A/N: Thanks for the support of my story. I really appreciate all your comments.

Disclaimer: I own nothing Bones related except my imagination.

Whether it was luck or just good timing, when they arrived at Rodney's home, he was there and he invited them in as soon as Booth completed his introductions. They hadn't taken the time for the FBI to do its usual research and prepare a dossier on Rodney before they interviewed him, so they didn't know what to expect to find when they knocked on his door. What they found was a very polite, well-educated, and generally jovial young man.

"Wow, you guys are quick," Rodney said as soon as they sat down, having refused his offer for refreshments. "I assume this is about Cynthia, right?"

"Yes, that's right." Booth answered. "What do you mean by we're quick?"

"Well, just that it's only been a little over an hour since I called and reported her missing. I sure wasn't expecting to see the FBI on my doorstep this fast. That's all." Booth and Brennan shared a look. "Hey, I'm not complaining. I'm happy you're here. It means you guys are serious about finding her, right?"

Brennan answered. "Actually, Rodney, we're here because we've already found her. Cynthia's dead. We found her remains in the woods of Prince William Forest Park yesterday."

"Bones." Booth growled at her in reprimand for her blunt announcement at the same time that Rodney responded "Dead? Are you sure?"

"Oh." Brennan bit her lip, immediately feeling remorseful. "I apologize. I'm not very good at telling people when they've lost a loved one."

Rodney looked at her like he was fighting to hold back tears. "Well, I guess there's really no good way to go about it now, is there? What . . .what happened to her?"

"Well, we were hoping you'd be able to help us to figure that out Rodney," Booth answered. "We believe she was murdered but need help identifying a suspect. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm Cynthia for any reason?"

"There are indications that her murder may have been committed by someone she knew," Brennan added, thinking about the very personal statement implied by the villain removing Cynthia's heart from her body.

"Gosh. No. Her dad could be a pretty mean son-of-a-bitch sometimes, but other than that, no. Cynthia was great. She was . . . she was just great."

"When was the last time you saw Cynthia?" Booth prodded.

"Um, Tuesday. Tuesday morning before I left on my trip."

"What trip was that?"

"I'm a paralegal aide at a law firm in Alexandria. I had to accompany one of the senior lawyers in the firm to some meetings with a client in Boston for a few days. We actually just got back this morning which is when I discovered she was missing and called the police to report it. Now I know why she didn't return my calls."

"Wait," Brennan jumped in. "Don't you have a housemate? Didn't he notice her absence?"

"You mean Tom. Yeah. I asked him this morning before I called the police and he said she never came home from classes on Wednesday. Cynthia's a part-time student at NOVA. She had some problems after graduating from high school, but she's been working really hard the last couple years to put her life on the right track. Tom said he just assumed she was hanging out with some girlfriends or back at her dad's place. It's not like she would've really told him her plans anyway."

"Didn't they get along?" Booth asked.

"Well sure. They're pretty good buddies, but she didn't typically account for her whereabouts to him or anything like that."

"Where's Tom now? If he saw her Wednesday morning, then he may have been one of the last people to see her alive. He may be able to tell us something useful."

"Tom's working today. He owns a little business doing yardwork and landscaping and Saturdays he's usually gone all day unless it's raining. Gaia Landscaping it's called."

"Huh. Interesting name." Brennan observed, turning to Booth to explain. "In Greek mythology, Gaia was the personification of the Earth. She was the mother of all – one of the primal elements who first emerged at the dawn of creation, along with air, sea, and sky. All mortal creatures were believed to have been born from her earthy flesh."

Neither Booth nor Rodney seemed to know exactly what to say in response to that. "Focus Bones. Let's just focus here. Any idea where Tom might be working today?"

"Um, on Saturdays I think he usually does work for the Thompsons, the Mendozas, and . . . the Crowleys. Tom mentions their names occasionally, but I don't know where they live."

"Thanks. We'll see if we can figure it out."

Standing up to leave, Booth handed Rodney one of his business cards. "Thanks for your time. If you think of anything else, please don't hesitate to call."

As they left the house, Brennan asked Booth "What next?"

"Next I take you back to the lab so you can catch up on what your squints have accomplished since we've been gone and I go back to my office to try and locate the roommate and maybe find out some more about what classes she would've attended on Wednesday. I should be able to figure out who her professors were fairly easily and maybe one of them will have noticed something during class that can give us a clue."

