Zach, Brennan, and I were trying to determine the cause of death for Christine when she stilled, her expression taking on hints of pain and sadness. I looked up at her when she stopped moving altogether, noticed her face, and did a double-take, standing up straight and hovering by her side, slowly waving a hand in her periphery. "Dr. Brennan? Are you alright?"

Angela and Hodgins came up the platform stairs, quiet voices ceasing when they heard me checking on my boss. When my voice startled her out of her reverie, like she'd been lost in some memory, she gave them her attention. Hodgins was holding a clipboard and Angela was empty handed, but the worry and apprehension gave away that she was in on what Hodgins had.

"Yes. Um…" she just confirmed for me that she was alright, although she didn't usually zone out like that, so I wasn't entirely sure how true that was. "Did you find something in the soil?" She turned so her back was to the skull on the table. I looked to Zach, motioned to the skull for him to keep working, and turned around to involve myself in the discussion that Brennan, Angela, and Hodgins were about to have.

Hodgins, just barely the shortest in the group, looked down to the clipboard and then passed it off to Brennan, holding it out for her to take and see for herself. "This was in the soil samples alongside your mother's remains."

Brennan took the offered clipboard and looked down at the paper. The top was a print-out of an image from a computer monitor, like it had been a scan of something and then digitally enhanced. She looked down at the letters and recognized the look. "A movie ticket?"

"Rialto Theater," Angela confirmed. Isn't that in Arizona? "The nine P.M. showing of The Fugitive, September twenty-second, nineteen ninety-three." She must have memorized the date prior to bringing it to us, appearing grave and apologetic. What, does she think Christine had bad choice in movies- oh. It occurred to me that ninety-three was two years after she'd left Brennan, and I realized this seconds before opening my mouth to comment that there were worse movies.

Wow. That was a close one. That would have been awkward.

The authoress looked at the ticket for as long as she wanted, which wasn't actually that long. Her distrustful and slightly irritated second glance at it suggested it had personally offended her somehow. "Well, how did it get there?"

Entomologist and artist exchanged looks as they silently decided how to proceed. Hodgins ended up getting the apparent short straw and having to offer up the explanations. "Either… your mother had it in her possession when she was buried, or… it was somehow buried with her."

"The ticket dates the burial," I noted quietly of both circumstances. There seemed to be no way of getting around it, because any other situation was reaching far too widely for it to be plausible.

For a second it seemed like the hand holding the clipboard was shaking, but then she tightened her grip and it went away. "No," Brennan declared, as if she could change facts just by having a stronger conviction. "That's impossible. My mother disappeared in nineteen ninety-one."

"Sweetie…"

Brennan pushed the print-out back to Hodgins, who took the clipboard obediently but left it within reach for Brennan. "It's possible Mom was buried somewhere else for a year and a half, then moved," she told herself.

Hodgins only paused for a moment. He looked compassionate and reluctant, but he wouldn't let her delude herself. "No," he corrected. "That's not possible."

"Maybe it is," Angela countered supportively, giving Hodgins a 'please, go along with it' stare.

Hodgins looked back at her, asking her silently not to make him lie. They both wanted to do their best to help Brennan, but their opinions on how to approach this particular issue weren't the same. "We decided to tell you the truth," he said slowly, words still to the authoress. "And this is the truth."

While Angela and Hodgins were looking at each other, continuing to somewhat peacefully disagree, Brennan shook her head, refusing to believe it, and turned back to the skull on the backlit table.

The movement jerked Angela out of it and she stepped up beside the table. Brennan didn't look up at her, focusing entirely on the skull. "You alright?"

I stepped in between Brennan and Zach. She wasn't looking at us, but I knew she was hearing us. "We still don't have the whole story, Dr. Brennan. We're missing key information." So Max and Christine – or whatever their names were – had disappeared in ninety-one, but Christine died in ninety-three. There could be an explanation for that that didn't involve them heartlessly abandoning their kids.

"I'm pretty sure I just found cause of death." At her steadfast refusal to go back to the ticket date, Angela pursed her lips but nodded in acceptance that this wasn't an issue to push right now. She turned back to Hodgins and motioned for them to leave. "Zach?"

Zach stood up a little straighter. "Yes, Dr. Brennan?"

Brennan stood up so that Zach had room to bend down and see. "See the discoloration on the inside of the skull?"

