Title: (something that changes) What it Means to Be Human
Author: Cardiogod
Characters/Pairings: Brennan, B/B
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1900
Spoilers: Set post season 5 finale.
Disclaimer: They're not mine.
Summary: There are no letters between them.
Author's Note: Thanks to the lovely TT and MissM for looking this over for me and reassuring me that I'm not as rusty as I feel.
There are no letters between them.
There are no emails.
There are no phone calls or text messages or Skype meetings.
She doesn't even send a postcard.
It isn't something that they decided upon, the lack of communication, it's just something that happens.
There is a routine in Indonesia and it becomes comfortable, after an initial period of adjustment during which she wondered if she had actually made the right choice. But she did and she is here and she grows accustomed to the less-than-adequate coffee and the always-present dirt underneath her fingernails.
She awakes around seven every morning. Many days, the sun is so bright as it rises that her eyes open before her alarm clock has the chance to wake her and she thinks it's wonderful to witness the rotation of the earth, constant even thousands of miles away from the place she calls home.
She showers twice daily in the outdoor shower stall that the project has set up for her. The water is cold – she thinks that Hodgins would be very interested in examining it for microorganisms – but it feels good on her hot skin. The air is heavy with humidity here. Her work is physical and strenuous; she sweats profusely and regards this with a little bit of pride; it is proof that she has worked hard and has made a difference.
She digs with her team. She is both leader and teacher, but she does not regard herself as a superior being, even though her intelligence and experience greatly surpass that of those around her.
This is one of the reasons that she loves what she does; one is never too good to get her hands dirty. She is the expert, but digging in the dirt? Looking for answers? She is also a humble worker. Her intelligence does not set her apart here.
In her daily log, she writes of the things that they find and the things they don't find, of the methods they use and the conclusions they draw. She likes seeing the log book fill up as the time passes and she enjoys the act of writing, of documenting something that has the potential to change so many things.
She thinks of change often. She is studying evolution, after all.
She eats nasi goreng and finds that it is tasty. She has always liked ethnic food, though nothing surpasses mee krob, if only for the memories attached to it.
She has developed a routine.
It is steady and it is comfortable, and it is something she knows. She likes it here because she feels like she knows who she is.
She is a scientist.
She is an explorer.
She is a student and a teacher and a discoverer.
She is glad to learn that she has not lost these things, these things that make her her.
She doesn't think of him as much as she thought she would, but he still crosses her mind often, mostly when her work is done and she has time to herself to reflect.
She spends a lot of time thinking.
About him, yes. But not always.
She finds it odd that she does not seriously worry for his safety in Afghanistan. But he has promised her that he will not be a hero, and she trusts him to keep his promise. She finds that she trusts him implicitly, and this surprises her. Hodgins once told her that she had faith in Booth, and she is beginning to think that he is correct, as her belief in him surpasses all rational thought or valid concern. Yes, he faces danger, but he has given his word that he will return safely and, for some reason that she cannot fully understand, she believes this to be true.
She thinks about him.
But mostly she thinks about herself and about who she is and what she wants. She is gathering evidence.
The discovery that she is who she always was – scientist, empiricist, rationalist – is a relief from a fear she did not even know she harbored.
When she realizes it, she is standing over the dig site and experiencing the process of her own mind. The challenge pleases her, and her ability to meet that challenge offers comfort.
It's not that her work with Booth isn't challenging, because she finds it immensely so, but it is challenging in a different way, one she cannot clearly articulate, despite her laudable linguistic prowess.
She only knows that this work, the work that she is doing now, stimulates her brain and she likes putting the pieces together without consequence. They reveal things, they are scientifically invaluable, they will be written about in scholarly journals and they will change the way that humanity is viewed, but these consequences are abstract, distant.
Ancient remains, she has decided, are easier, because although their intellectual challenge is great, the emotional one is not present. The families of the remains are long-dead. There is no mourning their passage, there are not tears at the cause of death, there is not the question of how to move on once a loved one has passed.
There is no pain. There is merely discovery and joy.
She loves this work, and she is glad to find that she can still do it.
But she is not the person she was when she first began.
She sees his influence everywhere.
