I stepped into Booth's office, not even stopped by anyone on my way up. Over time I'd become a fairly common fixture in the FBI building, and so my presence didn't really draw any attention anymore. I pushed the door half-shut and pulled out the chair across from Booth's desk, settling down into the chair lightly and setting my palms over my knees. Booth looked up as I sat down and made myself somewhat comfortable.

"The… the fire did too much damage to Marshall's body." I said quietly across the table, raising my eyes to look over Booth's desk. It was messier than it usually was. I suppose it was harder to keep everything all orderly when you were busy being upset and going back and forth between the lab, the military base, and emotional therapy. "There wasn't enough tissue to confirm DNA to the cigarette that I stole. That lead's a bust."

Booth had been filling out a report. He set the pen down, not putting the cap back on first. He sighed and leaned forward, rubbing the heels of his hands against his forehead tiredly. "The one person who had a motive killed himself, but he couldn't have killed Marshall." The business partner had also checked out, and the airfare tickets had been legit.

I eyed him sympathetically. "The M.E. got back to you?"

"Yeah." He nodded, letting his hands fall down onto the desk slowly. He took a deep breath, his shoulders rising. "Confirmed it was a suicide. Plus, no one was in or out of the office. He definitely killed himself."

I relaxed as he didn't seem about to snap at me again. I straightened up a bit and leaned back against the chair, crossing my arms over my chest and stretching my legs out. "So, he killed Kent, though presumably on accident. That doesn't answer who killed Marshall," I sighed while I stretched.

While we had been talking, footsteps had been audible from outside the office. The door wasn't closed, and it was a busy building, after all. Now, though, a set came in through the door and stopped. It had me turning around to look over the back of my chair when Booth looked past me.

"Agent Booth?" The spectacled, short man who had been with Tina Kent stood uncertainly in the doorway as if he wasn't sure he was allowed to come in further.

"Mr. Kent?" I asked, more in surprise than for confirmation.

Booth rose up from his seat behind the desk, holding an arm out towards me to officially introduce us. "This is Miss Kirkland, she's-"

Charlie Kent's father interrupted. "I know," he said, nodding quickly. When I put my hands on the armrests to stand up, he motioned down with his palm facing the ground for me to keep sitting. I moved my hands back to my lap.

People always knowing who I am is starting to get a little weird…

It was a little weird to speak while I was sitting down, because I felt like I was being way too comfortable talking to him after unburying his murdered kid. "I'm sorry about the exhumation," I tried to uneasily apologize. While my tone probably was a little bit off, I was true in the sentiment. "We just needed to be entirely sure of what happened, and the reports were lacking."

He waved away my explanation, which would have bothered me if he didn't seem so beaten down or if he was more aggressive about it. "No, please, thank you. It's important for us to find out how he died."

I bit on my lip, not sure what else to say to keep the calm, and ended up offering the first thing that came to mind. "Would you like a chair?"

He shook his head and held up a hand again to tell me to stop. "No, I just wanted to ask… there's so many conflicting stories." Mr. Kent looked away from me and towards Booth again. "Now the captain says he can't talk to us. I just wanted to ask you to find the truth. My wife and I can't live not knowing what happened to Charlie." He seemed earnest, desperate. "We need the truth."

Booth nodded solemnly. When I looked at him, he seemed just as surprised as I was for Mr. Kent's calm visit to ask us to do our jobs. "Of course."

"We'll let you know as soon as we understand what happened," I promised, thinking back to how awful I'd felt letting everyone think that Devon had committed suicide. Aside from my morals, and Mr. Kent's appeal, I'd feel the same guilt if we didn't tell them what had happened to their child.

Mr. Kent's visit had brought up another question that begged an answer: why wasn't Fuller talking to them anymore? While it was true that the military wasn't required to personally keep the family involved, it seemed pretty damn rude to ice them out for no reason. Booth seemed to agree that they had a right to the information, at least, and so we ended up going back to the base to find Fuller.

"I can't talk to the family. There's an ongoing investigation." The captain-ranked, camo-clad man answered, walking on one side was me while Booth was on the other. We were crossing the base from one building to another as Fuller went about his responsibilities.