Zach tilted his head, craning his neck to the side to look down. He nudged the base of the skull with a glove-covered finger to make it move so he didn't have to keep doing borderline gymnastic stretches. "Left side, extending from the coronal suture, crossing the superior and inferior temporal lines to the squamosal suture…" his eyebrows lowered in scrutiny. "Subdural hematoma," he realized. Brennan looked up so she didn't have to keep looking at her mother's skull.

I was about to offer for her to just let Zach and I do the rest of this part. I at least know what I'm doing, and Zach is actually qualified for it, so… Between the two of us, we'd be able to be accurate and thorough, and she wouldn't be putting herself through the emotional complications any more than necessary.

Zach, however, wasn't done. "Wow, a big one!" He commented about the hematoma. Stunned, I blinked, balled my right hand into a fist, and drove it straight into his upper arm. Despite being stronger than he looks, Zach isn't exactly an athlete, so even though I didn't mean to seriously hurt him, he recoiled, bringing his other arm up and rubbing the outside of his sleeve. "Ow… Sorry." He added when he saw my expression. "Bad?" He guessed, sighing. I nodded emphatically and his shoulders fell. "Dr. Brennan?"

She looked down, shaking her head like she was pulling herself out of something. I don't think she'd actually hard the last part of Zach's dialogue. "Probably fatal…" she muttered, her eyes going up to the front of the lab again.

I looked up to see what was distracting the older woman and saw Booth coming into the Jeffersonian, leading Russ behind him. Russ was looking around, taking in the remarkable scene. When I'd first come in, I'd been this close to being awestruck. He didn't seem quite that excited, but he was at least curious.

"I knew he'd come," I said softly to myself, smirking and looking back to Zach when he continued to speak, not realizing that the newcomers were quite possibly going to create a problem.

"There are no indications of a blow to the outer skull," he said to Brennan, who was starting to strip off her gloves, an irritated expression in her features.

"Scan the outside of the skull," she instructed Zach and I, assuming that I didn't get sidetracked by working with Booth or staying with her. Normally my attentions are divided between field and lab work, but in this case I also felt the personal responsibility of staying at least accessible to her in case she needed it. I doubted she would, but if there was the chance, then I didn't want to be unavailable. "Look for histological changes, microscopic modeling…"

She trailed off, losing her train of thought entirely as she brushed past us, going to the stairs. She swiped her card out of habit and tossed her gloves in the trash bin on the way. She stopped in front of Booth and Russ, ignoring the latter almost entirely. She was angled so that she was facing Booth, but didn't have to look at her brother. She said something lowly to him without a glance at the other male, and Booth frowned when she moved past him, head up defiantly and an extra speed to her steps, heading off in the direction of her office.

"Bones," Booth tried to call after her, holding out his arms in exasperation.

Personally, I didn't blame her for her obvious aversion to Russ. If it were Aaron, I'd probably act similarly… maybe more violently. Russ left her right after her parents did. He knew she was struggling but he ditched her anyway. And then, because he ducked out, she had to go into the foster system. Maybe it's better than being on the streets, but that still doesn't mean it's good. The kids are taken care of, but there are a lot of people who foster for the state checks or the reputation, or who expect what they aren't going to get. Especially for kids in their early teens and older, families are generally less permanent, and no matter how well you're treated physically, being shuffled around hurts. It's like being told that you're not good enough to keep. Russ put his sister into that environment right after she'd lost her parents, and her brother on top of that.

Booth decided to go after her, which was good, because someone should. He turned back to Zach. Russ looked back from his sister's retreat when he heard Booth calling up the platform. "Alright, listen, Zach," he instructed loudly, making sure Russ heard loud and clear. "If this guy moves," he slapped Russ on the back. "Shoot him with a tranquilizer dart… or something." He shoved Russ towards the platform so he could slip behind him and pursue the anthropologist.

Zach sighed and held up his hands helplessly. "I don't actually have a tranquilizer gun," he protested.

I rubbed my hands together and pretended to yank up the sleeves of my jacket (jacket, not blazer. No court to appear professional for today). "That's okay," I reassured my friend cheerfully, also being sure Russ could hear, because I was in no way joking. "I can take him to the ground!" Bigger he may be, history of fighting he does not have. I bounced over to the edge of the railing and leaned over, bracing myself with open hands on the edge. "Russ! Knew you'd come around!" I beamed widely.

