Washington DC
Tuesday
14:38

There were sounds, whispers moving around and soft humming of something to his left. They weren't coherent enough for him to understand any of them yet. They were just there, in the background, out of reach but close enough so that he wasn't alone… wherever he was. It was a comforting thought. It was one of the many wisps of thoughts that floated in and out of his sleepy mind, never staying long enough to make any sense.

"...he'll be waking up soon–"

A heavily accented voice drifted over after a while, loud and insistent, disturbing Joe Hardy's peaceful slumber. Now, why did that voice sound familiar?

"The drugs I gave him earlier should be done flushing out of his systems by now,"

Whoa! What? Drugs? Why the hell would a German be drugging him? That thought sent a chill down his spine. He needed to wake up, open his eyes and say something. So, why the hell couldn't he? That feeling he had been enjoying earlier, that calm emptiness where nothing stayed for too long, was now suffocating, restraining darkness, pulling him deep under when all he wanted was to break into the surface.

"What did you give him?"

Wait! He knew that voice too. That was Frank. Oh, okay. Okay. His brother was also here. He was safe. He had to be, right? But, then why was his heart still trying to beat out of his ribcage without calming the hell down?

"Nothing illegal," the guy with the German accent chuckled. "Don't worry."

Burkhardt. Neurosurgeon. The memory slammed into him out of nowhere. Shit! He mentally winced. He must have gotten hurt again if Frank had to bring him to this guy. He tried to think back, to remember what could have happened for him to end up in this weird, limbo-like state, stuck between waking up and unconsciousness. But he couldn't. His mind was a thick, fog-filled mess where nothing made sense.

"... kinda shut him down, in a way a PC would shut down when it's overloaded," Burkhardt said, unknowingly cutting in through Joe's rising panic. "It was done for his protection. Sort of like triggering a survival instinct to shut off his brain, to save it from further degradation. The drugs were a cocktail to bring the chemicals in his brain to their previous levels. Other doctors wouldn't know the exact mix because his base chemicals ratio is a bit different from the rest of us–"

What the hell were they talking about? Joe wanted to wake the hell up right now. The doctor was not making any sense at all. He renewed his efforts to do something, anything - let out a sound, wriggle toe or something - to try and join the conversation happening above him.

"... due to, uh, well, obvious reasons."

Something must have worked because he felt a soft groan make its way out of his uncooperating throat, causing the doctor to stop talking at once. He heard them move around the room and he felt his right shoulder move a little. Then, finally, after a long struggle, he managed to blink open his heavy-lidded eyes.

"Hey," Frank moved into his line of bleary sight, looking red-eyed, tired and rumpled as ever, bringing up a flashback from two years ago. Whatever happened, it must have been bad. Joe suppressed a sigh. "Welcome back to the land of the living."

Joe had to scrunch up his nose and close his eyes again then. The room was too damn bright and the antiseptic smell was making him nauseous. The headache that was raging inside his head was not helping things at all.

"Come on brother," Frank cajoled, his voice soft. "Don't go back to sleep again, you need to stay up."

Easier said than done. Joe didn't want to go back to sleep paralysis either. But his body wasn't really listening to his demands just yet. Nevertheless, he made an effort to do as his brother asked.

"Wh…What…" he had to wince and cough to clear the hoarseness of his voice. A glass of water with a straw appeared before his face and he gulped down half of it gratefully. The chilled water felt like a slice of heaven as it chased away the dryness in his throat.

"Thanks," he muttered with a nod. "What the hell happened, Frank?"

"You had a seizure when we took off and collapsed. You only woke up now," Frank said, slumping on the chair next to his bed. Looking around, Joe realised he was in a familiar infirmary, the one that was located on the third floor of the Agency. The tall, blond, green-eyed neurosurgeon, Aaron Burkhardt, lingered near the medical paraphernalia to Joe's right, reading what he thought was his chart.

"How long?" he asked, focusing his attention back on Frank.

"Two days."

Joe closed his eyes again and cursed. "Shit."

