Disclaimer: It is a truth universally acknowledged that if an author is writing fanfiction, he or she probably doesn't own the original material.

A/N: This ficlet has been bouncing around in my head ever since I originally watched 6x21: "The Signs in the Silence."

It takes her years to get used to being called Samantha, and even longer not to flinch when touched. Some nights – even now – she'll wake up and think that she's back with the Shenfields. And trust… trust comes hard for her.

She loves her parents, she supposes, but it takes years for her to get used to them being her parents. They're strangers, really; kind ones, but strangers nonetheless. And she feels guilty for these thoughts. Yet her parents love her and want her and that's something that she'll never take for granted. She matters to two someones and that's more than she ever imagined she'd get.

Samantha Winslow knows who she has to thank for this. Even 15 years later, she remembers the signed words as if it were yesterday:

"I know how it feels not to trust anyone. People lie. But bones always tell the truth. Your x-rays will tell us exactly what happened to you. No one can dispute that; no one can say you're lying."

This strange woman believed her. Believed her. Believed her, Amy. (No one had ever believed her.) This doctor said that there was irrefutable proof etched into her bones – in the poorly re-healed cracks and fractures – of just what had been done to her.

The secret of her true identity had been hidden there too. Even though her "parents" had tried to conceal the truth, her bones had told the real story. Even when she'd had no voice, no memory, her bones had spoken for her.

All she had needed was someone who could understand them.

In retrospect, Samantha suspects that that was when she first became interested in forensic anthropology. If bones had such a powerful language, she wanted to learn it, wanted to be able to understand them too.

And so, once she was old enough, she had done just that.

It turned out that she had a knack for the subject; unlike many of her peers, Samantha was comfortable with the silence so frequently found in labs and skeletal storage facilities. She possessed fierce concentration and a sharp eye for details.

Now a forensic anthropologist herself, Samantha listens to those whom murderers have tried to silence. She restores their dignity and gives their families justice and closure. She's needed, important.

She lets the bones do her talking. As a wise woman once said, bones always tell the truth.

She gives back to others what the doctor – Dr. Brennan – once gave to her: a kind of peace.