A/N: I don't usually like making notes at the beginning of a chapter, but I'll make an exception here because this is the last chapter of "It's My Life!"

This chapter winds down a lot of the plot, and though there's still also a lot left up in the air, that's because I have to have something to keep you all excited for the sequel. That's right - sequel! End of "It's My Life," yes, but the end of Holly Kirkland? By no means! I still don't know exactly when it will be posted, but I am already working on the next story in the series. If you like you can follow my profile, or you can just check every so often. I may or may not post another chapter after this with the notification. The summary will be pretty obvious that it's the continuation, and I intend to call it "Until the Day I Die."

Some of you may have noticed that I'm naming my stories after songs. Music is an important part of my life, so the songs I choose are ones I feel aptly fit the story. "It's My Life" is named for the song by Bon Jovi. "Until the Day I Die" is named after the song by Story of the Year.

Everything else besides, thank you to everyone who's reviewed, followed, favorited, PM-ed, and read. I wouldn't have gotten this far through without your support! I hope this final chapter lives up to all of your expectations and makes for a memorable ending to the beginning of a series.

"No way Dad hits Mom." After recounting McVicar's half-ridiculous and half-reasonable story to Russ, the three of us all pitching in, occasionally with details and occasionally with opinions, Russ seemed about ready to kill McVicar himself, if not take his sister and run like his father had told him when he was a kid – twenty-seven years ago now. "No way."

"If he caught them together…" Brennan started to say, looking pained just by acknowledging the remote possibility.

Russ interrupted her, shaking his head vigorously. "No way Mom cheats on Dad! No way."

To myself, I privately thought that that's what most people thought of the dedicated relationships around them, even the ones where one or both of the people involved turned out to be unfaithful. Appearances are deceiving.

Booth shifted and leaned forward, soles of his shoes planted firmly on the rug as he set his elbows on his knees. "Men like McVicar-" he stopped and sighed when he realized that whatever he was going to say wasn't completely accurate. "He lies the way you guys take a drink of water." Almost guiltily, I thought back to all the times I'd said some lie or half-truth or lied by omission. I started to look down but realized it was telling and looked up again, then berated myself for making even my body language lie. I had to strongly remind myself that I wasn't like McVicar – I lied for my own reasons, yes, but I never lie to hurt other people. "He killed people and then snitched to save his own ass."

Brennan frowned at Booth almost contemplatively, like she was weighing his opinions against the odds of the other possibilities. "You don't believe him?"

I snorted and drank some more water like it was medicine for the uneasiness in my stomach and the subtle aching in my chest, manifested to feel like my heart was hurting from the stress in my mind. "I wouldn't." I said derisively, ignoring the look I got from Russ when I tipped the glass back and finished it off. I knew I wasn't normal. He knew it by now, too, and he was looking at me like I was strange.

Brennan shifted in her seat, changing how she was sitting to pull one leg up to cross over the other. "Give me one piece of evidence that doesn't back up his story," she instructed before she allowed herself to consider it.

Booth had one ready. I didn't know if he'd predicted she would ask or if he'd been thinking about it a lot himself. It was probably a little bit of both, I decided. "Your school sticker on the back of your parents' car – it was scraped off."

Russ looked between Booth and Brennan like he'd missed part of the conversation in the last five seconds. "What does that prove?"

"It hid where you lived, what school Dr. Brennan went to," I explained to him, not making some remark on his intelligence, because, really, this was an actual FBI investigation. We thought things through further than most people do. Oh, a sticker's scratched out? Huh, whatever. For us, it's more like let's psychoanalyze it and find a reason why. "It helped keep your location secret, so people couldn't find you. I mean, you put a sticker on, you like the sticker. There's not really another good reason to scrape only that part of it off.

"Also, McVicar was a hitman for the same strong-arm crew that your parents were involved in. Anyone who commits murder has some sketchy morals, and anyone who gets someone else to do it for them is even lower – not to mention a coward. He probably would have been sent after you two, even while you were just kids, if it got to Ruth and Max."

Until I started using Brennan's parents' names again, it had been getting easier to simply say what I thought had happened, but then I made the mistake of using their first names and making it personal again for all of us.

Brennan nodded thoughtfully while Russ looked torn between feeling anxious about the potential for danger they'd been in and hope that maybe their parents really were innocent in this case. "What else?" She asked, pressing for more than just the one piece of evidence she'd initially wanted.

Booth looked down for a second, and then back up, mouth set in a line that told me he wanted to be careful what he said. "Well, there's a story that tracks for me, but… without evidence, it's just a story," he warned them both.

Russ folded his hands in his lap, one elbow propped on the arm of the furniture. "Tell us," he ordered, because he did have the right to know. They were his parents too.

Booth sighed deeply. "Your parents go out Christmas shopping one day." Which fit with the timing – going God knows where right before the holiday season. McVicar sure has a talent for ruining Christmas, doesn't he? I thought bitterly. "They spot McVicar, the hitman, alright? So they lead him away from your home."

Brennan caught onto the gist of the idea. "They scrape the name of my school so he can't trace it back to me and Russ…" She slowly looked to Russ, expecting him to confirm it. He shrugged, not the expert, but nodded slightly like he could easily believe it.

"So you both are safe from whatever had McVicar after them," I deliberately reminded them of that. Their parents had loved them enough to leave them, which had to be hell for a parent. They hadn't left because they wanted to. They'd done it to keep them safe and alive. They needed to remember that.

"He takes out your father," Booth continued, quieter out of sensitivity to that they were talking about their family here.

"…And my mother gets away with a head wound," Brennan concluded, her eyes and body language sad but her words not trembling. She'd gotten used to the context of the case by now, no matter how much it still hurt – and I knew it had to.

"But the trauma was significantly less than it could have been," I acknowledged. I glanced at Russ, wondering if, at any time, he was going to pitch in a piece to the story. Really, the way the rest of us were going around and putting pieces together, it felt like we were playing one of those camp games where a person keeps adding sentence clauses to make a story that doesn't even have to make sense. "The hematoma only killed her after a longer period of time, in which she keeps running."

