AN:I know it's been ages and you probably no longer care. But after the last few minutes of last Wednesday's "The Truth in the Lye", this is pure therapy on my part. Also, some changes were made to ch. 2.

Chapter 3: Analysis

Brennan carefully sorted through the pile of bones in front of her, separating all the skull fragments from the rest of the very battered unidentified remains. Angela, seeing what she was doing, offered a sympathetic expression as she came closer. "Do you think there's enough for a reconstruction?"

"I'm not sure yet." Brennan picked up a piece of bone that had once been a part of the man's left eye socket, squelching an entirely impractical memory of the expression in Booth's eyes from the night before. The way his lips felt against hers …. "But given the condition of the skeleton it appears to be the only viable alternative we have for identification."

Angela smoothed a hand over the top of the plain cardboard box. "You could get Zach to do this, you know. Jobs like this are practically what internships were designed for."

"Zach's analyzing the wear on the one wrist and shoulder joint we have." Brennan said distractedly, locating a fragment of jaw. She looked up to find Angela watching her intently. "What?"

Angela studied her expression for another few moments. "What did Booth say when you asked him?"

Brennan quickly looked back down at the bones. "I … haven't yet." Not technically a lie, she reminded herself. Though kissing Booth had raised an entire series of questions, none of them were coherent enough to have been discussed with Angela beforehand. Not that she was certain how to discuss them with Booth, either, which was why she had been doing her best to focus on the skull fragments. "I doubt I'm going to."

Though if it led to getting kissed again ….

"Brennan!" Angela leaned closer, horrified. "You can't just forget something like that happened."

"Like what happened?" Zach asked, appearing suddenly from the direction of his workstation. "Did something happen with the remains?"

"No." Brennan said firmly, shooting Angela her best quelling look. Though, given how poorly it worked on Booth, its effectiveness could easily be called into question. "What did you find out, Zach?"

"Our John Doe was definitely a laborer – factory or construction work. Hodgins is analyzing a sample for trace elements." He paused, then caught the tension still simmering in the air and looked back and forth between the two women. "This was one of those conversations I'm going to be really, really sorry I walked into, isn't it?"

Brennan shook her head even as Angela smiled sweetly. "If you leave now, we promise we won't ask your opinion on what we were talking about." Zach, sensing the threat of uncomfortable social interaction, quickly left. Angela turned back to Brennan. "If you don't talk to Booth about this whole thing with Ortez, I will."

"That makes no sense." Brennan said firmly, working to keep any traces of panic out of her voice. Booth had been bothered enough that she had known – Brennan had no interest in finding out what his reaction would be to someone else having the information. "If I'm the one who has a problem with Booth's actions, it's my responsibility to resolve those difficulties."

"Exactly." Ang nodded as if Brennan had suddenly agreed with her. "Which is why you should go yell at him."

Brennan made an exasperated noise. "I didn't exactly yell at him …."

Ang's eyes widened. Brennan winced. Ang opened her mouth. Brennan's cell phone rang.

It was one of the most compelling arguments for the existence of a Supreme Being that Brennan had heard yet. She answered the phone.

"Bones." And here was the most compelling argument, sounding exactly as good as he always did. "How good a mood are you in?"

Brennan blinked. Was this some sort of covert reference to last night? And how dangerous a sign was it that she was even considering such a thing? "Why?"

Booth sighed. "The FBI doesn't like it when you attack witnesses at crime scenes. I'm weighing my odds."

Brennan's eyes narrowed as she picked up something in his voice. "How badly did they compromise my scene? Was there any damage to the body?"

"It wouldn't kill you to say 'hi.'" Ang muttered in the background. "Maybe even a 'good morning.' It's okay to go crazy every once in awhile."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Think about it this way – if the guy hadn't been trying to clear the property, we might not have found the body in the first place …."

"'Clear the property'?" Brennan's voice rose. "Implying that my crime scene was compromised with a chain saw?" Out of the corner of her eye she could see Angela gesturing at someone to escape the room.

"I doubt this was the primary crime scene, Bones …."

"Booth," she said warningly. "What happened to the body?"

There was another pause, slightly longer this time. "According to the responding officers, it was inside one of the dead trees."

Brennan closed her eyes and forced herself to take several calming breaths.

"Bones? Are you still with me?"

She dropped her forehead into one hand. Ang took a step closer, worried at her friend's lack of response. "You did tell them that was impossible, didn't you? Not only would it be impractical and incredibly difficult to fit the mass of a corpse inside a tree, it's impossible to reseal the wood after the initial cut."

Angela's eyes widened. "Someone stuffed a body inside a tree?"

Hodgins, interest overcoming any survival instincts, joined the party. "Ooooh, sounds like an alien abduction that hit a snag. The particulates must be fascinating …." Angela waved him into silence, but the expression of avid fascination remained on his face as he stayed to watch the show.

Booth's voice, on the other hand, sounded more relaxed than it had the entire call. "Actually, I thought I'd let you yell at them for both of us."

The corner of Brennan's mouth turned up. This time it was Hodgins' eyes that widened, while Angela's eyebrow raised in a sudden burst of renewed speculation. "Weren't you the one that said I wasn't allowed to attack the witness at the crime scene?"

"I said yell, not attack. One of these days I'm going to teach you about the wide range of human interaction in between those two words." She could hear the grin in his voice. "I'll pick you up in five."

"We'll be ready." Brennan tilted the mouthpiece downward as she looked up and Angela and Hodgins. "We'll need to move our unidentified body to one of our secondary tables. Jack, I'll need you collect tree samples."

Angela turned to Hodgins, an amused expression on her face. "Not to mention some quality spying." Her smile widened as Brennan glared at her. "You know the level of detail I'm going to be expecting."

Hodgins grinned at Ang over his shoulder as he went to get ready. "Detail is what they pay me for. I'll give you a full report as soon as it's safe." Brennan opened her mouth, ready to protest, but Angela just winked at her and followed Hodgins.

Still annoyed, Brennan returned to the phone. "Sorry about that." There was no response. "Booth?"

"I'm thinking."

"They won't be a problem, Booth," she said quickly, suddenly worried for reasons she wasn't precisely willing to identify. "Angela's imagination is goading them into baseless speculation, but without evidence …."

"And that would be my problem." Booth sighed. "I was sort of planning on getting you into as many situations as possible that would give them some evidence."

Brennan blinked, startled. "Really?" she asked, a completely irrational warm glow beginning to start in her chest.

"Not in the field, of course," he said hurriedly. "But it's going to be damn hard being on my best behavior every time the squints are around us …."

She was starting to smile again, and that was definitely not going to work …. "Admittedly, experience has shown that Angela's imagination tends to run independently of any new information that becomes presented."

There was a pause. "Which means?"

Brennan took a deep breath. "Which means that some new evidence in this situation would not necessarily be a bad thing."

She could hear Booth grin again. "I'll see what I can do."

000