A/N: Just a story I came up with while listening to Concrete angel. The lyrics belong to the wonderful Martina McBride, the characters to FOX, but Damian and Ceil are mine. This will eventually tie in with my other story, Sleeping In.
Concrete Angel
She walks to school with the lunch she packed
Nobody knows what she's holdin' back
Wearin' the same dress she wore yesterday
She hides the bruises with linen and lace
A young Temperance Brennan walked on her way to school, the scars from the previous night at her foster home evident on her arms and around her neck. She's fought, not only for herself, but also for the ten-year-old twins who had been brought into the hellhole that she currently called home.
School was her refuge. It was the one time she was left alone, and about the only time she had to think. To plan. She'd always plan on how to get away from this home, and be sent to another… but this house was different. She had to tough it out for Ceil and Damian.
The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask
It's hard to see the pain behind the mask
Bearing the burden of a secret storm
Sometimes she wishes she was never born
No one ever asked about the foster child Temperance Brennan, although when her foster father bruised her face quite badly, the teacher, Mrs. Torstein almost asked if anything was wrong.
Temperance hid the pain behind a mask of defiance. Not doing her homework, not listening, refusing to work in groups. She was brilliant, all her teachers agreed, but she'd be flipping burgers all her life if she didn't pull herself together.
She still remembered her parents, and all that they did for her. She remembered them leaving right before Christmas. She didn't know that one day, she'd find her mother's body, murdered, and solve the case. She didn't know that one day she'd be a famous author working for a world-renowned institution of science. She didn't know that one-day, everything she went though would be worth it.
Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
In a world that she can't rise above
But her dreams give her wings
And she flies to a place where she's loved
She'd never let on to her feelings, knowing that each tear was a sigh on weakness, and that each sob meant another beating. Each time she protested, her resolve hardened, and each time she resisted, she grew stronger.
She dreamt that one day she'd fall in love, just like any teenager would. In her dreams, she was perfect, but the lucky man never had a face, until one night.
He had dark hair and brown eyes that seemed to be able to gaze through all the barriers that she had spent almost half of her life building. He was always kind to her, and oddly, he called her 'Bones.'
Every time she woke up, there would be a few tears, which were always wiped away seconds later.
Concrete angel
Somebody cries in the middle of the night
The neighbors hear, but they turn out the lights
A fragile soul caught in the hands of fate
When morning comes it'll be too late
She'd cry from each punch, kick and pinch… any attempt to hurt her so that he would be satisfied and finally leave Ceil and Damian alone. She no longer cared for herself, only for those around her.
No one cared about anything that happened to Temperance Brennan. Teachers, fellow students, even the social worker assigned to her.
Ceil and Damian cared.
Ceil and Damian died.
A statue stands in a shaded place
An angel girl with an upturned face
A name is written on a polished rock
A broken heart that the world forgot
She'd waited over a decade to give her first friends a proper burial. She'd had them exhumed, and moved them to a small yet beautiful graveyard. A concrete angel, her head upturned, gazing into the heavens, headed their two graves, side by side. At the base, a polished rock bore two names, identifying the residents.
Booth stood by Brennan, whose eyes were watering if only slightly, red from sobbing before.
"You did good Bones." He murmured, one hand on her lower back.
Angela and Hodgins stood holding hands, watching Temperance struggle to keep control. "She needs this." Angela whispered, and Jack nodded in agreement.
Zach stood with one of his sisters, Catharine. Cam stood by herself.
In the distance, two male figures could be seen, standing side by side.
Max Keenan and Russ Brennan had come back, risking their freedom to watch the memorial service. A small dolphin charm for a silver charm bracelet lay on the passenger's side seat of Booth's SUV, slipped in through the open window.
"'Atta girl Joy." Max said, as they turned, walking inconspicuously back to a plain black car with a Canadian license plate.