The dread he had been suppressing so far rose up again in a fierce wave, drowning him. He hadn't lost two more days, had he? Why does he keep collapsing? Why couldn't this infernal spikes-in-his-brain sensation just be gone? Why can't he remember what happened? Why? Why? Why?

"Hey, take it easy… different," the surgeon's sharp voice broke through the panic and Joe tried to concentrate on what he was saying to get away from the wild vortex of emotions swirling in his mind.

"...breathe slowly, in and out… and out–" the words reached him intermittently through the buzzing in his ears. He did his best to regulate his breathing, to get some oxygen into his lungs and keep it there to clear away the bright spots he could see dancing on his closed eyelids.

"You didn't lose your memory like the last time, Joseph," Burkhardt was saying slowly, patiently, as if he knew exactly what Joe had been panicking about. "It's all there. Just keep breathing, nice and easy."

After what felt like a lifetime, Joe managed to get his breathing and panic under control. When he opened his eyes again, Frank was holding the railing of his bed in a white-knuckled grip, his expression worried. The surgeon was on the opposite side, giving him a once-over with a deep frown on his forehead.

"I, uh, okay, alright," he coughed and then winced when the headache went up another notch. He had to swallow thickly a few times before he could speak again. "I'm alright, I think. Um, sorry."

Frank squeezed his shoulder once and nodded, relieved.

"What are you doing here anyway?" Joe rasped at the surgeon.

"Trying to figure out what you've done to undo my hard work on your brain, obviously," Burkhardt chuckled.

"Funny guy," Joe grimaced.

"I am."

"He's here to help us recover your lost memories, Joe," Frank said quietly. All of a sudden, the past few days slammed into him with force; his stint in Afghanistan, his arrest, meeting Frank, the video of Alexis…

Yes. He still had those other memories lost or locked somewhere inside his head. He felt bad for Frank. He looked exhausted and sick with worry. Joe's own condition was not probably helping him either.

"Nothing else on her yet?" He had to ask. It was extremely worrying that all of Frank's hopes of finding his wife depended on Joe's misplaced and unreliable memories.

"No." Frank sighed, averting his gaze.

"I'm sorry man."

"Frank, I'm going down to see Riley, to get the place set up," Burkhardt said, walking over to the door. "Holler when you're ready."

He left, closing the door to the room softly behind him. Joe caught the pointed look he gave Frank before leaving. That was a private, wordless communication between them about something not known to Joe.

"What was that about?"

Instead of answering right away, Frank refilled the glass and gave him more chilled water. Joe took it and finished it all in one go, before handing it back to Frank. It felt as if Frank was taking his time, bracing himself before whatever he wanted to say to Joe. He dragged the chair closer to Joe's bed and dropped heavily onto it.

"There's something I need to tell you." he opened up with the most dreadful choice of words.

Joe gulped. The look on Frank's face, the sense of resignation in his slouched posture wasn't helping the matter any.

"Okay?" he asked, tentatively.

"You remember when you got injured during that raid, two years ago?"

"You said I almost died," Joe murmured, thinking what the injury two years ago could possibly have to do with his problem now. But then again, the unusual way his head hurt was very similar to that day he woke up in that private hospital. So maybe the two situations were connected.

"I went to see Aaron before I came to see you," Frank said quietly, his tired gaze fixed somewhere on Joe's blanket-covered right knee, studiously avoiding eye contact. Joe knew his brother, and what he was reading off of him at the moment was guilt. It worried him even more.

"When we both finally got there, the doctors at the General Hospital wouldn't let us in where they had you," Frank continued dully, lost in a memory only he could see. "You were dying."

Joe was torn between wanting to know what happened and putting a stop to it then and there. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to know.

"What did you do?" The question slipped out before Joe could make up his mind.

"There was a choice to be made," Frank whispered. "Aaron gave me that choice. To let you die or give you a chance. There were no guarantees, but there was hope."

Frank was now truly scaring him. What the hell have they done to make his brother look this pale and afraid? "What did you do, Frank?"

