milliways_bar | (no subject)

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(no subject)

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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?"

"I have killed many people."

Beat.

"I still do. At home."

This pause is longer.

"When they hurt people."

"You're a soldier?" Brennan asks, curiously.

Conjecture. But a fairly safe conjecture, Brennan thinks.

"No. I am a weapon."

Beat.

"And an X-man. We protect people."

"My partner is an FBI agent. And was formerly a military sniper. He's killed many times in order to protect others."

There is killing for profit or out of passion. Or because of psychosis. And there is killing that is socially sanctioned. To preserve order. They two cannot be judged equally.

"I've killed," Brennan adds after a moment.

"It didn't bother me as much as I thought it would."

X's expression shifts, just slightly.

It's still pretty blank.

"Oh."

Beat.

"That is good."

What's better is that Brennan did not like it. X doesn't, either. It's just what she does.

"It was necessary. The man was trying to kill my partner."

Brennan feels that she ought to explain that much, at least.

And no, she hadn't liked it. Had even spent a couple of hours allowing herself to be upset over it.

But she would do it again if the circumstances were to repeat themselves.

"It is good you did not let him."

It's not hard to tell that X means this. Utterly.

Brennan smiles.

"I think so. I'm fairly certain my partner thinks so as well."

"The fact that we have committed violent acts doesn't necessarily warrant fear. It doesn't make us bad people. It depends on the surrounding circumstances."

There is always grey area, of course. Like the time Brennan had lured Epps into a trap for the express purpose of killing him. (She had been interrupted by Booth before she could carry out the plan.)

But even then, Epps had been trying to kill her loved ones.

X considers this.

Carefully.

And then--

"You have not seen me work."

"No. I have not."

Brennan raises a questioning eyebrow.

"Is that relevant?"

X considers this.

"I do not know."

Beat.

"Sometimes it is."

"Because of the method of killing?"

Brennan nods to X's hands.

"My assumption is that the claws are employed?"

"Yes."

Beat.

"Some of the time. If it is in the mission parameters."

Sometimes explosives are more useful. Or guns.