering as he looked back at them.

"He's yours," Bones confirmed.

"When I thought he was gone," Kyle said, ceasing his earlier pacing as he looked at them with a slight edge of what Booth could only think of as nervous excitement about his manner, "and Carlie... I wished I could have changed how things had been."

Kyle's further thoughts were cut off when a social worker entered, carrying the baby boy they had earlier identified as the presumed dead Baby Richardson (Booth wondered if Kyle was going to change the kid's name, considering that he'd been named by his mother's killer, but quickly concluded that it wasn't his business; Kyle could sort that out later).

"Don't you want to hold him?" the social worker asked, holding the baby out to Kyle.

"I don't know," Kyle said, awkwardness once again dominating his appearance. "The kind of guy I am... I'm no father."

"You don't get to decide that," Booth said, memories of his own instinctive reaction to Darla identifying him as her baby's father flashing through his mind; even before he'd contemplated the possibilities of what the child of two vampires would be like, his inability to provide a good role model had been the first thing to occur to him. "You have a son. Step up. Take him."

Staring at his son for a moment, Kyle stepped forward and took the baby from the social worker, smiling uncertainly at the child he'd never known about before now.

"Hey..." he said, smiling at the baby in his arms, hugging him close before he looked at Booth, a smile slowly spreading across his face as he held the last remnant of his wife to him. "Thank you."

Looking at the reunited father and soon, Booth could only smile in satisfaction at the sight before him.

He enjoyed his job of bringing murderers to justice, but there was something far more satisfying- maybe because of how rare it was- in those moments when he was able to bring a family together, rather than just providing a broken group with answers to what had happened to their missing member.

Kyle might have his doubts, but now that he had the chance to step up, it was clear that he was ready and willing to at least try and be a better father to his son; sometimes, you never knew how someone would cope in a situation until they were actually there.