"You know, most people pay for things like yard service with a personal check and personal checks often include home addresses. I bet Angela can get access to Tom's bank accounts and find scans of the deposited checks which would give us some addresses."

"Sounds good. You can call me when you know more."

Booth had been back at his desk for less than an hour when Brennan called him with her update.

"Hey Bones, whatcha got?"

"Angela was able to determine an address for the Crowley's and the Mendoza's, but not the Thompson's. They must pay cash or write their check in another name."

"That's great," Booth replied, amazed once again at Angela's expertise with technology. Sometimes, she skirted the limits of what the law would permit a little too close for Booth's comfort, but she was damn good at getting results so he generally adopted a don't-ask-don't-tell policy with her. "I have the home address of one of her Professors from her Wednesday classes. I'll come get you now and we can visit him after we try and track down Tom."

"I'll be waiting out front and I'll fill you in on what else we know when you get here."

Booth picked Brennan up and they drove towards the Crowley's home first, since it was closest to the Jeffersonian. As they drove, Brennan shared some more information with Booth. Hodgins had discovered some sort of chemical residue on Cynthia's clothes that he was running through the mass spectrometer now. Just as Brennan was leaving the lab again, he was starting to look at the mold of the tire track Booth found at the crime scene while he waited for the mass spec to finish its analysis. They should know something about both items pretty soon. Cam had confirmed that there was skin under Cynthia's fingernails so their suspect should have some scratches on him. Cam was running the DNA analysis now, but the results weren't available yet.

As they turned onto the street where the Crowleys lived, they spotted Tom's green pick-up truck with the words Gaia Landscaping in white lettering on the side and a trailer full of lawn care equipment hitched up to the back. A young athletic looking man was standing beside the trailer, loading some of the lawn care tools into the back. He wore a pair of low-riding jeans and boots, but was shirtless with a uniform golden tan covering his torso which indicated being shirtless in the sun was pretty typical for him.

Just as Booth was pulling up behind the trailer to park his SUV, Brennan's phone vibrated with an incoming text message.

Brennan read the message then reached over and placed her hand on Booth's arm, halting him momentarily from exiting the SUV. "I think we may have our suspect, Booth. Hodgins says the tire track you found at the scene was from a wheelbarrow, which could very likely be how the killer transported the body from the parking lot to the grave site. Also, the chemical residue on Cynthia's clothing was from fertilizer." With a head nod towards the bare chested man by the truck, she added "Both items would be easily accessible to someone who owned a lawn care business."

"Okay. Let's go, but be careful and let me do the talking. Got it?"

"Of course, Booth."

Booth and Brennan exited the SUV and approached the young man together. Bones let her eyes wander over his naked chest and arms, noting subconsciously that while he was well-developed and muscular, his was a lean, wiry kind of physique and she personally was more attracted to a fuller musculature, like Booth's, instead.

"Tom Farrow?" Booth inquired.

"Who me?" the man answered, looking at them fully for the first time. "No. I'm just the cheap labor. Tom's still out back," he said, pointing to a path made from stone pavers that ran along the side of the house.

Booth started to head towards the back yard. When Brennan took a minute to follow him, he fussed at her. "Bones. C'mon. Stop ogling the hired help."

She rolled her eyes. "I was not ogling him, Booth. I was simply verifying that there were no marks consistent with fingernail scratches on what I could see of his skin."

"Yeah. Right. There was definitely plenty exposed for you to see."

"It's not uncommon for men who engage in physical labor to be shirtless. Male barechestedness does not carry the same social taboo with it that is associated with toplessness in females, at least in westernized countries. I've been to some parts of the world where it's perfectly acceptable for women to parade around shirtless too."

An image popped into Booth's mind of Bones standing in a field of grass wearing a colorful African print sarong wrapped low across her hips, sunglasses, and nothing in between. Booth shook his head to try and dispel the image. This was not the time, or the place for him to be picturing his partner that way (not that there was a right time or place for that). The words slipped off his tongue before he could stop them. "Did you . . .?"

"Yes." Brennan chuckled in reminiscence of the experience. "It was quite liberating."

Booth groaned. "Geez, Bones. Let's just focus on the case here, okay?"

"You are such a prude," she teased with a soft laugh, earning herself a frown and a grumpily muttered "Am not" that just made her smile more.

