A/N: Well, here you have it, my friends. The epilogue I promised. I'd like to take a moment to thank you guys for reading this story and sticking with me through it. So thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, followed, and favorited this story. It means a LOT to me. :) And if you guys could drop me a quick note after reading to let me know what you thought of the epilogue, or the story as a whole, I will love you forever.

Enjoy~

Two Months Later

Lance Sweets walks down the stairs in his home slowly, almost sideways, with both hands gripping the banister. He's trying to reach the bottom with the least amount of pain because, as he recently found out, using the stairs requires much more use of the abdominal muscles than he previously thought. It's not so bad, though. It was worse when he'd just started walking around again. Now, after a few weeks, it's much more tolerable.

He reaches the bottom of the stairs and walks into the kitchen, where he's genuinely surprised to find one of his roommates, Janet, still in the house at ten in the morning on a Wednesday.

"Good morning!" she says cheerfully.

"Hey," he greets her with a smile as he moves away from the doorway and into the room. He notices that the kitchen table is completely set, with a stack of pancakes on a plate in the center and two places set side by side by the edge. He looks over at Janet, who's grinning ear to ear, and gestures toward the table settings. "What's…?"

"I made breakfast!" she answers happily. Then, noticing his slight confusion, she explains. "A pipe broke on my floor in the clinic. Most of the offices are flooded and they said it should be a day or two before everything's cleaned up. And since I'm here and have time, why not eat an actual breakfast for once?"

Sweets chuckles, thinking about the mornings when all three of them would wake up late and rush out the door, each filling a travel mug with bitter instant coffee before they left and grabbing something small to eat in the car. Those mornings became a routine over time, but they all still manage to make it to work every day. Well, as of late, all of them except for Sweets, who's been on a leave of absence since being shot. And today, all of them except for Sweets and Janet; which is really just Chrissy.

Janet starts putting a few pancakes onto her plate and gestures for Sweets to come to the table. "Come on, sit down! Have some."

Slowly, he obeys and sits down, reaching for a fork and placing a single pancake in his plate. He's not really hungry, but Janet was considerate enough to make breakfast for the two of them. The very least he could do is eat some of it. So he picks at it. And, luckily, Janet doesn't say anything about it. Not that he expects her to say anything, though. He hasn't been eating much lately anyway, and even though he's lost a bit of weight over the past two months because of that, she and Chrissy haven't been pushy about it. He's beyond grateful for that. About other things, though…

"So," Janet starts after swallowing a bite of her breakfast. "I know you didn't just wake up. How long have you been working up there?"

She gestures up to the second floor and Sweets hangs his head with a smile.

"About an hour," he replies.

Janet sighs. "Weren't all your patients referred to other therapists?"

He nods.

"And there are no new cases because you're on leave," she continues. "So what can you possibly be working on that's so important?"

Sweets brings his head back up to look at her and grins. "I'm just tying up some loose ends."

Janet sighs. "Come on, you've been working since you came home. What kind of 'loose ends' take that long to finish?"

"Really long ones?" he tries, and he's met with another irritated sigh from his roommate.

"Fine, don't tell me. You're just going to slow down your own recovery if you keep working, though. You know, stress and all that."

Neither of them says anything else for a few minutes. Janet continues to eat her breakfast and Sweets continues to pick at his, staring down at his plate and thinking about how he can never say anything about the Pelant case until it's finished, no matter how much it annoys his roommates that he won't confide in them. He can't confide in them. Telling them would put them in danger, and they don't deserve to be dragged into Pelant's twisted game. Really, no one involved deserved to be dragged into it. But since they were, Sweets figures that the collateral damage should be kept to a minimum. Therefore, he tells no one about the case.

Janet won't let it drop so easily, though.

"So, what?" she asks calmly once she's finished eating. "Do you feel that, because you were so directly affected by the case, you have to help finish it? Maybe you feel some misplaced guilt about being shot, or frustration about your inactivity, and -"

Sweets looks at Janet with a strange expression.

"Hey, don't psychoanalyze me," he says with a laugh.

She smiles. "Sorry."

"And that's not it," he clarifies as he stands up from his chair and starts to help clear the table. After a few minutes, everything is clean and the two are standing by the table, facing each other as Sweets continues. "This whole case, it's like a puzzle. A huge puzzle. And I think I have a big part of it solved, but there's another big part that I'm missing. It's the most important part, and I have no clue what it is. I just have to solve the puzzle. That's all."

Janet eyes him carefully for a few seconds and sighs.

"Fine. Just… don't overdo it too much, okay?"

Sweets smiles at her and answers, "Of course."

"Okay," she says as she walks over to the front door and grabs her bag from a coat hook on the wall. "Glad that's settled. Now, I'm going to go run some errands. Do you need anything while I'm out?"

