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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Brennan nods along as X talks. It's interesting that the mutations seem to be so highly individual.

Then the claws come out. And Brennan actually jumps slightly.

"What...!"

The startle response is normal, and is quickly replaced by curiosity. Brennan leans forward to look at the claws.

"These are a naturally occurring mutation?" she asks, disbelievingly. She looks up at X. "These look man-made, not organic."

"The adamantium is a coating."

Beat.

"Doctor Zander Rice put it on during a surgical procedure."

Without anaesthetic.

"They are bone. Underneath."

There is also a faint tracery of occult-looking symbols along the claws. They are for killing demons.

Brennan would love to get her hands on some X-Rays to study who retractable claws would figure into standard human hand structure. Would there be some commonality with felines, or....

The rest of what X says registers, and Brennan glaces up, frowning.

"Without anaesthetic? That's highly unethical. Unless part of you mutation is an inability to register pain?"

"No."

Beat.

"It hurt. I remember."

This pause is longer.

"Pain is not relevant."

Beat.

"And Dr. Rice is dead."

Brennan looks horrified. And highly indignant.

"It's unconscionablee," she says. Vehemently.

"And of course it's relevant."

X just looks at Brennan.

"The Facility liked to hurt people."

Beat.

"It is okay. They do not exist anymore."

Edited 2008-12-21 02:03 (UTC)

"I"m very glad to hear that," Brennan says.

There are few things more abhorrent than human experimentation.

"It was shut down by the authorities?"

"No."

Beat.

"I blew it up."

This pause is longer.

"And Miss Frost made Kimura track everyone else down."

"I see."

Well. It's not like Brennan can fault her.

"Track everyone else down?" she asks.

To form allegiances? To eliminate adversaries?

"Yes."

Beat.

"Kimura liked to hurt me, too. And Miss Frost is a telepath."

"So these were people who sought to harm you?"

Brennan shakes her head.

"How old were you when all this happened?"

She'd estimate X's age at no more than 20. At the outside.

She's basing that on human qualifiers, though.

"I was very small."

Beat.

"I am--"

She pauses, frowning slightly.

"Seventeen. Now."

Or thereabouts.

"It is relevant?"

"Just that that's a great degree of emotional trauma for a child to have to endure."

Children sometimes have to endure it, though. Even in Brennan's world.

She shakes her head.

"It's not necessarily relevant. I was just curious."

"You must have been very resourceful from a young age."

X's expression is blank.

"I am a weapon."

Beat.

"I was trained well."

"Clearly."

To topple this Facility as a child, she would have had to have been.

"You speak very rationally about the whole thing."

On the one hand, Brennan appreciates and admires rationality.

On the other hand, the degree of rationality is almost disturbing.

X frowns.

"I am not supposed to?"

That does not make sense.

"Many people, in my experience, would have a much more visceral emotional reaction."

Brennan shrugs.

"I can't say whether you should or should not. That boils down to psychology, which is not my field."

"Do you think you are supposed to?"

"No."

Beat.

"It would not be productive."

Brennan can appreciate that line of thinking. After all, what's the use of dwelling on painful emotions?

"Then I wouldn't worry about it."

Brennan rolls her eyes slightly.

"Most psychologists are of the opinion that particular events in one's life must be met with particular reactions, regardless of one's personality or outside influences. Which is why psychology is an imprecise science."

"If one can call it a science at all."

"I do not like psychologists," X announces.

"They do not make sense."

"Neither do I."

Brennan is well known at the Jeffersonian for her I hate psychology rants.

"It's guesswork masquerading as science."

X nods, just a little.

"And they do not ask useful questions."

Beat.

"And they are not relevant."

"No. They are not," Brennan agrees.

"I find it presumptuous that a person would attempt to dictate an individual's emotion responses as being correct or incorrect in the name of medicine."

Brennan has been on the receiving end of a good bit of unsolicited psychological analysis.

It's annoying.

"Your mental state does not seem to be outside the realm of normal, as far as I can tell. If rationally quantifying your past works for you, who is anyone else to tell you that that is wrong?"

X shrugs, quick and one-shouldered.

"Some people are afraid of me."

Beat.

"It is okay."

"Why?"

Brennan ponders this a moment.

"Because you have committed violent acts in the past?"