Christine Angela Booth took a deep breath and looked one last time down at the the letter handed to her this morning. The Deputy Directors signature on the bottom of the page mocked her. She tried not to let it get to her. Biting her lip she looked up at the beautiful array of buildings that was her second home for so many years and her lips formed a thin line. Her eyes glinted in surpressed anger and she got out of the SUV slammed the door shut and walked purposely over to the entrance.

If he wanted to play this game with her than she was going to show him just who she was.

Recently promoted Supervisory Special Agent Christine Booth flashed her badge and entered the once world renown Jeffersonian Institute.

Dr Michael Vincent Hodgins looked up as the door to his lab door slammed open and in walked an ethereal beauty clad in a form fitting black power suit with a tantalisingly open collar.

She had red blonde hair, a spitting image of her mother and yet the anger in her eyes was almost completely her father. He swallowed his nervousness and put the piece of skull he was examining back on the table, straightening up as she set off the alarm to the platform by walking straight through. He nodded to his intern Cat who hurried to swipe her card at the entrance to stop the klaxons ringing even as the warrior princess in black came to stand across from him, her surpressed anger palpable.

Ah Christine Booth. For the past seven years he had had absolutely zero contact with this woman. They had been inseparable before. That happened when you grow up together and have no one else to play with for the first ten years of your life. His best friend. His Christine.

He knew that night would change them. He knew he should have resisted more. But being in love with your Mom and Dad's best friends daughter from the age of puberty was never going to end well.

Finding her side of the bed empty and an email twenty days later telling him she had been accepted in the Academy was all he needed to know that he had managed to lose his best friend. And now she was standing in front of him again. He had heard she made Supervisory Special Agent. The last guy to consult with their lab was extremely chatty about the Deputy Directors daughter being promoted soon. Mumbling about nepotism. But Michael had followed Chrissy's entire carreer through the Academy and the FBI, she was the fastest rising Agent through the ranks of the Agency despite her dad's obvious dislike of her career choice.

And here she was, seven years later. No phone calls. No emails. No texts. Just here. And apparently angry at him. He wondered what to do. She looked beautiful. More than he had ever known her to be. God damn his Hodgins heart.

"Mikey, I need your help."

"Hello to you too Christine. Welcome back to DC, how was your flight? In fact, how was your last seven years?" Just because his heart still raced at the sight of her, didn't mean he had to give her what she wanted after seven years of radio silence.

He watched her visibly deflate in front of him and immediately felt bad for making her sad. The next minute he was angry at himself. She was the one who left. What about when she made me sad? He still sighed and snapped of his gloves.

"Miss Cat, please check the rest of skull for missing fragments and scan in the image to 3D print the missing pieces so we can complete it for storage. Agent Booth? Follow me."

As he made his way up his entomologist rushed in to hand in a report. "Thank you, Rachel. Check the particulate on table nine and see if you can find any discoloration in the bones on table five, I have a suspicion on cause of death but i don't want to suppose based on speculation."

She nodded and smiled hopefully at him but went on her way when she encountered his new shadow dogging his steps.

His pathologist waved through the window and he took out his phone to send Mrs Delton his finished report on the Civil War Soldier. Delton smiled her appreciation at his promptness and got back to her work.

"Seems like you run a tight ship, Dr Hodgins-Montenegro." she tried for small talk but he really wasn't in the mood.

"I learned from the best," he replied sardonically referencing her mother. "And I go by Dr Michael around here most of the time. Hodgins-Montenegro is a bit of a mouthfull."

He swiped his key card and entered his office.

"But I can still call you Mikey right?" she asked impishly as he turned back around to her.

"That awfully familiar, Agent Booth." he returned walking around to his chair and surreptitiously taking a picture frame off his desk.

"You're punishing me," replied her sullen voice and damn did it not tug at his heart strings.

Still he met her eyes, her beautiful gray blue eyes, dead on. "I wasn't the one who promised nothing was going to change and then broke that promise." It was petulant, he realised, but he was twenty five with three doctorates and five people working under him in the most prestigious forensic anthropology lab in the United States, sorry if he allowed himself some leniency.

She broke eye contact first and mumbled something under her breath before changing the subject. Typical Chrissy, her avoidance behaviour hadn't seem to have changed in the last seven years.

"The Assistant Director is stonewalling my promotion by assigning me as a liason to the Jeffersonian," she said through clenched teeth as she handed in the orders.

Michael read the document, scanned it and made a copy for himself before handing it back to her.

"He knows that it will keep me out of harms way," she made air quotes while rolling her eyes. "So that I don't get hurt."

