---

Being sore never felt this good before.

---

April drug herself up the last flight of stairs to Booth's apartment, sure she'd never been so tired before, at least, never when she had been on the winning side of a beating. Of course, that was a new experience in and of itself.

She winced slightly as she pushed through the door. The stinging pain in her head had gone down but now that the adrenalin had worn off, there was a throbbing in her right forearm where she was sure she'd have a bruise.

Brennan and Booth came around the corner from the hallway when they heard the door open, Booth discreetly zipping his pants as Brennan hastily buttoned her blouse, not that April noticed either of their guilty expressions.

"Bug it's been almost an hour where have you been?" Booth asked as benignly as possible, trying not to sound overprotective.

April took a deep breath and gave a small smile. Booth frowned, glancing at Brennan, he stepped forward, cupping her cheeks gently.

"April, why are you crying?"

Blinking, April reached up to touch her eyes. Sure enough, warm, salty tears wet her trembling fingers.

Booth watched her green eyes follow in fascination as the wet droplets rolled down her fingers and it only served to concern him more. Taking the girl by the shoulders, he tried once again to get a straight answer from her.

"April, where were you?"

April looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, and then looked over his shoulder at Brennan, who was studying her intently.

"I beat a guy up."

---

I learned two things today. One, I can kick some major ass when I want to. And, two, it's best to ease Seeley into stories about my ass-kicking abilities.

---

Booth's blood pressure was no-where near normal, in fact, it wasn't even in the same hemisphere as normal. He couldn't have sat still if he wanted to, but he didn't really want to. April had gone to take a shower after finishing her story, and all Booth could think was that he needed a stiff drink and to have a talk with Zach about his tutoring April so she would not have an excuse to ever leave the house again.

He looked up from the floor he'd been watching move back and forth under his feet when he heard the bedroom door open and Brennan slipped through.

She handed him a glass of single malt with ice and crossed her arms.

"I stopped in to see the bruise on her arm, make sure she didn't hurt herself." She said, crossing her arms and watching him. She thought he'd done surprisingly well that evening, considering he'd just gotten back from an undoubtedly tough undercover assignment only to find his sixteen-year-old 'niece' had taken up jogging and karate.

"She thinks you're mad at her."

He gave her a look over the rim of the glass and swallowed. "Well, she'd be wrong."

"Yes, I told her that but…"

"I'm mad at you."

"Me?! Wait, what did I do?"

"Lets start with not telling me that there was a boy at her school that was harassing, abusing and generally being a jackass to her."

"Booth I called the school and you can trust that they have had the fear of God put in them"

"You don't believe in God." He said, mostly to be argumentative.

She rolled her eyes "The fear of you and me then. Besides, it's not like I could easily reach you, you were undercover, remember." Brennan huffed, jerkily pulling her clothes off to change into pajamas.

"Yeah, I won't be doing that anymore." He muttered, facing the other direction and finishing his drink.

"That's not rational, you have to do what Cullen asks of you."

Ignoring this comment, he continued hotly, "How about these little Jackie Chan lessons you've been participating in, I don't remember hearing anything about those."

Brennan pursed her lips, she didn't really have a response to that, she had been intentionally vague about the martial arts with him, unsure of how he'd react.

"And then she goes off to find this guy and…"

"She didn't intend to find him, she was running and ended up there, she didn't realize where she was going." Brennan defended lamely.

"Yeah, we're getting a treadmill."

"I think that defeats the purpose."

"Why? Running is running." Booth stopped pacing and took up a spot near the open window, trying to relax. It seemed like he'd been tense for days. Months even. It was true actually. It just went from determined, watch-your-back tension, to a fatherly worry tension.

Booth had his back to her, but she could see him clenching his jaw, but for some reason some of the fire was gone from his next words.

"Bones I just…I'm glad you took an interest and I'm not sorry you did what you did. But, I need to know what's going on. Especially something like this guy Pierce. He could have really hurt her." He turned around, hoping she would understand

Brennan frowned, realizing it wasn't so much that Booth was angry, but that he was worried. Meeting his eyes, she bit her lip and slowly crossed the room to him.

"April can take care of herself now Booth." She said carefully, watching him for a reaction to see if that was the right thing to say.

Booth took a deep breath and hung his head and then turned slightly to look at her. "I see that. I just…I kind of wish she didn't have to, you know? She didn't get to have a childhood. I wanted to give some of that back to her now. To protect her for a while."

Brennan looked away. "I'm sorry if I took that from you Booth. I was trying to help."

Booth studied the night sky for a moment, and then reached over and grasped Brennan's arm as she started to turn away.

"No Bones," He said quietly, pulling her against him, "I'm glad you did what you did. I know it's what she needs. She's not a little kid anymore, I just…it's going to take some getting used to." He kissed the top of her hair and gave her a little squeeze. "You did good, Bones."

Brennan smiled into his chest, enjoying his warm embrace for a few moments in thoughtful silence. "She still needs you, you know." His only response was another kiss on her temple, so she contented herself with his embrace for a while before looking up at him. "How'd the assignment go?"

Booth stiffened slightly and he quickly masked a flicker of sadness that crossed is face. "We lost a man. A guy who'd been deep cover for several months, he was hit in a firefight a few weeks into the assignment." He sighed and she pulled him back toward her as he rested his chin on her shoulder. "But we got the bad guys so…"

Brennan nodded, wishing to lead him to bed and get him to try and sleep, though she knew it wouldn't come easily that night. But her eyes fell on the white envelope on the bed and she pulled away.

