By the time you were 5, you already knew much more than any other kid your age. You could already recognize people's emotions in their eyes—you had to learn early, for it was your only weapon against your father's fury. Every second you gained was a second that could decide how bad it'd be this time, as if the responsibility for your father's actions was yours, and not his.

By the time you were 8, you wanted to give up. You felt you didn't have the strength to fight him anymore, to run anymore, to try to protect your brother anymore. You'd long before given up the hope your mother would save you—you knew better. You knew the best ways to disguise the results of his fists against your skin and bones, so the other kids wouldn't have more clues of the hell that was your home. They already talked of you and your brother behind your back, they didn't need any more reasons to do so.

By the time you were 9, you had learned to ignore the muffled voices in the Church every Sunday, for you knew they had tried—but failed. It was the way adults were, after all. Yes, you had lost hope in them this early, too.

By the time you were 12, you felt like you couldn't take it anymore. You felt like maybe you were never meant to exist, and that everyone, especially you, would be better off if you just disappeared. The selfishness of those thoughts made you feel even worse and, had you not decided to go and talk to your granddad to try to decide better—not for yourself, but for what is right—you would probably have ended your existence by then.

But then you were 16, and already had the body of a man. You had worked for it, for you knew the only way to fight physical madness was with physical strength and control. And that you had. And that was what had finally protected you and your brother.

The day you turned 25 you got drunk in your Ranger's tent, mulling over the fact things weren't as you had imagined when you were 10 they would be by this time, or hoped for when you had left home. Jared was doing well, your dad wasn't using him and your mom as punching bags anymore... but still you didn't find the peace you needed. You still needed to defend yourself. You still hoped for the day in which you wouldn't feel a storm brewing inside you, no matter how much you tried to quell it.

Then, all of a sudden, you were 30, not in the army anymore, and with a child on the way. The day he was born something seemed to implode inside of you, a love and certainty you somehow never believed your father could have felt, because there was no way this kind of emotion would allow to hurt someone this beautiful, this miracle that this little person in the crook of your arm was.

And when your son had spent a year in this earth, you realized that that love could only grow... and put yourself in the position of revisiting your life and decisions over and over again. You were full of questions that kept you awake at night, too important to let aside: Had you been right in letting Rebecca go? How could you be sure you'd be a good father, if you didn't really have an example to follow? Was it enough to simply vow you'd never give your son to the kind of childhood you had? You felt it wasn't, that a child needed so much more than the lack of violence.

You had to pray each night that you would be able to give him what he needed, when he needed it, before you could finally get asleep. Because you weren't sure you had the means to making your son feel loved, when you'd been so full of rage and hate for so long. When you'd finished so many lives with a simple movement of your forefinger.

Some time later, a few days before turning 33, you met her. Those first few times you had been around her were infuriating for you—a woman that wouldn't really look at you, that was so lofty in her ways that she somehow made you feel like you were little more than an amateur detective, like some kid playing Sherlock Holmes, for you weren't able to tell the victim's favorite sport by looking at x-rays.

You thought she had to be wrong. You laughed at her.

Then had to ask for her help again when you realized she had been right all along and needed that kind of superpowers on your side... so much you were willing to take her with you, if that's what she wanted. You had faced more difficult and dangerous things before. It wouldn't hurt to accept a deal she would surely get bored or scared of soon enough. And then you would still have her on your side, helping you.

But you hadn't expected what had happened. Not at all.

Now, almost 6 years after that decision had been made, a newborn son in the crook of your arm, all these memories going through your mind's eye, you have to be glad for the decisions you made. You're looking at her, not even trying to hide the emotions you know are so clear in your eyes: love, oh so much love, for your baby, for her.

And now, for the first time, you can be thankful of what you've gone through. It has been each and every one of those experiences that have made you the man that you are, that has led you to this exact place, to this exact time, in which you are married to a woman that has changed you as much as you have changed her, and who has given you yet another reason to look with hope to the future... a future that has nothing but happiness embedded for this family. In trying to avoid repeating your pasts, you have found the balance you have been seeking for so long.

And this knowledge you hold now for the first time in your life, close to your heart, expanding from that point to the rest of you, healing you.

This oneshot was written all at once, right after writing a chap for the multichap (Let your heart speak), in a sudden wave of inspiration. Seems I hope Booth heals as much as I hope Brennan does! Not a discovery per se, really, but a first-time-aknowledging.

Thanks, Anna, for helping me with this one! It really needed a beta this time, didn't it? lol.