"Hm." I hummed skeptically. I found that a little bit hard to believe – they'd spoken to Kent when the investigation had started, hadn't they?

Booth heard and he correctly interpreted my meaning. "Kid…" he said under his breath in warning.

"I didn't say anything."

Booth shot me a warning look out of the corner of his eye and continued the conversation with the military captain, not willing to make it into such a big deal, especially in front of other company that would be apparently extra sensitive to my type of scrutiny. "And you had no idea that this was a friendly fire incident?" Booth had to ask to make sure.

To myself, I thought that friendly fire was a misnomer. No matter who's firing at you, it's probably not with friendly intentions.

Fuller snorted, unappreciative of the question. This was supposed to be a very obvious no answer, but he actually answered. "If I had, don't you think I would've reported it?"

"The report was inconsistent," I told the captain, tone calculated to sound a mixture of matter-of-fact and pointed. "People have to sign off on documents like that." I hadn't been told, but I was certain of it, especially when they got back to America and had to sort through things for burials. "It seems to me that someone would notice that it didn't add up."

Fuller stopped in his place and turned to look down at me. I may be tall, but he was even taller, over six feet, and made me feel short in contrast. I felt oddly like a little kid. "Dr. Brennan vouches for you, that's good enough for me." I had known he'd called the Jeffersonian, but I hadn't realized Brennan had spoken up for me. I almost smiled. "But you don't know the first thing about combat." Okay, no smiling. "We were taking fire. One of my men was killed. The area wasn't secured. Do you think I'm counting bullets and drawing pictures?"

I felt chastened and didn't like it.

Fuller went past me to Booth to make his point. "You've been through it," he reminded the former sniper. "Does it ever go the way you want it to? Is it ever the way it should be in combat?"

The captain didn't get an answer within five seconds, so he assumed that he wasn't going to get one. His expression went from questioning to flat. Booth excused the unpleasant line of conversation with, "We have to ask these questions. It's a murder investigation. You understand that?" That last part seemed kind of like a hint that the captain needed to remain cooperative or we would be a little less friendly.

The captain rolled his shoulders, holding his head up. "And I'll cooperate in any way I can," he promised Booth. "I don't want any more of my men to die, either." That I could buy. Only a psychopath could actually want people to die for no good reason. "Now, if there's nothing else…"

He looked over Booth and I again. Neither of us had an immediate enough reply to it, and he nodded with a sense of finality before leaving us on the sidewalk to walk up to another on-base building.

"Got something!" Hodgins held the magnifying glass over a bullet hole in Kent's body on the table and he raised his other arm up high in victory. The magnifying glass was linked to the monitor on the table, which showed the image zoomed in. Around the gory hole in Kent's torso, there were several tiny brown spots. "A splinter pattern! Particles of wood were blown back into one of the exit wounds from the AK-47s."

"The missing bullet," Brennan said aloud as the five of us came to the realization. The inconsistency in the report now made sense. There were more wounds than bullets because one of them had gone clean through, and was probably still in the cabin where the insurgents had resided.

Zach, who was standing across from Angela and next to me, twisted around to look at the picture on the screen of the computer. "But he wasn't leaning against wood when he was shot." He pointed out the obvious flaw in the situation. "He was in the middle of the room." That did seem to be a consistent factor in the reports, so we were taking it as truth.

"No," Hodgins agreed with his roommate… well, they don't actually share a room, so are they roommates or just people who live together? … "He was on the floor." Hodgins put the magnifying glass on the table next to the corpse and turned to the computer. The camera on the glass was pressed to the exam table so the screen went dark until the entomologist hit the keyboard and it changed tabs, going to one of a few crime scene pictures. This had Kent lying face-up on the floor, already shot dead.

"Kent shot at the insurgents, Lefferts panicked and shot Kent, so… then instead of attacking the actual threats, the insurgents kept shooting at Kent?" I theorized, scowling and shaking my head by the time I had finished. That was the explanation that fit what we had so far, but it made absolutely no sense. "The firefight must have been over when he was shot with the AK-47."

