Fic: Gracie
Title: Gracie
Author: ladychi
Characters/Pairings: Booth/Brennan, OC
Rating: All ages
Summary: Future-fic. Booth and his daughter. Fluff because today has been rough. Inspired by the genius that is Ben Folds and his song "Gracie".
Gracie
She is sitting in the middle of her room, all spread out on the floor, a plethora of crayons and markers scattered around her in what looks like a haphazard pattern, but, knowing Gracie, is probably designed for the most efficiency. She is concentrating on coloring precisely inside of the lines. Her tongue escapes from her mouth and, standing in the doorway, Booth is struck by the beauty of what his love for Brennan has given him.
She has hair somewhere between brown and auburn, eyes that are as brown as his own, a mouth that curves sweetly up in a smile because she's been happy her whole life, and a nose that is all Brennan. She laughs like Brennan, too. Straight from the gut and full of joy and damn the consequences and what everybody else thinks. Gracie's always got a plan, an idea of how things should go and she makes sure that her plan is known and followed through on.
She is sternly instructing the stuffed bear she named Parker after her favorite person in the world on how to color. "You press down. But not too much cause it soaks through and then Mom gets mad." She shakes the marker impressively at the bear who is studying her with all the attention the interns give her mother. "Inside the lines, Ms. Suzy says -- except when there's no lines. I like that best."
Booth coughs, trying to hide a laugh, and Gracie hears him. She whirls around and her whole face lights up from the inside out. "Daddy!"
"Baby-girl," Booth says, as he opens his arms and drops into a squat, accepting the hug that nearly knocks him over. "How was your day?"
"Fun!" she says, bouncing in his arms as he picks her up. Brennan tells him all the time that Gracie is too old for him to be picking her up all of the time, but Booth knows that he has to cling to these moments because time goes so fast and he'll blink and tomorrow he'll be buying her a prom dress.
"Were you a princess today?" He asks, tapping on the tiara she has arranged artfully in her hair. It matches the pink tutu she's got on.
"Yes. Molly wanted to be a princess, too."
"At school?" Booth had a hard time keeping Gracie's friends straight. Some were invisible, some were real, and some he was still figuring out.
"Yes."
"So there were two princesses, huh?"
"Yeah. Until I got home. Then it's just me. Parker doesn't like to play princess." Gracie studies him seriously and reaches forward and smooths the skin of his forehead out. "Does your head hurt?"
"It did a little before," Booth says.
"Sometimes school makes my head hurt, too." Gracie kisses his forehead, a sweet little peck, and Booth squeezes her before setting her down on the ground. She runs off at full speed, around him and down to the kitchen, shouting for her Mom. Booth smiles and rubs his forehead. Gracie's better than Tylenol.
**
Booth's stretched out in a sleeping bag, one hand loosely wrapped around Brennan's. There was a time, he thinks ruefully, when he would have zipped their two bags together and slept spooned together. The kids are with them this time, though. Parker's old enough to take it in stride, but Gracie's seven and Booth doesn't want to answer those questions yet.
He hears a sound outside the tent and Brennan hits his leg with an open palm. "Go find out what that is."
Booth grins. "I thought it was your turn."
"No," Brennan says, not opening her eyes. "I changed the last poopy diaper."
"That was five years ago!"
"Still counts," Brennan says, sticking to her guns. Booth laughs and opens the tent flap, standing to his full height and looking around before he spots the culprit.
It is Gracie, hair carefully braided in pigtails, poking at the remains of the campfire and looking up at the sky.
"Hey Gracie-girl," Booth whispers, his voice low and gruff. "What are you doing up?"
"Parker snores," Gracie says, and Booth notices that she's folded herself nearly in half, her face contorted in an expression that isn't right.
"Are you sure that's it?" Booth sits next to her and bumps her with a shoulder, noticing when she winces in pain. "What's wrong, baby?"
"My stomach hurts," she says mournfully.
"Okay." Booth has a moment of panic when he wants to call for Brennan, but he mans up. Remembers that he's done this before. "How bad, honey?"
"Real bad," Gracie says, closing her eyes until tears force their way out.
Booth's eyebrows fly up. His girl rarely cries -- never at scraped knees or elbows. She's spent her whole life running after a brother twelve years older than her, bound and determined to let nothing slow her down. "Do you want me to get your mom?"
