AN: Dammit. Making promises will get me into trouble every single time. I'm so sorry. Again. No Booths for me, I guess. I don't even get a single Zach. Anyway, on with the story. (Oh, and the nightmare is in italics.)

Sleep had finally overtaken her after the second hour of sobbing. Nightmares had come, as they always did, but this one was different than the others. This one hadn't just made her wake up crying: it had left her shaking with fear.

A darkened hospital corridor stretched behind and in front of her forever. Her nose smelled garbage, urine, sweat, rot. This was not the scent of a place for healing. There was a sound behind her. Before she had time to be startled by the noise, a hand was over her mouth. She tried to scream and yell, someone would hear her here, but the sound stuck in her throat, stifled by her attacker's hand.

She tried to jerk and punch and kick, but her limbs refused to do her bidding. The attacker shoved her to the ground, and she took her chance to run. Her legs were leaden, and her feet betrayed her, dragging on the tile and tripping her every chance they got. She risked a look over her shoulder and saw a hulking shadow lumbering after her, not even worried enough to hasten his speed. He knew he would catch her. She was slow, and she would tire.

She couldn't look backwards for long. When she looked back, Parker was standing there. He said nothing, but looked so sad. She tried to scream at him, tried to make him help her, but her mouth wouldn't form coherent words. She reached for him, expecting him to reach back, but he just stood there with that pathetic look. She ran to him, telling her legs to go faster, faster, faster, get to Parker, get to Parker NOW.

He never got closer to her, and finally she knew she had to save herself. She turned the knobs on all the doors she passed, but they were locked. She was sleepy. She couldn't run anymore, no more, too tired. Her legs gave out, mere jello beneath her. The shadow was on her now, yelling at her, hurting her, and facing no fight.

It wasn't what hurt most.

Parker stood watching silently.

The clock on the wall read five-twenty when Marissa finally gathered the strength to uncurl herself from the shaking, shivering ball she had become after waking from that nightmare. For two more hours, she sat awake, blankly staring at her feet under the blanket, reassuring herself that the dream made no sense.

It was merely a concoction of her imagination, a mixture of her thoughts and the events of that day.

Parker would never let her get hurt, never stand there and watch while she tried to escape from someone who tried to hurt her.

It didn't mean a thing.

When she saw that blonde face again at seven-thirty, she still wasn't sure she had convinced herself.

"She'll be okay. She's strong."

"It's not her I worry about, Booth. Parker's a lot like you, and that means Marissa's going to be very well taken care of. Unfortunately, that means Parker is going to take this very hard."

"Are you comparing the two of them to us?"

"That is exactly what I am doing, and don't even try to tell me you don't see the similarity. They argue, they insult each other, they can hardly stand each other sometimes, but they care. And Parker, like you, is going to feel horrible about the fact that someone he loves got hurt."

Booth sighed. Bones was right. He and his son both had hero-complexes. (Although they were far more likely to refer to said complexes as 'strong senses of justice'.)

"He'll deal with it. It'll be a slow process, and he will very likely become impassioned with finding the bastards who do things like that as a by-product of dealing, but he will. And he's going to feel the need to be even more protective of her than he already is."

"So, basically, he'll become obsessed with keeping her safe, which will annoy her very, very, very much?"

"I do not obsess!"

She chuckled and put on her best (fake) innocent face.

"When did we begin talking about you?"

Her laughter nearly drowned out his indignant snort.

"Marissa, you've been really quiet this morning. Did something happen after I left?"

"Really bad dream, that's all." She kept her head pressed against the cool glass next to her head before deciding that no, he wouldn't lie to her, and yes, she could just come out and say it. She turned her weary face to the driver. "Parks, you would never just stand by while I got hurt, right?"

Between jerking the wheel and looking at her, he nearly wrecked the car after her question. "Of course not! Jesus, how would I live with myself if I did? What the hell made you think I would do something like that, Marissa?"

Smiling at the mixed shock and gentleness in his voice at his last sentence, she merely turned her head back to the window. "Bad dream. That's all."

---

No promises, but I think the next part is in my head, and I'm hoping I can get it up tomorrow.