Author's notes: Obviously, I do not own Bones. If I did, B/B would have happened by now for sure. I'm not sure where this story came from but it was rattling around in my head all day so I thought I'd spit it out onto paper. You guys let me know if I need to continue this or not, okay?

-Jessica

STRENGTH

She'd always considered herself to be strong. Strong willed. Strong minded. Strong physically.

One didn't get through three years in the foster system after being abandoned by parents and brother alike at fifteen without being strong. One doesn't put themselves through undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate schooling without being strong. One did not earn a black belt and other equivalents in various martial arts backgrounds without being strong. She had opinions and she had never been afraid to voice them. She'd never hesitated to defend herself and the people she cared about to the extent that it was almost being on the offensive. She'd never been timid or shy; she was blunt and truthful and never afraid to go for the things that she wanted.

Unless that something she wanted purposefully drew lines between them to ward off any potential advances.

With that singular exception she'd never had any reason to believe herself to be anything but strong.

But everything changed when he left.

He'd come storming into her life, demanding that she help him solve the unsolvable murders and demanding that she stay in the safety of her lab when she wanted to be out in the field and then switched everything around when the mood suited him. He'd quickly become her best friend in ways that even Angela had never been, allowing her the luxury of having a confidant and someone always at her back, willing to catch her at any misstep. He'd charm smiled his way into her heart, forcing her to admit to having feelings that she had long since written off as biological processes and neuron responses to physical stimuli. He'd brow beat her into believing in love and the archaic institution of marriage as a symbol of love and commitment instead of a way to exchange women as property and he stirred a desire in her heart that she'd believed to be nonexistent- the desire to be a mother. He'd forced her to step out of the shell she'd been existing in and poured color into the grayscale world she'd been going through the motions in. She still loved bones and still saw no need for television but he had opened up her mind and her heart to so many different things, though she would have been loathe to admit it to anyone.

And then one day he came to her, drawn and tired looking, and told her that Rebecca was getting married and moving to North Carolina, taking Parker with her. She had been prepared to offer her condolences and any and all alcohol in her apartment when she'd noticed the look in his eye and for the first time since she realized her parents weren't coming back she felt the sensation of all of her internal tendons failing, letting her organs fall into her pelvis. Particularly her heart. When he started apologizing his voice was strung tightly, like he was trying to ward off tears.

She'd denied it for weeks, refused to acknowledge that he wasn't going to be there anymore to take her into the field, to offer her thai food at midnight after tough cases, and force her into realizations about herself that she was not necessarily prepared to make. She went about her business identifying remains that could not be identified through normal means, supplying families with answers, and firmly ignoring the fact that everyone kept telling him they would miss him, reminding him to call once in a while.

Then one day he was just gone.

He'd left her feeling incomplete and that made her angry. No self respecting woman needed anyone else to complete the definition of herself, especially not a man that wasn't even theirs to begin with. But no matter how angry she got it didn't change the fact that he had taken something crucial with him when he left, something she was pretty sure she needed.

At first he called all the time, trying to engage her in conversation like he'd never left, and she'd resisted on principle. Then as he got situated in the Charlotte field office and started working new cases he'd gotten busier and the calls became less and less frequent. She, on the other hand, suddenly had more time than she really knew what to do with as the agent the FBI sent over to replace him was rude and arrogant and refused to take a squint out into the field like his predecessor had done. So Dr Saroyan went to collect the bodies instead and she offered her expertise where needed but spent the majority of her working hours, and too many of her non-working hours in limbo.

Until she met Ryan.

He'd reminded her of a hybrid of Booth and Sully when she first met him at the vegan restaurant she'd had to replace the diner with in her normal routines. He was charming and seemed to be something of a lost soul, unsure of where he belonged in the world and she'd clung to the familiarity of someone who had once cared for her but confident and pious and unrelenting in his pursuit to make her see things his way. She'd allowed herself to believe that she had fallen for him because she knew all too well what happened when she hesitated whilst still keeping Booth in the back of her heart and her memories.

They dated in earnest almost immediately and at his insistence they passed milestone markers at such speed that she should have noticed that something wasn't quite right. However, she waved it off as having never been in a very serious relationship before and there wasn't actually anything wrong with Ryan. She allowed herself to get attached to him in ways that she had never gotten attached to anyone before, anyone besides Booth at least. She viewed him as her one last chance at happiness and she refused to give up on him no matter what, determined to make it work with him since she'd never had the opportunity to do so with Booth. He moved into her apartment, taking down all of her treasures claiming they freaked him out. He stopped working, sitting around all day claiming that he was tired of working dead end jobs and just needed to figure himself out. He asserted more control over her than she felt comfortable allowing but gave anyway when he ordered for her in restaurants, interrupted her when she was talking, and told her that she needed to stay home with him instead of going out for drinks with her friends.

Her friends noticed changes in her; she didn't speak her mind anymore, she was sullen and withdrawn in ways she had never been before, and she rarely if ever left the confines of her apartment or the lab. When Angela pointed out that she had begun to wilt like a flower without sunshine or water she got angry and denied the evidence that her claim was the truth.

The first time he hit her was when she refused to attend church with him one Sunday late in April.

He'd told her he was sorry and kissed her bruised cheek tenderly while he'd cried at having marred her perfect porcelain skin. He'd claimed to have lost his temper and promised it would never happen again and she'd believed him but warned him just incase that there could not be a second time.

The second time he hit her was a Thursday early in June when a case kept her at the lab later than she'd planned on being there.

He didn't apologize that time when he'd kissed her reddening flesh, but rather explained that if he didn't know where she was then how was he supposed to know she wasn't out with some other man? She'd apologized for the misunderstanding and promised to call him the next time she was going to be home later than suppertime. He'd promised that as long as she called then it would never happen again and she'd warned him that he couldn't lose his temper like that again.

