A/N: LOL WHAT. Catch me updating a story after like two years. College senioritis is very real, so here I am. Nostalgia wins. Maybe drop a review if there's anyone still reading Bones fanfic in 2018
Her dress is a long, plum gown, with a beaded front and soft, satiny fabric that hugs her waist just slightly, and then falls gracefully to the bases of her heels. At the very top is an extension of thin, flowery lace that borders her collarbone and is displayed neatly, beautifully across her back.
She is an artist – so, naturally, she does her own makeup. A matching purple gradient decorating her eyelids, the thinnest wing of eyeliner her hands could draw.
She is gorgeous.
That is a fact her husband knew from the start; behind her, Jack Hodgins stands, curling the smaller strands of hair that are too far back for her to reach. As he pulls the iron away for the last time, he offers a gentle, discontented sigh and stares at his wife's reflection in the mirror in front of them.
"You look beautiful," he says, and she smiles. "And I wish you weren't doing this."
She stands from her seat and finds that the heels, these sparkling silver shoes with a rather short, two-inch lift, set her even taller than her husband than she already is. She leans forward and places a soft kiss to his forehead – and when she pulls away, the dark shade of lipstick is copied perfectly onto his face.
"I know. But it was my choice. It's how we're going to find the truth."
"It's how this guy says we're going to find the truth," he gently corrects, and she considers this. She bites her bottom lip, looks away for a moment.
"He's Sweets' brother."
A nod.
"He is," Hodgins offers, reaching for her hands and holding them tight in his. "But he's an ass, Ange. He's nothing like Sweets was. We shouldn't feel like we owe him anything."
And for a moment, she just stares.
"We?" she finally asks.
At first, her husband doesn't answer; he lets her hands down and turns away for a few long moments. He takes a few steps, runs a hand through his hair. When he comes back, all he can do is sigh and admit it.
"Yeah. We. I guess the only reason I didn't fight you more on this… is that I get it. Kind of. And you know, if I'm honest, I want to be able to say that any family of Sweets is family of mine. But he makes it so hard; he's obstinate and irritating and rude, and he's dragging you into this mess. And he's an ass. But something still makes me want to try."
Angela smiles. "That's because you're a good man. And good people look for the good in other people."
"Yeah. I guess," he presses another kiss to her cheek, but this time pulls away quickly. His expression quickly turns thoughtful once again. "But you know what really gets me? What really makes me mad… is that he doesn't seem to care at all that he had a brother. You know? When I learned about Jeffrey, it changed my whole life. Everything was different, and here's Daley. Not only does he find out he had a twin, but that twin was murdered. And he just brushes it off like nothing."
She considers this – and nods.
"Yeah. That's how it looks, sure. But I'm sure he just has his own way of dealing with things. It might seem like he doesn't care… but that doesn't mean that's the truth. Maybe he's projecting, or rationalizing, or – I don't know. Sweets would know."
She pauses.
"I miss him."
She whispers this, and just as she does, her husband's arms find their way around her. Gently, she presses her cheek against his.
"Yeah," he says, rubbing his hand back and forth on her back. "Me too."
They stay like that for just a few seconds more before he finally pulls away.
"Alright," he sighs. "Let's go meet the prom date, huh?"
She pulls the device out of the top drawer of her desk and places it right into Daley's hand in one definitive motion, and for a moment, he just stares at it. Wordlessly gauging its size, its visibility, its usefulness, he glances first at his hand and then up at her. She is perfectly glad to explain.
"That's thin enough to fit completely in your jacket pocket unnoticed," she explains with half a smile on her face. "It's got two gigabytes free, which doesn't sound like much, but it can hold about three days of audio on it – so you might as well switch it on now. Sound quality's crystal clear, too. You're welcome."
He holds it in his hand for just a moment more before pressing a tiny button on the side. The size of a pinhole, a blue light shines bright enough to signal that it's on, but dim enough to not be seen unless he looks particularly hard. As he slides it gently into his pocket, he offers her half a smile in return.
"That's perfect. Thank you."
She simply nods in response.
Somewhere in his peripheral vision, he sees a set of keys being thrown his way, and at the last second, he turns to grab them with his left hand. Booth follows them into view.
The older agent places a hand on Angela's shoulder and spends a moment sizing the other up once again.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Daley," is all he says, earning a stern nod and a stony expression.
