This next chapter will be the last for awhile, I'm sorry to say. I'll be out of town next week and soon after that is my high school graduation! I'll try and see if I can squeak in a chapter between coming home from the trip and graduation (about a week and half worth of time) but all the fun stuff is happening around that time—party hardy, you know? Anyway, rest assured that I won't let this story die—in fact, I'm growing quite attached to it.

I also have to research Charlie's injuries and medical care in great detail; I don't want to just fluff my way through that part! If anyone out there knows anything about gunshot injuries and surgery—especially those to the shoulder, please don't hesitate to e-mail me. I don't want to spoil too much but what I have (I hope) won't be too difficult to figure out.

I'm a little unsure as to whether I like how Don turned out in this chapter, especially in the middle… I think I might have taken his response to what happened a bit too far in places…

Some spoilers for The Pilot, and I imagine some others I let slip. And as always, enjoy!

Note: Many, MANY thanks to Afton (my lovely beta) and WynterSnow for finding my little mistake! This chapter has been edited to fix it … sorry 'bout that! I've fixed it as best I could for now … when another rewrite comes around, I'll incorporate it in a better way.

CHAPTER III

The smell of hospitals, of antiseptic and mind-numbing cleanliness, never once bothered Don. Or perhaps he just failed to notice. His sense of smell, like many of his senses and emotions, had been numbed by his time in the FBI. In such a stressful and high-risk business there was no room for pain and fear, anger and hate. He had grown accustomed to the thick moments of tension, the unpredictability, the sound of a gunshot, the recoil of a gun …

Damn. He bit down hard on his tongue, forcing himself to keep the curse silent. Gun. Don wondered if he would ever be able to think of that word in the same context again.

Huddled in the corner of the ambulance, Don felt a strange sensation akin to claustrophobia. His chest, tight and heavy, made steady breathing nearly impossible. Little could he comprehend at that moment that his was an illness of a different kind—that the tight space of the ambulance was not his source of discomfort, but rather, the close confines of something else … something much darker and much stronger.

The EMT in the cabin with him worked swiftly and diligently, his back to Don, as focused on Charlie as the elder Eppes brother had been minutes before. … Minutes? Had a really only been minutes? Five, ten, fifteen? Physically Don felt as if he had been treading deep water for hours on end. Mentally, time had become like elastic; moments of sheer terror intertwined with confounded periods of slow-motion.

Charlie hadn't moved. Don assumed he was unconscious but hadn't the voice to call out to him. The EMT had long since thrust Don away, ripping the brothers' hands apart, destroying the one link Don had to his brother, his current of strength and hope. Don felt unequivocally alone, though Charlie was no more than two feet from him.

"He's a grown man."

No, he wasn't. Grown men didn't bleed like this. Grown men didn't lie dying in their brother's arms. Grown men like Charlie worked complex math equations Don could never in a lifetime comprehend. Grown men stayed alive.

The EMT slipped the slender IV needle into the nearly translucent skin on Charlie's left hand. Don watched the younger man inadvertently jerk his head, his eyelids cracking for a fraction of a second to reveal the whites of his eyes before his body settled limp again. He was still alive, at least. Don released a breath he didn't know he had been holding.

Gauze and sterile rags had been stuffed into Charlie's wounds, trying to suppress the bleeding; but there was so much of it, Don could hardly fathom it all…

Charlie did not believe in guns; Don could vaguely remember hearing that somewhere. A gun no more belonged in Charlie's hand than a piece of chalk belonged in Don's. Both brothers had their own distinct worlds; Charlie his numbers, Don his criminals. Up until Charlie had discovered that case file those worlds remained parallel, never crossing paths, the way they were supposed to be. Charlie did not belong in his brother's world; Don knew he should have realized it from the beginning, but his own foolishness—or was it his pride?— blinded him.

At that moment, Don could have destroyed every sprinkler head in Los Angeles.

"You don't have to prove yourself to anyone."

