milliways_bar | (no subject)

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If there is one thing that Brennan excels at, it's compartmentalization. It's a useful skill, especially during otherwise hectic times.

Next week, she and her father are flying out to Ohio, to participate in their first official family Christmas in over fifteen years. Brennan is looking forward to it, but it does leave her with a lot to get done.

On a number of fronts.

She started out this evening in the bar with work from the lab--a shattered skull in need of reconstruction. The skull is now pieced together, resting on a stand while the glue sets.

Its eyeless sockets are watching Brennan as she moves on to her next task--wrapping her nieces Christmas presents.

Brennan measures out a precise square of red and green paper (just enough to wrap a crystal-growing kit from the Jeffersonian gift shop) and sheers her scissors neatly through.

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"Technically the skull belongs to a woman," Brennan corrects automatically, fumbling her roll of scotch tape out of the shopping bag by her chair.

"I'm waiting for the glue to dry."

"How can you tell?" the warrior asks. "Are we not all equal, in death? There were men with small heads, also."

"The brow ridge is generally a good indicator of sex."

"Also, I have this skeleton's pelvis back in my lab. It is unequivocally female."

Brennan shakes her head slightly.

"As far as equality...dead people are dead. A corpse does not retain any need or consciousness of social concepts such as equality."

"Dead men are dead," Teja agrees, "barring the dead that come to this place. Indeed."

Pause.

"Corpses and bones no longer had will or intention of their own; their meaning is in our eyes only. The skull of a queen, and the skull of a slave-girl, may look the same."

"They may," Brennan agrees. "Although, depending upon the culture, one might see significant differences in the structure of the bone of the person of the higher social class as a direct result of better nutrition."

Slave generally weren't fed as well.

"You seem to know something about skulls," she observes.

Perhaps not in the scientific sense. But he speaks as someone with a certain degree of familiarity with the subject matter.

"I know skulls from cleaving them, with my axe, in battle," Teja says. "And in a land that is at war long, there are bare skulls to be found around the old battle-fields, and the many places of skirmish and ambush. I have seen many dead men, and many of them no more than bones, in my life."

Brennan nods. Very slowly.

War is still a prominent component of her world and her culture. Cleaving with axes? Not so much.

There's a long moment of silence.

"I'm a forensic anthropologist," she replies.

A little lamely.

"One that practices the lore of man-kind, so that justice may be done?" Teja parses the Greek and Latin terms. "To catch murderers, by what modern men call 'science', one would assume?"

"In a sense," Brennan says, with a certain degree of reserve.

It's not usually phrased in quite such poetic-sounding terms.

"I study the human skeletal system for the purposes of identifying bodies that cannot be identified by conventional means. And yes--my findings are often part of investigations into unlawful death."

"You're familiar with this sort of science?" she asks.

"I have spoken to one that works to catch criminals, using science," Teja says. "But he uses those computator machines that modern men have, for that; and he only persecutes the crimes and misdemeanours of sailors. There should be enough work for him, as those were ever an unlawful bunch!"

Pause.

"Can you still tell who the dead woman was, in the end?"

Edited 2008-12-21 01:55 (UTC)

"Now that her skull has been reconstructed, we stand a very good chance of identifying her," Brennan replies. "Assuming that she has been listed as missing and is in the system."

"If not, she will be placed in Bone Storage."

Or 'Limbo' as that part of the Jeffersonian is commonly known among the Medico-Legal employees.

"This man--what's his name?" Brennan asks curiously.

"His name is Timothy McGee," Teja says. "He is easily confused and worried, but a good man, overall."

Pause.

"But even if she is missing -- how can you match the bones with a living face? If there is no hair left, and not personal items with the skeleton, there is no way of telling who was who, or even telling friend from foe, in my time, when one would bury the dead of old battle."

Brennan hasn't heard of Mr. McGee. It was a long shot that it would have been someone she knew, but professional courtesy had nudged her to inquire.

"My friend, Angela, is a forensic artist. She works with me in the Medico-Legal lab."

"She can feed the dimensions of this skull into a computer, and use that information to reconstruct her facial features. From there, it's just a matter of matching those features to the features of an individual in the Missing Persons database. Assuming that she is there."

"The rest of the skeleton will provide us with additional information that can help us narrow our search, as well."

"She can put a face back on a skull?" Teja says, amazed. "That is truly a strange art, and a noble one. You live in a truly peaceful time, then, that every dead man, woman, child will have such care taken over them?"

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