Back to Booth again. "She leaves the car a thousand miles away, and finds friends." I wasn't rude enough to say this out loud, but I had to wonder who would be friends with Ruth Keenan and also knew who she was running from and why without calling the police, but then realized that she probably had connections from her time with criminals. Her "friend" was probably one of them. Without people to have your back on occasion, I don't imagine you last long in the Keenans' line of work. "But she can never go back to see you guys, because the crew is still looking for her."

Brennan bobbed her head slowly like she was only just daring to believe that maybe, just maybe, she had her answers. "Fits the evidence."

At what passed as assent at the theory, Booth nodded to himself decisively and slapped his hands down on his thighs. "You know what? The weapons McVicar had on him, they're a violation of his agreement with the Witness Protection Program. I'm gonna take him into custody, get a warrant, and I'm gonna search his farm." He stood up finally, set with determination and stubbornness that meant if he didn't get what he wanted, he'd raise a raucous.

Russ tipped his head back as the other man stood. "Search for what?" He inquired.

"McVicar likes to bash in people's heads." I really didn't think we needed the reminder of the M.O., just like I could happily live for the rest of my life without seeing Howard Epps again and yet never see tire irons the same way ever, ever again. "Maybe we'll get lucky and match the weapon he used on your mother."

But that was so long ago now that even if he had kept it as a trophy, we were unlikely to find any evidence still intact. I scowled and decided to stand up, ready to go to the lab. I would be there for Brennan and Russ while they needed support as their family's secrets were revealed and in a none-too-great light, but I had my own business to attend to, too. McVicar knew who Rosemary and Nicholas were – had been, at least – and had our car. It wasn't a far leap to assume that he had killed them, as he seems to like doing to people. I have a right to know what happened to them, even as the foster kid that got left behind.

Maybe not having spent as much time with them was actually the reason why McVicar never came after me, despite having met me and knowing what I looked like. They weren't as much a pressure point for me, nor I for them, so it would have been a mostly pointless kill that only raised more questions from law enforcement.

"It's unlikely," Brennan cautioned while I pulled on my jacket, getting up to my feet with the same insistent and hell-bent posture as Booth.

"Well, I want to know what they've found in the Buick." And, knowing the Jeffersonian employees, I'd probably have a full work-up on hand if I asked for it, and if I didn't, then it would get relayed to me by one person or another. "And even if they haven't found anything, then his day will still suck because of the agents crawling around." I shrugged like I couldn't care less what McVicar was feeling – that was a half-lie, because while I cared, I only cared for him to feel miserable. "Either way, it's a win."

I looked for Hodgins right off the bat. As the entomologist, he would be given the report of what they found and concluded in the Buick once it had been brought back to the Jeffersonian; everything inside would be marked as evidence, Aaron's jersey included, until the case was closed, and every detail would be marked down and catalogued carefully.

I just hoped that some of those details involved DNA that was indicative of the psychopath who I knew was responsible for the reason that they had left and were possibly not alive anymore.

I met him halfway between his laboratory and the Medico-Legal platform where everyone else was gathering, and I swung around and fell into step neatly beside him, because we've all gotten pretty good at matching paces while talking to save time. And then he started talking already; I didn't even have to ask him.

"Xena, they did a work-up on the car, but…" He didn't even have to finish with the conjunction before I realized that the team had gotten nothing. If they had, he would have the details of the file in hand, and he was empty-handed, working back up to the platform to join them in crossing murder weapons off the list. "They can't find anything. No blood, no evidence of any kind of fight."

I'd have been lying if I said I wasn't extremely disappointed. I wanted actual answers, damn it, and being this close and still not knowing was worse than having no idea whatsoever. There's a difference between being thirsty and suffering and being thirsty and just being unable to reach the water.

My inner frustration must have showed on my face, because Hodgins was quick to continue. "But they're testing for fingerprints and DNA now and should get results back soon." It felt like a platitude, but it was meant as a reassurance so I let it slide.

"But he has their car." I shook my head slightly to try jerking myself out of it and straightening out my voice before I started to freaking cry. "He talked to them, they disappeared a week or two later, and then he has their car. Whatever happened to them, he's the reason – he either abducted and killed them or frightened them into leaving, then got them anyway…" I trailed off, because this sort of thing happened on television, not in real life, and certainly not to you.

I blinked furiously. It felt almost like I was wearing a corset, because my abdomen felt tight and I was having a bit of trouble taking deep breaths, and the thought of someone managing to convince me to wear one of those medieval torture devices almost made me laugh in contrast to the frustration and the angst.

"I'm… I'm sorry," Hodgins offered, his face plainly showing support but reluctant uncertainty. There wasn't much he could do besides be sympathetic and try to understand, and I knew that, and I appreciated it. "They'll do it again, but they can't get any more thorough."

"It's fine." I swallowed. My throat felt sore, and I had a bit of a difficult time remembering that it wasn't the end of the world. "They can't…" Do much of anything, if they're dead. I stopped what I had been planning to say when that option jumped into my head and instead shook my head quickly, saying something different. "Knowing they left because of McVicar still gives me answers I didn't have before." And a better mental state… "I wasn't abandoned. They were being hunted." It wasn't something that I'd done. I hadn't driven them away because they didn't want to deal with me. "I just want to know what they did to get McVicar after them in the first place."

"Hey." I looked sideways to the entomologist when he asked for my attention again, and he brought an arm up behind my back as if he was planning on giving me a pat on the shoulder. He thought over it again and decided not to. Honestly, I don't think I'd have minded enough to be bothered if he had. "Dr. Brennan found what happened to her parents after fifteen years." Given that I'd lost my parents just last year, that put it in perspective. If Brennan could find her answers, who's to say I can't get mine? "You'll find what happened to yours."

I looked back in front and pushed my card through the scanning system. It beeped and flashed green. "Thanks," I said genuinely, soft but earnest while we stepped up onto the platform.

Hodgins cleared his throat a bit loudly to attract the attention of Angela, Zach, Booth, and Brennan, all of whom were standing around with the "weapons" picked up from McVicar's farm. "Also, the FBI delivered all these tools and weapons from the pig farm guy," he added to me, catching me up on what I had missed when I'd skipped the platform in order to seek him out.

Angela held a hand out over them. They were laid out over the table, organized more by type, then by size, and all were labeled with tags. "We went through them all to see if any of them match the mark on your mother's skull." The lack of enthusiasm or excitement sort of spoiled the results for me.

