Discovery

Chapter 10

Willow checked her email late on Sunday night, having been out patrolling with Buffy, Angel, Xander and Cordy. Giles had opted to stay behind when he heard that they were planning on starting off at the Bronze.
She smiled when she saw that she had a new email from her 'maybe' dad. She smiled as she read it. It was Monday the next day. Maybe this time tomorrow she would know for sure whether or not Special Agent Seeley Booth was her father. If he was, she was going to show the others the photo of him she found on the computer. There was no use creating such a huge disturbance in the group over nothing.
Willow decided to type a quick email off to Agent Booth before she went to bed 'To Agent Booth,
I did some research on my mom and found out her being valedictorian. I think it's cool. My friends found a photo of her on the computer when we were looking her up, and they reckon we look alike. I'm sure you are very smart.
Thank-you for your condolences about Jesse. I still miss him sometimes, but Buffy's been helping us get over it and move on.
I wondered if you would make the connection between my mother and I. My father is a Rabbi, and he spends little time in Sunnydale though, as does my mother. They spend most of their time on the lecture circuit and attending different conferences around at the world, and they also like going on holidays. When they both are in town, it doesn't last much longer than a week or maybe two, and then they'll be gone again for another six months, or more, so it wasn't that great when I was growing up. I was just the guinea pig that they tried out my mother's theories on (I'm not talking to my parents at the moment, or they're not talking to me, either way. I'm staying with Buffy and her mom.)
They're off in Spain at the moment, and no, I have no siblings, or rather adopted siblings
You sound like Xander. He likes comic books too, and has a huge stash under his bed (though he isn't so keen on watching sport.) I don't really follow much sport. I like to keep track of how the school team is going, because I know those people, sort of, anyway.
I sent the DNA test away last night. Hopefully it will arrive tomorrow sometime. I'm really excited about finding out if you are really my dad, or if, you know.
Never mind, I'm just going to shut up now.
Sunnydale's crime rates are actually down on what they were two years ago. I don't really know why they are so high. Maybe it's just the kind of town that attracts the wrong kind of person.'
Willow snorted with laughter as she wrote that,
'The crime rate has always been high though, so the demand for the graveyards is high. My friends and I think that the businesses that are the most successful in the entire town are the morgue, the funeral directors, and the stone masons.
I'm glad that I'm not going to get you into trouble.
I hope that you're well, and that you aren't being distracted by murder investigations because of me.
From Willow.'
BtVS/XO BtVS/XO BtVS/XO BtVS/XO BtVS/XO
Cam had not been at the Jeffersonian long that morning when the courier arrived with a parcel labeled express post from a place called Sunnydale. She knew instantly what it was. Seeley had given her the heads up yesterday that he had instructed Willow to send a mouth swab to her. She opened up the parcel, and found a single cotton bud, enclosed safely in the canister for the packet of cotton buds sitting in the packaging, surrounded by padding. She put gloves on and took the parcel into her lab, where she carefully got the swab out, sending it off for DNA tests. She'd pulled a favor and had them assigned to the top of the list. With a bit of luck, they'd have a result by the end of the day.
Cam knew that Booth had already, at least subconsciously, accepted Willow as his daughter, and Cam was inclined to believe him, but she was going to wait until the teenager's DNA results came back before she committed herself to the theory. It all was very plausible, and there was no way Carmen would have cheated on Booth, and Cam remembered what her old best friend had been like during the month after Booth left, before she disappeared. Carmen had been a shadow of her former self, very much still feeling the loss of her lover. She'd pined for him, and thrown herself into her studies, determined to have established herself when Booth returned. Cam had suspected, though Seeley had neither confirmed nor denied her speculation, that he'd proposed to Carmen before he'd been shipped out, promising her to marry her when he returned.
Only thing was, when he did return, Carmen, the only one who knew the truth, was long dead, and Willow had been whisked away by her new, adopted parents.
Sometimes life just sucked.
BtVS/XO BtVS/XO BtVS/XO BtVS/XO BtVS/XO
Booth strode into the lab, nodding in greeting to the guards at the door, who nodded in reply. He'd gotten the text message from Cam twenty minutes ago, the one that asked him to come to the lab. It didn't take an IQ of over One hundred and sixty to figure out what it involved, considering that there was no case.
He glanced up on the platform, and spotted Bones and Zach working on some hundred year old skeleton, talking in low voices. Acting casually, he walked around the platform to Cam's office, knocking on the door before entering.
"Hey, you wanted to see me?" he grinned. Cam got up from her desk, and grinned at Booth, picking up an envelope from her desk. It had been opened.
"Is that...Is that what I think it is?" He nervously asked. Cam nodded
"The DNA sample arrived this morning, and I added the sample of your DNA we have on file here and I called in a few favors and had it put as a high priority."
"Thanks, Cam." Booth smiled, taking the envelope from her and sitting against her desk. Cam got up and sat next to him.
"This is going to change my life, Cam. If this is positive I'm going to, instantaneously, become the father of a teenaged girl."
