Title: Snowing on the Beach

Author: Lady-Daine

Rating: PG (May go up later for language/violence)

Author's Note: Again, thanks a bunch to all my reviewers for their lovely feedback. I would, shamelessly, ask that you drop another review if you get a chance, and as always, the more critique the better! Especially in the coming chapters, I'm working a lot with character emotion and development, which is thin ice for me. Also, FYI to my divine readers, I am trying to keep a steady weekly update, but things like umm, classes, and, uh, life, tend to get in the way of my writing sometimes, so this might not be a consistent schedule.

Disclaimer: My editor always takes care of this. My imaginary editor that is. I have no affiliation with the T.V. show numb3rs, nor do I own any characters, concepts, or anything else relating to the show. I'm simply borrowing some of them because I was too lazy to make up my own. The poem at the beginning of the piece is mine though, but I don't think it's worth stealing…

Snowing on the Beach

Chapter 4

"How long have they been out there?" Don peered out of the large glass window into the spacious yard that he had grown up in. Charlie was lounging against a tree, his eyes fixed on the slight figure that was perched in the grass, listening to something that she was saying. His father shrugged.

"There were there when I came into the kitchen the morning."

"They've been out there all day?"

"I guess. It's an interesting way to spend a Saturday, but, to each their own." Alan shrugged again, feigning ignorance of the situation. Don shook his head and turned to Terry, at the same time loosening his tie and discarding the formality over a nearby chair.

"What do you think?" The woman smiled serenely in the failing light that came from the yard, her eyes lighting up.

"She's communicating with Charlie because she relates with him, I would guess. It's common for someone who has been through a traumatic experience. Someone like that looks for another that will sort of- direct her, give her focus. She saw something in Charlie that was familiar, and so she's clinging to him." Terry put her hand on Don's arm as he frowned and put a hand on the sliding door, preparing to descend into the yard.

"It's healthy, at least unless she starts to depend on him completely. He sought her out in the first place, didn't he?"

"I guess so," Don affirmed reluctantly. "I just don't like the idea of anyone depending on Charlie. He's not a bad guy, but the first time that a number catches his eye, everything else is gone. I would hate for him to discard her, and have Lily take it the wrong way." He took his hand away from the door and sank down into the vacant chair that his tie was draped over. Letting his body sag down, he closed his eyes momentarily. Tomorrow was Sunday. He would be able to sleep in, at least a little, have a good meal, and recharge enough to keep him afloat for a little while longer.

Alan motioned for Terry to take another chair near Don's, and moved back into the kitchen, bustling around to make dinner. After a moment, the FBI agent opened his eyes and peered at his partner, enjoying the way that the light from the window haloed her gentle features and played across the fabric of her chair in orange-gold links of liquid sunset.

"Can we talk to her tonight?" he asked, feigning carelessness. Terry turned her head, gazing at the subject of their thoughts with concern. The effects of the sunlight on the lawn, along with the volume of greenery lent the young woman a dark innocence.

"I don't want t-"

"Is it possible?" Don interrupted her, his voice clipped and firm. She nodded slowly.

"Then we will, before dinner." he concluded, his voice offering no yield to argument.

"Let me speak to her first, before you start grilling her." Terry replied, her tone as icy as his own. "I want to make sure that she's stable enough to take it before you make her relive her nightmares."

"Fine." Don sighed as he watched Charlie stand up and meet his gaze. There was something in his younger brother's expression that chilled him to the bone, even in the warm evening. That look.

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"We should go inside now. It's getting late." Charlie stood up slowly, shaking out his limps to get his blood to run through them again. He had a high tolerance for many moments of stillness, thanks to years of spending hours in front of some computer or a blackboard, but it didn't make the end result of stiffness any less painful. Looking up, the young man saw his older brother peering out at him from one of the comfortable chairs positioned around the large viewing space. He met the gaze full on, not bothering to hide anything in his own expression.

