A/N: Well, you guys get to benefit from my misery. I've been sick all day... that stomach-contents-in-the-back-of-your-throat, saltines-and-chamomile-tea-diet kind of sick that really makes you want to do absolutely nothing but lay in bed and hate the world. It's not like I'm surprised -- every semester without fail, I get sick the week before and of exams. Methinks I stress a little too much about finals, but hey, what can you do?

Anyway, since I've had nothing better to do with my afternoon, I got this chapter written. And let me tell you something - I have had this chapter planned in my head for a long time. I will be really interested to see your reactions to it. So with that said, enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Let me know
Do I still got time to grow?
Things ain't always set in stone
That being known, let me know
Let me

Seems like street lights glowing
Happen to be
Just like moments passing
In front of me
So I hopped in the cab and
I paid my fare
See, I know my destination
But I'm just not there...

- Street Lights, Kanye West

Booth rounded the unfamiliar corner and rolled down the street at a snail's pace, rationalizing to himself that he needed to drive slowly in order to avoid hitting any children that might suddenly appear in the middle of the road. The truth was that there were no children in this neighborhood—not in the street, anyway. The few people he did see had their hands stuffed in their pockets, shoulders hunched, walking fast with their eyes averted to the cracked sidewalk underfoot. Some even wore heavy coats, despite the warmth of the mid-August afternoon, and Booth didn't really have to wonder what they were probably hiding underneath them. Today though, he couldn't care less.

He'd found out from Jared that their father had moved across town a few years back, unable to pay the rent on their old family house with the money he collected on his pension. He now resided in an apartment in the lower southwest part of the city, which was where Booth was currently, looking for the proper building. He found a tall, narrow brick structure tagged by a local gang, and after matching numbers with the address written tidily on the piece of paper in his lap, realized this was his father's home. He parked on the corner and walked back towards it, his hands now shoved in his own pockets for lack of anything better to do with them.

He felt bile rise to the back of this throat as he approached 2A, his father's unit. He did not want to do this. He paused in front of the building, looking up to the top of it and beyond, sighing weightily. In the distance he heard two distinctive dog barks, and further than that, the general quiet roar of the city. Philadelphia growled in a fierce, hungry way that D.C. did not, and he realized then that he did not miss it at all. Summoning whatever courage he might have left, he stepped up to the warped wooden door and, after hesitating for a moment, rapped his knuckles against it.

Nothing. He waited for a minute or two, then knocked again. He knocked louder, pounding his fist against the door and making it rattle in its frame. He did not come all this way to find an empty apartment, to have to stand around and wait for the old bastard to get home. Just as he felt his blood begin to boil, he heard steps from within the house, and that hot boil quickly plummeted to a cold sweat. He heard a man's grumbling voice drawing closer, finally reaching the other side of the door and growling, "Who is it?"

"It's… it's me," Booth said weakly, and whether it was an acceptable identifier or not didn't seem to matter. He heard the deadbolt turn in the lock. The door cracked open and he was greeted by one dark, bloodshot eye peering out at him from within the apartment.

"Who the hell…" the man began hoarsely, but stopped half-way through his sentence, red eye widening. The door closed briefly and Booth heard the chain being slid out of the lock, and it reopened widely, revealing the whole of the man that was his father.

He was much shorter than Booth remembered him being. His back was a little hunched, stooped with age, and at his tallest he might have come up to Booth's nose. In Booth's mind his father had been a giant, as broad as a barn and strong enough to lift one. Of course, all children believe that of their father, but seeing as his dad had demonstrated that monstrous strength against the back of his head more than once, he was more inclined to believe it. His father's skin was pale and sallow, his jowly cheeks hanging loose from his powerful jaw. What had once been a square, powerful frame had turned soft and round with age, and he wobbled slightly even just standing before him. His hair was thin and greasy, strands clinging to the side of his head and mostly absent from the top. He was only sixty-five or sixty-six, but he looked at least ten years older. For some reason Booth had imagined his father to be the robust, powerful man he had left behind almost twenty years ago, untouched by time. He knew this was foolish, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he believed.

