One last time, yes? Thanks, Bones fans. It's been a privilege.

~T

From the Ashes

It smelled like wet paint.

That was the thing that struck her most as she placed her bag on the desk in her new office and surveyed the room.

Though there were subtle changes in the lab as a whole, her office was as it had always been. The walls were the same. The furniture, although new, was unchanged in style or upholstery or finish. It was her office, devoid of any personal touches, looking the same as it ever had every time she had returned from any kind of leave or sabbatical.

It just smelled like wet paint this time.

Despite Booth's optimistic outlook after the explosion, it had taken a lot more than a few weeks to get the lab operational again. In fact, even as she stood in her new old office, it would be another week until the Jeffersonian was back in business.

The perk of a rule-bender being in charge was that Hodgins let them in for an early sneak peek. She could hear her team out on the platform. Angela's laugh drifted across the platform and through the door to her office. Brennan couldn't see her, but she could imagine how her friend looked: one hand on her basketball-sized belly, a wide smile across her face, and her eyes dancing in merriment as her husband relayed the story of Michael-Vincent getting in trouble at school for keeping caterpillars in his desk. She heard one of Cam's and Arastoo's sons exclaim in a soft southern accent that Michael-Vincent was "surely in a heap of trouble" as Hodgins proclaimed he'd never punish scientific curiosity. She knew with certainty that Booth was rolling his eyes, just as he had the first time he'd heard that story, but that it was done with affection and understanding: after all, they'd been called to Christine's school after she'd explained basic human reproduction to a child whose mother preferred her son believe a stork dropped off the new baby at their house.

She heard Booth shout out "Hey Aubrey!" as the younger agent arrived at the lab, announcing "I brought celebratory donuts. I may have eaten one or two on the way over. Traffic was really bad and I got hungry." She knew that meant he'd likely eaten three or perhaps even four. Another example of something that hadn't changed at all. Cam warned her sons not to spoil their appetites as it was nearly dinner time and that reminded Brennan why she'd left the group to come into her office in the first place.

Time.

She pulled the broken clock from her bag. 4:47. It was still smudged with soot and the vague scent of charred metal and explosives negated the new paint smell she'd noticed earlier. She ran a finger across the face of the clock, tracing the hands, remembering the chaos and terror that had erupted at that moment: how everything had nearly ended.

Then she heard Angela's laugh ring out again and remembered that it didn't.

She took a deep breath and her eyes landed on just the right place for her clock. She stepped forward and set it on top of her filing cabinets, leaning it against the wall until she could hang it properly.

"Looks good," said Booth from the door.

She'd known he was there. She always did.

She turned and saw her handsome husband's small, slightly crooked and completely sincere smile of support as he leaned against the door frame. She looked back at her clock, back at the moment when they'd come so close to losing it all and then back at Booth again.

"It's not quite right," she answered as she pulled Sweets' book from her bag. She lifted the clock and slid the book underneath it, raising the clock higher.

Booth came to stand beside her.

She linked her arm through his, resting her head on his shoulder.

"I believe that's better," she mused.

Booth dropped a kiss in her hair. "It's perfect."

"There's no such thing as perfect," she began to automatically argue, but stopped as another peal of laughter erupted from the platform and Hodgins called for a celebratory toast. "But sometimes we get close."

"That we do, Bones. That we definitely do."