Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They are owned by Kathy Riechs, Fox, Josephson Entertainment and Far Field Productions.

It lurched into skin like oil, sticking and gliding smoothly over the bumps and hairs and into the pores that existed millions to the inch. It made her hair stand on end as it floated across her shoulders and neck, resting on her gaze as she turned. Sharing a silent greeting she looked him over. He wore a dark grey, almost black suit with a deep blue tie pulled loose from his un-buttoned collar. What time was it? Breaking their eye contact she searched her wrist for a watch, finding it missing. Glancing back up she felt him near to her before she caught it with her eyes. Holding his wrist up for her, she viewed his watch, the silver glinting in the harsh light of the lab, the dark hands pointing to the seven and one. Seven oh one. The day had gone by in the span of a worthless blink. She had yet to accomplish anything pertaining to the ancient skull. She new it had once belonged to a mongoloid female, age unknown, her remains were nearly too old to be dated through radio carbon-14 making her born in the 1700s or so but there was no current way to tell the exact time. Other than that, which she had already known last week, she had discovered zip. She was waiting for the soil samples and incisor tests.

"Hi Booth." She flashed him a barely noticeable smile, her eyes going back to the bones lying before her on the sleek metallic table. What to do now?

"Got a new case for you and the squints Bones."

"May I be surprised?"

"Bones, it's 'let me be surprised.' "

"Whatever…anyway, what does the case pertain to?"

"The ME's guys should be here any minute, sections of a human skeleton were found placed on a college kid's doorstep last night with a note."

Pulling a small paper baggie from his jacket pocket he handed the evidence to her. Inside the small baggie was a deep red Post-It note upon which a single lien was scrawled.

"'But were I a man I would eat his heart in the market place.´" she read the note out loud more to herself than Booth.

"It's Beatrice's line."

"What Bones?"

"Beatrice, Shakespeare's character in Much Ado about Nothing. Hero is disgraced in public at her own wedding by Claudio. Benedict, though he has professed his love for Beatrice, refuses to kill Claudio to avenge her cousin's disgracing, sending Beatrice into a fit. She has a wonderful soliloquy in which she wishes she were a man so she could exact her revenge."

For this she received an odd stare.

"What are you talking about Bones?"

"You never read Much Ado about Nothing in High school?"

"I did…Why does it…Bones, what does it have to do with the bones?"

"We'll hopefully know soon." Leaning back onto the rails of the central lab station she crossed her arms, nodding towards the approaching morgue techs. Turning he watched them approach, a child-sized body bag in the arm of one man, a small bunch of paper's in the other man's. Swiping a card, a security guard let the men approach, their entrance attracting the attention of other squints, the heads of Angela, Hodgins and Zack popping out of doorways like gophers out of their burrows. She watched silently as Booth greeted the two men.

"Did they really need to send both of you?" he questioned the older of the two men.

"Procedure Agent Booth." The man smiled, handing over the stack of paper, his partner moving to set the body bag down upon an empty lab table. Following the man armed with the body bag Temperance watched as he carefully unloaded its fragile contents onto the cold work table. Slowly from the dark bag emerged a bright contrasting white accented with flashes of red. Something was painted onto the bone. Finally the bones came to rest in a small heap of ribs and spinal discs, each body of bones intact with its original sibling bones to create a whole rib cage and a whole spine. Thanking the man she moved in on the bones as would a machine. Booth looked on, his hand crossed over his chest and silent as he imagined the wheels of her mind whirring to lightning speed as her eyes scanned the bones.

Cleaned. The bones had been cleaned; perhaps the flesh had been devoured by insects, beetles really, and then left to soak in a bleach solution; the bones were a bright unnatural white. Age? Young, there was hardly any wear on the vertebrae. Sex? Currently undetermined. Height? Undetermined.

Quickly she donned a pair of thin, white latex gloves, her right hand reaching for the red paint nearly before her left hand was even gloved. Wiping it appeared to do nothing, scratching at it removed small, thin, fragile chips.

"This isn't my expertise but the spray pattern and fragility of the paint suggests the substance is a cheaply made and priced, latex based spray paint."

Tracing the shape with the tip of her finger, Booth watched as she escaped into some filing cabinet in her mind.

"It makes sense with the quote." She said in thought, her eyes seeming distant.

Painted upon the white bones was a deep red heart, probably painted using a stencil as there were small droplets where the painter's spray would have missed the stencil, creating an almost "Heart in a box" effect. In an odd way it reminded him of Bones.

"What took the FBI so long to get its hands on the bones?" she asked, looking up and removing the gloves from her hands, leaving them smelling of powdered latex.

"I don't know Bones, I guess the ME had a stick up his ass and fought it for a whole night, we would have had it a few hours after the examiner got it, but the guys a real SOB."

"I don't know what that means"

"Be glad you don't Bones."

She nodded her head, taking up one of the file folder's brought in by the Techs.

"The examiner didn't rule cause of death, though his notes confirm my suspicions. The Bones were cleaned in a bleach solution, and the paint is indeed a latex based mix. He also confirmed my idea that the bones belonged to a young individual."

"How young?" he asked, leaning over her shoulder to look at the files.

"Maybe early to late teens, there isn't much wear on the vertebrae so the person was either handicapped or was very young."

"Damn"

"Yeah."

Removing a pen from her lab coat she scribbled down a few notes onto an empty space below the coroner's writing. Closing the file she leaned closer to the spine, poking at something with the closed end of the pen that still remained in her hand.
"Hmmm."

Re-opening the folder she scribbled a few more notes, leaning down again to poke at the now visible creamy looking substance that clung to the vertebrae.

"What does 'Hmmm' mean Bones?"

"The coroner didn't pick it up, but there seems to be a great deal of fatty tissue and oils left on the vertebrae."

"Could that explain the lack of wear on the vertebrae?"

"It could, but the person would have top have been morbidly obese to the point where they couldn't stand or walk." She said staring up at him as her best friend bounded into the room, her lab coat gone and a small, flashy purse slung over her shoulder.

"Come on Bren." She called, standing just before the security entrance to the main lab station, her knees bending as she bounced impatiently.

"Ange, you might have to go without me I just got a new-"

"Sweetie you promised and I'm not going to let you back out, you've spent way too much time in here lately and I don't want you spending the night again. It'll be fun."

Booth looked between the women confused.

"Angela made me promise her that I would go with her to a club tonight."

"You can come too if you want sweetie." Angela called from the bottom of the stairs to Booth.

It had been a long day…why the hell not?

"Sure." He answered, making his way down the stairs towards his partner's best friend, finding himself wondering if Bones could dance.

A/n: It's just a start. Hope you enjoyed.