A/N: Okay, hi!
This is my first 'Bones' story... Please don't be too harsh! But constructive crit is always welcome.

I'm at war with the world

And they try to pull me into the dark.

I struggle to find my faith,

As I'm slipping from your arms.

The doorbell's hollow ring sounded for the third time within a few minutes, and after sighing to herself and grumbling under her breath, Angela slid out of bed and shrugged her thin dressing gown onto her small shoulders.

The doorbell rang once again, causing her to quicken her pace down the hallway.

"All right, I'm coming!" She mumbled, as if the person at the door could hear her from behind the thick wood.
Yanking the door open, Angela was prepared to launch straight in to a speech on what times were and weren't appropriate to come calling- 3am definitely not falling in to the first category.
Instead, her mouth dropped open as her eyes took in the sight of her best friend, stood slightly hunched before her. Her hair was loose and hung around her shoulders in sweaty strands and a thin slither of blood dripped down from a cut on her lip. Around her eye, a bruise was slowly starting to form, only the ghost of a painful mark that was yet to come.

"Oh, sweetie..." Angela extended an arm and held her hand out to her dishevelled friend, but Temperance ignored the friendly gesture and instead stood panting, leaning against the door frame. "What happened to you?" Her friend shook her head, sliding down the frame a little. Angela moved quickly and slid an arm under her small frame to stop her from falling, and gently steered her inside her apartment, moving to sit her down on the couch.
Kneeling in front of her, she put her hands on Brennan's knees -only to remove them when she flinched away from the touch- and looked up into her friend's eyes.

"Sweetie?" Her friend lifted her gaze, and dark, sympathetic eyes met her own lighter and piercing ones.

"Can I... Use your shower?" Temperance's voice was so meek and quiet that Angela could barely hear it.

"Sorry?" She repeated herself, and the darker haired girl put her head on one side, her eyes widening as the realisation began to dawn on her. She looked up and down her friend's body, noticing the dirt smeared on her bare skin and the button that was missing from her blouse. A tear trickled down her cheek as her despondent friend sat staring at her interlocked fingers, and she wiped it away hurriedly, knowing Brennan needed someone strong at that moment.

She should have known that something was up when her friend told her she was going out that night; a night on the town was hardly her favourite thing to do. Angela had assumed that she was going for a meal with someone she had met online, and her heart froze in her ribs as she realised that if her assumptions were correct, then this was all her fault.

'Why did I have to show her that dating site?' She cursed herself as she draped the throw that usually rested on the back of her sofa across her friend's shoulders.
Neither one of them had answered the other's question, so Angela decided to try and get a confirmation- she could be completely wrong after all.

"Temperance," The other woman looked up, a look of almost surprise lined in her features. Angela barely ever called her by her first name.
"I know it's hard, sweetie... But I really need you to tell me what's going on here. I'm starting to get really worried..."

"It's reasonable that you would be worried by my appearance..." Brennan's voice was louder that time. Angela forced out what she hoped would be a comforting one.

"Yeah, I know. Okay, how about this. I'll ask you some questions, and you can just nod or shake your head. Okay?" Temperance nodded, trying to return the smile only to have it crumble from her face like a biscuit.
"Good girl. Okay, do you remember someone attacking you?" Her friend declined her head slightly.
"Was it a man?" Yes.
"Did he hit you?" Yes. Angela took a deep breath, steeling herself for the question she knew she had to ask.
"Did he... Did he rape you?" Brennan shook her head hard, turning so she wasn't looking at her best friend. Angela sighed, and, placing a hand on Temperance's cheek, very gently turned her head to look at her again. Her blue green eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, sweetie. It's okay, you can tell me. Did that bastard do something like that to you? Did he rape you?"

"Y-yes." She stuttered. After a few minutes of silence, she wiped a tear away from her cheek, she shrugged Angela's hand off. "Can I have a shower now? Please?"

"Well if you really want to, you know I won't stop you. But I think we should get you to the hospital first. You know that any... Evidence will be washed away if you shower, right?"

"I know. But I... I feel dirty."

"C'mon sweetie. I know you can be brave for me. You've done it before, remember? In New Orleans, after..." She didn't finish her sentence. "Oh, and when that guy Kenton tied you up and was about to kill you? You came straight back to work afterwards, you were so strong. You can do this too."

"That was different. Death ends everything. What this guy did was... Different."

"Sweetie, I know. But you know how important it is to catch criminals, right? You help to catch them every day." Temperance looked up along the hallway towards her friend's bathroom, and then back at Angela. She sighed.

"All right. All right, I'll do it. But... Can I have shower after that?" Hope and longing glimmered in her eyes.

"Good girl. Okay, come on then. Can you stand?"

"I think so..." Angela slipped an arm around her friend as she got to her feet, slightly wobbly in her stance.

The pair started off towards the front door, both gritting their teeth at the prospect of what they knew was to come.

"Angela?"

"Yeah, sweetie?"

"Don't you think you should put on some clothes on first?"

"Are you ready for this?"

