A/N: I'M AN AUNT!!! My SIL had her baby yesterday afternoon and now I'm an aunt to a beautiful, amazing, gorgeous, absolutely perfect little prince. :) The very second I saw him I fell in love, and when he looked up at my eyes... oh God, he just stole my heart. I wanted to share that with everyone because I am SO thrilled, I have been waiting for this forever and now that he is here, I couldn't possibly be more in love with him.

And now that I've shared that extremely exciting, uplifting, happy piece of life news with you, you can carry on and read this very morbid, depressing chapter. I wish I had a happier chapter to share the news on, but this little doom-cloud just happens to be next. Oh well, that's just how it works sometimes.

At any rate, enjoy, and please review and let me know what you think!

She up and died and left you in a fall you can not forget
You were too young, you said, "Not yet, not yet, not yet."
That year the cherries choked from pretty pink to red to brown
You looked around, but she was nowhere to be found

It's alright, this could be a rough night
So hold tight, this is not a fair fight
It's alright, this will be a rough night
So hold tight, this is not a fair fight...

- Fair Fight, The Fray

By the time the sun had dipped low enough to touch the western horizon, only Brennan, Booth, Jamal, and Parker remained at the park, cleaning up the remnants of the party. Well, to be precise, Brennan was cleaning up the remains of the party—Booth, Parker, and Jamal were engaged in a game of two-on-one basketball.

Brennan paused and watched as Booth lumbered across the court, the boys each hanging from one of his thick arms and screaming with laughter as he carried them through the air. She smiled, and briefly worried about him throwing his back out again, but her thoughts were interrupted by Booth's phone ringing on the cement picnic table. As she reached for the phone, Booth shook both of the boys off and ran the last few yards to the basket, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet and pitching the ball effortlessly into the net.

"You carried!" Jamal shouted.

"Yeah well you both get personal fouls and fouls for holding, so I get a free throw," Booth said. "In fact, I get like, ten free throws."

"Do not!" Parker yelled.

"Do so!" Booth retorted playfully. Brennan rolled her eyes as she picked up the phone.

"Booth's phone, Brennan speaking," she said.

"Tempe? It's Jared. Where's Seeley?"

"Playing basketball with the boys," she said. "How are you?"

"Can I talk to him?" Jared asked, ignoring her cordial question. He sounded edgy, and Brennan's brows wrinkled.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Just put Seel on the line, will ya?" Jared asked impatiently. "Please." She looked up to the court, where Booth was single-handedly wrestling both boys to the ground, growling like a dog.

"Booth," she called out, holding the phone up in the air.

"I'm a little busy here!" he yelled back, noogying each of the boys in turn. Brennan pursed her lips.

"It's Jared," she said. "It sounds important." Booth hesitated, then released the boys from their captivity and jogged over to where Brennan stood, taking the phone from her.

"What's up?" he asked. Brennan strained her ears to hear Jared's fuzzy voice from a distance, but she couldn't make out what he was saying. She could tell from Booth's empty expression, however, that it was not good. Booth nodded slowly, sighing and rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. By the time he hung up, he looked pale and uneasy, almost as if he were about to be sick.

"Are you okay?" Brennan asked, taking a slight step towards him. He didn't speak—didn't answer her question, didn't even seem to acknowledge her presence. Instead he collapsed onto the picnic bench, leaning over with his head between his knees and his hands over his face. Brennan didn't know whether or not to get him something to throw up in.

"What's wrong?" she tried again, thinking maybe he hadn't heard her the first time. She looked up at the boys—completely oblivious, they had turned back to their original one-on-one game, running back and forth across the court and shouting out at each other. She sat next to Booth on the bench, reaching out to touch his back but hesitating, as if afraid her touch might break him. He looked easily broken.

"It's my mom," he finally said.

"What happened?" Brennan asked gently. "Is she in the hospital?"

"She's dead."

oOoOoOoOo

A week prior, Booth had sat on the coarse, thin couch in Sweets's office, jiggling his leg anxiously. Sweets opened Booth's folder, which had grown exponentially in size over the past two months, and flipped to his most recent page of notes.

"So Agent Booth," Sweets asked. "Your mother left your father when you were twelve, is that right?" Booth nodded, hating the synoptic recap they went through at the beginning of every session. "And how long did you live with your grandfather for?"

"Three years," Booth said.

"And after three years, then what happened?" Sweets asked. "Did your mother return to your father?"

"She never went back to him," Booth said. Sweets raised his eyebrows.

"But you did?" he asked. Booth shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Did you begin living with your father again when you were fifteen, Agent Booth?"

"Yeah," Booth said tensely.

"And Jared too?"

"No Sweets, I thought I'd fly solo," Booth growled. "Yes, Jared too. We both moved back in with the old man that year."

"Why?" Sweets asked. "What happened to your mother?" At first Booth did not answer, but eyed Sweets with a seething, venomous glare that, if looks could kill, would have dropped the psychologist on the spot.