She shakes her head vehemently. "No. We've been planning this trip forever and Parker came back from school and everything. I don't want her to make us go home."
"Baby, if you're sick, then we need to take care of you, okay? Parker can come back if he needs to. Besides, maybe it's just bad hot-dogs."
Gracie tries to laugh but it comes out as a gasp. Booth stands to his feet. "I'm getting your mom."
"Dad!"
"Grace Booth. Do not use that tone of voice with me." Booth shoots her a glance that quells her attitude and heads back to his tent, shaking Brennan awake with a hand. "Bones."
"Hmm?"
"Gracie's sick."
She sits up. Booth remembers a time when she wondered whether or not she could possibly be a good mother -- but she is. The best. She goes from sleeping to wakefulness in a matter of moments. "How sick?"
"Pain in her stomach. Enough to keep her up."
Brennan is reaching for her pajama bottoms as Booth talks. "It could be any number of things."
"I thought maybe bad hot-dogs," Booth teases.
"Just a few hours ago you were insisting there was no such thing as a bad hot-dog," Brennan shoots back, but she's pulling the tent flap back and across the campsite before Booth can respond.
"Hi Mom," Gracie says, her eyes filled with tears.
Brennan brushes back their daughter's bangs and winces in sympathy. "It must hurt a lot for you to be in tears, Grace."
"I didn't want to wake anybody up," Gracie cries in protest of an imagined slight.
"She gets this from you," Brennan says, looking up at Booth. "If you're sick, your father and I are who you wake up. No matter what time or where you are or how old you get. If you need us, Booth and I will always be here. Now. Where does it hurt?"
"My... side," Gracie says, pointing. "All over. But mostly my side."
Brennan tests her gingerly, wincing when Gracie grunts in pain. "Booth, we should take her to the hospital."
"What?"
"Appendicitis is a possibility," she says seriously.
"Oh." Booth nods. "You load Gracie up. Parker and I will be ready to rock and roll before you gals are."
"Dad, you don't..."
"Gracie Christine. Enough." Booth walks over to Parker's tent, unzips it and shakes his son awake. "Parker, c'mon."
"What's up, Dad?"
"Gracie's sick. We're going to take her to the hospital. Can you help me break down camp?"
"Yeah, Dad. Absolutely." Parker's up and ready to go quickly, and together they move with the efficiency of years of father-son camping trips and Booth's ingrained military training. They are on the road within twenty minutes, driving quickly but safely through the dark roads of the campground until they reach city lights.
Booth and Parker drop Brennan and Gracie off at the emergency entrance and park the SUV.
Booth remembers going to see Cullen, all those years ago, when his daughter had been so ill, just before she died. He remembers thinking of how terrified he would be if it had been Parker. It always flashed through his mind before he went to his kids in the hospital. And they were there often enough -- broken bones, sports injuries, science projects gone awry.
Parker, so tall now that he had Booth by a half-inch, laid his hand on Booth's shoulder as they walked up to the entrance. "She's going to be fine, Dad. She's a trooper."
"Yeah." Booth shakes off the worry that threatens to paralyze him, and meets Brennan in the waiting room, where together they fill out the paperwork together. Parker sits next to Gracie, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and running his hand through her hair. Booth can hear their conversation.
"Hurts pretty bad, huh?"
"The worst."
Parker squeezes his sister's arm. "You know, kiddo, I miss you a ton."
"Miss you more."
Parker grins. "Probably. I'm not nearly as annoying as you are."
"Ha ha." Gracie's working on perfecting Angela's eyeroll. Booth notices that she's getting pretty good at it, for a seven-year-old in pain. "Why do you have to be so far away?"
"Cause that's where they gave me the most money to go." Parker shrugs.
"Will you come back for my First Communion?" Gracie looks up at him. "I get to wear a white dress and everything."
"Of course." Parker nods solemnly. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. Are you gonna practice not making a face when you taste the wine?"
"Is it gross?" Gracie looks worried.
"The worst," Parker says conspiratorially. "You get used to it, though."
The nurse eventually sends them down the hallway, and the doctor comes in and soon, Brennan's instincts are proved correct. Appendicitis and emergency surgery are the only words Booth can really remember.
Brennan next to him reminds him patiently that it's a fairly routine surgery with a high success rate, but... it's his baby girl going under the knife and words like "routine" and "usually" don't mean shit right now.
