April 28, 2014
Never Saw Blue—Hayley Westerna (4:38)
Bones
Angela
There were very few times when she felt inadequate. Normally she was confident and courageous. Adventurous. But the smell, and the sights and the sounds. It was too much. Far too much.
"Oh, my God," she murmured as they rounded the fire truck. So many broken bodies. This…this was not what she had signed on for. Thousand year old skeletons? Bring 'em on! Mummies? No problem. But these bodies? Only hours ago they had been people. Living, breathing, people who had jobs and families. She may have even seen some of them before, walking down the street or shopping in one of the boutiques she frequented or any number of places.
Blinking she followed Booth and Brennen farther into the mess of the bomb site. Neither of them looked affected at all. How could they hold those grim expressions? Where was the horror, the sadness at the lives wasted?
She tuned out everything for a few minutes until Zack pushed a pair of gloves into her hands. Shakily she tried to pull them on but her fingers weren't cooperating. Brennen handed her a red bag and Angela just stopped for a second.
"You know…uh…I don't think I can…" she pushed the bag back towards her friend. "Sorry," she said quickly and fled back to her nice, safe, quiet office. She admired her friends but she couldn't do what they did.
Angela spent most of the day with her shoulders slumped in dejection. She had never felt so ill prepared or insufficient before and she hated this feeling. She should go explain to Brennen.
Angela tried to apologize for her actions. Brennen interrupted her before she could. And said the perfect thing. She always did. She wasn't inadequate. Angela was an artist. She was someone who kept the other squints in the world of the living and not the world of theory. She reminded them about life outside the lab and she was important.
Brennen was better with human emotions than anyone thought and Angela was the only one that knew. That was something right there. That was a reason to stick around. A good one.