So I wanted to try something different! I couldn't get this idea out of my head after watching a movie with Emily Deschanel in it. She did a rather splendid job in the movie, and the emotional pain felt throughout it really hit me hard.
On top of that, I write what I know. And this, along with another fiction I shall be writing (I'm unsure how long that one will be) is one of the things that I'm currently seeing. A family friend just recently had this occur, and while I don't know her well, I felt a stab of pain at what had happened to her. Something my mom used to tell me kept popping up in my head and I just couldn't forget it.
'Storms are usually silent. They strike without meaning or care. It's blind. It does not care about who you are, your wealth, your status, your race. It does not care about your age. Mostly, though, storms are here to see how long you can stand before being pushed down. They seem hard, but remember. A storm always has to lighten up, some day. It can't last forever.'
So without further ado, here's "Storms". I hope you enjoy.
"Do you know how absolutely exciting this is, Bren? A little boy! Are you going to tell Christine?" Angela asked, excited genuinely after her friend had told her the news. While the entire lab had been ecstatic about the couple having another kid, Brennan had only trusted Angela and Booth with the news of the little guys gender. The idea of telling five year old Christine of the news, however, seemed like both a bad and good idea. She'd have to discuss it with Booth.
"It's quite exciting, yes. And perhaps we'll inform Christine…I'm unsure. How are you feeling, Ange?" she asked. Almost two weeks after Brennan had announced her pregnancy, Angela had taken her aside and admitted the same thing to her friend. While Angela hadn't been thrilled when Jack let it slide later that month, she'd quickly forgiven him.
"I'm…Well, Bren, it'll be worth it," she grinned, and both women sat down, leaning back into the anthropologists couch.
"How is Michael taking the news?"
"He's really excited, actually…It's just…Sweetie, I…" the worry in her voice, the strain, made Brennan look up almost immediately into her friends eyes.
"What is it, Ange?"
"Hodgins and I…We hadn't actually planned on getting pregnant again…The risk was too high for the chance that he or she could be born blind and…I'm worried, sweetie…I really am,"
Brennan stayed silent and then propped herself up, trying to think of anything comforting to say.
"Anthropologically speaking, the worry you're feeling is simply-"
"Sweetie, I know…I just can't stand the idea of a kid living in a world without sight…Sight is my instrument. Michael, he was lucky, but…"
Brennan stayed silent again and blinked, rubbing her neck before intertwining her fingers with Angela's.
"Even if your child is born blind, they will be alright. Family holds fast. Alright? We stick together."
This promise was not a promise on Temperance Brennan's lips. No, they were fact. She wasn't lying when she said these things, and was instead saying something very real and something that she believed was true. It wasn't faith, she'd deduced. She'd seen what her family, what their family, could do. Angela was like a sister to her. One of which she rarely argued with and understood her quirks. And everyone had grown close. They didn't leave each other. This was fact.
Angela, astonished at the words, nodded and blinked.
"I have to go, Ange," Brennan said quickly when she looked at her wall clock and got up. "Stay safe. Call me later, if you want," she'd stated. Angela nodded and waved her off with a small smile on her face.
It was more than being a sister to her. It was like she was a part of her. It hurt, physically, to see the other hurt.
Neither was aware of the storm collecting around them.
Nor was Booth, who sat at the table, holding a glass of wine and waiting for his girlfriend. He'd put
Christine to bed an hour ago, and had yet to figure out why Brennan was so late tonight. It wasn't just that, of course. There were other reasons that he was nursing anger.
When the door opened softly and closed even softer, Booth looked up and felt his eyes harden.
"Where were you, Temperance?"
That should have been the first sign of his internal storm, not THE storm, but A storm, a storm that was tearing him apart. Only he didn't know it yet.
She crept in and laid her bag on the counter before sitting across from Booth, laying her head in her hands and sighing.
"I talked to Angela for a little later then I'd hoped, and the traffic wasn't pleasant today. I apologize, Booth. I'll look after Christine tomorrow," she offered, thinking he was angry about having to take care of their child by himself. He'd had to for the past week or so because of a case.
"Christine misses her mom, Temperance. Where the hell has she been?" he asked. For a moment, Brennan almost replied with the exact same reply as last time, before she realized that he had meant where had she been for the past week?
Since having Christine, she'd managed to block away the constant need to be at the lab. Christine and Booth, frankly, made her happy. But last weeks case had hit her hard. A foster kid who had died in the same manner she'd been treated. Trapped in the back of a car. She'd been re-visiting the bones, treating them with much care and almost motherly affection. Perhaps it was a bit odd to others, but she knew what it felt like and she didn't want her to think, even if the idea of an afterlife in her mind was ridiculous, that she didn't care.
