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

Feedback: Appreciated

Angel of the Bones

"We're not sure about time of death yet," Bones noted, as the two of them discussed their latest case during their current session with Sweets; if they were going to be stuck with the guy for the foreseeable future, they might as well try and make use of his insight.

"It was definitely a murder," Booth added, wondering what it was about this case that was making Sweets look so bored; this had to be more interesting than discussing issues that only the psychiatrist seemed to feel were actually there…

"Definitely," Bones confirmed. "Probably by two assailants."

"What a shock for that couple, huh?" Booth said, smiling over at his partner. "You know, they slide naked, into the hot mud bath, and a skeleton hand pokes her in the-"

"Anus," Bones interjected.

"Bones!" Booth said, smiling at her choice of term.

"What?" the anthropologist said. "It's a clinical term for that part of the body, Booth."

"Doctor Brennan, Agent Booth…" Sweets said, looking between them with an overly shocked expression, "would it be fair to say that you use work to avoid confronting personal issues?"

"What?" Booth said, unable to believe Sweets was bringing up such a random topic. "Because I don't want to talk about…"

"The anus," Bones finished.

"You really like that word, don't you?" Booth said.

"Do you two ever discuss anything that's not attached to work?" Sweets asked.

"Well, it's better than talking about, y'know…" Booth began.

"The anus?" Sweets finished.

"What is it with you two?" Booth protested.

"Well, Sweets could be right," Bones noted. "I mean, we talk a lot about work."

"I talk about my kid," Booth pointed out, rejecting that idea.

"Because he was almost kidnapped during a case," Sweets said (Booth really wished he could legally hit Sweets for that; he'd mentioned Parker to Bones before Epps had gone after him, and they'd never once mentioned the whole Epps thing after his sessions with Gordon Gordon when discussing how things were with him, Parker and Rebecca).

"My father," Bones noted, raising a finger. "We talk a lot about him."

"Because Agent Booth arrested him for murder," Sweets noted.

"Mmm…" Booth said, debating whether they should point out all the discussions they'd had about her family history before and after the arrest before deciding he didn't want to give Sweets any more 'ammunition' than he had already. "OK, what are you trying to get at here?"

"Your inability to share your personal lives," Sweets said. "I thought that was obvious."

"OK, that was snotty," Booth said, glaring slightly at the younger man. "I don't respond well to snotty."

"After a case," Bones put in, leaning over to lay a hand on Booth's arm, "sometimes we have a drink, or coffee, Booth has pie. I don't...like pie."

"You really should just give it a chance," Booth said, glad for the new topic.

"I find it too sweet," Bones replied.

"OK, there," Booth said, smiling at Sweets. "We talked about pie. Nothin' to do with work."

"It… is better when we discuss murder," Bones noted, leaving Booth suddenly feeling awkward about this conversation; he didn't specifically agree with the idea that he and Bones had a poor dynamic outside of work, but it was hard to argue with any of Sweets' points…

"I'd like to see you guys in a social situation," Sweets said. "A situation where work is a taboo subject."

"What, are you gonna send us to a restaurant and watch us through a one-way mirror?" Booth asked; sometimes he wondered if Sweets needed to do most of these tests or if he was just screwing around to try and live vicariously through them…

"I'm still not having pie," Bones began.

"No," Sweets interjected. "An evening out with my girlfriend and me."

Booth couldn't resist the temptation to chuckle at that; one thing he enjoyed about his life as Booth was the ability to make these kind of jokes without people worrying that 'Angel' was having some kind of breakdown…

"They need someone to buy them beer," he noted to his partner.

"You want us to go on a double date?" Bones asked.

"Why don't you go on the internet like all the rest of the kids?" Booth added.

"OK," Sweets said, ignoring their arguments. "If it goes well, I'll withdraw my concern. I'll release you back into your environment."

"What are we; brook trout?" Booth asked.

"Fine," Bones said, pouting briefly in frustration, which Booth simply sighed as he picked up a small stress-sumo-wrestler figure from the table.

"Agent Booth?" Sweets asked, looking pointedly at him. "Unless… you think that's too much to prove."

"Fine," Booth said, making a face in frustration as he tossed the doll at the psychiatrist. "I'll show 'em I have nothing to prove. Bring it on, Sweets."

He hated having to jump through hoops for this kid who couldn't hope to understand half of the things he'd been through in his life, but if it let him continue his work with Bones, he'd put up with it…


"I'm enjoying this," Bones noted as she worked away at the pot she was currently making in their ceramics class. "The last time I threw pots I was in Colombia with the Auroco Indians."

