"How was school today?" Belle asked her son as he climbed into the car, even though she already knew the answer. It would be the same fine she'd heard since...well, since Milah. But she would ask anyway, because he was her son and she had no idea what else to do to remind him that she cared.

"Fine," he mumbled without looking at her, his hair draped across his face just enough to obscure him from view.

Not that he'd ever been one to say much more than 'fine,' but he used to say it differently. It used to be an invitation to ask more, to poke and prod and get out which classmate had said something funny and what the most interesting thing he'd learned that day was. Now, it was a wall put up between them to keep her out. He was still hurting, and he wasn't read to let her help him face it yet. She understood that (after her father died she hadn't let anyone in until Bae). She wouldn't push him any further than Dr. Hopper approved of, but she would keep knocking until he let her in.

She glanced back in the rearview mirror – if he wouldn't look at her, she would still look at him. Bae was watching out the window, and he was so beautiful she wanted to cry. He didn't know she was looking at him right away, so she was able to glance back and forth between her son and the road. Something caught his attention, and he glanced away from the window for a moment, but it was all she needed to see the angry red bruise marring her son's cheek.

Belle slammed on the brakes so hard it was amazing she didn't cause a traffic accident and whirled around to face her son.

"What's on your face?" she demanded, throwing the car into park on the side of the road and spinning around to look at her son. "Who did that to you?"

"Nothing!" Bae retorted, keeping his face angled away from her as much as possible. "It's nothing. I'm fine."

"That is not fine!" she insisted. "What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it," he mumbled. "It's fine."

Belle grimaced, throwing the car into drive and heading back towards the school.

"What are you doing?" Bae demanded. "Where are we going?"

"I'm going to talk to your teacher," she replied. "Because I need to know what is going on."

"Mom," he exclaimed as she parked in front of the school and unbuckled her seatbelt. "No! This isn't a big deal, I swear!"

He reached forward and tried to grab for her arm, but she whipped around to face him at that.

"If you don't want me to go in there, you need to tell me right now what happened to your face."

Bae paused at that, glancing back and forth between the school and his mother with an agitated look on his face. She put her hand on the door handle and prepared to get out of the car.

"I got into a fight," he finally mumbled. "After school while I was waiting for you to pick me up."

"Who were you fighting with?" she said as calmly as she could manage. "And why?"

"August," he replied, looking away.

That was a shock. She'd expected to hear about a bully or something, not a boy whose house her son routinely slept over at.

"What happened?" she repeated, a little calmer than before.

"We were talking about Halloween costumes," he said with a sigh. "August and Emma and I. We were talking about who we wanted to dress up as and I said I was going to be Thor."

"And?"

Bae took a deep breath before continuing.

"And August said I couldn't be Thor, I should be Loki instead because...because..."

She was pretty sure she knew what was coming next, and she wanted to make it have never happened but she had to hear it, because he'd had to hear it.

"Because?" she prompted, when he wasn't forthcoming.

"Because I'm adopted."

His voice was tiny, and it cracked on the last word and Belle was feeling the frothing rage working itself up and she was trapped between the warring urge to drive over there and give an eleven-year-old boy a piece of her mind and the knowledge that she couldn't be the one to decide whether Bae and August would remain friends. So she squashed the impulse to lash out down. Deep, deep down where it couldn't do any harm.

"What did you say to him?" she asked as calmly as she could. He had to know she wouldn't yell or blame him for what happened. He had to remember that she was always on his side.

"I told him to shut up," Bae replied guiltily. "And then I punched him."

Belle took a breath and counted to three before responding.

"Okay," she said softly. "Alright. I'm not mad at you, but your dad and I are going to have to talk about this. You can't just hit people though, Bae. No matter what he said."

He nodded gloomily, sitting back against his seat and folding his arms across his chest.

"Hey," she said as she put the car back into gear. "You know I love you, right?"

"Yeah," he replied automatically.

"No, Bae," she said as seriously as she could. "I love you more than anything. You are the single most important thing in my life. I chose you, and if I had it to do all over again I'd always choose you. I need to know that you know that."

He looked at her curiously, as though trying to suss out her meaning before he nodded at her.

"I know that, Mom," he said so quietly it was almost a whisper. "I've always known it."

"Okay then," she tried to put on a cheerful face as she said it and pulled back out into the road. "That's good."

Something had changed between her and Arthur lately, and Belle was hard-pressed to put her finger on what or how. Things had been going so well between them, and then Milah had died and then somehow it had all gone wrong. She didn't delude herself into thinking that her dating again had nothing to do with it, but she hadn't expected it to be this awkward to deal with each other. They'd both known the other one was free to date from the beginning, and quite frankly she needed this right now. George was simple, Arthur was complicated. She wasn't really sure of her feelings for him any more than she was of his for her, and she wasn't sure of where they could possible fit into each other's lives with Bae. She needed something easy right now, something where she knew exactly where she stood and where it was going – something that didn't have the potential to break everyone's hearts.