Lily unfolded herself and stood up, allowing any watcher to notice her poise and see the dancer within her. The two of them slowly made their way towards the door, Charlie leading, and the young woman a few steps behind him. Silence reigned again, but it was a comfortable stillness, not because there was nothing to say, but because both the conversers were wrapped up in thoughts of their own.

As soon as they had reached the house, Don stood up again, ignoring a warning look from Terry, who had positioned herself closer to the door.

"Lily, we need to talk to you." The FBI agent was able to keep his tone even, with nothing accusatory or rough flavoring it.

"I know it's early, but it's important that we get as much information as we can, as soon as possible." The female agent's voice was soft, not maternal, but rather as though she was addressing a friend of hers. Lily turned towards the woman and lifted her head slightly, studying the pattern of crimson thread that had been worked into the chair she occupied, the whirling colors blending into a ginger-gold background. Biting her lip, she nodded.

"Can we eat first?" Alan, brandishing a wooden spoon in one hand appeared from behind them, his face showing concern. "Neither of these two have had anything all day." Charlie looked at Don and shot him a cautionary look, but the agent was determined to get some fodder for his mind to digest before he let himself rest.

"A few questions." He concluded, noting the awkwardness of the five of them standing around. Gesturing to the chair that he had been occupying, he lightly pushed the young woman toward it, taking action before anyone could protest. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Charlie exchange irritated looks with his father, and Terry roll her eyes. They knew he was in one of his don't mess with me moods, and that there would be little room for any compromising. Resigning themselves to the situation, the other two men took seats at the kitchen counter, bowing their heads in a quiet conversation.

Terry moved over towards Don and stared down at their quarry. She was still pale, her entire frame looking worn and fragile. Her hair was tangled from the day spent outside, and her clothes rumbled from the outdoor, but the young woman's eyes were full of ideas and sparkle, if a little deadened. She couldn't be called beautiful, but the aura of a dancer's bearing and her intelligent face might have allowed her to pass as pretty.

"Lily," Terry spoke her name adroitly, almost as though she was trying to use her voice to reflect the delicate namesake, "We're going to carry this out as though we would with any witness. We need you to just answer each question as best you can. Anything you know that might be helpful, we must also know. And if you want, you can ask questions also. I'm Terry, and this oaf is Don as you know." She let a smile fall into her tone, hoping to put the younger girl at ease. Something that might have been the distant kin of a smile played on Lily's lips.

"Just do your best. We know that this is hard." Lily nodded again. She didn't look particularly threatened or nervous, just blankly aware of the presence of the two FBI agents. At the counter behind them, Charlie and Alan had ended their discussion and were listening intently.

"Please tell us your full name and age." Don said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a half-full notebook. His voice fell into the monotone of a normal questioning session.

"Lily Aaralyn Rissaya. I'm, I'm eighteen, nineteen in May." Don started slightly, realizing that he hadn't ever heard her voice before. It was light and melodic, though well saturated with grief at the moment.

"And your relationship with Nina Rissaya?"

"Don!" Charlie left his perch at the counter and moved over towards his brother, eyes flashing. "You know this, why are you making her-"

"It's standard procedure. Stay out of this." The words were crisp and curt. The younger man was about to open his mouth to protest, but a pleading look from Terry stopped him. Sulkily, the mathematician took the seat that the female FBI agent had vacated and sank down, eyes fixed in Lily.

"That's my mother." All three of them turned their attention back to the teenager who had answered the question. At first glance, she was relaxed, but her hands dug into the arms of the chair viciously.

"Can you recount to me what happened this past Thursday? Everything from when you woke up until the end of the night. Any detail, any memory that you can discern."

"I woke up, probably five-thirty. I took a shower, got ready for school. My mom…my mom dropped me on the way to work, like she always does."

"Where did your mom work?" Don's pen was stationary on the page.

"CalSci. She was chemistry professor." Her voice betrayed nothing.

"So you went to school. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary relating to your mom?"

"No. She was fine. She dropped me off, umm, probably around seven-fifteen, and then went to work. I went to school."

"Was everything normal in school?"

"Yeah," an undertone of bitterness stole into her voice, and Don looked up, a frown plastered across his expression.