He looked her up and down out of the side of his own printed copy of the Assistant Directors orders and couldn't help but agree with his concerns. She had filled out a bit, grown more in strength probably and he had no doubt she was an excellent Agent, probably could kick his ass. But he couldn't help but want her safe. Still.

"The politics of the FBI office is not something that I concern myself with Agent Booth. And I assure you that what we do in the lab for the Agency is very important." He was a little peeved that she regarded this job as beneath her purview.

She looked up from her pacing and backtracked. "Of course I think your job is important, Mikey." His chest tightened at her imploring tone of voice. "I just know that he gave me this job thinking that because it no longer has the closure rate of its heyday, he can just drop me off here and expect me to just play nice."

"His concern for you is not unwarranted, Christine," he said against his better judgement. Her clenched jaw was extremely telling of what she thought of that opinion. "How many times has your dad been injured in the job, Chrissy? How many times do your remember your mum having to tend to his back? Wake him up from nightmares? Stich his wounds? He's got a permanent limp because of this job Christine. I don't know why you wanted to put your parents through this when you joined the Academy." What she put him through was left unsaid.

Her countenance had shifted while he talked, at one point she even smiled at him but as he went on her smile turned frosty.

"I didn't choose this path to hurt my family Michael!" she near yelled. "I chose this path because my father dedicated his life to it and he was the one I wanted to live up to."

Michael Vincent softened a little at her admittance. "Your father would have been just as proud if you were barristering at a Starbucks Chrissy, at least then he won't have to worry about you coming home on a stretcher."

Christine closed her eyes and he could tell she was trying to not yell out her point, he remembered her mom teaching them that if your get your point across civilly then you gain the respect of your debater. Yelling and screaming made you sound uncultured and makes your point moot.

"Look around you Michael! You have the world best scientists working with you, you have the respect of peers twenty years older than you. You are making a difference. My parents made a difference. Your parents made a difference. They saved lives Mikey. You give people justice. I knew that my career path before the academy might have made me rich? But I wouldn't be making a difference."

Her impassioned speech, almost whispered, her bright eyes, her intense gaze, made him lose his words for a moment. Then he sighed. It was pointless denying this woman anything. He was going to give in to her anyway.

"I have a standing contract with the FBI. You bring in the remains, I'll get the team on the job. At the end of the day I'll mail you my findings."

"Nope!" she said promptly making him look up in trepidation.

"What do you mean, Nope?" he asked again; against his better judgement.

"I mean, Nope! I am not going to sit in my office waiting for you to call me to tell me your findings while I interrogate suspect after suspect and do what he expects me to do."

"Chrissy," he said in exasperation. "This is what we do."

She shook her head put both hands on his table and leaned over his monitor. He had a hard time not looking down.

"This lab and you can do so much more than the once a month body dump that you have to deal with. Our forensic lab back in HQ identifies remains and particulates at three times slower speeds than the slowest squint team back in the day. I'm good at my job but relying on just the FBI forensic team for evidence gives the perp just as much time to escape justice.

"The team at the Jeffersonian? They were the best. Agent Booth and Dr Brennans closure rate is still the best closure rate of any partnership in the FBI. I want to bring that glory back to the Jeffersonian. And to do that I need a partner."

He was confused for a moment about exactly what she was asking. Then it slowly dawned on him even as he watched her grin widen.

"Oh no. No, no, no, no, no." he muttered shaking his head frantically.

"Yes, Mikey." she replied coming around the desk to stand close. "You remember? We used to talk about it? Agent and Doctor? Remember? How we planned to be partners and fight crime!"

She was way too close. Pushing his chair away he tried to regain his composure.

"Chrissy playing pretend at twelve is whole lot more different than taking down perps as an adult. I'm a scientist. A squint, as you guys like to call us. We don't belong in the field."

She was not deterred. "Not according to Caroline. I talked to her about a warrant a week ago and she mentioned that on the first case the FBI pushed on you, you wanted a ride along. But the Special Agent in charge shut you down."

"He wasn't wrong. I may have training but I'm not a cop. I belong in the lab."

"Even when you could make a difference?"

Micheal blinked.

"Just hear me out, okay?" she asked imploringly and he cursed his weak will against this woman for the umpteenth time.

At his nod she turned to the silver half sphere sitting on his desk. The Universal Hyperlink Bus blinked as she placed her hand on it and the details on the monitor changed immediately.

His works and all his projects open, we're wiped away and in came an entirely new desktop display with a wallpaper showcasing two fuzzy furballs of fluff. He snorted at her display.

