(After 'The Beginning in the End')
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He sat in the man cave, the television off, his stereo playing classic rock softly in the background. He couldn't sleep and he didn't want to disturb Brennan any more than he already had. They had talked for a few hours about what his options were regarding Parker, but in the end, Booth didn't want to tear his son away from his mother. Brennan couldn't understand why he was so adamant trying to protect Rebecca's rights and Booth didn't know how to explain himself. They had gone to bed unhappy, but after two hours of restless sleeping Booth had left the bedroom and found sanctuary in the basement.
"Booth?" She had felt him leave their bed and had tried to return to sleep, but sleep had evaded her. She wanted to help Booth with his problem, but he wasn't letting her. She wasn't sure why and that made her restless. Did he not trust her? Was she so socially unaware that he didn't think he could explain his position or was it that he knew that she just wouldn't understand? She knew that Booth loved her, but it was times like this that she worried that she wasn't what he needed. "I'm sorry that I am unable to understand the situation. Clearly I am incapable of helping you and I am sorry for that."
Startled, Booth opened his eyes and placed his feet in the floor to face her. "Bones . . . Bones don't apologize okay? You're not doing anything wrong. I just don't know how to explain myself . . . I have my reasons for why I don't want to take Parker from his mother." He saw the worried look on her face and he knew that he was just making her feel worse. "Come here, I need to talk to you."
She moved across the room and sat down on the couch next to him. She didn't say anything. She just wanted to know why Booth was acting the way he was. It didn't make sense to her. She wanted to sue Rebecca for Parker. She knew that it would be a battle, but Brennan felt that Booth had a least a fifty percent chance of winning.
"Look . . . okay, when I was ten years old my Dad and Mom got into a big fight one night. I don't know what it was about because I was in my bedroom when it started." Booth remembered how bad the weather was that night. It was raining hard outside and the thunder and lightning was so intense, he felt like the house might collapse in a fiery pile of rubble killing everyone in the Booth family. "I heard him hitting her and her yelling in pain. I left my bedroom to see if maybe I could protect her . . . They were in the kitchen by the time I got downstairs. I don't know why the basement door was open, but she screamed something at him and my father just punched her in the face. Mom was standing in front of the open door and she just fell backwards down the stairs . . . she screamed . . . she screamed while she fell and then . . . and then the screaming stopped."
He brushed a tear from his eye. He could still see it all in his mind as if it had happened that day. The look on his father's face was surprising. The man had actually appeared afraid. "Dad ran downstairs calling out my Mom's name and I moved closer to the stairs. I could hear her moaning and Dad was crying . . . I don't know how she survived the fall, but she did . . . I went downstairs. I thought maybe I could help, but . . . Dad heard me and he shouted at me to call for help. I called the police. We didn't have 911 back then and I had to call the operator and have her call the police for me." He stopped talking. The image of his mother lying at the bottom of the stairs and his father crying over her wouldn't leave him.
"He cried." Booth shook his head. "He almost killed her and he had the nerve to cry . . . the bastard."
Brennan gripped Booth's hand. She wasn't sure if he was aware of her support, but that didn't matter. He sounded so tragic, so lost.
"I waited on the porch for help to come." Booth sighed. "At first a police officer came then an ambulance. They asked Dad what happened and he told them Mom tripped down the stairs . . . the lying bastard. They didn't ask me . . . I'm not sure what I would have said if they had asked me . . . They took my Mom away and I never saw her again. I asked to go see her in the hospital, but Dad said I couldn't and then after a few weeks he said that Mom wasn't coming home. He wouldn't explain and I learned to stop asking. He hit me if I mentioned Mom . . . it got worse after that. He didn't have Mom to torture anymore so he went after me most of the time . . . Jared some of the times."
He stopped speaking and that worried Brennan. He was so still, so caught up in bad memories and that made her nervous. "Booth . . . Booth . . . Booth." He finally blinked and looked at her much to her relief.
"Mom had protected me most of the time when she lived with us or she tried to." He didn't think he was telling her what she needed to know. He needed her to understand. "With her gone, my life became almost unlivable. After a while, I thought about killing myself."
She gripped his hand tightly and leaned her forehead against his shoulder. To think of him killing himself was so unthinkable. She was speechless.
"Pops walked into the house one day and found my father beating the shit out of me." Booth considered his grandfather his hero. He would always be a hero. "Pops took me and Jared home and he raised us. I don't know where my mother went, but she never came back. She just gave up on me and Jared. I don't know why. I can understand why she ran away from my old man. Who wants to be abused like that? No one . . . but to give up on her kids . . . maybe she just couldn't handle having a family anymore . . . I prayed that she would come back and get me and Jared, but she never did. She just . . . I don't know . . . threw us away like yesterdays trash."
Booth exhaled deeply. "I'm telling you this so you can understand what's going on . . . Rebecca loves Parker. She would never abandon him, never. No matter what's going on her life, Parker comes first . . . She's made sure he's been in sports and special programs like the science summer school program they had at the Jeffersonian. When she and Drew were having trouble, she made sure that Parker was okay and that meant that Drew had to leave. She protected our son and she always will. Rebecca isn't like my mother. She would never abandon her son and that means when she moved to England, Parker had to go with her. That's bad for me, but she made sure that Parker was with her and . . . and that is more than my mother did. Parker needs a mother like Rebecca. She loves him so much and I won't take our son away from her. It wouldn't be right. Not when he means so much to her and how she protects him so much . . . I wish my mother had loved and cared for me that much, but she didn't. Me and Jared weren't worth saving . . . I won't separate them. I can't do that. Not when I wished so much that I had never been separated from my mother. I just can't do it. Do you understand?"
Brennan leaned back and stared into her boyfriend's soulful eyes. "Thank you for explaining your reasoning Booth and for telling me about your mother. I knew that she had disappeared from your life when you were a boy, but I didn't know why. Yes, Rebecca is a good mother to Parker, but you are a good father, Booth. I understand why you don't want to separate Parker from his mother, but this will mean you will see him less. Will you be okay with that?"
He thought about it for a few seconds. "It'll have to be. He needs his mother and his mother needs him. As much as I hate Rebecca right now, I know that I can count on her to protect my boy. She will protect him with her life and Parker will be safe. He'll always be safe with her. I can count on that."
His story was tragic and Brennan could see that his mother's abandonment had affected him greatly. She too had been abandoned by her parents and she still couldn't forgive them for what they had done. Perhaps she never would. "Yes, Rebecca will protect him. He is a very lucky boy to have parents like you and Rebecca." She was sincere. Like Booth, she might despise Rebecca, but she knew that Parker would always be safe by his mother's side and it would be that way until he was grown enough to be on his own. If only her parents had loved her enough to protect her. Perhaps her life would have been better. It certainly couldn't have been worse.
"Yeah, he is." Booth hated Rebecca for taking his boy to England, but he would always be grateful that she was such a great parent to his son. He knew that if anything ever happened to him, his ex would make sure that his son was loved and protected.
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A/N: To the guest reviewer who seems to think this is just a 'Booth gets screwed story and Brennan is getting off free' thing, I find your premise rather puzzling. Brennan loves Booth and if Booth is suffering emotionally then so is she. Just like he was there for her when she found out her mother was dead and her father wasn't, Brennan is supporting Booth. Also, Brennan loves Parker and thinks of him as a son. Rebecca whisking the boy off to another country is upsetting to her as well as Booth.