A/N: Alright, sorry so long for the update... Haven't been very motivated with this one lately. But, at the very least, here's another chapter.

Warnings: This one gets a little brutal. Nothing terrible, but mentions of rape, forced drug use, etc, etc. Not for the faint at heart.

Shawn ran. Again.

He wasn't sure where he was running. He just had to get away. From the pitiful looks. The horrified faces.

The memories.

The photographic memory and hyper-alert senses his father used to call his 'gift' made sure that Shawn never forgot one second of those damn memories. Sometimes, he wondered why his head hadn't exploded from the amount of shit his mind retained. Especially with the crystal clear, high quality horror reels it'd picked up over the previous seven years. How much garbage could one brain hold before it finally exploded? Before the memories –that only bothered him seventy percent of the time –took up full, permanent residence in his conscious psyche, driving him to the brink of insanity? How long would it take to go mad?

Or maybe it was better phrased as 'how long had it taken him to go mad'?

Four years' worth of beatings. Four years of forced drug injections. Four years of hallucinations from said drugs.

Four years of rapes.

The pain. The God-awful pain. Pain so bad he just wanted to curl up and die. Pain so severe, he would forget who he was, where he was, or what was causing the pain in the first damn place.

He hadn't been on the road very long when Kyle found him. As a matter of fact, he'd only been gone two weeks when he hit San Francisco. Hungry, cold, tired, and more than a little angry after going to his mom's house, and not finding her.

Looking back, he'd been the perfect target. The easy mark. Kyle had plied him with food, and a place to stay. Fed him some bullshit story about how Kyle had done the same thing in his youth, after an argument with his own parents. How Kyle had fallen in with some bad characters, and he wanted to keep Shawn from the same fate.

And Shawn had fallen for it. Hook, line, and sinker. He'd been so enraptured with the man's lies about his 'impetuous and dangerous youth', he didn't notice the funny taste to his drink, or the little roofie pill disintegrating in the bottom of the glass. He didn't notice the hazy, fuzzy feeling, or the nausea building in his gut until it was way too late.

Even its drunk, drugged fog, his brain still retained every piece of information from that night. How many magnets were on the cheap, faded yellow fridge. How many steps it took for Kyle to carry him to his bedroom.

The weak, pathetic attempts at fighting back.

He'd spent almost a week tied down to Kyle's bed. Every few hours, the man would return, force him to either swallow liquid that Shawn would later find out was a type of acid, or shoot him full of heroin, before raping him again. And again, and again…

After the first week, Kyle let him up for the first time. Just long enough to drag Shawn's thin, emaciated body to the shower. Scrub him down.

And then it was right back to the bed.

And another week of hell.

Halfway through the second week, Shawn began to lose track of time. His life became an endless cycle of hallucinations, drugs, and rape. How long had it been? How long had Kyle kept Shawn to himself, before realizing the gold mine he was sitting on?

The next time Shawn was allowed out of his bindings, and off of the bed, it was only to receive a beating. Not one of those pansy-assed spankings he'd gotten from his father as a child. Kicks to the groin. Punches to the kidneys, and the head.

While Shawn could remember every incident that took place over those four years he remained with Kyle, times and dates had gradually gotten distorted. He was only rarely allowed out of the shitty apartment, and even then, it was usually only to go with another John. Only at night. Time had eventually lost all meaning, as four years turned into a lifetime of agony. An eon of pain.

And then that night. The night with the Johns, one of whose name –ironically –was actually John. John Schweitzer, and his buddy Ray Bouvay. The men who had whipped him until he passed out, and then driven him to the hospital, only to throw the half-dead young man from their vehicle without stopping, or even slowing down.

Shawn had spent six weeks in the hospital, two of those weeks in a medically induced coma while they re-broke and reset both his arms, his right wrist, right ankle, and three of his ribs, along with attempting to fix his completely shattered femur, his left shoulder, and his right knee cap, along with half the bones in his face, and his torn up back, while trying to detox him from the large doses of heroin in his system.

