In a Mirror, Darkly

by Valerie Vancollie

valeriev84 at hotmail dot com

Note: Yes, I know it's been about 10 years since this fic was updated, but the good news is that it will be finished in the next few days. I now have an AO3 account and I've slowly been migrating all of my old fic there to be posted alongside my new MCU fic and in prepping this fic for posting I was inspired to finish it. I did have part of this chapter finished after all. So, here it is if anyone's still reading N3 fic or has been waiting for this story to finish.

Part VI: Billy: Hospital

Chapter 27:

Saturday, 14:43
Hospital Room, UCLA Medical Center

Don's whole body jerked at the unexpected and loud interruption. Billy cursed as he saw a wince and a flicker of panic cross the other man's face just as a tiny rivulet of blood ran down his last remaining good finger of his left hand. Before Billy could even think of doing anything, there was a cry behind him and rush of movement. He realized what Alan was doing just in time to react, reaching out to grab the older man as he tried to move past him and attempt to grab the knife away from his son.

Not caring in the slightest about being gentle or kind, Billy pushed the elder Eppes backwards just as Don overcame his shock and reacted on pure instinct, his right hand with the knife flashing forwards to slice through the air where Alan's hands had been a split second before. With an additional shove, Billy sent the older man stumbling away from the bed, though Alan was hardly able to remain on his feet due to the shock and horror of what had just nearly happened.

"Don, it's okay, you're safe," Billy said soothingly as he brought his hands up to show they were empty. "It's okay, you're in the hospital, you're free."

The words seemed to have little effect, Don's eyes were blown wide and darted about unseeingly. His breath was coming short and quick, the harsh rasp unnaturally loud in the otherwise quiet room and Billy gave quick thanks to the fact that Don had been removed from the heart monitor earlier in the weekend as he could only imagine how quickly his heart must be beating just now. The last thing they needed was for more people to rush into the room, adding to the chaos and working Don up even more.

"Eppes! Snap out of it!"

If soft and gentle didn't work, then perhaps a barked order would. It had worked well enough in the past while on the road. Almost instantly, Don flinched, but his eyes snapped to Billy's face, slowly clearing of the haze and focusing on his former partner.

"Billy?" Don questioned, voice weak and terror filled.

"Yeah, it's me, Donny, it's me. You're safe, okay? You're in the hospital and Frazer's dead. He can't hurt you anymore."

Confusion seemed to cloud his partner's eyes for a moment before Don glanced down at the knife in one of his hands and the blood on the other.

"Oh."

"Don?" Billy questioned, afraid seeing the knife might send him right back.

"It's okay, I'm still here," Don replied, pushing the closing mechanism on the blade.

"Okay? Okay!" Alan repeated, voice rising with every syllable. "What the hell was going on here? What were you thinking, Cooper?"

Oh, great, just what he needed at the moment. More blame and anger from the Eppes family patriarch, as if the old man didn't already hold enough towards him. Billy bit back his first response. And then his second and third ones too.

Breathe, Cooper, breathe!

"It's not his fault, Dad," Don sighed, offering Billy the knife.

"He gave you a knife!" Alan retorted.

"At my request!"

The heat in his partner's reply made Billy's eyebrows rise. Okay, clearly his partner was not as fully recovered from what had just happened as he'd like them to believe. Luckily he was pretty sure Alan Eppes was too far gone in his own reactions to notice.

He had to deescalate this situation and quickly before the older man said something unforgivable. Again.

Billy had heard enough from what Don had, very reluctantly, said of his parents' reaction to his decision to join the FBI to know it had not been pretty. He wasn't sure how much of that they had been able to work past, but he knew enough from how Alan had treated him each and every time they'd met since to suspect it had been more ignored and overlooked than actually dealt with.

"Why on earth would you want to hold or even see a knife now?" Alan demanded.

"You wouldn't understand," Don retorted.

Oh, ouch, definitely time to separate the two.

"You going to be okay on your own for a few minutes?" Billy asked Don, handing him a tissue from a nearby table.

