Disclaimer: See part 1

Note: It occurs to me that this might be a little tough to follow if you don't, you know, have the episode memorized. So. You guys are troopers. Thanks ever so much for your kind reviews. I'm doing my best to get it all out to you by Thursday.

[3] There's Something About Gemma

Booth doesn't tell Brennan the victim's identity even though, in the retelling, the girl's name was the first thing out of his mouth. There's a reason for this that has to do with him and a reason that has to do with her but neither of those is one of the reasons they give Sweets.

He didn't really think she was making a joke when she said she was the best in the world. She could have said she was the world's fastest knitter or had made it around the world in 80 minutes. With her looking at him like that, he was willing to believe most anything she said.

So he believed she was the best forensic anthropologist. He just had no idea what that meant for his case. The claim is just something on the surface, something in the flesh. And all the good evidence is on the bone.

The other thing is about Booth the Gambler. No one's luck is like his. No one's intuition comes close. This is why he plays pool, this is why he tells Cam he won't take on a partner. "Best in the world" doesn't mean much to him. Yet. So first he needs to see some magic.

In the lab there's Zach, alive and hilarious. He confidently states that the remains are less than two-hundred years old. We laugh but Brennan doesn't. "We have to shift the paradigm," she explains.

And Zach's immediately offended. I mean, I know you're busy laughing at poor, befuddled Zach but you'd be pretty pissed too if someone told you to shift your paradigm. "What does this FBI agent want?"

But Brennan's already answered that. He wants a paradigm shift. He wants to shift them. Shake them. Pull them all out of the comfortably dead past and plunk them down a hair's breadth away from the present. From life.

He wants to know if they can look at who the dead girl was to figure out who she is. He wants to know if it's something they can do, derive a whole from a summation of parts.

So Zach changes shape and filters out the relevant details. Age, gender, trauma.

Hodgins, eating, approaches the bench. He's different. His eyes are sharper, his hair is awful. He's never missed lunch for work before.

We only start to realize how strange and alien modernity is to them at the startled look on Hodgins's face. "I'm taking the clothes," he declares, feeling the thrill of urgency in his work for the first time ever.

Brennan snaps at him not to be so unpleasant and he's got a whole bag full of retorts that end in Zach kicking him out and Hodgins taking the clothes. We're a little thrown because, much as I love her, Brennan was the one who started by speaking in the B-I-T-C-H voice, not him. So it kind of jumps out, that exchange. It should. It's a reminder that the paradigms have only begun to shift. She's never heard him excited before, only unpleasant. So it's not really her fault. It's not anyone's fault. Mostly they're still who they've always been.

Also. He might need to get laid.

On her way to find me, Brennan looks nervous. She's not used to sun or families or smiles. She passes juggler's who defy gravity and street magicians who make things disappear. She's nervous about finding me there. She's not used to magic and here it's for sale. So she grounds herself immediately by tossing tact out the window. "This is not a good likeness."

"No this is accurate, actually," I say. And okay, we're playing this subtle but I'll tell you right now that I'm pretty sure this is why I'm the narrator. And: "This is very accurate." .

See, a long time ago Aristotle wrote, "The whole is more than the sum of its parts." And then more recently (you know, sometime in the last two hundred years) a guy named Max Wertheimer came along and said a bunch of things that amounted to, "the whole is different from the sum of its parts." What is seen is what appears to the seer and that is not necessarily the same thing as what is actually there.

But that's Gestaldt theory which is psychology so Brennan has no use for it. So she says, "In reality, his nose looks like a yam."

And I really can't sit there and explain it to her because she's really bad for business. Hey, girl's gotta eat. And get back to Paris.

So I take a break from funding Paris for a fudgsicle and a chat with a new friend. That's something you can do when you're your own boss and it's all part of my paradigm, fudgsicles and fantasies. And not to go all angsty on you but I think it's worth mentioning that this is how you know that paradigm shifts also suck and not everyone's always better for Booth entering the scene. I mean, when's the last time I got to eat a fudgsicle at the Jeffersonian?

Yep. Brennan shows me the skull and there's the paradigm shift. We have to meet in the middle, near the tourists and amongst the shadows. On a park bench.

I throw away the fudgsicle.

Brennan talks about murder and it's gross. Both things: the murder and the way she talks about it. Skull-crushing related objectively. And because I'm good at what I do, because she sees enough science in my magic, she wants me to go to that gross place with her. She wants me to trade Paris for D.C., sunlight for the fluorescent light of the lab.

She also wants to pay me.

"I'm in!"

Like I said, out here magic's for sale.

Back at the office Cam's found Booth's paperwork. We know it's a hopeless case because of the cardboard box. It's the kind of box that ends up, mislabeled, in someone's attic. Lost and forgotten like the Christmas tree stand, or Aunt Selma's prom dress, or the bones of Brennan's mom.

Booth tells Cam he's kept Gemma's identity a secret. Cam catches on quick. She calls him a Gambler to his face but it's for us, like the bell in the college, because really, Cam dearest, it only counts if he says it.

