A/N- I actually started this story almost a year ago, and then forgot about it until I was looking through Word!

A Day With the Squints

Chapter One: Zack Addy and the Angel from Hell

"What're we going to do with her? I mean, she can't come with us to Canada!"

"Well we can't leave her at the house! She's seven, who knows what could happen to her!"

The familiar sound of Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth squabbling preceded them around the corner moments before they entered the bone room with a small child in tow.

Zack Addy looked up from the skull he was reassembling as the beautiful family walked in. "What the-"

"Zack! Zackie, Zackaroni," Booth said, hurrying inside and leaning against the table near Zack. "Glad we caught ya."

Zack stared at them suspiciously. He could tell something bad was about to happen, what with Booth using those names for him. "Why?" But before either Booth or Brennan could respond, the child grabbed Zack's legs.

"I wanna go to the zoo today, Uncle Zack!"

Zack stared down at the girl with wide eyes, then up at Booth and Brennan. "You can't be serious."

"Please Zack," Dr. Brennan said in that tone she used when she really wanted something done right. "Our babysitter got walking pneumonia and we've got a flight to Ontario in an hour. Just until we get back, okay?" she said, locking eyes with her version of the puppy-dog pout that she had learned from the master: her daughter. Zack looked down at the little girl, whose darker version of her mother's eyes had the same look.

Zack, never being one to refuse Dr. Brennan, gave up all resistance. "Fine. But you better get me one hell of a souvenir."

"EEE!" Emily Brennan shrieked, jumping up and down and nearly knocking Zack into his almost-finished skull. By vicious scrambling he mangaged to save it, but not without knocking over a lamp and his glue. He looked up in exasperation at them. "How long?" he said weakly. He had a feeling that by the time they came back the lab would be in ruins.

"Just a few days," Brennan assured him as she bent down to pick up the pieces of the lamp and Booth got the tub of glue.

"If anything, anything at all, happens to Emily, if she gets so much as even one scratch on here, I will break every bone in your body and kill you and then make it look like it was an accident," Booth said, making Zack gulp.

"Yessir, no problem sir," Zack said, suddenly flashing back to his days in Iraq and the war-torn men he remembered from there. Booth's face swirled and merged with his commanding officer's until they looked one and the same, and Zack wrenched himself away and found, instead, Emily's excited eyes to stare at. "She'll be safe."

"Come on, Booth, we've got to go!" Dr. Brennan said, reaching out to take away her overprotective partner. It was kind of like those books Emily liked to read, The Baby-sitter Club, where the mother was forever giving last minute instructions to the baby-sitter. Only with the father instead. Brennan had always found those books a bit sexist anyway. "Thanks again, Zack," she said from behind the special agent.

"Don't forget to email Daddy, okay, honey?" Booth said as he was dragged out the door.

"I will!" Emily said, still clutching Zack's leg.

"Every day?"

"Every day! Bye, Daddy!"

"Come ON, Seeley!" Zach knew that when Dr. Brennan called him by his first name that she was angry.

"Zack, don't let her talk to strangers! Or cross the street without a helmet! Or-"

"SEELEY BOOTH WE ARE LATE!" Dr. Brennan screamed at him, trying her best to pull the large man away from his little girl. She finally had gotten him out the door, but he stuck his head in at the last second to say loudly, "Be careful!"

And then they were gone, the sound of their bickering retreating down the hallway.

Zack and Emily were alone in the room, and the finality of what he had just agreed to crept up his spine. He looked back down at the little girl, whose eyes, now that her parents were gone, glittered with hidden mischief and mayhem behind the angel face she put on.

"Oh, no," Zack said under his breath. Emily grinned up at him in apparent awe and innocence, but he knew the real thoughts in her head. He slowly untangled himself from her and bent down to her eye level.

"Now, Emily," he said quietly, pretending for a moment that he was at a family reunion in Wisconsin and she was a hyperactive cousin, "I know you're used to... something besides being here," he told her lamely, "but while you're here, you can't run around and scream and surprise people or... whatever it is you usually do, okay? You have to be quiet and calm."

