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Chapter Text

The interrogation room is cramped and stuffy. Doubly so once everyone and all of their daemons squeeze inside. Fortunately, Brennan’s butterfly daemon, Auster, takes up next to no space, and he hovers on top her hair, flapping his iridescent blue-purple wings in agitation.

The man from homeland security stares her down across the other side of the table. Brennan can’t see his mongoose daemon, but she can hear her pacing around on the floor, chattering angrily to herself and nursing her “wounds”.

(As if anyone’s going to believe that she’s actually hurt. Brennan didn’t lay a finger on her; no matter how often people scornfully call her a sociopath, she has more than enough common sense to know not to grab someone else’s soul, and her own butterfly didn’t do more than flap his wings in her face and make her run around in dizzying circles.)

The staredown tactic doesn’t seem to be working, so she decides to try talking instead. “I’m Doctor Temperance Brennan. I’ve been in Guatemala for two months, identifying victims of genocide. Including him.” Brennan points with her chin at the skull on the table between the two of them. It’s been taken out of its protective casing, lying on the stainless steel counter. It’s incredibly unsanitary and extremely disrespectful, both to her work and the skeleton itself.

Homeland security glowers. “Most people in this situation, what they do is they sweat it.”

Brennan feels her hair shake, and not for the first time she’s glad that her daemon is tiny enough that people can’t easily tell when he’s laughing. “Guatemala? Genocide?” she repeats. “How are you scary after that?”

Homeland Security just keeps on talking. “You know who doesn’t sweat it?”

“Sociopaths,” answers his daemon, crawling up his pants leg to glare at her.

Brennan opens her arms in frustration. “I’m not a sociopath!” Her daemon stops laughing and flaps his wings in annoyance again. “I’m an anthropologist at the Jeffersonian.”

“Who works for the FBI,” says Homeland Security. “Which I’d maybe believe if you had ID that did more than allow you access to the cafeteria.”

The door opens. Brennan doesn’t break her deadlock with Homeland Security, but her daemon turns around to see who it is.

It’s another man in a suit, this one with a defined jaw and neat haircut, and also the last person Brennan wants to see right now. His daemon, a lanky, gray-furred wolf, trots in at his side, her amber eyes sweeping across the scene and taking everything stock of the situation in as little time as it took Brennan’s daemon to do the same for him.

Homeland Security and his daemon don’t even give the newcomer even a glance. “You are illegally transporting human remains, ma’am. And you assaulted a homeland security agent.”

“Look, I’m sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends, but next time you should identify yourself before attacking me.” Brennan does not have time to deal with this. He was the one following her and Angela around the airport like he thought she just wouldn’t notice. And Mr. Last-Person-She-Needs-Right-Now still hasn’t explained himself. “What are you doing here?” she snaps, still not looking away from Homeland Security. Her daemon flaps off of her and towards his wolf daemon, who watches him approach. Her tail twitches, but otherwise gives no indication of her emotions.

The newcomer steps forward and flashes a badge. “FBI. Special Agent Seeley Booth. Major Crime Investigation, DC. Bones identifies bodies for us.”

Now Brennan turns to glare at him. “Don’t call me Bones. And I do more than identify,” she tells Homeland Security.

“She also writes books,” says Booth, pulling out a hardcover he’d been hiding underneath his arm and sliding it across the table.

Brennan can’t decide if she should be more angry at Booth or Homeland Security. So she decides both; she glares at Homeland Security and her daemon, landing on the corner of the table, gives his more souring look at Booth’s wolf daemon. Of course, his face is so small and inexpressive that he doesn’t look all that intimidating, but over the years he’s perfected his “annoyed and agitated” aura.

Whatever Homeland Security gleans from the book, he decides it’s good enough. “Fine. She’s all yours.”

Booth grins .”Great. Let’s grab your skull, and let’s vamoose.”

