Northern Re-Exposure
Fandoms: Numb3rs x Northern Exposure
Genre: Action, Family
Rating: K+
Setting: Numb3rs season 3ish; takes place in Cecily, Alaska
POV: Don Eppes, Charlie Eppes
Pairing: Don Eppes/Maggie O'Connell
Disclaimer: The various TV properties belong to their production companies. I only own the plot and the bad guys (or what's left of them.) Forgive me any huge (Alaska-sized) geography mistakes; I've never been there. This plot is sort of cracky; what did you expect from a Northern Exposure crossover?
Preface: Charlie has a lot of misconceptions about Don's past. Some of them were due to deliberate misdirection on Don's part.
***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************
Chapter 1: Latent Image
Don looked out the airplane window curiously. Juno, Alaska. The small regional airport had changed very little in ten years. Despite the increasing influence of technology on the rest of the country, the few runways still butted up against forest, their area hardly distinct from the clearing that described the moderately sized town that passed for Alaska's largest city; and as the plane dipped for its landing Don's heart rose in his throat the same way it had when he had first experienced a small passenger jet aiming for those almost obscured runways. Just you wait, he reminded himself. The next leg of the journey would be even more adrenaline-raising.
Twenty minutes later, he was arguing with a charter plane scheduler and trying his best not to think about the size of the craft he was requesting. "Look here," he said, holding a slip of paper up. "It says here that I've booked a four o'clock flight. P.m., not a.m. Today, not tomorrow. What's the hold-up?" He could feel the frustration rising in his voice.
The old man shrugged. "I'd be happy to get you in the air right away," he said.
"Okay."
"Unfortunately," he added, "You'd be going without your plane. She's not in yet from her last run."
"Oh." The man's point took the bluster out of Don's sails. "Well, do you have any idea what time you can expect—" he was cut off by the loud sound of a small aircraft on approach.
"Yup," the man shouted over it. "That'll be her now."
Don gave a startled nod and followed the old man out of the cramped hanger office. A small Cesna was taxiing up, and Don felt the same claustrophobic feeling all over again. Was he really going to put himself through that again? Don stayed a pace behind out of respect for the old man's business as they approached the small craft. He'd probably have some catch-up work to do with the pilot; reports to log, that sort of thing. Don found his attention wandering back to the bright Alaskan day as he waited; and then it snapped abruptly back.
"Joel?"
"Maggie!"
The pilot, a diminutive brown-haired female, all five-foot-five of her, wrapped in the same (or nearly the same) fur-lined parka, sliding the bulky noise-cancelling headphones off her head and tossing them back into the seat of her plane, where she hung, one foot still on the landing strut, turned towards him. Maggie; product of Cecily, Alaska; the last person he had expected to see until he reached the tiny town.
"Joel Fleishman," she said again, climbing down and extending a hand. She was smiling, but sizing him up. "You colored your hair."
Don choked back a snort. "Uh." He'd thought about how to explain things to her if she was still in Cecily, but when you were actually in Maggie O'Connell's presence, words had a tendency to disavail themselves. "Uh, I go by Don now," he said, ignoring the perplexed look the old man was delivering. "But you—you look great." A gesture waved itself at her helplessly, acknowledging the fact that somehow or other, Maggie O'Connell, Cecily's premiere bush pilot, had failed to appreciably age. He followed her quick strides back to the hanger, feeling a little stunned and completely off-balance. O'Connell was as purposeful as he remembered.
Ten minutes later they were in the front seat of the re-fueled Cessna, watching the Alaskan town drop away beneath them. "So, Fleishman," she called out over the roar of the engine into the radio headset he was wearing, "what made you decide to come back? Not money, I'm guessing." Her rolled eye implied she thought New York must have done rather well by him.
The suit. Why had he worn it, again? Bad idea.
"Yeah," he said, "like I said. I don't go by Joel Fleishman anymore. Everybody calls me Don Eppes." Which made sense; that was, after all, his real name.
"Clean break with the past. That's ridiculous." Maggie shook her head. "Are you going to walk into Cecily and tell everybody that? Besides," she added, "you didn't answer my question."
