Author's note: This is my first ever multi-chapter Bones fic, and the first in a while multi-chapter anything. Please be gentle and patient. I will make every effort to update regularly, but I didn't want to write the whole thing until I knew people would latch onto the story. By the way, it's not necessary, but is helpful, to have seen the movie The Wizard of Oz, as it will be regularly referenced.
Disclaimer: It should come as no surprise that I don't own Bones, The Wizard of Oz, or any of the characters and/or references related thereof. But I am a huge fan of both.
Special Agent Seeley Booth was in a good mood today. He had just wrapped a big case with the Bureau, and now he was on his way to bug his favorite forensic anthropologist for her final report on the remains that were found.
As he approached her office, he could hear Mozart's Symphony No. 40 playing on her stereo. He stepped through the door and found her standing on a chair, stretching to reach something on the top shelf of the bookcase. She couldn't quite get at what she was reaching for, so she stepped up onto a higher shelf of the bookcase.
She didn't notice him as he stepped towards her, and he didn't make his presence known, not wanting to startle her. At least, that's the excuse he gave himself. Truth be told, he was enjoying the view as he stood right behind her.
In a desperate effort to retrieve the object, Tempe superextended her arm and leaped up on her toes. She finally got her fingers around it, but she lost her balance and fell back from the shelf, the large book flying from her hand and landing across the room.
The only sound that escaped Booth was a soft "Oof!" as Tempe's full body weight hit him in the chest. His arms went protectively around her middle, and he stumbled backwards, crashing into the solid table a few feet away.
His hands remained around her waist, even after she looked like she could stand on her own. She took a few seconds to catch her breath, then put her hands on his and muttered a breathless, "Thank you." He let his hands drop from her body, and brought them around to knead the part of his back that had made contact with the desk.
She turned to look at him, then walked over to where the book had landed. Her apparent lack of concern for him bothered Booth. She picked up the book and flipped through it distractedly. He moved to where she was searching through the large tome and said irritably, "Bones, what if I hadn't been there to catch you?"
"I'd probably have a bruised ass," she mumbled vaguely.
"Yeah, or a broken neck! What on earth possessed you to climb up on the bookshelf like that?"
Perhaps noticing his tone for the first time, she looked up at him and met his eyes. She made a brief visual survey of his body, and noticed his hands gingerly rubbing his back. She indicated the spot and asked, "Are you okay?"
His anger disappeared as quickly as it had emerged. He rolled his eyes, more at himself for temporarily forgetting whom he was dealing with. "Yes, I'm fine. Probably just a bruise. Are you okay?"
"You caught me. Of course I'm okay," she said, as though it was the most obvious response.
He mouthed a silent "Okay," and shifted his attention to the cause of their collision: the large book that lay open on Brennan's desk. It was an encyclopedia on folklore, and it was open to the section on witches.
"A little light reading?" he joked.
Missing his sarcasm, she answered, "No. Someone sent me a package. It's over here," she added, walking away from the desk and moving over to a table with an open cardboard box on it, and a large picnic basket next to that. She picked up the note lying next to the basket and handed it to the FBI agent. On it was typed the message:
DING-DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD
With furrowed brow, he lifted the flap and peered curiously into the basket. A cleaned set of bones, detached just below the kneecap, lay perfectly preserved on a pillow of foam. The attention-grabber, however, was the pair of shimmering red shoes fitted absurdly on the feet.
Tempe had launched into an explanation of her choice of reading materials. "I don't know much about the historical significance of the feet as they relate to witches. And I'm totally lost on the shoes. So I thought that I might be able to find infor—"
"Dorothy Gale," Booth interrupted.
"What?"
"Bones," he said, looking directly at her with forced solemnity, "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
She narrowed her eyes at him, sure that he was messing with her. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"'Ding-dong, the witch is dead?' Ruby slippers?" At her continued blank look, he said in exasperation, "The Wizard of Oz, Bones! Good God, please tell me you've seen The Wizard of Oz!"
"Apparently not," she said, not knowing why this bothered him more so than most pop culture references she didn't get.
