A/N: Hm, haven't updated this story in awhile - also haven't proofread this at all, but I'm rolling with it! Note to Dignan - thanks for asking about Daisy! I actually did that on purpose, and I'm not just saying that as an excuse haha. ;) You'll find out eventually what the situation is, and you should see why I haven't mentioned it by the end of this chapter. Thanks again for all the lovely reviews! Hope this chapter was worth the long wait. If not (and if so!), feel free to let me know in the reviews! Enjoy!

(Edited and reposted July 15, 2015)

December, 2014

Christmas is a miserable affair, but they try their best. Daisy wears Sweets's holiday hat – a loud, green and red elf piece with a pom-pom on the end and pointed ears to boot – and they string up lights like no one's business and smile like it's the most natural forced thing in the world. They draw straws to decide who the designated drivers will be, and the ones who give up their keys drink as if the alcohol were free. And even inebriated, they don't say a word about him. They fill a glass to the brim with rum-spiked egg nog and leave it on the table, right in the shrink's usual spot, and aside from the occasional withering glance in that direction, they do put on a good front. They almost seem happy.

Some people, however, see right through it; even if they are fairly tiny and largely removed from the truth, they do. Michael Vincent runs up and hugs his father's leg far more frequently before returning to his toys on the carpet, gives his mother an extra kiss without being prompted, because that will surely make her happy. And when he receives a few crooked grins for his efforts, he decides that that may be just as good a Christmas present as the Lego set under the tree.

Christine's goal is essentially the same, though her methods are slightly different. Extra hugs and kisses might work perfectly well in Michael's case, but instead, she waits for her daddy to put his glass down on a nearby end table, waits for the conversation to pause (because it's the polite thing to do, according to her mommy) before carefully toddling up to him and poking his knee. His attention is on her immediately.

"Daddy?" she asks as he squats down to her level. She looks nervously at him and up at her mother, and back down at a drawing clasped in her small hands. He hums for her to go on, and she does. "Are you sad?"

She just has to make sure.

And Booth looks up at Brennan and locks eyes with her for a few seconds before answering his daughter. The rest of the room has quieted to listen with mild interest as he slowly nods.

"Yeah, a little. I'm a little sad, sweetheart. Why do you ask?"

"Are you sad because you miss Uncle Sweets?"

His eyes flicker for a moment to the rest of them. Just for a moment. Then they're back on her.

"Yeah, Christine. I miss Uncle Sweets."

And she thrusts her drawing in her father's face, with enough surprise force to throw him off-balance for a brief second. The stick figures and wildly colorful crayon drawings look like a typical drawing, in all honesty. So she elaborates.

"Okay, 'cause I thought you were sad about Uncle Sweets, and I was too, so I made a drawing. Look, there's you…" she points. "And there's Mommy, and there's Uncle Sweets and Aunt Daisy, and there's me! If you want, you can keep it until he gets back."

She hands it to her father without waiting for a response, gives a quick kiss on the cheek and a quiet, "Merry Christmas, Daddy," before returning to the carpet and going back to Legos with Michael.

Booth tapes the picture up by the bathroom mirror, so he sees it each morning when he gets ready for work. Consider it a motivator, as if he didn't already have all the motivation in the world.

The ball drops in Times Square with much more fanfare than is necessary, and as soon as it does, Brennan turns the television off and stares at the black screen.

She turns her head to face her husband, gives him the fakest smile she's ever given, and stiffly says, "Happy New Year."

He says the same.

It's not, though.

January, 2015

It is some ungodly hour of the morning when he wakes up, when the sky just outside the windows is black and heavy. There might as well be no window at all, really; and he's used to that by now. No windows, no light, no way to gauge location.

But even without light, he can tell that this location is new, with a different sort of air surrounding him, and he can't place it exactly at first. And God, he never thought a change like this could make him panic – but what do you know? A high-pitched, continuous beeping, one he never noticed until this second, speeds up in perfect time with the hard thumping in his chest.

But at the sound, he rolls his head just slightly to the side and sets his wide eyes on the machines to his right. Screens. The light they give off, soft and dim, doesn't help him much. But it's enough to just barely illuminate the walls and the tiles and everything that makes the room he's in a hospital room.

The beeping in his right ear does not slow back down.

It's a trick. A lie. Or, at the very least, another change in the game. It doesn't much matter. None of those three would end well for him, anyway.

There's breathing to his left, nearly drowned out by the sounds of the monitors. Deep, even breaths that indicate sleep, and – as if he'd much rather not find out who it is – he rolls his head back that way slowly, expecting a mask. Expecting some nameless face, leaned to one side, asleep – and likely with a loaded gun dangling from his fingertips.

What he sees is far different, and perhaps even worse than the last three options.

It's a dream.

Seeley Booth's face, created perfectly from memory, is not one he'll ever see again. He knows this; they told him this. And for lack of any reason for him to think otherwise, he believed them.

Because what was the last thing he saw before falling unconscious? Certainly not a daring rescue scene. No arrests being made, no FBI uniforms in sight. Instead it was a bloodied mix of shoe heels and the darker side of a wooden baseball bat and a final blurring glance at a random mask as his eyes slipped closed.

No, no rescue by any stretch. It must be drugs, then. Some high-grade hallucinogen. The IV sticking out of his left wrist seems consistent with the conjecture – but the lack of restraints does not. Even so, too tired to lift his other hand to pull the needle out, he decides to give it a rest. Blink his eyes a few times, shake his head, and Booth will be gone, replaced by some other illusion just barely seen in the dark.

He does this slowly, clumsily in his own right – but when he opens his eyes again, Booth is still there. And Sweets can't bring himself to stop staring, his mouth agape just so, as the other man's eyes – real or not – twitch open.

He nearly stops breathing when they find their way to stare back at him.

The beeping in his ears, put musically, could be prestissimo in tempo, for all he's got to compare it to. Even the fastest songs he knows can't quite match it.

"Sweets?" the voice echoes across to him, still sleepy and rough.

But it's not real. It's not real. It's not real.

And yet the tears that start snaking down his cheeks, hot and wet, the jarring thump-thump-thumping of his heart in his chest – they all feel real. All these sensations, all the sounds in the room, what little he can see, they're all too much, too much, too much.

"Sweets." Breathless, tangible relief that only grows.

And he is so, so small.