This has been a bit of a working effort for a few weeks, so I hope you enjoy :) It just digs a little deeper into how Brennan constructed her walls and how Booth, being the striking gentleman that he is, pulled them down.
My dear friend eitoph deserves a big chunk of credit for this one! Been there since it was 500 words that I had no idea what to do with. Thank you lovely! She's a legend and everyone should go read her work :)
Disclaimer: I've come to accept it, Bones is not mine, but I still like to play with the characters ;)
Enjoy.
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Truth and Understanding
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"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."
-Galileo Galilei
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Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
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Somewhere in the far recesses of her superbly networked brain, there lives a memory of a childhood long gone by. Laughter and happy chaos with paint streaking in bright colours across her mind. She can remember Russ and herself wearing aprons to protect their clothing, but still being covered from head to toe in bright yellow and blue. She can remember her mother pulling a camera from the bench behind her and snapping a photo, laughing at her two children's messy antics. Her father had walked in then and even at a young age Temperance could see that he was worrying about more than when his next pay rise would be. But the sight of his children playing on the newspaper lined kitchen bench was just perfection to him and he couldn't help but scoop up his daughter in one arm and son in the other and swing them around, not even caring in the slightest way that the intense coloured acrylic was staining his new white shirt and clip on tie.
It is a rare memory, the kind that sneaks up on her and takes over her whole thought process on an idle Thursday afternoon. The kind that can make her smile for the rest of the evening, the kind that leaves her wondering what could have been, in that romanticised fashion she so often criticises.
It's the kind of memory that she wants to share with the world but can never find an appropriate moment to express, so she keeps it tucked away with everything else. Keeps it burning alive inside of her as a flame of her true self, a reminder of who she was before...everything.
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Part 1
We'll make sure to build your home
Brick by boring brick,
Or the wolf's gonna blow it down.
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Offer up a little bit of yourself every once and awhile. Just… tell somebody something you're not completely certain you want them to know.
-Angela
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It smelt like oil and urine by the end of two days, but always, always she could smell the sweet lemon scent of the dishwashing detergent she had been using. Her legs were cramped up as she lay shivering in the foetal position, her nose catching whiffs of the sticky detergent in the putrid air, her mind playing over and over again the event which led to her being in the car trunk in broken sequences. Time wasn't a construct she could recognise in the blaring darkness surrounding her, but she knew that she was tired and hungry and so, so cold.
She tried to distract herself by singing the 'trying' song, but even that couldn't bring her comfort or make the time pass any faster. The words were fading from her memory like a lot of things she had brought with her from that other lifetime. To shake the fear of losing her childhood she started to recite the bones in the human body by name. Anatomy was becoming her favourite class at school and she wondered if there was any way to get a job out of it. She wondered how many of her bones bore the evidence of the abuse she had encountered.
There were a lot of tears in the beginning, but slowly they ebbed away until all she could feel was the tightening of her chest as she sobbed.
Her parents had driven away so long ago now. And her brother had left her to fend for herself in this scary world of people full of hatred and rage. She wondered how many children her current foster parents had had over the years, how long it took them to go from the loving caring people she could see in faded photographs around the house to the people they were now; the people who yelled constantly, who punched and kicked instead of comforting and cuddling. She wondered if maybe they were never like this before her, maybe she was the trigger for their anger. She made silent promise after silent promise that if she made it out of the car trunk alive she would be better. She would never break another dish as long as she lived.
When the fresh air hit her lungs as the blinding light flooded in, Temperance jumped from the back of the car and ran straight to the grass where she dry heaved for a good few minutes before, in the absence of any food in her stomach, she threw up a small amount of bile.
Her foster father picked her up around the middle, his clothes smelling like beer and smoke, his skin's pores filled with the stench of sweat, and pulled her inside to her bedroom, which had been stripped of everything that was hers. A black garbage bag lay in the middle of the room and a clean set of clothes was lying on the bare mattress; all her worldly possessions reduced to a garbage heap. He didn't yell at her as she had feared he would, he didn't beat her, but instead told her calmly to put on the new clothes and get in the car. They were going to child services.
She'd only been there two weeks and the place before there had only been a week. She knew what was happening; she was 16, she wasn't a cute, sweet child, she was a damaged adolescent. Rejected by her own family. Why would anybody else want her?
Rifling through her garbage bag, she found her shoe and wrote 'Willis' accompanied by the date on the bottom.
Most girls her age were racking up the amount of boys they had kissed.