Booth looked over the long table and shook his head, half in disbelief that one man would have this many potential murder weapons and half in resignation that all this had apparently come to nothing. "We got twenty hammers, a dozen hatchets…"

"The man loves his blunt instruments," Hodgins decided, standing over the table and frowning at them uncomfortably.

"Seven tire irons," Zach added, as tire irons had been elected as the most likely culprit. "None of them match the wound, even when allowing for shrinkage."

Well. To be honest, I had been hoping for a little more success than this.

"It was fifteen years ago. Even if McVicar killed my mother, what are the chances he hung on to the exact weapon?" Facing what seemed to be the more realistic option, Brennan raised her head and indicated the rest of the innocent weapons. She tried to hide that she was disappointed, but it was ridiculously easy to hear in her voice that she wanted to prove the connection.

Booth sighed and let his head fall back. "It's always like this with McVicar," he groused unhappily. "Alright, so some mook is found with his forehead bashed in. The FBI goes in the basement, collects about forty hammers, and…" He paused for effect before finishing. "… Nothing matches." McVicar was taunting us, I realized, and he'd taunted police every time he'd been a suspect by leaving so much bait out that could be when none of it ever was… not unlike Kevin Hollings, who left a pocketknife out in plain view when he knew that was exactly what we were looking for.

"Always the forehead?" Brennan asked as she realized that Booth had added that as a constant variable. She was frowning like she had just figured out something that could be bad for McVicar but good for us, but she didn't know if she was right or not.

I nodded. "Serial killers have an M.O. and signature. McVicar may be a hitman, but he's still a serial killer." Usually when someone contacts a hitman, they don't care how the victim dies, so long as they end up dead. McVicar executes the assassination how he likes, and he always does it the same way, meaning it's an M.O.. "The bashed skull's the modus operandi, and the frontal bone's the signature."

"Not that anyone could ever prove it," Booth added darkly with a huff. I knew it was rubbing him in all the wrong ways that McVicar was still allowed to live freely, even when the government knew what he'd done and who he'd been.

Brennan pushed her hands slowly into the pockets of her lab coat. "Where did McVicar grow up?" She asked, having some agenda besides being curious about her mother's murderer.

"He grew up a farm kid in Iowa," Booth answered, having memorized all the important information from when he went over the report given to him by Witness Protection. Details meant everything in these investigations, even if they seemed insignificant – we'd caught Ken Thompson, Cleo Eller's murderer, because someone had told us that he had tropical fish. "Why?"

She looked thoughtful. "How do you slaughter a pig?" She questioned rhetorically, implying her suspicions.

I had an actual answer for her. "Bolt stunners, usually," I replied, crossing my arms and +trying to decide if it was plausible that the damage on Ruth Keenan's skull could have come from a stunner, even if she was pulled away at the last possible second. "The pig's kept in a small space where it can't run, the stunner's held to the forehead, and blasts through. It's a bloody mess," I established, grimacing. "But the pig dies almost instantly."

Both Brennan and Booth turned their heads to stare at me, wondering exactly why I knew that.

"What?" I asked defensively, raising my shoulders. It wasn't like it was confidential or top-secret knowledge. "Temple Grandin."

We joined the FBI search team when we went out to McVicar's farm again, this time in search of something that could kill livestock and leave the same sort of damage on bone as we'd seen on Ruth's skull. This time Booth had McVicar himself escorted; dressed in orange for a prison and handcuffed with his arms in front of him, he was no longer charismatic and friendly, to say the least. While stationed between two officers outside of a prisoner transport van, he glowered around darkly, almost managing to be intimidating.

"Why is he here?" Brennan asked Booth, looking over at him unhappily. I could never see his face again and be totally alright with that.

Booth didn't even spare the serial killer a glance before he answered, already knowing exactly who we were talking about and where he was. "If he gets nervous, we know we're getting close."

A tall FBI technician with a lanky, tall figure and short, dark hair jogged over to us, as we were the people in charge of the search. He was wearing white gloves and carrying in one of them a sort of gun-like shape. I hoped it wasn't an actual gun; if so, then he clearly needed to be educated on how to safely carry firearms.

"We found this in the barn." He passed the gun-thing to Brennan. Up closer I could see that it wasn't actually a gun, it just looked similar to one. Brennan turned it over, trying to see what it was. "This is a spring-loaded catapult bolt stunner. The animal's restrained, it's pressed to the forehead." He mimed pulling a trigger to demonstrate the rest.

Brennan hummed quietly to herself and turned the stunner upside-up, so she was holding it like a handheld gun. She pressed it against a flat, vertical plank of wood in the fence. With the barrel pressed firmly to the wood, just like it would be on an animal, she pulled back the trigger. Immediately there was a noise that sounded like a gunshot, but quieter, and part of the fence was blasted. Dust and splinters flew, and a good chunk of wood fell into the pasture on the other side of the fence.

Booth whistled while the wood settled and Brennan tipped the stunner up to see the front tip which would have left the mark and caused the hematoma on her mother's skull.

The technician leaned back and looked completely horrified by what the stunner had done to the fence. "What kind of person could use this on a human being?" He asked, revolted.

Brennan aimed the thing back in front of her in distaste. "What kind of person could use this on a pig?" She countered coldly.

Low-pitched barking started on the other side of the barn. I couldn't see them from where we were, but I definitely heard them. There were three or four of them on leashes led by members of the search team. They were shushed fairly quickly, trained to obey when told to settle or some other command that involved not barking.

"Hey!" Someone on the other side of the barn started yelling back to the vans with the CSI equipment parked in the long driveway. "The dogs have found something! We need shovels over here!"

The man pointed over his shoulder vaguely in the direction that the barking had been coming from. "Is that-?" He asked, starting to ask if we were done with his company at the moment.

I nodded quickly and waved him off. "Yeah, go help with the dogs. Thanks," I added hastily as an afterthought for fetching the murder weapon. He nodded briefly while turning around, head down, and going to the van, probably to get those shovels that the dog unit was asking for.

"It's the perfect dodge," Booth realized as he sighed, leaning against the next post in the fence that hadn't been destroyed in Brennan's experiment. "Blood, flesh… it can all be explained." Of course it could. It was meant to be used to murder pigs, after all.