"She had some problems," he finally said. "Personal issues, stuff she had to deal with. She wasn't… she couldn't take care of us anymore. She just didn't have it in her."

oOoOoOoOo

"Seeley."

Her voice struggled down the narrow hall, barely making it into the boy's bedroom. He sat up in bed with his eyes still shut, rousing from sleep the way a newborn baby's mother does when she hears her child's cry in the middle of the night. He walked down the hall into the living room, where he found his mother curled in the fetal position on the pullout sofa bed, her blankets in a heap on the floor next to her. She shivered visibly, and her sunken eyes stared out at him like a frightened animal. Her sugar-white skin, thin and waxy, shone in the glow of the muted television.

"Hey," he said gently, picking up the blankets from the floor and spreading them over her, taking care to wrap the ends around her feet to keep them warm. "Did you get cold?" She didn't nod, but her eyes held his in the way that let him know she understood the question. He pulled the quilt up around her shoulders and tucked it around her frail body, making sure no nighttime chills could sneak in.

She smiled and shut her eyes, wrapping her fingers around the edge of the blanket and pulling it towards her. In these little moments when she smiled, when Seeley felt he had done something to give her some glimmer of happiness, he felt his heart swell. He brushed her short, thin curls with his fingers, then bent over and kissed her cheek before retreating back to his bedroom for the rest of the night, or at least until her blankets fell again. Jared wouldn't wake up—he never did. And after working a ten hour day, Grandpa was just too tired, just too exhausted. Seeley knew the feeling; the second he fell back into his bed, he slipped back into unconsciousness, and did not wake up again until his alarm sounded.

A little more than a year after they had moved in with his grandfather, she began having episodes. At first they were mild, hardly noteworthy—she would insist that she had left the iron on, or the stove, and drive thirty minutes across town back to the house to check on them. They would joke—Seeley, Jared, and Grandpa—about her housewife paranoia. They didn't know then; how could they?

As the months passed the episodes became more frequent, more persistent, and new 'quirks' added themselves to the list. Seeley would often stumble into the kitchen in the morning and find his mother counting eggs in the fridge, or even wake up in the middle of the night to find her in his bedroom, counting the buttons on all of his shirts to make sure none had fallen off. She would iron slacks three, four, five times in a row, insisting that they had to be smooth. 'You don't want wrinkled pants, do you?' had been her response to their inquiries about her behavior. Or missing buttons. Or an odd number of eggs in the refrigerator.

Stress, the psychiatrist said it was, once they had finally convinced her to go. Leaving an abusive relationship, taking care of two growing boys and a household. She was a very tense woman. He gave her a bottle of Valium pills and instructions to take one as needed for her "episodes", and to see him again if the dose was not strong enough. With some encouragement from her father, she began taking one a day as she felt the waves of obsessive panic grip her.

Once a day turned into twice a day, turned into three times, turned into Seeley waking up at four in the morning to his mother's panicked cries, shaking the empty pill bottle violently in search of just one last pill. They called the doctor—he upped the dose. Then he upped it again. Her nerves were so badly frayed, like the battered end of a nylon rope, that she began taking the Valium with a rum and coke just to hasten the effect.

That was almost two years ago. After her first psychotic break, the one that went undiagnosed as more than 'stress', she stopped volunteering at the library. Then she became mysteriously absent at her knitting club meetings, her needles and yarn balls lying dormant on the back porch table for months. Her ritual home-cooked dinners became less and less frequent—by the end of their second year with their grandfather, they were lucky to come home and find that any lights had been turned on, much less a meal prepared. Usually they found her sitting on the couch, curled up under a throw, watching television. Only she didn't really watch it—with so much sedative in her system watered down with so much rum, she didn't do much but stare. Stare and, occasionally, smile—though before long the smiles seemed more like involuntary facial twitches than actual reactions.

When Seeley was fourteen and graduated from the eighth grade, she spent the entire morning ironing her one blue dress for the occasion. After three hours she had burned four of her fingers and burst into tears twice. Still trying to get himself together for the momentous occasion, Seeley took his mother's shoulders and gently pulled her away from the ironing board.

"It's smooth, mom, look," he had told her, holding the dress up in the air to show her. "See? No wrinkles. It's perfect." After enough sedatives to down a horse, she found it within herself to agree, and put the dress on without a fuss. Her hair was still limp and she had not put any make-up on by the time they arrived at the school's auditorium, but she did smile when her son walked across the stage. She saw him; she knew him. That was her boy. That was her baby.

That was the last time she went out in public. Now in high school, Seeley arrived home late every afternoon after football practice, sweaty and worn out. He biked the entire way there and back, since he couldn't drive and nobody could pick him up. After chaining his bike to the fence outside of their house, he kicked off his cleats and tread lightly into the house. Even though it was only six in the evening, his mother was usually asleep on the living room sofa, and he did not want to wake her.

