Ice melts
I was once told that my eyes were like ice. And I had laughed, because that's exactly how people describe my personality, cold and untouchable, like ice.
I haven't always been like that though, not when I was younger. When I was a kid, I was like anyone else, minus the watching of television, I have never gotten the attraction people feel toward watching things that happen in everyday life all the time, only with references of magic and other impossible happenings. But that's beside the point. When I was a kid, I had eyes like the ocean, the pacific ocean, warm and inviting-trusting- I had tons of friends, in the small town I had grown up in, you had known everyone.
But after I turned fifteen, right before Christmas, things had changed, a lot. I had been forced to toughen up, learn to depend on no one but me, freeze myself to numb the pain. And that is a very realistic metaphor, when you go to the dentist, they freeze your gums before they fill a cavity, when you go to the hospital, they give you a shot of anaesthetics, before they you get stiches, when someone scrapes their knee or gets hit on the head, they put ice on it, not because it makes it heal faster, but because it helps to take the pain away. That's what I did, I built a wall of ice around my heart, numbing my pain, nothing, no one, gets in, and none of the pain gets out. My wall of ice can be observed through my eyes, I guess they never were like the pacific, the ocean never freezes.
However, something is happening to my wall of ice, it's failing. Because it's so cold, people are suppose to shy away from me, avoid my touch, stay at arms length, far enough away so that they cannot hurt me.
And that's what everyone does, except him.
The day I met him wasn't different from any other encounter. We talked about the case, he tried to flirt with me, and I stopped him cold in his tracks, just by looking him right in the eyes- ha, eyes of ice, cold in his tracks, I never realized that I was so poetic.- Anyway, at the time, I hadn't felt that my cold exterior was in danger, in fact it took ages for my suspicion to kick in, it took ages for me to realize, I wasn't just a tool anymore, used by the FBI when I was needed, locked away and forgotten about until I was needed again.
Agent Seeley Booth was trouble. And I should have seen that the moment that I realized I couldn't take my eyes off him. But I hadn't, and now I'm paying for it. Yesterday morning I walked in the door later than I usually do, another thing that can be blamed on Booth, and gave the same half smile I do every morning. Only something must have been different-though I had no idea what- almost everyone I saw, stopped me and asked what I had done differently, the women who stopped asked specifically about my make-up, what had I changed, I answered the same every time, nothing.
Only when I saw Angela, did I get my question answered. She had laughed, and said I looked different, and I had snapped, I hadn't changed my make up, I hadn't gotten my hair cut, and I hadn't worn a new shirt.
And she had given me a smile, and made me turn to look in a mirror. I saw immediately what was different, what was wrong.
Where there should have been cold indifference, there was the warmth and compassion that had once dominated my life. Where there should have been reserved suspicion, there was openness and trust. Where there should have been ice,
There was water, ocean water.
In all of my haste to find protection and solitude, I had forgotten one thing, warmth melts ice,
and that is what Seeley Booth had put back in my life.