The Superhero in the Jeffersonian

Booth tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for Brennan to tell him if this was a suicide or a murder. He was more on edge than usual and admitted it. Cullen was going to have his head if he didn't solve this case in a timely manner. And on top of that Buffy and Parker were supposed to be arriving home from an impromptu trip to Scotland tomorrow and he wasn't good with being away from them. Buffy had gotten a call about some demon problem and everyone wanted to see Parker so he had gone too.

"It's Warren Granger, age 17," he announces later that day as he and Bones pull up to the Granger residence.

"Looks like every other house in the neighborhood, " Bones points out

"Every family has its secrets, Bones," he replies dryly and Brennan looks at him strangely, more than likely for the way he said that. But he couldn't help it, he more than anyone knew that a family could hide a lot and that the surface never showed the truth.

It was kind of a good thing really, how oblivious people could be. He really didn't want any of his neighbors to start coming at him or his family with crossbows and torches. That was his past, honestly. And it wouldn't help Parker make friends if the other parents knew that his parents' date nights took in cemeteries and not at the cinema. It probably was also a good thing Parker's friends didn't know that he knew how to fire a gun, which might not go over well with his teacher either.

Inside Warren's room Booth couldn't help but look upon the comic collection in awe. Even Bones' teasing wouldn't ruin the moment for him. Living on the brink of society for a century taught him to appreciate the finer things of the human world, and that included comics. Without human or demon interacting for that long the brooding vampire had become found of comics. And now even as a human with a job, friends, and a family he couldn't help but love comics.

Later back at the lab everyone was sitting and discussing what they knew so far. And the more they dug up about this case the more upsetting it became. This boy reminded Booth far too much of himself, a loner trying to fit in and save the world. He tried to rile Bones up, saying he was more like her, but what was he supposed to say? Everyone here thought he was a jock who had the ultimate high school experience. Hell he didn't ever even go to high school! The army part could correlate with the boy slightly, trying to save the innocents and all; plus he actually did do that when he first became human! But really his almost friends wouldn't understand anything, so instead he teased his partner relentlessly.

Before his brood session continued any longer he smiled as his wife walked into the lab, "Hello everybody."

"Hey Buffy," they coursed back while Bones just stared at her.

"What are you doing here Buffy? I did not realize you were working on the case."

"I wasn't," she tells them. "I didn't realize there was a case. Parker and I just got back from Scotland and decided to drop in since Parker missed his Daddy so much. Parker say hi"

Just then a small boy with dirty blonde hair and dark brown eyes steps around his Mother and steps in between his two parents, "Hi," he waves.

Angela puts a hand to her heart, "He's so cute. How old are you buddy?"

"Which age do I say Daddy?" he asks.

"He's 5," Booth explains. "Sometimes he likes to think he's older though."

The adults all nod at the explanation. "So what's the sitch?"

"Dead teenager, pushed off of a building, found in some costume, loner, parents isolated him, and apparently he wrote comics staring himself," Angela tells the blonde.

"How'd he die?"

Nobody bated an eye at the questions she was asking. Buffy and Booth had accompanied the squints to a nearby bar a few times and by now they all understood that it was professional curiosity and that she was a PI. "Well we're still examining the remains and I don't feel comfortable talking about it in front of your son," Zach says uncomfortably.

"Actually," Brennan interrupts. "Parker probably hears about cases on a regular basis given his parents careers. And it isn't a bad idea for a child to grow up knowing how harsh the world can be."

Booth wants to laugh at the thought of Parker not knowing about life. Hell he'd tried his hardest to give his son a new life, twice, but both times he seemed to find out anyway and he had given up. Buffy giggles slightly at Brennan's exclamation and nods in agreement before excusing herself since she just arrived back into the country and all.

As everybody gets back to work they also talk about how cute little Parker was. Being the Father that he was Booth just went along with everything they said and even added in a story or two of him when he was younger.