The doctor's about to take her into surgery when Brennan catches her arm. "Dr. Franks? A moment of your time, please. Her father has some unusual reactions to a certain kind of anesthesia and I would be more comfortable..."
Their voices disappear down the hallway, and Booth looks down at his daughter, who is looking up at him with trusting eyes.
"Pretty scary, huh kiddo?" Parker asks from behind Booth.
"Nah, this is easy stuff," Gracie says, grinning. She's missing a tooth.
"You're awesome," Parker says, giving her a high-five. "See ya when you get out, okay?"
"See ya." Parker leaves, and Booth bends over to give her a noisy kiss on the cheek like he does before bedtime every night. Gracie reaches up and smooths the lines from his forehead away with the palms of her hands.
"See ya, Daddy."
**
Parker's graduating from college today. Then there's a week and he's off to basic training. Because, Booth thinks to himself, he's just too much like his old man. He's downstairs in the kitchen with boxers on and a robe, drinking a cup of coffee, when he hears the explosion start upstairs.
He winces. Of course his daughter would head into wildly-emotional puberty earlier than usual. She's done everything else ahead of schedule. Her inability to be rational clashes sharply with Brennan's firm belief in it and the result is...
"It is too early in the morning for this kind of behavior!"
"Mom, I'm eleven years old and I can dress myself!"
"If your father sees you wearing that public, he will shoot you. And I will be unable to stop him."
"It's a cute outfit, Mom!"
"It is developmentally inappropriate. You will wear something else." Booth's eyebrows have been crawling up his forehead slowly up until this point. He's curious, in a way. But he also wants to avoid being caught in the cross-fi...
"Booth!"
Dammit.
"Yeah, Bones?"
"I require your assistance."
"Mom!"
"Bring your gun. You're going to want to shoot your daughter."
Booth's standing up when he hears the conclusion of the fight. "Fine. Jeez, Mom." Her door slams. Booth growls.
"Grace Christine, you will close your door like a lady or I'll take it off the hinges!" He shouts up the stairs.
Of course, he can hear the wailing from the table. Life is so unfair when you're eleven. Brennan comes down the stairs, dressed in a sundress and large hat, ready to attend the ceremony later that that day.
"She's your daughter," they say together, and laugh wearily.
**
Gracie is fourteen the first time that Booth wants to shoot someone on her behalf. He's a young man by the name of Brad, a name that Booth has always hated, and he knows nothing about whatever piece of shit this kid may be, other than he broke his only daughter's heart.
He watches, helpless, from the door as Brennan rocks Gracie back and forth in a way she hasn't done since his baby girl was young, whispering soothing things under her breath. He feels useless, extraneous.
He walks down the stairs and gets his service pistol from the gun cabinet. Deliberately, he takes it apart, makes sure all of the rounds are removed from the chamber, and methodically cleans it.
He's at the task for hours, a perfectionist streak in him rising up that has long been subdued since his time in the Army. It's nearly midnight when he looks up and sees Gracie there. Her eyes have stopped being so red, and they only look a little puffy.
He opens his arms automatically and she falls into them. "He's such a jerk, Daddy."
"All teenaged boys are jerks," Booth says loyally. "Jerks who are... diseased. It's better just to stay away from them until they're forty. No... fifty."
Gracie laughs reluctantly and wipes her eyes. "What are you doing?"
"Cleaning my gun."
"Daddy, you can't shoot Brad." She's teasing him. Booth smiles.
"If anyone could get away with murder, it'd be your mom and me."
"True." Gracie reaches out a hesitant hand. "Hey...Dad?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Will you show me sometime how to fire a gun?"
"You aren't allowed to shoot Brad, either," Booth says.
"No, Dad. I just thought..." She sighed. "I thought it'd be fun."
"It can be." Booth finishes and puts the gun back in the lock box. "You want to learn, really?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
"Really?"
"If I can trust your mother to conceal and carry, at the very least I can show you how to protect yourself," Booth says.
"Awesome!" She kisses his cheek and is halfway up the stairs before she barrels back down. With two thumbs, she eases the lines in his forehead. "Goodnight, Dad."
"Night, Gracie."