He shakes his head and she leaves.

As soon as she's gone, he sighs in relief as he sits back down at the table and puts his head in his hands. He's almost completely sure that this is the first lie he's ever gotten away with, even if it isn't such a big one. Most of what he told Janet was true, of course, except for the fact that he does feel guilty and he does feel frustrated. Just not for the reasons she speculated.

He feels guilty, not because he was shot, but because of all the murders that were based off of his papers. He feels frustrated because he wasn't able to follow Pelant's moves, even though he should have been able to. He feels guilty because he has files on his computer with information about every one of his friends that ever came to him for formal counseling, and now Pelant has access to them. He feels completely frustrated and angry because, after everything, he still can't figure out what the missing piece is to Pelant's big puzzle. (Okay, and maybe Janet is a little bit right. Maybe part of it is the inactivity, because he can't really do anything other than focus on Pelant, and he's not even doing a good job with that at the moment anyway. That would make anyone frustrated.)

He runs his fingers through his hair and says to himself, This will pass. It has to end eventually. And that thought is almost enough to placate him, until he gives it some more thought. Yes, it will pass. Yes, it will eventually end. But how many more people will have to die before it does?

The ideal answer would be "none." The realistic answer, though, is a bit different. It's open ended, and it's a testament to how far behind Pelant they all are.

He sighs.

He does need to give his head a break, he knows that. It's not healthy for him to obsess over the case, and if he burns himself out so soon, he'll be useless by the time he's cleared to go back to work.

After a bit of thought, he decides to give it a rest for awhile. Take a break. So he gets up from the table and walks into the living room, grabs a movie from the shelf and pops it into the DVD player. He sits down on the couch, then, and just enjoys the movie for awhile.

Except, he doesn't make it half an hour into the movie before his cell phone starts ringing.

After fishing it out of his pocket, he answers it without checking to see who it is.

"Hello?" he says as he grabs the remote and pauses the movie.

"Hey, Sweets!" Booth's voice echoed through the phone. "Just the guy I was looking for!"

Sweets smiles. "I kinda figured, since you called me."

"Yeah, well," Booth grumbles. "Anyway, I was wondering if you could do an on-the-spot profile really quick. Just a cursory thing so I have a general idea?"

Sweets nods, even though he knows Booth can't see him, and says he'll try his best. After a quick description of the case, he thinks for a few moments and gives the quickest profile he's ever given and that's all the talking they do about the case. Booth changes the subject after that.

"So how are you doing?" he asks.

"Me? I'm good," Sweets answers happily. He's telling the whole truth this time. "Stitches are almost completely dissolved and I have my last PT visit on Friday. Should be back to work in a week or so."

"Half-days?"

"Probably. I think it's the doctor's decision."

"Oh, okay," Booth says. "Well, can't wait to see you back."

Sweets replies with a quick thanks and wishes him luck on the case and then the conversation is over. After he hangs up, he slips his phone back into his pocket and gets back to his movie.

On the other end of the line, Booth hangs up and shoves his phone back into his pocket. He hears a throat clear behind him and turns to find Hodgins, who is carefully holding a Petri dish close to his chest and cracking half a smile and looks like he's been there for a few minutes.

"May I help you?" Booth asks, sounding a bit rude but knowing that the scientist wouldn't interpret it that way. Hodgins just stands there grinning.

"I thought you already got a formal profile from some other FBI shrink."

"I did," Booth replies easily. "Just confirming."

Hodgins just raises one eyebrow and stares at Booth, who smiles and rolls his eyes just a little bit.

"Keeping him sharp, Hodgins. Keeping him sharp."

That stupid grin doesn't leave Hodgins' face as he says, "I see that." He turns away from Booth, then, and walks into the lab with his findings. Not thirty seconds after that, Brennan walks out of the room, pulling off her latex gloves as she walks and tossing them into the nearest trash can. They greet each other.

As soon as Brennan removes her lab coat and hangs it on a peg in her office, she and Booth leave the Jeffersonian and drive to the diner for lunch. There, they talk about the case. They talk about their engagement. They talk about Christine. They talk about Sweets. They talk about everything. And as they finish their meal, it is unanimously decided by the two of them that life is almost normal again. Things are good. Things are great. And, as long as no curveballs get thrown their way, that's how it's going to stay for a long while.

And when Pelant does decide to show his face again, he'd better watch out. Because the Jeffersonian team is ready for anything he has planned, and they're more determined than ever before to catch him. And they will catch him.

It's guaranteed.

A/N: I had a notes-page up before with info about upcoming stories, but I took it down. It was annoying, haha. In short, there's a one-shot coming up soon (preferably before the 19th) and a multi-chapter story that probably won't be posted any time soon. Message me if you want more info about any of it. :)

Thanks so much for reading! You're the best!