He'll say, Hi, my name is Seeley and I'm an addict.

And we'll say, Hi, Seeley! Because we're always on his side.

On the way to the elevator, Cam plows into Brennan and it's ugly. How's that for a fun little inversion of foreshadowing? Years after the fact we get to smirk and remember how it's going to go between them.

Cam apologizes, Brennan talks mores. Cam takes it as an acceptance of her apology even though it's pretty much exactly the opposite of acceptance. Which totally throws Brennan off because A) it was pretty much the opposite of acceptance and B) his nose looked like a yam and C) she never had much time for Aristotle (not to mention psychology) so she's best at bones but hopeless when it comes to sums and wholes.

Cam's better. She's puts together pieces and sees what she sees or sees what she wants.

See: "Hey, you're Dr. Brennan!" Yeah, give Cam age, gender, and some trauma at the elevator and she'll give you a name.

But that's enough of Cam for now. Brennan's got somewhere to be.

Brennan has a list for Booth. She has age, gender, trauma, birthplace, hobbies. She has everything but a name.

He stares at her, seeing a seer. He wonders if she has his case file up her sleeve.

She shows him a picture. He sees hope. And his jaw drops.

His paradigm shifts.

She's still working on her own shift. She's still stepping closer to now, closer to life. He has to remind her about gloves.

Booth doesn't have an office yet so they watch a video in a nice, warmly-lit … interrogation room? Or …? The table's not big enough for meetings of any respectable size. I mean, I guess the boss could drag you in amongst all that scary wood-paneling and give you a stern talking to in private. And I know Booth doesn't have an office yet for that kind of thing but you'd think someone at the FBI probably has an office.

Well, there's an abandoned coffee mug on the TV stand so this must be the room they serve coffee and donuts in when you visit the FBI on a day trip. Whew. Glad we cleared that up.

Anyway, on the TV is the girl from my sketch. Yep, there's a video of her. And it's completely and utterly useless to the case. See, it's not about the case, it's about her.

And she's my kind of girl. A preposition girl. She doesn't waste time on the noun, on who killed her or why. She's all about what happens before death and until death and despite death.

Booth says, "Just watch."

make everything so simple in a crazy world,

and I'm tryna find the words to say,

you make everything alright just by being around

boy you make me wanna sing

The song is called "Mmmm" and it starts just like that, right in the middle of things.

Booth and Brennan watch her sing. They're moved without really knowing why. There are almost tears in Booth's eyes. What she's singing, the way she's singing it … Booth wants that. Brennan's calmly impressed. She doesn't know what that is yet so she can't want it.

And we're moved too because it really sucks that Gemma's dead. Extra sucks. Because they've only just figured out who she was back then when which was when she was alive and already singing about who they would be.

Brennan recognizes the flesh of her. "She's bears a marked resemblance to the sketch I gave you."

She does.

Booth's seen enough magic from her now. "Gemma Arrington," he admits and proceeds to list all the ways Brennan was right.

"She was the murder victim?" Brennan asks almost casually. Like he might have shown her a video of a girl who looks eerily like the victim sketch just for fun. But she has to ask. She's just been moved without knowing why. She'd really be more comfortable getting back to the noun.

Booth apologizes for the deception but Brennan's not upset. In fact, she kind of likes that he tested her. "Obviously I passed with a lot of colors."

"Excuse me?" He's understandably confused because huh?

Eventually he figures it out. In spite of her attempt to explain. He realizes it for the first time here: she's best at bones and worst at a lot of other things. Use of idioms is one of those things.

"Flying colors," he corrects gently.

"Yes. I know." Humility is another.

They talk about catching the killer and Brennan trips on the word bastard and Booth graciously pretends not to notice. He's already learning.

He flashes a picture of a guy in robes next to a flag. "I guess you know who that is, right?"

Nope.

"Judge Myles Hasty. That's a Federal judge," he says helpfully.

Brennan doesn't know because she doesn't keep up with events more current than the Industrial Revolution. There's a little pause while Booth shakes his head so you can go ahead and snicker.

But if you do, it's only because (like I said before) you're used of siding with Booth. You laugh because her world is so oddly and arbitrarily narrow. But how narrow is his world that he thinks a person should be able to name a judge on sight? Shoot, I mean most of us would struggle if shown a picture of a Vice President.

So Brennan gets a first look at the judge. Then she gets a first look at Booth's gut. Metaphorically. Duh.

It goes something like this:

Booth knows it was the judge.

So why isn't he in prison?!

Well, he doesn't have any proof.

So how does he know?

He just knows.

So, naturally, she's totally horrified. She won't sentence a man, change a life, on a feeling. But she'll help him find the truth. "First the truth, then the catching." First the truth.

"It seems like someone like you could benefit hugely from an association with someone like me." Brennan says.

He laughs and-

But woah.

Brennan?

Who would have thought she'd be the one to figure out how they fit together?

There it is for the first time. Guts clash with facts. Booth meets Brennan.

So, it's about time for a commercial break.