They rounded the corner of the house and saw another barechested young man in jeans trimming some bushes.

"Tom Farrow?" Booth called out.

The young man looked over his shoulder at them. "Yeah. What can I do for you?"

"I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth with the FBI. This here is my partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan from the Jeffersonian Institute. We'd like to ask you a couple questions about Cynthia Morton."

As Tom turned to face them, Brennan halted. She could see several very distinct scratch marks. Some on the right side of his neck. Some on his left forearm.

"Booth," she said softly, tilting her head in Tom's direction.

"Yeah. I got it," he answered her quietly before addressing their suspect again. "Tom, I'm going to need you to come with me to the FBI headquarters."

Tom just stood there, looking back and forth between the partners and not saying a word as Booth approached him, reaching for his handcuffs. When Booth was only about a foot away from him, Tom suddenly sprang forward and shoved Booth, causing him to lose his balance and fall on his ass. Then Tom turned and sprinted for the side of the house, assuming Brennan wouldn't be able to stop him. Quickly assessing the situation, Brennan positioned herself to where she could grab him as he tried to run by and using his momentum plus her marital arts training, she suddenly had Tom finding himself sprawled on his back trying to suck air back into his lungs after having the wind knocked out of him. Before he could react and try to run again, Booth flipped him over and cuffed him. "Good work, Bones."

Brennan accompanied Booth back to FBI headquarters and into the interrogation room with Tom. Once she enumerated the evidence they were compiling against him, he realized he was well and truly caught and he provided a full confession.

It was a story that started the same way too many others had. It was an accident he said. He didn't mean to kill her. Tom and Cynthia spent a lot of time together at their house when Rodney was working or traveling and he'd fallen in love with her. They worked out together, watched TV together, and sometimes even cooked together. Tom would flirt with her and she'd laugh and flirt back, but that's as far as it ever went. This last time Rodney went out of town, Tom decided it was time to let her know how he felt. He told her he loved her and that he wanted to be with her. She told him no, that she loved Rodney and only Rodney. He got angry – called her a cock tease and said other hurtful things then grabbed her and tried to kiss her. She freaked. Started hitting him and scratching him. Tom snapped and the next thing he knew, she was dead so he drove out to the park and buried her.

Brennan found the whole story disturbing. "What about her heart? Why cut out her heart?"

Looking Brennan right in the eye, Tom shrugged and simply explained "She stole my heart, so I stole hers."

Later that night, the partners met up at the Founding Fathers for dinner and a couple drinks to celebrate another case solved, as they often did. Hannah was at a black-tie evening event at the White House as part of the press corps, so Booth didn't feel the pressure to rush home and was happy to just relax. It had been a grueling day. The partners kept the conversation light and avoided mention of the case all through dinner, but afterwards, as they sat sipping another round of drinks, the discussion inevitably turned to the case. Recapping the events of a case together after it was over was a type of coping mechanism for both of them, an opportunity for each of them to address any lingering uncertainties or issues they still harbored before putting it behind them and moving on.

Booth started. "So, I spoke with someone over at Children's Protective Services and they did remove Gil from his father's house this afternoon. You were right about his legs too. They were pretty badly bruised on the backs and sides from a whipping he'd received."

Brennan nodded her head, glad to hear that Gil would be placed somewhere safe yet also saddened on his behalf not only for the loss of his sister but also the pain he must be feeling at being separated from his father. "Sometimes, I just don't understand love."

"How so?"

"I don't understand how a parent can hurt their child like that, the way Felix Morton abused his children, Gil and Cynthia . . . the way your father treated you . . . I think about Parker and while I'm not his mother or really anything special to him, I feel . . . he's like . . . I am very fond of him and I would do everything in my power to protect him if he were in my care. I can't imagine deliberately hurting him like that. I just can't."

"Well, yeah. I know that, Bones." Booth reached across the table and covered her hand with his, giving her a gentle squeeze. He had always been amazed and, if he was being honest, extremely pleased by how well Bones and Parker seemed to connect. "And you are something special to him. Very special. Don't ever doubt that, okay."

Brennan's eyes flicked to Booth then down to where his hand lay on top of hers before turning to look out the window. "I've missed him lately," she confessed. Booth saw her swallow and blink rapidly for a moment and with dawning clarity realized that 'lately' meant since Hannah had arrived in DC. "Next time you see him, tell him I said hello."