"What was wrong with school?"

"It doesn't have anything to do with-" Lily looked up, eyes skeptical.

"At this point, we're willing to take anything at all. Small things can often be significant." Terry's perpetual patience was a blessing to the group. Every time she spoke, she managed to smooth out the tension that was rising in the room.

"I just don't like school. It's not a-"

"Why not? Is it hard for you?"

"Hardly," a touch of arrogance replaced the bitter undertones. "It's easy. Ridiculously easy. Boring."

"What classes were you taking?"

"On Thursday? AP bio, AP chem., BC calc, humanities, AP modern European, and uh, health. In that order."

"So you had all your classes, then what?"

"I came home, on the bus. My mom was already there. She gets home early on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I started my homework, she was doing something for her research."

"What kind of research?"

"She was working on anti-matter." The strain of speaking was obviously taking a toll on the young woman. Her voice had begun to shake, but she continued to take deep breathes and speak rapidly, as though drawing poison from a wound. "It's this concept that's pretty well known. A lot of scientists think that the opposite of known matter exists, because there had to be something outside of the space-time fabric, in black holes and stuff. My mom thought, she thought that," the interest in her voice was obvious, but it was surrounded by a deep regret, a sort of despising love that reminded Don greatly of Charlie talking out his unsolvable math problems.

"it could be created by slamming uranium atoms together with neutrons to create a controlled nuclear reaction, and then taking away all the electrons in the system, or something like that. The idea was that the huge positive charge of the remaining pieces, in the light of a nuclear reaction, would act in a way that would allow her to, I guess, turn them inside out. She wasn't finished with the idea."

"How far along was she?"

"I don't know. She was doing most of it on a strictly theoretical level."

"It sounds like she shared a lot of her work with you."

"I like chemistry." Lily sounded vaguely defensive, as though she was used to being ridiculed for her interest.

"Ok, so you did your homework, then what." Don cut off the conversation about chemical research, feeling a dead-end coming on.

"I had an appointment with a therapist." Terry raised her eyebrows.

"What for?"

"Mom thought something was wrong with me. Because I was losing interest in a lot of things that I used to like to do. And I really didn't like school."

"Sounds like depression to me." Terry said immediately. Lily shrugged.

"I wasn't depressed though, I was just… indifferent."

"There's different degrees of depression." Terry replied, looking at the girl thoughtfully. Don cut in again, impatient to forward the conversation, wanting to know what happened shortly thereafter. He was a hunter on the loose, eager for the chase, and the quarry.

"So you had the appointment, then what?"

"We finished, we were going to drive home. I asked mom if I could run home, because we were only three or so miles away. She agreed. I ran home- it took me about twenty or twenty-five minutes." The vague shiver in her voice was now a full fledged quake, the tension in the arriving moments building up to a level of impossible passion. Still, there was no emotion, no hint of what the girl's thoughts were, save that they were afflicting her somehow.

"Her car was in the driveway. I walked in the front door-" She cut off and abruptly closed her mouth, unable to go on.

"Come on Lily, we need this. This is very important." Don kept his voice soft, but firm. From across the room, Charlie stood up and strode over to the three that were crowded around the girl. Looking reproachfully at his brother, he pushed passed the three of them towards the stairs.

"She was on the floor in the kitchen, against one of the…one of the cabinet doors. I couldn't really…I couldn't….I….there was blood, so much blood." The girl's eyes slipped closed as she struggled for breath, her entire body shaking now. "That's all. There's nothing clear after that." She looked up pleadingly at the two agents who were standing over her, begging them to end their inquisition.

"You didn't see anyone else in the house? Anything?" Lily swallowed and shook her head at Don's question. He nodded and scribbled in his open notebook.

"I think that that is enough!" Alan came back from the haven of his kitchen, eyes focused on young woman who was fighting a breakdown with all her might, and losing that battle. He recognized the signs- the struggle to breath, to move, to focus. He had seen them in his youngest son all too often. He let his tone rise as he stared expectantly at Don. "I think it's time that we ate." With a sigh, his son nodded and folded his notebook slowly, peering down at Lily. He was about to turn around when the surprising sound of her voice stopped him.

