Title:The Place Where I Am Free
Author: Signs Of Sun
Summary: One Shot. Post Blowback. Don's POV.
Note: I normally don't do this, but my title was pulled from the song that played at the end of the episode Blowback.
"Do you want to see it? The place where I am free? Because in my mind I've been there and there's no one here but me."—Twenty Years by Augustana
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The Place Where I Am Free
"Charlie Eppes is a vital part of the FBI and as supervisor of the Los Angeles Violent Crimes Squad it is my belief that I can not perform my duties without him."
"You realize what you're saying?" Carl questions, leaning back in his chair.
"Yeah Charlie's back or I'm gone!" I declare and click off the recording. There is nothing more to be said.
The words swirl around the fringes of my mind just outside my grasp. They skim over other memories, bleeding the colors of their fabric into those of the ones they come in contact with. Blacks and blues seep into the lighter hues, tainting their warmth and making their weight greater to carry. And I wonder is this the price I pay for traveling the road I have chosen to go down. Will the lighter hues survive the charred blacks and deep blues? Or is the damage done and there is no hope for the wreckage of me.
My father always argued that I've been running from myself by chasing others. That somehow I deliberately selected this path to avoid facing hard truths and unhealed childhood wounds. I don't know. I guess he can see a more vivid picture than me if that's the case. All I have is the choices, the twists and turns, I've made at the forks in the road.
"I played minor league ball. Stockton Rangers. My last time up at bat the pitcher's on fumes, right. He throws me a gopher ball. I mean the kind of fat slow pitch you know is going over the fence."
"Oh you missed it!" David tosses to me.
"By the time I got around first I knew in my heart that I'd never be more than a mediocre single A player. Signed up for the FBI entrance exam the next day."
I never counted on where the road might end up. Never scouted ahead to see where my footsteps might take me. I only knew where I had been and what I wouldn't become. I never thought that eventually that next fork in the road would bring such an agonizing and unavoidable roadblock. Charlie and my worlds collided and his clearance and my career became dependent upon one another.
I never thought I'd be forced to choose between the delicate seams of brotherhood and the independent identity I had established in my work.
Somehow, blindly, I allowed my brother to become embedded into the one thing I had all of my own. Even that notion is tainted by darker hues in my thoughts! Was it truly blindly or did I deliberately look right past it? If I did was it for my relationship with my brother? Or was it something deeper and uglier-that I wanted his shadow back to mask the long embedded fear that I'll never amount to anything more than average. If Charlie is around attention becomes drawn away from me and the pressure wanes.
The deeper I went the more the colors of my memories and emotions bled into one another, eroding the lines that have always been my guides.
So the lines had eroded and I was standing at that fork in the road, forced to choose a direction. And as I stood there toeing the divide I searched for a place to be free from all of this. Free from having to choose. I had one foot in the dirt on the side where childhood ghosts resided, haunting and tugging at me to stay clear of my little brother's shadow.
My other foot kicked at the earth on the opposite side of the fork, frustrated but driven. An unrelenting sense of loyalty and responsibility resided on this side, encouraging me down its path.
And I couldn't help but let the seeds of wonder grow inside my mind. Way back in the beginning if I had just cut it off and said No more Charlie! would this have all gone so differently. Should I have never asked that first time around? What if Charlie hadn't injected himself into it, poking into those maps I left on the dining room table that day? Should have I been less careless or did I want him to give into his never ending curiosity and peek at them while I was turned away. He had helped on a couple cases before that but I had kept it to a minimum. I still had control of it then. It was clear I allowed too much slack at some point in time and then there I stood no longer in control of this. I think maybe that day had been the turning point. I never looked back much after that.
You know I don't know how I got in a situation where I need your help to do my job. But I sure as hell have!
I'd like to be able to say that the choice was immediate and unfaltering. I am a bit ashamed to say it was not so swift or clear. I'm not a perfect person. I am made jagged by the disappointments of human experience and the harder edges of my personality. No. I sat for an exhausting length of time digging for an easy way out and finding none.
I knew better underneath. I knew full well that I would come up empty handed, but I sat there anyway as time ticked away on my window of opportunity to go to McGowan before a decision was reached.
Either I had to retreat, wait it out, hold my ground on my view of the situation, and hope for the best. Or I had to step up and take a risk. That risk would mean plowing head first right into that roadblock and take what came my way.
If I retreated I would salvage the long sought after achievement of standing outside my brother's shadow. My career would be damaged but intact. The accomplishment would be tainted by having failed my brother though.
If I chose to plow right into the roadblock I would stand alongside my brother but quite possibly risk losing the battle to not be overtaken by his shadow once again. I would more than likely have to turn in my credentials and walk out of that door for the last time.
Maybe if I had paused somewhere along the journey I would have seen if Dad was right and I was running from the truths about myself by chasing others. But I didn't.
I just kept right on racing down the road hoping that if I went far enough I might eventually come across a place where I am free. Free from feeling like all I had ever been was average, ordinary, and compared to my brother. I always came up short and now the opportunity to be free of his shadow was finally upon me.
It was an ugly thought, but one I needed to face head on. It forced me to see where my priorities lie. It made me look at the place I've been hanging on to for so long.
The place the road had ultimately landed me was somewhere there was no one else but me. It was a lonely place where the walls of pride, independence, and a hard realistic view of the world I held up so vehemently kept everyone else at arm's length. It kept me free of vulnerability.
The place where I am free of Charlie's shadow was unexpectedly a place that made my heart ache for his companionship. And it was that truth that propelled me to Agent Carl McGowan's office that day.
"You realize what you're saying?" Carl questions, leaning back in the chair.
"Yeah Charlie's back or I'm gone!"
The words departed my lips and hung in the air, torturing me and praising me at the same time. The thing that I had built so I'd have something of my own, my career, was now no longer solely mine. It was now sewn into the fabric of my brotherhood with Charlie.
And with that I discovered something about myself. The truth is I don't want to be free. What I want is for my brother to always know that I'll be there for him. No matter what the roadblock. No matter what the cost. We'll simply plow through it together.
The fabric of our brotherhood creates its own shadow. Our threads are intricately interwoven now and any attempt to separate them would unravel something incredibly unique and valuable that we've sewn together.
No. I don't want to be in the place where I am free.
I want to be in the place where my brother needs me to be.
By his side unconditionally.
"Yeah Charlie's back or I'm gone!" I declare and click off the recording. There is nothing more to be said.
"You and your brother have the same way of looking at things. You know that?" Carl responds with disdain in his voice.
"I haven't heard that but I'll take it!"
Slipping out into the hallway the dark hues of all those memories lightened. Their brighter tones revealing to me that this was the road I was meant to be on all along.
The End