I'm back! I enjoyed so much writing Turning Back Time and Just Perfect that I just had to write another fan fiction. This one is a bit special, you'll see why as you read on. Hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think.

The day had been fairly long. An explosion had occured in a warehouse near the Jeffersonian and Brennan, along with her team, had been called to the ruins to do some bone collecting and some identification. Her team had worked for hours trying to collect all of the bones they could find and when they had gotten back to the Jeffersonian they were all pretty exhausted. But there had been more work to be done. Zack and Brennan had cleaned off most of the bones, Angela had drawn a few sketches and two bodies had been identified. They had started at 10:00 am in the morning and it was now close to seven.

She walked in to Sid's hoping to find Booth sitting at their usual spot. Surprisingly he wasn't there. A bit disappointed, she went to sit at the counter.

"The usual?" Sid asked even though there were no need.

Brennan simply nodded. A couple of minutes later, Sid was coming back with a plate and a cup of coffee.

She ate quietly and listened to the conversations of the people surrounding her. She really thought Booth was going to be there. She had actually looked forward to seeing him. Where could he be? She wanted to ask Sid if he had seen him but decided not to.

Suddenly a particular conversation sprang to her mind.

"Next time you miss me, pick up the phone, call me. We'll do lunch."

Of course she hadn't missed him that time but now she found herself missing him. Should she call him? Would she be bothering him? What if he were busy? OK it was a bit too late for lunch but maybe dinner. She immediately realized that it was too late for dinner as well as she looked down at her plate. Alright, so it was also too late for dinner but hey this was Washington. There was bound to be something to do in this city. She had made up her mind. She was calling him.

As she looked through her purse for her cellphone she heard the door to the restaurant open. She didn't bother to look up. She knew that it wasn't Booth. She rummaged through her purse as the stranger walked past her and sat down two stools away from hers. Brennan still didn't look up.

"What will it be, Miss?" she heard Sid to the newcomer.

The woman answered and Sid disappeared in the kitchen. Had Brennan looked up, she would have seen the weird glance Sid had thrown her. But she didn't, still busy looking for her phone.

She finnally found what she was looking for and she was about to dial Booth's number when her eyes fell on the woman not far from her. It was unbelievable how much she looked like her! The hair was the color, they had the same eyes, the same face. If the woman hadn't been a good ten years older than her, maybe more, Brennan would have sworn the stranger would have been her twin sister.

Feeling a pair of eyes on her, the woman looked up and turned to Brennan. She seemed to have notice the similarity too. She got up and took the stool next to Temperance.

"We look alike." The woman stated.

Stating the obvious but ok. Brennan thought. But she simply replied with a nod.

"I'm Temperance Brennan." The woman added. "Dr. Temperance Brennan."

Bones felt her jaw dropped. Temperance Brennan? The woman had to be kidding. She was definetely playing a joke on her. The woman probably knew who Bones was and that's why she had introduced herself as she did. Her name couldn't possibly be Temperance Brennan.

The woman seemed to be waiting for some kind of reply from Bones and Bones felt pressured to give one.

"You're kidding, right?" Bones asked her.

"No. Why would I be kidding?"

"My name is Temperance Brennan and I'm also a doctor."

"Really? What kind?" Temperance asked excitedly.

"I don't see how that is important." Bones replied.

Temperance didn't seem to hear her response or if she did she simply decided to ignore it. She went on talking about herself.

"I'm a forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Charlotte, North Carolina but I also work for the Laboratoires des sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale in Montreal, Canada. I've just finished working on a case with the Washington Police and I'm waiting for my boyfriend to show up so we can catch our plane. But you know men, always late. What kind of doctor did you say you were?"

"I didn't." Bones replied.

Bones looked at the woman suspiciously. If this was a joke she was surely playing her role well. She really looked like she didn't know who Bones was and that surprised her. But what surprised her even more was that this woman claimed to have worked on a case with the Washington Police, a case that she hadn't heard about and she was the head anthropologist in Washington. Had Booth known about this?

"I'm the head forensic anthropologist at the Jeffersonian Institute here in Washington." Bones then said to the woman.

Surprisingly the woman didn't seem surprised.

" "I've never heard of you." Temperance said.

"I've never heard of you either." Bones replied truthfully.

Sid set the plate down in front of Temperance and his eyes shifted to Bones. She simply shrugged at Sid's questionning look and he disappeared once again in the kitchen. Apparently some new customers had walked in and were waiting for their food.

Temperance started eating quickly and Bones couldn't help but notice that the woman looked starved.

"I haven't eaten since breakfast. Ryan took me out to this really nice restaurant near our hotel. The food was delicious but expensive."

"Ryan?" Bones asked.