"Wait."

"What?" she sounded drained and lost, her tone wandering the borders of being incomprehensible.

"I…I have a few questions." Charlie stopped in his tracks and turned around, his eyes a question.

"I'm…I'm not stupid. The FBI doesn't investigate every murder victim in the state. Why…why are you involved?" Her eyes took on an intensity that Don recognized, and he felt his respect for the girl rise a little.

"Lily, were you aware that your mother was an agent for the CIA?" There was no easy way to say it- Don assumed it was best to do it quickly and painfully, rather then to talk in circles. Lily's eyes went wide. "She was working an undercover case, and…"

"No!" the girl shook her head powerfully, eyes panicking. "You must have something wrong. My mother was a chemist. She-"

"Nina Rissaya was a special agent for the CIA. She was working undercover as a chemist. We don't know why." Don turned away in frustration, missing the sudden conflicting emotions that played across the teen's face. The fight between her aging grief, and the sudden betrayal and anger of the situation was raging, and what was more, the desire to believe that she was being lied to, while at the same time, the rationality of the moment told her that it was the truth that had been spoken. She wanted to hate the only person in the world for whom she had feelings, and she couldn't, because she was morning that person's death. There would never be reconciliation, because that single person was gone. Gone… Oh God…I don't…

Terry glared at Don, angered by the merciless way that he had dished out information to the young girl, well aware of the frenzy within her. Give a choice, she might have waited to inform the teenager of her mother's circumstances, but Don was a man of the raw truth, and she knew that the likelihood of him withholding information from a question was something he would not do if he trusted the listener. Or rather, if he felt whoever asked deserved to know.

"When can I go…back to everything? School…" Terry turned her focus back to the subject of her thoughts, unsurprised to see that the young woman had shut-down completely. Nothing would penetrate the emotional barriers that had been put up- her eyes and face were artificially blank, refusing to give insight into the war within. The icy question was defense against the betrayal of her true thoughts.

"Well, we thought that you'd want to…have a while to recover." Terry said gently. "Legally, you're an adult, so we have no custody over you."

"So I can just go home?" Her mask was terrible. The pain that had been suppressed so suddenly had done to the room what taking all the pressure out of it might have- turned the environment into something unnatural and uncomfortable.

"Well, technically. We have reason to believe that you are somehow in danger, so there might be some provisions." Terry looked pained to be saying what she was, knowing where the conversation was leading, but she couldn't lie to the girl. That would be worse, especially with someone of her intelligence.

"So I can leave, right now?" She didn't seem fazed at the idea of having her life in danger. Of course, the FBI agent knew that this was hardly the case, and that the young woman had just started herself on a spiraling path that would lead to her own mental destruction. She was a time-bomb, thrown off balance, and ticking into oblivion. And no one knew when she would go off. Schooling her face to remove the intense pity that she felt, Terry forced frost back into her voice.

"Not right now. We still might need information, so it's best that we have easy access to you, so we'll have you stay here for a while. But eventually, you can do whatever you want." Lily nodded, and stood, facing the now dark exterior of the house.

"And of course, you're welcome here as long as you want to stay." Alan mustered all the warmth he could from the frigid room and thrust it at Lily, feeling the icy shell that she had wrapped herself in."

"Yeah of course. You need to show me your guarding color thing anyway," Charlie chimed in, his voice as unsteady as any other in the room. He took a step towards her, but she rebuffed him. Without word or gesture, she took several steps towards the sliding door, then opened it and walked out, disappearing into the dusk. Immediately, the mathematician started after her, but Terry reached out and grabbed him.

"She needs to fight with herself for awhile." She turned towards Don, who stood still, looking stunned.

"You however, have me to deal with."

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"This is amazing." Charlie had spread out the contents of the large brown box on the table, and was examining it with a keen eye. "But not enough."

"What do you mean?" Don eyed the pile of equations and data tables with interest, wondering what it could be that would impress Charlie. The younger man was studying a set of equations that seemed to involve several chemical symbols.

