PIE AND MEMORIES by: Arianna Malone

Disclaimer: I have only borrowed the character Temperance Brennan from Bones. I do not own her. All I did was ask if she could come outside and play. When I'm done, I'll return her – no worse for wear – to her real family: Josephson Entertainment and Far Field Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television.

A/N: This story sprung from my rather excitable brain. It will probably be rather off-canon, seeing as how we've only received hints about Brennan's past. Also, it turned out to be both longer and slower than I intended.

The character of Birdie the cat comes from Kathy Reich's book series about Temperance Brennan. Any personality quirks that do not fit his persona from the books are the result of my errors alone.

Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2005

Temperance Brennan opened her eyes and turned her head toward her bedside table. She sighed when she saw the time on her clock: three minutes before her alarm would go off on a normal day…three minutes before it was still too early to be up on a holiday. Still, there was no help for it. She was awake, and going back to sleep right now really wasn't an option. Her secondary alarm clock – the one with the fuzzy face and fish breath – was up as well. He wouldn't lie back down and sleep any more this morning until his food dish had been filled to his satisfaction and Brennan had lavished praise and affection on his rather obese feline form. Even now, Birdie had crawled up and settled on her pillow, his loud purr reverberating through her head. Soon, he would begin to nibble on her hair – which hurt when he dug his teeth in a little too deeply into her scalp. Tempe knew when she was beaten. Well aware of Birdie's extraordinary perseverance, she always let the cat win.

Birdie stretched as Brennan fought her way out from under the covers. Still purring, he watched as she dragged a pair a disreputable sweats out of her bureau along with a tank top that had seen better days. Scowling at the mirror on the wall, Tempe dragged a brush through her brown hair. Her wavy locks never looked better for having been slept upon. Opening the top drawer, Tempe found an old bandana. After folding the soft material into a triangle, she tied it around her head. At least her hair would stay out of her eyes for just a little while with the do-rag on her head.

A do-rag…that was Sara's term for it. Tempe found herself smiling over the memory. Sara, a fellow student in the gross anatomy course that Tempe had taken when she was a graduate student, had been so proud of her do-rag. She had bought it at an honest-to-god Harley-Davidson store. For some reason, that was an exciting novelty for the petite med student. Tempe walked to the kitchen, her mind still on her school days, and the pleasant memory of that anatomy course. It was where she had first used a scalpel, had first dissected human flesh, and had first witnessed the orderly set-up of the human body in its entirety. The experience with soft tissue had been interesting, and she had learned so much from Dr. Levi, but then, as now, her passion had been for the skeletal material beneath the surface.

Brennan shook her head to banish the cobwebs and memories that preoccupied her at the moment. As a general rule, she was able to squelch any memory that threatened to surface, to focus on the present, and to keep her mind on her work, her life. Still, this year appeared to be no different from the last decade or so. It was the beginning of the holiday season, and Brennan now faced at least two days with no work to focus on and memories that were crowing for attention. Thanksgiving Day, of course, would be over soon – in about seventeen and a half hours to be exact – and then Tempe would only have to get through Christmas Day. Once that was over, she could go back to focusing on the things that really mattered.

Now though, after feeding the cat and listening to his sounds of contentment, she might as well face what the day would bring. She had a ritual to observe; then she was free for another year.

Tempe began to pull out mixing bowls and various ingredients. This was her Thanksgiving. Brennan didn't have any family with whom to spend the day, she rarely went with friends to celebrate with their families. Her day, as so many other celebrations in her life, was a solitary thing. The first thing to do was to bake the pie. She wouldn't eat any turkey and she didn't have any of the trimmings – in fact, today she would probably content herself with a beef stew. That, like the pie, had been something she'd learned from her life with her grandfather. He was a big believer in simple, one-pot meals. That was understandable given the number of years that he'd been a widower.

As for the pie, he'd always thought that anything that Temperance baked was a great treat. He'd always said that she had come by her abilities in the kitchen honestly, that her mother had been one of the best cooks around. That statement was about as traditional during the Thanksgivings that she had had with him as the turkey and the pumpkin pie had been. She'd help him in the kitchen – he was in charge of the main meal, but he put her to work peeling potatoes, basting the turkey, and what ever else needed to be done – and then she'd make the pie. They would stuff themselves, and he would always, always comment on what a talented baker she was.