Brennan grimaced. "I think I just became a vegetarian," she announced.

I nodded. Very little could make me give up meat entirely – I like meat too much – but I think after seeing that and knowing it was used to kill other humans (most likely most of, if not all of McVicar's victims) I might be able to join my roommate on her stint with vegetarianism. "I'll keep that in mind for groceries."

I may not be a master chef, but I can live off of chips, sandwiches, and ramen.

Remembering where we were, Booth cleared his throat. "So, what do you think?" He prompted, about whether or not this could be the evidence we needed for a solid conviction.

Conviction. My stomach lurched and I hoped that we wouldn't be called to testify. By God, I'd do it if I was called to – anything to get this bastard behind bars – but spending any longer on the details of our families' pasts was not what Brennan or I needed, by any stretch of the imagination.

She nodded slowly and ran her finger delicately over the edge of the stunner, feeling the tip that blasted through the wood. "Yeah," she decided slowly. "Same shape as a tire iron, but smaller. This could be a match."

At the seeming confirmation, McVicar lifted his head higher and ignored the officers on either side of him. "Before you decide anything," he called across the distance between us. "We should talk."

Pleased to see him out of his comfort zone, Booth looked from him back to us with a slightly sardonic smile. "I'd call that nervous, wouldn't you?" It seemed mostly rhetorical.

"He should be," I agreed, raising my voice and glancing at him with contempt while we strayed across the grass to talk to McVicar where he was held in the driveway. "That's the murder weapon used on Christine Brennan. And you heard the others – the dogs found something buried."

We stopped a few feet away from the contract killer, who raised his chin defiantly, refusing to let his pride fall. "There's no way to prove that's the exact weapon that killed your mother or anyone else," he told Brennan, the side of his jaw blossoming into a nice, purple bruise where I'd punched him.

I smirked.

"You'd be surprised what she can prove," Booth loyally defended, sounding like he was stating a fact rather than defending reputations.

Disgruntled but mostly unruffled by Booth, McVicar lowered his eyes from the agent and to the authoress. "I need to speak to you alone." He stated, sounding positive that he was going to get the opportunity to be left alone with her. Ha! Handcuffs don't make you harmless. We aren't idiots.

"Forget it," Booth dismissed flatly.

"Booth, it's alright." She tried to say over her shoulder, not looking away from McVicar, despite that she was talking to someone else.

"No!"

"It's alright," she said, more insistently.

Rolling his eyes at the bickering, McVicar held up both chained hands and waved his arms towards me carelessly. Booth tensed even at the motion. "The girl can listen, I don't care." He must have guessed that we were wary of leaving Brennan with him in case of harm, and put together the pieces that between the three of us, I was the most impulsively violent. Criminals make the best profilers, after all. "She's not a fed. We're family friends." He gave a crooked grin.

"Don't make me punch you again," I warned, but didn't argue the terms. If he started tearing Brennan down the moment Booth was out of earshot, I would do damage and I'd walk her right the hell away.

Booth took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, walking forward and staring down the shorter man like he was drilling threats I couldn't hear into his skull by watching him alone. "You've got two ways to look at this." He said, tone brisk and irritated. Clearly he didn't agree that we should be allowed to converse privately, but he knew us well enough to know we would insist on hearing what McVicar wanted to say. "One is that you score a private chat. The second one is, you attack, and I'll drill you through the forehead."

The cruel, straightforward irony was definitely not lost on any of us. McVicar's cocky smirk faded.

Canting his head, McVicar looked absolutely bored as he again showed off the shiny handcuffs locked tight around his wrists. "How could I possibly attack either of them?" He drawled out.

Booth leaned over into his personal space, eyes sharp and expression calculating. "I'll decide what is and isn't an attack," he told the other lowly with a threat of violence I didn't hear from him very often. "Like, say… a hiccup."

"Booth," Brennan objected to the intense caution and gave him a look. He wasn't happy about it, but he let the subject rest and stepped back, holding up his arms as if to say by all means. Brennan's eyes traveled back to McVicar. "Come on," she commanded, turning her back to Booth and nodding her head down the rocky pathway.

Booth gave the officers a signal to let McVicar leave and I stayed by Brennan while we wandered out of earshot of anyone else. We weren't going to have a shouting match, so we didn't have to go far. It still felt like I was under scrutiny, although I knew that it was mostly just others watching over me and making sure I was still safe.

Brennan stopped moving abruptly when we were far enough away from Booth for her to deem us "alone." She turned to face McVicar and he stopped, waiting for her to talk with a sort of curiosity like he wasn't sure what she would say but thought it would be interesting. I hated that he managed to look that way and still be so at ease with everything he'd done. I took up a position protectively beside Brennan. Sometimes I thought it was funny that even though she was more than ten years older than me, and had taken care of herself in far more jeopardizing situations, I still acted like I thought I was her bodyguard.

This was not one of those times when I felt the inclination to laugh about it.

"You killed my mother." Brennan didn't accuse him of it; she just stated it so matter-of-factly that he would have a hard time arguing with it, even if he was innocent. She looked at him expectantly, waiting for an explanation or a reasoning, like most murderers do once they know they're outed.

But I had a feeling that, like Epps, McVicar didn't have a good reason for slaughtering Brennan's parents, or the dozens of other people whose lives he'd ended at the beck and call of other people.

I was right. He kept a straight face that suggested he'd make a killing playing poker. "Gonna be hard to convince a jury," he pointed out, going back to the little physical evidence we had. But we had enough circumstantial to add to the physical and more than enough reasonable doubt, and at least three character witnesses. Brennan and I are good in front of juries, as we'd both learned. I know how to act to play into people's emotions when they expect a victim; Brennan can be passionate and just when put on the stand with the right prompting; and Russ may not be a good liar, but that fear and anticipation he'd felt for McVicar was obvious and if he just put a little effort into broadcasting it, then…

"You underestimate us," I said coolly, certain that even if we were against the odds come the trial, we'd not only have our own intellect and abilities, but also Russ's, Booth's, and the rest of our group of weird friends that shouldn't work well together but somehow did anyway.

