AN: Thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, followed, or favorited the first chapter. I'm a little bit warier of posting this one, but here goes. There probably needs to be a trigger warning here for abuse.
That night, she woke up at 3 a.m. drenched in sweat and gasping for breath. She flipped the bedside light on (There is light…) and stared up at the ceiling (It is high above my head; I am not being crushed…) and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders (I am warm. I am safe. Everything is fine…). She waited for her heartbeat to calm, and then for her thoughts to stop running circles in her head, but the nagging anxiety wouldn't quite dissipate.
This was ridiculous. She had moved past all that a long time ago. She really had. She thought she had. She hadn't had a dream this vivid in years, not since that trip to El Salvador that had dredged up so many old memories. Was she internalizing Booth's reaction? Seeing the horror with new eyes? Or… damn it. Was it Sweets? I still don't think it was fair… Why had she said that? She knew it wasn't fair; she didn't need someone to reassure her of that fact. But Sweets had done it anyway, and he'd looked at her like he was seeing some kind of torment behind her eyes (however impossible that was). He had looked at her like she was a victim. She wasn't a victim, not anymore… but he had made her feel that way all over again.
She groaned and flopped backward onto her pillows. God. She hated psychology. She glanced at the clock again. 3:22. She had a feeling that this was going to be a long night.
What was different about today? Those memories did not play a large part in her everyday life, but it wasn't as if she suppressed them, either. She thought about it, sometimes, the cold and the dark, the inability to move or cry out. She identified with the murder victims she examined, used the fear she'd experienced then to drive her now so she could get justice for those who could not seek it for themselves. Reliving those memories was not an uncommon occurrence.
But she hadn't relived them today. Not really. She'd shared a little with Sweets, more with Booth, but the version of the story she'd told… it was so sanitized it was almost untrue. And maybe that was it. Maybe the memories wouldn't be denied.
I was afraid, she had said. It was dark, and cold, and cramped. I didn't fit. But she'd left out that the trunk had already been full when they crammed her into it, so full that the latch wouldn't click into place. It had taken them three tries to close the lid over her head; they'd had to slam it on top of her—hard—and she had taken most of the impact on her forehead as she tried to sit up. The first time it hit her, the pain had increased her panic. The second time, it had left her stunned. She'd stopped fighting by time the third blow came, and that was when the latch had finally engaged. They had gone inside to their comfortable couch and America's Funniest Home Videos, but she'd still been there, crushed between the detritus in the trunk and the cold metal of the hatch, barely able to move. Already as good as forgotten.
We didn't really have any neighbors. There wasn't anyone around to hear me. That's what she had said to Booth, and it was true enough, but she hadn't told him that they'd slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth. She wouldn't have been able to scream for help if a policeman had knocked on the hatch and asked if someone was inside.
I was very lucky, actually. The weather was relatively cool and there was a large tree over the driveway that provided shade. A month later, the heat might have killed me. The cold might have killed her, too, if she had been in there any longer. The first day had been unseasonably warm, about 70 degrees, and she'd been grateful for that tree that kept the already stale air inside the trunk from getting any warmer. But the second day it had been colder; the temperature may have reached the low 60s, although she wouldn't have bet on it, and it had plummeted once the sun set. When she was admitted to the hospital, her core body temperature had been approximately 93 degrees and was still falling.
I was hospitalized for a week and treated for dehydration. And hypothermia. And the sores that had formed as a result of her inability to shift her weight or position. There had been vaginal and urinary tract infections caused by lying in her own excrement for so long. The head injury, which was thankfully more blood and bump than concussion. A radial head subluxation, or partial dislocation of her elbow, from when they'd yanked her off the ground, where she'd fallen as they tried to pull her outside (the only defense she'd been able to think of at the time). And psychological trauma. Of course. Don't forget that one.
They moved me to another home after that. I believe charges were laid against the family, although I was never forced to testify. She knew there had been a trial. Her social worker, in what had quite possibly been the greatest service she'd ever done her, had kept Brennan out of it. She'd insisted that since it was Child and Family Services laying the charges, not Temperance Brennan, the right of the accused to face their accuser did not apply. She'd convinced the lawyer that the medical records and the statements the police collected at the hospital would be enough. And she'd been right; her foster parents were sentenced to ten years in prison for child endangerment, abuse, and neglect. Temperance hadn't really even cared, by that point; she had just been moved to yet another new home (the fifth in ten months) and wanted nothing more than to leave the past where it belonged.
All of that, she had left out on purpose, but there was more, so much more. She couldn't have told the entire story if she'd wanted to. There was too much there. Too many emotions that she still wasn't entirely certain how to quantify. Too many details that didn't seem important in the initial recitation, but were necessary in understanding the whole. It was alright, though. She knew all those pesky little details already, so she could tell the story to herself and not have to worry about leaving them out.
And maybe, after she did that, she would be able to sleep.
AN: That's what I have written at the moment, and I'd like to continue, but things will probably move fairly slowly from this point. I also feel like I should give a disclaimer that there is a possibility of it not being finished. Like I said, real life is pretty intense, and this will need to be near the top of the "something's gotta give" list. That being said, I won't leave things in a terrible place, because that's not good for my head-space. =P So. Caveats in place, would people be interested in reading further? You should let me know.
