Disclaimer: I still do not own these wonderful characters, just imagining how a certain friendship ever got started.
Author's Note: I've taken my cue from the already established friendship between Brennan and Angela that we were introduced to in the Pilot, based upon the way it got started in the 100th episode. How did that strong friendship develop so quickly? What does Angela see in Brennan?
~Q~
~The Singer Who Was Silenced~
~Q~
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.
Measure for Measure, Act III, scene 1, line 118.
~Q~
Northwestern University
February 1998
When she held her first human skull, Brennan was still learning the names of things. Every part and parcel of bone had a name, a description of where it was, what it did, and what it connected to. Words like ramus (a large, bony projection that juts out at an angle) and condyle (a smooth, rounded bump where bones join) were only just being joined together with other words like mandible (jaw bone) and masseter (chewing muscle). Put them all together, and eventually Temperance Brennan would be able to identify a jaw bone as belonging to a male or a female just by its size, the sharpness of its 'chin,' the strength of muscle attachment; and its age just by looking at any attached teeth.
That uncanny ability was still a few years away when she first envisioned a face. Sitting in her human osteology class, turning the skull carefully so she could note certain structures and begin to make her measurements, Brennan looked into the skull's empty eye sockets and saw brown. Brown eyes, high cheeks, skin the color of coffee with just slightly too much cream. Without taking measurements and plotting morphometric characteristics from standardized charts, without 'science,' Brennan could already see the face of this 'Caucasian' specimen didn't match the racial category someone had placed it in. She suddenly raised her hand until the professor came to her.
"Who did this skull belong to?" Brennan asked. "Is there a way to find out?"
"It came from one of our exemplar collections."
Brennan studied the zygomatic bones carefully, tracing the curve with a tender fingertip. "Was she mixed race? African and Caucasian. About 20-25 years old."
Frowning, Professor Johnston leaned in for a closer look himself. When his eyes had flickered over the skull, evidently confirming his own suspicions, he held out his hand to receive the skull. He tipped it carefully, noting the cataloging number inked at the base of the occipital. "I'll check, Ms. Brennan. I confess, you have me intrigued."
He returned the skull to her and promised he would check the skull's provenance after class.
The following morning, as she was about to leave the osteology lab, Professor Johnston asked her to stay behind a moment. "You were correct. The specimen you were examining yesterday did indeed belong to a young mulatto woman from the mid 19th Century. I'm surprised you were able to detect it; mixed racial characteristics are notoriously difficult to quantify."
Brennan shook her head, still uncertain herself how she'd visualized it. "I just saw her." A face had floated over the bone almost like a painting or a photograph.
"You have a gift for this kind of work," he said slowly. "You should not let it go to waste."
~Q~
She didn't let her talents go to waste; rather, Dr. Temperance Brennan became one of the best physical anthropologists in the world. Most of the time, Brennan had to work at it in order to bring out a face. She specialized in ancient remains and painstakingly reconstructed faces, lifestyles, injuries. Most of the people she worked with were dusty and still, their faces teased out by layers of clay smoothed over tissue depth markers. Most of them were silently content with their lot, having happily lived and then left their lives in the company of loved ones.
She cataloged them or vetted them as authentic. Sometimes she wrote journal articles explaining how she'd arrived at particular conclusions regarding diet, dress, cause of death.
But once in a while, a face floated freely over the skull. Every now and then a word scraped roughly over her subconscious and alerted her to look … there. To notice ... that. Sometimes, the bones spoke to her. (That's what Angela called it, although Brennan never failed to point out bones did not have mouths and thus they could not speak.)
Still, at times the bones did speak and she always listened very carefully when they did.
One 4000 year old man's bones rustled and hissed when she touched them, his face floating fretfully over his skull. Brennan bent towards his ribs, fingers drifting over the curves and tiny grooves until she found the tip of an arrow wedged into the space between his seventh posterior rib and the inferior angle of his left scapula. Someone had driven a spear into him and broken the tip of the arrow when it hit the scapula, a feat that would have been impossible if the man were standing. He'd been lying down, the attacker coming at him from the right side.
