Author's Note: I've never written a fan fiction, Bones or otherwise. Be warned. Having said that, this could be very long, or not, I don't know yet. The only background info I think you need is that for the purpose of this fiction is that Angela and Hodgins are dating.
Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan was completely submerged in a large body of water, but she was having no trouble breathing. She could feel the water, cool against her skin, but the faded blue sweatpants and the old university tee shirt she wore remained completely dry. She couldn't remember how she got to where she was, or what she was supposed to do now that she was there, but somehow these things seemed trivial and unimportant. As she began to look about absently at her surroundings, a corpse, now a skeleton due to years of decay, floated into her field of vision. The twin sockets in the skull were void of eyes, however Temperance could sense that the form was looking at her. The skeleton's jaw then began to move as it spoke to her in a voice that was neither distinctly male nor distinctly female.
"You forgot to turn off the coffeepot," the specter said. "Angela is going to be mad when the baby starts crying."
Temperance nodded at the corpse. Her brain did not register the lack of coherency in the statements it had just made, or the illogical fact that it was a skeleton which was speaking to her, just as her mind failed to recognize that she was standing, perfectly dry, underwater and breathing without difficulty. Instead, she stared back at the corpse and thought 'what time is it?'
"10:63," the corpse replied. It did not alarm Temperance that the specter knew her question in spite of her lack of verbalization, just as it did not occur to her that '10:63' is not an actual time. What Temperance did notice was that as soon as the skeleton had made its pronouncement about the time, it vanished.
Temperance resumed idly gazing about, and a moment later her eyes perceived the form of FBI Agent Seeley Booth floating a few feet a way and slightly higher than her in the water. She smiled and gave him a friendly wave. He smiled back, and opened his mouth as if to speak to her. However, instead of a voice, a shrill cry of 'bbbrrrrrriiinnggg!' shot from his mouth.
'What?' Temperance thought as she looked up at him. 'I don't understand.'
He threw his head back, and his face contorted as if he was laughing. However, instead of the jovial sound of happiness, the sharp sound of 'bbbrrrrrriiinnggg!' once again emitted from his open mouth. She tried to yell to him, but she found that she did not have a voice. As this realization came to her, Booth began to float further upwards and away. She struggled to follow after him, and slowly she felt herself rising up from under the water…
The shrill sound of the telephone announced itself once again as Temperance woke up. Still not fully aware of the line between her dream and reality, she picked up the phone. "Booth?" she asked in a groggy and confused voice.
There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. "Yeah, Bones, how did you know it was me?"
"You were underwater," she stated simply, as if this explained everything. And with that she hung up the phone.
Roughly eight seconds later the phone shrieked again, causing Temperance to jump. She grabbed the receiver and mumbled, "Brennan," without opening her eyes.
"Bones, it's me, wake up!" Booth said from his end of the line.
"What time is it?" she asked as her brain began to struggle out of its sleep induced fog.
"3:24," he said. Her newly awakened senses registered the tired timbre of his voice. "Lambert finally cracked. He gave up the location of his hideout. We know he had more victims there, and we need to go down and recover them so we know how many counts of murder to formally charge him with."
"Can't we do it in the morning? You already have him in custody. A few hours won't make a difference."
"Cullen wants the ID's. He wants to charge this guy as quickly as possible, and we can't do that until we know how many counts of murder to charge him with. He wants you to give him a number, and then later on today he wants you to give him names. He also wants Hodgins to go with us and collect some samples so he can start building a timeline for the trial."
"Hodgins won't be happy," she said as she stood up from the bed and straightened her faded blue sweatpants.
"What else is new? I'll pick you up in about a half hour."
Temperance sighed and nodded, only vaguely aware that he couldn't see her do so, before replacing the receiver and stumbling to the bathroom. She undressed and turned on the shower, deeply inhaling the steam infused air and smiling when the hot spray danced on the back of her neck. She bathed quickly before toweling off and dressing in fresh clothes. She blasted her head with a hairdryer for a few minutes before growing bored with the process and pulling the damp mass up into a ponytail. She swiped on an obligatory amount of makeup, mostly to cover the fatigue, and then stepped back into her bedroom to hunt for socks and shoes. She glanced at the clock beside her bed. Booth would be there in roughly five minutes. She grabbed the phone and dialed Hodgins.