Her grin faded. "But why? That'sh no fun," she said with a faint lisp caused by her missing front tooth.

'Okay Zack, think. You come from a big family. You know kids.' The problem was that Emily was unlike any kid he knew. He had an idea, and though he doubted it would work, it was worth a try.

"Hey Emily, want to play a game?" he asked. It was one that his cousin often played when she was at her summer day camp.

"It's called Mummy. You lay down on the ground with your arms crossed and you can't move or talk. If you do, you lose."

It seemed to work. Zack finally finished the reconstruction and went around putting the more breakable and important items where it would be hard for Emily to get them. Of course it seemed like everything in the lab was breakable and important. Still, he did his best. He was so consumed in what he was doing he didn't notice Emily quietly get up and sneak away.

&&&

Playing Mummy had been okay at first, but after a while she got bored and her nose began to itch and the floor was too cold. Besides, what was the fun of winning if there was no one to win against? Now, if there had been other children here, that would have been a different story. She was always up for playing another game. What was something she could do with Zack that was still fun? She had it: hide and seek. Emily got up very slowly, something only hide and seek could get her to do, and crept out of the room with an exaggerated tip-toe movement.

Now all she had to do was find the perfect place to hide before he figured out she was missing.

&&&

"See, now that wasn't too bad, was it Emily?" Zack said once he had finished making the lab as kid friendly as possible. He didn't get a response.

"The game's over, Ems. You can get up and move now." Zack turned around, not worried. Emily had the tendancy to take games really seriously. She loved winning and could get competitive. He couldn't imagine where that came from, at all. Certainly from neither of her parents.

"Emily?" He checked only to see the floor empty.

"Great, it's only been a few minutes and already I'm a doomed man. I should have shown more back bone and refused them. But no, Dr. Brennan just had to give me that look. Okay, if I were a seven year old, where would I be?" Knowing Emily, it would probably be the place she could do the most damage. If unintentionally causing trouble were an Olympic sport, Emily would have a gold medal.

And then it dawned on him…limbo. If Zack had ever been one to swear, now would have been the perfect time to let such vulgar profanities out. But Zack had always found swearing pointless, and in most cases a waste of time when you could be doing something about whatever misfortune it was causing you to swear in the first place. He sprinted as fast as he could, almost bumping into a few interns who gave him questioning looks. Right now, though, he was more concerned about his well being than his reputation.

His instincts had been correct, for as he entered limbo he could see the form of a small child climbing the boxes much like a monkey would.

"Emily, get down from there before you fall!" he shouted out, but it was too late. As Emily turned around to see who had disrupted her fun, her hand slipped from the box, and then she was falling, taking a few boxes down with her. Zack sucked in a breath at the thought of all those bones getting mixed up, but those thoughts left as soon as Emily started crying.

He rushed to her and immediately began to make sure she hadn't broken anything (she hadn't) before taking inventory of her other injuries. Other than a scare though, and a few scrapes and bruises here and there, it seemed like the damage wasn't too bad. That is, until he noticed that she had lost her other tooth, causing two missing front teeth. Zack stifled a groan. The other injuries could be taken care of, but there was no way that Booth wouldn't notice the missing tooth. It made him think of his cousin Melanie, who loved a show called Angel and made him watch an episode once. Angel had recently had a son, and he told this one man that every unexplained thing that happened to Connor would happen to him, before proceeding to cut open the man's cheek because his son Connor had gotten a scrape there. He had a mental picture of Booth banging his head against something hard and making his tooth fall out.

Emily threw her arms around his neck and sobbed some more, bringing Zack back to the present.

"Hey, it's okay. Everything will be fine." He said, awkwardly patting her back. Suddenly, an idea dawned on him. How did the saying go? Killing two birds with one stone. He could get her away from the lab so that she couldn't cause further damage and cheer her up at the same time. "I'll tell you what, Ems. We'll put some anti-septic on that so it doesn't cause an infection, and then we'll go to the zoo for a bit, okay?"

"'Kay," Emily said, her lower lip trembling slightly.

Fortunately the zoo was a good enough motivation to keep her mostly quiet, minus a few complaints, while he treated her wounds.