Don snorted. "I'll be fine."

"Like we can believe that, you always say you're fine, even when you clearly aren't," Alan stated.

"Outside," Billy ordered, turning towards the older man.

"What?"

"We need to talk and Don needs to rest."

Rather than give the man a chance to protest, Billy took hold of his arm, quite ready to pull Alan along with him. Luckily it didn't seem necessary and the older man pulled his arm free before storming out of the room ahead of him. Billy rolled his eyes and followed, though he couldn't help but glance back at his former partner as he closed the door behind him. Don was lying back down with his eyes closed and his good hand clenched into a fist. The sight made Billy wince even as it served to further rouse his anger.

Donny didn't deserve any of this.

"If it were up to me, I'd have you barred from his room," Alan declared when Billy turned to face him.

"Then it's a good thing it isn't up to you, now isn't it?"

Alan's eyes narrowed and his teeth clenched. "If you ever hurt him again, I-"

"Don is like a brother to me, a brother!" Billy interjected, furious. How dare the man accuse him of hurting Don when he'd just so recently saved his life! What had Alan been doing, sitting around and waiting? "I would never do anything to hurt him in any way, do you understand me? Never!"

"Recent events prove otherwise," Alan snorted dismissively.

"It wasn't my actions which led to him cutting himself," Billy snapped back.

"Excuse me?"

"You're the one who startled him and that's what caused him to cut himself."

Anger darkened the older man's face and it was clear Billy had rendered him temporarily mute. A part of him felt satisfied even though he knew it was childish. He couldn't help himself, though, Alan Eppes had always been able to bring it out of him after their first meeting. He didn't think he'd ever been judged so harshly with so little evidence before and it grated, particularly as the older man had no problems making his feelings quite clear whenever they met.

At least Don's mother had been more subtle and Billy was quite sure she had actually come around to him a bit more by the end.

"He still wouldn't have been able to hurt himself if he hadn't had a knife," Alan finally replied.

Billy sighed. "Do you really think my having said no would have meant he stopped trying? I thought it better he did it while there was someone else around in case he needed help."

"Not in the hospital he couldn't."

Disbelief was Billy's first reaction. Did the man not know his son at all? Or was Alan being willfully ignorant? It would explain a lot about their interactions actually.

"Perhaps instead of trying to find a reason to blame me here, you should think about why you really don't like me all that much. It's not because of anything I've done, but rather because I'm an easy target."

"What does that mean?" Alan demanded.

"It means that it's easier to blame me for Donny's lack of contact during his time with Fugitive Recovery than for you to face the real reason."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do, you just don't want to admit it, even to yourself after all of this time," Billy shot back. "I never prevented Donny from calling home and while the job makes communication difficult, especially back then, before cell phones, it is still possible to remain in touch with people if you want to as my mother can easily verify. But then, Don never really wanted to talk with you all that much and you just didn't want to see that."

"You're crazy."

"Am I? So he was better at keeping in touch when he was in DC, Detroit or Albuquerque?"

The full body flinch told Billy all he needed to know. And yet the man still wanted to blame him; typical.

"He was more open then," Alan countered instead.

"Perhaps because it had been longer since all you'd said to him when he told you he was joining the Bureau."

"Yo- You know about that?"

Billy rolled his eyes. "Like a brother, remember?"

"He already has one."

Billy threw up his hands, turned around and stormed off down the hall before he said something he'd truly regret. Even he knew better than to go poking at that particular relationship. At least Charlie had been more polite to him, both now and the last time he'd been in LA even if he had noticed an edge of jealousy to the younger man's interactions with him. Ironic given what Don had told him of his little brother's complete and utter lack of contact with him after they'd graduated from high school together.

Things changed, he knew that. Or at least they were supposed to, but it was clear one particular man hadn't received the memo.

"Where are you going?" Alan demanded, clearly still spoiling for a fight.

"To get Don a nurse to check that new cut."

God save him from the Eppes'!

Maybe he should wait until after visiting hours and use his badge to get in to see Donny the next time.

