A/N: Posting some old stuff from LJ that I didn't realise I'd never put up here.
They give you that generic green-black plastic to carry your things around in, because you're generic, just another face, just another number in the system and in it you put the few items that you own and there you are, summed up and defined by a couple of identifying trinkets and a garbage bag. And. nobody. wants. you. Because you're garbage, and especially not your parents.
Just once you wish you could be that girl, the girl who doesn't take off her make up after she goes out clubbing, who wakes up with panda eyes and that grainy feel to everything and fingers twitching for a cigarette, and hating the world and blaming your parents for the fact that you're nothing, blaming the system for where you are today, blaming anyone but yourself. But you can't be like that, be like Russ, angry at the world and with a chip on his shoulder and in and out of prison, because you were only fifteen, and he was only nineteen but he had four years on you and look, look at you, you turned out okay, maybe. Maybe not, too, but you don't smoke, you're not on drugs, you don't drink that much these days even when you wish you could because some nights it hurts, more so than others, but you can look in the mirror and pretend that you're normal, and that it's some measure of your worth to be able to say it. You're not one of them, at least - the had-been's and the never-were's because you got over that anger, and that pain and made something of yourself.
Your foster parents don't care about you, not really. Not the faces of this week, or next week, or last month, because they're all in for different reasons and they're usually the wrong ones – for the money, for the knowledge that they're doing something for someone a little worse off than them, but no one's ever there to be your mom, or your dad, to love you. To care about the little things, and not just the big things and the mistakes you make, transgressions against them and they went out of their way to help you and this is how you repay them. Because they don't care about your past, they just want to mould you to their future, for you to wear their ribbons in your hair and smile and fit in, just like that, but you never do, and they resent you for it, maybe if only a little, maybe without meaning to. Because you're either too much or never enough; you do things, sometimes, just for the attention and they look the other way because they pity you, because they think you're special because you're alone in the world. And maybe they don't realise they're adding to it by treating you different, but they are. They respond too harshly or not at all and either way they're just pushing you more and more inside of yourself, until it sinks in and repeats in your head like a mantra: I'm nobody, I'm nobody, I'm nobody. Until one day, something snaps.
It takes a licence to own a gun, to drive a car, to have a pet, these days, but anyone in the world can have a kid. What kind of sick joke is that?
Everything's about forms and files and paperwork, and having the right permits and paying the right people. Rights and rules and regulations, and people get married and divorced every single day and that's okay, because there's mutual decisions and agreements involved, but nobody asks to be born, nobody agrees or signs a piece of paper I do, I accept the terms and agreements, in sickness and in health and til death do us part. Nobody ever drew up that contract, but maybe somebody should, because in your eyes being a parent is one of the highest privilege jobs in the world, full of work and responsibility and so much reward, and not that you'd know, because you don't, but you figure that somebody needs to be invested enough for the two, three, however many of you when one's too small, too young to know any better. Parents and child. Mother and father and brother and sister and daughter and son. Family. Because in your eyes that's a commitment, a bond, albeit an unspoken one, saying you'll stand by each other not just out of an obligation of blood but as a need, want, desire to borne from unconditional affection, too.
The foster system tries to define something of such loose definition; tries to place terms and agreements on something beyond them, and somewhere amongst all that paperwork and neat, organised files there's a loss of humanity. You can't make families, can't push people together and tell them how to act, tell them to be comfortable with one another because family's a special kind of glue that needs to be two sided to stick. You haven't found anything worth holding you in one place, not yet. Not even now, with all that in the past and behind you.
When you were six, seven maybe, you went to a birthday party – it might've been the first and last one you ever went to, because you never were one for candy and cake and dresses, you weren't pretty, or popular, too aloof and bossy and unable to establish the strong peer connections that would form the foundations of your relationships for the rest of your life, or so the reports said. The birthday girl – you don't remember her name, and you think that should bother you but it doesn't – wore a pink dress and a crown, and all you wanted to do was sit in the corner and wait for your dad to come pick you up and take you home, but there were grown ups around who thought you were so cute and so timid and pushed and pressed you to join in the games, so you ended up in a circle passing around a newspaper parcel waiting for the music to stop, for it all to stop, for everyone to just go away and leave you alone. You think back and see yourself in that parcel, wrapped up in yesterday's news, being shuffled around from place to place and stopping occasionally but never staying for long, and one by one the layers are peeled back until suddenly there's nothing left anymore except some scrunched up gift wrap and someone else smiling and you just standing there, forgotten, in another empty home.
It's not fair, you think, wasn't fair on Russ, all that on his shoulders when he was nineteen and you were fifteen and he wanted a life and all the family he had left, but he couldn't have both, you see that now, and he chose to live with you resenting him, resenting himself instead of choosing you and having to resent you, because you know that's how it would have turned out. Because maybe he knew or hoped you were the better person, the one more likely to forgive, and more of a survivor than he was and as much as you want to hate him for it you know he was right. Sometimes you wish he could have seen you, though, seen you hiding under the stairs and holding your hands over your ears trying to drown out the silence, crying so hard you think you'll never stop and shouldn't have any tears left, and wanting to break things, too, just hear the smash of glass and crystal and see yourself in the broken shards, a reflection of destruction.