**
Gracie turns eighteen and Brennan and Booth have a private party, just the two of them. Wine in the kitchen and soft music over the sound system. They sway gently in the kitchen to Louis Armstrong wailing hopefully about a kiss to build a dream on.
It's late at night when the front door opens and Gracie barrels in, full-steam ahead as she has done all of her life. She sees Booth and Brennan and grins.
All Booth can see is a little girl with pigtails in her hair, missing a tooth. It nearly stops his heart.
"Did you have a good time?" Brennan asks, unmoving from Booth's arms as they dance slowly together, unceasingly.
"Yeah. Mike's okay. And the music was good."
"Not like this," Booth denies, quick-stepping Brennan around in a whirl. She laughs, delighted and clings to his biceps until she gets her balance again.
"Nope," Gracie agrees, popping a grape in her mouth as she watches her parents slow dancing together. "This kind of dancing looks like more fun than what was at the party, too."
Brennan smiles, looking deep into Booth's eyes and he can feel the love of two decades, the love of his life, the love he just knew, shining back at him. "It is."
**
Special Agent Grace Booth-Williams and Doctor Parker Booth buried their father on a cold day in December. They stood on either side of Brennan, holding her hands as they put Booth into the ground.
"You think the soul goes on after the body expires?" Brennan asks Gracie as she makes her mother a hot cup of tea.
"That's what Dad always said. And Dad... he just knew things like that," Gracie says, tucking her mother in. "I can't abide the thought of Dad stopping, you know?"
"Yes." Brennan closes her eyes, and Gracie tip-toes from her bedroom into the family room, where Parker is waiting for her.
"She all set?"
"Yeah. I think she'll sleep."
"Good. Come here, kiddo." Parker opens up his arms and Gracie steps into them, holding on tight to her brother. "I'm going to miss him."
Gracie nods. "So much."
When she unlocks her house later that night, her husband is waiting for her. And on top of him, her five-year-old son is asleep, his thumb in his mouth. Gary hands him to her and she walks him up the stairs, to the bedroom with crayons in the middle of the floor.
She lays him on the bed and kisses his cheek and is about to pull away when he reaches up and soothes the lines of her forehead away with two small palms.
"Don't be sad, Mommy."
"Oh, honey." She kisses his cheek again. "I'll try not to be."
Author: ladychi
Characters/Pairings: Booth/Brennan, OC
Rating: All ages
Summary: Future-fic. Booth and his daughter. Fluff because today has been rough. Inspired by the genius that is Ben Folds and his song "Gracie".
Gracie
She is sitting in the middle of her room, all spread out on the floor, a plethora of crayons and markers scattered around her in what looks like a haphazard pattern, but, knowing Gracie, is probably designed for the most efficiency. She is concentrating on coloring precisely inside of the lines. Her tongue escapes from her mouth and, standing in the doorway, Booth is struck by the beauty of what his love for Brennan has given him.
She has hair somewhere between brown and auburn, eyes that are as brown as his own, a mouth that curves sweetly up in a smile because she's been happy her whole life, and a nose that is all Brennan. She laughs like Brennan, too. Straight from the gut and full of joy and damn the consequences and what everybody else thinks. Gracie's always got a plan, an idea of how things should go and she makes sure that her plan is known and followed through on.
She is sternly instructing the stuffed bear she named Parker after her favorite person in the world on how to color. "You press down. But not too much cause it soaks through and then Mom gets mad." She shakes the marker impressively at the bear who is studying her with all the attention the interns give her mother. "Inside the lines, Ms. Suzy says -- except when there's no lines. I like that best."
Booth coughs, trying to hide a laugh, and Gracie hears him. She whirls around and her whole face lights up from the inside out. "Daddy!"
"Baby-girl," Booth says, as he opens his arms and drops into a squat, accepting the hug that nearly knocks him over. "How was your day?"
"Fun!" she says, bouncing in his arms as he picks her up. Brennan tells him all the time that Gracie is too old for him to be picking her up all of the time, but Booth knows that he has to cling to these moments because time goes so fast and he'll blink and tomorrow he'll be buying her a prom dress.
"Were you a princess today?" He asks, tapping on the tiara she has arranged artfully in her hair. It matches the pink tutu she's got on.
"Yes. Molly wanted to be a princess, too."
"At school?" Booth had a hard time keeping Gracie's friends straight. Some were invisible, some were real, and some he was still figuring out.
"Yes."