"He, uh, he implanted a microchip in your brain," Frank's words were so quiet Joe almost missed them. "One that was half organic, half synthetic," he continued to mutter oh-so softly. "It is wholly integrated with your brain tissues and grey matter. And, it's grown in mass to fill up what was missing–"

"Huh," Joe blinked, and stared at Frank for a long time, not really seeing his brother. His mind was busy putting together what he had just heard from his brother. There was a microchip implanted in his brain. The words tumbled around his mind in a loop, refusing to make any sense.

"…Joe–" he heard Frank first and then saw him peering at him with a very concerned gaze. Joe realised that he had been lost in his head for too long.

"Say something here, Joe," Frank pleaded.

"Um," Joe said, trying to figure out what exactly he should say here. "For a moment, I was afraid you were gonna say you made a deal with a demon or something,"

They both blinked at each other, confused in their own way.

"A what?"

"Like the crossroads," Joe said, knowing he was rambling. But he couldn't stop. He was apparently not yet ready to say or feel anything about what Frank just revealed. So, he settled on rambling about the supernatural in a reflexive defence. "Like where you trade your soul for something and then get dragged into hell at the end of the deal…"

It was Frank's turn to go silent and stare at Joe for a long moment. Joe stayed quiet, completely happy to pretend that the last few minutes didn't happen.

"What are you talking about?" Frank broke the silence in the end, leaning closer to place the back of his palm on Joe's forehead to check his temperature. "Are you feeling okay?"

Joe moved away to shrug his hand off. He wasn't exactly feeling angry…yet, or afraid. He was just confused, lost and if he was honest, a lot hurt. So he needed some distance from Frank.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, shaking his head, and then wincing because that also still fucking hurt. "I'm fine. It's just…urgh."

"Yeah, it kinda is."

"So, um, this chip," Joe finally said, resigning himself to the fact that they needed to talk about this, and get it out of the way so that they could actually get to solving the crime they still had on their laps; the crime that needed to be solved so that Joe could clear his name and get Frank off his back. "Is it like just a filler for the missing chunks or does it have anything extra going on?"

"It does what the rest of your brain does," Frank elaborated. "It controls certain functions, releases chemicals, and basically retains all your experiences," he shrugged. "It's part of your neurological system."

That was not what had started to bug him. Not really. It was the fact that there was an artificial, man-made thing, now growing and living inside his brain. "Has it been impacting the rest of me in any way?" he asked tentatively, his voice very quiet. "Does it change me somehow?"

Frank was aghast. "No, Joe," he said quickly. "No. I wouldn't have–" he cut himself off, shaking his head. "Absolutely not. It's just something that saved your life, Joe. It did nothing else. No."

Frank's absolute conviction of the fact felt genuine to Joe. He studied his brother's worn-out and drawn face, searching for lies or half-truths. He didn't see anything but guilt-ridden honesty. But, there was something in his mind, preventing him from trusting Frank fully.

"You didn't tell me." It was not a question.

"I couldn't, Joe." Frank sighed, closing his eyes.

"Why?"

"Because it was illegal for one," his brother muttered, his eyes closed and his forehead resting on the back of his knuckles where he was hanging on to Joe's bed railing. "We had to make sure it worked okay and that you got through without any side effects–"

Now, that was not an answer, Joe knew that much. "I did get through okay," he said, patiently. "It didn't take two years for you to see that, did it?"

His brother's shoulders dropped even lower as if he was hunching in on himself. But Joe wasn't really in the mood to let him off the hook just yet. There was something much bigger going on here between them. A schism had been growing slowly between them for longer than just two years. A breach in the trust they used to share so freely. A fracture.

"No. It worked," Frank admitted. "I wanted to leave it at that."

"What did you mean by the procedure being illegal?" Joe asked, wanting to know more before confronting his brother about the heart of the matter.

"The product - the chip - was in the testing phase," Frank mumbled. "It wasn't approved by any medical board anywhere in the world. It still isn't."