Someone had to care.
Her name had Joy Manning. Perhaps that little tid bit had punched her hard as well.
"I'm sorry, Booth. It's just, the case-"
"You don't put work before family! That's not something you do! You don't put the bones of some dead girl who's been forgotten before your family! I thought even you'd have figured that out!"
Perhaps Booth hadn't figured out why the case had affected her that much. That was the only rational reason. But suddenly, Brennan didn't feel rational herself anymore. She got up quickly and slammed her hand on the counter top.
"She doesn't have any family, Booth! She was alone! Totally and utterly alone! Trapped in a god damned car trunk for days! A man that she was supposed to trust put her there! No food, no water, no light, almost no clean air! A child, Booth! A child who wasn't as lucky as some other children," she stated, before swinging around and walking away.
"Where the hell are you going?!" he snarled.
"To the guest room! I'm sleeping there tonight. Talk to me in the morning, Booth!" she stated, slamming the guest bedroom door and falling to the bed, exhaustion overtaking her.
As sad as it was, she was happy that he didn't knock on her door.
Christine had heard all of it, of course.
She'd cowered in the corner of her bedroom, holding her stuffed animals to her chin, and cried into her blanket. She knew that her mom had come home late, but she'd never have guessed Daddy would have gotten that mad over it. She'd seen her father angry when she'd broken something or played with something she wasn't supposed to, but never shouting angry. Daddy had always went outside or gone downstairs. He'd never screamed before.
She wanted to go to her treehouse, but it was dark and she was afraid of monsters. Ironically, she was the most aware of the storm building in the house. Not a storm, like the one that was building in her daddy, but the storm. The one that would blow them down.
This was like the wind that blew hard on a fall day. It hurt sometimes, but it was mostly harmless.
Cowering, Christine closed her eyes and started to tell a bedtime story to herself, trying to avoid the monsters that came with the storm.
Booth stood looking at the door for a long time. His heart had calmed down in his chest, but the anger was still there. Perhaps that's why he didn't go to her. The insignificant gnawing of the storm that was coming, it was barely registering. If it had registered, he would have gone to her. He would have whispered all things lovely and he would have told her how much she meant to him, how much he loved her.
But of course, this would not happen.
Instead, Booth finished his wine, and put away the cup, cleaning it slowly and methodically, not unlike he'd cleaned his gun all those years ago in the Rangers.
He jogged upstairs and didn't check on Christine. Perhaps, if he'd noticed the gnawing of the storm, he would have. But tonight, for the first night since she had been born, he didn't look into her bedroom. He walked into his own room, kept the door open and laid in bed.
He did not feel the storm approaching, but he did feel the aching of loneliness, of the lack of his woman beside him.
He ignored even this, though perhaps because fate is mostly unkind, he did not sleep.
He heard her scream for him at three in the morning. At first, he'd freaked out, thinking she'd had a bad dream. As though making up for bad timing, he checked on his daughter, who was sound asleep now on her bed, and then ran downstairs.
"Bones? You okay?"
"Booth…Labor…" she panted weakly. The man quickly stiffened.
"You're only nineteen weeks, Bones…"
"I'm well aware, thank you. Now get me to the freaking hospital, Booth!" she snarled, though it sounded as though it was more out of fear then pain. Booth rushed upstairs and woke up Christine, knowing that no baby sitter could be found this late at night, before he loaded both his girlfriend and child into the police car.
The frightened look on Christines face barely registered for Booth. He was paying attention to Brennan.
When they finally got to the hospital and managed to get in (luckily, almost no one was at the ER at three thirty in the morning) both Booth and Christine sat silently in the waiting room. He'd texted Hodgins to let him know.
All that Booth could think about was that fear in Brennan's eyes.
To be fair, it's unrealistic to assume that you can predict the storm. That you can know it's how it moves like weather men occasionally know when a storm will hits.
Children feel it first, and perhaps that's why they are either more or less affected by it then adults. Perhaps it has nothing to do with mental devolvement. Maybe it has everything to do with it. And maybe, in reality, when children feel it, it's just a lucky guess.
Who knows?
We breathe until our last breath comes forth.
But what if we never got the chance to breathe at all?
Perhaps this is the ultimate tragedy.
While the child sleeps, unaware that the storm has struck, rain falls from a man's face.
The rain is only the beginning of the storm. He is aware of this.