AN: I know, I know, if I'm going to take a break form House to write Bones I should finish the stuff that I've started... but this idea planted itself in my mind and grew rather tenaciously.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Taraxacum:
any plant of the genus Taraxacum (daisy family), including the dandelion
It had been two days.
Two days, Brennan thought, and she walked faster as if she could escape the unforgiving finality of that fact. She couldn't, of course, no more than she could escape the claustrophobic feeling that had threatened to crush all the air out of her in the confines of her apartment. But it hadn't been the walls closing in. A walk through the park couldn't alleviate the horrible pressure in her chest; it was as if all of her was swelling and she was about to burst through her skin.
An errant tree root sent her sprawling. The stinging in her palms felt good for a second, then dissipated and she pressed her cheek into the ground and felt like sobbing and would have if any tears had come.
But they didn't.
She lay there a moment, then breathed in as if she were preparing to hoist herself up. Not worth it, she decided. She let the air escape.
The least she could do was remove herself from the path and avoid inconveniencing any potential joggers. She flipped over twice, off the gravel and into grass.
All around her, dandelions grew; she didn't know how she'd failed to observe them earlier. Her mental clock surged forwards. Two days and fifteen minutes and she was falling apart at the seams.
Right in front her her, up from spiky roots, grew a bright yellow dandelion, head upturned towards the sun dripping through the autumnal canopy. She laughed, a rusty, barking sound which surprised her into silence. One eyelid closed, then the other, then she squinted both at the bright yellow not-quite-flower.
If it rubs off yellow under your chin, you're in love. A schoolgirl superstition. She picked it, rubbed under her chin, and then dropped it as a chill ran up her spine to freeze her hand. Rationality should have been a bastion to her in this time, she thought, but it was, it seemed, the first thing to flee. Yellow or not made no difference. She couldn't see, anyways.
The other sort of dandelion grew in the grass as well, the kind with soft white seeds and if you blew them into the wind, your wish will come true, but that was all nonsense and yet she grabbed one of these, too, and blew until all that was left was the ugly, unfulfilled stem.
No, she decided. Not a dandelion. Taraxacum. Cold, clinical language. From the family Asteraceae. Nothing to do with hope or being in love or wishes or the world she'd become ensnared in, with all its nuances of emotion and taking chances and the unfolding of yellow petals and downy seeds. Taraxacum.
She watched the last of the white seeds fly from sight. Then, she rolled onto her back, rose to her feet, and walked to the lab instead of back home.
She rubbed all the yellow off the bottom of her chin as she walked. Two days and thirty minutes and all the dandelions were already taraxacums again.
AN: Hope you enjoyed this one-shot foray back into the world of Bones fic... let me know if you thought this was a hit or a miss!