This night he padded past her stealthily into the kitchen, putting two pots of water on to boil. His grandfather wouldn't be home for at least another hour or two, and there was no telling when Jared, now thirteen, would be. He was supposed to be home by seven every night—by the time their grandfather was—but some nights he was out until eight, nine, ten. Seeley didn't blame him; if he didn't have to come home, he probably wouldn't either.

He snapped a large handful of spaghetti noodles in half so they would fit in the pot, and once the water reached a rolling boil, dropped them in. Seeley usually made dinner, reading easy-prep recipes off the inside of soup can labels and the backs of pasta boxes. Spaghetti, tuna casserole, grilled cheese sandwiches, and pancakes were the things he was really good at making. Sometimes he went out on a limb and tried something a little more difficult, usually after Sunday morning Mass when he had the afternoon to himself to do backed-up schoolwork and cook. Last weekend he made stellar stuffed ravioli and sauce that even his mother, in her state of stupor, complimented him on.

Getting her to eat was hard most nights, which was why Seeley set two pots to boil at a time—he would make spaghetti in one, and white rice in the other. If they couldn't get her to eat anything else, he could usually mash up white rice and chicken broth and get her to take a few bites. She had to eat something; he had to make sure she did.

Once the spaghetti was cooked and drained, the salad was tossed, and the table was set, Seeley walked down the hall into his bedroom and collapsed on the mattress. He tried to force his eyes open, but it wasn't working. The day had just been so long—actually, the entire week had seemed a constant cycle of assignments, chores, and midnight care-taking, without any reprieve. Maybe it had been that way all month, or all year; at that moment, it felt like a lifetime of exhaustion was pressing down on him, begging him for just ten minutes of silence.

What would a nap hurt? He looked up at the red digital numbers next to his bed; his grandfather would be home in less than half an hour, and Jared too probably. His mom was asleep in the living room, or just catatonic, but either way she wasn't going anywhere. The doors were locked, the stove was off, dinner was made; he really had nothing pressing to do for the next thirty minutes. He shut his eyes and succumbed to the lure of sleep, not even bothering to crawl under the blanket.

He woke with a jolt, like someone would if they had been suddenly struck or shocked in their sleep. Disoriented, he reached out and hit the snooze button on his alarm, only to realize it was not the alarm sounding. Slowly his mental confusion cleared, and he realized it was screaming that had shaken him from sleep. His hair stood on end when he recognized the screams—they were his mother's.

He charged into the living room, ready to kill his mother's attacker. When he got there, though, there was no attacker. There was only his mother in a heap on the floor, arms wrapped around her middle, red-faced and screaming as if she herself were on fire.

"Mom!" he yelled, grabbing her by the shoulders and trying to help her up. She wailed even louder, if possible, and jerked free from his gentle grip. Her face and hands twitched as she twisted and writhed on the floor, her shrill screams magnified by the echo in the room. There were no sentences, no words, nothing he could understand, only the sound of her vocal chords fraying. She began clawing at her arms, at her face, still screaming. He grabbed her hands and wrenched them behind her, just to stop her from hurting herself, and in lieu she began attempting to bang her head against the ground.

"Please, stop," he begged, not realizing he was crying too. She continued to shriek at the top of her lungs, the sound throbbing in Seeley's ears, tearing something deep inside of him that would never mend, though he did not know it then.

Terrified, he looked around the room for anything he could subdue her with. He held her with one arm as he reached out onto the couch, grabbing the blanket she had been wrapped in previously. He pressed her arms to her sides and wrapped her tightly in it, almost as if swaddling a very large baby, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly to his chest.

Crouched on the living room floor with his mother in his arms, he began to rock back and forth slowly, whispering calming words into her ear. He crooned and hummed, saying or singing anything he thought might settle her. After perhaps ten minutes of this her screaming slowly subsided into quiet whimpers, punctuated every once in a while with a sharp gasp of air and a startled yelp. Tears still ran copiously down both of their cheeks, but she had stopped screaming, and he felt that if he just kept holding onto her, maybe she would be okay. Maybe, one day, if he just kept holding onto her, she would be all right again. One day she would be mom again. He just had to keep holding on.

oOoOoOoOo

"That must have been traumatic for you, Agent Booth," Sweets croaked, unashamed of the redness that rimmed his own eyes. Booth pawed at his eyes roughly.

"I wasn't the one having a mental breakdown," he said quietly, not seeming to trust his voice beyond that.

"And after that, they took her?" Sweets asked. Booth nodded.

"My grandfather was afraid she would hurt herself," Booth said. "He was afraid she… he knew she needed help, more than we could help her. We couldn't help her anymore. We took her to the hospital and she stayed there for a long time."

"Did you ever visit her?"

"Once," Booth said. "Just after that happened. She was so drugged, she didn't know it was us."

"I take it your father never took you to see her?" Booth shook his head curtly.

"He didn't want to see her."

"Did you?" The question lingered in the air long after it was asked, like a current running between the two men. Booth's face hardened, all prior emotion wiped from his expression.

"What I wanted didn't matter anymore."