She was racking up the foster homes.
It made her angry at her family for neglecting her. It made her angry at the foster system for their lack of commitment to making sure foster families were still capable of looking after children. It made her angry at herself that all she wanted to do was cry.
She threw her shoe back into her bag along with her filthy clothes. The clean ones she pulled on smelt like the house she was soon to be escaping, so she sprayed them with deodorant to forget the smell. She opened the door, her head held high. In two years she would be at college and this would all be behind her, she would never speak of any of this again. It became her mantra and brick by brick, her walls were constructed. The world would not know the problems of Temperance Brennan.
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My foster parents locked me in the trunk of a car for two days when I broke a dish. I was a very clumsy child. They warned me it would happen, but the water was so hot and the soap was so slippery. I still don't think it was fair, even though they gave me fair warning.
The water was so hot.
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"I just had to put together the finishing touches on the death metal case. Would you like to meet at the Founding Fathers?"
Booth looked to the kitchen where he could see a very tall psychiatrist working diligently, "Uh, how about you just come to mine, Bones. Gordon-Gordon is cooking. We'll have our end-of-case beer here."
"What is he making?"
He peered into the kitchen again, trying to see what ingredients lay before the man, "Looks like something with beans. Maybe."
She laughed, "I'm not sure Dr Wyatt would approve of your assessment of what is sure to be a first grade meal."
It was Booth's turn to laugh, "First class, Bones. Not grade. See you in ten?"
"See you."
He hung up and walked back into the kitchen to a glaring chef, "I'm making cassoulet, as I have stated at least thrice since being in your home."
Booth looked at the ingredients that Gordon-Gordon had lying before him and shrugged, "Looks like a whole lot of beans."
The psychiatrist turned chef looked at the agent disapprovingly, "When is that dear Doctor Brennan getting here? I need her to distract you."
Booth took a step back, acknowledging the hint, and semi-accepting that his psychiatrist had turned his crafted mind to cooking, "She should be about ten."
"Good, that gives us just enough time."
"Time for what?"
Gordon-Gordon turned from the ingredients, facing Booth, "Time to discuss you and the good doctor, of course."
"There's nothing going on between me and Bones."
The chef smiled that knowing smile, "Of course not."
Booth took a swig of his beer, "Then what are we talking about?"
"We're talking about the nothing and how it may so easily blossom into a something." His tone suggested exasperation.
"Listen, Doc," Wyatt raised his eyebrows at the title, "Uh, chef, whatever. Bones and me, we're too different. We would never work."
"Always extremes with you, 'nothing between us', 'never work', maybe if you open your eyes to the possibility of something you'll see more than you could imagine."
A knock at the door indicated that their conversation would be cut short as Brennan stepped in. Gordon-Gordon raised his eyebrows at Booth, turning back to cooking as the agent went to greet his dinner guest.
All night, all night, Booth thought about the conversation in the kitchen. He had looked long and hard at his partner that night and seen something he had lost all hope in seeing. Love was a strong word, but one he was willing to use to explain his feelings for his partner. He had accepted it a while ago, but it wasn't something he had ever even dreamed of seeing floating in Brennan's eyes. It was still shrouded in such conflict, such struggle, but it was there, shining and mixed with the tears of her long suppressed childhood memory. Right there, before him in the office of a young psychologist.
Sweets had joined them for dinner after the baring of their souls which had taken place and it was a long while between dinner and when the two psychological experts left Booth's apartment in the frenzy of a heated debate over Piaget's developmental stages of children. Brennan was still there at the late hour, not listening to her partner as he told her over and over again to leave the dishes and that he'd do them in the morning.
"Booth, it's foolish to leave them out over night when I am quite capable of tidying up," she pulled the stack of bowls from his hands and walked towards the sink, "Besides, it's not like I'm afraid of washing dishes anymore." She looked up at him begging him to understand, she just needed to keep going. If she could act the same way around him as she had been acting since she was 16, maybe she could push the memory of the car trunk to the back of her mind again. It would be as though she had never brought it out of the cobwebbed box from the back of her memory bank.
He sighed as he conceded to allow her to at least rinse their dinnerware, "When I was a small child, Russ and I used to get dad's newspaper from the morning and cover the entire kitchen bench with it." She swirled the sponge across a plate, leaving a streak through the crumbs that had stuck there from Booth's morning toast, "Mum would get us these huge sheets of butchers paper and paint and we would just get absolutely filthy finger painting everything." She smiled and moved a few of the dishes around so they would all fit on the bench, "Those are the things I want to share, Booth. Not the horrible things, but the happy things."