Why had he come? It was a question pricking continually at Don's mind. A serial sniper on the loose and Charlie decided to stroll deep in thought, fully exposed to every danger, at an active crime scene. What was he thinking? Geniuses never had such blatant lapses of thought … ? Suddenly Charlie was vulnerable in Don's eyes; a young man struggling to prove himself to his older brother, to his brother's world.

"Charlie can never say no to you."

He had done it; and done it all. He had allowed Charlie to consult on that first case, he had brought his brother out into the field, he had taught him to shoot the rifle, he had let him meander in the sniper's crosshairs; again the guilt riddled his mind. His father was right—Charlie would throw himself through fire to solve his equations, find that last variable. Where numbers were concerned all of nature's borders disintegrated: had the world spun wildly off its axis Charlie would work oblivious to it all. Helping his brother was something Charlie could not ignore and would not fail at, no matter what the cost.

A subtle jerk threw Don forward several inches and before he could even steady himself bright afternoon sunlight poured through the now open ambulance doors. His arms went out to his brother only to find the gurney already unloaded, surrounded by medical personnel. Their connection wavered. Don threw himself from the vehicle, his knees nearly collapsing beneath him.

Feet moved rapidly. Bodies became one continual swash of color. Hands exchanged bags of fluid, bloody rags. Voices carried through the air, disjointed. Doors shot open. White coats flashed for a moment and slipped inside. Don could barely bid his eyes focus in the chaos before his brother was gone. Their link was broken. The feeling of Charlie's hand in his turned cold. Darkness crept in on the edges of Don's eyes.

Tunnel vision. One thing his FBI training had supposedly effaced; he could remain calm and imperturbable in even the direst of situations … but, then again, a mortally wounded Charlie had not been included in his training. The thought of someone taking aim at Charlie was a thought that never once crossed his mind; it was nearly inconceivable. Don knew that nothing in the world could have prepared him for something like this.

His body slammed into the door with the weight of all his turbulent emotions. At that same moment he espied his brother's gurney vanish down a long hall, the word 'Emergency' glaring at him in towering red letters from above it. Don felt his heart sink. There was nothing he could do now. Halfheartedly he made his way toward the hallway, dragging his legs as if walking through deep water. His body was exhausted, mentally and physically. A million thoughts, none of them remotely coherent, bombarded against one another in his mind. Adrenaline made his body shake. Charlie …

Blood. A sniper's bullet. A sparkle of shattered glass. The bitter crack of a rifle shot. The far and distant echo of his voice through the canyon of buildings.

Charlie. Don could not stop, could not think. The terror of the last half hour had consumed him and would not release its hold. This was not a childhood scuffle, to be fixed with a simple bandage and a kiss from his mother. For the first time, Don realized in vivid detail that the little brother he had just seen vanish down that hall he might never see alive again—and that, above all else, terrified him.

"Don." Terry's hand fell lightly against his arm. Terry? Where had she come from? Had she been there all along …?

"Y-You can't go back there, Don."

The older agent let his eyes fall to the floor. A thick yellow line snaked across the floor, a diligent barrier between one world and the next. Between himself and Charlie. Between life and death.

"… Terry." He barely had the strength to finish the simple syllable.

"Don, I—I think you should go … get your father." Her eyes shifted uneasily, "he … needs to be here."

"My father?" The two words became Don's tipping point. His father … how could he face his father after a debacle like this? His blatant disregard for his brother's own safety … Alan would never forgive him…

"Do me a favor and not say a word to dad. The guy already thinks I'm gonna wind up getting you killed."

"Oh, God, Terry."

"Don."

"Damn it, Terry!" Two opposing forces, agony and anger, slowly ripped the elder agent apart.

"Don …" heavy silence surrounded them as Terry fought for words to say. "Do it … for Charlie?"

They weren't the most comforting of words, but that was all her befuddled heart could manage at that moment.

Don slowly looked over his shoulder and down the endless hall. His body heaved with a sigh from deep in his body, his very soul.

"For Charlie … Charlie … would have wanted that."