"You'll be fine, Seeley. You've already started off the hardest part, getting to know her. You just have to keep going and take it as it comes."
Booth pulled out the contents of the envelope and looked at the cover sheet. He glanced over the paragraph at the top of the page, and the couple of graphs that decorated the page, before he looked at the bottom of the page.
POSITIVE MATCH; CONFIRMED FATHER DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP "Congratulations Seeley, It's a girl" Cam said with a wide smile on her face.
Booth froze, looking at the papers in his hand. There were so many people he would have to tell. Parker, Bones, Rebecca, Jared, Pops (He shuddered at the thought of that conversation), the rest of the Squints, his boss at the FBI, Caroline would probably find out, especially if he wanted to petition for custody, although he was planning on making an assessment of her living conditions and how happy she was before he made any major steps like that. There was no point uprooting her from her friends, her school, and everything she'd ever known, just because he wanted her close. She was sixteen after all.
Booth realized he'd been holding his breath, and forced himself to exhale, before inhaling again. "Booth, are you alright?" Cam asked, slightly concerned.
"Yeah, just give me a few minutes for it to all sink in."
"Okay then, just remember that I'm here if you need."
Booth nodded, his head lowered, keeping his face hidden, as he knew his emotions would be obvious to Cam.
"Thank-you," He murmured after a while, looking up again. Just as Cam guessed, there were tears in his eyes. She wrapped her arms around him comfortingly.
"Its okay, Seeley, It'll all be alright."
"I can't believe that I've had a kid out there all these years, all the stuff I missed. Willow admitted that her parents are away a lot, she's practically raising herself. Her parent's guinea pig, she called herself."
"It isn't your fault, Seeley." Cam murmured reassuringly.
"I know. At least Parker will be happy, he always wanted a sibling. Pops is gonna kill me though. Hey, I have a daughter, which makes her the first girl in the Booth clan in about five generations, according to Pops. He always said he wanted a great-granddaughter to spoil."
Cam laughed, " I guess he got his wish, You always were the kind of guy that would do the unexpected."
"I'm going to go email Willow and tell her the good news. I think she'll be happy. She sounds like she wanted it to be true."
"What are you going to do after that, Booth?" Cam asked curiously.
"Tell everyone, Bones, Parker, Rebecca, the rest of my family, and then I'll head down there for a visit. I want to meet her face to face."
"Fair enough, don't let me stop you" Cam said with a grin. Booth slid off her desk and walked out of the office, and out of the lab, before going down to the basement garage and driving back to the Hoover building. He walked back to his office and got onto his computer, opening up his email. He grinned when he saw that Cam had sent him a copy of the results for him to forward onto Willow.
He opened up a new email, and attached the results, before he began to write. 'Dear Willow,
I attached the results from the DNA tests to this email, I hope you have them. What they mean is that we are related, you are my daughter. I am you father.
And that sounded like a Star Wars quote. I'm sorry if that was cliche.
I think we should get together at some point. I am going to arrange to have a few days off work so I can come down to Sunnydale to meet you, because I really would like to meet you face to face.
I'm sorry if this sounds weird, but I've never done this before. I don't really know what to write.
I'm also sorry about your parents being away for so much of the year. Who looks after you while they are gone? How long has this been going on? I'm sure they care about you very much, and that they miss you when they are gone, and that you aren't "Just their Guinea Pig." Do you get many post cards or phone calls or emails form them while they are away? Do you ever go away with them for a holiday?
I know it sounds like I'm questioning you, but like I said; it's a hard habit to break.
So, you aren't into sport, and neither is your friend Xander. What do you do with your friends on the weekends?
Just in case you were wondering, I am not married, and I never have been married. The closest I got was being kind of engaged to your mom. We were both too young to handle being married (we were only 18 at the time, so I promised that when I got back from the war, I would marry her, but when I came back she was gone.)
I don't know if you already knew this, but your mom died not too long after you were born. Her body was found in a cave and identified, and returned to her parents. That was the last time I saw them, at your mother's funeral. I asked Carmen's best friend from high school, Cam, (who I now work with. She's the one who I got you to send the DNA to) and she told me that your grandfather died a couple of years ago, but we don't know about your grandmother. Both of my parents are gone, but my grandad is still around. I think he'll really like you. He'll probably kick my butt for having fathered a kid pretty much straight out of high school though, but he's always said that he wanted a great-granddaughter to spoil. I'll tell you more about my family when we meet.
When I learned that I was your father, I was so scared that I was going to stuff up. You sound like such a wonderful person, so much like your mother, and I don't want to wreck that. The only experience I have of teenagers was the ones I grew up with, and the ones that I encounter through my work, which isn't much.
I hope I haven't scared you off in this email, but I have so many questions. Please reply back and tell me when it would be okay for me to visit.
From Your Dad, Seeley Booth

Sorry about taking so long to update but my ipad crashed and i lost all of my writing so i have to redo it all over again, I'll update as soon as i can.