"The missing round passed through him, and into the wood floor." On the picture on the computer, the floor wasn't visible, but there was definitely wood embedded in the skin around the gunshot wound.

Angela frowned as she puzzled over the half-solved mystery that was this entire case. "Yeah, but… all the insurgents had already been killed, and they were the only ones with the AK-47s." So one of the American soldiers had to have taken up an insurgent's weapon and shot at Kent, even though he was dead already. Friendly fire was awful and bad, but it wasn't the first time this had happened. What else could they possibly had to hide that was worse than what they'd staged?

Hodgins smirked widely, bouncing on his heels like a kid who wanted to go see the Christmas tree. I doubted he could contain the excitement for much longer without driving everyone else insane. "I hate to say conspiracy," he lied. He loved saying 'conspiracy.' "But…" he looked at me almost pleadingly.

I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling and waved my hand in assent. "Fine, go ahead."

He looked like I'd given him the entire world. "My peeps, we've got a conspiracy!" He beamed happily. It was sad because it was looking more and more likely to be true.

"Someone wanted to cover up the friendly fire incident by making it look like he was killed by the insurgents." Although that answered my earlier questions as to why he was shot when he was already dead, that only made the circumstances more suspicious. I wasn't looking forward to having to tell Booth. "Angela, enhance all the picture of the aftermath so we can see body positions, bullet holes, damage to the house." Brennan took on a look of determination that I recognized as meaning that, come hell or high water, she'd get her answers. "I wanna reconstruct what happened that night."

Brennan, Angela, and I all went up to Angela's office, and Brennan and I pulled chairs up close to Angela at her main computer. Angela booted up her system and loaded up her previously-scanned images from the crime scene in Iraq. Angela's office was kind of cluttered, but it looked like she was reorganizing, and when that happens then things usually look worse before they start to look better. We left the door open in case Hodgins or Zach needed us.

"I wanna see all the walls," Brennan announced to start, holding the folder of documentation from everyone's incident reports. "Can you scan them for bullet holes?" Angela's computer ran a thin green line across the scanned-in photographs and detected the gun-inflicted blemishes on the wood. Then the computer beeped, making small green boxes around the bullet holes in the walls. "Okay, single out the ones that came from Lefferts' weapon." Many of the green boxes disappeared.

I pulled at a seam on my jacket, fiddling with the cuff of the sleeve. "Booth is still having a hard time with this," I sighed. He had gone out to lunch to catch up with Hank, the handicapped vet I'd met at the V.A.. I doubted that this was going to get me out of going to meet his wife and kids with Booth. Part of the reason I think he'd wanted to meet up so soon was to share the case with someone who had been in a similar situation as him, someone who could really relate.

"He's idealistic," Brennan told me with a slight shrug, which I had already known. By no means was Booth naïve, but some of his perspectives were outdated or slightly unrealistic. He liked to see the good in people, but sometimes he didn't completely expect others to be as unethical as they were. "The findings from the case are disillusioning him. It's not surprising he's having trouble accepting that."

"Well, I think it's nice to know somebody that wants to keep honor and responsibility alive," Angela put in helpfully to join in on the less business-related conversation.

"No one is disproving it, though. One unit was screwed up." I let my head roll back while I complained, getting my frustrations off of my chest – or at least out in the open. "An accident happened and they chose not to own up to it. That doesn't mean that Booth is the only one with his values straight…"

Brennan was half focused still on the case and she held the folder open. "It says, insurgent A opened fire when he saw Kent, and Kent took him out." She looked down further on the paper to double-check and looked back to the screen when she was satisfied. "Let's see A again," she instructed.

The computer made a green box around the indicated insurgent. He was an Iraqi man in his thirties or forties with bloodied and ripped clothes, his back leaning on a leg of the table, legs out in front of him. An AK-47 was across his legs, but his arms were up, fingers curled half into fists with his hands in front of him.

Angela zoomed in on the box, making the image bigger until it filled the screen, and she talked to me while she did so. "You're doing your job to find who killed Devon Marshall. He knows you're not doing anything bad or wrong."

