(no subject)

[argyle_princess]

Hannah thinks that Brennan is right about most things, and Hannah knows she's right about needing to eat and sleep and so on.

So Hannah eats. All right, Hannah mostly pushes soup around the bowl with her spoon, but she eats at least a third of it, and in her defense, it is a very large bowl.

She drinks all the juice.

She brushes her teeth, showers, works the tangles out of her hair, puts on mint green flannel pajamas provided by Bar, hangs her clothes in the bathroom so the wrinkles would fall out.

Small things that add up to living, right?

It would be nice to sleep, because sleeping is one way to stop thinking, and one that doesn't later involve having to join a twelve step program. Hannah is just not especially optimistic about it happening any time soon.

But she curls up on her side, arms and legs drawn in tight, blanket pulled up to nose, facing the chair Brennan is sitting in. There's some conversation about nothing in particular, but Hannah's replies get slower and shorter and less distinct, and (if she were awake to notice) she'd be surprised how quickly she falls asleep.

She stays very still for a long time, but eventually, (and gradually) she relaxes, uncurls.

She might be dreaming.

She also might now be drifting in that place between sleeping and waking, not quite dreaming but also not quite picking her thoughts.

Whatever it is, those thoughts are tumbled and jumbled and they don't quite fit together, like pieces of different puzzles dumped out onto the floor.

And then she sits bolt upright, gasping.

Whatever she was before, she's awake now.

Comments

[argyle_princess]

Hannah shakes her head.

"What do I tell Mom? Or Dad?

"God, Brennan, I don't know what to do. Right now I'm having trouble remembering to breathe."

[dr_temperance]

Brennan doesn't really know what to say---and when she doesn't know what to say, she generally winds up saying something that makes things worse.

So she just pulls Hannah into a very tight hug.

[argyle_princess]

Hugs are good. They don't fix the problem, but they don't make it worse, either.

"What am I supposed to do?"

[dr_temperance]

Brennan can remember asking herself that question when she was not quite Hannah's age. And under circumstances that, at their core, were not entirely dissimilar.

She draws back so that she can look Hannah in the eye.

"We," she says, "are going to check in regularly with this Commodore Lyon in case there is any new information. We will offer assistance if there is anything we can do to help, though given that this seems to involve magic, we should be prepared for the possibility that we won't be able to."

"And in the meantime we are going to go about our lives, as difficult as that may sound. But we can't just stay here indefinitely hoping to hear something. It won't do anything to help the situation, and in the end it's not healthy."

She hopes that Hannah doesn't think her unfeeling. Because that's not even remotely the case. But it's the only advice she knows to offer.

"It's hard, I know, when there are no answers. But until we have more data, and data that we can act on, it's all we can do."

[argyle_princess]

The smile is very small and not remotely genuine.

"You make it sound easy.

"Commodore Lyon asked me what I thought Henry would want me to do."

[dr_temperance]

"It's not."

Brennan shakes her head almost imperceptibly. "Carrying on with no answers is never easy. But it is necessary."

Her eyebrows draw together slightly.

"It was unfair of him to ask you that. Logically, Henry would want you to be safe and happy. Anyone could figure that out. But it's counterproductive to use emotional manipulation to try to get you to force yourself into that frame of mind."

Plus, it's a cop out answer, which is something Brennan has never had any patience with.

[argyle_princess]

"I'm not sure logic has anything to do with it," Hannah says. "I mean, I know that's the answer you're supposed to give. Carry on, live life, be happy, climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, whatever. But I don't know that it's actually the answer."

She can't figure the answer out. And that somehow bothers her more than almost everything else.

[dr_temperance]

"I suppose it's impossible to definitively say what any one person would want of another."

"And this is the sort of situation where objectivity is extraordinarily difficult."

If not impossible. At least, not this quickly.

[argyle_princess]

The fact that Temperance Brennan finds objectivity about something difficult is, actually, pretty terrifying.

"If it was me, if our places were reversed . . . I think I would want it to hurt. Isn't that an awful thing to say? Maybe I don't even mean it. I don't know. But I think that, at least for a little while, I would want it to hurt so much that he wouldn't be sure he could stand it. To be something that he didn't actually if there was a way to get over or around or through.

"Which I guess makes me a horrible person. But there it is."

[dr_temperance]

Brennan can understand that. She's not sure she can explain it very well, but she can understand it.

"It's only when something or someone means a great deal to us that it hurts when it's lost."

She makes an attempt at a smile.

"At the genetic level we're social creatures. We require emotional attachments, even though logic tells us that those attachments will all inevitably end someday, one way or another. But we form them anyway. It's one of the things that makes us human."

[argyle_princess]

"And it's all just anthropology."

Hannah doesn't smile.

"You're right, though. I can't just stay here. If nothing else, it'll probably be easier to be some place he wouldn't be, anyway."

[dr_temperance]

To Brennan, there's no such thing as 'just' anthropology. It's more than an academic science. It's something that is constantly playing out between people all over their world.

The world where Hannah needs to be right now.

She nods. "I think you're right."

[argyle_princess]

"I can call you, right? If I need to? It's just . . . it's not like I can tell people what happened, you know?"

[dr_temperance]

"Anytime you need to. You have my numbers."

"And you know I'm used to keeping odd hours, so don't worry about the time."

[argyle_princess]

"OK," says Hannah.

"I think I'm gonna run," she says. "Then I'll worry about looking presentable enough to go back."

It's not that she thinks running will help much, it's just that she knows not running really won't help.

[dr_temperance]

Brennan nods.

"And then I do think you should call off sick when you get back. Go home and rest some more. And I'll call you this evening to check in."