"So there were two princesses, huh?"
"Yeah. Until I got home. Then it's just me. Parker doesn't like to play princess." Gracie studies him seriously and reaches forward and smooths the skin of his forehead out. "Does your head hurt?"
"It did a little before," Booth says.
"Sometimes school makes my head hurt, too." Gracie kisses his forehead, a sweet little peck, and Booth squeezes her before setting her down on the ground. She runs off at full speed, around him and down to the kitchen, shouting for her Mom. Booth smiles and rubs his forehead. Gracie's better than Tylenol.
**
Booth's stretched out in a sleeping bag, one hand loosely wrapped around Brennan's. There was a time, he thinks ruefully, when he would have zipped their two bags together and slept spooned together. The kids are with them this time, though. Parker's old enough to take it in stride, but Gracie's seven and Booth doesn't want to answer those questions yet.
He hears a sound outside the tent and Brennan hits his leg with an open palm. "Go find out what that is."
Booth grins. "I thought it was your turn."
"No," Brennan says, not opening her eyes. "I changed the last poopy diaper."
"That was five years ago!"
"Still counts," Brennan says, sticking to her guns. Booth laughs and opens the tent flap, standing to his full height and looking around before he spots the culprit.
It is Gracie, hair carefully braided in pigtails, poking at the remains of the campfire and looking up at the sky.
"Hey Gracie-girl," Booth whispers, his voice low and gruff. "What are you doing up?"
"Parker snores," Gracie says, and Booth notices that she's folded herself nearly in half, her face contorted in an expression that isn't right.
"Are you sure that's it?" Booth sits next to her and bumps her with a shoulder, noticing when she winces in pain. "What's wrong, baby?"
"My stomach hurts," she says mournfully.
"Okay." Booth has a moment of panic when he wants to call for Brennan, but he mans up. Remembers that he's done this before. "How bad, honey?"
"Real bad," Gracie says, closing her eyes until tears force their way out.
Booth's eyebrows fly up. His girl rarely cries -- never at scraped knees or elbows. She's spent her whole life running after a brother twelve years older than her, bound and determined to let nothing slow her down. "Do you want me to get your mom?"
She shakes her head vehemently. "No. We've been planning this trip forever and Parker came back from school and everything. I don't want her to make us go home."
"Baby, if you're sick, then we need to take care of you, okay? Parker can come back if he needs to. Besides, maybe it's just bad hot-dogs."
Gracie tries to laugh but it comes out as a gasp. Booth stands to his feet. "I'm getting your mom."
"Dad!"
"Grace Booth. Do not use that tone of voice with me." Booth shoots her a glance that quells her attitude and heads back to his tent, shaking Brennan awake with a hand. "Bones."
"Hmm?"
"Gracie's sick."
She sits up. Booth remembers a time when she wondered whether or not she could possibly be a good mother -- but she is. The best. She goes from sleeping to wakefulness in a matter of moments. "How sick?"
"Pain in her stomach. Enough to keep her up."
Brennan is reaching for her pajama bottoms as Booth talks. "It could be any number of things."
"I thought maybe bad hot-dogs," Booth teases.
"Just a few hours ago you were insisting there was no such thing as a bad hot-dog," Brennan shoots back, but she's pulling the tent flap back and across the campsite before Booth can respond.
"Hi Mom," Gracie says, her eyes filled with tears.
Brennan brushes back their daughter's bangs and winces in sympathy. "It must hurt a lot for you to be in tears, Grace."
"I didn't want to wake anybody up," Gracie cries in protest of an imagined slight.
"She gets this from you," Brennan says, looking up at Booth. "If you're sick, your father and I are who you wake up. No matter what time or where you are or how old you get. If you need us, Booth and I will always be here. Now. Where does it hurt?"
"My... side," Gracie says, pointing. "All over. But mostly my side."
Brennan tests her gingerly, wincing when Gracie grunts in pain. "Booth, we should take her to the hospital."
"What?"
"Appendicitis is a possibility," she says seriously.
"Oh." Booth nods. "You load Gracie up. Parker and I will be ready to rock and roll before you gals are."
"Dad, you don't..."
"Gracie Christine. Enough." Booth walks over to Parker's tent, unzips it and shakes his son awake. "Parker, c'mon."
"What's up, Dad?"