The slightly annoyed look that I got for my joyful demeanor expressed quite clearly that he did not appreciate being blackmailed. I just cocked my head and smiled even brighter.

The first thing that Russ picked up from the evidence bag on Brennan's desk was the dolphin buckle that Brennan had held onto so tightly. "Mom loved dolphins," he laughed, observing it for a minute before the marble caught his eye. He put down the buckle and picked up the small green marble. "This was mine! My favorite marble…" He looked to Brennan curiously. "What was she doing with that?"

Brennan stood at the side of her desk, a few feet away from Russ. She had her arms crossed in front of her, similar to how I was standing while I leaned against the doorframe, but she had a lot more attitude and annoyance in her posture.

"Where did they find you?" She demanded of him instead of answering his question about the marble.

Russ shrugged and tried to write off the question. "It's not hard for an FBI agent to find a parolee. Or for an affiliate who's seen my photo." He glanced over at me and made it clear who he was talking about with the last part. I nodded my head towards him in acknowledgment. It had been oddly easy to find him once we knew he was at the carnival.

"I didn't ask how," she told him in irritation, her stance giving off loud, loud readings of anger and hurt that were being held back. "I asked where."

Russ heard the change, however slight, in her voice and though he kept the marble in his grasp, he dropped his hand and turned back around to his sister. "Morehead City, North Carolina." They hadn't been too far apart, all this time, and I didn't know how that must have made Brennan feel. With his empty hand, Russ pointed at her as he stepped closer. "I call, every year, on your birthday. You never pick up."

How could she? She didn't have you for fifteen years, was she supposed to recognize a strange phone number as yours? It's the twenty-first century. I doubted that they still had the same phones they did in the early nineties. Then again, maybe Russ did and Brennan had memorized the number when they were younger.

"Take a hint," she told him coolly, crossing her arms.

Well, I'm starting to wish I wasn't here. The tension was beginning to feel like it was wrapping around my throat and killing me slowly. "Okay," I exhaled quietly. I hadn't expected them to get along, but I hadn't prepared for this much negative emotion in the room.

I unwittingly broke some of it when I spoke, and Russ looked down to the marble he was holding. He held it up to show me, as the FBI affiliate who had dragged him into this mess in the first place. I couldn't really bring myself to regret it, but I did wish him luck in getting his sister to tolerate him. Not that he really deserved it from me – I'm with Brennan on this all the way, my situation mirroring hers almost eerily. For me it had been a lot more recent, and not too long after I'd been abandoned, I'd met everyone at the Jeffersonian.

"Can I have this, please?" Russ asked about the marble.

I shook my head quickly. "No, that's evidence. Can't release it, even to family, until the case is closed."

Russ frowned disbelievingly. "Evidence of what?" He asked, looking down at it and remaining unimpressed. "It's a kid's marble."

I shrugged. Brennan shrugged, too, but she seemed somewhat pleased that Russ wasn't getting what he wanted. "It's the rules," she explained, just an inch away from gloating that he couldn't have the marble because her rules trumped his. "I can't let you have it."

"Some old Tempe." Russ's nickname was affectionate, but Brennan's expression remained stony. He passed the marble back to her and dropped it in her open palm. "Never met a rule worth breaking."

"Same old Russ," Brennan returned. I'm not sure she realized that Russ's gentle teasing wasn't supposed to be taken as rude, or even as a bad thing. "On parole."

Ouch.

My phone vibrated as a text arrived and I immediately went for it, grasping onto it tightly and hoping that it would become a distraction and make the atmosphere between the two siblings a little more bearable. I held the screen up for both of them to see, relieved. "Booth just got your parents' car to the Jeffersonian."

In the Jeffersonian's processing garage, an entire FBI forensics team was surrounding and working on a metallic, light blue car with an Illinois license plate and the Chevy emblem on the trunk. It was small, four doors, with two seats in front and a booth in back big enough for three medium-sized people, and there was a yellow, rectangular bumper sticker with red writing boasting about their daughter being an honors student at a school whose name had been scratched off with keys or something else sharp and uneven.

I led Brennan and Russ in, because we all had to get to the same place, and Booth was already there, talking to an African American forensics guy standing on a ladder to reach the top of the elevated car, hoisted up so people could do a work-up underneath and of the tires.