Brennan stands up. This doesn’t add up. “What, that’s it? ‘She’s all yours’? Why did you stop me?”

“Why does it matter? You’re free to go.” Booth leans over to grab her stuff. “Let’s just grab your bags--”

“You set me up,” Brennan cuts him off. She glares at Homeland Security again. “You got a hold-for-questioning request from the FBI, didn’t you?”

He doesn’t say anything, and his mongoose daemon puts on a decent display of looking shocked at the accusation. Brennan’s daemon trembles with anger and she scoops him up in her arms and rests him on her shoulder. She glares at Booth accusingly, who raises his eyebrows and doesn’t make eye contact. His daemon, on the other hand, wags her tail so hard her body sways and opens her mouth in a panting grin, like this entire thing was one big game to her.

No one says anything. Eventually Homeland Security hands her the book. “I love this book,” he says as he sidles past her and out of the room. His mongoose daemon, riding his shoulder, looks everywhere but at her.

Brennan scowls at Booth. The audacity of that man, thinking he can just charge right in and meddle with her life just because his daemon’s a big-and-charismatic mammal and hers is a supposedly small-and-timid bug. She grabs both her book and skull, and knows that her daemon would have spat at him if he was a cobra instead of an insect.

Chapter Text

“Come on, honey. If we don’t leave now, we won’t get into the club!” Angela sweeps into Temperance’s office, her canary daemon fluttering behind her on freshly-preened wings. 

“I’m just finishing up a few emails,” Temperance says, never taking her gaze off of her computer. Her purple butterfly daemon rests on top of her monitor screen, still as a statue as he focuses his attention just as intensely as his human. 

She’s still wearing her lab coat, Angela notices. She shares an exasperated look with Cher as he touches onto her shoulder. “Oh, what?” 

“My publisher wants to schedule a book tour. I’m just confirming dates.”

Angela moves around the desk so that she’s standing right in front of Temperance. “Okay. That can wait, sweetie.” Her canary daemon hops off of her shoulder and swings by Temperance’s daemon, brushing him with the tips of his wings and knocking the butterfly off of the monitor. 

Auster drops, surprised at the attack, before regaining his composure and flapping to rest on top of Temperance’s hair. She stands up, and for a moment Angela dares to think that convincing Temperance to go out will be just that easy, but then she walks past her to the other side of her office, picking up a stack of papers. “There’s a student that needs help identifying the cause of a fracture on a lateral epicondyle.”

Angela sighs and snaps her fingers impatiently. “TGIF. You heard of that?”

“Yeah. It’s some kind of acronym.” Temperance rifles through the papers and turns back towards her desk. “But my inbox is full.”

“Well, we know that’s not true,” chirps Cher, who had hopped onto Temperance’s keyboard after she had moved away and had been examining her emails.

“There’s a TV show that needs research!” Temperance snips.

“Not that they listen,” her butterfly daemon mutters, still glued to her hair, flapping his wings in agitation. His voice is quiet and barely audible over Temperance flipping through her papers, and the background noise of the air conditioning, but Angela’s had enough practice listening by now that she doesn’t have to struggle to hear him.

Angela and Cher share a look of triumph. When they get curt, it means they’re getting flustered. Which means they’ve almost got them.

Angela gently plucks the papers out of Temperance’s hands. “Okay. We’re going.” She helps Temperance peel off her lab coat, even as she weakly protests about cataloging her skull. “‘Cause Pepe LePew is more important than booze and boys,” Cher mutters into Angela’s ear. She snorts and picks up Temperance’s jacket from her chair, and hands it to her. 

Auster’s wings flap in agitation as Temperance hands her her own jacket. “I don’t think that’s his name,” she protests. 

“Just go with it, honey,” Angela soothes, pushing her forward and out the office door. 

---

It’s so dark and noisy in the club that more than once, Angela worries that Temperance has ditched her to sneak back to the lab. But then her canary daemon, fluttering overhead, feels the gentle brush of Auster’s wings, and she turns to find her friend dancing stiffly in the corner. 