"Mmph-lo?" came the voice from the other end of the line.
"Ange, it's me. Can I talk to Hodgins?"
"He's asleep," Angela Montenagro mumbled into the phone. "Why aren't you?"
"Just put him on, Ange, and you can go back to sleep."
That seemed to entice her. Temperance heard her friend wearily say 'Jack' before she heard the hard sound of a telephone connecting with Hodgins' head.
"Ouch! What!" She heard Hodgin's newly awakened voice exclaim. Temperance smiled to herself as she heard the muffled interaction through the phone.
"Tempe's on the phone for you."
"Why? What does she want?"
"How should I know? She called for you not me, and if you don't mind I'm trying to sleep here, so talk quietly."
Temperance heard Hodgins grunt, and then, "yeah?"
"Hodgins, it's Tempe, sorry to call you in the middle of the night."
Hodgins mumbled something that Temperance didn't catch. She assumed that was best.
"Booth just called me, we have to go help with a recovery. Get dressed, we'll come get you in about fifteen or twenty minutes."
"A recovery in the middle of the night?" Hodgins asked, his tone more than a little irritated.
"Sorry. See you in a few," Temperance said.
She heard Hodgins mumble something else, and then she heard Angela saying, "What was that?" before the line clicked off.
Temperance sighed and shuffled to her living room, where she flopped on the couch. Despite the fact that her shower had aided in waking her up, she felt the need to rest her eyes. Booth won't be here for a few minutes, anyway. What harm could it do? Just as she was closing her eyes, however, a loud rap at the door brought her back.
With a stifled groan, she rose and opened the door to a very sleepy looking FBI Agent. He gave her a tired smile, which she returned with a look of weary disdain. Her face brightened, however, when he handed her a hot Styrofoam cup with "Dunkin' Donuts" printed on the side.
"Mmm, thank you," she said, closing her eyes as she took a drink. The hot liquid spilled down her throat and warmed her from the inside out.
Booth nodded and took a drink from his own cup. "Sure," he said once he had swallowed. "Ready to go?"
She nodded numbly as she tossed her keys in her bag and slung it over her shoulder. Locking to door behind her, she followed Booth out of the building and to his waiting SUV.
She sunk down into the cushioned seat as Booth climbed into the driver's side. She offered no argument about him driving, opting to take another drink of her coffee instead. She glanced at the cup holder and saw another waiting cup sitting beside a bag containing cream and an assortment of artificial sweeteners. Hodgins. She smiled at his thoughtfulness.
"Did you call Hodgins?" he asked as he pulled onto the road.
"Yeah," she said as she glanced over at him. His clothes looked rumpled and his hair was in disarray. Clearly he had been roused from a perfectly good night's sleep and forced to get ready for this little excursion in a hurry, just as she had. She felt irritated that she had been forced to get up in the middle of the night thanks to a child killer. They lapsed into a comfortable silence, both struggling to wake up as they drove to Hodgins'.
Lambert was a serial killer who the FBI had tracked for roughly four months. His prey were primarily children, though he was implicated in the murders of two adults who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. His crimes were almost unspeakable. So far, he was facing a minimum of six counts of murder in the first degree, not including the new bodies which they were on their way to uncover. The FBI had known he had a secret hideout somewhere, and so they had questioned him until he broke. They knew his hideout was somewhere in D.C., and so now that they had the location they were eager to get an accurate body count. Lambert was scum-when he had been caught almost a week before, the FBI almost declared it a national holiday out of sheer joy.
Temperance and Booth pulled up outside of Hodgins' just as he walked out the door. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair was mussed, and the general air about him was one of a man who was very unhappy. His eyes showed that he was very irritated by the fact that he had been dragged out of his warm bed and away from his girlfriend in the middle of the night. He got in the car, offering little more than a cursory grunt. However, when Booth handed him the waiting coffee cup, his mood improved considerably.
"Thanks," he said, taking a long drag. Booth nodded and they continued on their way, each drinking deeply from their cups, each trying to put up their emotional shields to protect themselves from what they knew they were about to see.