The next day Booth returns to the Jeffersonian with his wife in tow. As they walk into Angela's office everybody stares at Buffy, "What I don't have horns do I? Because I was really careful last night and I know for a fact I didn't get infected again."

"Sexually transmitted diseases don't give you horns," Brennan says.

"They better not or else who would I sleep with besides demon chicks," Hodgins whispers and Booth exchanges a meaningful look with his wife. Noticing their look he changes the subject, "What are you doing back Buffy?'

"I'm helping with the case."

"If you don't mind me asking how do you keep getting hired for the cases your husband works on." Goodman asks.

"Friends in high places," she tells them and the squints all begin to think something along the lines of how the mystery of Buffy Summers continues to deepen. "And please don't stop on my account."

"Can you really pull all that information from a comic book?" Angela wonders

" Absolutely. All writers reveal more of themselves than they intend on every page," Goodman answers. "

" You know I gotta tell you, I never bought all that English 101 stuff. Sometimes a river is just a river," Booth tells them."

" All due respect, but my writing, for example, is pure fiction."

"Dr .Brennan, I fear you reveal much more of your worldview in your writing than you realize."

"Such as?"

"Such as "Archaeologists make good administrators because they enjoy tedium"'.

Such as "Artists are doomed to a life of loneliness because they aren't able to think beyond instant gratification"'

"Such as some people use their looks to get everything they want and that Private Investigators will never be happy because they do not work well with others."

"Such as, you know, F.B.I. guys are hot, and Angela here wants to have sex with me."

"Yep," Angela agrees.

"Seeley," Buffy narrows her eyes dangerously. "And to think that I considered you a friend Angela, god you're the second good friend of mine to want to sleep with him!"

"I thought that before I knew about you sweetie. And god Booth who knew you were such a stud. What friend are we talking about."

"I think Buffy's discussing Faith, but let's get back to the case," he rolls his eyes.

"And Cordelia, she was a friend near the end who you fell in love with!"

"This isn't a productive use of my time," Brennan interjects. "I am going to go look at the body again."

Once again Booth was starting to brood more and more over the case. After talking to the "Blue-Minnow" about the deceased he could easily begin to picture the kid. Only now more so than himself he could see his son in him. Someone outside of society with lots of issues and tries to protect the world. It pained him to think about Conner, even though Conner did live under the same roof.

When Conner had regained his memories even after the deal was struck and decided against pursuing his own dreams in order to fight in the final battle he had died. But due to his dedication and character the Powers decided to intervene in more than just restoring his humanity. Feeling pitiful they had restored Conner to his baby self before Wesley had stolen the child. It was then that they also revealed that he was actually conceived on the day that wasn't and Darla was nothing but a surrogate.

Neither he nor Buffy could rename him, it wouldn't feel right, but they also couldn't call him Conner, because for all intents and purposes it wasn't Conner. Thus the beautiful suggestion by Illyria to call him by a middle name, Parker.

All these thoughts just caused him to brood more. Ever since the strange encounter with the Mayor Booth was slipping farther back into his Angel ways and thinking about his past more and more. In five years he had really gotten used to his new life with Buffy. They managed to be normal and still patrol. Have a child and still maintain everything. Have new lives and still stay connected with Buffy's slayer side. But since the mayor he was slipping and people were starting to suspect something amiss.

While at the bar with the squints he had seen a vampire flirting with a guy and without thinking went and flirted with her as he used to. Of course Buffy had stepped in and saved him before the questions came, but he couldn't afford the slipups. Damn the slimy snake! He had never liked the son of a bitch. He was part of the reason he had left Sunnydale and was just a jerk,

"Earth to Angel," a confused Brennan says as she waves her hand in front of her partner's face.

"What did you call me?" Booth asked and everyone in the room could sense his temper about to flare. He was getting fed up with Buffy acting like a kid when she was an adult. Yes the past year had been horrible even before the mayor and she regressed in times of pain, but people were going to start to figure their secret out. He'd have to have a talk with her later.