Terry felt her insides crumble. Years of criminal psychology told her volumes when someone—criminal or otherwise—spoke in the past tense. To Don, Charlie was already too far gone … it was not a good sign.

"Yeah, Don … for Charlie."

A heavy, heart-wrenching sigh.

"David'll stay here, okay?" she continued. "He—He'll let us know as soon as anything happens. But—you have to be with your father, Don. You need him right now. It won't take long…you can bring him here…"

Terry tugged lightly on Don's arm, pulling him away from the yellow line, the hallway. Inching toward the door they passed by David, his eyes downcast, shoulders slumped. The other agent was in no better shape than Don was, consumed by his guilt. Being there for Don—and for Charlie—was the only thing on his mind right now; he would never forgive himself if Charlie did not emerge from that hallway alive.

As they reached the door Terry herded Don to the left where their SUV sat empty, looming. A hearse, that was what Don decided it resembled, staring at it aimlessly with half-focused eyes. Approaching it his heart fell and shattered at his feet. He was going to have to tell his father …

Never before had Don even considered hating that beautiful house … but he did now. He hated it for the memories. For the man that should have been safely inside it, not lying cold on a gurney. He hated it for the father he would have to tell: "I'm sorry dad, I should have listened to you. Charlie's dead, and I killed him."

The ride in the SUV—the longest trip of his life—had forced Don to endure the everlasting horror of that day: Charlie's blood, a great saturation by now dried brown around the edges, burning oblong stains across the denim. They became a painful brand against the underside of his eyelids, haunting him even in that blackness. There were stains there that would never be removed …

Terry didn't pull into the driveway but left the SUV idling by the curb. Don sat in contemplative silence for several moments and when he dragged himself from the car Terry made no inkling to follow; Don needed his father more than he needed his partner looming over his shoulder.

Walking up that driveway everything became deadly silent. All of nature seemed to refrain from movement, becoming statuesque and tense, quiet and somber. Seeing the hot red stains with every blink of his eye, Don clumsily shed his jacket and, wrapping it once around his arm, held it low by his belt, blotting the horrific crimson stamp from his sight—yet not from his mind. With every movement of his legs Don could feel the blood, by now a cold dampness against his skin. It made a shiver course like electricity through his body.

Crossing through the front door, Don became much like the little kid that had just broken a window with a stray fly ball and was waiting, as per the cliché, for his father to come home. It was just like he was thirteen again; only today he wasn't the clumsy teenager that had broken a mere pane of glass. No, something far greater and far more precious lay in pieces that day.

But inside the house was empty and Don wandered aimlessly, one empty shell within another.

Crossing towards the kitchen he felt a cold draft blow gently against his bare arms. Looking up, he spied the back door ajar. He silently screamed at his legs to stop—but just like every other action, his mind had no control. Stepping over the threshold, Don discovered Alan at the top of a ladder, focused intently on the brush in his hand.

For a minute Don stood and watched in silence. His father looked at peace, fixing up his beautiful house, content in a world that was nearly perfect. A shame that by speaking just a few fragments of sentences Don would shatter that peace forever.

"You really think I would put Charlie in danger?"

" … Dad." Even with all of his breath, the call was no more than a whisper.

Alan jerked up from his work, turning to face his son. "Donny! You're off work early, I see?"

"Dad … g-get down off that ladder…okay?"

The eldest Eppes glanced up from his work. "Huh? Why, Donny?"

"I … I just … I want you to be down here…when you hear this."

Seeing the genuine look of terror that had seized his son's features, Alan abandoned his post on the ladder without a second thought. Approaching his son and placing a hand on each shoulder, he looked deep in Don's agonized eyes.

"What is it, Don?"

"Look … I … I was thinking about…" Don paused, his mind riddled with agony. "About … what you said when you came by for lunch …"

Alan could sense it. Don did not even have to continue speaking, his face told more of a tale than words ever could. The Eppes patriarch felt his heart flip and sink. Inwardly he prayed that, just this once, his parental instincts were wrong.

"I—I think … I think you're right."

To Be Continued.