"Gracie's sick. We're going to take her to the hospital. Can you help me break down camp?"
"Yeah, Dad. Absolutely." Parker's up and ready to go quickly, and together they move with the efficiency of years of father-son camping trips and Booth's ingrained military training. They are on the road within twenty minutes, driving quickly but safely through the dark roads of the campground until they reach city lights.
Booth and Parker drop Brennan and Gracie off at the emergency entrance and park the SUV.
Booth remembers going to see Cullen, all those years ago, when his daughter had been so ill, just before she died. He remembers thinking of how terrified he would be if it had been Parker. It always flashed through his mind before he went to his kids in the hospital. And they were there often enough -- broken bones, sports injuries, science projects gone awry.
Parker, so tall now that he had Booth by a half-inch, laid his hand on Booth's shoulder as they walked up to the entrance. "She's going to be fine, Dad. She's a trooper."
"Yeah." Booth shakes off the worry that threatens to paralyze him, and meets Brennan in the waiting room, where together they fill out the paperwork together. Parker sits next to Gracie, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and running his hand through her hair. Booth can hear their conversation.
"Hurts pretty bad, huh?"
"The worst."
Parker squeezes his sister's arm. "You know, kiddo, I miss you a ton."
"Miss you more."
Parker grins. "Probably. I'm not nearly as annoying as you are."
"Ha ha." Gracie's working on perfecting Angela's eyeroll. Booth notices that she's getting pretty good at it, for a seven-year-old in pain. "Why do you have to be so far away?"
"Cause that's where they gave me the most money to go." Parker shrugs.
"Will you come back for my First Communion?" Gracie looks up at him. "I get to wear a white dress and everything."
"Of course." Parker nods solemnly. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. Are you gonna practice not making a face when you taste the wine?"
"Is it gross?" Gracie looks worried.
"The worst," Parker says conspiratorially. "You get used to it, though."
The nurse eventually sends them down the hallway, and the doctor comes in and soon, Brennan's instincts are proved correct. Appendicitis and emergency surgery are the only words Booth can really remember.
Brennan next to him reminds him patiently that it's a fairly routine surgery with a high success rate, but... it's his baby girl going under the knife and words like "routine" and "usually" don't mean shit right now.
The doctor's about to take her into surgery when Brennan catches her arm. "Dr. Franks? A moment of your time, please. Her father has some unusual reactions to a certain kind of anesthesia and I would be more comfortable..."
Their voices disappear down the hallway, and Booth looks down at his daughter, who is looking up at him with trusting eyes.
"Pretty scary, huh kiddo?" Parker asks from behind Booth.
"Nah, this is easy stuff," Gracie says, grinning. She's missing a tooth.
"You're awesome," Parker says, giving her a high-five. "See ya when you get out, okay?"
"See ya." Parker leaves, and Booth bends over to give her a noisy kiss on the cheek like he does before bedtime every night. Gracie reaches up and smooths the lines from his forehead away with the palms of her hands.
"See ya, Daddy."
**
Parker's graduating from college today. Then there's a week and he's off to basic training. Because, Booth thinks to himself, he's just too much like his old man. He's downstairs in the kitchen with boxers on and a robe, drinking a cup of coffee, when he hears the explosion start upstairs.
He winces. Of course his daughter would head into wildly-emotional puberty earlier than usual. She's done everything else ahead of schedule. Her inability to be rational clashes sharply with Brennan's firm belief in it and the result is...
"It is too early in the morning for this kind of behavior!"
"Mom, I'm eleven years old and I can dress myself!"
"If your father sees you wearing that public, he will shoot you. And I will be unable to stop him."
"It's a cute outfit, Mom!"
"It is developmentally inappropriate. You will wear something else." Booth's eyebrows have been crawling up his forehead slowly up until this point. He's curious, in a way. But he also wants to avoid being caught in the cross-fi...
"Booth!"
Dammit.
"Yeah, Bones?"
"I require your assistance."
"Mom!"
"Bring your gun. You're going to want to shoot your daughter."
Booth's standing up when he hears the conclusion of the fight. "Fine. Jeez, Mom." Her door slams. Booth growls.
"Grace Christine, you will close your door like a lady or I'll take it off the hinges!" He shouts up the stairs.
Of course, he can hear the wailing from the table. Life is so unfair when you're eleven. Brennan comes down the stairs, dressed in a sundress and large hat, ready to attend the ceremony later that that day.
