A/N: Hello! So, this is my first Bones one-shot ever. I hope I did well (because I feel I started out good and then it went to hell in a handbasket -.-') and didn't go OOC on Bones. I am updating this one-shot because it's my 18th birthday today (31st December, lame day, I know) and I have a tradition of updating a one-shot on my birthday.
A few things, I am from Belgium and my first language is Dutch, I only learn English in school so I try to help myself out with what I've learned so far. This is not beta-ed so there are mistakes, I know that, but it's almost 1 am here and my brain is kind of half asleep already so I probably read over them. To the ones that follow my OTH fanfiction, I am so so so so sorry for not updating anything for so long, I am just so busy (lame excuse, you already are tired of that one probably) and I am kind of stuck with my stories so I am trying to figure out how I am going to deal with the stories and stuff.
Now I am just going to stop talking ... I hope you'll enjoy
--BB--
Unlovable
Rushing through the hallways of the Jeffersonian while helpless tears misted her big troubled blue eyes, her hands giving her the guidance she would need just in case she would bump into something as a wall or another human being. But she wouldn't. She knew her way around here blindly, her teary eyes wouldn't bother her finding the way to her destination. Nor would another individual cross her path because this part of the building was usually deserted.
The grabbing of a pale hand, the push of a flat palm followed by the uneasy step of wooden heels.
A breath, bringing oxygen into her system, pushing carbon dioxide out her body.
She straightened herself up to repeat the easiest, the most practiced, the automatic action of a human body. Staying alive.
But she couldn't, a sob rose from her throat. Her fragile hands clutching for the sink, for some sort of steadiness. Steadiness of life maybe? She strangled the sob deep in her throat. Her teeth buried themselves on the inside of her lips, fighting back everything that dared to come up. Sobs, cries, tears. She had to fight them back, each miserable one of them. Any sign of sorrow, frustration, anger, angst, hurt. Any emotion that would put her out of control and make her somebody she wasn't. Or claimed to be she wasn't.
A sniff made her chest shortly heave. New oxygen made her chest slightly swell. Using her knuckles, she brushed the upcoming tears away not too lightly. Her hands transforming from wrists into their flat position, running through her chocolate brown hair out of pure frustration.
She threw a look into the mirror which reflected a Persian red shade spreading over her face, lingering on her cheeks to accentuate before spreading further to her delicate neck. The skin that always appeared to be rather pale was painted away by the shade of red.
As her turquoise eyes hit the merciless mirror, imagines and reflections started to whirl around her. Every single visualization was her, but wasn't her.
She fought to close her eyes, but for some sort of reason she couldn't understand in the way of science, they didn't perform the action send from her brain.
Again she gasped for breathe, trying to push away the pictures that flickered before her eyes like a flashes of lightning. She didn't want to acknowledge them, she simply refused, she had to find a way out.
"You are aware of the fact you're a cold hearted bitch right, or is it just a part of your act?"
The words sharper than a cutting of a knife, ringing in her ears. Still ringing in her ears after being spoken by a random associate from the FBI on their newest case. She felt like her ear canals were being drilled with some sharp object.
She swallowed as she suddenly could look into the mirror for real, past the imaginary pain, seeing her bewildering expression.
Her breathing, merely struggling pants stringed together making her chest move with short, burning and painful hauls.
Again, she tried to calm herself down, not wanting to recognize the dazed reflection of herself.
She tried to focus on the different components of her face which looked like a painting from an artist like Franz Marc who was a part of the Expressionist movement. She never liked the German man for his inability to represent a real reality. She found it a waste of time to create a twisted reality, something not logical, not rational.
Her salmon pink lips that hadn't been kissed in a very long time.
Her turquoise eyes were nobody felt the need to drown in.
Her velvet Papaya whip skin that no-one cared to touch.
Her face that was in the inability to extract love from a person.
And suddenly her face seemed to fall, her expression saddened ever more. The reflection in the mirror suddenly seemed so familiar, so … like she couldn't place.