Murdered in his sleep, four thousand years ago.
Publishing her findings in this ancient murder case was what eventually brought Temperance Brennan's name to the attention of an FBI Agent named Seeley Booth. Solving his four year old murder case was what brought her to the attention of the best friend she would ever have.
~Q~
August 2004
"Hey, you wanna go out and maybe get some drinks? You look the same way I feel."
Brennan glanced up in surprise to find Angela Montenegro standing uncertainly at the door to her office. Going out did not appeal to her at all—she'd had enough alcohol last night to last a month—but the only alternative was to stay at work and brood, or go home and brood. She wasn't really the brooding type and generally lacked experience at the proper brooding technique. Ordinarily, Brennan preferred to bury herself in work when her mind was unsettled but tonight the work itself had unsettled her. The idea of drinking her troubles away was one she hadn't considered yet and despite her desire to avoid anything harder than a glass or two of wine for the foreseeable future, the idea tempted her.
Because, she thought, having company and companionship might not be such a bad idea. Brennan was feeling decidedly off-balance, disturbed, sad, and bitter. Booth had her seething, but the young woman whose murder she'd just solved still haunted her.
Gazing curiously at Angela's drawn face, she asked, "How do you feel?"
"Like I need to get away from that." Angela gestured behind herself, unmistakably pointing towards the forensic platform where the murdered girl's bones were waiting to be released to her family.
Brennan had needed to get away from that area as well, for a little while, but had fully intended to return to work within an hour or two. She still had several reports to prepare before the court case got underway. Leaving the lab would be longer than just a little while, however. If she left, she probably wouldn't come back until morning. Angela's invitation was starting to appeal to her even more now that she'd considered her alternatives.
With a tired sigh, Brennan grabbed her coat and headed past the artist she'd just hired a couple of days ago. She walked up the steps of the platform briskly, leaving Angela to remain behind, curious and just slightly miffed about being ignored, but Angela's expression changed when she saw what Brennan was doing.
A skull was resting on a foam block, surveying all the other bones set out below it in anatomical order on the table like a queen over her loyal subjects. Brennan went to the skull and gazed down on it with something like regret. "Booth says I can't take you with me. You're evidence." She bit her lip, studying the bone structure very carefully. "I'll be back tomorrow."
Abruptly, she spun back and returned to Angela without any explanation. "Where are we going," she asked casually, walking towards the exit as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
Angela had remained stalled at the base of the platform, her head tilted quizzically. "What was that all about?"
"What was what." Brennan sounded vague and kept herself busy at the exit pawing for car keys in her messenger bag.
"You spoke to it."
"Spoke to what." She had the keys out. Lifting her steady grey-green gaze at last, Brennan's face was smooth and blank.
"You spoke to that skull."
Brennan glanced back at the table, then turned back to Angela almost defiantly. "I was thinking out loud."
Angela Montenegro made her living observing everything, mostly what she could see. But occasionally what she could hear, and she'd heard Temperance Brennan telling that skull the reason she wasn't taking it with her. A chill ran down her arms. "You took it home with you last night."
How morbid was this woman who walked around with skulls in her purse? Angela was starting to get the creeps, but the unmistakable grief that flickered in the anthropologist's eyes arrested her disgust. It wasn't morbid at all, what drove Brennan; it was something else entirely.
"She's not an 'it,'" Brennan corrected fiercely. "She was a sixteen year old girl, a singer. She was alone for four years in a garbage dump. She was locked in the trunk of a car for a day."
This last came out sounding strangled.
"Well, she was already dead when that happened, right?"
Those ghostly silver eyes were glinting like pebbles at the bottom of a clear, rushing steam: visibly sharp and distinct, and yet it was impossible to tell how deep the water ran over them. "No one belongs in the trunk of a car."
Not dead, not alive. Not ever.
Angela's feelings on the matter exactly, except that Brennan seemed to be drowning in sorrow. The haunted pain rolling off of the other woman almost took Angela's breath away. She wanted to paint what she was seeing right now, to capture the terrible beauty of Temperance Brennan's passion and grief, but sensed it wasn't the right time. She knew she would see this again if she stuck around, however.