The third and fourth times he hit her was a Tuesday three weeks later when he'd come home and found her talking on the phone to Booth.

He didn't kiss the mark her left on her face that time. Instead he'd shouted at her that he never wanted to find out that she was talking to 'that guy' ever again. She'd apologized again and explained that she didn't know that he didn't like that she talked to him once in a while, which was when his palm connected with her left cheek bone again. She didn't warn him that time and blocked Booth's number in her phone.

After that Ryan lost his temper a lot more and to increasing magnitudes. She got very adept at covering the discoloration in her skin.

It wasn't until a Wednesday in mid-January, after a particularly harsh beating because she'd forgotten to buy the beer he'd specifically requested as she'd walked out of the door earlier, that she realized she wasn't strong anymore.

She sat in the parking lot at the grocery store, the twenty he'd handed her before pushing her out of the front door without the opportunity to grab a coat or fix the marks on her face still clutched between her fingers. The visor was flipped down and she was wiping the blood away from her lower lip with a napkin from the glove compartment and for the first time in eight months she actually saw what she'd become. She had allowed herself, in her endeavor to hold onto someone as tightly as she'd wanted to hold onto Booth, to become one of the sniveling weak women that defended their lying, cheating, abusive husbands until they choked the life right out of them. She really saw the bruises on her face for what they were instead of the every day occurrence she'd been treating them as.

The person looking back at her in the small rectangle of reflective glass made her sick to her stomach.

She opened the glove compartment again and opened the envelope she put her registration and insurance cards in and pulled out the emergency credit card she'd stashed there a long time ago after having gotten a flat and calling for a tow only to realize she'd left her purse at home. Ryan had her purse, her cell phone, her driver's license, and all other legitimate means of access to her money or people she loved but had pushed away because she didn't want to see herself through their eyes. The twenty she held wouldn't get her as far as she knew she needed to go.

But that credit card was her last chance at freedom and the interstate was beckoning her from just down the road.

Without a second thought she pulled out of that parking lot and hit the I-95 S and drove and drove and drove. She stopped for gas only once in Bracey, Virginia. The radio stayed off and her heart clamored in her chest like a rock in a dryer, her eyes darting too frequently to the rear view mirror as if she expected to see flashing blue and red lights that would drag her back to Ryan. But it never happened. Not once in the six and a half hours she was in the car did she see a single police officer, highway patrolman, or county sheriff on the road.

It wasn't until she stopped for gas a second time did she realize that she hadn't had a solid plan for getting help.

She went inside the quickie mart attached to the pumps and asked to borrow a phone book when she bought a single cup of coffee, one cream, no sugar. She used one of the light up pens on display at the counter to scrawl an address on the back of her hand and carefully plot out directions from the map in the front of the book on the palm of her hand.

Sitting in her car outside she felt anxious for reasons she couldn't completely figure out but unbuckled her seat belt anyway and started for the door. He met her on the walk, trash bag in hand, and a surprised look on his face.

"Bones! What are you doing here?"

Her mouth opened to reply far faster then her brain could come up with a way to explain how far she'd fallen in the eleven months, two weeks, and four days he'd been gone and her hesitation allowed him the opportunity to really look at her. She felt naked, exposed to the elements despite the temperate Charlotte weather and her stomach involuntarily clenched around the stone that had settled there when his face turned stormy.

He abandoned the bag he'd been taking to the can in the grass and strode purposefully to her until he was close enough to grasp her chin in his fingers, careful to avoid the numerous bruises covering her skin in varying shades of healing. She knew he would know from experience that it hadn't been a single occurrence that had resulted in the colorful mottling. When he spoke his voice was low and dangerous sounding and she felt as though her intestines were slowly wrapping themselves around the knot her stomach had created around that rock like a boa constrictor- pulling tight.

"Who, Bones?"

She couldn't find her voice amid the tears jamming up behind the lump in her throat so she shook her head instead. But he was insistent.

"Who did this to you, Temperance?"

Her eyes darted up to make contact with his coffee colored eyes that were surprisingly warm and comforting looking like the beverage she compared him to despite the anger she could feel radiating off of him in waves.

"You… you don't know him. I met him after…"

"How long?"

"Booth…"

"How long, Temperance?"

"…Ten months."

His eyes widened at my answer and she'd felt the grip he'd had on her chin slacken. He stared at her until she started to fidget under the intensity like a four year old caught doing something wrong by a stern parent. Finally, he spoke again, softer this time and she thought she could detect a little sadness or possibly even heartbreak in the undertones of the single word question he asked her.

"Why?"

But she didn't have an answer for him. She didn't know why she'd let it happen. She supposed she could pin point where she started to lose some of that strength she'd so prided herself on but how she'd let it slide so far past that she didn't know.

Instead of answering she moved in and wrapped her arms around his torso, seeking out one of the 'guy hugs' that had punctuated every truly deep moment in their partnership. For the first time since he'd gone away she allowed herself the luxury of letting her eyes flood with tears and spill over onto her cheeks, soaking the long sleeved t-shirt he wore that announced his allegiance to his hometown Philadelphia Flyers above where he'd taken a bullet for her.

She felt a bit of that strength seep back into her bones and instead of being afraid of what could happen when she went back to DC to throw Ryan out of her apartment she started to get angry at what he'd done to her. She even found herself making plans in the back of her mind to fix what she'd inadvertently wronged in her own life and she knew she would start by going back to karate and jujitsu and tai kwon do.

So when he wrapped his arms around her, held her tight, and whispered that it was okay now that she was safe with him she believed him.