Booth was in a hurry as he walked into Brennan's office. "Knock, knock. Hiya, Bones. Are you ready to go to dinner? We have reservations for Rigoletto's for seven tonight, remember? Man, I'm starving. I've been thinking about their veal parmesan and spaghetti all afternoon."

"I'll be ready in about five minutes. I just want to finish this paragraph on my paper. Angela and Hodgins are going to take Hank and Christine for the evening, so we can enjoy a leisurely dinner." Brennan typed a few more words on her keyboard. "What happened at the coroner's inquest into the Roberts case today?"

"After hearing all the evidence we had, the judge finally ruled his death a suicide. She said that all of the identities were part of the same person and part of that person intentionally caused his own death. I guess it makes as much sense as anything else about this case." Booth sat down on the sofa in Brennan's office. "I really felt sorry for the guy. I mean, how can you protect yourself from a situation like that...one part of yourself trying to kill another part of yourself, and there's nothing you can do about it, right?"

She nodded in agreement. "It was a difficult situation, Booth, and it was, perhaps, made even more difficult because of the stigma society still places on individuals who have mental illnesses. It's almost as if people still believe that these illnesses are caused by evil spirits or by a curse of some sort. If Conrad Roberts hadn't felt it was necessary to hide his illness he might have been able to get more intensive treatment and his disease may have remained under control instead of leading to his death." Brennan grimaced slightly as she glanced over what she had typed. "What's going to happen to his physician?"

"It seems like Dr. Ellingson did everything she could to help the guy, but it just wasn't enough, I guess. Caroline decided not to prosecute the doctor for withholding evidence from the medical records since she was trying to protect her patient's reputation, and it wasn't done with malice, and in the long run, nobody really got hurt by it. I'm okay with Caroline's decision about that."

Booth thumbed through an anthropology journal as he waited for his wife to complete her work. "I guess Roberts' personal assistant, Kevin Maxwell, is gonna get 5 years for the theft of that Space Babe memorabilia and the sale of stolen property via the internet...he was lucky he could work out a deal with Caroline. He turned state's evidence on the organized crime gang that the loan sharks were part of, so he didn't get 10 years…" Booth tossed the journal back on the table. "Did I tell you what else I found out? The cyber tech guys found a lot of stuff that the Freddie alter ego had written about Conrad. He'd been going to the public library to use the computers, and then he stored what he'd written on the cloud. It was some really crazy shit...wild, threatening letters, ravings, plots to murder him...the whole nine yards. Dr. Ellingson was right when she said the Freddie personality was emotionally unstable…criminally insane is probably closer to the truth."

"I find this whole scenario to be illusive." Brennan shut down her computer and turned to her husband shaking her head. "The whole scenario really is quite illogical."

"Illusive? What the Hell does that word even mean?" Booth rolled his eyes as he grinned at his wife. "Sometimes I think you use weird words like that just to bug me, don't you, Bones? And of course this situation isn't logical..."

"Illusive means pertaining to fantasy. Psychiatrists and psychologists can't even agree among themselves about whether or not dissociate identity disorder is a real illness or what treatment for it is the most effective, if any. Currently the recommended treatment is called talk therapy, because there are no medications to treat it. It doesn't appear to be a brain chemistry or a brain wave malfunction. I find it hard to believe people can have multiple personalities. It seems quite unlikely that situation could occur in reality. It seems more like something someone might put in a work of science fiction."

"Dr. Ellingson said it wasn't like there were actually three different people inside Conrad Roberts, Bones, but more like his personality had fragmented into three different distinct parts because he was under so much emotional stress during his life. She also said that most of us have multiple aspects of our personalities but those aspects are usually well integrated with each other so it doesn't bother us the way it did our victim. Conrad Roberts started out life as an emotionally healthy person, but he had some severe traumas occur in his life, and it caused a huge amount of damage to his view of himself as a person." Booth rose from the sofa and moved to sit in a chair in front of Brennan's desk. "His personality couldn't take it any more, so he fell apart under the pressure."

Brennan shook her head. "It still doesn't make sense. Both you and I have had severe emotional traumas in our lives, and we didn't develop fractured personalities or different identities. All this case proves is that psychology is a pseudoscience with no real basis in empirical data."