"Buffy told us to call you that or Liam and it would get your attention. You were spacing out for a good five minutes buddy. And please don't explain the whole Angel and Liam thing. I don't need to know about your kinky sex lives, I mean unless you're willing to share," Angela trails off.

"How about we get back to work," he growls, more at his wife than at the artist.

"Warren Granger on the night he died, wearing his costume." The Angelatron burst to life and the four look at it intently.

"Okay. Start the sequence. Cause of death was a severed spinal cord. We can rule out Abigail Zealy as the killer."

"How do you figure? She has motive," Buffy reminds them.

"Abigail doesn't have enough strength to sever Warren's spinal cord with one blow."

"What about his stepdad? Or the, uh, other kids at the comic shop? " Booth asks.

"Well, the physicality of the murderer is between 5'10" and 6'1"... I'd say yes to them all, depending on the weapon."

"What could he have done to make somebody so angry at him?"

"My bet is more on the comic nerds than the step-dad," Buffy tells them. "According to my friend, co-worker or whatever Andrew it is entirely plausible. He's kind of a comic dork himself, well that's an understatement. See he met his two best friends Jonathon and Warren at one of these comic things and to cut a long story full of boring details he told me short, people there are whack. Apparently some are simply in it for fun, but a lot of others go and use it as a way of life. Andrew and his two friends actually decided the games were too mundane and started committing, um, for the lack of a better word felonies to make it reality."

"That's how they met?" Booth laughs. "Comic books? And to think you ever found them formidable?"

"I got them eventually. Okay so it was Darth Willow who started it, but I tracked them down too," Buffy humphs.

"Zack's cleaning the bones now. Maybe we'll find something that we've missed," Brennan hopes.

She leaves towards the lab and Booth and Buffy head towards the Hoover building to go and dig up some dirt on the suspects. The entire time Booth was teasing his wife about almost being killed by a bunch of comic nerds. Buffy was whining about having people underestimate small girls and their strength and cursing out Brennan. On any given day both would defend the conflicting opinion, but they both knew better today. It was easier to bitch and laugh about everyday occurrences than your past coming and catching up to you.

Neither party, science and law, found anything of interest. The case was becoming stranger and stranger as it continued. It was also becoming more and more personal for the FBI agent. From the looks of it Warren had no life, he was invisible, something he knew all too well.

They ended up walking into a bowling alley where the victim worked. "You smell that?"

"Yes, I do."

"You know what that is, Bones?"

"Wax, popcorn. Feet, deodorant. "

"That is America, Bones. "

"Keep your bowling ball in the car?"

"Of course he did," Buffy laughs. "Knowing him he figured we'd ask a few questions and then bowl a few frames. Playing sports is a great way to take the edge off of…"

"This is not a sport," Brennan says

"How do you figure?" Booth asks, clearly annoyed.

"There's no physical benefit. So it's really like golf. It's not a sport, it's an activity."

"You know Brennan, sometimes it's easier to make friends when you aren't always pissing them off," Buffy offers as they walk away from the lanes. "Trust me on that."

"Yeah. Sorry. Are you good at this... sport?"

"Well, my average was over 200, less than 2 opens per game. One match I had 211 strikes out of 431 shots. 29 opens in 39 games. "

"What does that mean?"

"Means I won some bowling awards."

"Understatement much, trust me Brennan you do not want to get in the way of Seeley and his bowling. When he, um, oh got back from the military he used his skills to bowl and it helped calm him down. Of course I beat him most of the time."

"I won the Marshall H. Dixon Award for my paper on George John Romanes and physiological selection. That is also an award."

"My God, it's like we live in parallel universes!"

"Sorry baby, but this is more of parallel lives more so than parallel worlds."

He thinks about it for a moment, "True," he sighs. "Parallel universes can get tricky anyway."

Brennan stares at the couple whom had disappeared into their own conversations. She did tuck the conversation into the back of her brain. Their behavior baffled her more than most and she wanted to know why.

