Chapter 18 Bonds
A/N: This chapter is a somewhat different take on this particular one-word hiatus prompt. Not sure if I succeeded, would love to hear reviews of your opinions.
Bonds…a simple five-letter word…..with many different connotations.
Brennan mused as she looked at the scrapbook which was perhaps the most precious wedding gift she and Booth had received. It came late, but it was very significant and meaningful to her, nonetheless. Family bonds were very important anthropological links among relatives and generations of human beings. Bonds and connections in her own life of which she had been unaware until very recently.
Her Florida aunts, Esther, Judy, and Lydia, her mother's gregarious sisters had painstakingly collected a number of old pictures from their side of the family. It was a window into her past which Temperance Brennan was too young to recall on her own. There were faded Brownie snapshots of Ruth as a child with her sisters, school pictures dated below the smiling faces, Polaroid picture strips of her mother and Max taken at a 25-cent photo booth, wedding pictures of various couples in the family, copies of stiffly-posed formal portraits of Brennan's grandparents. She had only been able to meet Mema, her mom's mother on a crime-solving trip to Florida when she discovered her clan and their roots. The other grandparents had long since passed away. There were even a few pictures of Max as a child, as a lanky teenager, and one of his parents on their wedding day. With her anthropologist's keen eye, Temperance Brennan could spot the family traits passed first to Kyle and Joy, and on to her own daughter Christine,
There were no pictures of Ruth and Max after they moved to Ohio and dropped contact with her family. Their time as a young married couple before they had children was completely lacking in photographic evidence, without any visual documentation for their anthropologist daughter to analyze. Ruth's sisters had said she wrote carefully-worded letters but never sent photographs.
The reason for this, Brennan reflected, was another kind of bonds. Totally different from those of a family. Her parents had skillfully stolen investment bonds from bank lock boxes during their years as white-collar criminals. These financial bonds had prevented them from living a completely normal life. Her parents had hidden in plain sight with false identities. Once they had children, their stealing ceased to protect them. The children had new names. Not a problem for Temperance, too little to remember the change or know the difference. But a life-changing event for her brother. At seven, Kyle was suddenly ordered by his stern-faced dad to forget his name, to learn a new one "Russ Brennan" repeated over and over until it stuck in his head. His dad demanded "You swear on your baby sister's life that you will never reveal this, or it will kill you both!" Suddenly his mom was a bookkeeper, his dad taught science at the high school. And they never saw any relatives ever again.
Brennan had a very few pictures of herself as a child, Christmas morning in pajamas, a family picnic, her teenaged brother showing off his souped-up car. And suddenly, one Christmas, the bonds between parent and child, brother and sister dissolved in a matter of weeks. Her parents were gone, her brother drove away, she was alone. The bonds blew away like dry wintered leaves.
To protect herself, Temperance recalled, she chose to reject bonds of any sort!
Brennan decided she needed no family or emotional bonds, no links, no connections to anyone. She would build herself a solitary life, surrounded by homework, and textbooks, and knowledge and mental acuity. Emotionally, she turned inside herself to survive, armored herself against betrayal and hurt. She sought shelter in study and intellect. Along the way, she suffered bonds of foster child abuse; locked in a car trunk, ridiculed, relocated, rejected.
Finally age and graduation gave her independence. But no freedom from financial bonds of earning her way. How to provide for herself and survive? Again, her mind was her tool. Scholarships, scanty food, part-time jobs, one semester at a time, she pulled herself up the university ladder toward advanced degrees, since knowledge, intellectual achievement and scholastic acclaim would release her from bonds of worry and want.
Even though she'd become accomplished, highly-educated, successful and globally-renowned, Temperance Brennan shied away from emotional bonds. Romance and love? She scoffed at these concepts as foolish.….reduced them to mere biological imperatives, human instincts, natural physical urges. The spiritual realm? Hogwash! B.S.! Nonsense!
But then, Tempe smiled to herself,
She met Angela, a blast of fresh air, an artistic talent, questioning, teasing, laughing…a bohemian girl who gave her something she'd lacked for so long….a confidante, a fun-loving comrade, a sprite who dragged her to party for the heck of it (woo-hoo!)
Angela gave her the feeling of feminine closeness, of platonic companionship and love. Angela had wiggled her way into Brennan's world, ignoring her academic rants, a bouncy irrepressible spirit who gave her an ultimate gift…the bond of friendship.
And THEN, Brennan grinned to herself, hugging herself mentally, remembering with fondness and glee,
Thanks to the suggestion of another sophisticated woman, another well-educated doctor, very astute, very subtle, very wise: Camille Saroyan-
A handsome, cocky FBI agent threw open the heavy doors of the staid university hall, charged down the aisle, interrupted her lecture, questioned her beliefs and credentials, challenged her carefully-constructed parameters of intellectual homeostasis and peace.
Seeley Booth upset her metaphorical apple cart of rationality, reason, and calm.
He and Parker showed her the fun of believing in Fate, the irrepressible bond between parent and child, the joy of tossed footballs, crunching through leaves, running through parks and sunshine, falling into cold powdery white drifts to form snow angels…..
And FINALLY…Bones admitted silently, tears in her eyes, romance in her heart, a hero in her life…
Temperance Brennan rediscovered what a treasure the right kind of bonds can be….
Those of love, and lifelong commitment,
Of tender sensuality, becoming one from two, challenging physics,
Recreating Plato's four-armed, four-legged, two-faced, self-mirroring, metaphorically spiritual being.
She and Booth had truly spent years trying to complete themselves,
And finally admitted to each other (and everyone else) that they'd already done so.
They already shared an unbreakable bond; that of partners in every sense that they could possibly be!
The bond of soul-mates!