"You know what Lily said about her mother's work? About slamming uranium atoms into each other, and…how did she put it?" The mathematician looked up at her brother, who had automatically stiffened from mention of the girl's name. Terry had thankfully had the grace to pull her partner into a separate room before she let loose her temper, but several choice phrases had escaped the confines of the chamber, namely, "You just took whatever stability that poor girl had, and blasted it into shreds." And, "If she kills herself, the blood's not on anyone's hands but your own."

"Yeah, yeah, about turning the remaining atoms inside out," Don mumbled, trying to block out the cutting words that were still ringing in his head.

"She was extremely close to just that, according to these calculations. She had the exact required speed of collision, and the magnetism needed to pull away her electrons. Of course, there isn't a magnet that strong, but she intended to have a parallel reaction going on in the accelerator, to create the magnetic field. It's…" the young man shook his head. "Amazing. This woman was essentially going to create a nuclear reaction in a particle accelerator, and then create like….a baby-black hole, I guess, and just turn the whole thing inside out. It looks, almost, possible."

"If she didn't blow herself up first." Terry responded from across the room. She focused her gaze on Charlie, refusing to acknowledge Don's presence. Her concern for the girl was draped heavily over her shoulders. She shouldn't have let Don talk to her, and she had known it, but her disparity of getting some sort of lead on this case had blinded her better judgment. What was worse, she couldn't do anything about it. Lily didn't trust her or anyone else, so she wouldn't let anyone beyond her mental shields. She could self-destruct, and none of them would know it until she took it into her head to slit her throat, and the only preventative measure the woman could take would be to tie the young woman up and tuck her away somewhere. But to do that would be to deny her any semblance of a life, and it would be messy. She was helpless, and if there was one feeling in the world she hated, it was that.

"I doubt she would. Everything here is so perfectly planned." Charlie's excitement penetrated her morose thoughts. "She had position down to one billionth of a nanometer, and speed, to," there was a pause as the man went into calculation mode. "The same measurement, per nanosecond. It's…" he shook his head as he studied the sheet. "She made all her measurements with the assumption that there would be a vacuum in the accelerator so that she could suspend the result, and make sure it didn't touch anything."

"And what would someone do with anti-matter?" Terry wondered allowed. "Besides stare at it and feel proud of themselves?"

"I…don't know, really, I'm not a chemist, but from what I've read, it's like black magic. According to the theoretic properties of the stuff, you need, maybe a couple particles, and you could take out most of the United States, maybe more."

"So we're dealing with a giant bomb?" Don asked. Charlie shook his head.

"It's hard to explain, but, not really. That's just the FBI approach to it. I mean, in space, it's what a lot of people think causes anomalies in galaxy distribution. You can't see it, because it doesn't absorb or emit light waves. And there's a bunch of different kinds. Hot, cold, non-baryonic, which is sort of a buffer, if you will, that makes stars and other large clusters act the way they do. Then there's baryonic, which is what Dr. Rissaya was working on. This stuff is what is supposed to make up most of the mass of the universe. I suggest you ask Larry about it, he would know more. I just use it when I'm helping him calculate interstellar velocities…." He turned back to the sheet, and Don looked helplessly over at Terry, who ignored him. After several moments of silence, Charlie continued, rummaging through papers as he spoke.

"I don't know why exactly she would want to create this, because it seems awfully risky to actually carry-out. But it has something to do with controlling it. There's a bunch of different suspension chamber designs here- I recognize them from Larry's work- as though she thought it could be used like an eraser. Only, for matter."

"So she could wave it around, and it would just destroy whatever it touched?" Don's eyes went wide with worry.

"Yes, and no. It would be a risky operation, because controlling what actually got touched would be…difficult to say the least. Say she wanted to get rid of a piece of paper. It would also destroy all the air around the paper, and then perhaps, every other object in the room, through diffusion, like if you were to spill coffee and it leaked across a table, staining everything, not just what it initially came in contact with. Or if that didn't happen, because there are different gases in our atmosphere, she might create a severe imbalance that would allow objects to spontaneously combust."