Still, though, one thing she was sure of what that he was Bae's father and he needed to know what was going on. He was still at the pawn shop, just like Belle knew he would be as she pulled up outside. She'd had a little time to cool down and wasn't nearly as agitated as she had been when they left Bae's school, but she still wasn't particularly looking forward to telling him about this.

"Hey," he said, glancing up at the sound of the bell on the door. He sounded surprised when he saw her there, but whatever that was evaporated the moment he saw Bae. This, she decided, was why she had to force her emotions to stay platonic. His entire face lit up at the sight of her son. She couldn't risk Bae losing that, and she refused to risk losing it for herself, too.

Of course, that all changed the moment he took in the bruise on his son's face. It wasn't quite a black eye, it was a little lower actually and more on the cheekbone (August probably had a pretty sore hand if nothing else) but it was a little swollen.

"What happened?" he asked, coming around the counter. His voice had taken on a panic that she knew all too well.

"Your son got into a fight at school today," she said as lightly as she could. This was serious, but she didn't want Bae to feel worse than he already did. "This seemed like the sort of thing a father should probably handle."

She gave him a steady look, willing him to take her meaning, needing him to understand that he needed to be proud of Bae in this moment. He needed to do that obnoxious thing dads did when their sons got into fist fights where they faked being angry all the while talking about how tough their kid was. He needed to make Bae feel like a grown up, and he needed to make Bae feel loved and wanted and remind him that he wasn't just adopted anymore than he was just an accident of genetics. He had two parents who had both done everything in their power to be with him, and he needed to feel that more than ever. Belle would spend the evening watching movies in pajamas and making cocoa and being there, but this part was something that was better coming from a dad.

Luckily, Arthur seemed to understand at least a little bit.

"Did he now?" he was talking to Bae, but his eyes never left Belle as he watched for her signals. "Well, I think I have some ice in the back. Why don't you hop up on the stool so I can get a good look at you?"

Bae nodded, dropping his backpack on the floor by the counter and climbing up onto the stool his dad kept behind the counter so he could do homework. Arthur made a show of tilting Bae's head back and moving it around so it would catch the light at different angles.

"That's a pretty nasty bruise," he remarked lightly. "But I should probably see the other guy, huh?"

Bae almost smiled at that, and Belle breathed a silent sight of relief.

"How does August look, by the way?" she broke in. It hadn't occurred to her in the car, but she really needed to know all the details before she spoke to August's dad.

"I split his lip open," Bae confessed. "And I think he hurt his hand on my face."

"I think there's some ice in the back," Arthur said finally. "Let me see if I can find any to put on that bruise of yours."

He gave Belle a curious look before ducking behind the curtains. She followed him closely, reminding Bae to stay at the counter and not to move.

"What the hell happened?" Arthur said sharply as soon as she was far enough into the back that their voices couldn't carry too far. "He spends two days at your house and he's coming home with bruises?"

She was instantly defensive, which she hated. They needed to be a team on this, not at each other's throats.

"He got into a fight at school," she shot back. "It's hardly the first time two little boys ever threw punches, you know."

"So if it's that unimportant," he challenged, digging a plastic bag out of a drawer and moving to the little drink fridge he kept back there for Bae. "Then why did you bring him here?"

"Because he needs you," she replied. "He needs his father to tell him he did good even if he didn't."

"What happened, Belle?" he finally asked. "This sounds absolutely insane."

"One of his friends made a comment about him being adopted," she replied. "And Bae hit him."

"Which friend?" his voice was hard and a little dangerous and she regretted telling him that part already.

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me," Arthur growled. "I need to know who to destroy."

"Alright, first off," Belle interrupted, grabbing his arm to hold him in place before he could storm out there and begin demanding directions to the Booth house. "The kid is eleven, so calm down. Second, he's one of Bae's closest friends so this will probably be all over by next week. And third, August's mom died last year. He's probably at least a little jealous that Bae has two parents now."

"Well how am I supposed to know all of this?"

"You're supposed to trust that I have eleven years of context here," she replied. "And that I have his best interest at heart."

"So what? I'm just supposed to go out there and tell him he did good?"

"No," she said, taking another deep breath and trying to calm herself down again. "You're supposed to go out there and make a fuss and let him feel how much you love him, and then I'm going to do the same tonight. Tomorrow I'm going to call August's dad to talk about it and then you and I are going to figure out some consequences for him. But right now this is the first emotion he's shown in two weeks so you need to go out there and put some ice on your son's face and be proud of him, okay?"

Arthur seemed conflicted, but he finally nodded and began to walk back towards the curtain that divided the back room from the shop.

"This conversation isn't over," he promised her before he was gone from view. Somehow, it had never even crossed her mind that it was.