Pillar of Salt
This came to me on a whim and I wrote it down longhand this evening in about 10 minutes - Another one of those post-WitW stories. This is my take on Brennan's thoughts immediately after Booth's death, with a little bit of help from Vonnegut.
Temperance Brennan was stuck inside a cliché.
She sat on the hospital steps, her partner's dried blood still on her hands from when it flowed freely from the bullet hole, seemingly desperate for freedom. It had started to rain, completing the trite little scene, and even the copious water falling from the sky did little to wash the rust-colored flakes away.
She didn't cry. She didn't think. She just stared into space, her mind blank and struggling to remain that way as the horrors of that night waited in the wings, ready to usher in every stage of grief all of the other dangerous emotions that come with it.
The doctor had bowed his head and avoided her eyes upon giving her the news, apologetic but unaware of the implications of the news that he had just delivered.
Angela came and sat down next to her on the steps, ignoring the bone-chilling image silhouetted on the steps and the much-sought-after solitude of her friend. She told her to go back inside, or to allow the squint-squad to take her home, anything to get out of the soaking wet, cold night air. Temperance made no reply, no sign that she had heard anything, but continued to stare, blankly holding the iron railing of the steps, determined to stay in this moment, live in it forever.
Because once she left, it would all be real. It would be a memory, something in her past, something that could be reflected upon.
She would rather live for eternity here in this moment than continue on to the next. In this moment, Booth's death still hadn't become reality to her. He was still warm, somewhere in the building behind her. She wouldn't go on without him. She'd live here, in this instant with him for as long as she could.
Angela went to get the others, leaving Brennan alone again, still staring out at the parking lot, the forming puddles, the leaves bowed down by assaulting raindrops.
It wasn't a bad place to stay, she decided – her emotions at bay, the sheets of rain isolating her from those reassuring, well-meaning people who, doubtless, loved her, but simply didn't understand.
Angela returned with Hodgins and Zack as both men pulled her up gently by her arms and stood her on her feet.
Sudden terror rose up within her. She didn't want to move, didn't want to leave the moment here on the steps. But they calmly, slowly led her towards Angela's parked and waiting car, and Brennan was forced to reevaluate. Memories were not memories if you kept them from reentering your mind. She would compartmentalize, never ever look back. Not at the hospital, not at the sopping, dripping cement stairs, not at the Checkerbox, not into her partner's petrified eyes, closed in the ambulance but so wide and staring and grasping for salvation in the moments after the shot.
She would not look back.
A flash from her The English Bible as Secular Literature class pushed its way unexpectedly to the front of her otherwise-cluttered, failing mind. What was that tale from Genesis? About the woman… the wife of Lot who had looked back upon the falling city of Sodom and been turned into a pillar of salt? Right.
Brennan could not allow herself to become a pillar of salt. Look only ahead, she thought, the words sounding in her mind as clearly as if she'd said them aloud, don't look back.
Jack ran around to the driver's side and Angela opened the door to the backseat. Unthinkingly, she placed a supportive hand on her friend's lower back to help her into the car.
Brennan felt a jolt of heat emanate through her entire skeleton. Her bones. His Bones.
She hadn't shed a tear since she'd learned of his death. All of the moisture running down her cheeks had come from the weeping sky. But as she felt that hand and the sudden stab of lost love threatened to overwhelm her, she realized that Bones was no more. Bones was still there, sitting on the steps, soaked in rain. Or maybe in the ambulance, holding his unresponsive hand. Maybe singing to him from the stage in the moments before the world came crashing down around them. She would always be there, and never alone. Always with Booth. Temperance Brennan was a separate creature who, in that moment, looked back, took it all in, drowned in the pain, and tasted that first tear for what it was and what she had now become:
Salt.
A guy I know died yesterday. He was a great person and only 19. It still hasn't become real to any of us yet, but we're struggling to move forward and everything. I'm an atheist but I think there's value in that particular verse.
Anyway, I know it's not the best writing I've done and far from the best you've read, but I'd really like to know what you thought, [but please be gentle ;-) ] Thanks in advance.