A/N: I told you I was going to get busy! xD I felt bad, giving you three chapters in three days, then leaving you hanging for almost 2 weeks. But that's what happens - life gets crazy. I've been doing this in bits and pieces as I've had time, and finally got it done today. I'm really going to try to keep up with fairly often updates, but please bear with me if there is sometimes a week or two between chapters. I've got a lot on my plate, being both a full-time student and a part-time employee. I've also got some things going on healthwise that I'm sure you don't care about, so I'm going to just stop rambling and let you read the chapter. :) Enjoy!

I can see there's so much to learn
It's all so close, and yet so far
I see myself as people see me
I just know there's something bigger out there...

- Strangers Like Me, Phil Collins

Booth opened his eyes, blinking hard and tearing his gaze from the ceiling. Sweets was leaned forward in his seat, elbows resting on his knees. He watched Booth with a look he had never really seen before, one he couldn't pinpoint—was it sympathy? Sadness? Understanding? Not wanting to stick around and find out, he stood from the couch and cracked his shoulder loudly.

"I'm leaving now," he said, walking towards the door.

"Agent Booth, we still have…" Sweets began, but whatever they still had was never known. Booth turned and gave Sweets a very dangerous look. He had never felt that the agent would really do him any bodily harm in the past, but in that moment he wasn't so sure.

"I'm leaving. Goodbye." With that Booth left, slamming the office door behind him.

Meanwhile, Brennan stood over an exam table in the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal lab, squinting at a patterning of fractures on a victim's skull. She heard a sigh come from somewhere around her elbow, and looked down out of the corner of her eye. Jamal stood next to her, his thumbs hooked into his belt loops, face slack.

"What?" Brennan asked. He sighed again dramatically.

"I'm bored," he whined. "You said we was only gonna be here for a little while."

"We have to wait for Booth to get here before we can leave," Brennan explained, turning her gaze back to the skull. "He's coming with us."

"Does he have to?" Jamal asked.

"Yes, why?" she asked. Jamal gave her a dumbfounded look.

"Seriously?" he asked. "How you gonna even ask that question? You saw what he did to my dad."

"He was protecting you," Brennan said without emphasis, turning the skull and looking down into the cavity where the brain would normally reside.

"I don't need nobody to protect me," Jamal said stubbornly. Brennan couldn't help but know the feeling. Before their conversation could continue, Angela swiped her card and joined the two on the platform, smiling down at the boy who she had deemed 'adorable' upon first sight.

"Hey buddy," she said sweetly. He scowled at her.

"That ain't my name," he said. Angela raised her eyebrows.

"Hey Jamal," she corrected, looking to Brennan to see if she was going to reprimand the boy for his tone. When she realized that Brennan had effectively zoned out into Bone Land, she shrugged it off.

"I'm bored," he repeated, this time to Angela. "There's nothin' to do here."

"Are you kidding?" Angela said. "There's plenty to do here. You wanna come with me and look around the museum for a while?"

"I meant nothin' fun to do," Jamal said.

"Museums are fun," Angela said.

"Museums ain't fun," Jamal argued. "They boring."

"Well," Angela said, thinking for a moment. "Do you want to come to my office and paint for a little while? I've got some extra paints and canvases tucked away."

"Uh-uh, art's for girls!" Jamal exclaimed. "I ain't no girl!"

"Art isn't just for girls," Angela said. "Some of the best artists in the world were men. Haven't you ever heard of Leonardo da Vinci? Michelangelo? Raphael? Donatello?"

"Man, now I know you clownin'," Jamal said, waving her off with his hand. "Those are ninja turtles!" Brennan smiled wryly at the skull, pretending not to pay attention, and Angela struggled not to laugh.

"The ninja turtles were named after Italian Renaissance artists," Angela explained. "Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, Raphael Sanzio, and Donato di Niccolo de Betto Bardi. They were some of the most influential Renaissance artists who ever lived."

"They must notta been that important, 'cause I ain't never heard of 'em," Jamal argued. Angela made a face, and then lit up as if she had an idea.

"You're a boy," she said.

"No joke," Jamal said. Angela smiled.

"So you like to blow stuff up, right?" Jamal's face lit up, his white smile stretching across his thin face and ending in two deep dimples.

