Disclaimer: CBS has the rights of the characters, but it's me who has the rights of the story (YES!) …Huh? What, the series itself cashes more money than this story? Damn. I think you're right.
Timeline: Well… January 2010, I'd say.
Note: This story has a bonus for you because you can participate by having an influence on the ending. Isn't that great?

A Cry for Help

Don parked his SUV in the driveway and got out. It was late and he was longing for a beer. He debated momentarily as to whether he should go into the house to greet his father first or to go directly Charlie, whom he suspected, in all likelihood, would be in the garage. Eventually, conscientiousness directed him.

He knocked quietly as he opened the wooden door and entered slowly. He had been right; the light was on, Charlie was there. He was standing in front of one of his numerous boards and didn't seem to have noticed his brother's entrance.

Though Don had often seen Charlie in such a state, he couldn't help but be struck by a certain fascination. Charlie could get carried away so completely with his mathematics that he forgot everything around him. Don could hardly comprehend that, but as time had gone by, he had learned how Charlie operated, how his mind worked – although he rarely understood what his mind worked.

Don leaned against a support beam, tilting his head slightly while his eyes continued their observation. No, Charlie really seemed to be somewhere completely different. His brow was – as far as Don could see – deeply furrowed, and his eyes stared at the marks on the board with an intense concentration, seeking to reveal something behind them. Charlie's mind was so occupied that he didn't seem to notice anything in the world outside. At times like these, Don was always tempted to creep up behind him and spook him.

He grinned. Sometimes he did, actually. Right now, however, he wanted Charlie to help him, and in such a case it wasn't advisable to anger him.

"Hey, Charlie," he therefore said, pushing himself away from the support beam.

It seemed that his good intentions had been useless. Charlie whirled around; it nearly looked as if he jumped slightly, before he exhaled with a blow when he saw Don.

"Don," he said, sounding a bit exhausted. "Do you have to scare me like that?"

Don grinned. "Next time, I'll think of another way to scare you."

Charlie, too, forced a wry smile. "You'd better not," he said, turning back to his board after a short checking glance at the laptop sitting on the desk behind him.

Don realized that his brother was again about to lose himself in his work. And that was something he had to avoid at all costs. "Hey, I came over because we need your help. A radical group has threatened to release poison gas somewhere in the city. Could you have a look at it?"

"No, not really."

Don frowned. Now, he remembered again what his father had mentioned to him yesterday – that, yet again, he hardly saw Charlie anymore lately because he entrenched himself in the garage and came inside just for the news, if anything at all. That sounded like a very work-intensive situation. And still, Charlie hadn't even turned around to face him at his answer. Don was used to a bit more cooperation from his brother. "You did something similar for us before," he continued to talk at him. "When you found out how a certain poison could have been released during those anti-terror exercises, remember?"

Charlie didn't answer immediately. When finally his response came, it was mumbled and slightly unnerved. "Yeah, maybe."

"So? Can't you do that again here?"

Charlie inhaled sharply through his nose. "Maybe. Dunno."

Also Don was becoming increasingly impatient. "Maybe if you have a look at it?"

Charlie let the fist with the chalk fall against the board, lowering his head lightly as if that would help him contain himself. "Maybe you didn't notice, but I'm pretty busy right now."

"Whatever it is could wait another day, won't it? You do this stuff pretty quickly, don't you? If our team were to try to find out how and where the perps will strike, we'd probably have to go through files for a whole month or station our guys at every potential location, and we have neither the time nor the means."

Don had to make an effort to understand Charlie's next words. "You've got more time and means than you're aware you have." No, wait – 'understand'? Make that 'hear.'

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just forget it. Can't you just let me continue?"

Don couldn't believe it. "Charlie, didn't you hear what I just said? We need your help. I'd really like to know why our cases are suddenly beneath you."

The annoyance in Charlie's voice was now quite evident. "They're not beneath me, Don, I just have more important things to do!"

"And what's that?"

"How about preventing thousands of people from starving to death after they've already lost everything!"

And as simple as that, Don shut up. At least for a moment. "What do you mean?"

Charlie sighed. Indeed, he was still in a bad mood, but at least he wasn't angry anymore. "You even need to ask?"

He was right. Don really didn't have to think for long. But he still couldn't understand it. "Haiti?" he asked in confusion.

Charlie nodded. The frustration still didn't disappear, but by talking to his brother he at least regained a bit of his calmness. He sighed heavily. "Yeah."

As he didn't offer any more explanation, Don found himself forced to ask further. "What… I still don't understand."

"They asked me after the earthquake. I'm supposed to design algorithms to show the help on site where to search for people buried under the rubble. However, the information I got is vague and very uncertain. The predictions I can make on them… they're not really precise or definite. And aside from that, I'm establishing a distribution plan for the UN for the aid packages."

Don lifted his eye-brows. "You're doing all that at the same time?"

Charlie shrugged. "The computer is calculating the buried people's probable locations. I can't do anything about that, anyway."

Don shook his head slightly. He was a bit overstrained with all these information. "But… Geez, Charlie, the task is huge! How do you think you could handle that alone?"

Charlie laughed briefly. "I'm not alone. We've divided the area as best we could. Still – we have a lot to do." His look wandered to the last lines on his board. Don saw him swallow before he spoke again. "And time's of the essence."