"I'll put you away." Brennan vowed evenly, with not quite the same ice in her tone but the same mean determination.

McVicar looked in between us and over our shoulders, seeing where Booth was. I didn't look away from the hitman out of paranoia, but I had no doubt that Booth was watching over us like a hawk, ready to swoop in and deliver a broken nose straight to McVicar if he thought that we were being threatened in any way.

Then he dared to move in just slightly – enough to speak quieter, almost to sound taunting, but not so much as to warrant reasonable alarm. "Here's the thing, Joy," he whispered to Brennan, eyes lit in aggravated cruelty. He called her by her birth name again, this time purposefully trying to unravel her. "Two people know what really happened that night: me, and your father."

Max Keenan. While we knew the specifics on what happened to Ruth, we were still sketchy on the details about her husband. We assumed that he was the one who just barely saved Ruth from getting her skull smashed in by the bolt stunner, but we had no proof of that.

Brennan shifted and narrowed her eyes. "You killed him, before you attacked my mother." That was more of an accusation, because we didn't know that as a fact.

His lips twitched in a mocking smile. "Then how did I get this scar on my head?" He raised both handcuffed wrists and motioned to the thin, long mark on his face. Brennan didn't have a response to that. "You've got a choice, Joy. You drop the bolt stunner down the well, and you'll know what happened." The well was filled with water, so theoretically we could just go down and drain it, but I wasn't sure of that and wouldn't consider it even if I was. I don't bend to psychopathic maniacs. "You put me in front of a jury, and not only will you fail to convict, but you'll never know the truth."

Brennan looked conflicted, torn between her sense of right and wrong and her desire to know what had happened to her dad. Almost as if she wanted guidance, she looked over her shoulder to Booth. I suspected she was hoping someone would intervene and save her from having to make that choice, knowing that either way she'd probably regret it.

"You can't live with that, Joy. You can't live without knowing."

I intervened for her, stopping the torment that this sick man was putting her through. "She won't have to." I said, crossing my arms with an air of decisiveness to indicate I was just done dealing with him. "We were clever enough to find out about you, weren't we?"

Brennan looked back from Booth when she heard me and summoned up her courage and determination that she was so known for. "I found out what happened to my mother," she hissed, leaning closer to fully convey her hatred with her expression and smoldering eyes. "I will find out what happened to my father, too."

"And by the way," I started, then paused, and stepped up so I was face-to-face with the man. Booth's footsteps started to crunch on gravel as I apparently got too close for his comfort. I took the time I had to appreciate the nice bruise formed on the side of the farmer's face, courtesy of my own fist. "You, sir, have invented all new levels of douchebaggery."

Which wasn't technically a word, but damn, was it accurate.

"Hey, kid, come on. We're done here." Then there was a hand on my shoulder to pull me back out of McVicar's space, and I allowed it, because I knew I wouldn't like it if Brennan had gotten that close to him either, even if he was in handcuffs. Just because he was taller than me didn't mean that I was afraid of him and I had wanted to prove as much.

McVicar's face turned to a mask of rage when Brennan and I were ushered away by our partner. "You will never know what happened to your father!" He shouted after Brennan hatefully, face turning pink for his troubles.

I turned around to walk backwards beside Booth and offered the man an extremely impolite gesture, holding up my middle finger to flip him off. "And you will never know what it's like to be free ever again," I promised, shouting back with an even louder voice to make sure everyone nearby heard, humiliating his efforts at the same time. "Seems like you're still on the losing side."

"We've got a grave! We've found bodies!"

My steps slowed and then stopped and I stared off towards the barn, heart feeling like it was doing a weird thing where it was torn between jumping up to my throat or ceasing to beat altogether. The anxiety. The Buick. And now bodies…

Booth noticed that I'd stopped and then he was there in front of me when I'd been too distracted to really realize he was moving there. I blinked, surprised to see him after thoroughly checking out for a couple of seconds. He looked down at me in concern and protectively looked over my shoulder at McVicar. I couldn't force myself to see his expression. "You okay, kid?" He misinterpreted the reason. "What did he say to you?"

Nothing he said… not really.

I looked up to him and blinked and felt that weird dissociation between what I was feeling and what I was expressing. I wasn't frowning or smiling or really having an external reaction. I wasn't shocked, not really; I'd almost expected it, tried not to think about it, even, and I knew what I was feeling, I just wasn't showing it because it took effort and energy I was pretty sure I didn't have at the moment.

"You heard them." I said it and almost sounded blank, toneless. "They found buried bodies." And the abandoned car. And – God. Somehow I'd thought they'd be dead this whole time, but I'd never – I'd never expected it to hit this hard when it was confirmed. My emotions were a mess. I didn't know if I was this upset because I cared for them more than I'd known or because I was freaking out that this happened once and it could happen again to these people I want to stay with. "What are the odds that they're not my foster parents?"

Because no matter how much I'd resented them for making me care and leaving – and how bad I then felt for running when they had only been running from McVicar and for their lives – I had never wanted them dead.

His expression turned understanding and sympathetic, supportive and caring. He laid his hand back on my shoulder and walked around, moving to shield my back. He squeezed my shoulder gently and started driving, pushing lightly in the direction of our SUV, where Brennan was unlocking the doors and holding up the keys to let him drive.

"Come on, kid," he murmured softly, just for me to hear, and I wondered if this was how fathers usually helped their kids when they were struggling to remember what came next. "Let someone else identify these."

A small glass of water was sitting on the edge of Booth's desk in front of me, but I couldn't make myself finish drinking it. He was sitting behind his desk, half-working on paperwork while I was chilling and waiting for the identification call to be made from the bodies in the grave behind McVicar's barn. That bastard was going away for a good, long time, but I wanted to know who else he'd killed, and I wanted to know as soon as I could, so I was hanging out at the FBI building.

It's not like people haven't gotten used to me by now. I've kind of gone from "that one juvenile," to "Booth's kid consultant," to "Booth's literal kid," to "the teenager here frequently because it's her job and she never bothers us so no harm done." Yeah. It took a while to get through those transitions.

A knock at the door almost made me jump and ripped me off of the train of thought I'd been in. I turned my head to see who was at the door so quickly I nearly hurt myself, but that was okay, because Booth looked up so rapidly I think I heard something pop.