The dance floor is a mess of humans and daemons all mixed together. The touching taboo isn’t what it once was, though most people still prefer to avoid touching another’s daemons if they can help it. But clearly, those rules don’t apply everywhere; after five minutes Angela’s brushed up against more dog and cat daemons than she has in the past month. Occasionally they’ll leap back at her touch, but usually they just ignore her, continuing to weave around everyone’s legs with their daemon dance partner. 

Those with winged daemons usually stay overhead, either flying above everyone’s heads or resting in the specially-made rafters hanging from the ceiling. That’s where Auster had stubbornly plopped himself when they got here, but Cher has the advantage of size; it doesn’t take much cajoling to playfully shove him into the air and get him dancing, too.

Angela and Temperance take a break from dancing to grab some drinks from the bar. The bartender makes drinks while his chameleon daemon takes orders and cash. Angela gets jostled up against some poor soul’s gazelle daemon as she pushes forward to make their order; a small tweedy looking boy with moppish hair that falls into his face gives her an alarmed look as the two of them pull away. They couldn’t have been older than 21, the poor things. Taboo or no, it can’t be easy to have a daemon so large that she can’t move out of the way of unwanted contact. Feeling ruffled, Angela smoothes down her yellow shirt, the same color as Cher’s bright feathers, and grabs their drinks.

She makes her way back to Temperance, who has sectioned herself off in a quieter corner of the bar -- in a generous definition of the word ‘quiet.’ Her purple butterfly daemon has taken a break from dancing to rest in his customary position on top of her hair, flapping his wings restlessly. Cher nods to him before settling down on Angela’s shoulder. She hands Temperance her drink, taking a sip of her own sweet cocktail. “Isn’t this nice? Being with people who still have their daemons.”

“It’s crowded. But very stimulating, I have to admit.” Temperance gazes out over the club. 

“We are so going to tear it up tonight!” crows Cher, puffing out his chest. 

Temperance shoots the canary daemon a look almost as alarmed as that kid with the gazelle daemon had. “That’s slang, right?”

“Right.”

“And is my costume alright?” Temperance motions to her plain tank top and pants. 

Her hair was neatly pulled up in a ponytail; for a moment Angela considers telling her to let it down like she had down with her own, but decides against it. For whatever reason, Temperance clearly feels more comfortable with her hair up in a ponytail and only likes to let it down if she has to. Angela thinks it’s a sensory thing, but she knows it’s not her place to ask. It had been enough of a task just getting her out here tonight, no need to risk upsetting her. “Sweetie, it’s not a costume. It’s a cute outfit, and yes, it looks perfect.”

Temperance nods knowingly. “Because it’s very warm in here.” 

Cher rolls his eyes; Angela brushes him off of her shoulder and back into the air. “No, because you look great.”  She puts her drink down and grabs Temperance’s arm, noticing more than a few sly glances in their direction as she leads her back into the thick of the dancefloor. “You are so getting checked out.”

The DJ starts playing a thumping rhythm. Temperance nods her head to the beat. “I love this music!”

Up on the stage, a man waves his hands around emphatically as he spits some mostly-incomprehensible words into a mic. His daemon, a sharpei dog with skin almost as baggy as her human’s clothing, sways back and forth, making soft woofs to emphasize the beat. 

Angela and Temperance dance to the music, their daemons fluttering together overhead. Temperance looks like a gangly giraffe, but hey, she’s enjoying herself, which is what Angela really wanted. The chance to score with a hot boy (or girl) is just a perk. 

“It’s so tribal!” Temperance says, sidling up closer to Angela so they can speak over the roar of the music. 

Oh, boy. She glances around to make sure no one heard her say that. “Don’t say ‘tribal’, sweetie.”

“Why?” Temperance looks confused, then her eyes grow wide with understanding. “Oh! Because of all of the black people?”

