Filler/Tag to season five finale, "Angles and Devils"
Warning: Language
Author's note: Thanks so much for the reviews from my last story. It was a warm welcome to the fandom.
Disclaimer: I own not a single itty bitty part of Numb3rs.
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She Thinks Probably
by felldownonce
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The adjoined shack they kept her in was filthy and Amita can't wash it off, not completely. She sees bruises of grit and grim on her face that aren't there, not really, but the memory of the smell and sweat and desperation lingers heavy in the air around her.
She stays in the shower so long that eventually a worried Charlie joins her.
For a boy who uses so many words, once in a while, Charlie is amazingly perceptive when it's time for quiet. So instead of asking her if she's all right, which they both know she isn't, he turns Amita around from the shower spicket and gently draws her into his arms. He's soaked now, drops of water dripping down his face. He kisses her closed eyes and tells her, "It's okay to cry."
She nods but the tears don't come until a little later, when he's shampooing her hair and she feels his fingers massaging deep in her scalp and Amita realizes with such a profound relief, that she's safe, not only physically, but mentally.
She's safe.
That bastard and his evil bitches didn't take away any part of her soul that Charlie can't give back to her in his own way.
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They all hover around her, all the Eppes men.
Alan with his comforts. A warm blanket. Hot cup of cocoa. Food. Mashed potatoes and soft bread with melted butter.
Charlie sits so close to her that he's practically on her lap. From time to time, she leans into him and puts her head on his shoulder and the whole dinner table comes to a pause until she lifts her head back up and begins eating again.
Across from her, Don keeps his gun on his side and smiles and later that night, squeezes her hand and kisses her on the cheek.
Days from now, he'll take her to see a man named Bradford and with that private gesture, he'll astonish Amita even more then when he stood above her, blurry at first, and rescued her from hell.
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The next night, Charlie says to her, "Let's go out for dinner, just the two of us."
Amita agrees.
She just wants things to be back to normal and she and Charlie usually eat Thai on Wednesday. It's their tradition and it's Wednesday night and she ready to dress in something besides baggy sweats. She wants to put on make-up and feel pretty.
Alan opens the door for them on their way out, telling Amita, "Enjoy yourself, my dear. God knows you deserve it."
He winks at Charlie and there's a mischief in his eyes that Amita can't quite interpret. But of course she'll understand it, later, after dinner, when Charlie bends down on one knee and asks her to be his wife.
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Will she say yes?
She's mostly just confused, mostly just still spinning, remembering in snapshot flashes as a crazy man shoved rice in her mouth and she spat it back at him. Remembering how it felt to know that if he simply said, "Kill her," she'd be dead. Gone.
Quick and wasted and meaningless, she would have been erased.
And now Charlie wants her to marry him.
He's such a good man, so smart and somehow still innocent and she knows he would never, ever purposefully hurt her. Never. Charlie's pure, like his math, predictable but always capable of being a puzzle if you study it closely enough, and she's thought many times about what their children would look like, with Charlie's window eyes and her olive complexion.
God, they'd be so beautiful in so many ways.
Amita already assumed that this moment would happen, that Charlie would have a ring, but she never imagined it would be like this, not a chain reaction of Charlie's panic that she would be taken permanently away from him.
He loves her, there's no doubt and she loves him with everything she has but is this the way she wants to tell her children how it happened?
Why their father asked her to share his life.
With a single finger she reaches down and gently traces a line above his brow, where the thin scab is no longer covered with a bandage.
Will he have a scar?
She thinks, probably, he already does.
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Thanks so much for reading.