Booth took a deep cleansing breath and said, "Okay, we'll have to get you up to speed. First off, this book," he indicated the hefty volume that had already caused so much trouble, "is not gonna help you at all." He slammed it shut demonstratively.
"Okay, then you can explain it to me while I study the bones," she said decisively.
"That, I can do." He followed her back to the wicker basket. She snapped on a pair of gloves and indicated that Booth open the lid for her. He did so, and she reached down and delicately lifted out the bones one set at a time, careful to preserve the position of the shoes on the feet.
She lay them out on the tabletop and pulled the lamp towards them. She took about a dozen or so photographs, then carefully pulled the shoes off the feet. Inside one of them was another typed note. She gently opened it up and read:
FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
"'Yellow brick road?'"
"It's another reference to the movie, Bones. I think the sender is trying to tell you to follow the clues."
"Obviously," she muttered, looking back down to study the shoes more closely. Booth, meanwhile, bent down to get a better look at the notes. He reached for the second one and Tempe slapped his hand away. "Gloves," she said sternly.
"Bones, check out the notes. Notice anything about the letters?" he asked as he grabbed a pair of latex gloves from the nearby box.
She shifted her attention from the foot she was studying to the two pieces of paper. She squinted at the small print, then straightened and pulled the magnifying lens and the light over to the notes.
After a couple seconds of looking at them, she said, "Some of the letters are green. Write these down on the white board as I call them out to you," she instructed.
He picked up the nearest dry erase marker and took down the letters:
EITCD LEYRA
She shook her head at the nonsense characters written up on the board. Booth's expression was more thoughtful, though. He wrote something below the letters she had called out to him.
E-ERALD CITY
"I don't know what that means," she said as he stepped back.
"It's the place Dorothy is headed in the movie. Only, the M is missing in this anagram," he said.
"M," she said to herself. "Hmm…." She looked back down at the bones and bent over to study the bones of the feet.
"Whatcha thinkin'?" he asked.
"Metatarsals," was her only reply as she continued scanning the bones. She got to one particular bone and squinted and moved her face so close that Booth thought she'd actually touch the remains with her button of a nose. She held out her hand, palm up, and said, "Camera."
He handed it to her without hesitation and she snapped some close-up pictures of the metatarsal bone she had stopped on. Then she put it down and picked up a set of forceps.
"This metatarsal," she said as she gently wiggled the bone with the surgical tool, "is fake." She managed to remove it from between the phalange and the cuneiform.
"A phony bone?" he said jokingly. She shot him an unamused look before holding the bone up to the magnifier.
Booth moved closer so that he could also look through the glass at the counterfeit piece. "Looks like someone inserted another note," he said, indicating a hole at the end containing a rolled-up piece of paper. She again took the forceps and pulled the note from its place. They unrolled it and read:
TAKE A TRIP OVER THE RAINBOW
"This is ridiculous," Tempe growled in frustration. "I don't know what any of this means."
"That's why you've got me here, Bones. I'm your resident pop culture guru."
"Well, I don't think there are anymore hidden fake bones. Unless there's a secret compartment in the basket," she started to inspect the wicker container.
"I don't think so, Bones. I'm pretty sure this 'Over the Rainbow' refers to the bar on M Street."
"M Street…" she mused thoughtfully. "Like the letter missing from 'Emerald City?'"
He jerked slightly in surprise. "Yeah, I guess so. Way to listen, Bones."
She grinned self-congratulatorily. "So I guess we're taking a trip."
"I guess so."
"I'll call the team to come in here and study these bones and the clues, dust for prints..." she trailed off as she moved towardsthe phone.
"Great. I'll call the Bureau and let them know we may have a new case."
On M Street, a man sat at a bar with sparkling green countertop. "I'll take one more Twister," he said to the bartender.
"You got it."
He tossed a twenty on the counter when the bartender's back was turned, and walked out the door without getting his drink. The package had almost certainly been delivered by now, and probably been studied a bit. He smiled and breathed in the cool air. He glanced up at the bar's sign, then made his way along the sidewalk, in no particular hurry.
The words "Over the Rainbow" glittered benignly on the relatively deserted street.
To be continued…
Good? Bad? Wicked? Let me know if I should continue this or just stick to one-shot fluff.