She had a point. "Okay," he said. "I'm here on a case."
Maggie gave him a brief eyebrow raise. "Cecily's still a small town. If anybody needed a specialist, I'd know about it. If you are a specialist."
Don tilted his head in a nod and pulled out his I.D. "Nope," he said. "F.B.I. agent now." Just like I was then. Just like I was in Albuquerque for those few short months before all the years in Witness Protection. "I've got a case, all right, but it isn't one I can talk about."
O'Connell gave a whistle. "Wait 'til Maurice sees that," she laughed.
"Really? The old buzzard is still in charge of the town?" Don laughed.
"In name only," Maggie replied. "He spends winters in Florida now. But he's still going to turn green with envy when he sees you're an agent of the Federal government." She shook her head. "I can't believe you went into law enforcement." She gave him a sudden shrewd look as the plane dipped into the wind. "You didn't murder an F.B.I. agent and steal his badge, did you?"
Don choked again. "No! My picture's on that card, isn't it?"
***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************
Don was glad he'd made the decision not to try to convince the whole town of Cecily that his name wasn't Joel Fleishman anymore. Too many people still recognized him. There was Holling and Marilyn, and Chris-in-the-Morning of course, and Phil, his replacement, even remembered him. He'd had to explain certain things to Maurice, of course; the old land developer would have nosed into the whole thing anyway. Maurice had looked at his F.B.I. credentials like his photo had grown a second head. "I had to do some time," Don had explained, "in a Witness Protection program, and I had to change my name."
Maurice had looked up from the card he was still fingering. "Witness Protection convinced you that you wanted to join the Bureau?"
"Hey," Don had joked, "maybe I remembered what a great job Cecily was doing in law enforcement."
"Still," Maurice had mused, "shame about all that money our state shilled out for your education."
"Oh, I don't know," Don had said. "I like to think my years here repaid at least a part of that debt."
***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************
Despite the fact that almost everyone in Cecily knew him and greeted him as Doctor Fleishman, Don found that, easy as it might have felt to slip into the old role, he was much too busy to do so. At any given moment, for the next three days, he was either poring over Sherriff's Office reports, or examining maps and tracing routes flown over by the Anchorage F.B.I. helicopter—there was only one available for three hundred square miles of mountains—or on the phone with Colby or Liz back in L.A. piecing together another lead for a manhunt he was beginning to feel was an impossible task. Anybody could disappear up here—heck, he'd done it himself. He even broke down and called Ian Edgerton, tracker extraordinaire, who had offered helpful advice but said he was on his way to a hunt in the Florida Panhandle for a Federal prison escapee. Otherwise, he'd be happy to spend a few weeks in the Alaskan mountains. "But hey," he'd said, "what you really need right now isn't me; it's better intel. Have you thought about calling your brother in on this one?"
Edgerton was right, of course. Don knew he'd been avoiding the idea of bringing Charlie in on the case. He could trust Charlie—tell him anything; but even the generous-spirited mathematician would be justified if he were angry at a five year lie kept secret for so long. Maybe Charlie would never forgive him; worse, maybe he would never trust him again; and Dad… Dad would find out.
In the final equation, there was never any question. Don needed Charlie's help, and so Charlie came.
***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************
Don met Charlie at the airport in Anchorage, a little tired from his own flight the night before, surprised at how fresh Charlie looked after six hours in a cramped economy-class seat. "Good flight, I take it?" Don asked, two cups of coffee in his hands as he met his brother inside the terminal.
"It was great, actually," a buoyant-looking Charlie said, reaching for the outstretched cup. "I had no idea the Pacific northwest was so interesting from the air. Have you seen how many mountains there actually are?" Charlie was beginning to babble, and Don cut him off while steering him out of the gate area.
"Oh, yeah, Charlie, I have." Several times, actually, he added silently. "Say, Chuck. How about a little breakfast?"
Charlie was beaming so hard he ignored the nickname completely. "Sure, Don. I'm starving."