When he'd first arrived at the hospital, he'd been in the stages of a class IV hemorrhage, and was still losing blood quickly. John and Ray had quite literally ripped his back apart, cutting deep into muscles and tissue, and in a few areas, straight down to the bone.

The doctors tried prying information out of him. Asked him who he was. If he had family.

He'd told them they were all dead.

After his release, they'd tried to put him up in a homeless shelter for young men, while encouraging him to go to physical therapy.

He never did. The second the police officers had left him at the large shelter downtown, Shawn had bolted.

Again.

"Shawn?"

Shawn wiped the tears from his eyes, and cleared his throat. Somehow –and it was scary how he couldn't remember how –he'd ended up in-between the wall and a car. In the airport parking lot, he was pretty sure.

"Shawn, are you out here?"

Wiping his eyes again –damn, where the hell were the tears coming from? –he stood, and forced himself to smile as Gus spotted him.

"Gus! There you are, buddy! I was uh… I was…"

Gus felt his heart tightening at the lost, broken look on Shawn's face, as his best friend struggled to come up with a joke, a reason, anything.

"Shawn," Gus said softly, after a few moments of Shawn's stammering. "It's alright."

"No, I was just uh… just… needed a quick breath of air real quick. Sorry, I didn't mean to uh… to freak anybody out, or anything." Shawn's brows drew closer together in confusion. "Where's my mom?"

Gus sighed. "She took a cab to her hotel. I've got the address, she just didn't think you'd want to see her right now. Shawn, do you… Do you wanna talk about this?"

Gus was surprised when Shawn actually seemed to think about it, before shaking his head.

"No. No, I just… I can't, Gus. Not now," He said, his voice hoarse.

Gus nodded in understanding, as he wrapped an arm around his best friend's shoulders. "Alright. Don't have to do it now. But eventually, Shawn, you're gonna have to talk about it. We both know it."

Shawn sniffed back a few tears, and gave Gus a horribly fake smile. "Yeah. I know."

For a moment, Gus couldn't see Shawn. All he could see was the broken, emotionally battered young man standing before him.

Because Shawn didn't have that slumped shoulder defeated look. The pained look, the one that reminded him of the kids he'd seen in the news, the ones who had been beaten by their parents, or the ones starving in Africa. That hopeless look that said they had nothing left to live for; that there was no point in even trying.

Shawn didn't have that look. Shawn had the carefree, jackass, shit-eating grin. The 'I can take on the world' attitude. That was Shawn…

Not this broken, empty shell of a human being.

While Gus was trying to figure out what to say, what to do, Shawn changed, right before his very eyes. Almost as if Shawn pulled the wounded part of himself back inside, and Old Shawn appeared on command. But for the first time, Gus noticed the slight tightness around the corner of Shawn's eyes, the slight down turn at the corners of his lips, even as he smiled.

"Hey, why don't we get some food? You hungry? I'm hungry," Old Shawn said, that shit-eating grin back in place. "How 'bout some jerked chicken? You know you can't resist."

Gus couldn't find words, as Shawn walked by him, slapping him on the back, as he headed towards the Echo across the lot.

"Oh, well I'm thinking about it, we gotta swing back by my place… Forgot something."

Gus kept silent as he nodded, unwilling to push Shawn any further, not after the melt-down in the airport.

But he wondered which one of the eight different prescription pills in Shawn's bag the brunette man had forgotten.

Maddy had been in a fog the entire check in. It really didn't click with her what was going on. She checked in, rode the elevator to her room, opened the door with the key, and set her bags down, all in a daze.

Slowly, she pulled her little address book out of her suitcase, and sat on the bed, picking up the phone, and staring at it for a few moments, before finally dialing the number she'd only called twice in the past six years.

"Leave a message at the beep."

"Henry? It's Maddy. Henry… Shawn's come home, and… And I really need you here."