Knowing her initial instincts about Brennan were correct, she decided someone needed to pull this poor woman out of this cursed laboratory and out into the world of the living once in a while. Angela suddenly took Brennan's arm and ushered her out of the lab, her decision made. This wasn't about Paris anymore. Brennan cared too much, she connected too deeply, and it would destroy her if someone didn't intervene.
"You shouldn't dwell on it," Angela chided. "Let's just go and forget about it. Okay?"
Brennan's shoulders sagged a little. "I can't forget."
"Just for a couple of hours."
~Q~
Angela had wanted a rousing nightclub with thumping rhythms and legions of horny men scoping her out. Brennan had insisted on a quieter lounge nearby, claiming she still had a headache from the Tequila.
"So, what happened last night?" Angela inquired with a salacious grin. "You and Agent Studly see any action?"
"I told you I didn't sleep with him," Brennan reminded her gruffly.
"But you wanted to…"
Shaking her head slowly, Brennan heaved another sigh. "Not like that."
Angela settled in for a juicy story, sensing that whatever 'like that' meant, it was important. "Like what?"
Toying idly with the cardboard coaster her wine glass was supposed to be resting upon, Brennan allowed her anger and disappointment to emerge just briefly. "He got me drunk, then he fired me."
"Okay…." Angela prompted. "Then what?"
"Why did he get me drunk first?"
Angela shrugged. "Was he drinking, too?"
"Yes."
"Bad judgment call, then. So, what happened?"
"We kissed."
Angela squealed so loudly Brennan's head nearly imploded. She winced, glancing around sheepishly at the other patrons of the lounge. They had earned a few raised brows, but evidently Angela didn't care enough to stop her excited gushing.
"How was it? Was he a great kisser? I'll bet he was. Those lips, those shoulders. Tell me you got to touch his shoulders…."
"Angela!" Despite her torn feelings over Seeley Booth, Brennan couldn't help smiling a little at the artist's enthusiasm. "We were both drunk, so I went home. Alone."
Ah, so 'like that' must have meant drunk. Temperance Brennan didn't do drunken hook-ups. Angela filed that away for future reference. "Okay, but you're going to see him again, right?"
"No." Brennan took a long sip of her Merlot, savoring it over the lingering bite of Tequila and Booth that still held court in her mouth. Kissing him was a bad idea. What the hell was she thinking, throwing caution to the wind and hurling herself at his oasis like a woman dying of thirst. It was nothing but a mirage. "He hired me back this morning. FBI Agents can't date consultants."
"But the case is over," Angela pointed out.
"Don't you get it, Angela? FBI Agents can't date consultants. He got me drunk, then he fired me. We kissed…. But I didn't go home with him and the next day he hired me right back. He didn't say a word about it. Doesn't that mean what I think it means?"
"That he's an ass?"
Brennan snorted, then laughed. "He does have a fine ass."
"He is an ass, but most men are," Angela assured her. "That's why you let them screw your brains out a couple of times and then kick them to the curb before they can mess with your head."
The startled look Brennan threw her made Angela snicker. "What, you never took some guy home to have your wicked way with him, just for the hell of it?"
"No." It wasn't disapproval, more like surprise. As if the idea hadn't ever occurred to her, nor the opportunity. "I don't get out much," she shrugged. Men generally weren't interested in her. Then again, most men didn't interest Brennan either. Seeley Booth had been an anomaly in both those respects, an observation that Brennan found herself struggling to explain. The many things she felt around and about him defied her efforts to quantify and dismiss as merely a troublesome biochemical fare-up. Hormones running amok did not explain why she felt so achingly raw in the places he'd wounded her.
They fell silent for a moment. Angela gestured to the waiter to bring them another round. "Hey, since we're talking about things not explained in the morning…"
Glad for the change in topic, Brennan waited expectantly with one brow lifted.
"Why did you offer me a permanent job this morning?"