The only thing she knew was that she was becoming aware of unexpected actions of her body. Her heartbeat rating up to a swift trumping pace. Her stomach feeling hollow and empty but not bothered. Just like, like she was looking forward to something long awaited, like the first snowflakes in winter.
But the feeling wasn't given a long life as it immediately was suppressed by an even more familiar, the most familiar hollow and empty feeling, really blank feeling.
As she felt like she always felt, only a million times more intense now.
Cynical about human society. How could she be not? She was forensic anthropologist, she had solved many murder chases, cruel murder cases. How could she have faith in the goodness of the human race as they killed each other in animal alike fashions?
Jaded by the 24/7 life she led for her job. Her body overworked, often sore. Her mind as well overworked but mostly tired.
Faithless, as she had given up on having faith in someone or something already a very long time ago. Let's guess, since she was fifteen maybe?
Disappointed in life, in people, in herself and in the universe. Disappointed by her parents, her brother and so many others. Disappointed in society and every aspect of it. Disappointed by herself for her shortcomings which surfaced far too many times. Mostly disappointed in the universe, because what it had created, was rather a nightmare than a dream.
Disillusioned mostly. Her nose had been pressed on reality; cold, cruel, hard reality far too many times. Disillusioned about the life she led, about the people that surrounded her, about who she was. Every possible ideal she could have admired had disappeared through the years.
And actually, she felt used too. She was just a tool of the same society she detested. Just a pawn of the FBI when they solved cases. Just like any other teacher for her students. Just another employee of the Jeffersonian.
She was just Doctor Brennan. Cold and only capable of negativity.
But the expression which had just shown on her face made a burning thinking occur. About another woman than Doctor Brennan and that woman would want to take back all her sweating she had done during her work in all kinds of circumstances. Would take back all her tears she had cried in her life over cases, mostly the one of her parents, over negativity. The sexual encounters based on men who'd like to tell their friends they had slept with the 'Doctor Brennan', forensic anthropologist one of the best, and she was also a best-selling novelist, she would gladly erase. Her joy caused by findings about cases, about solving them, about everything.
She would take back all the time, this seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years. Her effort to become the best of the best female doctors in her kind. She would take back the passion that drove her through all of this. Her dedication to become the best and stay the best, and always be the best until she would stop performing her profession.
She would give all those things made her 'her' to the outside world back, those things she gave and experienced for 'Doctor Brennan' she would erase. It would make her feel again like that string of emotion from moments ago. Anything, everything. If she could switch identity with the woman that was fighting to come out. Anything and everything to erase this mistaken identity which made her suddenly not feel like herself anymore.
The identity of a woman which sounded angry because of so many reasons. Every word coated in bitterness caused by her life. Every sound somehow sad, sad inside. Every vibration of her voice was infatuated with reasons she barely understood herself.
It was the bare truth, all those sentiments audible in her voice.
And there were others. For people close to her, it was clear every word her mouth produced was accompanied with a certain amount of denial. Even more anger like little explosions after each word. But each word had bargained with brain and lips before it came out, most of the time. And the undertone of each word was depression, that dark cloud deep inside of her.
There was so many other fragments of her voice. Fragments which couldn't be identified.
The mirror reflected her stormy blue eyes. Waves colliding, fighting waiting for the calm. The calm of acceptance. Acceptance of change and this, all the negativity would be over. She felt so close to grabbing the feeling in her chest, to grabbing that other person inside of her. Like a hand was reaching out to her and she was already able to touch her fingertips. And the sudden outburst of warmth and inner excitement of being such so close to fulfil her sudden longing. But she slipped inside and her barely there hold loosened, it was just so complicated to hold onto something she never knew was there, or never claimed it was there.
Her eyes had widened when she acknowledged herself into the mirror again. Inside she screamed she was stupid, stupid for believing there was anyone other in there than 'Doctor Brennan'.
