A/N: Ok kids, bit of a long one for you here so please stick with me. It's getting a bit angsty but I promise all the big issues are going to be properly dealt with soon enough. Just had to get this whole Emo phase out of my system... Also, thank you for all the reviews and support. You're all amazing and I appreciate the effort from all of you that R&R. You guys rock my world.
Hodgins looked up from his work station to see Doctor Brennan marching up on to the forensic platform with a face like thunder. Half tempted to ask what was wrong, the glare she cast over the bodies in front of her quickly put paid to that idea.
Glancing back in the direction Brennan had come from, Hodgins watched as Angela paced up and down inside her best friend's office. Quickly and quietly, he slipped away from his work to go and check on the woman he loved.
Walking in to the office, Hodgins pushed the door to just as Angela slammed her cell phone shut in frustration.
"Hey, what's up with Doctor Brennan? She's walking round the lab with the attitude of a Nazi commandant."
Angela sighed heavily as she perched on the edge of the desk.
"She and Booth had a fight. He's on the verge of reassignment so she basically kicked him out for good."
Hodgins raised a hand as he tried to process what was going on.
"Wait, reassignment? Why?"
"Because the big boys at the FBI aren't that happy with his relationship with Cam."
"That's ridiculous! Just because two people in the workplace get involved, it doesn't automatically affect their jobs or their performance at work."
Angela couldn't help but smirk at him.
"Ok, over identifying much?"
Hodgins offered up a sheepish grin and a shrug before turning to look through the window and back over the lab.
"So Doctor Brennan got mad, huh? What did she do, accuse him of being a liability and jeopardising her work?"
Angela shook her head in mild disbelief.
"You're pretty good at this."
He winked at her playfully over his shoulder.
"Well, I learnt from the best."
He turned back to face the lab as Angela moved to his side, sliding her arm through his.
"I just tried calling Booth. I wanted to get him to come back here and sort all this out."
Hodgins turned his piercing blue eyes on her, examining her profile in the dim light.
"Well, if all this is just about work, when all the reassignment stuff blows over, she'll forget all about it."
Angela shook her head sadly, her gaze focused on her best friend.
"This is Booth and Brennan we're talking about here, it's never just about work. They're just both too damn stubborn to admit it even though to the rest of us, it's as clear as day."
Hodgins smiled, his heart fluttering in his chest.
"Well, it just takes some people a while to see what's right in front of them."
Angela caught his gaze, their eyes locking with one another's. A slow smile spread across her lips as she gently squeezed his arm. After a long moment, Hodgins cleared his throat and turned his gaze back to Brennan's solitary figure on the forensic platform.
"The day she admits she's fallen for her partner is the day she's gotta let her guard down. I'm not sure if she's ready for that. Doctor Brennan always holds everyone at arm's length, even you Ange. I mean, before I thought that maybe…"
He tailed off, staring in to space. Angela frowned at him, a look of concern obvious in her eyes.
"What do you mean?"
Hodgins blinked rapidly, his entire body tensing up.
"When we buried underground in that car, we both wrote notes. You know, a way of saying goodbye I guess. Mine was… mine was to you. I'll give you three guesses who Doctor Brennan wrote hers to."
Angela just smiled.
"Could it possibly be her knight in shining FBI issue body armour?"
Hodgins grinned back at her.
"The one and only. But he's with Cam now, right? So maybe Doctor Brennan really is barking up the wrong tree."
Angela rolled her eyes as she turned to face him.
"Are you kidding me? That guy would lay down his life for her. He literally almost has a few times in case you've forgotten. Whether they want to admit it or not, those two are perfect for each other."
Hodgins cocked an eyebrow in her direction.
"Angela… I sense you having a plan here."
She grinned as she turned to look back at her best friend.
"Oh yes Jack, I'm a criminal mastermind… But you've got to admit, getting those two crazy kids together would be well worth it."
Hodgins sighed.
"Right now, I think just getting the two of them talking again would be hard enough."
Angela cast a sly wink at him.
"Give me time, Hodgy, just give me time..."
oo00oo
Seeley Booth was tapping his foot against the carpet in frustration as he waited what seemed like hours for the lift. Eventually, the doors slid open.
"Hallelujah!"
As he practically charged towards the doors, Deputy Director Cullen stepped out with a severe look on his face, stopping Seeley in his tracks.
"Ah Agent Booth, just the man I was looking for. My office. Now…"
As the Deputy Director marched off down the corridor, Booth's heart seemed to lurch up in to his mouth.
This is it… He's going to reassign me and I'm never gonna work with Bones again. She'll never forgive me.
I guess she was right. I guess I really have become a liability. Not to the work but to something way more important than that.
I became a liability to our relationship. And now I've lost everything. I've lost her.
Attempting to keep his head held high, Booth trudged off down the hall to meet his fate.
oo00oo
Doctor Brenan was examining the second body the team had removed from the park when Zach approached.
Barely glancing up from the remains, she pointed down at the bones.
"Zach, tell me what you see."
The socially inept assistant squinted at the remains.
"There is a strange variety of bone markers that shouldn't be seen together, inconsistencies that I have never seen before on a skeleton. The glabella and zygomatic bones show both male and female characteristics, though male appears to be the most prominent."
Zach turned his eyes back to his teacher just as Hodgins and Angela arrived on the platform.
"Doctor Brennan, could this be a hermaphrodite?"
Hodgins's eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
"You mean this person was, you know, both a girl and a boy? Like a chick with a di-"
A sharp elbow in the ribs from Angela stopped Hodgins before he could finish his thought. Brennan just gave him a quick glare and turned back to her assistant.
