Author's note: I am incredibly sorry for how long it has taken me to get this chapter out. RL got in the way. Also, I am not confident about how it turned out so I'd really appreciate any feedback you can give me. Oh, and if anyone is interested in beta-ing this story I would be very grateful, especially because of cultural and language barriers. Either way, I hope you enjoy it and if you can let me know what you think and/or if you find any mistakes.

M xx

As soon as Booth called her with the information on their latest murder victim - a woman in her mid-thirties beaten to death and buried in a park -Brennan had agreed to meet him in the Hoover to go over the details and watch him hypothesize about what had likely happened in order to pursue the leads and question the suspects his investigation had yielded.

The woman was a social worker for the Department of Children and Family Services, currently managing a total of fifteen cases of children who had been placed in foster care, three of which had been cases of parental abuse.

Working with DCFS was always harder on Brennan, even though she would never admit it out loud. This one, however, was particularly tough given the nature of her personal thoughts as of late. Ever since her conversation with Angela two days ago she could hardly prevent her mind from straying to a little girl or boy that depended on her completely.

On the way to the first of the few foster homes they would be visiting during the investigations Booth kept stealing glances over to the passenger side of the SUV while he thought his partner was obliviously staring out the window. She was indeed staring out the window, just not quite as oblivious as he'd thought she would be.

She couldn't help but think about the children they would see there. Normally she would dismiss the thoughts based on the lack of rationale behind speculating about the images you would see for sure in a matter of minutes. Still, this one case, the DCFS files, the abused children, the crowded foster homes, it was not all speculation. She'd been there. She had experienced firsthand what it could do to a person, a child. And, yes, she was a world renowned scientist and best-selling author, but would she be all of that and emotionally available with basic people skills and an understanding of her own and other people's feelings had she been raised in a different environment past the ago of fifteen? A loving one?

Her musings were brought to a halt as the clicking of the driver's door being opened made her realize that they were there and Booth was already getting out of the car. She couldn't help but smile a little at the encouraging boyish grin that only he could sport at his age and his "you coming Bones? Chop, chop!" while standing next to her door with his hands on his waist and Cocky belt buckle glinting in the sunlight.

Not one second before opening the door to her apartment and locking the door did Brennan allow herself to feel. To feel the sensory overload those foster homes provided her with. The smell of stale food and dirty carpets, the colorless walls and the pictures. Those were the worst, the faces of all the children that had been abandoned or worse. Who had to constantly be uprooted and relocated to other homes – no, houses, definitely not homes. It was when you really looked at the pictures that you noticed just how sad they were. You could count the real smiles on those walls with the fingers of just one hand, yet there was never a deliberately sad look either. It was the look of masked feelings. Hidden loneliness, sadness, angst, desperation. And that was how she felt to this day, over fifteen years after leaving the foster system. Still one her own. Lonely.

The dampness on her cheek startled her. She didn't even realize the tears had started flowing. Tears for something she had never cried over. Feeling lonely was never an issue for her, she had never let it become one.

Tonight, however, she cried. For herself, for her teenage years, for those children. Because she knew their lives, remembered what it felt like to have no one and to feel like the whole world was weighing you down. because even if she never let herself stay down, she never mourned the loss of her childhood and innocence either. She had never let herself have an open heart thinking that it could only lead to new pain and abandonment. She wasn`t meant to be in a family. Look at her, the last time she even brought it up Booth had to have brain surgery. And even though rationally she knew the tumor was an independent occurrence, not at all related to her actions, she couldn't help but feel guilty.

Suddenly, she envied her brother. Sure, he was not nearly as successful as she was, but he still managed to go through the loss of their parents and still have his own family. He was able to overcome that terrible loss and move on, find love, have children. She had seen him with the girls, the love and devotion on their eyes as they looked at him. The openness he had when near them. She wanted that, she craved it. And not because she was lonely, for the first time she realized that it was because she could. She could love people, she wanted to. And who better to benefit from her newfound love than kids?

That was the last thought she entertained as the emotionally spent anthropologist laid down on her bed and fell asleep, still in her work clothes and with the discreet mascara she had sported earlier smeared down her cheeks from tears. The distraught look was almost amended by the timid smile that graced her sleep as her subconscious showed her how amazing it would be to fill the void in her heart with a child.