"She's your daughter," they say together, and laugh wearily.
**
Gracie is fourteen the first time that Booth wants to shoot someone on her behalf. He's a young man by the name of Brad, a name that Booth has always hated, and he knows nothing about whatever piece of shit this kid may be, other than he broke his only daughter's heart.
He watches, helpless, from the door as Brennan rocks Gracie back and forth in a way she hasn't done since his baby girl was young, whispering soothing things under her breath. He feels useless, extraneous.
He walks down the stairs and gets his service pistol from the gun cabinet. Deliberately, he takes it apart, makes sure all of the rounds are removed from the chamber, and methodically cleans it.
He's at the task for hours, a perfectionist streak in him rising up that has long been subdued since his time in the Army. It's nearly midnight when he looks up and sees Gracie there. Her eyes have stopped being so red, and they only look a little puffy.
He opens his arms automatically and she falls into them. "He's such a jerk, Daddy."
"All teenaged boys are jerks," Booth says loyally. "Jerks who are... diseased. It's better just to stay away from them until they're forty. No... fifty."
Gracie laughs reluctantly and wipes her eyes. "What are you doing?"
"Cleaning my gun."
"Daddy, you can't shoot Brad." She's teasing him. Booth smiles.
"If anyone could get away with murder, it'd be your mom and me."
"True." Gracie reaches out a hesitant hand. "Hey...Dad?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Will you show me sometime how to fire a gun?"
"You aren't allowed to shoot Brad, either," Booth says.
"No, Dad. I just thought..." She sighed. "I thought it'd be fun."
"It can be." Booth finishes and puts the gun back in the lock box. "You want to learn, really?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
"Really?"
"If I can trust your mother to conceal and carry, at the very least I can show you how to protect yourself," Booth says.
"Awesome!" She kisses his cheek and is halfway up the stairs before she barrels back down. With two thumbs, she eases the lines in his forehead. "Goodnight, Dad."
"Night, Gracie."
**
Gracie turns eighteen and Brennan and Booth have a private party, just the two of them. Wine in the kitchen and soft music over the sound system. They sway gently in the kitchen to Louis Armstrong wailing hopefully about a kiss to build a dream on.
It's late at night when the front door opens and Gracie barrels in, full-steam ahead as she has done all of her life. She sees Booth and Brennan and grins.
All Booth can see is a little girl with pigtails in her hair, missing a tooth. It nearly stops his heart.
"Did you have a good time?" Brennan asks, unmoving from Booth's arms as they dance slowly together, unceasingly.
"Yeah. Mike's okay. And the music was good."
"Not like this," Booth denies, quick-stepping Brennan around in a whirl. She laughs, delighted and clings to his biceps until she gets her balance again.
"Nope," Gracie agrees, popping a grape in her mouth as she watches her parents slow dancing together. "This kind of dancing looks like more fun than what was at the party, too."
Brennan smiles, looking deep into Booth's eyes and he can feel the love of two decades, the love of his life, the love he just knew, shining back at him. "It is."
**
Special Agent Grace Booth-Williams and Doctor Parker Booth buried their father on a cold day in December. They stood on either side of Brennan, holding her hands as they put Booth into the ground.
"You think the soul goes on after the body expires?" Brennan asks Gracie as she makes her mother a hot cup of tea.
"That's what Dad always said. And Dad... he just knew things like that," Gracie says, tucking her mother in. "I can't abide the thought of Dad stopping, you know?"
"Yes." Brennan closes her eyes, and Gracie tip-toes from her bedroom into the family room, where Parker is waiting for her.
"She all set?"
"Yeah. I think she'll sleep."
"Good. Come here, kiddo." Parker opens up his arms and Gracie steps into them, holding on tight to her brother. "I'm going to miss him."
Gracie nods. "So much."
When she unlocks her house later that night, her husband is waiting for her. And on top of him, her five-year-old son is asleep, his thumb in his mouth. Gary hands him to her and she walks him up the stairs, to the bedroom with crayons in the middle of the floor.
She lays him on the bed and kisses his cheek and is about to pull away when he reaches up and soothes the lines of her forehead away with two small palms.
"Don't be sad, Mommy."
"Oh, honey." She kisses his cheek again. "I'll try not to be."