Thoughts of Christmases Past
Title: Thoughts of Christmases Past
Author: zolotazirka
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything up to Episode 5.10, ‘The Girl in the Goop'
Summary: After the dinner party in The Girl in the Goop, Brennan reflects on Christmases past.
Disclaimer: Bones and all the characters therein are owned by FOX, Hart Hanson and Kathy Reichs.
A/N: Thanks to labsquint for encouraging me to start writing, and to tempertemper77 for kicking me in the pants when necessary. This is my first published fanfic, written for therathasspoken , as part of zerodetorres 's fic exchange.
Temperance Brennan was curled up on her couch, cradling a mug of hot cocoa in her hands. She was happy but exhausted from all the work needed to host a Christmas dinner. The dinner had gone quite smoothly, save her fumbling the toast, but even that hadn’t been a complete failure, as Booth had managed to salvage what she had meant from her anthropological and stilted attempt at expressing it. Her thoughts drifted to Booth, as a smile slowly spread across her face. Throughout their five years of partnership, he had been central in the creation of fond, if unconventional, Christmas memories.
First there was the case of Lionel Little, whose infection with coccidiomyosis combined with Dr. Hodgins not taking the safety precautions resulted in the team being quarantined in the lab over Christmas. Giving Ivy Gillespie the evidence to prove that her beloved hadn’t abandoned her, and had managed to give her granddaughter the money needed for her education had been a touching experience, one which reinforced Booth’s point that gift giving is something that goes both ways.
That lesson became all the more poignant when after 14 years of avoidance she opened her last Christmas presents from her parents. The gifts, like the surviving evidence of Lionel’s life, were not very special to the outside observer - a 100x objective lens, a pair of earrings, and four paperback novels, but they held many memories for her.
The objective lens was a replacement for the one she’d broken while using the microscope she’d received on her 14th birthday. She still had that microscope - it had been an awkward object to lug from foster home to foster home, but it had held many happy memories for her, and because of that, she could not bear to part with it.
But neither the objective lens, nor the novels, lovingly chosen to suit her interests at the time, made the strongest emotional impact. That honour went to the earrings - they were her mother’s. She nearly lost one of them for good in New Orleans, mere months after opening that present, and loosing one of the very few tangible connections to her mother had been more worrying than loosing an entire day.
The next Christmas with Booth was a very interesting one for other reasons. Santa’s murder made for a very intriguing case, but it definitely wasn’t what made the holiday memorable. No, that honour goes to kissing Booth under the mistletoe, which certainly was nothing like kissing her brother. Not that she’d admit that to anyone else.
And that kiss wasn’t the only thing that made that Christmas memorable, celebrating with her family in that trailer was lovely, even with her dad’s foul tasting attempt at creating alcohol, as well as not being able to have Christmas tree in the room. Despite the drawbacks of the location, the joy that lit up the faces of Hayley and Emma upon seeing their father, made the lying and missing her trip to Peru worthwhile. Booth’s gift of a Christmas tree, was perfect, and really made what initially was an austere trailer, into a festive place for celebration.
This Christmas was different, however. Despite giving her a reason to strip Booth down to his underwear and giving her lots of fuel for thoughts that certainly weren’t of the “we’re just partners” variety, the case they had just closed was depressing. However, joining Mrs. Chevaleer in the graveyard so that she would not be burying her son alone on Christmas, as small of a gesture as it was, made the sombre occasion slightly less heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking. The word was certainly not correct from a physiological standpoint, but it summed up the feeling so well.
The other thing that set this Christmas apart was meeting Margret. Her second cousin initially was utterly frustrating with her incessant quoting of Benjamin Franklin, but once she had started to offer her own opinions, it was possible to hold a pleasant conversation. Sure, Margret was still odd and annoying, but according to Booth, that is part of family.
If it wasn’t for him, she would have been in El Salvador right now, avoiding Christmas and family as she had done for so many years, ever since her parents had disappeared. As a child in foster care, she had always holed herself up in her room and avoided any attempts by her foster parents to include her in the celebration of the holiday, as it dredged up too many painful memories. When she was finally free of the system, she always found some way to be otherwise occupied around the holidays - be it volunteering in a foreign country as an undergraduate in university, or working long hours in a lab as a grad student. She continued this tradition of avoidance until Booth came along and showed her that Christmas needn’t be a painful reminder of what she’d lost, but a time to make new, happy memories.
