Bones
::as requested by katie__pillar, mardy_bum and balooky::

Hello. Hi there. I’m Joy. My name is Joy Kelleher.

It wasn’t right. It didn’t *feel* right. It shouldn’t matter, logically. Brennan was confident that Zach would be able to point that out to her. And he would be quite right; there was no logic in letting yourself be defined by a name; an arbitrary label attached to you at birth – or later, as the case might be. It was, after all, just a label – something that could be taken on and off at will. It didn’t matter.

So, maybe she didn’t mind if her name was Joy Kelleher and not Temperance Brennan.

Angela would point out that logic didn’t come into it. A name was given to your by your parents; it has an emotional connection that you can’t ignore. Anthropologically speaking, Angela was correct. Names did matter. Giving – or denying – a name was a crucial part of forming familial and tribal bonds. Her parents had chosen to deny her true identity

Maybe Brennan did mind.
Hello, I’m Joy Kelleher. Hi, my name’s Temperance Brennan.

Brennan stared at herself in the mirror, saw the same face she saw every day. Saw the same person. And she smiled, and it was bittersweet.

At least she’d always be ‘Bones’.