"My boyfriend. We were on our way to Charlotte to see my daughter when I got the call from the Washington Police. We're actually leaving for Charlotte tonight. I can't wait to see my daughter. I haven't seen her in almost a year."

"You have a daughter?"

Bones didn't know why she was asking so many questions. A part of her was telling her to shut up and the other part was urging her to go on, to find out more about this strange woman who looked an awful lot like herself, who had the same name and who had the same profession as her. It was like... talking to herself, an older version of herself.

"Yep." Temperance replied before taking a bit of her food.

She swallowed it before pursuing.

"Her name is Katy. She just graduated university. I'm so proud of her. At a point I thought she was going to drop out but she just went ahead and surprised me. Kids can be so surprising. Do you have any kids?"

"No."

Temperance nodded.

"Aren't you going to eat your food? It's going to get cold."

Bones didn't know why but she did as she was told. She picked up her chinese sticks and took a bit of her rice. Temperance simply smiled.

"Do you have someone in your life? A boyfriend, a husband?"

"No."

"Really? Nobody?"

Bones looked up at her older twin. She could see that Temperance didn't believe her but what was there to say? Yes, there is someone in my life except we just work together and nothing will ever happen because they want different things out of life? To her surprise, the words just blurted out of her mouth and Temperance was surprised.

"Really? Nothing could ever happen? I don't believe that."

"Why not?" Bones asked, still recovering from the shock of her sudden confession.

"Because you can't run away from that kind of stuff really long. Trust me, it's happened to me. It took years of flirting and of going back and forth before I finally agreed to date Ryan. I fought so much to keep my head straight and my feelings sorted out when it came to him but it just didn't work. Then one day I just stopped and it was the best decision I ever made. My divorce with Pete was rough and I thought I'd never date after that. Well the joke was on me."

"You divorced a man named Pete? I had a boyfriend named Peter but everybody called him Pete."

"Ironic."

"Yeah."

There was a short silence between the two woman before Temperance continued her story.

"All I'm saying Temperance is that you have to give that man a shot."

"Trust me, there are days when I would gladly shoot him." Bones replied.

Temperance looked confused.

"I don't know what that means."

"Yeah I know."

They ate in silence for the rest of the meal and when they were both done, Sid brought them their dessert and some more coffee. The women still didn't talk. There was no more to be said. Bones couldn't actually believe that she had opened up to a woman she didn't know just because she simply looked like her.

But there is so much more than that. Her mind told her.

Yes, there were. Everything she had just said sounded a lot like her own life, except maybe for the daughter and her parents. This Temperance hadn't mentionned what had happened to her parents. Then again maybe nothing had happened. It didn't mean that just because Temperance and her seemed to share some kind of parrallel lives that it meant everything that had happened in the other woman's life was the same as in her own.

After dessert, Temperance looked at her watch.

"Where is he? He's at least an hour late. We're going to miss our flight."

"What time is your flight leaving?"

"Nine and it's already six-thirty." Temperance replied, obviously annoyed.

Her answer made Bones laugh and a small smile spread over Temperance's face.

"Don't worry. You still have plenty of time."

"I guess."

"So why did you pick this profession anyway?"

"Well I've always been good in science and this work just called to me. How about you? Why did you choose that field?"

"My... parents disappeared when I was 15, my brother moved out west and I went into the foster system. I picked this profession because I wanted to help people find the answers that I had been looking for for a long time."

"That's so sad but I'm sure you'll eventually find out what happened to your parents. We always get answers sooner or later."

Temperance took a sip of her coffee.

"What's your brother's name?" she then asked.

"Russ."

"That is so weird. I had a brother named Russ but he died of leukemia when he was just a baby."

Somehow Bones wasn't surprised.

The door to Sid's opened and a tall and handsome blue-eyed man walked in. Temperance's face immediately lit up and she jumped up from her seat. The man's smile matched her own. Something in the man reminded Bones of Booth but she couldn't quite pin-point what but as she looked at Ryan, she suddenly found herself wishing she was staring at Booth, that his smile was for her and not for the older woman behind her and that she was the one about to leave on a trip to visit some relative with her boyfriend.

Temperance reached in her pocket and took out some money. She put it on the counter. Bones watched her.

"Don't forget what I told you, Temperance. Give that man a chance. It might be the best decision you ever made. And if things don't work out, you can always blame your twin."

Bones nodded and smiled. She watched Temperance joined her boyfriend at the door. Just before the anthropologist walked out, Bones called her name.

"What does your boyfriend do for a living?" she asked her.

"He's a cop." Temperance replied, a weird smile spreading over her face.

Bones nodded. Deep down, she knew that she had already known that.

TBC?