Disclaimer in chap. 1. Back to the point where we can't be sure if they even like each other...
"This is exactly why squints belong in the lab. You guys don't know anything about the real world."
Their faces shut down, all of them. Bones measured him with a look; he stared back, determined not to be cowed by her. He could see the moment she wrote him off as just another officious, idiotic, PITA. Surprisingly, it stung a bit--a slap to his professional pride. She turned away then. "Come on. We're done here."
How does someone that cold manage to engender such loyalty? he wondered briefly as Zack and Hodgins followed her out without another word, faces dark and disapproving. He had noticed from the beginning that all of the squints were fiercely loyal to her; even Dr. Goodman tendered her more respect and autonomy than might be expected between superior and subordinate. "Wow. Touchy," was all he said however, flipping his poker chip.
Angela headed into the main part of her office. "You must know about her family. Both parents vanished when she was fifteen." She gave him a reproving look. "Probably counts as the real world."
"Yeah, I know the story. I read the file. The cops never found out anything," he responded, following her, trying not to let his impatience with this little segue show.
"Yeah." Angela leaned against her desk. "Brennan figures that if maybe somebody like her had been there--"
Booth turned to face her. "Well, for somebody who hates psychology, she sure has a lot of it." He started to leave, then hesitated. "So where do you think she went?" he asked, suddenly realizing that he might have just become another name on the list of agents who couldn't handle Temperance Brennan. Dr. Temperance Brennan, he reminded himself with mordant humor. He disliked being a statistic, and he hated being a failure. If he couldn't work with her, he'd be both. Not to mention he had told Cullen he needed her on his side. If he screwed it up now…
"If she's not still here at the Jeffersonian? Firing range, probably," Angela said. "Letting off some steam. If not there, the gym, punching the stuffing out of a bag. Look, G-Man, do you mind some advice?"
"Can I stop you?"
"No. Solve this case, and solve it quick. Then decide if you still want to be the liaison to the Jeffersonian. You're the fifth one we've had from the FBI. The others were barely polite to Hodgins or Zack, which, admittedly, is the same thing I can say for you, and let me tell you, it doesn't win you any points where it counts. But the person you need to worry about is Bren. The others couldn't handle her, didn't understand her. Didn't try. And yes, she dislocated Agent Coffey's arm when he picked up a bone barehanded. I had hopes for him until then," she added casually. "The rest came in, demanded answers immediately without even basic politeness, rarely let her work with the remains in situ, blamed us for errors when we weren't given all the information, then argued and quibbled over everything she said. Gender made no difference, since Agent Pinota was as bad if not worse than the men."
"Goodman--"
"Dr. Goodman can't stop her from driving you out if she's not doing it on purpose. And she wasn't. That's really the way she is. All four of the others gave up after one or two cases because they couldn't understand her drive, her…focus. This is your third, so you've done better than them. But you screwed up so badly on the last one that she didn't want to deal with you again. If she hadn't gotten that call to Guatemala, she probably would have submitted her own request for a new agent. Or possibly refused to work with the FBI again. That's how furious she was."
"Wouldn't that affect her job here?" he asked reluctantly. He realized from what Angela was saying that Brennan must not have told anyone that he was being yanked off the Eller case and was oddly touched.
Angela arched an eyebrow. "Probably not. After all, we do work with other federal agencies, but somehow yours seems to attract all of the idiots. I'm serious," she said as he scoffed. "Based on personal observation, and with the possible exception of Homeland Security, the FBI agents have been the worst; even the State Department has been civil. But if it did affect her working here, she'd find another place to work. Stanford, maybe. I know they've offered several times. Their equipment's almost as good as what we have here, and she could focus on her teaching and the digs." Her smile was secretive. "I'm telling you this for a reason, Booth. I like you, though God knows why. If you can adapt, you could be the best fit we've ever had. But if you can't or don't, you will go down as the single worse liaison we've ever had, and the one that cost the FBI the services of one of the premiere forensic anthropologists in the world, if not the government. And that'll cost you quite a bit in turn. You could probably kiss any hope of promotion good-bye."
He shoved his hands in his pockets, still fingering the chip. "But there's no solid proof," he muttered. "I can't go after a Senator without it."
"You would know that better than me," she replied, sitting at her computer. "But that little scenario we showed you," she nodded at the darkened holographic machine, "is the best explanation for the evidence we have. It's based purely on the facts--we know the type of place if not the actual location; we can tell what caused Cleo's wounds. Brennan wouldn't show it to you otherwise, and she still hedged. She won't discuss motive, even when she has a theory; and you note that she wouldn't let me put Senator Bethlehem's face on the assailant. That's still a guess, but it fits the evidence. What you do with it is your job. But you can't write it off completely. Not if you want to keep working with us.
"And something else, Booth. We aren't machines. This isn't a series of party tricks. Every piece of information we can give you, every hypothesis, all of it, is the result of hard work and time. Hours of hard work--blood, sweat, and tears hard work. Don't think because it's mental that it's not hard. Bren will stay up all hours to work on a body from bone storage, a body 100 years old or more, just to identify it as much as possible. A victim of a crime…well, she was here all night and fell asleep over one of the tables out there after putting Cleo Eller's skull together. That after supervising the retrieval of the remains and a flight from Guatemala and a fight in the airport. That's what she offers when she works--everything! All she's ever asked for that I know of is some respect and recently, a chance to broaden her horizons by going out in the field. Yes, she's stubborn and hot-tempered and brilliant. That's part of what makes her so good at what she does.
"Hodgins is as smart as she is and he puts as much effort into his work, though he at least has enough sense to go home when he can barely keep his eyes open. He can run five analysis programs at once and never lose track of what machine does what nor does he screw up the results. With just a little time, he can tell you more than anyone sane wants to know about a water sample or a bit of dirt or bugs. Zack is probably the smartest grad student we've ever had, though you might not believe it. He's just as dedicated as Bren--but he's learning from the best, after all. He would put in as many hours as Bren if he was allowed to. She says he's becoming a wiz at figuring out the weapon from studying the marks along with everything else."
"You don't say anything about yourself," Booth said, looking at the artist in a new light.
"It's not nice to blow your own horn," she replied with a teasing smile. "I stay as long as she needs me at night during a case, and I do my damnedest to make accurate renditions of faces or recreate a scenario on my little baby there. And I'm there for Bren, to remind her to go home, to eat, that there is a life outside this lab when there's only old bodies to examine. But my point is that you--or your replacement if you decide it won't work--need to remember an old programmer's phrase. 'Garbage in--'"
"'--Garbage out,'" he muttered. "Even I know that one."
"Mm-hmm. Or if you prefer, 'you get what you pay for.' Decide quick, G-Man, 'cause when this case is over, she just might decide to submit that paperwork on her desk."
He ran this thumb over the edge of his poker chip, feeling the ridges. And here I thought I gave up gambling. "Where did you say the range was?"
I think I may have borrowed some concepts from the handful of other Pilot & pre-pilot stories I've read. Sometimes it's hard to tell what's original and what's lurking. My deepest apologies if I stepped on any toes.
