I know I promised quick updates on this one, but my throat stupidly decided to contract some sort of infection this week (I don't know which one yet, I've been tested for all kinds of unhappy things like strep, mono, bronchitis, and some freakish infection where if you don't take the medicine the doc gives you your voice box may paralyze and you may become mute…something like that…don't worry, I'm taking every single pill/liquid). Point is, I've got an epic sore throat and I'm on lots of medicine so I might be a little slower with the updates than I thought. Like this one. This was supposed to go up yesterday but umm…sorry? Cough cough.

Also, I'm going to respond to all of your wonderful reviews. I swear. I should do that now, actually.

So here's a little bit of Boothy angst for you. I know, you guys want more cutesy stuff like the last chapter, and I promise there will be a happy ending, but we've got to get through some unpleasant stuff first, right? Right.

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Friday night. It had been nearly a month since you'd started stealing Bones's clothing in order to get a good sleep at night, and her scent had yet to fail you. Until now.

And it was all because of Jared.

He had called you, earlier in the night, relaying a message from Aunt Rachel, your mother's sister. Your mother was in the hospital. Eight broken bones, three fractures, two black eyes, and a concussion that had her slipping in and out of consciousness. All courtesy of the fists and feet of your father, of course. You were saddened to hear it, but you were by no means surprised. Occasionally, it seemed like your father was getting a little less violent with age but, really, you doubted that his temper would ever truly disappear.

This time, according to Jared, he got laid off and decided to take it out on your mother by beating her to a pulp.

Jared was going home to Philly so he could be with her. And, if you were a good son—as Jared put it—you would go too. She needed you, Jared insisted. You hadn't been back to see her in over ten years; the least you could do was go visit her now that she was recovering from a near-death experience. It was likely that she would be in the hospital for quite some time. What a better thing to cheer her up than her oldest son coming for a visit?

Well, there was a reason why it had been nearly twelve years since you'd been back to see your mother and there was a reason why you only called her on her birthday or a holiday. You had escaped from Philadelphia and you vowed to never go back. No matter what. Your father, much as you wanted him to love you the way that you loved Parker, was never going to change. He was going to die an old, dirty, woman-and-child abusing alcoholic, and there was nothing you could do about it. And your mother, much as you loved her, had chosen to stay with him. You offered, many times between the moment you turned eighteen and your last visit to Philadelphia, to bring her with you. You offered to work for her, to take care of her, to put her up in an apartment—with you or on her own, whichever she preferred—where she could move on without your father and try to make some semblance of decent life. You offered to treat her like the princess she was, the way your father should have been treating her since the day he met her. But no. At first you thought it was because of Jared—you thought she was waiting for Jared to finish high school in Philly rather than move him to whatever city you were going to be in. But slowly you realized that that was not the case. She was still rejecting your offer years after Jared had turned eighteen and left the house. Evidently, she would rather stay with a man who beat on her than move out with her loving son.

And now where was she? Half dead in a hospital. A part of you wanted to go see her, to be there for her the way any good son would. But another part of you refused. Why should you feel sympathetic when she had always known that she had a way out with you? Even after you'd stopped your visits because a.) you couldn't bear to look at her bruises anymore, and b.) you could no longer promise not to beat your father to shit every time you saw him, you made sure that she always had your phone number. She still knew that all she had to do was call you. Seeley I want to leave him. Six simple words were all she had to say, and you would have dropped everything to drive to Philadelphia and get her.

Why should you feel sympathetic, why should you take time off of work, why should you forgo your much-looked-forward-to weekend with Parker, because she had chosen not to say them?

A part of you resented her for staying with him, and that part was stronger—much stronger—than the part of you that wanted to drop everything and follow Jared to Philly. So you didn't do it. You stayed right where you were. The basketball game you were watching ended and you went to bed not knowing who won. You lay there with Bones's hat over your nose, but for the first time since the night she'd left the white scarf behind, sleep didn't come.

What did come were images. You tried to imagine what your mother probably looked like now, after what your father had done to her. Jared had mentioned that she had two black eyes and, if the past was any indicator of the present, then it was possible that she was missing teeth and/or large clumps of hair. Jared hadn't specified which bones were broken or fractured, but if you were still a gambling man you would have put money on her nose, fingers, and ribs—your father had broken those uncountable times before. She was in the hospital, so she would be on a ventilator. There would be various needles and tubes coming out of various parts of her body. And she would be pale. Very pale. You would be able to see her every vein. She would look like death.

Along with the images came guilt. You weren't a good son; you were an awful son. Scratch that, you were an awful man. What kind of man let that happen to his mother over and over again, until he could no longer picture her face without a swollen cheek or a busted lip? What kind of man let his mother stay with someone who abused her? She could have died—what kind of man let that happen? A good man would honor his mother and protect her from all harm. Instead, you left her. You should have tried harder to make her leave him. You should have grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to come with you. Hell, a good man would bind his mother up and drag her out of that household if it meant keeping her safe.

And a good man, he would go back. The second a good man heard that his mother was in the hospital, his bags would be packed and he would be moving mountains to get to her. But you? You were no good man. You couldn't even muster up the will to call her, or your Aunt Rachel, or whoever happened to pick up the phone in the Intensive Care Unit, just to make sure that she really wasn't going to die as Jared had reported.

By one in the morning there were so many demons running rampant in your head—memories, guilty feelings, what-if scenarios, fear for your mother's life—that you were considering downing an entire bottle of whiskey just so you didn't have to feel or think about it anymore. But you couldn't let yourself do that. That was something that he would do. If you weren't careful, you were going to end up just like him. Just. Like. Him. You had come close one time already; you hadn't overcome your gambling addiction just to become an alcoholic.

So you went for a run instead. It was pouring rain, but you barely noticed as you ran as hard and fast as you could, pushing yourself until you could focus on the rhythmic sound of your feet pounding against the pavement rather than on the demons that were slowly taking over your brain. You ran until you were sweating buckets, until your chest burned, until you could no longer breathe, until you thought your legs might give out and you would collapse in a heap right in the middle of the street. But you couldn't stop running, couldn't turn around and go home, because then the demons would come back.

And you didn't know how much longer you could deal with them.

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Could I possibly write what happens next from Brennan's POV? Gasp! I mean, cough cough.