In the end they didn't get the chance to bowl after the interrogation for they had to hurry to interrogate the victim's parents again. Unlike the first one they found this interrogation to be much more informational. Warren was sick as a child and that explained a lot of what was going on with him. They also had no clue that he was sick once again. The young boy had been hiding his pain from the world.

"You told her that her son didn't tell her about being sick to make her feel better," Brennan says in confusion and Booth nods. "You don't really believe that. You told her to make her feel better?"

"It would have hurt her too much to know the truth," Buffy sighs.

"So you just did what you said people don't do. I wonder why he didn't tell his mother.

"Well, maybe he was all caught up in the romance of being a dying superhero. You know, adolescent angst, all that."

"What do you think Buffy?" Brennan asks and Booth and Buffy smiled at one another, glad that Brennan was behaving.

"I think the boy was looking to be a man. All on his own without any help. He was doing the best that he could."

"Heroes don't whine about being sick.

"Something like that," Booth says cryptically knowing all too well what it was like to be a hero and hide your true feelings.

"Poor kid," Buffy adds. "To be in that position must be horrible." She takes a deep calming breath and Booth goes over and wraps an arm around her as Hodgins, Angela, and Goodman walk in.

"Do they know about the leukemia?" Hodgins wonders

"No. He kept it a secret."

"Tough guy, huh?"

"You were right on before about the kid knowing he was facing imminent death. This changes motivation," Buffy tells him.

"The killer's motivation?"

"No. Warren Granger's," Angela guesses and Booth and Buffy nod as if they were one.

"You think he was emboldened by the knowledge he was going to die. "

"He went looking for a fight," Goodman explains.

"No," Buffy shakes her head. "He was looking for a way to make a difference before he died."

Brennan gives her a questioning look, "Why would you imagine that."

Buffy takes a minute and it seemed as if she was having trouble talking about it, but Booth knew she was coming up with a believable story. "It's what anyone who's been in that circumstance does," she answers cryptically.

Nobody knew what to say and it's quiet for a moment until everyone starts discussing the case once again. It took them some time to get there but eventually everyone was on the same page. Warren Granger had been out looking for the Twisted. The mystery was still who the Opalescence was and that conversation was put on hold once Brennan came to the realization that Warren did not draw the comics, instead the artist was the comic store owner.

Buffy sat this investigation out in order to go to Parker's soccer practice and look at some of her own firm's cases. Brennan was investigating the bones again and that left Booth by himself to talk to Stew Ellis.

Booth really couldn't stand Stew Ellis. The guy was agitating and did not like answering the questions. To the FBI agent he seemed a little too defensive at every question he answered. The guy was also a little weasel. All in all it wasn't a very fun questioning and it left him more frustrated than anything.

The only information he even got was that Ellis was the artist and that the two had artistic differences. Well that and that he had a crush for the girl who was pining for Warren. However even with a motive it was apparent that he did not commit the murder. That's what his gut told him at least and he hadn't survived over two and a half centuries by ignoring his gut. All that time had also taught him a little bit about people, and Stew was not a killer.

Back at the lab he went straight to Brennan who was in the middle of some experiment with the bone fragment on the deceased that did not belong to him. Apparently the bone could give them a big insight as to who the killer was. That was always a good thing.

They discussed the case for a few minutes until Brennan came out of the blue and asked, "You said before that Warren reminded you of me. You think I'm just like him, that he hid from life by immersing himself in a fantasy world where he fought crime. And I do the same thing, only I don't have superpowers. I... I have science."

He was at a loss for words; he didn't mean it when he said that. It was only to throw them off his scent and it came back to bite him. "No, Bones. You do fight crime. It's not a fantasy. As far as any normal person is concerned, you do have superpowers."

Booth thought that was a good enough answer, it was true. However based on the definition she gave of Warren Granger it made him with his need to do good to redeem his soul, his wife with a death prophecy over her head, and his son with his strange upcoming, all too much like the kid. Possibly even more than he thought before.

"You're just saying that to me," she accuses, breaking him out of his thoughts.

