Lucy Chapter 4: Tuesday Afternoon, a bones fanfic

A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews that have spurred me back into action. This is a draining story to write, so I appreciate the feedback. It's fuel to my fingers!

This chapter jumps around in time a little but it seemed to fit. Enjoy, and please continue reviewing. Thanks.

Recognisable characters aren't mine. I'll lay claim to Lucy and the Vanaults.

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C h a p t e r F o u r – T u e s d a y A f t e r n o o n

She walked into the lab and breathed a sigh of relief. Hodgins was not at his table in the lab, which meant Angela was not sitting beside him, waiting to complete the conversation Zack had so conveniently interrupted that morning.

"Dr. Brennan." A voice came from behind her and she braced herself, expecting another surprise. Instead, the courier that delivered to the Jeffersonian was waiting, electronic clipboard in his hand.

"Parcel for you." She reached out a hand and signed before being given the parcel. Her address was on the front and the colour of the packaging suggested it had been overnighted to her. Turning it over, Brennan felt her breath leave her lungs in a whoosh as she stopped just past the threshold of her office. Ray and Linda Vanault's names were on the back, handwriting carefully decipherable.

Moving hesitantly to her chair, Brennan ripped the end off the package and emptied the contents onto her desk. Letters fluttered out, a whirl of coloured envelopes. A lone piece of white paper drifted out with it and Temperance unfolded it.

Temperance,

Lucy wrote these to you. She never sent them, but we think she might like you to have them now.

Yours,

Linda & Ray Vanault

Straightening her shoulders and making a decision, Brennan walked to her filing cabinet and grabbed a piece of paper. Filling in the few fields that made it up, she signed it and sat it on the desk as she scooped the envelopes into her bag.

Form in hand, she left the room, turning the lights out. A quick walk across the floor to the neighbouring corridor led her to Cam's open door. A short knock prompted Cam to look up from her computer, offer Brennan a smile.

"Dr. Brennan, I hope you're feeling better." A frown decorated her forehead with a crease and she continued as Brennan walked to the desk.

"Are you and Booth back already? I didn't hear him come in." Brennan would've allowed herself a smile if she could have managed it; Booth did like to make his presence known, usually vocally.

"No, Zack is taking over at the crime scene. I came back to give you this." She handed over the piece of paper and waited while Cam read it, breathing shallow. For a brief few moments, she'd been breathing normally but the swings and the letters had given way to the mantra in her head she was becoming used to; Breathe. Just breathe.

"But… This is effective immediately." Cam looked up to meet Brennan's eyes.

"Yes." Brennan nodded. The silence prompted her to explain.

"I still have holidays owing. And my contract enables me a working break. You have a forensic anthropologist on staff now Zack is qualified, too. He's more than capable." She hoped Cam wouldn't ask her what it was about and, sure enough, the slight animosity that still existed between them prevented any further questions.

"Well, I guess it's covered. I'll see you when you get back." Brennan nodded at Cam and left the office. Then she left the lab.

P a r t T w o – S u n d a y

Lucy had been remarkably intelligent. Her test scores were well above average and she'd had her sights set on Brown, or Yale. Brennan had soaked up the Vanaults' praise while she looked over photos of school trips, family picnics and various sporting events. Lucy rode horses, rock climbed and had been planning to get her dive licence as soon as she could. Brennan had then begun to realise how similar they'd been; and like herself, Lucy's birth parents hadn't been there either. But she'd been loved. It was evident in the Vanaults' voices, in the pictures of the three of them; Lucy had been loved. And that was more than Brennan had at that age.

"She really loved autumn. It was her favourite season. We always planned a trip up to Canada in autumn, but just never…" Linda Vanault put her hand to her mouth, as if to stop the words coming out. Her sentence trailed away to non-existence and the silence fell amongst them awkwardly.

"I didn't know she played the violin." Unsure of what social etiquette would demand, Brennan broke the silence as she came across an image of Lucy in an orchestra in the album. She couldn't sit there and soak up Linda Vanault's tears while she still had none.

"Yes, she loved it. She always said playing music was like gracefully finding your way out of a maze of notes. We've got… we've got a CD of her playing, don't we Ray?" Linda Vanault looked up to her husband who was standing, already nodding.

"Here." He found it in a nearby drawer and pressed the CD into Brennan's unwilling hands. She didn't want to hear the musical prowess of a girl whose cold fingers would never again curl around a bow and drag the horsehair across strings. She didn't want to be exposed to another talent of Lucy's that she didn't know about. And she didn't want to have a reminder at her apartment, something that Booth might come across if he ever perused her CD collection again.

"If it's the only copy…"

"We've got more. She was brilliant on the violin." Ray Vanault nodded, took the photo album out of Brennan's hands as she closed it, finished looking at the happy snaps of a family life she'd never been part of.

"Thanks." Reaching down to her shoulder bag, she put the CD gently inside.

"She'd been asking us if she could see you again." Ray Vanault changed the subject abruptly as he sat back in his seat. She stared into her bag for a moment longer than necessary.

"Really?"

"Yes. She… Well, she's always known who you are. We've never hidden anything from her, which was what we planned from the start." Linda Vanault smoothed an impeccable pleat in her skirt while her husband took over talking.

"That's why we needed you to send the cards. We didn't want her to feel closed off from you. That day you flew in… She still remembers that." Brennan noticed Lucy's father spoke in the present tense and she felt saddened by it. Lucy had been past tense to her from the day she was taken away.