"I do."
He replies, and with a lighter nod in Angela's direction, he walks off, leaving the artist to follow behind and idly wonder at what the evening will bring.
Cam and Hodgins stare at what they've got, which isn't much.
They've got flesh, collected and contained and sampled.
They've got a computer testing its composition, but the expensive program meant to help them find it keeps crashing. Over and over and over again, error messages they haven't seen before. Codes they don't recognize.
Cam mutters to herself, frustrated, confused: "Carbon-based, hydrogen, nitrogen… other."
Sixty percent of the remains' makeup, unidentifiable.
"We'll have to send it out."
Hodgins takes a breath, holds it, lets it out slowly.
"I couldn't find any evidence of chemical changes. Whatever this is… it appears to be genetic. It was born this way."
They've got a clear plastic container full of off-grey flesh, anomalous organs stored away for later examination. Photos of where they had once been inside the victim, tucked away in a thin manila file.
Hodgins pauses, his train of thought switching lines.
"If we're sending out the flesh to be analyzed, we can't make that request electronically."
She considers this. Cautious. Nervous.
"I don't like throwing conspiracies around like that," she says. "I know Daley's convinced."
A pause.
"I didn't want to get dragged back into one. I'd like to think this is all innocent enough, but… I'll drive the sample to Intertek in the morning."
"Whatever it is, it's weird," Hodgins looks her in the eye and nods. "Conspiracy or not."
And he's usually the first to bite. Now, stepping closer to the frozen computer and scanning the error codes for the hundredth time – he sighs.
"It's uncharted territory."
He can dance without stepping on her shoes, and she is pleasantly surprised.
Not that Angela ever stopped to consider Daley's dancing ability. Sweets had two left feet, was often barred from handling expensive equipment in the lab on the chance that he fumbled. A distinct – often endearing – lack of grace.
Sweets' brother is different.
He hums along to the song playing, softly, casually, but paying her no mind. He's scanning the room, having already found the senator he was looking for, but taking it all in nonetheless.
Senator Sennick is a middle aged woman with a cropped red pixie cut and a strict expression, but speaking with constituents on the edge of the crowd, the tight smile she offers is nearly good enough to hide it.
"What do you think?" Angela asks, attempting to track his gaze, but his eyes move too quickly. For a moment, he keeps humming along to the music. Pensive.
"I think her conversation is almost done."
"That's not exactly what I meant."
"I know," Daley says. He is quiet for a moment. "The security guards by the doors are armed."
She glances around the room, her eyes falling on officers scattered throughout the event. Closest to the entrance, a guard's jacket rests just slightly open, revealing the edge of a holster.
"Does that surprise you? There are a lot of important people here," she offers, calm. And she is not wrong: in addition to the senator, there are two other congressional members in the room. Scores of wealthy donors who are not posing as such to get a moment alone with one of them.
"Not at all," he replies, hushed, and breaks his eyes from the crowd to look at her carefully. "In about two minutes, I'm going to step on your foot. I manage to do it by accident at every event we go to because I'm a clumsy dancer, but this time I hurt your toes so much you have to switch your shoes. Argue with me for… fifteen seconds. Go out to the car to get your other pair and stay there. Understand?"
She reviews it in her head. A bit overcautious – a tad dramatic. Doesn't he think so?
He smiles, just a little. Charming, but not quite sweet.
He would remind her of Sweets if they weren't here. If his words were not so typically cold, so far away. Foreign.
"It's a political gala, not a firefight, but I tend not to see the difference. I return you with a single scratch, and I think your husband would kill me. He'd probably get away with it, too."
Angela laughs, nearly in spite of herself. Behind her, the senator is thanking a pair of campaign managers for their hard work, promising shining recommendations. They've done an excellent job, she says. She hopes they enjoy the event.
Daley lifts his arm, slowly spins her around – and doesn't warn her again before his heel comes down on her toes.
She appreciates the silence of the car at first. That, and her flats.
After being inside for the better part of the night, with a roar of conversation and the speakers turned just a little too loud, her ears ring softly once she pulls the passenger side door shut and sighs. She pulls her hair up, ruining the style she'd put it in just a few hours ago.