"No, that's not it. If the victim was a hermaphrodite then there would be one prominent gender and only some hints towards the other. In this case, the gender markers are the result of extensive surgery."
She pointed down at the point between where the eyebrows once were.
"See here? These cut marks are evidence of extensive cranioplasty, not to mention the large amount of augmentation to the supra-orbital rims and the mandibular angle."
Brennan's gaze continued down to below the jaw where she nodded to herself slowly.
"This victim even underwent chondrolaryngoplasty surgery."
Angela shook her head.
"Ok, now you're just making stuff up."
"Chondrolaryngoplasty is when the thyroid cartilage of the neck is shaved to remove the tell-tale Adam's apple, usually as part of masculinising genitoplasty."
Angela just stared at her. Brennan sighed and reworded her answer.
"It's part of the sex change operation when a man undergoes surgery to become a woman."
"Ahhh… Now I'm with you."
The artist turned to look down at the bones in front of them.
"I never realised just how much pain they had to go through to change like that…"
Though Brennan was intensely preoccupied by the situation she had found herself in with her partner, even she couldn't fail to miss the sad tone to her best friend's voice.
"Angela…?"
The artist seemed to snap out of a daze, blinking rapidly as she refocused on the group. Brennan and Hodgins shared a confused shrug as Angela spoke.
"Well, the good news is that if this victim did go through a sex change then identification should be relatively easy. I mean, statistically speaking not that many people must actually get it done -"
Zach interrupted without even looking up from his work.
"Between seven and twelve thousand sex reassignment surgeries have allegedly taken place in America to date, around half of them male to female."
Hodgins moved to the grad assistant's side.
"Seriously dude, try going out on a Saturday night…"
Seeing the look of confusion on Zach's face, Angela decided to finish her point before he could interrupt her again.
"Anyway, what I'm saying is that I can run a statistical analysis on the images I get from the skull and try to apply masculine averages over the feminine features. Then I can run the best results past any hospitals or clinics that perform the surgery and see if it matches any of their patients. Hopefully, he… she will be pretty easy to identify."
Brennan nodded.
"That's great news, Angela. Once we find out who she is, it'll be easier to track down the husband too."
Hodgins frowned down at the two victims in front of them.
"I don't get it, Doctor Brennan. I'm surprised you're not excited. I mean, aren't these two offering you up a fascinating anthropological anomaly?"
Snapping off her latex gloves, Temperance sighed.
"Throughout history, people have struggled to conform to whatever society has decided is 'normal'. Some people have even had to struggle with themselves. Whether it be over sexuality or gender, the important thing is that this person appears to have won. They changed, yes, but the wedding rings and the manner of their burial suggests that this person found someone who was willing to accept them for all their faults."
She stared down at the victim, her expert eyes finally seeing past the bone markers and surgical alterations to see the smiling face of the woman she knew Angela would eventually create.
"This woman, no matter how lonely she felt whilst coming to terms with who she was, she found someone who she loved. She found someone she actually ended up dying with, someone who loved her so much they were even buried hand in hand, side by side…"
Brennan blinked rapidly, regaining her self control.
Stop it Temperance. You sound like an emotional idiot. You're an empirical scientist, this isn't you.
Looking up at the group around her, she felt the blush of embarrassment creep across her cheeks at their bemused expressions. Turning away, she heard Hodgins whisper to Angela.
"And you think I'm the one who over identifies?"
Brennan pretended she hadn't heard him as she spun on her heel, barking orders.
"Zach, I want cause of death for both victims. Check with Cam about any remaining tissue she wants to examine and then boil the bones to get a better view of their injuries. Angela, once the skull's ready, run it through the Angelator. In the meantime, you had better start approaching the hospitals that perform gender reassignments to let them know you need their help. Hodgins, you said that the crossover of particles on the victims' clothing might help to identify where they were before they ended up in the park. Work on that."
Before any of them had a chance to respond, she marched off the forensic platform and in to her office. Closing the door quietly, she settled at her desk and stared at the blank computer screen.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the small plastic pig standing proud beside her phone. Jasper was a present from Booth, a way for him to show his support and his friendship.
She refused to look at it now.
I over reacted to those bodies. What's happening to me? I don't act like that, it wasn't like me at all.
Leaning back in her chair, she ran a tired hand across her face as she attempted to analyse and explain what had just happened.
I identified with her, that's the problem. I imagined her being scared and confused as she grew up, awkward in who she was. And then when she finally got the surgery, she gained a real identity, a real idea of herself. And that's what probably helped her find her partner. Replace the surgery with a love of science, and it's my life.
But I've never seen myself so much in a victim before. I've always been detached, always held my emotions in check. But then when have I ever thrown Booth out of my office before? When have I ever admitted even to myself what my true feelings are towards him?
I guess today really is a day of firsts. Like the day I'll lose my first partner due to reassignment.
A reassignment I forced on him because I couldn't stand to see yet another person I've loved walk away. I thought it would be easier by making it my own choice.
It's not.
Closing her eyes to try and force back the tears, Temperance Brennan realised that the walls she had spent her entire life building had finally collapsed, leaving her crushed in the rubble. And the man who'd cracked her defences, the one man who always rescued her, was nowhere to be seen. She'd driven him away and he wasn't coming back.
Alone in the dark of her office, Doctor Temperance Brennan began to cry.
A/N: Told ya it was angsty... Should have the next chapter up by sunday night/monday morning. I promise there's a lot more action coming your way, including the reappearance of Nate, a mysterious stranger, and at least one more dead body... Thanks for reading.
PS: The top Season 1 Bones moments as suggested by you guys will be listed on my profile page in the next few days. You need to vote for your top five cos YouTube only allows videos under 10 minutes. Damn rules...