"Beautiful." Don muttered.

"But think of the possibilities." Charlie put down the papers that he was clutching and started up at his brother. "You wave it over a cancerous tumor, and boom, it's gone. Nothing left, no more spreading, no more illness." His eyes filled with a dark determination and he continued to work, falling back into his numbers, unaware of anyone else in the room. The two FBI agents stewed in their thoughts, concerns and worries running awry.

"There's something missing, a hole."

"What?" It had only been a few minutes, and Don was surprised to see his brother "emerge for air" from his mathematical reveries.

"The first reaction that needed to be started, with the uranium atoms, is missing. There's no calculation or mention of it. It's quintessential to the rest of the experiment. And there's nothing here that mentions it."

"Could she not have gotten to that part yet?" Terry wondered.

"No, because all the other math relies on it. It's definitely missing." Charlie's face was worried. "She refers to it several times. Some of the papers just aren't here."

"Are you sure?" Terry stood up.

"I'm positive. All of the math requires back-up support, and it's not here. No self-respecting scientist would go through all the trouble of this other stuff if they didn't have the foundation mathematical rational."

"I knew it!" the woman walked over and surveyed the mess of papers on the table. "I'm going to the school right now to check this out. Someone searched the office before we did." The words were probably meant for Don, but she shot them at Charlie.

"Do you want me to come with you?" the mathematician offered. "I know the campus, so I could-"

"No." Terry's refusal came out sharper then she had meant it to. "Thank you."

"I'm going with you." Don rushed towards the door before Terry could refuse his help. She didn't make any attempt. Without another word, the two of them had slammed the door behind them, leaving Charlie staring in their wake.

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"Lily? Lily?" The mathematician stumbled around the dark lawn, vaguely commenting to himself that he was spending an ungodly amount of time navigating the place in recent days. In one hand was clutched a plate with a peanut-butter sandwich on in, the other was flailing out in front of him, trying to keep himself from running into-

"Omph!" the young man crashed directly into something semi-solid and fell backward with as yell, as the object he had made contact with did the same. Mathematician, mystery thing, and peanut butter sandwich all went crashing to the ground, hopelessly tangled (the sandwich somehow managed to remain on the plate, but both food item and ceramic dish landed two or three feet out of the young man's grasp.)

"Lily?" Charlie peered into the darkness, trying to confirm his suspicion that he had inadvertently discovered his quarry. The terrified girl sat up quickly, eyes wild, until she saw who had run into her. Chest heaving, she pulled herself into a sitting position and stared at her seeker.

"I thought…I thought you might be hungry." Charlie indicated the fallen plate, not without irony as he dwelled on the many times that his brother or father had searched him out with food that he had forgotten to eat.

"I don't want pity." Her words were soft-spoken, not angry, not even really there. They were vague; an afterthought.

"It's not. It's peanut-butter." The genuinely confused look on the young man's face disarmed the distraught young woman.

"oh.' Lily stood up and turned away from her newfound companion, her thoughts troubled.

"Are you going to eat? You should. You haven't in…awhile." Charlie felt his cheeks color as he followed her example and rose. He couldn't believe the position that he had been thrust into. He didn't mind it- but it was so…different. The comforter instead of comforted, the nurturer instead of the lost. Lily didn't respond. Her eyes were focused to some corner of the sky, and yet not really seeing it at all.

Charlie picked up the plate, hoping against hope that it hadn't cracked, and found himself in luck. He figured that the flexibility of the grass was enough to increase the cushioning effect on the ceramic utensil so that it didn't crack.

"Then I'll have half," gingerly, the young man picked up a slice of the sandwich and then held it out in the darkness towards the young woman. "And you have half." Lily was so nonplussed by his behavior that she reached out and obliged him, taking the wheat-bread in her hand. She didn't move to eat it, but rather held it out, her figure still, waiting. Charlie forced himself to take a large bite of the sandwich and chew, indicating that she should do the same. Slowly, she lifted the food to her mouth, but still did not take a bite.