She was just 'Doctor Brennan' who had a father who never loved her. Never loved her as a 'Brennan', only as a 'Keenan'. He had only loved her as 'Joy Keenan'. The little girl she had been. They had become 'Brennans' because they were forced, a shield to hide away from the parts of that they didn't like about themselves. Clearly an understatement if you looked at the file kept on her parents and the crimes they committed.
She was a woman who had grown from an abandoned young lady who was unaware of those harsh crimes. She had been so unknowing about why a mother would abandon her own daughter and son. Her leaving had marked them, especially her. It had been the axiom that there was no such thing existed as the love glorified in those pitiful love songs and poorly written love stories.
The pain of her parents leaving had spun her around and pushed her into a dark direction. It made her someone who would not bend and would not break.
Somebody that was gracious enough to create a plan to back the fifteen year old girl that was somewhere still hidden in her up. She was good enough, good enough for the world as forensic anthropologist and bestselling novelist. She also good enough as a person, somehow, in a way hopefully someone else would ever understand. But that steadying was a mere whisper in the back of her head to keep her on solid ground on some very rare occasion if she was about to break down emotionally. A whisper you couldn't even relate to any affection at all.
For all she cared, affection was a lie too, or at least for her. Every single time had shown any type of affection for her over the past years, it had ended up sadly for either her or the other person who offered her his warmth.
No wonder her encounters with men were strictly sexual. She knew her weakness, sometimes she let herself be opened up and she would hungry try to eat every crumble of it. She would seem so tiny and weak and real as she begged without anyone actually seeing any sign. Sometimes she would feel enamoured, but then she would recall that being in love was a trick of her body, something for fools, and since rationality ruled, she would never be.
Like she had never felt this feeling before? Nudging to hopefully get recognized and not shot down time after time without guilt because her rational side would make up for all the love that only existed in fairy tales she missed out on.
She looked in the mirror again, her fingers touching her dry lips.
Were those lips which would speak fascinating words not soft enough to kiss?
Were her blue eyes which could squint at bones for hours not mesmerising enough to look at?
Was her feminine sculptured body not sensual enough to be a great lover?
Was she not worthy enough to be love?
Something inside her happened, something as life changing as the Big Bang. As surreal and not able to happen scientifically, she felt the hand reach out inside of her of a person screaming and crying for heaven's sake to be saved from the hell she had been living in since she was a fifteen year old girl waving her parents car goodbye forever. Her unbreakable heart broke eventually and she lost all sense of control over her body.
Glass shattered by the impact of her hand against the mirror, and she knew she would never be the same again. Never again she'll be able to avoid the real Temperance Brennan inside. Temperance with the heart. Not Doctor Brennan with the brain.
"Bones, you okay?"
His voice wrapped around her like a warm blanket. The evident worry, the alpha male sense of protection, made something stir inside of her.
Her brain screamed to her to tell him she was just fine, like always. But when her gaze fell down, and she caught the imagine of her blue eye that was about to trouble in a piece of the broken mirror, her heart that was bleeding it own red tears made her change her mind.
"I am not okay Booth."
And for the first time she let him envelope her in anything other than man hug.
Her throbbing hand fell to his shoulder, her blood slowly pouring on his always black tuxedo vest. Her blue eyes closed to drown into the darkness behind them. His masculine sent soothed every negative feeling she ever could feel. It intensified every fragment of her being that screamed that she finally had found herself, but nothing intensified it more than his heartbeat echoing in her ear that rested on his chest. His heartbeat that could tell more than all the words in the English dictionary could, or probably all the dictionaries in every language ever spoken on earth.
Nothing could tell the message better as the beat of his heart. The realisation that she, Temperance 'Bones' Brennan was not unlovable.
--BB--
Review? Pretty please? They are the better kind of birthday gifts, for writers at least :-) Let me know what you think, good or bad ... I am open to critism, so hit that button and share your thoughts. Much love Veronique aka GirlinTheCafe