"Yeah Bones. I'll do that." He used to frequently invite Bones to hang out with him and Parker when it was his weekend to have his son, but he hadn't done that at all in the last few months and it was just occurring to him that he'd probably short-changed both Parker and Bones by not helping to nurture their relationship. "Parker asks about you a lot and I know he misses you too. Next time he stays with me for a weekend, we should plan to get together for a bit if you're available. I know Parker would love that."

"Yes. I would enjoy that too."

Booth retracted the hand he'd placed over hers and they were both silent for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts. It was a comfortable silence borne of many years spent together.

"Love is a serious mental disease," Brennan eventually uttered.

Booth frowned at her. "What?"

"Plato. It's a quote by Plato," she explained. "I think love must mean different things to different people. Tom claims he killed Cynthia because he loved her but his love was obviously conditional on her feeling the same way. She didn't reciprocate his love, so he killed her. His love was selfish. You once claimed you loved me, but your love was also conditional on my feeling the same way. Granted, I never felt my life was in jeopardy, but when I failed to reciprocate adequately, you immediately withdrew your love. Your love was provisional. I've recently admitted that I have been in love with you for some time and even though I know my feelings aren't reciprocated, they haven't diminished any. In fact, they've only strengthened over time despite my knowledge that they are one sided. I believe my love for you may be perpetual."

"Stop, Bones. Just stop, okay. You can't say things like that," Booth whined, looking flustered.

Brennan furrowed her brows, unsure of what he was complaining about. "What part?"

"You know . . . the love stuff."

"No. I don't know. I don't understand your objection."

"You can't keep saying things about . . . well about your feelings, you know, for me. It's not right."

Brennan studied Booth for a minute. He was tense and fidgety now when he'd been calm and relaxed a few moments earlier. "It makes you uncomfortable for me to tell you that I love you," she observed.

"Well, yeah. I'm with someone else now," Booth responded although the word uncomfortable, while accurate, didn't come close to fully explaining how he felt hearing 'I love you' tripping off her tongue so easily. He felt thrilled that this amazing woman considered him worthy, even though he shouldn't. So he felt guilty for being thrilled. He felt confused, because it was so obvious to him now in both her words and deeds and he wondered how he hadn't seen it before. He felt sadness, because he empathized with the hurt she must continually experience and which he knew she'd keep bottled up inside. And, he felt fear that the something special they still shared might not survive in the long run.

"All right. I understand and I will make an effort not to make any more unwelcome declarations or to impose my sentiments on you in the future." Brennan had spent years not admitting her feelings. While she refused to outright deny they existed anymore, she figured she could certainly go back to holding her silence. She gave Booth a lopsided smile and punched him playfully in the shoulder. "You have to admit though that there's a certain irony in that you and Angela have been after me for years to be more open about my feelings and now that I am, you want me to stop. How do you do it anyway?"

"How do I do what exactly?" Booth reluctantly asked, certain that this line of discussion couldn't go anywhere good, at least not for him.

"How do you fall out of love?"

Booth looked at her incredulously. "I don't know, Bones. Why ask me that?"

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question to Brennan. "Because. You've fallen in and out of love several times with different women. You obviously have experience with falling out of love and it appears it's a skill I need help to learn since you're the first man I've truly loved. Besides, you're who I talk to about love. Even before things between us got messy that night a year ago, you've always spoken freely to me about love. There must be something you do differently once you've decided to move on. So . . . how do you turn off that flutter in your stomach when the object of your affection enters the room? How do you keep from thinking of them when they're not with you? How do you prevent your brain from dumping dopamine and norepinephrine into your system whenever that person is in your proximity?"

God, this woman could make him nuts and he had no idea what to say to her on this topic. How do you instruct someone not to love you? What would being with her be like once she stopped? "Well, it's not exactly a skill you can practice, like learning to ride a bike or something, Bones. Every time you fall in love, you give away a little piece of yourself that you never recover 100% and you'll carry a piece of the other person with you for the rest of your life, even if just in memories. Even so, you just have to keep moving forward and opening yourself up to new opportunities until the right one for you comes along."

Brennan frowned. She found his answer extremely unsatisfying. It sounded too much like psychology. "Well you're just no help at all Booth. None at all."

A/N: Confession time – the idea of Brennan asking Booth how to fall out of love has always intrigued me. Not sure I did justice to the emotional impact I thought it would have, but hope you liked it.