"He doesn't act much like it," I mumbled. I knew I was being a little childish, but it was hard to resist the urge to just complain for a while. I fixed in on the picture to focus and pointed halfheartedly up to the monitor. "Why are his hands up like that? Can you zoom in?"

"What for?" Angela drew a new green box around the man's upper torso, including his forearms and half-open hands. They magnified, zooming in again. "What should we be trying to see?"

I mimicked the Iraqi's position with my hands. It felt like I was bracing myself against an impending attack. "His hands are up instead of on his gun." And yeah, sure, he might have let go when he was being shot and dying, but how could he have fallen with the gun landing on his lap with his hands staying up? "It almost looks defensive."

Brennan was also raising up her hands in the similar position. "He was shielding himself from the rounds coming at him," she realized, sounding stunned but accepting. "Cadaveric spasm – the muscles became rigid when he died." Her eyebrows lowered and she cocked her head just slightly to one side. "He might not have been holding that weapon."

Then how would it have gotten there?

"What does that mean?" Angela questioned, her voice low with a note of severity to the implications.

Brennan shook herself quickly like she was brushing something off. "Show us insurgent B," she commanded instead.

Angela zoomed out to the regular picture we'd started with and picked out the other male insurgent. She magnified the man, younger than the first, lying face down on a burgundy and gold carpet. Both arms were by his side, and an AK was about a foot away to his right over a long bloodstain on the rug.

"Look," I pointed out, shifting forward to the edge of my chair and leaning past Angela, pointing to hover my finger over the blood on the carpet. I wasn't silly enough to actually touch the screen. I think Angela would give me dirty looks for smudging her computer monitor. "All of that blood is rubbed into the carpet. He was dragged to where he was."

"That gun was placed there next to him." Brennan determined, but then swiftly moved on before she could be questioned, just like she'd done with the other insurgent. "Show us C."

The final insurgent was a woman in a long-skirted dress, her brunette hair snarled and held back in place with some sort of pin, and she laid on her stomach. A glint of silver from a large spoon was behind one outstretched arm, the hand loosely holding onto a whole grenade with the pin still in. There was a piece of metal or plastic underneath her chest that looked like a dinner plate.

"Okay." Angela zoomed it in so that the third insurgent took up the screen. "This is the third insurgent woman, about forty, holding the unexploded grenade in her hand."

Brennan crossed her arms and tucked one hand underneath her opposite upper arm. With her other hand, she gestured towards the computer. "Magnify her torso."

Angela's computer drew a box around it and zoomed it in yet again. "Wait…" she focused on the metal I could see underneath her chest. "She's lying on a dinner plate."

"The serving spoon is next to her." Brennan said in reference to the silverware half covered by the Iraqi woman's extended arm. "She'd been holding it when she was shot."

Maybe the house was just really unclean. … Okay, yes, she was holding onto the spoon.

"And a grenade?" Angela questioned disbelievingly, blinking and raising her eyebrows at her computer.

"Not impossible, but the two together seems a little weird… even to me." I commented, and to be fair I was pretty open-minded about scenarios and contexts.

I heard the footsteps before I could see the shadow, but I twisted around to look over the back of my chair. I saw Booth through the blinds of one of the tall glass windows of Angela's office and he appeared in the doorway a second later.

Booth looked around the office before he settled his eyes on us. He barely glanced at the computer or the photograph magnified on the screen. "Found anything yet?" He asked, seeming less antsy than he had been earlier but still somehow weary.

"Nothing good," I responded in warning.

Brennan shuffled her feet to turn around to face Booth. Her face fell when she realized that we'd have to tell him the truth of what he'd found, which was far worse than what we'd initially thought had transpired. "None of these people were armed when Kent was in there. All of the weapons were placed on them after they died."

Which meant that they hadn't been a renegade group. They'd been innocent. They hadn't been insurgents – they'd been civilians. The older man and woman were probably the parents of the younger Iraqi male.

"Fuller's unit killed an unarmed family."

Almost ten seconds passed where everyone was both saddened and horrified. A whole family, slaughtered by a well-meaning unit who then blew them all away.