"Yeah!" he shouted. Angela put her hand on the boy's shoulder and steered him off the platform.

"Let me introduce you to Dr. Hodgins," Angela said. "I think you two are going to get along great." Brennan smiled as she watched the two of them—the big child and the small child—head into Hodgins's office, and rolled her eyes at the thought of what mayhem would ensue. For a while the lab was quiet; she found that without someone asking 'Can we go now?' every five minutes, she could get a lot more work done. After half an hour she heard a deep rumbling from the vicinity of Hodgins's office, and another few minutes later, a loud bang. Feeling that it was within her legal duties as a foster parent to make sure her Jamal didn't get blown to pieces in a lab experiment, she set the skull on the table and headed in that direction.

When she arrived in Hodgins's office, she found Hodgins, Angela, and Jamal flattened against the far wall, each sporting goggles and a lab coat, and identical grins of elation. The lab room itself was covered in thick white foam—it coated the countertops, dripped from the ceiling, and clung to their lab coats. Jamal smeared the foam off of the front of his goggles and looked over to Brennan standing in the doorway.

"That was so cool!" he yelled, jumping up and down in place. Brennan gave Hodgins a quizzical look, and he grinned.

"Hey Dr. B," he said while peeling the goggles off of his face. "We were just doing some, uh, hands-on science."

"I see," Brennan said, watching as the foam dissipated into water that now soaked the floor and counters, and dripped down on them. "What kind of experiments were those?"

"We blew up soda bottles!" Jamal exclaimed. "We put the stuff in and then put the other stuff in and BAM!" He gestured wildly with his arms, causing Angela to laugh.

"Like dad did with Parker?" Brennan asked. Hodgins turned his hand back and forth.

"Eh, kinda," he said. "See, your dad's experiments are cool and all, but they need more power."

"More power!" Jamal shouted. Hodgins grinned.

"Exactly," he said. "So, well, we took the soda bottles and emptied them out, and filled them with vinegar, right? And everyone knows the old vinegar and baking soda trick, kind of cool if you're five—"

"Pbbth," Jamal said, waving his hand. "No power."

"Right," Hodgins said. "So we added some, uh… activating agents to the solution."

"Power!" Jamal added.

"Yeah," Hodgins said, giving the boy a high five. "They're slow-acting, they take a minute. So we packed the baking soda in a water-soluble wrapping and put it in the vinegar and closed up the bottles…"

"And after about a minute…" Angela started.

"MORE POWER!" Jamal was positively yelling by that point. Brennan laughed, nodding.

"More power, right, I can see that," she said.

"Hey, sorry I—whoa, what happened?" Booth asked, poking his head into the room and noticing the remnants of their experiment.

"More power," Brennan explained. "Hodgins was showing Jamal some experiments while we waited for you. How was your appointment?"

"Let's not talk about it," Booth said brusquely. "So Dr. Hodgins showed you some cool stuff, huh?" Jamal gave Booth a wary look, then shrugged.

"Yeah," he said coolly. "It was tight. This stuff's a lot more fun than all that borin' mess we gotta do at school."

"Science rules, kid," Hodgins said, taking the small lab coat and goggles that Jamal shrugged off and handed to him. "School can make even the coolest stuff boring. Any time you want to do more experiments, just come on by."

"Yeah, man," Jamal said, bumping fists with Hodgins. "You a'ight."

"Thanks," Hodgins said. "You too." Jamal smiled up at him, then turned to Brennan.

"So we gonna go then?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Sure, let me get my things," she said. Jamal looked up at Booth.

"And you comin' too?" he asked.

"If it's okay with you," Booth said. Jamal gave him a long, hard look, then shrugged.

"I guess," he said, following Brennan out the door. Booth sighed, following him out.

"Good enough for me."

"What about these?" Booth asked, holding out a pair of jeans. They were in the children's section of the department store, a new experience for both Brennan and Jamal. Neither of them, from the way they continually stopped and stared at their surroundings, had ever spent much time in the children's department of a clothing store. Brennan had never had children, and Jamal, he thought, probably had never been given the opportunity to buy new clothes. Brennan had relinquished the shopping duty to Booth, perfectly happy to follow him around carrying their bags while he helped the boy decide on a new wardrobe.