The person who'd knocked was a male agent, a forensic analyst who worked for the bureau but didn't go out into the field. He walked in without being invited. Acknowledged was good enough, I supposed, and he wasn't hanging around anyway, just dropping stuff off. "Agent Booth, we've identified the bodies in the farm grave through dental records. They're-"

Booth hurried to cut him off, standing up from behind his desk before he could say the names out loud. "Thanks, just let us read it. Okay?" Frowning, but nodding compliantly, the man stepped across the room. Booth held out an arm over the desk. I leaned to the left as the analyst reached over my right shoulder to pass the file to Booth with the information.

"Okay," he agreed with a shrug. The file was marked with the legit bureau seal on the front cover. He looked still bemused by the exchange, but shrugged his shoulders and took his leave from the office, able to tell when he was no longer wanted.

Booth looked down at the folder and seemed surprised that it wasn't at all outwardly remarkable. He raised his eyes from it fairly easily and looked to me instead, solemn but compassionate. "You nervous?" He asked as he handed it across the desk to me. I was a little bit surprised, but appreciated that he was giving me the opportunity to learn it first for myself.

When I took the file by the edge, he let it slide from his fingers smoothly and I set it on top of my crossed legs. "I don't know," I admitted, staring down at it with a conflicted frown and mixed feelings about the subject. "I mean, I really… I expect them to be dead. I want them alive, but I don't expect them to be. Either way it's going to be a slap in the face."

I flipped open the cover of the file.

Staring back at me were photographs printed out onto paper above their legal information; a short-haired blonde with bright green eyes and a lovely brunette with brown irises and faint blush on her cheeks. I slid the papers so they were next to each other and looked at the images in turn. This could very well be the last time I really saw either of them so I wanted to commit it to memory. Kirkland, Nicholas and Kirkland, Rosemary. The former looked bored with whatever he was doing while Rosemary was smiling at the camera in that cheerful, bubbly way she'd sort-of seemed to perfect most of the time, where it was almost impossible to bring her mood down. While sickening at first, it had grown on me just a little.

I sighed deeply, feeling my shoulders sink as I shut my eyes and looked to my lap. "Yeah. It's them." I swallowed and had no immediate response from Booth, but that was okay. How do you respond to this, anyway? "I mean, odds were it would be, but… still." I opened my eyes again, fairly sure that I could control myself enough to stay calm and composed about it.

"Now you know what happened." The agent looked about to stretch across the desk to reach for my hand or something equally touchy-feely, but thankfully he remembered that that just wasn't me. I'm a lot more relaxed about contact than I used to be, but a lot of that is thanks to them going out of their way to not push me into it. I know I'm not being pressured so I'm not stressing myself out with what I do learn to get used to. "That's something."

"It is," I agreed. Because it was. One of the biggest mysteries of my life, answered. Something I'd wondered about since it happened was now clearer. It wasn't translucent; there were still some plot holes I was missing, like what they did to get McVicar on their trail in the first place, but I still had a hell of a lot more than I had realistically thought I ever would. "I just still don't know why McVicar killed them."

Judging by the sympathetic but helpless shrug that I was given, Booth didn't know the answer for that either. For the first time I wondered how he must be feeling to watch his daughter actively getting over the death of her "parents." It was something most parents would probably want to know – how their kids would cope after they were gone; but my relationship Booth and my relationship with Nicholas were very, very different and the bonds between us could hardly be compared.

Knowing that it was over was a weight off of my chest, but also a hard curtain to close after leaving it open for so long. I sighed and uncrossed my legs, looking at the photographs side-by-side. "Nicholas Kirkland and Rosemary Kirkland nee Moreno." I said their names again, half in closure and half because I didn't want to forget. I didn't want to forget them because they were the first decent guardians I'd had. That meant something to me, even if I didn't always realize or show it.

And it was thanks to them that I'd been in that area of D.C., working at that job in the bar, and getting arrested by Special Agent Seeley Booth.

"Why are you letting me drive?" Brennan queried a few minutes after leaving the parking lot, driving the SUV herself while Booth sat shotgun and I was in the backseat, thoughtfully contemplating my life and deciding what choices to make next.

"Can we play the 'be quiet' game?" I asked in turn. "It's where all of the CSIs have to be quiet and the person who talks first has to go sit in a corner and think about their life thus far."

I remembered mocking someone who was irritating me with that joke. I hadn't expected myself to be put in a situation where I actually was thinking over my life and what could happen next. I know I want to keep working at the Jeffersonian and stay with Brennan, Booth, Zach, Hodgins, and Angela – at least until my internship expires. But after that, what do I do? Save money and go to college? Or do I stay near Booth and Parker?

What happens next now that I know about my foster parents? Do I find Aaron and tell him what's happened? He has a right to know, they were his parents, too, but seeking him out seems… not very appealing to me at the moment.

"You never let us drive," I said, backing up Brennan's question, letting him choose to give us whatever excuse he wanted. We'd need to talk about this eventually – get it out there and understood – but we knew the most important facts, and that was enough for now until we'd had time to actually process what we'd learned.

Booth sighed while looking out the window and turned his head to look out the windshield. It was dark out already, streetlights turning on to illuminate the road, but the humidity was low and there was very little cloud cover. "It's your reward."

"For what?" Brennan asked, curiosity unsated, frowning while she wondered what she did that she should be rewarded for.

He chuckled. "For totally pissing off a hitman."

I reminisced to the case with the gangs involved. Brennan and I had accidentally gotten ourselves on a hit-list after seriously wounding the pride of a fierce and feared gangbanger. Booth hadn't told me the specifics, and I hadn't asked, but I knew that he'd gone straight to the man in question and done something mean to change his mind about those hits.

"Last time we did that, you weren't very happy with us," I pointed out.

"It's all in the context," he said, waving away the contrast and yawning. He sat up a little bit straighter. "Can I read your book?" He asked Brennan without warning, probably hoping to take her by surprise and get less of a 'no' than last time he'd asked.

I craned my neck to see Brennan at an angle from the rearview mirror. Her lips quirked, but she remained steadfast in her original decision. "After it comes out," she maintained without pause.

"Not before?" He sighed in defeat but didn't give in just yet.

"No."