Then Booth spoke up, looking between Brennan and I as if one of us was supposed to explain that it could be wrong, that it might just be a misunderstanding or that there was an alternative explanation. "Kent shot unarmed people?"

"They look like a family," Brennan said, repeating the sentiment she'd expressed already.

"About to sit down to dinner," Angela added in agreement, her face pained as she realized the significance of the dinner plate and spoon.

And suddenly, Booth's horror morphed to grim resignation.

"Was the unit ever under scrutiny for other operations?" I asked, unable to help but think that maybe if they were willing to cover up this then they wouldn't prioritize truth very high and who knew how many other innocents they had slaughtered?

Booth shook his head, putting my worries to rest for the most part. "None. They served another six months without incident." They finished their tour. Figures. They just wrote the whole thing off like a bad dream and continued about their lives like nothing wrong had ever happened.

"How could something like this have happened?" Angela frowned deeply and she asked it quietly as if she wasn't comfortable speaking any louder.

Booth started to shrug his shoulders, pulling his hands half out of his pockets to do so, but gave up halfway through the motion and he stuffed his hands back in. "Woman could've heard them," he supposed dully. "She was on her way to the back door. Kent probably thought the spoon was a weapon."

"A spoon?" Brennan repeated skeptically.

"It's dark," Booth shortly responded. "It happens." With it hard to see and adrenaline and fear running high, the glinting of silver could have been mistaken for the barrel of a gun. "He's inexperienced, he's scared out of his mind. You only have an instant to make a choice. Kent probably thought he was being attacked, so he burst through the door."

Brennan understood how the spoon could have been confused for a weapon under those conditions. "From the spray pattern, he was shooting as he entered. He must've killed the woman first, the others as they rushed to the woman to help."

They'd never stood a chance.

"He probably thought they were attacking, too," Booth sighed, feeling remorse and regret for the victims and the unit's sakes. "Lefferts hears all the firing, he goes in. Kent turns to the broken door, weapon still pointed…" The image painted itself in my head. I hear gunshots and suddenly a gun's aimed at me, I'm going to shoot on instinct and only question it when there's not a barrel in my face. "Lefferts shoots, killing Kent." He looked away from the computers and scratched at his hair. "It all happens in seconds."

"But if Kent turned to face him-" Angela started to object.

The agent waved off the beginnings of her inquiry. "Doesn't matter. I mean, after all the shooting, all Lefferts sees is a weapon, pointing right at him. He just reacted."

The artist looked abhorred as she knit her fingers together, wringing her hands. "God…"

"Yeah." He agreed quietly, nodding.

"No wonder they covered it up." I turned back around to see the computer screen, part of me mourning for the murdered family no one else had known to grieve for. "This was more than just friendly fire."

Booth cleared his throat. "A hell of a lot more."

Booth was absolutely furious to learn what Fuller had done and had refused to acknowledge or take responsibility for. He almost broke the door storming through the doorway into Captain Fuller's office, and even though he was nowhere near even a semblance of calm, I wasn't going to try to slow him down. I followed him through the door while Booth stalked across the room to the desk.

Fuller had been standing by the side of the desk, looking over some papers, and looked up in surprise. He didn't have time to react when Booth lunged forward to grab his shirt. "You son of a bitch!" He growled, shoving him back against the wall. "You covered up the whole thing!"

Fuller didn't move to hit Booth, but he arched his back against the wall to make himself taller and try to lessen the pressure on his spine. "Stand down, Agent Booth!" He yelled.

"They were innocent!"

"I don't know what you've heard, but by report clearly states-"

I slammed my fist down on the edge of the desk loudly. An ache sprung up in my hand, but it was so worth it. "Your report was falsified!" I accused loudly, eyes burning and muscles tense with the urge to do damage. "The Jeffersonian took the scenario apart and we know what really happened. Your unit slaughtered an entire family of civilians!" Though I'd started out loud, by the end I was shouting, working myself up.

