Since her first case with Seeley Booth, Temperance Brennan has been the Little Dutch Boy with his finger in the dam.
Before meeting him the concrete and stone of the dam that she had built around herself with logic, reason and science was stable, strong, the water couldn't erode it away and she was safe, barred from the rushing waters of emotion that battered on since Russ had left her alone. Protected from waves that would drown her if given the chance to escape. Since Russ had left she had forgotten how to swim in the pool of her feelings, she thought it better to stay dry than risk that sinking feeling the waters brought. Occasionally a few drops had spilled over during the years, she avoided them to keep dry; her first crush, her first boyfriend, sprinkled the water over the top of the but nothing that left more than a rapidly drying puddle, when the waters calmed again. And nothing to ruin the structure of the dam.
When Temperance kissed Seeley Booth for the first time he had pulled out a loose stone in the dam. The water trickled slowly out and so did feelings she had longed to stave off. She realized she had to plug the leak and like that little Dutch boy she had nothing but her finger. She knew that it wasn't ideal, there was nothing else to use and she knew that having the job to keep the floods at bay, would preoccupy her in her single state. Alone she could contain the waters behind their barricade and protect her self from their destructive force. To stop herself from drowning and pulling him under with her.
She soon realized she wasn't alone. Seeley stayed with her. But the longer he stayed and the closer he got the waters on the other side got rougher and cracks in the concrete appeared. Soon she wasn't just holding the water back with one finger, but both hands were stopping flows that burst through. They were happening at alarming rates and all that she work she had done to keep herself from pain, from love was coming undone. Not just because Seeley had weakened the wall with his constant banging and hammering to see something other than logic and reason from her, or because the rough waters on the other side had thinned it out; but because she had let the wall crack, she pulled her hands away; she enjoyed the puddles of pain or rainbows of joy and love the water created as it poured from the cracks. The memories of swimming, of losing yourself to emotion were coming back to her, not enough to make her think she could try getting into the waves.
Then they talked to Sweets, and Seeley drilled a hole straight through the thin stone and the water poured out fast, painfully and powerfully. That dreaded sensation of drowning in emotions she's blocked out and doesn't understand slams into her and she's stuck. Again Temperance had to stop it with nothing but her finger. The flow slows, but doesn't stop entirely it trickles out leaving behind it a numbing pain. This time plugging the hole leaves her on her own, Seeley isn't there to help her make sense of why the waters flow out at different rates and why that brings different emotions. She's on her own. Temperance knows that this hole isn't like the others; she's forced to stay with it, keep it closed.
She can't leave, not yet. She knows logically though that it is only a matter of time before she's forced to pull her finger out and the dam really shatters and everything she's bottled up for years comes flooding out. She just hopes at that time she will have found a way to swim.
