Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: If I did own the show, these things would have happened already!
Author's Note: Third chapter! I'm getting better with my speech! There are conversations! With actual participants!! Anyway, getting a little too excited there. Breathes. I think I'll just go get back in my box...
Booth walked quickly to Angela's office, leaving a mystified Brennan standing alone in her office, wondering what to do next. She was tempted to help Zach, but reminded herself that Zach was an Anthropologist, now. She couldn't baby him any longer. It wasn't her place to anymore.
In a strange way she missed that. She liked having Zach as her student, and everyone knew he liked being her student. After all, there was no one in the world better to learn from than the Doctor Temperance Brennan. But she missed teaching Zach.
It wasn't so much that she liked telling him what to do, having power over him, but she liked the way it felt to have someone dependant on you, to know that what you do and say impacts them as well as you. Simply put, she liked that there was someone else to whom she mattered.
She wondered briefly if that's the way parents feel about their children, but quickly pushed the though away. She would go with Booth. She needed to get out of the lab anyway: breathe some fresh air. As fresh as the air in a city like D.C. could get, anyway.
She chuckled at this, confusing a few interns walking past her office to the lounge. Ignoring this, she headed down to Angela's office.
"Hey, Ange, Booth here?" she searched the office for him.
"Hi, Brennan. And no, he just left. I thought he would have told you." She gave Brennan a quizzical look.
"Oh. No, he didn't..." She wasn't paying any attention at all the Angela anymore. She was too busy wondering whether or not to try and find Booth.
"Did you two have a fight or something? He wasn't the happiest of campers earlier...? And you aren't too charming, yourself." She raised her eyebrows. Brennan looked at her, blank.
"Uh. No. If you see him, tell him I was looking for him?" she said distantly, thinking of something else.
"Sure, Sweetie." One track mind, she sang inwardly, smirking to herself.
Brennan left Angela's office wondering why Booth had taken off so quickly. She swiped her card as she mounted the platform where Zach was onto studying the clavicle, jumping at the beep, confusing herself. Why was she so jumpy all of a sudden? Normally she was impenetrable, and she heard that beep at least seventy times a day.
"Zach." She didn't need to ask. Zach was a top student, and a brilliant anthropologist already.
"Yes, Doctor Brennan. I found more fractures on all the ribs on the right-hand side, and a hairline fracture on the left clavicle." He pointed to the bones as he spoke, showing her what he'd found. "Consistent with our earlier findings, Doctor Brennan."
"Yes, Zach, good work. Um, I want you to take this one by yourself. Do you think you can do it?"
Zach looked ecstatic. "Yes, Doctor Brennan! I'll give you a full report tomorrow morning!" He went to work immediately.
Hodgins, who was on the other side of the platform with Cam, looked up at Zach. "No one should get that excited about human remains. Especially him. Zach adds this extra creepiness to it." He looked over at Zach like he was studying him, tilting his head sideways and narrowing his eyes.
Cam looked at Hodgins and laughed. "Indeed he does. But, you know, if you continue to stare at him like that, he won't be the only creepy one here." She patted him on the shoulder and walked away, leaving him slightly worried as Angela came up onto the platform.
"Doctor Saroyan!" Brennan chased her across the lab. Cam turned around.
"Doctor Brennan?" She raised her eyebrows at Brennan's apprehensive look.
She looked about nervously. She wasn't used to this kind of conversation. In fact, she wasn't used to conversation at all. Except with Booth...
"Um. Do you...I was...Do you know where Booth is?"
"No, Brennan. Did you automatically assume that because Seel-"
"No!" Brennan said all too quickly. "I was just looking for him. He's disappeared. I mean, not literally, because that is physically imposs-"
It was Cam's turn to interrupt, "Yes, Doctor Brennan. And no, I haven't seen Booth all day. If I see him, I'll tell him you're looking." She turned and left swiftly, avoiding further conversation with Brennan.
Brennan frowned. It wasn't like Booth to just leave without telling her. Or inviting her to go with him. She honestly wasn't sure which had bothered her more. She stood in the middle of the ground floor of the Jeffersonian, arms crossed, frowning.
She finally made up her mind and ran up the stairs to her office. She took off her blue lab coat, grabbed her phone and tugged her jacket on in a matter of seconds.
She walked back down the stairs more slowly, so as not to arouse suspicion, and made sure Zach was doing the right thing, then left quietly.
Hodgins looked at Angela. "Where's she going?"
Ahh, the question on everybody's mind...