"But we coped with our own emotional traumas in other ways, right? I was addicted to gambling…" Booth reached across the desk and covered Brennan's hand with his. "You tried to isolate yourself emotionally from other people." He smiled as he spoke gently to his wife. "I know you don't like to think of it that way, Bones, but we were both dealing with our traumas as best we could, just like Roberts was trying to do. To me, it seems that for some reason we were both just more successful at coping with the bad stuff that happened to us than he was."

Brennan looked up into her husband's warm brown eyes and smiled back at him. "Perhaps, because Mr. Roberts lived alone and had no family to love him, he couldn't cope as well as we are able to do. After all, we have each other for support, don't we?"

"You're right, Bones...I know that you've helped me cope with a lot of emotional stress, and I'm so thankful for that. I really don't know how I would've survived everything I've been through in my life without your love."

"And you've helped me as well, Booth. I'm no longer afraid to engage with other people emotionally. I've become a much stronger person because of your love for me, and I'm grateful for that." Brennan began to clear her desk for the evening. "But what I don't understand is this: if the decedent truly had multiple personalities or identities, what would've triggered one of those identities to become murderous? It's almost like one day he was fine, and the next day a part of him is planning a murder in detail."

"Remember what you said about atherosclerosis and the small blood vessels in his brain being clogged? His doctor thinks the disease in his blood vessels combined with his age and health problems had something to do with it. He'd been able to maintain control of his dissociative identity disorder using talk therapy up until the last few months, when he had a small stroke. Things seemed to go to Hell after that. The Freddie aspect of his personality became almost impossible to control, even with intense therapy."

Brennan picked up her coat and purse. "Okay, Booth, I'm ready…." She started to walk toward the office door, but turned as Booth hesitated.

He grinned at his wife as he innocently stated what was on his mind. "Okay, we can go, but first, could you explain one more thing to me? I know you really believed that Roberts' death was a murder. You were absolutely positive, remember? I guess it doesn't bother you that you were wrong about that, does it?" He walked to his wife and wrapped his arms around her.

Brennan scoffed at the thought. "Of course not. Why would it bother me? I'm usually correct, but I'm not perfect, and I do make errors occasionally. It appears that in this case, according to the judge, I was mistaken."

Booth laughed out loud at that statement. "According to the judge you were wrong, but you still don't believe that, do you? You still think you were right." Brennan narrowed her eyes and glared at him, pretending to be offended. "Come on, Bones. I know you. You absolutely hate being wrong, and you always rationalize the situation to make yourself right."

Brennan put her arms around her husband's neck and acted shocked. "Are you suggesting that I sometimes twist the facts to get the results I want? I'm a rational scientist. You should know I'd never do something like that. Really, Booth, I'm fine." She glanced at her watch. "Oh, look at the time. We should probably be going. We have reservations for seven, remember?"

"No...not so fast there, Bones...I want to know something even more important…" Booth winked at her as he leaned down to give her a kiss.

Brennan tilted her head as she smirked at her husband. "What could be more important to you right now than veal parmesan with spaghetti? You said you were starving…"

"Okay...here goes. I know you don't like to admit it, but if you believed psychology was a real science, and was actually right about Conrad's identity disorder, you would be correct about the murder, because one of the identities did murder another one. But if you're determined to hate psychology because it's a pseudoscience, then you'd be wrong, and it wasn't a murder, it was a suicide. So what's more important to you, Bones? Hating psychology because you think it isn't scientific and being wrong, or being correct about the murder even if it means you have to accept that psychology could be right?"

Brennan smiled as she considered Booth's question. "What's important right now is that I'm hungry."

"Nope...not good enough. How important is it to you to be correct in this situation? Important enough to admit psychology might be a valid science?'

"I think I want vegetable lasagne tonight." Brennan grinned as Booth kissed her again.

"You know I'm not gonna drop this, Bones. I'm gonna find out the answer to my question tonight, one way or the other..."

"So are you saying that you have methods guaranteed to make me talk and give up my darkest secrets?" She smiled coyly as she sauntered toward the office door.

"Actually, Bones….if I remember correctly, I can not only make you talk, I can make you moan and scream, too…" Booth was wearing a wolfish grin as he twitched his eyebrows at her.

"Perhaps before we get to the interrogation portion of our evening we should eat dinner first…"

"Okay, let's go." Booth grinned. "but you can count on us finishing this discussion later at home."

Brennan laughed as she looped her arm through Booth's. "I certainly hope so…"

A/N: thanks for reading my little story. This is my first case fiction, and I had a lot of fun writing it.