"Seeley?" his dad asked, squinting hard at him as if he were in the far distance. Booth nodded, cocking his head slightly and giving a hesitant smile.

"Yeah, dad," he said. "It's me." His father stood with his arms limp, face warped with dawning comprehension, just staring for a while. Then a smile split his sagging face and he reached out and patted Booth on the shoulder. Booth flinched subconsciously, and was not sure if it reflected in his actions or not, but he kept smiling.

"Well, come in," his father croaked, punctuating the sentence with a deep, dry cough. He stepped aside to let Booth in, shutting the door and relocking it behind him, carefully placing the chain and twisting the bolt.

What first hit Booth was the darkness of the house. It was like stepping into a cave—the narrow hallway was lit only by the glow of the television coming through the doorway at the end of it. Even though it was a bright, cloudless afternoon outside, there was no sign of it in the house—his father must have had every window heavily covered to achieve that kind of darkness. They navigated the shadowy corridor, carefully stepping around piles of old newspaper and trash bags that had only made it as far as the hall, and Booth held his breath against the acrid stench that escaped from them. The entire house, he discovered as they made their way into the far living room, was infused with an off smell, like cigarette smoke and something sour and damp.

In the living room itself, dark curtains hung over the barred windows Booth had seen from the outside, effectively blocking out the sun. The room was lit by the bright, slightly fuzzy screen of a small television sitting on an end table across the room, which was otherwise mostly empty. Aside from the trash bags and newspaper stacks in the hall, it had been empty too—no coat hanger, no pictures adorning the walls, not even as much as a hook for his keys. His father moaned as he lowered himself into the same recliner he had been sitting in for over twenty years—Booth recognized the blue houndstooth pattern and the beaten seat cushion immediately. It was, like him, much worse for the past twenty years—there were cigarette burns on the arms, and there was almost nothing left of the cushioning in the seat.

"You want one?" his father asked, picking up a pack of cigarettes from the small round end table next to the chair and holding them out in offering. Booth shook his head, and his father shrugged, pulling one out and lighting it. He took a long draw and expelled it with a wheezing hack. The way he looked, illuminated by the NASCAR race playing out on the screen, he already looked dead—like a semi-translucent ghost sitting in his father's chair, taking a drag off of a cigarette and watching him with a peculiar look.

"I, uh…" Booth stumbled, not really knowing what to say to the man sitting before him. He was the father he remembered, but at the same time, nothing like him at all.

"Long time no see, huh?" his father asked, saving Booth from having to initiate the conversation. He let out a sigh and nodded.

"Yeah," he said, taking this angle of conversation and running with it. "Yeah, it has been… a really long time. How have you been?" His dad shrugged, vaguely motioning at his surroundings.

"Gettin' by," he said. "I guess Jared told you I moved?" Booth nodded, folding his hands in his lap and feeling much too big for the stiff-backed chair he sat in. It was like a toy chair, a doll chair, something so fragile that it might snap beneath his weight.

"Yeah, he gave me the address," Booth said, eyes flicking over to the television screen and back to his father. "I didn't know you guys, uhm, talked."

"He gives his old man a call every once in a while," his father said. "Just checkin' in on me I guess. It's been about a year since I heard from 'im though—I got rid of my phone. Piece of junk, ya know? Not worth the money."

"Right," Booth said, not knowing what else to fill the empty space with. His father cleared his throat and excused himself, hoisting himself out of the chair and exiting the room. He came back with two cold beers, and held one out to Booth.

"No, I'm alright, thanks," he said. The last thing on the entire planet he wanted to do was drink with his father.

"What are you, some kinda religious nut?" his father asked irately, uncapping both beers and setting them on the side table. He didn't wait for a response, though, and switched topics. "So what are you doing with yourself now? Still in the army?"

"No, I work for the FBI now," he answered, pulling his badge out of his pocket and tossing it to his father, who let it land in his lap. He picked it up and flipped it open, examining it.

"Special Agent, huh?" he asked. Booth nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "For, wow, over ten years now."

"That's somethin'," his father said, tossing the badge back. "I don't see a ring, you still single?"