"Tear through the whole car, treat it, and then go through it with a fine-tooth comb," Booth instructed, his voice carrying well in the garage and not yet noticing the three of us.

Watching Brennan and Russ interact was… interesting, to say the very least. Russ watched his sister when she wasn't able to see. He wasn't mad at her, but he was letting her blame him. And when Brennan wasn't controlling her body language, then she was keeping him in her line of sight, where she could easily look and make sure that he was still there. Whatever bond they'd had before their family had been torn apart was obviously still there, but Brennan was too furious with him to see it.

It made me question how I'd act if I ever saw Aaron again. Would I behave like Brennan? He and I hadn't had the same closeness that the Brennan siblings did. We knew each other for less than a year, whereas they had fifteen to grow up together. Would I be too angry to think with him around, or ignore him entirely? My emotions felt in perspective now, but would they stay that way if I heard his voice?

Russ stopped right after Brennan did, taking a cue from her without either of them seeming to realize it. He crossed his arms and sighed. "That's our old car, alright," he confirmed needlessly.

Brennan frowned at the bumper sticker as Booth turned around, not exactly surprised to see us but not having known we were there before Russ spoke. "The name of my school is scraped off… Woodside Elementary." She forced her eyes away from the sticker. "They said they didn't find anything in the car," she told Booth, prompting for an explanation for the forensic unit's presence.

"There was a bloodstain," he answered quickly, just getting it out there and done with so she didn't have to press. "Front seat, passenger side." He picked up an FBI file with the official seal on the front and seemed to have remembered something. Despite having just given orders to the analysts, he dropped the file like it was on fire and yelled, "Guys! Everybody!" Some of the background noise dropped out as he had his audience, and Booth went ahead and whistled for effect. I grimaced at the sharp pitch. "I need the space! Now!"

A black-haired Asian at the front of the car, wearing a white lab coat marking him as Jeffersonian rather than FBI, looked around the automobile incredulously. "What, now?"

"Yeah, now," Booth said, confirming with a straight face.

The guy on the ladder Booth had been talking to when we'd entered the scene rolled his eyes and reached to strip his gloves from his wrists. "Take five, everybody!" He called, as people similarly removed their latex gloves and set down their tools, taking a break. The three closest to us were gone the fastest. In spite of their clear disapproval of being told to go away, they seemed to realize that there was a reason for it.

"Twice in two days," Brennan muttered, glancing towards her brother just like I'd look to a friend when I made a comment towards them. Immediately she realized what she was doing and dropped her eyes back to the ground.

I tried to lighten up the atmosphere, although the room felt a little chilly. I was pretty sure it was just my mind further enforcing the theory that whatever Booth needed everyone gone for, it wasn't going to be all that good. "When you have the power to make people run, how can you resist?"

Booth moved on quickly, opening the folder again. There were two pages of laminated mug shots on the top. He picked them up swiftly before Brennan could. "I had N.C.I.C. database check for a married couple who disappeared in nineteen seventy-eight…" The first year when Christine and Matthew Brennan actually existed. He handed the mug shots, one of a man and one of a woman, to Brennan. I stepped behind Brennan to move between her and Booth rather than her and Russ, and Russ moved closer to look over her shoulder. The woman was recognizable as the same whose face I'd seen in the holograph. "Meet Max and Ruth Keenan."

N.C.I.C… I thought, while Russ and Brennan both seemed uncomfortable looking at the photographs. That's… National Crime Information Center, or something like that, right?

Russ nodded before Brennan did, accepting it faster. "That's Mom and Dad alright," he confirmed.

While we now knew who they really were, it didn't take Brennan long to come to the conclusion I had about the center Booth had gotten the information from. "The N.C.I.C. database?" She said slowly, lowering the pictures and looking up to Booth like she wanted an explanation. "That's… that's criminals. My parents were on the list of federal offenders?" She looked lost.

Russ, at first, looked surprised by it. I personally suspected he just didn't know what N.C.I.C. stood for off the top of his head. To be fair, not a lot of people know the meanings of the acronyms for government organizations. He didn't take it as hard as his sister, or if he did, he didn't show it. "How do you like that?" He asked Brennan dryly. "I guess a criminal nature sort of runs in the family."

Brennan started to give him a dirty look and I drew my hand across my throat over her shoulder, pointing at him agitatedly with the other hand. "Bad Russ!" I scolded. "Now is not a good time for a joke!"