He smiled, taking one of her wet hands and pulling her away from the kitchen, "I want to show you something."
She moved to fight against him and go back to the kitchen, but the sincerity in his eyes was beckoning her to sit down on the couch and wait for him as he brought out a dusty old photo album, "What's this?" she asked, leaning into him as he sat down next to her.
"This," he opened the cover, "Is my childhood. The good parts." He flicked a few pages in and Brennan made a mental note to go back and make sure she saw all of the photos, but when she saw the specific photo that he was pointing at she froze, gasping slightly.
"How old were you?"
He smiled, "About five, Jared was three."
She ran her hand up and down the photo, marvelling in the similarity it bore to one of her own, tucked away in a dusty album somewhere in her house, "I was about five too when we started painting like this. I know that statistically a lot of children would paint on butcher's paper and get just as messy, but I find it sort of comforting to know that someone so close to me did the same thing."
"Pretty cool, huh?"
She smiled, still marvelling, "Yeah, pretty cool."
And they sat there that night, for hours talking about the happier parts of their childhoods. She told him about their picnics on the beach, he told her about their warm Christmases and how everything would smell like cinnamon for weeks. She told him about her ballet lessons as a five year old, he told her about his soccer games as a six year old. Pulling bricks down from each other's walls.
As they laughed themselves into a comfortable slumber on the couch, a young psychologist made his way back to his office at that late hour to pick up his newly titled manuscript, wanting to add a few details to the intricate story of Booth and Brennan.
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Part 2
Booth likes to say that "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Bones, than are dreamt of in your science".
-Temperance
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Don't be reckless with other people's hearts.
Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
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Sunshine beating on their backs, he smiled and held out a hand when she needed it. He gave her reprieve from the harsh heat with cold water and that solid comfort in the knowledge that what they were doing was the right thing. Then, there, standing in that trench with skeletons piled up around them, corpses of those left defenceless at the hands of those soldiers standing around the very same pile, he helped her to believe in something. Something bigger than science and the world, something that couldn't be measured or quantified by material things. She had believed in something higher than all of that, she believed that somehow, through all of the heat, the pain and everything that they would make it out alive and with a sense of closure bound to them. He brought down her walls, not completely, but enough that she knew she was opening up to this man more than she ever had with anyone else in her life. He helped her to believe that they were brought to this horrible place for a reason. Fate brought them there because they were the strongest willed of people, they could do this.
She believed in fate because she believed in him.
And then, after a warm night spent together, tangled in each other's embrace, holding solidly to everything that had brought them to that point, he'd leaned down and whispered something so perfect, yet so perfectly illogical that she ran. She had to run from his words of love, because although he had helped her believe in fate, she still held such confidence in other things as well. To her, love was an illusory construct and somehow, love and fate and happiness became twisted together in this spiral of a confused lie. He had hurt her, locked her in a world of confusion, but he never knew how and years later he returned a shoe to her that she'd left behind in her long run. Somewhere deep in the far recesses of her mind she felt that tickle of fate lingering there, beckoning her.
But fate is not real. He showed her that. He told her never to flinch and he flinched. She ran from Michael Stires because she was scared of what possibilities lay with him, later though, she stepped away from him and saw him for what he really was. A man who had no right to even begin to try and teach her about fate. A man who could only fill her with anger.
Just a man.
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"Do you believe in fate?"
"Absolutely not. Ludicrous."
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It was fate that brought them together. And as much as she couldn't see it, he could.
They were perfect opposites, she was all brains and rationality; he was all brawn and full of notions of a metaphoric heart. They pushed themselves away from each other but somehow, like magnets, were drawn back together in an airport security office.
Her walls were a mile high and ten feet deep. But he started at the top and methodically worked his way down, chipping away the whole time, never flinching, never backing down. She was impervious when they met and he wouldn't understand that for years, but she grew stronger every day.
He could still feel the young man's blood under his fingernails, but his head snapped up when her voice told him he still had blood on his hands. It stung him for a second before Angela was quick to ease his pain, "She means literally." He rubbed his hands together and suggested everyone take the night off.
He needed to be selfish and so when he approached her to stay at his place that night, he didn't ask, but instead just told her. He watched her eyes flash for a moment and then clear. And he wanted to hold her to him then and never ever let go of her. Not one ounce of resistance was left in her blue depths, just acceptance. She nodded and they stepped out of the room together.