The captain snapped. "Kent!" He roared back defensively. "Kent did!" At the beginning of a confession, Booth let go of the man's shirt, but remained in his personal space and Fuller remained against the wall. "A kid so green, he never should've been there in the first place! Do you know what that town was like?! Our guys were being blown up by I.E.D.'s every day while we were trying to build hospitals and schools!" So maybe he'd gotten a little desperate. That didn't excuse it. "A mistake was made," he said slowly with emphasis. "No one likes it. But you know what happens! If it got out what we did in that neighborhood, the whole damn city would've exploded!"

So you took it upon yourself to belittle their deaths? Impugn their lives and memories?

"So you thought it was okay to cover it up when four people wrongfully died?!" I incredulously spat, pointing at him vehemently. "That's not a judgment call that you have the right to make!"

"What would you have done?" Fuller challenged me in response to the enraged shouts. "Would you have let the city burn? This can't come out, Agent Booth." He turned his eyes back to my father. "Don't make this any harder with an ugly story like this."

Booth shook his head in disgust. "I don't know what you're fighting for, Fuller, but it sure as hell wasn't my country." He unhooked the handcuffs from his belt and held them up. "We'll start with obstruction of justice."

Fuller glowered and raised his chin indignantly. "You have no jurisdiction on this base," he declared haughtily.

I rolled my eyes, both aggravated that he was still being righteous and pleased that he was going to be knocked down – hoisted on his own petard, so to speak. "You think we were stupid enough to get a confession without back up?"

Colonel Shore and a pair of other soldiers I hadn't met stepped through the door, Shore leading them. They'd been waiting in the hallway, listening in but not making their presence known. Fuller's boss had his arms in front of him and appeared visibly repulsed by the captain's actions.

"Jurisdiction is ours, Captain, and we're cooperating fully with Agent Booth." Fuller began to scowl as he realized what had happened. "You will not disgrace us, Captain," Shore stated angrily, while Booth grabbed Fuller's shoulder and forced him around. Fuller twisted his own arms behind his back to avoid being hurt by force. "You will be held accountable."

We got back to the lab as soon as Fuller was put into custody to fill in Brennan and Zach on his definite conviction. There was no way he was going to get away with this, and it gave me a sense of satisfaction to know that at least one seriously screwed up douchebag was going to pay.

Booth leaned over the edge of the railing on the platform, half doubled over with the rail pressing into his abdomen. He looked over the edge and to the floor. "Devon Marshall's killer is still out there. Fuller placed some confiscated weapons on the Iraqis, pressured the others to keep quiet… but he still has an alibi for the night of Marshall's murder."

"It's amazing how many secrets we've uncovered." I sighed, reaching up and running my fingers through my hair stressfully. "Lefferts, Kent, Fuller… and there's still another killer there."

"We're closer now." Brennan had already taken Kent's body off of the examination table, having finished getting enough information to fill a novel. "Zach found some discoloration on Devon's vertebrae. It was caused by residue from pethidine, an opiate affectionately known as Demerol." She said it wryly. "Someone jabbed a syringe into his neck, creating the indentation in the bone. He would've been unconscious in seconds. That's why the instrument could've been placed in his ear without a struggle."

Zach picked up a slim, silver surgical tool from our own supplies and held it between two fingers, easily visible to Booth and I. The agent turned around, putting his back to the edge. "It was a nine-inch surgical curette, like this."

Brennan didn't look the curette. I suppose she helped Zach to figure out exactly what the murder weapon had been. Although he was technically our weapons expert, Brennan was still adept at identifying them. "So we're looking for someone with access to surgical tools and prescription drugs."

Jody Campbell. The doctor. She could get both without being questioned because of her status as a doctor in her practice. I faltered. I had kind of liked her, in spite of the fact that I hadn't actually talked to her.

"Someone the army sent to medical school." Booth came to the same conclusion I had, having also talked to the military private.

I nodded slowly. It seemed like half of the unit was ending up dead and the other half had something nefarious to hide! They were supposed to be safe once they'd come back to America. "And who currently works as a doctor in a private practice."

Doctor Jody Campbell was in an appointment when we got there, but we didn't go in guns blazing, if only so that we didn't scare the child she was with. A little girl, maybe seven or eight, with blonde pigtails, was sitting on the edge of the table. Campbell was wearing an open white doctor's coat and sitting on a wheeled stool next to the child, whose legs were over the edge and kicking in the air lightly.

