The Land of Misfit Toys
A Bones Fanfiction
By Amanda
Spoilers for Mayhem on a Cross
I own nothing! Just for fun.
*~Bones~*
"What are we, the land of misfit toys?"
At the time I didn't give much thought to the statement, other than a brief acknowledgement to myself that I recognized the reference. Booth was a little guarded and on edge because he was reluctant to have to share something so personal with Sweets, and I dismissed what he had said and the tone as simple agitation. Besides, at the time I was too focused on the issue at hand, I have a tendency to do that.
Sweets, according to Gordon Gordon, was feeling a little left out, lonely, without a family. I knew how it felt to think that you had no place in the world. No one deserves to feel like that; especially when they do have friends and a surrogate family like ours. So I took it upon myself to make him realize that he was a part of Booth's and my hodgepodge family.
Thinking back on it later though, I realized how appropriate that description was. Really Booth is good at putting our situation into words. He had been right when he assured me there was more than one kind of family. And ours, mine, was a little like the land of misfit toys made up of Booth, Angela, Hodgins, Zach, Cam, Sweets, and myself.
Booth is the least like the rest of our family. He is a 'gut feeling' type of guy. He uses intuition and conjecture and postulates theories without empirical proof. He is not a scientist, but a cop. He was a soldier and has seen and done many things I know he wishes he could forget. He is always looking out for others, probably a trait born from living with an abusive alcoholic father. His family life was far from perfect, though he did at least have a family to grow up with.
Angela is the free spirit. She's not a scientist or cop, but an artist. She is probably the most compassionate of the group. She is not afraid to speak her mind and she is generally right. She can read people and their emotions better than most people I know. Her family life was different than most. Despite the fact that her father is a famous musician, and was often away, they have a very close relationship.
Hodgins is a scientist unlike any I have ever met. He shies away from conjecture when dealing with a case, but he believes in wild conspiracy theories which have very little basis in fact at all. He grew up with a lot of money but little family. Unlike the rest of us, he was raised primarily by 'the help' not parents. He is an amazing man though. He would rather work with bugs and dirt all day than live in the high class world he was born into.
Zach was by far the least confident and most naïve of us all. He has a superior mind and huge heart. He was still young enough not to have been jaded by the work that we do and still be determined to do right. His mind works primarily off of logic. Unfortunately, however, that was how he was able to be swayed by the Gormogon. Despite his large, close nit family and the group at the lab, he felt alone enough, or out of place enough, after coming back from Iraq that he has ended up where he has. So our treasured friend is locked away in an asylum.
Cam is a good mix between investigator and scientist. I don't know much about her family, but I do know that she had one of her own once. One that she had to walk away from because the man she loved was unfaithful. After that I don't think she had ever let herself really love again. Then, after his death, she took in his teenage daughter, trying to recreate a part of her family and save the girl from the foster system.
Sweets, I found out that night, had a childhood not too far removed from mine and Booth's. He was abused as a small child and eventually adopted by a wonderful couple. They had raised him and helped heal the emotional scars left by his biological parents. I also found out that they had died shortly before he came to work with us, leaving him without a family of his own. Whether he realized it or not, he was quickly taken into ours. Sweets is a scientist too, I suppose, although it is a soft science. He is smart and good at what he does I have to admit.
Finally there's me. Dr. Temperance Brennan. I am an empirical scientist to the core. I am also woefully ignorant of most pop culture. But unlike most scientists, I am not happy to be coped up in a lab all day. I thoroughly enjoy going out in the field with Booth. My family life growing up was great, even if it was a lie, until the Christmas I was fifteen. That Christmas my parents disappeared without a trace, my brother left, and I ended up in the foster system. Some of the families I had were nice, but most were not. I, like Sweets and Booth, was abused. So now I have trouble letting people in or trusting people.
So yeah,the land of misfit toys is a very apt description of us. Most of us have emotional scars, from adulthood as well as childhood. Our families are far from perfect. We don't really fit in elsewhere, no one else really wants or understands us. But we work together. We fit together. From the outside we are an odd bunch: A straight laced FBI agent, a free-spirited artist, a wealthy conspiracy theorist, a naïve genius, a slightly zany pathologist, a deceptively young psychologist, and a socially awkward forensic anthropologist. But from the inside, we are what is most important in life: each other's village, safe haven, support system…
… Family.
Author's Note: For those of you who read this: Thanks. I know this is not some of my best work and it has been hanging out on my computer for some time now, but I finally decided that I should just post it. The idea was so much nicer in my head, but it is what it is. I hope you liked it anyways.