Okay, now people are starting to look. “Sweetie, just for tonight, have fun, stop dissecting and take part.” Above them, Cher spins around Auster, both as a sign of affection and to separate him from the other daemons nearby, some of which are starting to look at him with rankled expressions.

Neither he nor Temperance take the hint. “Well, African-Americans aren’t the only ones with tribal heritage.”

Angela hears someone’s daemon hiss, and a black woman steps in between them, glaring at Temperance defensively. “Are you saying we’re members of some tribe?” 

“Anthropologically speaking, we’re all members of tribes,” Temperance says, blithely unaware of the woman’s angry stare. 

The woman scowls. Another woman--her friend, probably--sidles up to her side. “You better shut your mouth.” The first woman had sounded frustrated, but the second is definitely angry. Her scarab beetle daemon, nested in her hair like some ornamental headpiece, hisses, carapace flashing in the rave light. The other’s cat daemon fluffs out his tail and unsheathes his claws. 

Temperance glances at Angela. Angela stares back, the alarm spiking through her system clearly evident on her face. Apparently that’s enough for Temperance to take the hint; she stops leaning into the womens’ space so much, and when she speaks, she nods her head placatingly and uses her hands to emphasize her point. “I just meant hip-hop mirrors the direct visceral connection you see in tribal communication.” 

“What?” Another person joins now, this time a man. His peccary daemon pushes through the crowd and grunts at Temperance, beady eyes blazing.

“After the Cartesian split in the seventeenth century, we separated our minds from our bodies, the numinous from the animalistic.” She doesn’t noticeably back down or show any outward signs of fear, but her purple butterfly daemon sidles up to her, planting himself on top of her hair. Cher stays circling overhead, partly for solidarity and partly to keep back any daemon who might be foolish enough to try and pluck Auster off of his person’s head. 

“You calling me an animal, fool?” 

A third woman pushes into the scene, her armadillo daemon puffing himself up to his full size. “No, fool. She’s used descartes philosophy to say she’s down with the music.”

“Who you calling a fool, fool?” The woman with a cat daemon scowls at the woman with the armadillo daemon. She pushes her, and their daemons leap together in a whirl of claws. Despite being smaller and less offensive, the armadillo easily holds his own as the two roll together around their humans’ feet.

The woman with the scarab beetle daemon veers towards Temperance, who’s now in between her and the two fighting women. “Get out of my way.” She swings a punch at Temperance, who raises her arm to deflect her attack and then pushes her onto the ground. 

More and more people are starting to notice the scuffle, and the entire club quiets down, stopping to watch the fight. Besides the sounds of them fighting, the only sound is the deep bass of the DJ’s music, and his daemon’s soft woofs as she intones the beat.

Temperance instinctively moves towards Angela, who had been watching the entire scene go down, frozen to the spot. As soon as Temperance grabs her hand, it’s like she hits the ‘unpause’ button. “We’re going, we’re going,” Angela says, pushing through the crowd towards the exit. Temperance follows in her wake. Their daemons crowd close, and Angela lets out a deep breath as she feels Cher’s familiar weight settle onto her shoulder.

They’re not done yet; the man with the peccary daemon chases after them and grabs Temperance. “You shouldn’t have done that, bitch,” he snarls. At his feet, swings her head around, looking for Temperance’s daemon. When she pinpoints his location, safely nestled against his human where he can’t be touched, she grunts and stamps her hoof. 

Temperance punches him. Around them, everyone watching yells; no one expects someone with a dainty butterfly daemon to be so aggressive.

The man steps backwards, clutching at his hurting face. He steps back against the wall--

And keeps going back.

The music stops dead as the wall splits open and he falls inside. A cloud of white dust rises into the air above him. The dust showers everyone nearby, including Angela. Some of it lands on her finger, and she licks some of it off. She recognizes that taste. “Oh, no.” 