About sixteen hours later, Temperance and her entire team honestly believed they were going to collapse. The recovery had gone well, and an initial count had brought the estimate that roughly four bodies were in and around the small hideout that Lambert had been using. After transporting most of the bodies back to the Jeffersonian, Hodgins and Temperance had organized an FBI recovery team to finish the process and then had called Angela and Zach, letting them know that work was starting early and that they need to get to the lab. Angela and Zach had arrived around 6:30, and the team had been working nonstop on approximating times of death, sorting bones, compositing sketches of faces, and pouring over missing person's reports. The day had shown that Temperance's initial estimate had been wrong-there were at least seven bodies recovered from the hideout. By the time 8:00pm rolled around, all the "squints", as Booth so lovingly called them, were about to drop.
At 9:30, Booth, who had managed to get a few hours off to go home a sleep before returning to a mountain of paperwork and files on the Lambert case, walked into the lab. The sight that greeted him was almost enough to make him laugh. Hodgins was asleep in his chair, his head rested on his folded arms, beside a microscope. Angela was in her office, asleep on her desk beside a pile of unfinished and scrapped sketches, with her head turned at an odd angle that Booth knew would make her neck sore when she woke up. Zach was awake, but barely, as he stared at blankly at an X-ray, obviously not processing the information. He gave Booth a small nod before lowering the X-ray and numbly running his eyes over the bones that lay spread on the table before him. Temperance looked at the bones on the table with him, stopping only to make notes on a report that she was filling out. She spoke as she looked over the bones, recording the information into a small tape recorder which she held. Her voice was hollow with exhaustion. She didn't even register Booth's presence when he walked into the room.
Booth shook his head. It was time to put his squints to bed. They had done enough for one day; they had all the ID's but one, and that could wait for tomorrow. For now they needed rest, and lots of it.
He walked to where Hodgins was sleeping and gently pushed on his shoulder to shake him awake. "Hodgins," he said in a low voice.
Hodgins woke up with a start. "Wh-ah-what? I'm almost done," he said, as he sat up quickly. His voice was laced with sleep.
"C'mon, Hodgins, time to go home," Booth said. "You can work on this tomorrow."
Hodgins rubbed his eyes. "What time is it?" he asked, not even bothering to try to disguise the weariness in his voice.
"9:45. C'mon, I'll give you and Angela a ride."
Hodgins nodded and slowly rose from his chair while Booth went into Angela's office and woke her. She had seemed only vaguely aware of who Booth was, but she consented to going home and going to bed. She picked up her purse and followed Booth out of her office just as a very sleepy Hodgins arrived at the door.
"What about Zach and Dr. Brennan?" Hodgins asked as the three exited the building.
"Your place isn't that far from here, I'll come back and get them after I drop you guys off."
The pair nodded when he said this, but Booth was unsure as to whether or not they had actually comprehended his words. They climbed into his SUV, and a short ride later, they had arrived.
"Home sweet home!" Booth called out as a means of rousing the two sleeping forms in his car. They mumbled their thanks before stumbling out and into the building. Booth waited to make sure they got inside without incident, and then swung his SUV back onto the rode. Glancing in his rearview mirror, he saw lights flick out before he had even made it down the street.
Booth arrived back at the lab to find Zach sitting in the floor with his back against the wall. The X-rays that had once been clasped in his hand now strewn about his feet. His head and shoulders were slumped forward, and as Booth approached him, he could hear the young assistant snoring softly. Opting to leave him there for a moment, Booth set out to find Bones. He walked into her office to find her sitting at her desk, her eyes scanning over a report for one of the bodies. She made a small notation on one of the forms and continued to let her eyes roam over the page. Booth knocked softly on the open door so he would not startle her, and smiled when she looked up at him. Her eyes had deep circles under them and seemed almost to be sunken into her head with exhaustion. She gave him the best smile she could manage, despite the fact that she wanted to cry from lack of sleep.
"I'm almost done with this report, sorry its taken so long." She bent her head back over the document and allowed her eyes to resume their previous actions.
Booth could see sleep deprivation etched in her features. He walked over to her and carefully removed the pen from her hand. For a moment he didn't think she even noticed. "Okay, Bones, time to go. I think you've done enough for one day," he said as he placed the pen on her desk.
She looked up at him. "I'm almost finished, I just have a few more things to do and then I can give you your full report. I would have finished it sooner, but we had a lot to do with all the bodies and everything, and if you just give me a few more minutes I can probably finish this tonight."