Author: zolotazirka
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything up to Episode 5.10, ‘The Girl in the Goop'
Summary: After the dinner party in The Girl in the Goop, Brennan reflects on Christmases past.
Disclaimer: Bones and all the characters therein are owned by FOX, Hart Hanson and Kathy Reichs.
A/N: Thanks to labsquint for encouraging me to start writing, and to tempertemper77 for kicking me in the pants when necessary. This is my first published fanfic, written for therathasspoken , as part of zerodetorres 's fic exchange.
Temperance Brennan was curled up on her couch, cradling a mug of hot cocoa in her hands. She was happy but exhausted from all the work needed to host a Christmas dinner. The dinner had gone quite smoothly, save her fumbling the toast, but even that hadn’t been a complete failure, as Booth had managed to salvage what she had meant from her anthropological and stilted attempt at expressing it. Her thoughts drifted to Booth, as a smile slowly spread across her face. Throughout their five years of partnership, he had been central in the creation of fond, if unconventional, Christmas memories.
First there was the case of Lionel Little, whose infection with coccidiomyosis combined with Dr. Hodgins not taking the safety precautions resulted in the team being quarantined in the lab over Christmas. Giving Ivy Gillespie the evidence to prove that her beloved hadn’t abandoned her, and had managed to give her granddaughter the money needed for her education had been a touching experience, one which reinforced Booth’s point that gift giving is something that goes both ways.
That lesson became all the more poignant when after 14 years of avoidance she opened her last Christmas presents from her parents. The gifts, like the surviving evidence of Lionel’s life, were not very special to the outside observer - a 100x objective lens, a pair of earrings, and four paperback novels, but they held many memories for her.
The objective lens was a replacement for the one she’d broken while using the microscope she’d received on her 14th birthday. She still had that microscope - it had been an awkward object to lug from foster home to foster home, but it had held many happy memories for her, and because of that, she could not bear to part with it.
But neither the objective lens, nor the novels, lovingly chosen to suit her interests at the time, made the strongest emotional impact. That honour went to the earrings - they were her mother’s. She nearly lost one of them for good in New Orleans, mere months after opening that present, and loosing one of the very few tangible connections to her mother had been more worrying than loosing an entire day.
The next Christmas with Booth was a very interesting one for other reasons. Santa’s murder made for a very intriguing case, but it definitely wasn’t what made the holiday memorable. No, that honour goes to kissing Booth under the mistletoe, which certainly was nothing like kissing her brother. Not that she’d admit that to anyone else.
And that kiss wasn’t the only thing that made that Christmas memorable, celebrating with her family in that trailer was lovely, even with her dad’s foul tasting attempt at creating alcohol, as well as not being able to have Christmas tree in the room. Despite the drawbacks of the location, the joy that lit up the faces of Hayley and Emma upon seeing their father, made the lying and missing her trip to Peru worthwhile. Booth’s gift of a Christmas tree, was perfect, and really made what initially was an austere trailer, into a festive place for celebration.
This Christmas was different, however. Despite giving her a reason to strip Booth down to his underwear and giving her lots of fuel for thoughts that certainly weren’t of the “we’re just partners” variety, the case they had just closed was depressing. However, joining Mrs. Chevaleer in the graveyard so that she would not be burying her son alone on Christmas, as small of a gesture as it was, made the sombre occasion slightly less heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking. The word was certainly not correct from a physiological standpoint, but it summed up the feeling so well.
The other thing that set this Christmas apart was meeting Margret. Her second cousin initially was utterly frustrating with her incessant quoting of Benjamin Franklin, but once she had started to offer her own opinions, it was possible to hold a pleasant conversation. Sure, Margret was still odd and annoying, but according to Booth, that is part of family.
If it wasn’t for him, she would have been in El Salvador right now, avoiding Christmas and family as she had done for so many years, ever since her parents had disappeared. As a child in foster care, she had always holed herself up in her room and avoided any attempts by her foster parents to include her in the celebration of the holiday, as it dredged up too many painful memories. When she was finally free of the system, she always found some way to be otherwise occupied around the holidays - be it volunteering in a foreign country as an undergraduate in university, or working long hours in a lab as a grad student. She continued this tradition of avoidance until Booth came along and showed her that Christmas needn’t be a painful reminder of what she’d lost, but a time to make new, happy memories.