The first Thanksgiving, after his death, Tempe had felt so lost. It was an odd type of confusion, a curiosity and a helplessness about how to continue, about what to do now that she was alone, again. She'd moped around for most of the day, not feeling like herself at all until, in desperation, she found herself in the kitchen. Without reason, she prepared a pie…a pie for her grandfather…something for his sweet tooth…something that he would never have a chance to eat. That night, as she took the pie from the oven, tears started rolling down her face. She deposited the hot pan on the stovetop, and sobbed her way to the bed. She hadn't cried herself to sleep in years, but then, it'd been years since she'd lost her family. Being alone again wasn't too difficult day-to-day…she coped. She focused on the important things, on her job, on her passion for bones, and on how her work helped people every day. Thanksgiving, though, wasn't day-to-day. It was her day without her grandfather.

Ever since that first year alone, Tempe had given in earlier and earlier in the day on Thanksgiving. She was at the point now that she didn't even question what she would do during the holiday. The first job on her agenda was always to bake that stupid dessert. Not being particularly fond of pumpkin pie, it would keep in her apartment for a couple of weeks. Some years she'd eat the whole thing eventually. More often, though, she'd get through about half of it and then throw it away.

The anthropologist in her understood what was happening. She, Temperance Brennan, had created a ritual in response to an emotional need. She had needed to reduce her anxiety about being without her grandfather during the holidays, and baking that pie helped her cope. It didn't need to make sense. Baking in memory of her grandfather was nothing more – and nothing less – than a ritual act. She had been celebrating Thanksgiving this way for more than a decade, and the ritual was ingrained in her life. To give it up would be traumatic, and Tempe truly saw no use in removing this crutch that was hurting no one, and – at worst – resulted in a little bit of wasted food.

Birdie was keeping her company right now. He'd taken over one of the kitchen chairs. It looked like he was sleeping, but Tempe knew that he was monitoring her. If she did something that indicated that he might get a treat (she needed to stop feeding him people food, seriously), he would be alert in a heartbeat. He'd been with her for almost a dozen years, and it was rare for anything in her life to faze him. Not even the roar of the electric mixer disturbed his rest.

As she usually did, Tempe made the pie filling first. Moving on to the crust, she was hit by another familiar memory. This time, though, it was of her mother.

Janie Brennan had been a stay-at-home mother to her two children. Tempe could remember the marathon baking days that mom would have every month or so. Janie would start early in the morning, mixing up the bread dough, letting the first batch rise while she started on the next batch. How many hours had Temperance been content to sit at the table while her mother kneaded the dough, rolled it out flat and formed the heavenly-scented loaves? Tempe had been fascinated by the process, had begged to be allowed to be a part of it. Mom had always promised that when Tempe was older, she would be able to help. The terrible thing was that, when Tempe would have been old enough, she had been busy with school, with scouting, with so many other things that she never took the chance to bake with her mother.

Tempe shook her head once again, shaking away the regrets she felt about all the things she'd left undone or unsaid with her parents.

As she fashioned the crust and prepared the pie for baking, other memories flowed through her consciousness, but few hit her with an emotional punch. Today was one of the only times during the year that she let herself remember. There were memories of afternoon, summer thunderstorms that drove Tempe to her bed, the better to enjoy the ambiance the storm created, or of Sunday church with her family, of trying to stay awake and focused while Father Andre gave a long, droning sermon. Forever there would be the memory of crisp fall days as she and her brother walked to school, of the winter snows and of making snow angels and helping her father to shovel the driveway. There was the comfort of summer nights while her mom would spend the evening ironing clothes and listening to the baseball game on the radio. So many memories, and yet Tempe saw little use in mourning over the way her life had changed. It wasn't fair, how much she'd lost, but really what good was knowing that? It didn't change anything.

Some time later, Tempe pulled the pie from the oven. Setting on the stovetop to cool, she considered it. She would never finish the poor thing before it went bad. Perhaps, just perhaps, she might bring it with her to work on Monday. She could share it with the others, with Angela, Jack, and Zack. Perhaps Booth would come around with a new case for the team. She'd even consider offering him a slice.

One last look at the pie decided her. It made sense. She would be adding one more step to the ritual. The pie was made for her grandfather, for her lost family. On Monday, though, she would share it with her team. After all, they were the most important people in her life…a new family found.