Brennan, Booth, and I stopped in the hallway and looked in. Campbell had a needle in the girl's upper arm, her pink sleeve rolled up high and her neck twisted like a crane to watch the doctor press a cotton swab over the injection site and remove the shot needle, disposing of the needle on a tray and picking up a band-aid.

"All done," she said brightly, cheerily, to the little girl before she looked to see us in her periphery by the doorway.

She didn't seem surprised to see us, and as she flattened the band-aid against the girl's skin, her shoulders fell. She took her hands away from the child who ran her fingers over it before looking at her doctor curiously. She seemed disappointed but resigned, and make no move to get away or harm the child for leverage.

"He was gonna tell." She said, looking straight at Booth with a sort of sad shrug of her shoulders. "I… It's like the war was still going on. I was just trying to survive."

Devon Marshall was awarded honors and buried at Arlington, with a funeral presence of his family, Kent's parents, Jimmy Merton, Booth, myself, and several uniformed military officers from the base who were attending the veteran's funeral service before his burial.

A man in camouflage carrying a gun for the sake of ceremony raised his voice. "Forward!" He commanded the line of soldiers as they marched to the casket, covered respectfully with an American flag.

As the soldiers went through their process for the ceremony, Regina and Kiara Marshall broke from the line of mourners, Kiara's eyes lingering on her brother's coffin. The Marshalls came toward us. Because we hadn't known Devon, we were standing to the side of the service and watching the proceedings, not involving ourselves with the mourners.

Regina had her thumb underneath the strap of her purse, keeping it on her shoulder. Her other hand was holding onto her daughter's. "My boy was just trying to do the right thing. Thank you for letting people see that." She looked so honestly thankful and gratuitous that it almost made it worth all the frustration that had led to this point.

"He didn't deserve what happened to him." I told her honestly, feeling as if I was just stating facts rather than offering reassurance. "I'm glad we could prove it." I looked away from Regina and down to Devon's little sister, Kiara. The small brunette was much smaller than the rest of us. I smiled gently and dropped down into a kneel so that she was a little bit taller than me and I looked up at her. "Your brother was a hero in his right," I told the little girl. "You should be proud of him."

She nodded, looking more solemn and determined than I'd ever seen a child appear.

We started to walk away. Arlington was a huge property, but we'd paid our respects and didn't have much of a reason to linger. The soldiers began to fold up the American flag from the coffin in a uniform practice they must have done many times before.

We left that part of the cemetery and stayed on the path, not walking on other veterans' graves. I looked over my shoulder after a minute and saw Regina Marshall and Tina Kent embracing each other. They had both lost their sons, but I hadn't expected for them to bond over it – not that it was a bad thing.

I looked straight ahead again and resynchronized my steps with Booth's so that we were walking at the same pace, feet falling on the grass at the same time. "Miracles never cease," I commented, just so that he could hear, and I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in indication.

Booth twisted to look behind us and see what I meant. "Well, people will always surprise you." I think he meant it in general.

While it was true that people usually had the element of surprise, that didn't always mean it was a good thing. "Not always in the best way," I acknowledged, slowing down as he did without putting much thought into it. With the funeral pretty far behind us, the FBI agent sat down on a bench underneath the shade of a tree.

He knit his fingers together, his back slumped and shoulders down. He looked up and had to squint to see me with the sun behind me. "I've… done… some things," he started to admit haltingly, his voice low and tone remorseful.

Given the theme of the entire case, I realized quickly that we weren't about to have a lighthearted discussion. I sighed and sat down on the bench next to him, holding onto the edge on either side of my thighs and digging my heels into the ground.

"Yeah," I agreed gently. "I get that." I couldn't just walk away if he finally wanted to talk, but I also definitely didn't want him to think I needed him to tell me. I'd be totally cool with him telling someone else, Brennan, a therapist, a military friend – anyone, as long as he stopped letting it drag him down.

Although I had agreed peacefully, Booth shook his head. "No," he disagreed. "No, you don't."