"How much?" Jamal asked, for the five-thousandth time in the past hour. Booth checked the tag.

"Twenty-nine ninety-five," he read. Jamal shook his head.

"Nut uh," he said. "Next." Booth sighed, placing the pants back on the rack. Jamal had asked about the price of every single item they had picked up, and ninety percent of them he declined without even really looking at them. Brennan kept giving Booth confused looks, but declined to ask Jamal himself about the problem. Booth knew—when you had nothing, money was a big deal. Why spend thirty dollars on pants when thirty dollars could feed you for a week?

He also suspected that Jamal might have grown up the way he had—where, if he grabbed a pair of pants or a shirt off the rack that was too expensive, he ran the risk of a sound ass-kicking, or at least a screaming session about how selfish and irresponsible he was for even thinkingabout spending that kind of money on clothes. So when Jamal declined a pair of pants based on price alone, he understood, even if Brennan did not.

"These are on sale," Booth said, showing Jamal to a rack of t-shirts. While the boy browsed the rack, Booth stepped back to where Brennan stood, resting their bags on the floor.

"Why does he keep asking about the price?" Brennan asked. "I told him before we left that money wasn't a problem."

"It is for him," Booth said. Brennan furrowed her brows. "Look, he's probably never had anyone buy him anything nice before, alright? This is new for him. Where he came from, you can't just buy stuff without looking at the price."

"But he's only ten years old," Brennan said.

"Old enough," Booth replied stonily. "Didn't you ever have to pinch pennies growing up?" Brennan shook her head.

"No, money was never a problem for us when we were kids," Brennan said. "We had a decent house in a nice neighborhood. Before my parents left, they had me and Russ both enrolled in private school. I used to think it was because dad got paid well as a science teacher—obviously now I realize it was money stashed away from bank heists." Booth gave her a sidelong look, then shook his head. Money could be a problem in a lot of ways, he decided. It wasn't always from not having enough.

"I like this," Jamal said tentatively, holding out a shirt.

"Hey, that's nice," Booth said warmly. "Nice pick. Did you see anything else you wanted?" Jamal shook his head tentatively, then looked over to Brennan.

"I think I want to go… back to your house," he said. She heard him hesitate, as if catching himself before the h-word came out of his mouth. The h-word no foster kid said, because there could only ever be one, and they couldn't go back. They could say house, because they had plenty of those. But they never said the h-word. They never said home.

"Okay," Brennan said, looking to Booth quickly before nodding and taking the shirt from Jamal's grasp. "Let's pay for this, then we can go home."

A/N: Okay, so truthfully, not a whole lot happened here. But at the same time, I think several things are going on. Jamal is warming up to the squints, and learning that there is this whole world out there unlike the one he's been forced to live in for his entire life. Learning is fun, and he can have nice things and not have to worry about it.

By the way, kids checking price tags is so not out in left field... I grew up in a household where we had to pinch every single penny, and at ten years old I was definitely checking price tags. We shopped sales only, and usually my mom (a single parent) tried to find everything for my brother and I at thrift stores. I'm not ashamed - in fact, I'm so proud of my mom for being such an amazing provider for us. With the help of my grandfather and aunt, my brother and I both had our entire college pre-paid by the time we were in high school. Anything we wanted to do, whether it was being on the team or having lessons, my mom found a way to make it happen for us. So this is my shout-out to my mom, who will never read this and probably never realize just how much I appreciate what she did for us growing up - thanks, mom! :)

On a fic-related note, it's unclear whether or not Brennan actually went to public or private school. In "A Boy in the Tree", we find out that both Brennan and Zack went to private school, while Booth is a proud PS grad. In "The Bone that Blew", however, she said she went to public school and turned out fine, and Booth shouldn't worry about public school turning Parker's brain to jelly. (By the way, I am a public school grad and my brain didn't turn to jelly. :D) I decided for my own purposes, I am going to go with "Boy in the Tree" and make Brennan a private school kid. Also, out of curiosity, did anyone else make fun of private school kids as much as we did at my school? Because boy did we rail on them. :)

So what did you think? Like it? Hate it? Leave a review and let me know! I will try to update more quickly next time around.