"You should go see April. She'll want that."

Booth followed her gaze and nodded. "Yeah. I hope it's what she needs." He gave her a tired smile and moved out of the room.

---

I'm so lucky to have people like them. People who go out of their way to care about me. The kind of people my dad would have wanted me to be loved by.

---

A soft knock at the door went unheard by April as she stood on a stepladder in her room, headphones from her ipod planted firmly in her ears. Her pajama top was wet from her freshly washed hair and her bottoms were being splattered with varying shades of blue as the plate with her paints on it tipped, she was concentrating on a particularly frustrating piece of her mural on the ceiling and not paying attention to it.

Booth stood in the doorway, momentarily marveling at the art gallery April's room had become. When he'd left she'd stopped painting for a while and the colors were mere swirls and splashes covering parts of two joined walls and a ceiling. Now, though, all four walls and ceiling were covered in a Monet-esque multicolored mural of what he could now see were faces. Incredibly expressive, unrealistically colored portraits of himself, one Tommy Hopkins, Brennan, Parker, Angela and even Zack and Hodgins. He saw the part she was working on would be his favorite, a self-portrait of April done in orange and green, laughing out loud the way she rarely did. So rarely, that if she did he always felt the urge to bottle up the sound so he would have it there to carry him through the darker days to come.

April, bopping to a guilty pleasure of The Hanson Brothers, turned to clean her brush in a jar on her dresser, and caught sight of Seeley in the doorway. Hastily, she put down her paints and pulled the headphones from her ears.

"Sorry, I didn't see you there." She muttered, pulling some wrinkly plastic wrap over the paints and wiping her hands on an old dish towel.

Coming to stand in front of him, she looked up into his face bravely. "So, are you…mad at me?"

The question startled him. A moment ago she'd seemed flustered and nervous, now, that disturbingly calm voice was back and she was motionless again.

She really reminded him of her father sometimes.

"No, I'm not mad at you angel-face." He said gently, returning the smile she showed at hearing this.

"You like?" She asked, gesturing around her room as the silence turned awkward.

Booth nodded, grinning now as he openly studied her mural. "It's amazing. I can't believe how fast you finished it."

April grinned and flipped down on her bed. "Yeah, well, when inspiration strikes, you just gotta roll with it." She shrugged.

Booth nodded. "Bones says that too."

"Really?" April scrunched up her face, that didn't sound like a really Brennan-like thing to say.

"Well…not in so many words. What she actually says is 'the creative elements and the scientific pieces of her latest novel have finally started coming together so she doesn't have any time to eat', but, I get what she's not saying."

"Ahh…" April humored him, rolling her eyes playfully. She noticed him fidgeting with something in is hands and leaned forward curiously. "What's that?"

"Oh this?" Booth looked at the envelope as if he'd forgotten he had it. "This, um, is for you."

April eyed the envelope suspiciously before hesitantly taking it. Her eyes widened upon the writing on it and she looked back up at Booth, her mouth open with questions but she seemed to have lost her voice.

Booth expected the shock on her face and explained quickly. "You're father opened a safety deposit box shortly before he died. I recently found it and…well, he left that for you in it, along with this."

April looked up from the envelope in her hands to see Booth pull what looked like a necklace from his pocket.

He squatted before her folded up form on the bed and took her hand, placing the necklace with the antique, ornate round pendent, in the middle of her palm.

"What is it?" She whispered, teary eyed and suddenly very warm.

Booth smiled softly and shook his head. "I don't know. But you're dad had a way of making sure everyone knew exactly what they needed to know." He tapped the letter. "Let your dad talk to you, Little Bug."

He stood, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I love you April." Then, as quietly as possible, he left the room.

April watched him walk away and shut the door behind him and took several deep breaths before turning her eyes on the thick, yellowish-white envelope in her lap. Tears slowly ran down her cheeks as she clutched the necklace in one hand and traced the letters of her name in her father's unmistakable scrawl across the front.

The letter was sealed, it hadn't been opened since the day her father had closed it up all those years ago. Would she finally get the answers she wanted? Did she want to? What would he say?

Suddenly the thick, aged envelope felt too heavy in her hands and the air in her room too thick for her lungs. She leapt off the bed and moved to the open window, taking large gulps of air that tasted salty from the tears running over her lips.

---

A letter. From my father. This doesn't even seem possible. I…it's just...Oh God, I think I'm going to throw up. I never expected to hear from my father ever again, now I have this letter and I should be ecstatic. Instead I'm petrified…of what it will say, of what it won't. Of all the questions I'm so desperate to have answers for. I never really knew my father. I'm not ready for this. And I've never been more ready.

I am going to throw up.

---

But she didn't. She closed her eyes, gathered her newly discovered strength and took a deep, cleansing breath. When she felt her heartbeat return to normal, she turned slowly and faced the envelope that had fallen to the floor in her haste to get off the bed.

After only a moment's hesitation she went to her top dresser drawer, pulled out a small black box and removed a razor blade. Then, retrieving the envelope, she settled on her bed, carefully sliced it open and began to read.

Curious? Me to, keep going, thers more!!