"Fucking hell, Frank," the curse came out in a tired exhale, without any heat. Joe really didn't have any energy left to be angry right now. He was just tired.

Frank finally lifted his head to look him in the eye for the first time since they started this conversation. The fierce intensity in his brown eyes was aimed squarely at Joe. "Yeah, well," Frank said, evenly. "Don't expect me to apologise because I'd do it all over again if I had to. It was either that or let you die, and you know as well as I do, that the second option was not gonna happen."

Joe held eye contact for a moment, needing that assurance, conviction and promise from his brother more than he needed air to breathe. He needed to know that there still was something left between them of what they used to have before. Something salvageable. But, the fact remained that Frank hadn't been entirely honest with him.

"You could have told me, you know." He said softly.

"What difference would that make, Joe?" Frank asked, tiredly. "I didn't want to make you involve you in a mess if it ever got out."

"Bullshit," Joe shook his head. "I'm asking for the real reason, Frank," he pressed. "What made you keep something this huge from me, huh? It's my fucking brain we are talking about here."

"I was scared, alright," Frank snapped. He let go of the railing and pushed the steel chair away in a grating squeak, making Joe grimace. He then started to pace around inside the small room, breathing hard, like a cornered animal. "I just didn't know how to bring it up. I didn't know how you'd react–"

Those words told Joe exactly what he wanted to know. He let himself slump further into the soft mattress on the bed, and fixed his own gaze on the drab ceiling, unable to look at his brother anymore.

"No, Frank, that's not it," his voice was quiet when he finally spoke, and there was a lost, defeated quality to it that he couldn't really mask. "You didn't trust me enough."

There. He said it because Frank obviously wouldn't, or maybe he couldn't. But, it was the truth. He didn't know how they got to this point.

"Just like you wouldn't believe me when I told you what I really felt about Alexis when you first met her…" There had been something about her that had seemed wrong to Joe from the beginning and Frank never listened. "You punched me in the face that day, remember?"

There had been just too many arguments afterwards, almost every day, until Joe had given up, resorting to keeping an eye on her instead. It had been a little over six years now since he had known her, and Joe was relieved and annoyed in equal measures; relieved because she made Frank happy and seemed to actually love him back and annoyed because he still couldn't let go of his dislike towards her.

Maybe that was what caused Frank to drift away from him. Maybe it was Joe's own fault from the beginning. Maybe that was why they were on opposite sides now.

"Just like you wouldn't believe me when I said I lost my memories," he continued dully, unable to fight the feelings of self-recrimination, loss and grief that engulfed him. "And you still wouldn't believe me when I said that I didn't do anything to your wife…"

Because, for all his dislike towards the woman, Joe would never ever harm a member of his own family, no matter what some hastily put-together bunch of grainy footage insisted he had done. It just wasn't in him.

"Somewhere down the line, you've stopped trusting me."

"Joe, please–"

"I think I get it now," he continued, cutting Frank off. "That's why Dr Frankenstein is here. So, he could go digging inside my brain and scoop up the memories you think I'm hiding from you. Apparently, I hate the mother of your child that much I'd rather knock myself into a fucking coma than give her up back to you–"

"Brother, that's not what I meant–" Frank sounded worried. Maybe he was just worried for his wife. Joe wasn't really sure. He was so damn tired. There was too much in his head and he just wanted… he didn't know what he wanted.

But, at least, he knew what Frank wanted.

"You know what? Just do whatever you need to do. After you've seen for yourself what I'm saying is the truth, maybe then you'll start believing me again."

"Joe, I'm so sorry–" Frank sounded like he was close to tears. Joe kept his gaze averted, not really wanting to see the expression on his face. Whatever it was, he knew it would only hurt him…even more. He was already at the limit of his endurance.

"I don't think you are, Frank, not really," he let out a weary sigh and closed his eyes. What he needed was for this day to end so that he could just leave, and find someplace peaceful and safe to just…not think anymore.

"Let's get this over with so that I can get the fuck out of your face."