Having swallowed his sandwich piece, Charlie looked down at his feet and then back up at the stationary outline before him. Her shadow seemed to be a more accurate depiction of her soul, the absolute blackness that blocked stars from his view, taking in all the light around her and leaving the area that she covered in a silhouette that reminded Charlie of days without sleep and tears that he couldn't bring himself to shed.

"You know," he said finally, staring off, not quite seeing her. "I…I lost my mother when I was younger. Not quite, in your circumstances, I mean, she was murdered I guess…but not by a person, and I wasn't a girl, and…" he realized that he was babbling and schooled himself. "If you want to talk, about it, I mean, I guess I can relate, kind of. I mean…" He trailed off, and then looked again at his shoes, feeling absurd with a plate in one hand, his eyes not quite sure where to put themselves.

She shrugged and turned away.

Nothing is real.

"You can't shut down on me now! Come on!" Charlie took a step forward, not even really aware of what he was saying. Seldom did he find himself with such strength of emotion that he was willing to protest a near stranger's actions, but he knew this too well- he knew where it was going. She was going push everything out, pull herself in, implode upon herself. And she didn't have anything to keep her sane while someone else picked up the pieces. Lord knew, she didn't have anyone else.

"Just, just leave me alone. Please. I don't want…" Again, it was as though she was functioning elsewhere, not really seeing him, not really even aware of her own presence.

"You don't want what? You don't want someone to take you in their arms and tell you that it's alright? You don't want to wake up tomorrow morning and find that it's a new day and that the world hasn't stopped turning just because you've fallen out of rotation? It's just so much easier, isn't it, to let everything just fall away. Isn't it?" Lily whirled around, provoked at the words against her will.

Shaking her head in disgust, she collected her reflexes and moved to turn around again, but the mathematician was too caught up in his own emotions to hold himself back. He grabbed her arm and forced her around so that she had to face him. She struggled, but the man's arms had been strengthened by years of scribbling on chalkboards.

She continued to try to pull away, unwilling to speak.

"Look me in the eye and tell me that you're not taking the easy way out. Tell me that at the age of eighteen, you've decided that life isn't worth it!" They were both breathing heavily now, eyes wide in the darkness. Lily went limp, realizing that her struggles were useless. She turned her face away, refusing to look at the young man. Using his other hand, Charlie gripped her chin firmly, but gently, and turned it towards him. Again, the irony of the position, so similar to that of his brother and himself only a few weeks prior when he had tried to give up on the FBI's bank-robbing case, after having been faced with the reality of the situation, was not lost on him. We're more similar then we think.

"Say it!" he demanded.

She was silent.

"Because I've done what you're doing and it…it's not going to work. The real world is going to catch up with you sometime or another, and there's nothing you- or anyone- can do to stop it. Talk to me, just talk, say…say anything, sing, I don't care. But just keep talking, focus on me, don't close it off." He forced himself to meet her gaze, his eyes urgent with the need to keep her attention. "Tell me about….um, the dark-matter experiment, or your dancing, tell me about that. Come on, we'll go get something to eat, and you can tell me about the dark-matter. I couldn't find some of the math…maybe you could clear it up." His tone full of desperate resolve, he began to coax her back into the house. Taking a step back, he grabbed her wrist and tugged gently. She followed, taking one step, then another, slowly descending on the house.

When they managed this maneuver to the door, the mathematician awkwardly let go of the young woman and then slung her arm uncertainly around her shoulders in a gesture of shelter.

"So the uranium reaction. Was the point to slam multiple particles into each other, or use the neutrons like most nuclear reactions are staged? I mean, it wasn't quite apparent because there were several different isotopes notated in the equation."

"The point was to try to get as much lose nuclear material as possible, so," her eyes focused on the dark-curls of her redemption as she lost herself in the science. It was clean, methodical. And for once, there wasn't a cruel world antagonizing her- numbers weren't cruel- there were cold, but crisp. For once, she dared perhaps, to let hope touch her senses. Not enter them, or influence. But touch them, to prove that it was real.