She clutches her canary daemon, hugging him to her chest so he’s shielded from the worst of the dust; his delicate canary lungs don’t do well with breathing in substances like this. Beside her, Auster dives into Temperance’s shirt. 

As the ‘dust’ settles, a weird shape can be seen poking out from the wall; everyone crowds closer to get a better look. And then they scream and pull back just as quickly.

Angela doesn’t need to look that closely to know what it is. She’s seen enough dead bodies to know one when she sees one.

Chapter Text

It was a warm, sunny day, and most people, if given a choice, would have chosen to go outside and enjoy the warm weather. It was, however unfortunately, within working hours, and the forensic anthropology unit of the Jeffersonian were hard at work.

Dr. Camille Saroyan leaned over the work table, examining the spread before her. The lab coats and clunky work-issued gloves she wore did not flatter anyone, but if they could flatter anyone it would be her. In any case, it hardly mattered; her current project was less flattering than any lab coat.

A half-decayed dead body spread out on the table. This would be a high cause for alarm for most people, but fortunately not Camille, who had been alerted by a frazzled Zack Addy this morning that Dr. Temperance Brennan and Seeley Booth were collecting the body and would bring it back to the lab as soon as possible.

It wasn’t the most glamorous job in the world, but she’s good at it; she wouldn’t do it if she wasn’t. She takes pride in her work because it’s important, but it’s not the kind of thing you get giddy over.

Unless, of course, you’re Dr. Jack Hodgins.

“Oh, look at that!” A man with curly brown hair exclaimed. Using a pair of tweezers, he pried something loose from the decaying flesh, and held up something wriggling and absolutely minuscule. At his side, a shaggy dog wagged her tail so hard it banged against the leg of the table.

Camille grabbed the edge of the table to stop it from shaking. “One of these days you’re going to knock over the table and send human remains everywhere.” The small gray hawk perched on her shoulder shook out his feathers and, hopping from one foot to another, peered closer to see what Hodgins was compromising the integrity of their body for.

Camille closed her eyes, feeling through the link that tethered her to the harrier, sending a silent request for invitation. Without a word, the harrier opened her mind to Camille’s, temporarily allowing her to experience the world through her daemon’s senses.

See, in this world, everyone carried their soul on the outside. These fragments of their souls were called daemons, and they took the form of an animal with embodied the personality and being of the person they were a part of. Some people got shaggy dogs with tails that wagged too hard and shook tables.

If you were lucky, and Camille did consider herself lucky, you got a northern harrier.

Another person in her position might have used a magnifying glass to better examine the remains or Hodgins’ find, but the small gray hawk on her shoulder had more than enough power to match a magnifying glass. She tapped into her daemon’s senses, the world around her grew sharp. The bright lights that light up the deck momentarily blinded her, so much brighter to her daemon than to her dull human eyes. The object that had caught Hodgins’ fancy, too small to see all the way across the table by herself, wriggled and squirmed, and she could see it in all its bulbous glory.

Camille jerked back, knocking herself out of four-eye and shaking her head. “What is that?” she snapped. Why she expected it to to be something more digestible than a maggot, she’ll never know. It was always a bug with Hodgins.

Hodgins grinned, and while his own dog daemon had moved away from the table, her tail was still going a mile a minute. “I’ll have to examine it properly to confirm, but this little guy seems like a member of the Calliphoridae family,” he proclaimed. “Depending on the species, this could help us pin down time and location of death. Won’t you, little guy?” He lowered the bug into a small jar and placed it to the side.

On her shoulder, Camille’s harrier grumbled. “If you could see the bugs the way I do, you wouldn’t be so excited.”

Camille shuddered in agreement. Entering the four-eye state required intense focus and lots of practice, and even then some people would simply never be able to manage it. Even Camille for all her practice, could only hold the stance for a minute or two.