"Doesn't Holly want to?" He complained, dragging me into this.

This was not an argument I wanted to become a part of. Most arguments between them weren't. I pointed at my chest with one hand and shook my hand. "Holly is happy enough that there is another book," I said quickly and clearly, making certain both knew I was content waiting and was not going to choose sides. I used the third person to help keep myself out of it.

Booth sighed like I'd betrayed him. "I let you drive!" He whined.

Brennan tried not to smile and shook her head, exasperated but unable to bring herself to be annoyed. "Just let it go," she advised.

Rolling his eyes and sinking down slightly in his seat, Booth was silent for about thirty seconds while he half-sulked, disappointed that this approach had failed him as well. He was probably going to buy the book the day it was released if he still hadn't managed to persuade Brennan by then.

Finally, he sighed and started acting like an adult again while Brennan took a different route, driving on the highway past our turn and towards the interstate. He looked out the window for signs. "Where are we going?"

The anthropologist smiled softly as the question met her ears. "I'd like to make up for a little lost time," she replied calmly, seeming more at ease than she'd been since the entire disaster of a case began. And when she seemed that content, then neither Booth nor I could ask for any more answers.

Besides… to me, it seemed pretty obvious.

"I can't believe you've never come to a fair just to make yourself sick on rides and deep-fried food."

While Booth complained to me about how much I was missing out on, we followed Brennan towards the Ferris wheel. It turned out Russ had gotten a call and had to come back while we were still at the farm, and now that Brennan had had the time to have an honest conversation with her brother, she'd evidently decided that she wanted to make sure that they didn't lose contact again. Booth and I had happily directed her in where to go and now we were following to make sure she found him.

"Yeah," I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes and shouting over fairground music and screaming from a group of carts on a rollercoaster, sweeping down from the highest point on the ride with a deafening roar of tracks. "When you say it like that, it seems so appealing."

"It's part of the American experience!" Booth exclaimed, almost mourning the lack of "American experiences" I had in my life. I shook my head at his drama but suspected I'd end up experiencing a lot of inertia and shots of adrenaline before we left.

"I think I'll pass," I maintained, pretending to be bored although I was slightly amused by Booth's determination that I had to spend at least one day being a normal kid at a normal fair. I didn't sound too stubborn when I said it. If Booth wanted to ride some rides, fine by me, and if he wanted me to do the same, well… it's not like I'm afraid I'll get hurt. I mean, I just found out that my foster mother and father had been slaughtered by a contract killer turned pig farmer. I think both of us could do with something to get our minds off of it.

But I had to keep up appearances.

"Nope," Booth declared, not taking no for an answer on this one. "We're going on spinning rides until neither of us can walk straight!"

And, okay, him thinking that I would get dizzy first? That's just him being silly. Brennan stopped outside the metal fence keeping the civilians from the equipment and the restricted access part of the Ferris wheel ride, Russ seeing her almost immediately. Booth and I ceased walking a few steps behind her to give them some privacy when her brother set down a tool and moved to talk to her.

"You mean, until you can't walk straight," I corrected somewhat haughtily, rolling my shoulders and goading him into taking the bait for a challenge I was fairly certain I'd win. "It takes a lot to make me dizzy."

Booth shook his head, determined and resolute. "That's it. It's on now, kid. Come on." He beckoned with his hand and turned his back, heading off stubbornly towards the nearest vertigo-inducing fair ride he saw – a coaster ride that went up and down in fast, fast circles, then did the same going backwards, all while playing loud pop music over the speakers. "If you stay upright longer, then funnel cakes are on me!"

I perked up at the mention of funnel cakes. What's yummier than powdered sugar on top of deep-fried batter? Not much, that's what. Still, I had responsibilities to the other adults, so I looked back over my shoulder at the Brennan siblings. "Are you two…?" I started to ask, meaning to question if they were going to stick around or be alright. Both of them nodded, smiling while Booth shouted back about me being slow. I smiled gratefully when Russ waved for me to chase after the FBI agent and started to bolt after him, yelling back, "You never let me pay for anything, so they'd be on you anyway!"

Brennan, Russ, Booth, and I all disturbed the calm of the apartment by going in while still being noisy and talkative, even if Booth and I were a little tired. I suppose that's what happens when you spend hours going on every spinning and then every dangerous-looking ride at a carnival. I guess Booth hadn't been on a lot of them in years because Rebecca didn't care for them, and then when he had a kid to go with, Parker was too little to get on most of the adult rides.

He ended up being wrong that I'd get dizzy first. Like I'd said, it takes a lot to make me dizzy if I'm not somehow injured. When we got off of the Scrambler, Booth was subtly tilting from one direction to the other without realizing it, making me laugh almost hysterically because he didn't get what the issue was.

While it turned out that Brennan and Russ were mostly catching up on what they'd missed out on in each other's lives, we spent the rest of the time acting like idiots in general, consuming more deep-fried dough and powdered sugar than is healthy and getting on all the rides that seemed vaguely intimidating.

It was safe to say that I loved rollercoasters.

Then, in the car ride back, Russ and I actually got into a friendly argument about hockey versus baseball. I was on the side of hockey for the purpose of having the debate; really, I like both. Hockey, baseball, and soccer are my favorite sports, I just don't usually watch games. I ended up learning that Booth plays hockey when he took my side in the discussion. Since Brennan isn't that into sports, it was two against one.

It was almost like being with family. Brennan wasn't acting bitter or angry towards Russ anymore, and that made it a lot easier on me, too.

"Anybody thirsty?" Brennan asked in offering, heading to the fridge.

"Is it too early for a beer?" Russ asked hopefully – and I hoped not, because it was well past midnight, and if that was too early for a beer, then damn, by the time it was late enough it would be time to go do stuff again. Even if I can't drink alcohol, that seems unfair on principle.

I leaned against the kitchen table by the open box with Brennan's manuscript inside, printed onto paper. I didn't look past the title page (which, at this point, only had the title and authoress's name) out of respect for her secrecy. "Seconded?" I chanced.

Booth chuckled, shaking his head while smiling contently. "Not a chance, kid." He emphasized.