And nothing you could ever say will make them understand, not really. There's no way to put into words for Angela how Christmas is about family, about for you how you never had one, or you had one and you lost it, maybe, and it was all your fault. You can't put Booth in your shoes and have him feel what it was like, hoping and wishing and waiting for them to come home, and then one morning coming down the stairs and seeing the tree and the presents and having your heart almost swell and burst with joy, and then having that light in your eyes, that feeling of warmth and happiness, almost extinguished for good. You can't share that with him anymore than you can look through his eyes and feel through him what it's like to be a sniper, a trained killer, and being told you're working for the greater good but all the while feeling like you're only adding to the darkness until it surrounds you, suffocates you, and you can't take it anymore. You can't share those types of things, and maybe that's a good thing, but you can acknowledge them and feel a connection through this mutual pain and inability to explain it. You have something in common, a lot in common, maybe, and if only you'd extend out of your shell a little further each time and establish peer bonds, Temperance, you wouldn't feel so alone and disconnected.
You see children like this, like you, all the time, and you feel for them in ways you know no one ever felt for you, and you wish you could save them all but you can't, so you push them away and don't even try. You spend time in and out of hospitals, when you get shot at, when you get buried alive, when your partner gets blown up after opening your fridge when just minutes ago the two of you were dancing like there was nothing between you and not a care in the world, and you wonder how in this day and age anyone can want to be a parent, to bring a child, an innocent, into all this, when there's so much for them to lose just by being here and why people keep doing that when there's already so many children waiting to be saved, children without a home, or a family, children like you and the tears are running down your face again and you can't see properly.
It still hits you in quiet ways, sometimes, when nobody's looking for it but it comes back and takes you in waves, crashes down on you and you think you might drown, maybe, but something's always holding your head above the water. You take the trash out and think of the plastic, the generic green-black plastic and how you're still just another number in the system but there's people around you to know that number, now, to read it and memorise it and recite it back to you when you forget who you are and how far you've come.
Sometimes you wish someone would just hold you, without having to be asked because that's what family is, really, it's about not having to ask in so many words but just knowing, and that someone is Booth and he always knows, knows when to catch you when you crumble, wrap his arms around you and soothe you with nonsense and tip your chin with his finger and meet your eyes, the way no one ever did before because it scared them, and this scares you, so much.
You confess to Booth that you couldn't be a mother, anyway, not really, because you never had all that that you were supposed to have, not for long enough, anyway, never had the right person to show you how because all you can remember are the nights spent staring at the ceiling and biting your lip to quiet the sobs, having no one to wake you from your nightmares but yourself, no one to pull you into their arms, no one like Booth. He shakes his head, though, tells you that no one knows how to be a parent until they try it, tells you that you'd be the best mother of all because you had the best teachers, that your past led by example and showed you everything not to do, and that you know more than anybody what a kid like that needs. You understand, he says. And that's all they want – somebody to understand them when it feels like no one does.
You think you see a girl you knew once, stepping off a bus, and she's tiny like you remember her and still looks amazing in red like you remember her, and somewhere amongst all that you remember the way she made you feel when she told you were a nobody, that nobody cared about you, that nobody wanted anything to do with you because Russ is gone, now, and you're not Russ Brennan's kid sister anymore, you're Temperance Brennan, the weird girl who sits in the back of the class and never says anything, whose parents took off and left her and whose brother couldn't bare to look at her and who's dirt, who's garbage, who's going to the principal's office for punching another girl in the face.
It's a stupid idea, you think, when he pushes it, needles you into it and asks you to trust him and of course you have to, because he's Booth, because he's family, and if you can't trust your family you don't know who else you can. Orphaned infants can end up emotionally distant because they aren't exposed to enough love and touch when they're young, which is why we do this, get people to come in and spend time with them, holding them, the nurse says, and you hear it vaguely but don't really absorb, you're making their world a better place just by being here.
The baby's soft and warm against you just like that, and it rests in the crook of your arm just like that and it doesn't cry, or scream or reject you in any way and you let out a breath you might have been holding, and Booth's there and smiling tenderly, encouragingly for support and you smile back, because it almost feels like he said it would.
It doesn't change your mind about things, doesn't make you melt and go all doe-eyed and maternal, or make your past fade away, or make you want to rush out and get started on having one of your own, but he wasn't aiming for that, you realise. This is something more important, and it's not about changing your mind or loosening your resolve, it's about settling some kind of messed up score you've been keeping in your heart without even knowing. But he knows, because he's your family and it's his job to know, and now you're standing here holding a tiny bundle of significance, coming to terms with all your insecurities, your family issues, without really understanding the how or why. You look into its eyes and you see the world reflected back at you, the world that's too big and too awful for something so small and so hapless, and you wonder if you look hard enough you can see into the future, see all the ways this one's going to handle what gets thrown at it, if it'll even make it past the crummy hand it's already been dealt and if maybe, it's going to grow up and save the world some day the way it just may have saved you.
You turn to Booth, and you're smiling again, smiling like you haven't smiled in years, not since your parents disappeared, not since Christmas didn't bring them back, not since Russ couldn't either and decided he couldn't take it anymore. This one's special, you say, and he grins back at you, and agrees. I can tell, he says, and finally, something sticks.