"Ok," Don replied. "there's a McDonald's on the other end of the terminal." Don led the way, with Charlie rolling his suitcase in tow, and ten minutes later they were both seated at the tiny fast-food chain table-for-two, Charlie eating pancakes and Don working his way through an egg McMuffin.
"So," Charlie started, "you were telling me about the case. You said there was stuff you didn't want to tell me over the phone?"
"Ok, yeah," Don replied, a little reticently, not sure if his brother had picked up on the fact that proximity to evidence gathering was not the only reason he had flown Charlie all the way out to Alaska on the government's dime. "You know I've been on this fugitive case for over a week now."
"Right," Charlie agreed. "And you've got a series of credit card thefts that point to some place in northern Alaska."
"Mm hmm." Don suddenly found it necessary to slow the conversation down with a large bite of muffin. How much was he really ready to spill? How much could he avoid? "Look," he said, clearing his throat and swallowing, "the credit card transactions stopped in Juno," he admitted. "Although one of the local bus lines thinks they recognized him on a fare going north."
Charlie nodded. "Why Cicely?" he asked, entirely without suspicion. "I looked it up on a map; it's really out of the way."
Don shrugged. "Call it a hunch." He finished the sandwich. "I'd like you to take a look at all the evidence; see if you come to the same conclusion."
"Sure, Don." Charlie was looking at him a little strangely. "But there's got to be some reason you think this guy's reading for an Alaskan town with less than a thousand people in it."
Don felt a little bit like an insect being examined under a strong desk lamp. Oh yeah, Charlie, there is. He gulped his coffee and cleared his throat, still wildly unsure, yet knowing Charlie would have to know if he wanted his help on the case. "Remember when I was doing fugitive recovery full time?" he asked.
The tangent made Charlie draw up in confusion. "Yeah. I mean, Mom and Dad barely heard anything from you in almost six years, so that part sticks out I guess."
Don winced. Despite all that had happened recently to patch up his relationship with Charlie, his past—what they thought was his past—was still a sore point in the family. "I wasn't in fugitive recovery," Don said.
"What?" Charlie was staring at him like he just landed from another planet. "You weren't?"
"Not all of that time, anyway," Don rushed. "I was at first; for the first six months. Then I put this mob boss's son in prison on a life sentence, and then I was in Witness Protection for the rest of that time. The Bureau got some very specific threats."
Charlie's eyes were round like saucers. "They were going to kill you?"
"If I testified," Don said. "Which I did. I spent most of those six years living under an assumed name in Cicely, Alaska."
Charlie's head cocked sideways. "This fugitive—he wouldn't happen to be the mob boss's son, would he?"
"Yep," Don said. "Escaped from Federal prison two weeks ago. We think he's tracing some very old leads."
"Looking for you?" Charlie breathed, seemingly having forgotten the stunning news of Don's secret in this new development.
Don let out a guarded sigh. "It looks that way. But if he doesn't know I'm working for the L.A. office, then he also doesn't know I'm looking for him."
"Good." Charlie swigged his own coffee, then fidgeted with the cup. "Don," he asked, not looking up from it, "I think I get why you couldn't tell Mom and Dad where you were at the time, and why you didn't write very often. But—" and now Charlie's large very brown eyes were raised and locked on Don's—"why didn't you tell us after you came home?"
Yep, there it was, just as he'd been afraid of, in Charlies eyes; the hurt, the suspicion, the wondering what other secrets his brother was holding; whether he actually knew his brother. Whether he could really trust him. Suddenly, Don's own coffee cup seemed to hold all of his attention.
"I don't know," he said, finally.
"Six years… that's an awfully long time to keep hidden," Charlie said, his eyes starting to flash.
"It's an awfully long time to have to explain," Don said, defensively. "Dad would have been angry; Mom would have been upset and afraid. Mom was already in chemo when I came back. I didn't know what to do. The longer I waited, the more ridiculous the idea of explaining any of it seemed."
Charlie had suddenly gone gray. "I didn't know Mom was already in chemo when you came back. You went to Quantico then."
"Yeah, to teach."
