This story takes place after "The Monster in the Closet". This story was requested by OKBones. I hope you like it.
A/N: Partially told from Booth's point of view.
I don't own Bones. Not even a little bit.
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Everyone has a monster in a closet. It's just when we get older we call it something else. My little girl is brilliant like her mother and she has an active imagination. I'm not sure what happened to trigger this, but she's started to be afraid that there is a monster in her bedroom closet.
I know a lot of kids go through this, but I thought my kids would skip this part of childhood. I was hoping so anyway. Bones and I do everything we can to protect them, but I guess we can't protect them from everything.
It makes me sad to think that my baby girl is afraid of something. I've always wanted to protect her from the monsters in this world, but I know I can't. Evil exists and as hard as I fight to destroy it, it always crops back up. Monsters in the closet can be imaginary to some, but we all know they exist.
When I was a boy, I had my own monster in the closet except he lived in the bedroom down the hall from my bedroom. He was a sorry excuse for a human being and he took pleasure in beating his wife and kids. Edwin Booth was a monster that I was born to and there wasn't anyone to make him go away. Even my Mom couldn't protect us from him and she finally ran away because she couldn't take it anymore.
My monster got worse after that and I thought he'd probably kill me some day. I lost hope until my grandfather found out about what was going on and he took me and my brother away from him. My Pops was the bravest man I knew and he rescued me from my monster. He saved me from that evil.
We all have monsters and they take a lot of different forms. Bones was a Foster kid and her foster parents abused her. They were her monsters. The State gave her to them and they almost killed her . . . It's terrible that the ones that are supposed to protect you turn out to be the ones you can't trust, still we all have our monsters to live with.
Some people are lucky and their monsters are imaginary, but a lot of us have real monsters in our lives. Those people, the ones with real monsters . . . some of them survive and some of them don't. It's the way the world works and God knows I wish it didn't.
Right now my little girl's monster is imaginary. No matter how many times I've showed her that there isn't anything in the closet in the dark that isn't there in the light, she still believes it's there.
Last night, I pretended to scare the monster away, but that didn't help. She went to sleep and everything was okay until she woke up and she saw her monster. She was really scared and me and Bones tried to help her. I tried to scare the monster away again, but Bones didn't like that. You know how she is. She believes in the truth and she told Christine that monsters don't exist. Which might be the truth in a small way, but it's not true in a big way.
I know Bones believes in monsters because she's seen her fair share of them. Howard Epps, Christopher Pelant . . . Glen Durant, those guys were evil. They were monsters and no one can deny it, but I get that Bones doesn't want our little girl to believe in imaginary monsters. Christine is going to find out soon enough that real monsters live in this world if she already doesn't. She's lost her Uncle Sweets and Pops and . . . well you get it.
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Booth was tired and Aubrey followed him into the break room from the elevator. His day seemed to be par for the course, because his mug was gone from the counter. After grabbing the coffee pot, he carried it towards the open doorway with Aubrey shadowing him. Booth wasn't sure why he told Aubrey, but he did. "Christine . . . she's been having these really bad Freddy Krueger-like nightmares about monsters in her closet."
As Booth moved away from him and towards the door, Aubrey decided to give his friend some advice, after all what are friends for? "You want my advice?"
He didn't really need or want advice, so as Booth walked away from the break room with Aubrey following him, Booth tried to shut him down. "Your advice? Right because you're a single guy who knows how to deal with kids."
The younger man let that sarcastic observation go by. "No, trust me. The key is that Christine's gotta confront the monster head on. She's gotta get out of bed, walk up to the closet, tell the monster to go bye-bye or else her Dad's gonna put a cap in his ass."
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That evening as Booth helped his daughter get ready for bed, he decided that Aubrey's advice couldn't hurt the situation and it might even help. "Christine . . . tonight, if you think you see the monster . . . um, go to the closet and tell the monster that if he doesn't go away that your Daddy is going to bring his gun in here and he's going to shoot him in the butt."
Her glance moving towards the closet, Christine bit her bottom lip and decided to trust her father. "Okay, Daddy. I will."
Those innocent blue eyes now staring at him, Booth knew that he would do anything to protect her. As he knelt next to his daughter, he placed his arms around her shoulders, hugged her and kissed her. "Baby, you're going to be okay. Daddy and Mommy are just down the hallway and we will not let anyone or anything do something bad to you . . . do you trust me?"
Her small arms moving around her father's chest, well as much as small arms can, Christine nodded her head. "I do Daddy. I'll tell him."
Relieved that his daughter seemed to be alright, Booth stood up, pulled the comforter back and watched his daughter scramble into her bed. After she was settled on the mattress, he pulled the cover up to her chin. Filled with love for her, he leaned over, kissed her and smiled at her. "I love you baby girl."
"I love you Daddy." As she watched him leave the room, Christine was determined to be brave like her mother and father were.
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Later that night, a noise woke the sleeping girl and made her sit up in her bed. Momentarily considering whether or not to call for her Daddy or Mommy, Christine decided to do what her father had told her to do. Her courage to the forefront, she slid out of her bed and slowly walked over to the closet. As she pulled the door open, she looked into the small room and confronted her monster. "My Daddy says that if you don't go away, he'll shoot you in the butt and he will too. He has a big gun and he will shoot you to make you go away."
As she watched the monster slip past her out of the room and move quickly down the hallway, Christine decided to hide in the closet just in case he came back. When she entered the closet, she knocked her snow globe off of the dresser and when she turned to watch it fall she accidentally caused her pile of stuffed animals to cascade down on top of her. Burrowing under the pile, Christine new the monster was gone and she was safe. Her Daddy had been right to tell him to go away and her mother was right too. There are no monsters if you tell them to go away.
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A little something that popped into my head this morning. Please leave me a review and let me know what you think of it.