Brennan almost furiously reached into her pocket with one hand and she threw down the mug shots onto the table, landing haphazardly on top of the file they'd been neatly in. She withdrew a wallet-sized photograph of herself and Russ as teenagers and held it up in front of her brother, forcibly reminding him of the past.

"You were seven years old, Russ. Old enough to remember." While I'd known earlier that he might know more than she did, just due to being older and having a clearer memory or possibly being involved, it seemed that it was just sinking in that he had kept their parents' alternative identities a secret from her. She shoved the picture back into her slacks with less care. "What… what is your real name?" She demanded, fight in her stance but not as much in her eyes. Actually, I thought she might not be very many pushes away from crying. "What is my real name?"

"Dr. Brennan," I started to say quietly, almost afraid to interrupt an intensely familial and personal argument. "The file on your parents has all of the information…"

"No!" She all but shouted, her eyes fixed on Russ as if she'd disappear when she looked away. "No, I want him to tell me!" I suppose that's fair, I sighed to myself at the drama but understood that there was no getting around it. "What is my real name, Russ?"

I thought she could have chosen to phrase that better – not that I was going to tell her that, of course. Legally, her name is Temperance Brennan, so technically, that is her real name. However, she was just learning that she'd initially had an entirely different name. When she was too young to remember it, a fundamental part of her identity had been changed. She hadn't been allowed to choose, or able to be consulted. Having something like that revealed to you after spending your life knowing who you are… no wonder she wanted Russ to tell her. She already thought he owed her, and I suppose in a way I agreed that he did, but she deserved to hear the truth from him.

Knowing her birth name wouldn't change who she was now, or even who she was then, it just gives her a name for the person that, at one time, she might have been. I think the significance of given names is diminished for me because of how often I'd had to change my last name for the people fostering me. I distinguish different houses by the last names I'd taken – the McIntosh era, the Morrison era, et cetera. I don't think of the parents, I think of the surname. But because I've had to keep changing my name so often, it doesn't mean to me what it should.

That's not to say I'm completely desensitized. When I think of myself now, I think of Holly Kirkland as being my name, not Holly 'insert-name-here.' I think of Aaron and my foster parents, and that makes me sad and angry, but I also think of Booth and Brennan, Angela, Zach, and Hodgins, and even Goodman. I'm reminded of Amy Cullen, Holly Kirkland's friend, and I remember the people I've helped and saved right along with the terror and pain and assault that made up life lessons I'd had to learn and that have helped me mature and grow up in a short time, not to mention the people I've met and stuck around with that are even now helping me to overcome emotional distresses.

So, all things considered, I don't want to change my name again. I'm not prepared to at this point in my life, anyway, and though Holly Booth doesn't sound all that bad to me, that's not who I think of myself as being. That would be a completely different identity, and until I at least get closure for the 'people' I was while growing up, I think I should stick to the identity that makes me feel the best about myself. I know that not everything I've done is smart or ended well, but I do know that I have reasons to be proud of myself in addition to those.

Russ lifted his shoulders up, rolling and loosening the muscles like there was an unbearable tension. Metaphorically, I believed there was. "My name was Kyle…" he said slowly, like he was having trouble forcing him to say their names out loud. "… Your name was Joy."

Though he'd told her what she'd wanted, Brennan was only made angrier by the admission. "You are not my brother!" She accused, drawing back and slapping him hard. Russ went with it, bending over and raising a hand to his face. I was almost concerned, but I could see where he deserved it and there wasn't any blood, so…

"Bones!" Booth protested, shocked by the sudden attack.

"No!" She shouted again. If the other people were still here, then we definitely would have caused a scene. Had Booth predicted this would happen? "He lied about that! What else are you lying about?" Russ looked physically and mentally pained as he straightened his back, hand still hovering by his red face. "What else are you not telling us?"

She stormed off back towards the Medico-Legal lab, not giving Russ a chance.

I started to walk backwards to follow her but pointed at Russ. It was hard to stay angry at him when he was so clearly getting enough of that from his sister, but I felt like I was betraying her if I was being nice to him.

"I'm going to go make sure she stays alright." I knew they had to understand who I meant by 'she.' "As for you," I waved my finger at Russ sharply. "Stay where Agent Booth tells you to! You are not skipping out now!"