As Booth looked at her, it was all he could do to keep from laughing. She had been working for eighteen hours straight, and yet she was still apologizing for not getting enough done. "Okay, Bones, here's the deal. I am going to go wake Zach up, and then we are all going to leave. I already took Hodgins and Angela home. We are going to get in my car, and you are going to help me figure out where Zach lives. And then, after that, I am going to take you home and put you in bed where you are going to stay and sleep for at least the next twelve hours. Okay?"
Ordinarily, Temperance would have argued with him for telling her what to do, but the fact of the matter was that she had only slept for about four hours out of the last forty-one, and she didn't have the energy to fight. Instead, she just nodded and stood while he went to get her sleeping assistant. She gathered her bag and was closing her office door when she spotted Booth and a very disoriented looking Zach approaching her.
"Ready to go?" Booth asked.
She nodded and the three left the building.
Thanks in large part to the fact that he kept dozing off in the backseat, it took about forty minutes to figure out where Zach lived. When they finally pulled up in front of the building, it was all Booth could do to keep from sighing in relief. It was almost eleven o'clock, and his own disrupted sleep pattern was beginning to weigh on him. They waited and made sure that Zach got inside without incident before pulling back out onto the road, heading for Temperance's house.
He pulled up in front of the building and looked over at her in his passenger seat. She was dead to the world. He thought about simply waking her up as he had done with the others, but decided against it. She had done to much for him that day, and so instead he fished around in her purse until he found her keys.
'Am I manly, or what?' he thought to himself as he slung her bag over his shoulder. He climbed out of the car and walked around to her side. He opened the door and lifted her into his arms. He tried to do so without waking her, but unfortunately the motion was enough to bring her out of her sleep.
"Booth," she mumbled, her voice heavy with weariness. "I can walk."
He nodded and allowed her to put her feet on the ground. He watched he followed her to her door. Her tiredness made her steps wobbly, as if she were drunk.
When they reached her door he held out the keys he still had in his hand so that she could unlock the door. She didn't think about the need for keys, however, and instead simply put her hand on the knob and twisted. Much to Booth's surprise, the door swung open.
"Bones, I thought you locked your door this morning when we left…"
His voice trailed off as his eyes found a person, nestled in blankets with a book reclining on Bones' couch.
The image apparently surprised Bones as well. However, for her, understanding quickly followed.
"Meg!" Temperance exclaimed, her hand flying to her mouth. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry, I completely forgot you were coming today!"
The girl under the blanket smiled a waved her hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it," she said. "I'm Meg, by the way," the girl said, looking at Booth.
Booth smiled back at her as Temperance interjected by saying, "Oh, God, where are my manners. Meg, this is Booth, my work partner, Booth this is Meg, an old friend of mine from college."
"Pleasure to meet you," Booth said, flashing a charming grin.
"Great to meet you, too," Meg replied, her smile nearly matching Booth's in wattage. The interaction went almost completely unnoticed by Temperance, who was nearly asleep where she stood. "How did you get in, anyway?" Temperance asked.
Her friend looked at her with a puzzled look on her face. "You told me where to find the key almost a month ago when I told you I was coming, remember?" Meg gave her a quick once over. "Uh, Tempe, you know you look like you could use some sleep."
At this point, Booth jumped in. "Yeah, she could, come on, Bones, time for bed."
After a few minutes of argument, Booth and Meg finally convinced Temperance to go to bed. She mumbled her apologies to her friend as her eyes began to drop closed. Booth took her arm and lead her to her bedroom, where she fell into bed without changing into her pajamas, and fell instantly asleep.
Booth chuckled under his breath and shook his head as he walked out of the room and turned off the light. He walked back into the living room and smile at Meg.
"Out like a light," he said with a smile.
Meg smiled back. "She works to much," she said with a slight shrug.
"Yeah," he said, sticking his hands in his pockets. "She does." There was a beat of silence. "So, you know Bones from college?"
"Bones?" she said with a laugh. "So you're the guy who gave her the nickname she was always complaining about!"
Booth smiled. "Yeah, I'm the guy."
"Hey, can I get you a beer? I bought some to have with dinner when it looked like Tempe forgot I was coming."
"Sure," Booth said with a smile, dropping onto the couch. "That sounds great."
Here comes the button, you know what to do.