Finally, she reaches to her left and starts the car, fully satisfied when the heat turns on. It's May, but in the evening, the temperature still dips. It's chilly, but a nice enough night to sit in Daley's car and wait.
She waits for eight minutes before she hears a gun being fired, somewhere far off – but close enough to have her spin in her seat, wide-eyed, suddenly breathless. Frozen. She never considered this.
A million scenarios run through her mind, ones where Daley comes back with a round gone and blood on his shirt, ones where he doesn't come back at all.
She wonders what went wrong. Wonders what to do, unarmed and untrained in anything that could help. Alarms in the building begin to blare; light flash, and a door gets thrown gracelessly open.
It's not quite relief she feels when Angela sees Daley in a mad sprint toward the car. Rather, intense, growing fear as she sees the officers behind him in tow, racing, revealing a firearm. Her heart thuds in her chest, her eyes screw shut, and as Daley reaches the car, her ears ring at the sound of two more gunshots.
The ping of one embedding in the fender, but not the other. The driver's side door opens and shuts, and by the time she opens her eyes, the car is moving. Daley curses under his breath. A minute passes, and it is all behind them.
"What the hell happened in there?" Angela demands, and he shifts in his seat. Turns his head behind him, checking for another car and finding none. Speeding down roads that aren't meant for it, moving farther away from their intended route back.
He takes an uneven breath and she hears his voice nearly break. "I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?" she's yelling. She's got her phone in her hand, full of fear and sudden rage, ready to call anyone – Booth, Hacker, the police. Someone to get her out of this car, heading north instead of south, like they should be. She closes her eyes, brings her hands to her face, and wishes for a moment that when she opened them, she'd be back in Washington, safe and sound.
"I mean I got too confident and pretended I knew more than I did," he admits. She brings her hands away from her face, looks over to see him white-knuckling the steering wheel, his jaw clenched tight in between his sentences. "I forget what I said. Something about the old case, something along the lines of knowing what she did now, and I know it sounded like a threat, I just –"
A sigh.
"Whatever it was, I always figured it could have ruined her career. But the look on her face, it was like I was threatening her life. She got scared."
The car goes quiet. Daley turns again, checking all of his blind spots, not quite trusting the rear-view mirrors.
"There's no one behind you. They aren't following you," she snaps, and he says nothing to that, but wordlessly turns to check again in response.
Daley drives, slowly coming to change direction, but avoiding the highways, touching only state routes. She looks at him carefully, sees his eyes still wide with adrenaline. His jaw tight, his hands locked right around the steering wheel. Dark red shining on the side of his shoulder.
"You're bleeding," she says, alarmed, gently grabbing his right shoulder. At first, he barely seems to notice – but then he nods.
"I got grazed getting into the car, I think. It's not bad."
She considers that, but feels the wet sleeve of his jacket. It's a flesh wound, she knows, but upon inspection, it's deeper than it appears.
"You need to get stitches on this, I can find a hospital –"
"No," he nearly shouts, too quickly. His arms shake just slightly. He checks behind him again. His eyes are still wide, still with adrenaline – and a little bit of fear.
She can feel the paranoia radiating off him.
"It's fine."
A sigh.
"Just… get us back to the Jeffersonian, then. Cam can stitch it up."
He nods.
Minutes pass. He drives. They sit in silence.
"My suite is ruined," he says, finally, crossing into Washington. Mournful. She looks at him, and where the streetlights illuminate him, she sees his serious expression coming back. Immediate fear leaving, but the paranoia remaining. Exhaustion winning out over adrenaline.
"I needed it."
She eyes the jacket, now stained down the arm. She considers what now seems to be a major conspiracy case, the firefight she bore witness to, the fact that they're no closer to solving this case than when they started. And the ruined suit.
"It's… alright," she offers. "You can get another suit. Not like you were getting married in it."
Silence.
She smiles.
"Agent Daley, were you – going to get married in this suit?"
He looks over at her, his hands loosening around the steering wheel. The closest he could ever look to sheepish, the closest he's ever looked to Sweets.
"I only had one formal suit," he admits.
In spite of everything, she chuckles. "Care to tell me more? Her name? How'd you meet?"
"No." He shakes head, but isn't cold. The incredulity of it does not escape either of them, and as they pull into the Jeffersonian, she smiles.
"We'll find another suit, then. And by the time we do," she teases, "You'll have told me all about her."
