Disclaimer: I own nothing, I'm just playing with them.

Author's Note: I'm sorry that this update took so long. But this chapter was hard to write (as is the one I'm on at the moment). No Bones in this one, but in the begining there was a case...

Thank you, reviewers, for your lovely reviews. I'm glad that you liked the way I explained her history.

Chapter Eight: A break-through

Jeffersonian Institute, Wednesday

At the same time in the Jeffersonian Zach Addy studied the remains of the infant skeleton Brennan had worked on on Monday. They really needed to come up with something for the Alexandria PD, even the mere information if the child had lived would be extremely helpful.

This morning the first notion of this case had been published in the news, he expected the press to come to the lab latest this afternoon. And Camille was still on sick leave, Dr. Brennan in the hospital. Somehow that made him responsible for the forensic lab and Zach was exited and a bit scared at the same time.

He had cleaned the bones again and looked down on a spotless table with those clean, white bones on top. What should he do first?

He remembered an explanation Dr Brennan had given him in his first week as grad student: 'Normally you can be sure that a person has lived and then died, if you have a skeleton. But with infants you first have to make sure if they have been full-term. If not, determine how old they were. If you get less than 35 weeks and there is no case of a missing premature infant, they most likely never breathed and thus are no police case.'

Okay, that first step he could do. Measuring the long bones of the legs, he decided that this child had been about 1'7 long, putting it over the 35 weeks limit.

'You next step is to determine if the child has ever breathed.'

This was hard with only a skeleton. But what if he looked for evidence that this child had lived on it's own? Very soon after birth the first bones started to grow together, a process that ended only with death.

The skull was in pieces, not because of some force blowing it in parts but because the fusing hadn't really started yet. Zach took the parts and started to view them under magnification.

It took him hours of careful watching, checking and re-checking. Once he had left the bones and brought a large stack of books up onto the platform. The soft rustling of pages being turned was the only sound for hours.

But in the end Zach's evaluation was clear: This child had lived at least one month, but not longer than two. The skull showed first signs of fusing, but had still been held together by the skin. Some of the damage to the skeleton was clearly animal originated but the broken rib Dr. Brennan had hurt herself with was part of the pre-mortem injuries. Zach had problems to imagine the brute force needed to break the soft bones of infants.

As to the cause of death, he stopped and re-checked some of his books again. He had found no evidence for the most common injury-related death in infants: Shaken baby syndrome. But this death had been force-related, drowning or asphyxiation seemed the most likely to him. Perhaps it had drowned on it's own blood due to the broken ribs injuring the lung. But if it had been an accident, why was the body buried in the woods?

With his still relatively new confidence as Dr, Zach wrote and signed his report. Now it was up to Hodgins to determine if the soil and bug samples from the place the baby was found would reveal something about the time of death.

Two hours later and having done everything unfinished he could think of, Zach Addy started to stare at the wall opposite of his desk. He wasn't sure what he should do now, he was used to being told what case he should work on, when to deliver his report and if it was well written. Now he was trying to determine, if he had missed something. Perhaps he should asked Hodgins about his findings? Or could Angela help him somehow? And did he need to inform the police or would the officer just come over like Booth usually did?

Visiting Hodgins sounded like a good idea to him. And if the bug specialist could tell him something about time of death, he would phone Alexandria PD. This sounded like a plan, didn't it?

"Hey Jack", he greeted his older colleague while stepping inside the chemical laboratory.

"Hey Zach. Here, look at this." A finger pointed to the microscope.

The young man started to look through the eyepiece. "It's some kind of pupae, isn't it?"

"Yes, and a really special one, too. Riomexus sigma. They breed only in the hottest days of summer and normally you're lucky if there is a small population in a sample. But inside this sample we have hundreds of them." Jack Hodgins was nearly glowing with excitement.

Zach shrugged. "And why is this?"

"Well, I have two theories. Either it was very hot, for at least two weeks, when the body was exposed or it was kept at a warm place for some time before being buried in the woods. Even a combination is possible."

"We have a nearly fully skeletal corpse, that means 2 years at least."

"Remember the summer three years ago? The heat started in June and it was nearly impossible to stay in the city. And in August we had lots of rain and colder weather, messing up the beach holidays."

Zach grinned. "I'll tell the officer to look for a child born between April and June three years ago and never been seen again after the summer."

"And I'll try to give it a face", Angela spoke from the door.

"Angela!" A big smile crossed over Jack's face. "How long have you stood there?"

"Just long enough to hear your conclusions. Zach, can you reconstruct the skull for me?" The artist smiled back at the 'bug-boy', but it wasn't with her usual happiness.

"Sure." Eager to get back to work, now that he knew what to do, Zach left the room.

Angela stepped forward to Hodgins, the smile gone from her face. The scientist observed her, noticing every detail of her appearance. Didn't she look a bit ruffled?

"Spell it, sugar." Perhaps the direct way would work, perhaps not.

It worked. Angela grabbed one of the chairs, brought it up to Hodgins and faced him. "Brennan's really lonely."

He crocked an eyebrow. "How is she doing? Do you think she'd like it if I stop by later?"

"I'm sure she'd love it. All in all she's doing fine, but depressed." Angela was considering how much to tell him. She would trust Jack with her own secrets, but this one wasn't hers. "It's just, you know her, she's always working and now she can't. It's not easy to do nothing if your not used to relax."

"Then I'll give her something to think about. There's just the right book in my shelf." Jack started to grin.

"You're not serious, aren't you? Not that one!"

"But it's perfect. It will give her something to think about while doing nothing."

Angela shrugged. Perhaps it would help, at least it shouldn't harm her further.

"I'll be at my computer, I need to try something before Zach has the skull."

"Sure, see ya."

Zach Addy was back at the platform. Assembling a skull was difficult work, a puzzle. But unlike a normal puzzle you could never be sure if you had all pieces and every single one was unique.

At this time it was most important to get the small bones of the face back together, Angela would need them, not the complete cranium. He already knew that some parts were missing, he had only a part of one parietal bone and one temporal bone was missing completely. Starting with a chunk of modeling clay, he carefully reassembled bone after bone.

Zach was totally absorbed in his work, until the sharp sirens told him that someone had stepped onto the platform without clearing the sensor barrier at the steps before. His head flew up on time to see two of the security guards running towards him and his visitor.

The man was wearing a police uniform. But his gesture was not reassuring and confident as you'd expect, he looked more like a fugitive noticing police sirens.

"I'm sorry." he yelled over the noise, while Zach left his chair and walked toward him.

A nod to the security guard and it went quite again.

"Thank you. Again, I'm sorry." He grabbed his badge and presented it to Zach. "I'm officer Newman, Charles Newman."

Zach studied the badge, not sure how it should look like or how he would know if it was faked.

"Officer, I'm Dr. Addy. What can I do for you?"

"I'm from Alexandria PD, I was told that a Dr. Brennan would be working on the case we had sent to you?" Newman looked around as if he expected Dr. Brennan to jump out of thin air at him.

"Dr. Brennan is detained. You're speaking about the infant skeleton found in the woods?"

"It was an infant, not a cat or something?"

Zach nodded. "Yes, that much we had already confirmed to your colleagues."

"And do you have more information for me?" Newman's face was somber.

"I've finished my preliminary report, my colleagues are still working on theirs. Come with me and I'll bring you up to date." Zach led the officer into his office.

Seated there Zach explained what they had found and what logic told them about the history of the little girl.

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