"No I did not!"

"Yes, you do. You lied to Warren Granger's mother to make her feel better. That seems to be your superpower."

He had to laugh a little bit at that, "Look. This piece of bone you're analyzing- How did he get lodged in Warren Granger's neck?"

She goes on and on about that and once they figure out that they had to go back to the bowling alley and Booth praises her Brennan turns around and tells him that it was because he wasn't an anthropologist with superpowers.

The bowling alley turned out to be a bust, the owner wouldn't give them anything. And the Jeffersonian had yet to come up with any hardcore evidence that would get them a warrant. It was the politics and law of the system that made him realize his old life wasn't complicated. If he wanted to do something he just did it.

To get the warrant they needed to find the weapon. But so far the Angelatron couldn't find anything. As they started to figure it out Buffy walks in and gives Booth a quick kiss.

"How's Parker?" he asks.

"He scored a goal when they scrimmaged," she smiles.

Brennan gives he a strange look, "I thought you had a case to work on?"

She shrugs, "I did what I could and sent the info onto the people in Europe. Then the case that is more local can't be taken care of until later today." Buffy gives Booth a look and he nods knowingly. "So what did I miss?"

They fill her in, "Okay. So Warren's former boss is the Twisted, and the boss's wife is the Opalescence."

Her husband groans, "We still need more concrete information."

Zach does bring much needed news with the info from the bone, but they were still lacking a weapon to even look for.

"Wait. You said that in books you could find the real-world version," Brennan asks

"Yeah. Well, I mean, if you know you, it's pretty obvious," Booth tells her.

" Well, give me an example."

"Okay. Well, in your book, your partner's a former Olympic boxer who graduated from Harvard and spoke six different languages. In real life, you got me."

"So what you're saying is that reality falls far, far short of the fictional."

"Yeah. Thanks a lot, Bones."

"Warren Granger's spinal cord was severed by something sharp, but not a knife," Buffy states to ease the tension

"Okay. If it wasn't a knife, what was it?"

"The closest match I could find would be a corkscrew or a Tibetan skull knife but neither of them explain how foreign bone was left lodged in the vertebrae."

"Pull up Citizen 14's weapon thing," Brennan says

"I thought that was a boomerang thing, like a sonic gun," Buffy frowns.

"A laser cutlass. That thing that allowed him to hear through walls."

"we're looking for something that has a drabber, more banal version in the real world," Brennan tells them.

"Well, why would he be killed by his own weapon?" Angela tilts her head in confusion.

"Well, because he probably had it on him the night he decided to confront Ted McGruder," Booth suggests as pictures of the weapons are put up.

Angela gestures to the machine, "Citizen 14's arsenal."

Brennan points to one of the weapons, "What's that?"

"That's his main weapon. It's a three-sided throwing knife that returns to him. But none of them make the wound that resemble the one that severed Warren's spinal cord," Angela answers.

"It's just an idea."

" Brennan," Buffy starts

"No. I- I fell into the exact thing that I warned your husband about, developing too many hypotheses not grounded in fact."

"No. Brennan, I know exactly which drab real-world thing was used to murder Warren Granger."

The case was relatively simple after that. Once it was proven that ted hurt his arm they were able to make the arrest. It was what came after that was difficult. The case hit Booth a little too close to his heart. He didn't make a habit of going to funerals of the victims of his cases, but he felt the urge to in this case.

So he set out with his family in tow and went to watch the funeral. Neither he nor Buffy shed a tear. They had cried so many of them that it was hard to cry anymore. Parker did shed a tear or two though. Death was still a relatively new concept to him and even though he never knew the boy being laid to rest his parents had told him about death and it saddened him.

Once the crowd had dissipated Booth went up to the casket and put a copy of the Citizen 14 on it so even in death it could be a part of Warren Granger's life.

With that they left the graveyard before nighttime fell for fear of having Parker run into some unsavory guests.

Sorry for the wait, I've been swamped with school work.