AN: I'm amazed by how many of you are reviewing and adding this story to faves and alerts! Also, the quality of your guys` comments is just great! Chapter 3 for you awesome folks! I thought we should see Cam and Parker again!
Unidentified Particulates: Chapter 3
Dr. Camille Saroyan watched Parker through her kitchen hallway, observing him with the same intensity she did a fresh body as he paced between the table and counter, with the same scared, angry, glare on his face as she`d seen on his father`s more times than she cared to count.
The boy`s blond locks bounced with each step, and the front of his shirt was soaked with the tears he had quietly cried while picking at the leftover pizza she had served him. Cam herself had no idea what was going on, only that Brennan, looking pale and harried, had dropped Parker off with the phone number for the hotel Rebecca was staying at, and reminded her that he hadn`t had dinner yet.
She`d considered calling Booth, though she suspected the reason he was here might have been because of some disciplinary action Brennan had taken, or some issue at school both of his parents were aware of. It was rare that Parker cried at all, and the last thing she needed was Booth thinking that something like a lower than usual test grade was cause to call out the National Guard.
No, it was Booth and Brennan`s issue to deal with. They were the happy couple responsible for the kid, after all.
Despite that, she still wanted to know what was going on.
``Parker...do you want to tell me what's going on?", she asked gently, hoping she wasn't intimidating the boy.
He turned to her, wiping furiously at his still red eyes, glaring up at her as though he was embarrassed she'd seen him cry.
Typical Booth, Cam thought, almost rolling her eyes.
"It's all right if you don't. I'll be in the living room if you...", Cam paused, studying the anger and intensity that flashed across Parker's eyes.
"This is your fault!", he cried, sweeping his food of the table with a pudgy fist. Cam watched the plate clatter and break on the kitchen floor, slightly shocked at Booth's son's behaviour.
"It's all because of you! You're the boss and everything's your fault!", he raged, tears flowing freely again.
"What-Parker, what's my fault?", she asked, trying for timid and ending up sounding as though she had a cough caught in the back of her throat.
"Mom-I mean, Bones, says you're the boss and you're, um, responsible.", he sputtered. "The bad guys got someone because you're...inco-incom-incompe-I don't know!"
She stepped towards him and touched the top of his head, listening as his anger dissolved into more desperate tears. Crouching beside him, Cam tilted Parker's chin to look up at her as he tried to wipe at his cheeks with his sleeve.
"Honestly, sometimes Bones runs the lab more so than I do, Parker.", she chuckled, trying to make him smile despite the terrible feeling that this wasn't just some run-of-the-mill parent-child argument building up inside her.
"It's not her fault!", Parker shouted, slapping her hand away and running into the adjacent living room, where he balled himself up into a corner and continued to cry. Bones had seemed so afraid in the car on the way over, and had kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other firmly locked to his forearm, as though she would lose him at any second. When she had dropped him off, Parker knew she was trying her best to keep from crying, which scared him more than anything.
If Bones was afraid of something, it meant everyone else didn't have a chance.
Cam sighed as she began to sweep up the remnants of Parker's plate, trying to ignore him sobbing in the next room. She headed up to the bedroom, cell in hand, intending to call Booth and get his take on things, whatever that might make him do be damned. Maybe she'd call Hodgins over, or Angela. They both probably knew how to deal with a young boy in distress more so than she did, after all.
She grinned at her boyfriend Paul's clothes strewn across their bedroom. Maybe she'd have to learn how to deal with kids crying soon, too.
As Cam scrolled through her speed dial, she switched on the TV, set to the news channel she'd been watching with him last night.
"-This is Nicole Whaley, live on location at the Royal Diner in Washington, DC, where it appears as though a sniper attack has claimed the life of a man out for an early dinner with his family. We're only learning the details now, but from what we know, his name was Jack Hodgins, employed by our city's own Jeffersonian Institution as a forensic entomologist. Police sources have also confirmed that the assailant was this man, in the photograph to your left, whom the Jeffersonian's medical-legal division was also responsible for helping to put away in one of the most high profile trials of the past five years-"
She could almost feel her heart hit the floor as the camera shifted back to a shot of the diner, its broken windows soaked with blood drying in the mid-afternoon sun.
Brennan burst into the washroom, her hands and shirtsleeves wet with blood from having to make the ID for the investigators in the front of the diner.
Upon seeing her best friend clinging to her fiancé, her son swinging his legs innocently from the counter, barefoot and humming along to a song only he could know, she felt the frantic urge to scrub the blood from her hands and sink to the floor in tears.
It wasn't logical...it wasn't...Why not Booth, or herself, the ones who were responsible for the case? Why Hodgins? Why someone who...never even set foot in a single interrogation, never came to arrest him?
What about Hodgins had made him the man to remember?
She glanced again at Angela, sobbing quietly into Booth's suit, and Liam, turning faucets on and off behind them.
What hadn't?
If death was a necessary part of life, then why did it only serve to shatter every life left behind?
Brennan commanded her thoughts to a full stop and stepped towards the both of them.
"Angela?", she asked, quiet and timid, her voice hoarse from screaming her way past the officers outside. Brennan reached for her friends shoulder, momentarily forgetting her cherry-red stained fingers.
"Huh-Bren?", she whirled faster than Brennan had time to react whipping her fist into the other woman's cheek, all pure rage and grieving.
"Shut the fuck up!", she screamed, grabbing Brennan's arm with a tight grip as she raised a hand to push Angela away.
Blood leaked from her sleeves to Angela's bare wrists, forming a horrifying series of drips down her arm, like chalk tallies on a baseball scoreboard.
Booth stepped toward them; clearly intent on breaking the fight (was it a fight?) up. He stopped dead in his tracks, watching blood trickle from Angela's arm to the floor, his dinner slowly working its way back up his digestive system.
"Bones...", he whispered, brushing his fingers past Brennan's free arm.
It was at that moment that Angela let her go, grabbed Liam off the counter and ran, leaving Brennan's face screwed into her usual clueless expression, and Booth torn between chasing Angela and holding his woman tightly to his chest, thanking God she was still here.
They were still here.
Keep the reviews coming for more! Next chapter: Where's Angela? And what happens to Liam?