"Last time I did something like this, I was in nursery school," Booth noted. Even if the memory he'd spoken of was faked, he wasn't that keen on pottery as an artistic expression due to the relative lack of influence he had over the materials, but his old drawing skills weren't something Seeley Booth would have developed, and he was mainly here to go along with Sweets rather than anything else.

"Well, we love it," the woman who'd been introduced to them as April said firmly. "Don't we, Lance?"

"Yes," Sweets said, in a tone that suggested he was exaggerating his interest.

"Well," Booth put in, "I love my work, but I'm not going to talk about that right now, even though we think a paraplegic killed Tripp Goddard."

"That sounds fascinating," April said, looking curiously at him.

"April?" Sweets said, prompting a forced giggle and exaggerated apology from the other woman.

"Doctor Sweets says that you work with tropical fish," Bones noted.

"Yes, I love fish," April said with a smile. "They're just like people."

"No, no, they're not, actually," Bones said, looking at her in confusion. "People can't breathe underwater."

"She's funny," April said, her laugh prompting a similar smile from Booth despite his best intentions.

"I am?" Bones asked. "What? Why is that funny?"

"I don't think she meant that literally, Bones," Booth said.

"It's their eyes," April explained. "You can tell so much from eyes."

"In humans, the retinal scan is as specific as a fingerprint-" Bones began, evidently missing the point.

"No, no," April clarified. "Their souls. You can see their little souls."

"I don't understand," Bones said uncertainly. "You believe that fish have souls?"

"Yes," April said, as though it was obvious. "You can see it in their coloring; it's a reflection of who they are."

"Their coloring has developed over millennia as a way to deal with predators," Bones said, clearly confused at April's point.

"April just means they're beautiful," Sweets said.

"Don't tell me what I mean, Lance," April said, looking firmly at him. "I mean they have souls."

"Ah… OK," Sweets said.

"Hey, look what I'm makin'!" Booth said, smiling up at the group as he revealed his clay horse; the finer details still needed some work, but he was definitely making some progress at this end…

"You've done this before," Bones noted.

"Nah…" Booth said, unwilling to go into his artistic history at this point.

"You have," Bones said.

"You really think that's good?" Booth asked; clay was something he'd only dabbled in before, but he was still glad to know that he could make an interesting impression with art.

"Yes, very," Bones said.

"Yours is good too, April," Sweets noted, clearly trying to make up for their earlier argument.

"I'm not talking to you," April said in a low voice, prompting an awkward snicker from Sweets. "You think that's funny."

"Are they fighting?" Bones asked Booth, giving him a stage whisper.

"Just focus on your pot there," Booth said, wanting to stay out of this conversation; he wasn't going to convince Sweets to stay out of his social life by butting into the psychiatrist's…

"I'm with patients, April," Sweets said.

"Nope; no patients tonight," Booth said, even as he continued his own work. "Just us people makin' pots."

"You can't apologise for me, Lance," April said, looking up at him with a firm glare.

"Can we please just move on?" Sweets asked.

"No," April said with a shake of her head. "It just- I meant that, I believe that all creatures, people, fish, dogs, we're all connected. We all share the same stuff that makes life so beautiful and precious."

"On a quantum level, that's true, although the word 'stuff' is not accurate," Bones noted thoughtfully (Booth wasn't entirely sure if that applied, considering that demons definitely didn't share that same quality considering what some of them were capable of, but this was far from the time to bring up the existence of demons to refute a pleasant woman's somewhat naïve views).

"See?" April said, looking gratefully at Bones before shooting a scathing glare at Sweets, slamming a towel on the table to emphasise her point.

"What?" Sweets protested. "I have great respect for your fish. Admittedly, I might relate to other things more."

"He kills about a thousand people a night," April said, looking over at Bones.

"Yeah, in a video game, April," Sweets said as Bones looked at him in surprise. "They're not real."

"Hey, Sweets," Booth said, indicating the psychiatrist's now-faltering pot; he'd been so busy talking he'd lost track of his project. "Your thing there's droopy."

As Sweets examined his faltering pot, Booth indicated his own finished model with a smile, allowing the rest to express their thoughts on it before he picked up a stray piece of clay and tossed it at Bones, starting a small 'clay fight' that at least managed to make the night more amusing than it had been (The moment when April threw clay at Sweets' face was a bit of a mood-killer, but otherwise it was just amusing).


