Identity
"My name is Brennan. I'm Dr. –" She stopped to take a calming breath, which did little to help. McVicar scoffed at her, leaving the barn, and Booth looked on with a concerned expression as she tried to reassure herself with facts. "I'm Dr. Temperance Brennan. I work at the Jeffersonian Institution. I'm a Forensic Anthropologist. I specialize in identif–" her voice broke, but she remained determined to finish. "in identifying– in identifying people when nobody knows who they are. My father was a science teacher. My mother was a bookkeeper." To her dismay, tears had started to form, making her surroundings turn blurry. " My brother– I have a brother." Despite her attempts to brush them away, salty droplets of water began to drip down her face. "I'm Dr. Temperance Brennan."
"I know who you are," Booth told her. She didn't believe him. "Hey. I know."
How could he possibly know? She wasn't even sure anymore. Was she Temperance Brennan-- the scientist, the former foster child, the bestselling author-- or Joy Keenan, the daughter of two criminals? Of a man who had possibly murdered his own wife, her mother?
How could one's identity slip away out from under them so suddenly? Just a few days before, she had been confident in herself, in who she was. Her parents had abandoned her at fifteen. Her brother had followed soon after, and from that moment on, she had strived to makes something of herself. Of Temperance Brennan.
But now she was being told that she wasn't Temperance Brennan at all. She was Joy Keenan. And Joy Keenan was no one. It was as if the last fifteen years of her life were now meaningless.
She looked to her partner. He seemed convinced he knew exactly who she was. And that was when it hit her. To Booth, she wasn't Temperance Brennan or Joy Keenan. She was Bones. Bones his partner.
She hated the nickname. But at the moment, it was the one shred of herself she knew she could rely on.