I shrugged my shoulders and sighed. "Oh, well. I had to try." His logic seemed a bit faulty; I could work his job with him but I couldn't have a bit of beer? Hm. Maybe I'd have better luck when I turned eighteen. Or when Booth wasn't around, but Brennan's fairly laid-back brother was.

I supposed that if I gave him a chance to make his own impression, then Russ might be pretty cool.

"I gotta go," Booth said, sounding slightly reluctant and apologetic instead of asking for a drink. "You know, I'm picking Parker up for the weekend." It seemed really late for a four-year-old to still be awake, even on a Friday, so I assumed he was just going to go home and make sure everything was straight for his son and pick him up in the morning. "We might have to kidnap Mini for a day, Bones."

"I am not miniature by any stretch of the imagination," I told Booth with a roll of my eyes. You can't call someone Mini when they're almost as tall as you! "I'm adult-sized." I huffed.

To myself (but not out loud) I thought that it might be a fun weekend if I spent a day with one of my "guardians" and her brother and another day with my other "guardian" and his kid – my little brother. We probably wouldn't be called in for a case, at least not for a few days, given how close we'd been to this most recent one. Goodman valued work and reputation, but he wasn't a mean person – slightly egotistical, and he absolutely hated being undermined, but he was a more than fair supervisor, and knowing how close this had been for Brennan and how it had ended for me would probably convince him that we deserved a reprieve from the lab.

Booth looked in on the box with the manuscript as the title caught his attention. He looked at the clock briefly on the wall while Brennan was getting her brother a drink from the fridge. "Yeah… you know, on second thought, I'll take a beer," he called over his shoulder, reaching in to look past the title page.

"You have a boy?" Russ asked, looking to Booth while I noticed what he was doing. Protecting Brennan's wishes, I quickly smacked his wrist and then waved my finger at him as if scolding a child. He pulled his hand back and shot me a halfhearted glare that only lasted a second.

"Parker," I answered without pause. No point in getting Booth in trouble by having Brennan ask what kept us from answering. "He's four."

Russ smiled faintly. "The woman I'm seeing, she's got two daughters."

Booth turned around and put his back to the manuscript. I moved away from the box, confident that the agent wouldn't try again now that he knew I was watching him. "Nice," he said politely. He looked to Brennan while she got wine glasses down from the top cupboard to the right of the fridge. "Girls are nice."

I rolled my eyes.

I picked up one of the Budweiser cans Brennan had set on the counter while she got glasses for the two of us, and then stepped forward to Russ, holding out the alcohol in offering. "So, since we started off badly, you have my apologies for being a total bitch." I rolled my eyes at myself. I long since accepted that as something I'd have to say sooner or later to almost everyone. "Since I'm evidently going to be putting up with you for a while, I'm going to try this again." He took the beer from my hand while listening attentively, somewhat amused. "I'm Holly Kirkland, I live with your sister, and I catch murderers with her. You're probably going to either learn to hate me or become emotionally attached to me for some reason I haven't figured out yet." Like the rest of these people. "Either way… hi."

Russ laughed and grinned at me while popping open the tab of the beer can. I smiled back, knowing I'd done it right. "Hi, Holly. Russ Brennan. Nice start. Good lead-in with the beer."

I nodded, smug and satisfied. Somehow, having the closure that Rosemary and Nicholas were both dead – murdered by someone I'd helped put away – made it almost easier to relax and feel like this place was a home. Maybe because I knew there was no chance of my old one being fixed… or maybe because I now knew that they hadn't left because of me. "I thought so."

While I'd been "introducing" myself to Russ, Brennan had poured out sparkling cider into wine glasses from the kitchen cupboards for the two of us while the men enjoyed their beers. She passed one to me. I smiled. I'd always liked wine glasses; they just looked cool. It felt nice to be treated (mostly) like an adult by the other three.

"To us," Booth declared, raising up his Budweiser in a toast. I suppose it was inspired by the answers we'd gotten to answers that had haunted us from our pasts.

Russ nodded once and I stepped back, between Brennan and Booth, as he held up his own beer. "Whoever the hell we are," he added.

Brennan smiled softly and lifted her glass of cider, just not as high as the men had because the wine glasses were much more liable to splash. "To what we're becoming," she proposed.

I looked over the three as I mimicked their actions, raising my glass while I felt a swell of affection in my chest, almost threatening to choke me up and make it hard to breathe. I blinked through it, smiling more genuinely than I could ever remember. "To who we're trying to be," I pledged, whether it was a better brother, or a forgiving sister, or a loving father, or a reliable friend, sister, and daughter.

While we all started to drink to the toast, Brennan moved out of the odd circle we'd formed and pressed the button on her answering machine, the landline phone sitting on top and charging on the dock. The little screen on the front of the machine was blinking, so she pressed for it to play back.

"New message recorded: Today, three P.M.." The mechanical feminine voice said evenly. Brennan leaned on the counter beside the answering machine, dropping a hand to the edge of the tabletop.

While Russ, Booth, and I were all respectfully quiet so that she (we) could hear the recording, I took a longer drink of the sparkling cider, made a face, and held the glass out. Carbonation was always weird. It wasn't that it burned my tongue as much as it was that I had never had enough of it to get used to it, so it left an odd fizzy feeling in my mouth I wasn't accustomed to. I wasn't sure I liked it enough to drink anything with carbonation more often.

"Temperance?" It was an unfamiliar male voice, with a sort of labored breath and urgent, commanding tone. "You have to stop looking. Y- You have to stop looking for me, right now." The good moods slowly faded as all four of us forgot the drinks we were holding, all turning however necessary to stare at the answering machine. I didn't recognize the voice but I got a bad feeling from it, and apparently so was Booth. Russ and Brennan both looked confused to some degree, but stunned at the same time. "This is bigger and worse than you know. Please, stop now. Stop."

The answering machine beeped to signal the end of the message and it continued to blink innocently up at Brennan, who stood over it in a statuesque state of stillness.

I swallowed again, but this was in an attempt to loosen the tension in my throat. "Who was that?" I asked, looking between the siblings for an answer, as they clearly recognized the voice that they had heard. I waved my glass towards the machine. "Is there a callback number?"

Brennan looked up, eyebrows knit together and lips pulled down into a shocked frown. "That was my father."

I hadn't heard a room be quieter in my entire life.