"I tell you one thing," Booth noted as he and Bones drove into work after last night's disastrous and bizarre 'dinner date', "Sweets didn't get any last night."

"They're too young to be in a serious relationship," Bones said sceptically. "In agrarian societies, young couplings made sense; the partnership was for survival, but today…"

"You know, you can play the field but not plough it," Booth said, not wanting to hear her debate about young relationships any more than he had to; the last thing he needed was for her to start sprouting statistics that left him hitting himself for being a bad partner to Buffy and Cordelia all over again (They'd missed their chance because of outside circumstances; he knew they could have made it work if things had been different)…

"That was distasteful," Bones said.

"What?" Booth said, already regretting his choice of words; he'd just over-reacted because he didn't want to think about what she'd brought up.

"I like April, though," Bones noted.

"She talks to fish, OK?" Booth said. "I'm with Sweets on this one."

He knew that he'd crossed a line or two, but it was better to present a negative image right now than risk talking about something that might end up giving away something important about his past if he got into an argument…


"Excuse me, we're here about a mudbath?" Smalls said, looking at him uncertainly as they sat in the interrogation room.

"No," Booth corrected, "we've got a sworn statement here from Garth Jodrey that Philippa Fitz took him to the mud hole three years ago."

"To have sex," Bones added.

"The same mudhole that Tripp was dumped in," Booth continued.

"I could give you a sworn statement that Garth took me to that mud hole," Philippa said.

"Oho, I slid that one right by her," Booth said.

"What?" Philippa asked.

"You just admitted that you had prior knowledge to the location of a mud hole," Smalls clarified.

"No changies," Bones said.

"No takebacks," Bones added.

"Answer nothing without prior confirmation from me," Smalls protested.

"You killed Tripp because your father was about to sign the company over to him," Booth said.

"What?" Philippa asked.

"Don't respond in any way," Smalls informed her.

"We have DNA evidence that shows that you swung the prybar into Tripp's head," Booth said.

"According to the forensic report, the sample was very small, and was totally used up during the course of the test," Smalls noted.

"It's an accurate test," Bones countered.

"But it can't be repeated," Smalls said, sounding far too satisfied for someone who knew that he was defending an actual murderer (Seriously, Gunn had received a legal upgrade from the worst lawyers in existence and he'd still refused to take morally questionable cases unless the client had threatened darker consequences if he lost). "And my client has a twin brother. Juries hate DNA evidence and twins. What's that sound? I believe that's reasonable doubt startin' its engines."

"We have evidence that the same prybar was used to sabotage Tripp's motorcycle," Bones said, ignoring Smalls' protests.

"A common tool left in a semi-public area?" Smalls countered. "In a situation that could have arisen from incompetence rather than sabotage?"

"You sabotaged the bike to kill Tripp, but he signed the contract before he could ride the bike and die the way he was supposed to," Booth said, looking grimly at Philippa, ignoring Smalls' attempt to provoke him; he knew that they were dealing with limited evidence, but he'd put the case together and he was going to speak his piece.

"So, you killed him with a prybar, loaded him onto his own truck, and dumped him in the mud puddle," Bones continued.

"Everything was great until your brother rode the bike that you sabotaged," Booth noted.

"You don't ride someone else's bike; Danny knew that!" Philippa protested, clearly struggling not to cry at the memory of what her mistake had done to her brother.

"Philippa…" Smalls said warningly.

"You killed him," Bones said solemnly. "Accidentally, but you did kill him."

"I loved my brother…" Philippa said weakly.

"Don't speak, please," Smalls said as he stood up. "Are we free to go, or would you like to waste some more of the taxpayers' money?"

"She did it!" Bones protested.

"You may get a prosecutor to lay a murder charge, but a jury will never bring home this baby the way you want it to," Smalls said, placing his hands on Philippa's shoulders.

"You're right," Booth noted, nodding briefly at Smalls before he put his files away. "But I'm still gonna make the arrest."

"To what end?" Smalls asked. "You can't win!"

"We let everybody know what Philippa did, including her father," Booth said firmly.

Maybe they couldn't get a conviction, and maybe Philippa had only set out to commit one murder rather than two, but that wasn't the issue right now; what mattered was that she had to answer for what she'd done.

Even if she wouldn't actually be punished for it, people would know what she'd done in the end; that was all that really mattered to him right now.