Title: Little Earthquakes (Title comes from the Tori Amos song.)
Timeframe: Set during The Killer in the Concrete, in the scene where Brennan and Max take down the bounty hunter and find Booth's tooth.
Word Count: 200
Staring down at the left anterior molar cradled in her gloved hand, Brennan knew fear. Science told her that a cascade of epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol had tensed her muscles and increased her heart rate and respiration. Chemicals, yes, forcing her blood through veins that suddenly felt too small.
But her heart felt as if it was being squeezed by a giant fist, and her body vibrated with the overwhelming need to hit something—hit Veleska Miller—again and again and again if need be. To use her fist to smash the insolent smirk from the other woman's face.
Booth—partner, friend, and something she struggled to name—was out there somewhere, probably in the hands of a mob enforcer whose signature was an icepick to the brain.
Something savage and visceral awoke in her then; civility, rationality, and millennia of evolution thrown aside in favor of obedience to a voice that demanded an eye for an eye... and a tooth for a tooth. Neither morality nor reason nor temperance kept her from heeding the serpent's sibilant whisper; only the inexorable grip on her arm did that.
It was only then she realized it: She truly was her father's daughter.