Author's Note: I like Bones, unlike other crime drama's it doesn't just focus on death and the killers. Bones focuses on the people who solve the cases and what they go through while dealing with it and not dealing with it. Two of my friend's Penelope and Elle really love bones so I'm posting this for them. Of course they'll never see it but I kind of prefer it that way.
She doesn't understand it.
Temperance Brennan is a world class forensic anthropologist, one of the best and brightest in the entire world. She knows where every bone in the human body is, which bones cause extreme pleasure and which ones cause extreme pain. She can identify what a body's height was when they were alive, their race and their hobby all by seeing fragments of their bones.
She knows almost everything that can be known. When her parent's disappeared, when they abandoned her she craved for knowledge for the understanding that she never got. Until years later when by chance her mother's remains were identified. By her.
She doesn't understand it though.
Love. Affection. Worship. Aimer. Liebe. Amore. Amor.
What ever language you say it in from English, to French to Italian. She doesn't understand it.
These are the facts that she knows. (And she lives by facts)
She knows Love is dependent on another person. Though she can't understand why you'd risk your entire happiness on one other person. It's a risk like so many other's that she doesn't seem to be able to take.
She concedes that people do seem happy in Love. For the most part. She's seen other people who are saddened by love. And another fact she knows is that not every love is returned or accepted. That some loves are abused and used for someone else's gain.
Someone once told her that if he'd be willing to die for his sister than why wouldn't he risk something as meaningless as his happiness on her. She's had that kind of love before. Familial. Before parent's who drove away to run errands and never came back, before brother's who couldn't handle it and left her alone.
She's tried to forget about it. That kind of love because in the end she just ended up hurt and alone. With no one but she and a foster home with too many kids and to little people to care.
Love's not supposed to be like that. And for the most part it isn't. She's seen Booth with Parker and knows that it could never end up like that. She's seen Cam with Michelle who she hasn't seen in years but has never forgotten. She knows Dr. Saroyan will do everything she can to make it work, and that she'll try comforting her friend as best she can to make it work.
Could that be considered Love? Friendship in most cases is caused by Love. She knows she cares about her friends at the Jeffersonian. Angela, with the confidence and the social skills that she is sometimes envious for. Hodgins with his quirks, including his conspiracy theories that she missed when he suddenly stopped.
Zack, who she wishes she could have saved and who she thinks about all the time. She wonders if his reasons seem logical to everyone else. She understands the motive—a sense of knowledge that so few people have but questions the reasons. She understands Zack the most out of everyone because he seems just like her.
Sweets is the hardest for her to understand. His use of psychology is strange, makes her feel wary. There is no reason, no science in Psychology. And it scares her. She can relate to him sometimes. Sweets had a childhood like hers; both of them have scars on there back though hers are metaphorical.
And Booth. Booth who is an anomaly, an enigma to her. Who's different from anyone she's ever met. Who's past is more bloodied and bruised than hers but he still ended up better than she did. Booth who holds onto his beliefs without reason, without logic and cares when it seems impossible to. She's seen the way Booth is with Parker and she wishes she had a dad like him growing up.
She's seen the love between Angela and Hodgins knows it's only a matter of time until they end up back together. She knows that while the relationship between Dr. Saroyan and Booth didn't work out that they still love each other, just differently. She's never had that kind of love. She's written about it somewhat clueless in her books. Though she hadn't realized it then.
Temperance looks up and sees Booth talking with Angela and Hodgins. Laughing at something the "Squints" as he calls them has said. Sweets and Cam have joined them and she wonders if she should take the risk to join them to.
She's never been good at taking risk; even before her parent's disappear she was always the one to stay behind while Russ and everyone else race forward to the next adventure. She took her first risk by becoming partners with Booth, by stepping out into the field and out into danger.
Love's a risk that she's not sure she can take.
"Bones?" She looks up to find Booth waiting at the door of her office. The other's want to go out for food and most likely beer. She shakes her head no—she has to finish the next part of her outline and she has to work on a paper for the forensic society. Booth gave her a smile and says that she can join them later then.
Temperance Brennan looks at her computer screen and the word's that she's been writing for the last half hour. She thinks about the risks that she's never been able to take even though she always wanted to. She saves her document and quickly shuts down her laptop. She grabs her coat and races to the elevator before the door fully closes.
Her friends smile at her and she looks at Booth who she quickly settles into the familiar banter that makes up their friendship.
Temperance Brennan is a Forensic Anthropologist who can know almost everything about anyone just by looking at their bones. She doesn't know the reasons behind Love, she doesn't know what causes it or Why you'd let your happiness depend on someone else's.
She spares another look at Booth and all her friend's who are her family in almost every meaning of the word.
She may not understand Love….
…But she's starting to understand what its worth.