Charlie looked guilty, not accusing, and Don was sure he knew what Charlie was thinking. Charlie had been there; Charlie had been brand new at CalSci, but he had been oblivious, wrapped up in his own world before the prognosis had worsened and Don had moved closer, first to Albuquerque and then home to L.A.
Don shook his head. "They didn't want to tell you," he said, "not until things got bad. They didn't want you to worry when your life as a professor was just starting out. Mom and Dad—they were handling it okay." He hoped his words were comforting, and in fact Charlie seemed to take some comfort in them, because he relaxed a little.
"Don," he asked, "what other secrets has this family been keeping from each other?" The question was half rhetorical, half serious.
Don suppressed a hysterical laugh. Well, there was still the one other big one. He sidestepped that topic, not yet ready to broach it. "I know you set my hamster on fire," he suggested. "Even though you never admitted it."
"Don," Charlie rolled his eyes, "that hardly qualifies."
"Okay," Don said, sobering. "Look, buddy, you're coming with me to a tiny Alaskan town to help me catch a crazed, revenge-bent criminal, right?"
"Right."
"A town which is my stomping grounds. Or at least was for six years."
"Okay."
"Don't be surprised if a lot of people recognize me. A lot of the same people still live there."
"Okay." Charlie obviously couldn't see where he was going with this, genius brain or no.
Don continued. "Like I told you, I lived there under an assumed name, Joel Fleishman. Most people still know me as that. I haven't disabused them of that."
"Fine," Charlie said, conspiratorially. "Fleishman it is."
Now for the hard part. "Actually, it's Dr. Fleishman."
Charlie sat bolt upright. "Don. You didn't impersonate a…"
"No," Don said firmly. "I didn't have to. I went to medical school."
The last secret was out.
"Don, you're messing with me."
Don crossed his arms. "No, actually, I'm not. Although that's exactly the reaction I would have gotten at the time if I'd announced my intention. The FBI paid my way while I was at Quantico the first time. I was going to be a forensic pathologist for the Bureau."
Charlie still looked completely stunned, unsure whether or not to believe him. "What happened?"
"I had a guaranteed slot in this internship that got pushed back a year," Don said, shrugging. "I was already working part time as a field agent in Virginia, so I took a transfer to do fugitive recovery while I waited. Then—" he waved a hand in an explanatory gesture—"everything happened, and I wound up in Alaska."
"Practicing medicine?" Charlie asked, eyebrows raised.
"Of a sort," Don said. "Small town family practice stuff. I wasn't very prepared for it, honestly."
"Okay, two obvious questions," Charlie countered. "First, why in the world did we not know about this, and second, why are you working as an FBI agent and not making tons of money as a doctor in L.A.?"
"Couldn't come up with a hard question, could you, Chuck?" Don ribbed, gently. "First one: I didn't tell you guys 'cuz it was something I had to do for myself, okay? I mean," he added, "everybody knew you were a genius, and headed for great things, and I was just the average older brother who was okay with sports and should probably have stuck to that. But you know what," he said, watching his younger brother, who looked pained, as if maybe he remembered the quiet comparisons and assumptions that had floated around them in their shared childhood, "average can get you through medical school."
"And the other?"
"Easier." Well, sort of, if he discounted all the memories that still pulled at him—memories that had been part of the reason he had decided to make a clean break at the time; O'Connell rose sharply to his mind. O'Connell, and the way she had smelled that day in the hay. "I was a good doctor, but a better field agent."
"Okay," Charlie said, accepting the statement at face value. Accepting him, Don thought, gratefully. Not all secrets needed to be revealed; or, at least not all at once. Charlie would have the opportunity to meet Maggie O'Connell in due time; if he figured that out—well, there were still some possibilities Don wanted to figure out himself.
"We should probably get moving if we're going to catch your would-be assassin in Cicely, Dr. Fleishman," Charlie teased.
Don laughed and rose from the table. Charlie followed suit. "Hey. Does this mean you can write prescriptions? I've been meaning to see somebody about this wart on my left big toe…"
"Oh, no," Don broke into a run, laughing. "And you asked me why I never told anyone…"
***********Numb3rs x N.E.*************