Hodgins shrugged. Unlike Camille, he had never shown any interest in entering four-eye, and even if he did, his dog daemon’s vision paled in comparison to his own, unlike Camille’s sharp harrier daemon’s eyesight, perfectly evolved to pick out the movement of a single mouse in a field from hundreds of feet in the air. “I didn’t tell you two to enter four-eye.”

Camille frowned, and her harrier daemon ruffled his feathers, fluffing up to almost twice his normal size. He dug his feathers into her coat, hard enough to tear through normal fabric, but not enough to damage the protective shoulder pads attached especially for her daemon’s sharp claws.

Hodgins’ opened his mouth, apparently determined to piss Camille off, but before he could get farther than a sentence or two into his spiel about whatever (not listening, Camille is not listening, damn her daemon’s sharp hearing) when she heard the distinct beep of two people swiping their card and the click-clack of heels as someone climbed the stairs onto the platform.

Angela Montenegro grimaced when she saw the body. “Ugh.” Her canary daemon zipped around her head, a streak of bright yellow, before lighting down on top of one of the nearby equipment pieces that weren’t in use. As far as Camille was concerned, canaries weren’t nearly as useful as harriers, but Angela herself was a valuable asset to the team. Angela put her skills as an artist to good use, and her facial reconstructions were immeasurably helpful.

Cam couldn’t say the same for Hodgins, who she was convinced spent more time scheming up harebrained ideas and even more convoluted arguments to convince her they were instrumental to figuring out this week’s newest murderer than actually working.

Coming up behind Angela stood Dr. Temperance Brennan, whose lab coat did little to hide her bulky statement jewelry, all in purple to match her daemon. Her butterfly daemon rested on top of her head, flapping his wings lazily. She stopped behind Angela, frowning as she craned her neck to look over her friend’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” Angela told her. Glancing at the body again, she added, “Nothing new, anyways. I always get creeped out when I they still have skin on them. They look a little too alive to not have a daemon.”

As daemons were fragments of the soul, when a person died, so did their daemon.

“I don’t think these remains look alive at all,” said Temperance.

The body said nothing, but as it lay there, skin half-missing and stinking of rotting flesh, it made its argument perfectly clear.

“I know,” said Angela. “But still, doesn't it creep you out, seeing a person without a daemon like that?"

Temperance examined the remains. Her butterfly daemon flapped his wings, but remained stationed on her head, a living piece of statement jewelry. "No,” she decided at last. “I think it would be creepier if the victim did still have a daemon, seeing as they're dead."

“Sure,” said Angela. She glanced in Camille’s direction, as if hoping she would back her up, but Camille just shrugged; she had to agree with Dr. Brennan on this one. After the first few dead daemonless bodies, it stopped being anything to write home about.

Never one to waste a moment, Temperance sidestepped around Angela to get closer to the body. “When can I expect to have the bones for examination?”

“When we’re done here, I’ll let Zack clean them up,” assured Camille.

“I’ll be done examining the remains for particulates soon,” promised Hodgins, who had returned to prodding the body when it became clear that this conversation would not be stimulating enough to hold his attention.

“And where is Dr. Addy?” Temperance glanced around the platform, searching for her intern. Zack himself was rather nondescript - pale-skinned and dark-haired like three-fourths of the other employees in the Jeffersonian - but he was the only one who had to cart around a portable water tank to support his octopus daemon, and it wasn’t hard to see that he was nowhere to be found.

“He’s out getting coffee and donuts for everyone,” Hodgins said without looking up from the corpse. “Zack tried to explain he wasn’t that kind of intern, but Booth wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Angela’s canary daemon twittered in amusement, and Angela crossed her arms to as she fought back her own laughter. “Typical. Anyways, let me know when you’re done so I can get to work on the facial reconstruction,” Angela said, and then, “I’m going to go now, because I don’t want to stare at him any longer than I have to.” She turned around and zipped downstairs, her yellow blur of a canary daemon flitting after her.