"We were planning a trip to the Jeffersonian. It says on your book jacket that you work there. We had tickets, for the flight. It was going to be a late birthday present." Linda Vanault reached for her husband's hand and held it while Brennan bit her lip. If they'd made it to her workplace… Her past would have suddenly imploded with the introduction of Lucy to a workplace that thought she was adamantly against having a child of her own. Then again, Lucy had only been her own for the briefest of minutes, counted seconds of small hands batting at her teenage cheeks, blue eyes looking into her own.

"It would have been… Nice. To see her again." Brennan found the words leaving her mouth before she could stop them. But somehow, she meant them. If she could choose between revealing Lucy to everyone she knew or having to sit here today, with Lucy's parents, hearing about everything she'd missed out on and everything she would never be able to contribute to in Lucy's life, she would have chosen the former.

"Yes, she would've liked it." Linda Vanault's hands were back at her face, wiping inconsequentially at tears that refused to dry up. Her husband put his arm around her while Brennan stayed on the armchair, her eyes straying from the couple. She didn't belong here. Her grief didn't match theirs, and her regrets were mounting to surpass the autumn trip to Canada they never made, the tickets to the Jeffersonian they would never use. At least they'd had plans that involved more than a card sent at Christmas and another on Lucy's birthday.

"She always thought you were wonderful." Ray Vanault said over his wife's soft sobs. Brennan's eyes slid back to him and she bit her lip, willing the tears to come. They weren't forthcoming and she realised it was fitting; her tear ducts were being as selfish as she had been.

P a r t T h r e e – T u e s d a y l a t e a f t e r n o o n

The knock on her door came sooner than expected, before his working day should have ended. She'd turned her phone off and had been sitting in the quiet half dark of her bedroom. Sully had left several messages on her machine. Angela and Booth's messages had come after that, their voices concerned, their tones prying. Brennan didn't want to deal with any of it; she'd come to the realisation that being at work wasn't helping. There would always be another dead child, another dead girl. As long as she couldn't do her job, she'd stay away. She owed the victims that much; someone who would pay full attention to them and not just see a different face in theirs, imagine that their phalanges had once rested on violin strings.

"Bones! I know you're there, I saw your car outside." As usual, Booth announced himself by being vocal, his voice reaching her even in the bedroom.

"If you don't answer the door in five minutes, I'm using my key." Brennan sighed and untucked her legs, flipped them over the side of the bed. She'd changed into comfort clothes as soon as she'd arrived home; black tights and her old college sweater. She'd managed to dig out an old pair of fuzzy socks from her sock drawer and she half walked, half slid down the hallway. She didn't want Booth here, with his questions and his concern and that look in his eyes that made her want to reveal part of her soul sometimes.

"Booth." She opened the door to find him leaning on the doorframe outside, looking at his watch.

"Bones." His voice carried with it a sigh of relief, and she waited for him to say more than that. She didn't want to continue; if she started talking she might not stop.

"I was worried. You weren't answering your phone…" He shuffled in the hallway as Brennan kept the doorway blocked with her body.

"Can I come in?" Brennan sighed, swung the door wider. If she didn't let him in now, he'd probably camp out outside. She'd had enough complaints from her neighbours in the last two years; the explosion in her apartment, Epps. Usually a signed book was enough to placate them.

"Are you…?"

"Sully isn't here." Brennan said flatly. She closed the door, slipped the chain into place. She wasn't sure Sully would be back. She hadn't spoken to him since she'd left a hasty message on his machine, telling him the weekend was off. She knew that alone wouldn't drive him away, but the self imposed solitude she was planning probably would.

"Bones, what's going on?" Brennan turned to see him standing in the middle of her apartment, his hands in his pockets and for a moment she desperately wanted to tell him so that someone could tell her it was okay. But this was Booth; he'd fought tooth and nail to be able to see his son. She had never craved time with Lucy, had been reluctantly forced into the only visit they'd had. But this, too, was the same man who had absorbed the information about her family, the hell she'd been through. He'd tilted her eyes to meet his and told her that he was her family.

"Did something happen in Teven Valley? Angela said you got a phone call-."

"I told her not to tell you about that." Brennan found something else to occupy her mind as a small flame of anger was ignited.

"She's worried about you. We're all worried… You took leave. You don' take leave." With each word, he'd inched closer to her until they were only a foot apart.

"I do now." She focused on his last statement and tried to put his question about Teven Valley out of her mind. But, as usual, his people reading skills seemed beyond mere perception and he repeated the question.

"Teven Valley, Bones. Why did you go there? What happened?"

If she let her secret out in the open, it would make it more real. But if she kept it to herself, the way she had for all of Lucy's life then it would become too easy to forget. She wanted to forget, but at the same time she didn't. She'd been a mother, if only through blood and not action or deed. But it been a position she could lay claim to, if she wanted.

"I…" She started, faltered. It was a sixteen year old secret. She'd managed to hide it so successfully that even the journalists who had descended after her book hit the best sellers list to pick at parts of her life had never found out. Angela, her best friend, didn't have a clue. Her father had no idea he'd had a granddaughter out there, however briefly. And Booth, the man who knew more about her than most people ever got to… Booth was in the dark about it as well. She wasn't sure she wanted to change that.

"Temperance…" Her name filled the space between them and finally, finally, she felt tears fill her eyes. The tears at the funeral had been shed more for herself, but these were for Lucy. They were for a beautiful, red headed girl who would have grown up into a beautiful, red headed woman if she'd been given half the chance.

"Hey… Shhh…" He didn't tell her it would be okay, and she was grateful. He just gathered her in his arms and held her in a hug that wasn't remotely like the other times she'd found herself scared and crying in his arms. This time, she wasn't scared. She was just crying.

And more A/N: I know; most people are hanging out for the Booth/Bren conversation. But this felt like a good break in the story. Next chapter, I promise.