Don watched him with judging looks. It was true, his brother seemed more tired than usual, more exhausted. And somehow… yes, not as self-confident as before. He seemed a bit hunched, as if an invisible burden was pushing him down.

As if invisible. The burden was obvious.

"Hey," – Don had to swallow –, "I'm sure –" He fell silent. What could he say, after all? 'You'll make that somehow?' Make what? With every passing second the misery and the hunger in the already impoverished half of the island were increasing. And with every passing minute, more and more people were dying.

Also Charlie hadn't missed that. "You're sure about what? That everything will be alright?" He laughed briefly and joylessly. "The people there have lost everything, Don. They already had very little to begin with, and nobody has helped them. And now even that little bit has been destroyed, and many of them have also lost their family to add that, but still nobody's helping them."

Don was nearly relieved to be able to offer a counterargument to Charlie and his resignation. "Nobody's helping them? And so what are you doing?"

Again this joyless laugh. "If you really want to call that 'help'…"

"I want to," Don interrupted, but Charlie didn't allow his contradiction.

"What I'm doing isn't even a drop in the ocean. And the longer I take, the longer the aid packages are not reaching the people in Haiti. It's only a matter of time until it comes to violent uprisings and riots. The people are dying, Don! And I –" He stopped and turned towards the board before whirling around again. "It's just too much! And the help offered is too little! And too slow! We're all too far away! We can't do anything from here!"

"Would you be able to do more in Haiti?"

Charlie took a minute before he answered, enough to become nearly frighteningly calm. "Who knows?"

Now, Don thought it was high time to work to placate his brother. "I don't think you could do more on site than here," he admonished him with a certain severity. He could think of a lot of places he preferred Charlie to be than in Haiti. "Besides I think you're already doing enough."

"But it's not enough."

Don sighed. "Charlie, I think you're handling the issue a bit too idealistically."

"Maybe, but still it's obvious that the situation of the people would be better if everyone contributed what was in his power."

Don thought briefly. He didn't want to appear heartless – and he wasn't – but he thought that Charlie needed a more realistic view of the situation. "Look, of course the earthquake has been terrible, but the people there aren't the only ones that suffer in the world. We can't forget about the others. There will always be people that are beaten on by nature or destiny or whoever, without them being able to do anything about it."

"And therefore these people don't deserve our help?"

"You can't help everybody, Charlie."

"Maybe, but we can at least help some, can't we? If everyone just made a small contribution…" He hesitated and then became even more serious. "Have you seen the pictures?"

Don shrugged tentatively. Of course he'd seen the pictures. Pictures of ruins from which you could only guess what they once had been, pictures of bodies, if covered or uncovered, bled or starved to death, lying in the middle of the street, pictures of people poorly bandaged or altogether untended wounds, people trying to get a bit of food, pictures of half dead people being given medical help and being operated on as well as possible in the open air, pictures of people needing help, pictures of people not knowing how to help, pictures of parents looking for their children, pictures of children having lost their parents…

Don looked to the ground. Suddenly, he had a strange feeling in his gut. He had seen the pictures, but he had tried not to think too much about them. He couldn't let himself become distracted from the case; the case was important and also here human lives were at stake. And still… hadn't he turned his back towards the misery and the suffering too easily?

"A little while ago –" Charlie's voice died. For Don, it was obvious that he too had just been thinking about the pictures. Charlie cleared his throat. "A little while ago, there was a report that there had been a strong aftershock. It hasn't caused any damage, though. Know why? Because everything's already destroyed."

Don shook his head. It was just… so unfair! These people didn't have anything anyway, and now they had even less. "At least…," Don wondered, knowing at the same time that the good in this was so futile compared to the suffering, "at least the world's attention is drawn to it now. Before, nobody was interested in just how poor Haiti was. Now, help is finally coming."

"But it's not enough." Charlie still sounded resigned. And Don could sympathize with him. There was more, however – not only resignation, but also anger.

"But who knows, maybe there'll be enough money to build the country up again?"

"And for what prize? Besides, now you're the one thinking idealistically."

Don knew what his brother was talking about. Even if the eyes of the world were glued on Haiti, so many people had died and so much was lost forever. And the eyes of the world would turn toward other pictures soon. The media wouldn't report forever about Haiti. Maybe by next week there'd be another catastrophe or some war would become more important again than some earthquake. And then, the people there would be entirely on their own again. The conscience of the public would have calmed down for some time; they had been helping, after all, either they themselves or their society; but the lives of the people in Haiti and of their relatives would never be the same. Only the misery would remain, and probably continue to grow.

Don didn't fool himself. Nor did Charlie. Haiti's cry for help had been ignored for so long already. In a year, there would perhaps arise short reports about what had changed and what hadn't, and the reports wouldn't evoke half as much compassion as the catastrophe itself. Life went on, didn't it?

No. After everything they had already seen of suffering, and all the suffering that had already existed, there could be little doubt. The world was mostly deaf to cries for help.

The End?

By now, with the help of loveanimal's review and some alerts, even I have realized that I didn't manage to make myself clear. The story is done; there won't be another chapter or a sequel. The problem the story is supposed to describe, however, isn't done. With your ability to change the end of the story, I meant the ability to change the fact (or theory?) that the world is mostly deaf to cries for help and to answer the question if it should remain this way.
I'm sorry about the misunderstanding and if I've disappointed you. Still, don't underestimate your ability to change the world and make it a better place...