Saturday, 15:27
Waiting Room, UCLA Medical Center

Billy glanced towards Alan Eppes out of the corner of his eye as he finished his check-in call with Jennings. Like himself and Don, the man was a workaholic and so contacting him on the weekend wasn't unusual. Besides, he knew that if he didn't contact Jennings semi regularly until Don was fully cleared that the man would simply call him instead. His former partner had made his impression on the head of Fugitive Recovery and they'd all been sad to see him go.

Given that Billy knew Alan wouldn't have come out to the waiting room by choice, he figured the nurse had kicked the older man out so odds were good that he himself wouldn't be allowed in to see Don at the moment either. So he could wait out here and potentially be drawn into another fight, or he could use the time more productively.

Yeah, like it was even a tough decision.

Billy fished in his pocket for some change with his free hand as he looked up another number on his phone. Finding it he made the call as he moved to stand before the closest vending machine. Hmm, a Twix sounded good right about now.

"Sinclair."

God, even on the phone the man sounded uptight. Billy really didn't know how Donny put up with him on a regular basis.

"It's Cooper," Billy replied, grabbing his candy bar and ripping open the wrapping.

"How's Don?"

Okay, at least the guy had his priorities straight.

"Okay, starting to get bored."

Sinclair laughed. "I'm not surprised. If his father wouldn't take them away, I'd bring in some files for him to work on from our last case."

"You afraid of him?"

"Who? Alan? Not as such, but I don't want to be bared from the next dinner or anything like that. The man makes a mean lasagna."

Huh, so perhaps Eppes senior had some redeeming qualities. Billy wondered if he could talk Don into getting his father to make it while he was still around to try it for himself.

"I can slip them in," Billy offered.

"From what I heard you've already got enough to worry about from Alan without him catching you doing that."

"Eh, the man's never liked me, blamed me for Don not calling home enough back in the day."

"Ah, yes, that would do it."

"So, have you gotten anymore from Lawson?" Billy asked.

As both a civilian and victim, the kid had been far lower on the priority list once they'd gotten the bare basics of his involvement in this whole mess. So his full debrief had been kept for after an obligatory hospital visit and ensuring his sister was safe. Keane and Blakely had been far higher priorities as well as what they could learn of Banner and Frazer's movements and involvement prior to their deaths.

"Yeah, Nikki's down a complete interview now covering everything from the first time they contacted him to when you arrived on the scene," Sinclair replied over the sound of shuffling papers. "Turns out he's just as innocent in this whole mess as Charlie, simply the wrong person in the wrong job on whom they could get the right type of leverage."

Sounded about right based on what Don had said.

"Did he make any attempts to call for help?"

"No and I thought he was going to faint when Nikki asked him about it. Poor kid was so terrified for his sister he would have done anything they asked him to."

It wasn't at all how Billy would react if anyone threatened any of his sisters, but then he was a trained federal agent who took down fugitives for a living. And wasn't he the one who often complained about idiots who didn't know what they were doing trying things they shouldn't?

"There is one good thing about him, though," Sinclair continued. "Old habits and all, Lawson made regular back ups of his back ups and he did it for everything, so we have a complete computer record of all they asked him to do."

"Anything which can lead us back to Blakely you think?"

"Personally I doubt it, but we've already got Matt working on it just in case."

Good, that was good.

"Is the NSA going to take him back do you think?" Billy asked. "It wasn't his fault."

"I don't think Lawson's going to want to go back. I heard they had to sedate him in the hospital just to get him to sleep."

Billy couldn't help but wince. At least a guy with NSA level computer skills would easily find alternative employment in the private sector.

I hope anyone whose been reading this fic since the beginning liked this chapter. I had to stitch it together from the bits I'd already written which is always difficult after the fact, but I think I made it work. Hopefully it fits in stylistically with what came before as my writing style has changed quite a bit since I wrote in this fandom originally!
For anyone worried about the next and final chapter, don't worry, it's been finished too. I wasn't going to post this chapter until both were ready to go. It'll be up in the next few days.