Title: H is for Hesternopothia
Rating: K
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters
Author's Note: A companion piece to "A is for Appreciation" and "J is for Janus"
Author's Note 2: I spent almost as much time coming up with the title as I did writing the story.
Hesternopothia: Yearning for yesterday or earlier times
It was a reaction Don Eppes was depending on, even as he resented it.
It seemed unfair to Don that Charlie could escape from the fall out of the Janus list so easily. And yet, it was comforting. His world was so unsettled right now, even the bad parts of the past would be a comfort, as long as they familiar.
"Anybody home?" he asked as he managed to get the front door of the Craftsman open while juggling a bucket of chicken and a six pack of beer.
"Hey, Donnie," Alan said. His father was pulling off a tie. "I just beat you in." He looked at the food. "You know we're always happy to feed you," he said with an appreciative sniff of the aroma.
Don nodded. "Yeah, but I figure it won't hurt me to treat once in a while. Buffalo wing?" he added, holding out the bucket.
Alan shook his head. "Oh, no thanks," he said. "I just got back from a business dinner." He sighed. "Besides, at my age?" He nodded to the bucket. "That would keep me up all night with indigestion."
"Me, too," Don said. He smiled, but it felt unnatural. The puzzlement on his father's face showed that it looked unnatural, too.
"I figure that as long as I'm not going to get any sleep, I might as well have a reason," Don added.
"Ah." An understanding crossed his father's face.
They'd spent the night before talking about Taylor Ashby, tacitly avoiding the subject of Colby Granger. But they had all been thinking of him.
Well, he and his father had. He expected that Charlie had retreated into math land.
"Charlie in the garage?" he asked.
Alan nodded.
Don headed for the door, again feeling that uncomfortable mixture of satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
"Hey, you might want to put that chicken in a serving bowl," Alan said.
Don's eyebrows went up. "You afraid that I'll get the garage all greasy?" he asked.
Alan's smile was somewhat better than Don's. "I was more concerned that the heat from the wings would set the bag on fire," he said.
Don snorted.
"And you need some vegetables with that!"
"What? It comes with celery," Don said, gesturing with his bag.
Alan rolled his eyes and muttered about nutrition.
Don managed another snort of laughter because he knew his father was trying to make him laugh. However, he complied with instructions, and added another handful of celery stalks to the ones that Brewbakers had provided.
He arrived in the garage with a tray of hot wings, celery, bleu cheese and the six pack of beer. He set up the munificent feast on a convenient end table, studying his brother as he did so.
Charlie was not, as expected, shut away from the real world by a moat of math.
Instead, his little brother was sitting on the dilapidated couch staring at the expressions on the blackboard with no expression at all on his face.
"Charlie?" Don asked.
"Don," Charlie said by way of acknowledgement.
Don set up the TV tray and set the food on it. "Hungry?" he asked.
Charlie shook his head, but didn't take his eyes off the chalkboard.
Don plopped onto the couch next to his brother, pulled an empty bucket to discard the bones into and started in on the chicken.
"Beer?" he asked after the second wing hit the bucket. He opened a beer and handed it to Charlie without waiting for an answer.
Charlie took the beer and promptly began peeling the label off.
Don studied the blackboard for a moment. "That's not P vs. NP," he decided.
"No, it's not," Charlie's voice was barely audible. He turned his head slightly, but not quite enough to look directly at Don. "You were expecting me to be working on it, weren't you?"
Don swigged some beer and didn't answer. Instead he studied the blackboard. None of it looked familiar off hand. Not that he usually recognized Charlie's stuff unless it was labeled. However, he thought he'd give it a stab. "Doesn't look like your Cognitive Emergence Theory, either," he ventured.
"It's not," Charlie said.
"I mean, not that I'm an expert."
"No, but law enforcement officers are trained to recognize patterns," Charlie said. He faced the blackboard again. "Even before criminal investigation was quantified into a science, good detectives could instinctively grasp the underlying patterns and deduce…"
"Charlie, you're babbling," Don said.
"I know."
Don handed him a plate with some hot wings on them. Charlie pushed them around with the bottom of the beer bottle, but didn't look inclined to eat.
Don looked at the blackboard again and took another guess. "This has something to do with Colby, doesn't it?"
"Hm? Oh, sort of," Charlie sighed.
"You went over his files, plugged them into your formulas and … and, what?"
Charlie set the beer bottle on his plate and scooted back, so his back was more firmly against the couch and he was sitting up straighter. "I was trying to figure out why nobody realized what he was up to."
"Oh. And what did your equations say?"
"Expressions."
"Whatever."
"Colby's innocent."
"Really? Even though he confessed?"
Charlie shook his head. "According to my calculations, there's no reason for Colby to betray his country and every reason for him to stay loyal."
