A.N. I do not own Bones
A.N. 2 This fic is AU and OOC. It takes placed in the sixth season but no episode specifically. This is a betrayal fic with character bashing. The character bashing is because I want some serious mistakes made in relationships. Also, Angela will be one of the characters bashed and Hodgins too. If you have a problem with that, you have been warned.
Brennan made mistakes and she did acknowledge them but she knew it was too late. She was left alone in utter pain and lived at the Jeffersonian. Throwing herself into her work helped her numb her heartache. She was determined to give as many remains their identities back and make sure they can be returned to their families if possible. She always had taught her interns to have respect for remains saying they were someone's loved one and having their remains back can help fill a hole in not knowing what happened to them. She had been teaching her interns how to reconstruct faces without the help of Angela's computer and how most faces are identified without the high tech.
The extra time Brennan had been teaching her interns had made them see why the remains needed faces and names and not enough of them have been identified lately. All of the interns had seen how everyone had been treating Brennan and frankly they did not want to help them if they could avoid it. Brennan had refused to come to scenes unless on order.
In return she was asking all of her interns to step it up and they were ready. Angela had given Brennan a harsh remark "You never used to be this frigid to anyone and you are being too hard on your interns."What Brennan had excluded everyone else on is all of her interns were almost done with their thesis. They were told to step it up because she will not be there to help them forever.
"Angela, I kindly request you go back to your work. Now for my interns, they have been asking for more challenges and I am giving it to them. The challenges that I will present to them now will come in the form of more oral exams which I have never been an easy grader but fair."
Daisy had overheard Angela calling Dr. Brennan a bitch and she needed friends who were more fun. Daisy had lost all respect for the woman. During the months away from the Jeffersonian, she had become closer to Dr. Brennan and had a better understanding of her. Daisy had come to realize something about Dr. Brennan is she has Asperger's. She knows what it does and how it affects someone. Her cousin has it and she is one of the most gifted medical doctors she knows. Her cousin works with the World Health Organization helping to save lives. Her words have always had an effect on her "Everyone deserves a shot at life no matter how large, small, or different and all life is to be treated with respect because we all have something to offer the world."Her mouth would be sealed about the Asperger's because so many have screwed her over. If she says anything to anyone it would be Lance since psychology is his thing.
When working on a case that she had suspected that the cause of death was being an idiot Angela had tried to have her come to lunch with her. "I am going to have to decline Angela."
They were having a lunch break together when it was figured out that the victim had died from a belly flop off a 100 foot cliff. Everyone looked disappointed when Brennan had something to say. "The force of the impact would be like falling on a solid surface when entering the water. The victim would have sustained fatal internal injuries."It was not the first case that Daisy had dealt with an idiot.
Daisy knew Fisher, Arastoo, Vinny, and Wendell all wanted to dig into them but they had to keep it professional. That is why they had been getting together three times a week for study sessions. Wendell was sick of listening Booth tell everyone on the team how bad of a person that Brennan is, he quit the team. He found a spot on the Breakaway League in Alexandria with the Falcons. This team has some fun. The teams in this league has a tradition for the last 8 years that everyone helps mentor a child who is in the adaptive program. The division he was with is the standing program. He currently was helping a bunch of kids who lost limbs due to disease and injury take to the ice again.
It was here he met a nice girl who shares a love and passion for hockey. Her name, Elizabeth and she is both an Occupational Therapist and a Physical therapist. She also played hockey and is a center on his team. Elizabeth had also been in his corner in encouraging him to follow his passion. He also told her how everyone has treated his mentor and she was disgusted by that. "I hope she leaves. They took advantage of her. She spoke at Boston University and I loved what she had to say."
Wendell also voiced something he has had suspicions of "I think Temperance Brennan has Asperger's. I remember it from my psychology class. She has the drive in one topic, she does not always get social cues, does not understand humor, can have a flat affect and can speak in a monotone, not to mention she has problems keeping friends. I don't feel sorry for her but I feel she is probably the best person that I have come to know. She gives up her vacations to go and identify victims of catastrophe and return them to their loved ones. She also has us interns working on bones that have been stuck in limbo and returning them to,loved ones".
Elizabeth was shocked "Stay out of trouble, it's not going to help you if you do something that is going to get you fired. Now, you can get revenge from the jerks. It's called success, success is the best revenge of them all."
Now for Vincent, Brennan was throwing the books at him and was swallowing the information whole and applying it. She was correcting him when needed. Hodgins came into the bone room and said "Dr. Brennan, you could lighten up on the kid."It was Vincent who took a shot at him but it would not get him in trouble. "I am rather enjoying working in this case of an early bone cancer victim."It was the truth and he had a discussion with Dr. Brennan about switching into medical anthropology. She encouraged him because she said you want to do what you love. When he was not dealing with a forensic case, he was working on remains of those who died of disease and malnutrition which helped him form his own opinion about history and the world around him. Hodgins tried to get him do an experiment but he declined "What does it have to do with the bones. You just want to blow something up.
"
Now for Brennan, her books had been an outlet for her frustrations with people and releasing it in the form of a story. When she was not working on bones, she was writing. Writing is her second release. With the way everyone had been acting, why should she associate with them outside of the professional bounds of her career. She had been writing in betrayal into her latest book.
She had something else to focus on. She was starting an academic program to help the teenagers get out of the system and to go to school or help the ones who dropped out get their g.e.d. Her program was being well received by the youth centers around the city that help these kids. It was staying under the radar but she had her first success story.
Her name, Beth Mitchell. She was put into the foster care system when she was three and being moved around was making school hard for her. The program also offered SAT/ACT prep. Beth took her standardized tests and applied to Temple University and got in as an honors student on full scholarship.