She tries to use humor to lighten the mood of the workplace environment and, although her jokes are not widely understood, Daisy Wick always laughs.
Someone makes a reference to Michael Jackson and she knows what that means.
She is able to identify and respond to the emotional states of her colleagues by reading their body language and their facial expressions.
She asks "Why?" instead of "How?"
And when she finds Ms. Wick huddled in the tent they shared, crying about the loss of her Lancelot, she goes to her and offers comfort and understanding.
She is more than who she was; she is who she's becoming.
She doesn't know what to make of it.
This is one of the things she thinks about.
She comes close to contacting him once, when her team takes a break to swim in a fresh spring near the dig site and she thinks of Parker and his fondness for swimming pools. She wants to tell Booth that he should take Parker to the pool in her apartment building when he gets back, but she doesn't.
Instead, she writes letters in her head, letters that are fragmented and never fully formed, but enough to satisfy her need to convey her thoughts to a person unseen.
They are not very long – a few words, maybe a sentence, occasionally two – but they are always directed towards him.
Booth – Apple pie today.
Booth – Made a big discovery today. Just wanted you to know.
Booth – Ms. Wick is driving me crazy. (Not literally; I am not mentally ill, but I thought you would appreciate the use of colloquialism.)
Booth – Ms. Wick is not as annoying as I had originally assessed.
Booth – Six months.
Booth – Missing you.
That last one works its way in and out of her unsent, unwritten letters. It gives her pause.
There is one day when she gets a feeling like he might be in trouble. She does not know where it comes from, but it is a pervading feeling all day long, like there is something heavy in her stomach that will not digest.
She considers writing to him to find out if he is okay.
She decides against it because the irrational part of her feels like contacting him might break whatever it is that is keeping him safe. It is not logical. It does not make sense. But she cannot bring herself to type an email, just in case.
She is reminded of the time when she bet on him on a cool Las Vegas night so that he would not lose his boxing match. Beginners luck, he called it.
She told him on another cool evening that she is not a gambler.
She thinks about this.
Because she has gambled in coming here, coming to Indonesia and staying for a year and trusting that he will be there when she gets back. She doesn't recognize it as such – she sees it as a calculated risk with a low probability of loss.
A calculated risk, not a gamble.
She does not yet understand that these things are one and the same.
But she will.
And when she does, in her ninth month on Maluku, the realization nearly knocks her backwards.
There is a chance that he will not come back from Iraq.
There is a chance that he will not come back alone.
There is a chance that his feelings for her will have changed.
There is a chance that when they meet at the coffee cart in a little less than three months, everything will be different, and not in a good way.
There is a chance.
But she came anyway because she needed this time to think, to discover, and she trusts that when she returns, things will be okay between them. Better than okay.
She has gambled.
She smiles.
They find what they are looking for not long after her realization. Daisy finds the last link that puts it all together, and Brennan thinks that she has never seen such joy.
She has been thinking a lot about evolution. What it means to be human.
Biology teaches her that everything changes. Nothing in the universe is static. Everything evolves.
One thing becomes another in order to adapt to an ever-shifting environment.
They do this in order to survive.
The organisms that cannot adapt, the ones that remain static, perish.
Evolve or die.
She does not want to die. (Although she acknowledges physical death as a biological inevitability, she is not talking about that.)
She tries to picture her world without him in it.
Even though she has lived a life without him for ten months, she still cannot imagine it.
He told her that things must change, that they cannot remain as they were in those painful months after that night outside of Sweets' office.
She thinks again of that night and of his pleas and of his kiss.
She thinks of the things that scared her, she thinks of hurting him if she fails at this, if she can't be what he wants.
It occurs to her that maybe he just wants her.
She told him that night that she is a scientist and that she can't change.
She understands now that those two things, science and change, are not mutually exclusive.
They are, in fact, symbiotic.
Physics teaches her that an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.
She was at rest, and then she met him, and he set her body, her mind, her heart into motion and she has been spinning around ever since.
And now she must adapt.
She has already adapted.
She sees who she was and she sees who she is and she sees who she is becoming and she thinks that she is more capable of change than she thought she was.
Except, to her, it isn't change; it is evolution.
And that makes all the difference.
She smiles.
She will see him in two months, and together, they will evolve.