The question sent another unhealthy bolus of wine rushing down Brennan's throat as she stalled for a moment, because she wasn't sure how to answer that without sounding like she'd made an irrational decision. She had just followed an almost whispered idea that Angela was the right artist to choose for the job of drawing Jemma. (Booth had called it 'intestines' or something, but no one in their right mind made decisions with their digestive system. Well, except maybe hungry people did.) That she was still thinking of him coupled with that irrelevant bit of intestinal randomness made Brennan eye her glass with dismay and she set it aside. She hadn't been herself over the last few days and didn't know quite what had brought about the changes.
She studied Angela with the same intensity she ordinarily employed on bones, tracking bone structure under flesh, noting Angela's mixed ancestry. The artist had a beautiful zygomatic structure, and lovely winging brows that flew above her eyes like birds in flight. Angela's question awaited her answer but before she knew what her answer would be, Brennan knew she had to ask a question of her own.
"Why did you draw earrings on her?"
"What?" Angela tipped her head, completely bewildered.
"When you drew Jemma Arrington, you put in details that can't be empirically known. You styled her hair, and you drew large hoop earrings. Why?" She'd known from Angela's work that the artist had an eye for bone structure and the sculpting of muscles under flesh. Yet the sketch of Jemma had exceeded her expectations to an astonishing degree. That fact had been slammed home when she sat in the FBI conference room with Agent Booth and watched Jemma sing. From only a skull and Brennan's tissue depth markers, Angela had drawn Jemma, a portrait just as stunningly accurate as if the living girl had posed for her.
With a small, self-deprecating laugh, Angela shrugged and avoided Brennan's direct gaze. "It just felt like the right thing to do."
"You drew her the way she looked during her last performance. She was wearing those earrings." Brennan closed her eyes, seeing Jemma's face, hearing her low, gentle alto humming against the piano's somber notes. She saw the soft cheeks, the glowing, intelligent eyes, the musical smile. "You see her, the same way I do."
When she opened them again, Brennan turned to Angela and found the artist looking gravely serious. The two women remained suspended eye-to-eye, pondering each other's respective gifts, and the implications of a partnership.
"Do you believe in ghosts, Brennan?"
"No, of course not."
"I do," Angela shrugged. "Don't you think it's possible?"
She laughed, shaking her head. "Logically, no. Consciousness cannot exist absent electrical activity in the nervous system. Death stops all electric impulses; ergo, death ends consciousness."
"What about illogically?" Angela quipped.
"I don't know what that means," Brennan frowned.
"You were talking to Jemma's skull, and carrying it around with you. Why bother if there's nothing there?"
"There is nothing there," Brennan insisted. "I just … feel bad that she was alone for so long."
"Jemma doesn't care anymore," Angela pointed out gently. "Only you do."
Brennan looked away, another wisp of ineffable sorrow passing over her features. "Someone should."
"Yeah." Angela fortified herself with another drink. There was a lot to consider, both the short term financial gain of having a steady income, and the long-term cost of giving in to the demands of the dead. She'd felt something when she looked at that skull and drew that sketch; it was a sensation unlike any she'd ever experienced before. The very idea of tying herself down to a serious job involving death and justice went against every inclination she had, except for one: the realization that for the first time, her art had actually moved someone. She'd drawn a sketch and made a difference in more than one life. That was the force pulling her in: her own desire to leave her mark in the world through art, and the recognition that Brennan had given her a way to do it.
"Look, if I do this, I refuse to drink alone. You're coming with me, every night. I'm going to drag you out of that lab with me."
Brennan chuffed another soft laugh, but didn't contain her curiosity. "Why?"
"Because you're going to lose yourself in there," Angela warned.
The fact that Brennan didn't argue with her told Angela she was right, and even Brennan knew it.
~Q~
Author's Note: This is where we start, with Angela's story and how she is woven into Brennan's life. There's one more fundamental relationship (Booth) and his story will be woven into Brennan's as the story progresses.
If there's something you liked, let me know. If there's something you didn't like, let me know that, too. If you've got a question I will definitely answer it. Detailed reviews make me a better writer, which will ensure you get a better story. :)