"Okay," I responded slowly, trying to find a way to respond to him without making this harder for either of us than it already was. "I don't know what, exactly, but it's alright."

Booth shook his head and he unlaced his fingers, dragging his palms along his slacks anxiously. "It won't ever be alright," he corrected wearily. "At least, not – not as a secret…" he trailed off and coughed to clear his throat, and he looked to his left, at me. "You were right, the other day." My first thought was to cheer. "To expect you to tell me things, I have to be willing to do the same. I have to be, uh, honest. About myself. I… I have to be able to tell someone."

So this was him, being honest with me. And that he was actually prepared to tell me was good enough to satisfy me where he was concerned. "A therapist, maybe," I suggested carefully. "I don't think I should have pushed you as much as I did. You'll tell someone eventually. That's good enough."

I could see him swallow, mentally preparing himself to relive something awful. He didn't look at me, like he was having trouble coming out with it where I could hear at all. Instead of moving closer to pressure him, I stayed where I was.

It didn't take very long before he started to explain what he was so upset about. "I was – I was sent to Kosovo." A Serbian territory. Booth had spent a lot of time in the Middle East and Asia, although not as a tourist or sightseer. "There was this Serb, General Raddick, who led a unit who would… go into villages, and, you know, destroy them." I nodded solemnly, listening intently. Raddick didn't seem too unique. Other people had done similar crimes. While abhorrent, it wasn't something I could change. "Women, children, all – all killed, because he wanted to ethnically purify his country.

"He'd done this twice before. I mean, we had facts, proof. Two hundred thirty-two people, just erased." He shook his head slightly, fidgeting with his hands and staring at the way his fingers interlaced, and he shifted his feet, moving one back so the toes of his shoe was pressing into the grass. "I was the sniper sent in to stop him. He was set to leave in a couple hours. It was his son's-"

His breath caught in his throat for a minute. Immediately I saw the connection. Raddick had been with his son, and because I wasn't ignorant, I had the idea of how the story would end. There was a reason that Booth was a great sniper. Booth had his own son – hadn't when he was there, but now that he had a child he understood how the two were connected, and probably hated the connotation he'd forced onto the child.

Without thinking, I moved my left arm across my lap to set my hand gingerly over his forearm. He unlaced his fingers and let his forearms rest in his lap, but moved his other hand to rest on top of mine.

He took a deep breath and haltingly tried to continue. "His son's birthday. A little boy, maybe six or seven." A few years older than Parker, but still just a child. He held onto my hand tighter. I'm not sure he meant to do it, but his voice became a little steadier. "I can still hear the music from the party, you know? That song, just… playing, in my head.

"Nobody knew where the shot came from, but, you know…" He shut his eyes. "They knew why it came. They said I saved over a hundred people, but… that little boy, who didn't know who his father was, who – who just loved him…"

Guilt made him shudder. I couldn't blame him for how he felt about what he'd been ordered to do, but I also couldn't blame him for carrying out the orders. No one could argue that Raddick had it coming, and if we were taking a more moral perspective, then he'd certainly saved the lives of the people who the general would have otherwise murdered. In the grand scheme of things, one kid's trauma didn't seem like a big deal when it came with hundreds of lives made safer, but that didn't make it seem acceptable to do that to an innocent child.

"He saw him die, fall to the ground right in front of him. That little boy, all covered in his daddy's blood, was changed forever." Booth's voice cracked. I frowned as he sighed, shoulders heaving, and I slowly shifted closer to put my free hand over his back. He didn't respond directly to the touch, so I slid my palm over his jacket until my arm was against his back in a half hug.

Booth turned his head to look at me. "It's never just – it's never just the one person who dies, Holly." His brown eyes seemed haunted and old. I felt like he wasn't just giving me a statement, but rather a lesson he wanted to impress. "Never. Never. We all die a little bit, kid." He relaxed his grip and patted the back of my hand gently. I met his eyes sadly but seriously. He deserved to know for sure how I was feeling in response to the confession. I accepted it was devastating, horrible, terrible… but I wasn't going to use it against him or dislike him because of it. "With each shot, we all die a little bit."