The drive to the hospital had been undertaken in a silence that, had the two colleagues been only acquaintances and not friends, could have been viewed as a tense and awkward one, like the fog that hangs heavily in the air just before a storm.

But to them, the silence was only in place only because they knew that there was nothing either one of them had to say to the other; their friendship was bound together by such bonds that it was certainly possible for there to be a silence that did not need filling with mindless and worthless small talk in an attempt to seem friendly.

"Yes. Well, I think I am." Together they stepped through the big double doors in to the usually busy life of the Emergency Room.

It was hardly surprising that, at two 'o' clock in the morning most of the seats were empty, only a few patients scattered among them.

"Come on, let's go speak to reception." Angela murmured as she watched her friend tense up under the stares of the nosy inhabitants of the room. They crossed over to the front desk, where a bored and stern looking woman was nose-deep in a book.

"Yes?" The woman's voice was sharp and held a no-nonsense tone to it, and she spoke without looking up from her book. Angela leant on the desk, grasping her friend's hand in her own.

"Hi, this is my friend, Temperance Brennan. We need to see a doctor." The receptionist sighed.

"Yes, well that's generally the reason people come here. What appears to be wrong with your friend?" The darker haired woman leant further over the desk so she could avoid being overheard by one of the other patients close by.

"She was raped not long ago." The woman behind the desk looked up quickly, staring up at the pair through the glasses that were perched precariously on the end of her nose.

"Right. Well, I'll let someone know that they need to come and see you as soon as possible." Sympathy traced over her now softened features as she pushed a clipboard across the desk to them.

"Until then, I'll need you to fill out this form as accurately as you can, and then return it to me." Angela picked up the form and flashed a brief, insincere smile at the sympathetic receptionist.

"Thanks." She led Temperance over to a couple of seats as far away from the other patients as possible, and pushed back a lock of hair from her face. In her hurry to get her friend to the hospital, she hadn't had the time to brush her hair.

"There's a spelling mistake." Brennan mumbled, peering round at the yellow coloured form.

"Sorry?" She pointed to the word that her carefully trained eyes had picked out from the tangle of letters.

"There. Allergies should be spelt 'ie', not 'ei'. Maybe it's a typing error…" She became lost in her thoughts, and Angela watched her for a moment.

How was it that less than an hour beforehand she had been assaulted, and now she was correcting spelling mistakes?

"You okay sweetie?" Her friend nodded; and after sighing deeply, Angela screwed the lid off the cheap biro pen the receptionist had given her, and began to fill out the form, giving away the bits and pieces of information of her friend's life that made her who she was.

Name, date of birth, occupation, next of kin…

"Hey, do you want me to put Russ as your next of kin?" She shook her head, staring down at the floor.

"No, there's no point in doing that. He's on an annual fishing trip with friends." Angela thought back to the time when Brennan and Hodgins had been buried underground. They had been unable to get in contact with her brother then because he had been out on a fishing trip.

"Do you want me to phone him anyway and leave a message on his answer machine or with his girlfriend?"

"No, I don't want to worry him." The darker haired woman turned in her seat to look properly at her best friend.

"Are you sure? I'm pretty sure he'd want to know… Wouldn't you wanna know if it was him in hospital?" She shrugged.

"It's not the same. Anyway, he probably won't be back for a couple of weeks. It's fine, Angela." Temperance insisted, still looking down at the floor. A man sitting opposite them on the seats across was staring at her, and she shifted uncomfortably at his gaze. Her head suddenly snapped up.

"I'm sorry, is there something you wanted?" Impatience and a hint of anger tinged her tone, and Angela put a comforting hand on her arm. The man only leaned further forward, squinting slightly in order to get a better look at her face.

"You been in the wars a bit haven't you?" He let out a short, barking laugh. Brennan shook her head slightly, glaring back at the middle-aged man who was cradling a badly bruised hand.

"No? What're you here for then?" As silence filled the air, the man continued to speak. "I think I've broken my hand. I fell comin' home from the pub."

"Oh, so that's where the odour is coming from." His recipient replied sharply, referring to the bitter smell of alcohol that lurked in the air.

"Sweetie!" Angela gripped her friend's arm a little tighter, knowing how unlike her it was to snap at someone in that way. The man barked with laughter again.

"Ooh, we've got a feisty one here then! So what, did you get yourself beat up for snapping at someone like you did just now?" Another shake of the head, this time a more imploring one from Angela. The man leaned forward further still, looking as though he were about to fall off his chair.

"You oughta watch that pretty little mouth of yours sweetheart." His breath stunk of alcohol. "You might get yourself in trouble for it."

Temperance stood, and walked away from the slightly intoxicated man, limping slightly.

"Oh, and one more thing," She turned round again, her pale eyes biting into the man's. "Your wrist isn't broken. The way you moved your fingers just then without showing any indication of being in pain suggests that it's just a bad sprain."
She turned again, and walked off steadily in the other direction.

A/N: That wasn't too abysmal was it?
Sorry if it seems a little rushed, I have rather urgent matters I must attend to.