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The fact that she had come to him should have tipped him off straight away, but as he held her crying form to his chest, he couldn't bring himself to fathom the possibility of her strength quite yet. His heart was still fragile. He ran his hands up and down her back, whispering to her, pressing his lips to her forehead intermittently and soothing her. He felt as her sobs subsided, leaving her soft breathing in its wake, but he knew that she had not fallen asleep as her hand ran over and over his chest, her head moving every couple of minutes to make sure she never lost the sound of his beating heart.
"You're a good person, Bones."
She didn't move from his chest, but her confusion was still heard in her soft, "Huh?"
"That's what kind of person you are. You're a good hearted person and Vincent was lucky to have you as his mentor."
Although she had cried beyond what any person would call a large amount that night, she felt the tears prick her eyes again, "I was so lucky to know him, Booth."
His hands began to rub her back again as she lifted her head, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. And then her eyes locked on his, red and tired from tears and he could only imagine he looked somewhat the same. They didn't move, but just stared into each other and he couldn't help thinking that it was possibly the most intimate thing he'd ever experienced, as though his eyes were seeing past her soul and into something deeper, a part of her that she had kept hidden from the world for too long.
And then she went to lie her head back down, but he'd seen enough to know, to be sure and he caught her before she fell, his lips pressing against hers in a silent offering.
She closed her eyes, mouth still tangled in his, and kissed him back, accepting.
Her heart was pounding against his chest as they moved closer and closer to each other, never wanting a gap between them again. He knew the risks of doing this and then facing the day knowing he was going to have to bring down Broadsky. She knew the risks as well. But something was so right between them in that moment, that not even the constant beep of his alarm caused them to stir straight away.
It was a couple of moments before Booth snaked his arm from her back to his bedside table to switch off the offending sound, effectively pulling apart from a heavy breathing Brennan. They laid there for a little longer, foreheads touching, their breath mingling in a hazy, almost surreal moment of realisation.
They had crossed the line.
He wondered whether she understood what it all meant, then almost had to laugh at himself. Of course she knew. She had once told him that on a day when she was no longer impervious and he no longer angry, maybe they could be together. He had brought down the walls of her imperviousness; he had seen it in her eyes right before he'd kissed her.
And as for him, the only anger he could summon was for Broadsky.
"I'll see you tonight?" she was tentative to leave him, but she knew he would need space to get in the right frame of mind for the day ahead.
He kissed her forehead, "Tonight."
"I would have told you to be safe yesterday, but today I feel like it holds more weight. I'm not sure why I want you to know that." She added before climbing out of his bed.
He smiled softly at her, "It's OK, I understand why."
She gave him a quizzical look as he stepped past her into the bathroom. She wasn't concerned though, he would explain it to her one day, she was sure.
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Part 3
He knows the truth of you.
And he's dazzled by that truth.
-Avalon
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It's year later when he walks in and sees his family in their predicament, and although for all those years he has prided himself on knowing his partner in a way that nobody could ever know anybody else, in a way that makes him giddy inside and smile all day long, in a way that only Booth could know Bones, today is the first time he's ever seen her so lost in a happy, childlike way.
She'd left the lab earlier than usual, offering to pick Parker up for the weekend on her way home as Booth had some paper work to fill out. Charlotte had been at day care, but Brennan couldn't resist picking her up that little bit earlier once she had Parker with her, although she screamed all the way home about missing out on painting that afternoon.
And really, that was how it started.
Spurred on by her child's wishes to paint, Brennan had pulled out sheets and sheets of paper and laid them out all over their table, with a couple of bottles of paint and no brushes.
Booth had walked into a catastrophe of colour. Bones and his two children all looking as ridiculous as each other with purple in their hair and blue on their clothes. All looking Charlotte's age, rather than their own.
"I know you don't like me to spend money on unnecessary things, but I reasoned that buying us all a new set of clothes would be necessary after this." She laughed, stepping away from the table and towards her partner, "Besides," she lowered her voice, "I've been looking forward to a shower with you all day and this will give us an excuse to have an extra long one."
He grinned, pulling her to his chest, kissing her hello, getting purple paint all over the front of him and not caring for a second, "I'll get the camera."
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It is a photo that both Parker and Charlotte will show their future spouses one day, both children locked in a war with paint while their parents looking at each other over the top of their heads; something undefined and beautiful shining in their eyes.
Something only they will ever understand the truth of.
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Thank you for reading, reviews are appreciated :)