Due to her life in the foster system, she wanted to help others get out early and the way is through education. She understood what abuse feels like, what it feels like to have to move your life around in a trash bag. Others may judge but she does not. She knows she has her faults but sometimes you have to evolved to fix a problem.
There were a few around her that knew about what she was doing. Caroline was a big fan of it as was Sweets. For Sweets, the activity is not self-destructive so he was not worried about her well being through that but he had noticed that she has severe depression. The interns knew about it and wanted to volunteer as tutors.
Clark had quit. He just could not put up with the crap and drama of the Jeffersonian. He had other interests he wanted to pursue. He wanted to spread his love of anthropology through teaching. He had been thinking about it for the last three years. He wanted to be able to go on more diggs. Dr. Brennan, who he had butted heads with from time to time helped him find the right school and the right school is Dartmouth College. Her reference was so good that he was offered an assistant head of the department with no threat of being an adjunct. The only adjustment he would have to make is invest in a better winter jacket because New Hampshire is cold, much colder than DC in the winter.
Everyone else at the Jeffersonian had been picking up something was going on with all that was Brennan and her interns. Nothing was inappropriate or unprofessional. Casses were being handled and her work impeccable as were the interns who were getting even better but attitudes had changed. Cam noticed how cold Clark had been when he handed in his resignation. The interns were acting within proper bounds and so Cam had no power over that. They were cold around Hodgins, Angela, Booth, and herself. She also knew she could not interfere with Dr. Brennan's grading of her interns work. She was treating them professional but pushing them to do even better than before. She was getting the best out of them and with Brennan but she knew what the real problem was and she was enabling the problem.
She was guilty as was everyone else treating her like crap and being subhuman not even worthy of their friendship and respect. They had been leaving Brennan out on activities that they used to do together like go out for a beer or dinner after work. She was guilty of it as was anyone else but she knew she was losing Brennan and as a doctor, she could see she is in deep depression.
Her interns wanted nothing to do with them outside of work. She had ran into Arastoo one Saturday at the grocery store while he ignored her. He claimed he did not see her and was talking on the phone to one of his friends. She had heard him on the phone. Wendell had quit the hockey team that he was on with Booth. It was all falling apart.
Arastoo did not like how the others were treating his mentor. She was pushing him in what he was interested in identifying victims war and the realities of what he had was going to be facing. He had been soaking up her knowledge up like a sponge. He had been doing his own work but picking her brain over topics including genocides. What he wanted to get into was the darkest of humanity. Her lessons in limbo was helping him understand that each skeleton has a name and someone that loves them and is in pain because they do not know what happened. He also learned something else, before he got there Dr. Brennan's mother had been in limbo and she discovered it when they worked on on her mother's skull. He knew why the drive was there and he was pushing himself to be done with his internship so he can get out of there. Dr. Brennan even had given him the name of one of the anthropologists who does exactly what he wants to do and with Brennan's recommendation, he has his first true digg lined up and this one is in South Sudan.
Fisher was not impressed at all with the coldness directed at his mentor. He knew how she was feeling, isolated and numb and no one wanted to see what is in front of them. He had learned so much from her over the years that he did want to step it up. He had a nice laugh when him and Brennan solved a murder without everyone else's help. It took the eye of an anthropologist to solve a problem. He was interested in medical anthropology and Dr. Brennan mentored him in how to shift his thesis to that without losing 70 pages of work. Once he was done, he was gone. He was interested in working for the UN and the work that they do.
Angela and Hodgins saw a change in Brennan and her interns. They were all frosty to them but nothing unprofessional. She told Brennan she wanted a friend with human emotions but she had come to learn something. Hannah ' s emotions were shallow and lacked substance as a human being. She had been hurt that Brennan and her interns had been identifying so many bodies in limbo without her help. When she confronted Brennan about it she was told this. "They can not rely on you to do the identifications forever."The solving of murders without her was a slap on the face. She knew Hodgins was in the same boat as her.
Sweets had repaired his relationship with Daisy and he was glad he did when Daisy told him what was going on with Brennan and what the others were doing to her. That they did not give a damn about her anymore and she was spending all of her time in limbo or teaching them. He was actually concerned for her mental health and safety. It was worse than what he thought. He would be joining Daisy and the others in Dr. Brennan's corner. He would also be having a nice chat with Caroline in what has been going on at the Jeffersonian.
Booth had been saying "Serious as a heart attack"but heart attacks kill and this heart attack is destroying Brennan's heart. He would make it his personal mission to give Booth a wake up call and a nice dose of reality and bring him back down to earth where he belongs. He knew he played a role in the center unraveling and he would start to fix it for Dr. Brennan's sake.
Now, he did have an interesting discussion with Daisy about Dr, Brennan having Asperger's and it is plausible but he knew she would never agree to testing. He had suspected she has Asperger's for a long time now.
Everything would come crashing down during one spring morning. Dr. Brennan had been having a headache, like a migraine and she felt numb all over. She also felt nauseous. She could not stand anymore and fell to the ground having a seizure. Daisy had been working with her and the bone room and thought it was just a bug.
Daisy shouted "I NEED SOME HELP IN HERE. DR. BRENNAN IS HAVING A SEIZURE."
Cam heard Daisy and ran in. She was on the phone to get paramedics here now. She began examining and trying to keep Brennan from hurting herself. She had a suspicion, aneurysm and it just might kill her.
Daisy was white as a ghost and in tears. Angela tried to comfort the intern but pulled away "Don't touch me."
Watching Brennan having the seizure and being lifeless will haunt Angela and Hodgins for the rest of their lives.
The same thought came between Angela, Hodgins, and Cam. "What have we done?"
