fic: the weight of my heart (the fate of a false start) (bones, booth/brennan)
Title: the weight of my heart (the fate of a false start)
Disclaimer: Not mine in any way, shape, or form.
Fandom/Characters: Bones, Booth/Brennan
Word Count: 424
Requested By: sugarpromises
Brennan worries that she doesn't know how to be a mother. She can study proper feeding techniques and research the safety of cribs and car seats and she can read to the baby to help its cognitive development, but she knows without asking that those things aren't enough. She sees Booth with Parker and Angela and Hodgins with Michael, and she knows that the things that she knows won't be all that a child requires.
She knows, but she doesn't know how to solve the problem. She doesn't know that by knowing, she already has.
*
When the doctor puts their daughter in her arms for the first time, Brennan cries. It's not pain or exhaustion, though she's suffering from both those things, but there's a feeling in her chest that she's never felt before, and the tears come bubbling out of her without her understanding why.
Booth sees them trickling down her cheeks, and he smiles gently at her -- at them, she realizes -- raising his fingertips to her cheek to brush them away. "Don't cry," he says, even though she can see matching tears in his own eyes.
Brennan looks down at her daughter, red-faced and whimpering, and she recognizes what she's feeling as love. "Joy," she says. "I want to name her Joy."
Booth smiles again, and leans over their daughter's head to kiss her.
*
They take Joy home from the hospital and Brennan's fears begin anew. It doesn't matter how hard she tries, whenever Joy cries, it's Booth she wants, and Brennan doesn't know how to help. Booth tries to explain, he tells her that Joy can tell that Brennan is scared and that she just has to pretend like she knows what she's doing, because that's all that parenting is, but Brennan doesn't know how she can do that.
It's one thing to pretend on a case, to act like she's someone else, but this is their daughter, and Brennan needs to know. Joy deserves every kind of certainty that Brennan can give her and the idea that certainty is not a gift that Brennan can give her daughter doesn't make any sense.
But Brennan tries and she tries, and sometimes she'll catch Booth smiling at her when he doesn't think she's looking as she rocks Joy to sleep, reciting the bones of the hand in as soothing a voice as Brennan is capable of, and in those moments, Brennan thinks that maybe she understands.
*
When Joy is nine months old, she says her first word. That word is mama.
Disclaimer: Not mine in any way, shape, or form.
Fandom/Characters: Bones, Booth/Brennan
Word Count: 424
Requested By: sugarpromises
Brennan worries that she doesn't know how to be a mother. She can study proper feeding techniques and research the safety of cribs and car seats and she can read to the baby to help its cognitive development, but she knows without asking that those things aren't enough. She sees Booth with Parker and Angela and Hodgins with Michael, and she knows that the things that she knows won't be all that a child requires.
She knows, but she doesn't know how to solve the problem. She doesn't know that by knowing, she already has.
*
When the doctor puts their daughter in her arms for the first time, Brennan cries. It's not pain or exhaustion, though she's suffering from both those things, but there's a feeling in her chest that she's never felt before, and the tears come bubbling out of her without her understanding why.
Booth sees them trickling down her cheeks, and he smiles gently at her -- at them, she realizes -- raising his fingertips to her cheek to brush them away. "Don't cry," he says, even though she can see matching tears in his own eyes.
Brennan looks down at her daughter, red-faced and whimpering, and she recognizes what she's feeling as love. "Joy," she says. "I want to name her Joy."
Booth smiles again, and leans over their daughter's head to kiss her.
*
They take Joy home from the hospital and Brennan's fears begin anew. It doesn't matter how hard she tries, whenever Joy cries, it's Booth she wants, and Brennan doesn't know how to help. Booth tries to explain, he tells her that Joy can tell that Brennan is scared and that she just has to pretend like she knows what she's doing, because that's all that parenting is, but Brennan doesn't know how she can do that.
It's one thing to pretend on a case, to act like she's someone else, but this is their daughter, and Brennan needs to know. Joy deserves every kind of certainty that Brennan can give her and the idea that certainty is not a gift that Brennan can give her daughter doesn't make any sense.
But Brennan tries and she tries, and sometimes she'll catch Booth smiling at her when he doesn't think she's looking as she rocks Joy to sleep, reciting the bones of the hand in as soothing a voice as Brennan is capable of, and in those moments, Brennan thinks that maybe she understands.
*
When Joy is nine months old, she says her first word. That word is mama.