She grinned in retaliation. "I heard that Tib still pines for me at night?"

"He's just moody, I'm sure Fib just gets along fine? She was always the well adjusted of the twins."

"Yes well," she said softly. "Now that I'm back maybe they can reconnect?"

"Maybe," he allowed cautiously. "let's see where this goes first."

Were they really talking about the dogs anymore?

She touched the monitor pulling out the holographic display to access the case files.

"Take a look at this," she pulled up x-rays and forensic photographs of remains discovered near a golf course. "See anything?" she asked already knowing his genius brain was analysing.

"Blunt force trauma to the skull..."

"Buried face down..."

"Hands and feet tied together...?"

"..."

"..."

"...?"

"Epps?"

Christine smiled. "I knew you'd recognise that, considering his was one of the first cases we studied."

"We should have known then," he said a slight smile on his face. "Sneaking out serial killer case files from the lab for research is not normal teenager behaviour."

Chrissy shrugged. "Well I think we turned out alright." She went back to the photos. "This body dates back to the mid to late 2000s, around the time Epps and his apprentice Lappin were operating. She's positivily been identified as one of the last Epps victims barring Caroline Epps." she pulled up a picture of a cutiish looking blond girl around her own age, smiling softly at the camera." Her name is Norina Smalls, from West Virginia. She was attending college in DC and rooming with her two friends. Her parents filed a missing person's report thirty years ago. I'm going to have to be the one to go tell them we found her. But probably not the way they were hoping."

He looked up and his heart clenched at the anguish he saw on her face. He lifted a hand and placed it next to hers on the desk." I'm sorry you have to do that, Chrissy."

"It's part of the job. You have take the good with the bad," she admitted accepting his condolences.

"I'm still waiting for the good, I guess."

Chrissy looked like she wanted to ask bit held her tongue.

"Anyways, this was discovered. two weeks ago. Yesterday we had another body surface. This one dating a week ago." she pulled up another case file and scattered the photos over the desktop. "Recognise anything?"

Michael reached out and touched part of the wallpaper turning it black, he didn't want to see his dog next to the remains of a dead body. He focused then on said remains looking for and recognising the impossible M.O. that Christine was suggesting.

But there right in front of him was a fresh body in recent stage of decomposition sporting Howard Epps signature M.O.

"We have a copycat killer."

Chrissy smiled despite the grim announcement. "Yes we do!"

At that declaration he shook his head. "Christine," he interrupted her internal celebration. "Let's say I do agree to be your partner in this investigation, what makes you think your superiors are going to allow us to work together. I mean, your Dad aside, most Agents I've worked with say the same thing; Squints belong in the lab. And don't tell me your Dad will agree to it. First of all it will show favoritism and second he's just as overprotective of me as he is of you so...?"

Christine smiled. "Oh, don't worry about that Mikey. I've got the perfect counter to Dad's objections."

Just then the his phone rang and Dr Temperance Brennans face appeared over the screen.

"Speak of the devil," Christine said a little smugly as Michael accepted the call.

"Michael Vincent?" asked the world renowned Anthropologist and Author.

"Yes Dr Brennan?" responded her former student, more out of habit than anything else.

"Is Christine there?" she asked hesitantly. "Only, she promised to pick me up at twelve and still hasn't arrived."

Chrissy decided to peek in. "It's only twelve fifteen Mom! I'm on my way."

Brennan rolled her eyes. "Christine. If you intended to arrive at a time closer to twelve thirty than why would you inform me that your time of arrival was different. I could have got more work done."

"Sorry, mom." she muttered sarcastically knowing full well that her mom didn't register sarcasm.

"Can you inform me now exactly why we need to meet your father in his office?"

"I'll explain it on the way, mom," she replied quickly and threw Michael Vincent's overcoat at him. "We're on our way, Mom."

"Okay, sweetie. See you soon." She cut off the connection before Chrissy could fully analyse the suspicious tone in her voice.

She disregarded it and pulled Mikey to his feet. "Come on, let's go."

Michael Vincent looked once more down at the picture of two teenagers hugging closely as a candid picture of the two were taken and deposited the picture to the bottom drawer. With the real thing around he didn't need a reminder as to why he was where he was. He dutifully followed Christine Booth down the steps, knowing full well that this path could only lead to heartbreak and yet once again he was willing to walk down this path with her. He wondered how long this partnership would last.

I have so many stories in progress but while recently reminiscing about Bones I couldn't help but write this down. Tell me what you think? Please? I'm actually not above begging!