Don took a sip of beer and studied the hieroglyphs on Charlie's chalkboard. "OK, explain that to me," he said, gesturing to the chalkboard.
"What?" Charlie asked, clearly startled.
In spite of himself, Don laughed.
"What?" Charlie repeated, this time with some irritation.
"Usually, if someone wants you to explain your work, you jump up with a long explanation involving the math, the history of the equation and four or five easily visualized analogies," Don said.
"You're not funny."
Don shrugged that off. "I made me laugh," he said.
"You're actually quite good at that," Charlie said.
"You're actually quite bad at avoiding the subject," Don said. "What's up with that?" He gestured to the chalkboard again. "It's not like you to not want to explain your work. I'd think you'd want to display your proof that Colby is innocent."
"Um, my math can't prove that Colby's innocent. I only said that the formulas indicated that he shouldn't have been guilty. Besides, those aren't the Colby formulas," Charlie said.
"So, what they for, then?"
"You remember Nikki Davis?"
Don tilted his head and shot his brother a sideways look. "Not likely to forget her," he said.
"Um, yeah," Charlie said.
Don turned his attention back to the chalkboard. "So, that's the formula that you used to determine if she killed herself?" He thought that over. "I mean, the one you used to estimate the probability of her killing herself?"
"Yes," Charlie said.
Don studied Charlie's profile. He couldn't think of why Charlie would be worrying about Nikki Davis now. The only logical answer that he could come up with was that Charlie was worried about somebody like Nikki. Say, somebody who had the same stressors.
"You're worrying about me?" he said.
Charlie squirmed a little. "Yes," he said, retreating into unhelpful monosyllabic answers.
"You do something like this for me?" Don asked.
Charlie nodded.
Don was intrigued. "Well? What did it say?"
"Um, that there was a low probability… I mean, that it's not likely… I… um…"
Don reached over and punched Charlie with his wing holding hand, getting sauce on Charlie's shirt. "Your math said that I wouldn't do it, right? Charlie?"
"Yeah," Charlie said.
"You don't have to sound so thrilled," Don said dryly.
Charlie's cheek twitched, but if he was trying to smile, he didn't manage one. "I don't know if my formulas are right or if I'm just getting the answer that I want to hear," he said.
"Dad says you never let your emotions trump your math," Don said with a touch of pride.
"I wish I could be sure of that," Charlie said. "My math is getting the wrong answer for Colby."
"That's because you didn't have enough data, right?"
Charlie just stared gloomily at his chalk board.
Don studied his brother's profile. "And now you're thinking that maybe you don't have enough data about me, is that it?"
Charlie swallowed and blinked rapidly.
"Charlie, what's Asimov's First Law of Robotics?"
This was such a non sequitur that Charlie whipped around and stared at him.
"I know you know what I'm talking about," Don said.
"Um, a robot can't hurt a human, or, by inaction, allow a human to come to harm," Charlie blurted. "Why?"
"Suppose I promised that I would never deliberately hurt myself, or through inaction, allow myself to be hurt?" Don asked.
Charlie studied Don's face for several minutes. "Seriously?"
"Yes, of course," Don said. "I would never do that to you and Dad." He paused. "Or my team. You know that David and Megan would hold themselves responsible."
Charlie relaxed against the back of the couch. "Thank you," he said. Then he leaned forward and grabbed a chicken wing.
Don raised his eyebrows. "That's it, then? Crisis over?"
"Well, that one is," Charlie said. "There's still the matter of dealing with the fallout of Colby's arrest."
"I know," Don said. "They've been going over all his cases to find out which ones might be compromised."
"I could help," Charlie volunteered between wings.
Don snorted. "Thanks, Buddy, but, no. I'm not even permitted to work on this one."
"Oh."
There was a few minutes of silence while Charlie and Don munched on wings and drank their beer.
"Why did you come?" Charlie said. "You obviously expected me to be hiding from the whole situation."
Don sighed. "I guess I just wanted an escape myself," he confessed.
Charlie shot him a bewildered look.
"Kind of going back to when you were, well…"
"Living in an ivory tower?" Charlie supplied after Don's pause dragged on.
Don grinned. "Or at least more in your own little math world," he said.
"Sorry if I disappointed you," Charlie said.
"You didn't," Don said. "This is better. It's still you and your math," he gestured to the board. "But you aren't locking me out."
Charlie took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I see."
"So, why are you suddenly okay?" Don said. "I didn't say anything that your math didn't say, right?"
Charlie rolled his beer around on his tongue and hesitated so long that Don was convinced that he wasn't going to get an answer.
Finally Charlie said, "I guess, at the end of the day, I trust you even more than I trust math."
Don stared at his brother for a few moments. Then he ducked his head and smiled. "Still looking up to your big brother, eh?"
Charlie grinned. "Yeah, I guess some things never change." He held out his bottle.
"Amen," Don said as he clinked his bottle against Charlie's.