"No, not single, just not married" he said, realizing just how little his father knew about his life.

"Any kids?" his dad asked. Booth nodded.

"One," he said. "A boy, Parker. He's seven."

"You got a picture of him?" he asked. Booth nodded and got up from the seat, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket and flipping it open. He handed it to his father, who surveyed the picture with an approving smile.

"Looks like you," he said, handing the wallet back to Booth. "Looks a lot like you. Same eyes, smile, all that. You still with his mom?" Booth shook his head.

"Things didn't work out between us," he admitted. His father shrugged.

"It happens," he said. "Your ma wasn't one of my biggest fans either, you know." Booth stiffened when his father mentioned his mother. As if he had any right to.

"She died," Booth said plainly. His father looked up from the bottom of his first empty beer, eyebrows raised.

"Your mother?" he asked. Booth nodded. "Is that so?"

"Yeah, over a month ago, in July." His father sighed, starting on the second beer.

"Shame," he said. "Alice was a good woman, really."

"Wouldn't know from the way you treated her," Booth said darkly. His father looked up from his beer, and they stared coldly at each other from across the room.

"Times were hard," his father finally said after some calculated thought. "Money was tight, the shop wasn't doing so well…"

"That didn't give you a reason to beat the shit out of her, or us," Booth said loudly, feeling his hands tremble. He hoped his voice wouldn't.

"I know," his father said exhaustedly, finishing off the rest of the second beer and setting it heavily on the table next to him. "But you try keeping two kids and a wife on no money and see how rosy you feel at the end of the day, when they just won't get out of your face. Clean this, fix that, daddy, look at me... I mighta got a little angry, sure, but that's life kid." He fell into a coughing fit, his body shaking from the force of it. His breathing finally settled and he reclined back in the chair, closing his eyes.

"How can you sit here and just act like everything you did was okay?" Booth asked incredulously, rising quickly from the chair with his fists balled subconsciously. "How can you really think that?"

"Seeley," his father said with a long, weary sigh as he opened his eyes and looked up at Booth. "If you wanted to pick this fight, you're about ten years too late. I'm too tired to worry about the past anymore. I got nothin' to my name—no family, no friends, just a crummy little apartment and some creature comforts. If you wanna be mad at me, be mad. I'd already figured I'd never see you again… you always took things so personal. But you're kickin' a dead horse, son. This horse is dead." Booth stared down at his father for what felt like forever, seemingly watching the man before him waste away until there was nothing left but the indentation on the old chair. He sighed and sat back down in the toy seat.

"You know," his father added, "you don't seem like you turned out so bad, even with an asshole like me as your old man." Booth looked up and saw something in his father's eyes—something deeply buried, like remorse or empathy, or both. He was probably imagining it. What was it Brennan had said to him once? When you appraise a situation subjectively, you see what you want to see. That's why you must view everything through an objective lens. Only through objectivity can we see things for what they really are.

"Thanks," Booth said, rising from the chair. "I guess I'm going to head out. I really don't know why I came here."

"Either way, I'm glad you did," his father said, struggling to lift himself out of the chair. He walked Booth back down the dark hallway and undid the locks, pulling the door open and flooding the dusty hall with late afternoon sunshine. Booth stepped out and turned, his father looking up at him from just inside, squinting against the light.

"I know you don't believe it," he said, "but I always loved you kids. Always will."

Booth opened his mouth uselessly, completely taken aback by his father's words. Never in his memory had his father said that he loved him—there were a few times he said "I'm proud of you" or "You're alright, kid", but never an "I love you." That was strictly the territory of his mother, and in later years, grandfather.

"Like I said," his father said, shifting his weight, "I know you don't believe it. You don't have to. I wouldn't either." Booth closed his mouth and nodded, swallowing hard.

"I… I love you too, dad," he finally said. His father smiled sadly.

"That makes you a better man than me," he said. "I hated my father 'til the day he died. Maybe you won't have to." With that he patted Booth on the arm and closed the door, leaving him standing alone on the stoop. It wasn't until he buckled his seat belt and looked up into the rear-view mirror that he really let himself cry.