A/N: Life has just not cooperated, so I'm running a little behind I know. Almost home now. You guys have been the best. And yes, of course I'm working on another.

Chapter 25

"How long you gonna watch that stuff?"

Don hit the pause button and lifted one earphone. "Huh?"

Charlie flopped into one of the chairs next to the bed. "I said, how long are you gonna watch that stuff?"

Don glanced back at the DVD player. "I don't know - nothing on TV except soap operas - maybe forever. I thought you were working on a lecture."

"I finished."

Don pulled the headphones all the way off, trying to classify Charlie's tone. And actually, now that someone had brought it to his attention, his head was hurting from focusing on the screen too long anyway. He dug his fingers into his temples. "You know, you don't have to hang around here - you can take off. Do what you need to do. No point in both of us being bored out of our minds."

"I'm not bored."

Don shrugged. "Then I wish you'd share your secret."

"You're not bored either - you've been staring at that stuff like it contains answers to the mysteries of the universe. Or dirty pictures."

Don laughed. "No such luck."

"So. What did you find out?"

Don frowned, feeling like he was running a little behind in this conversation. "…about…?"

"You know. Twilliger."

"That he's a crazy, delusional S.O.B. But I guess that isn't news."

"Yeah." Charlie switched his gaze to the halted image on the screen. "Crazy. Is that official, or are you just being hyperbolic?"

Don shook his head, willing away the vestiges of a headache. "Well, we don't have a psych evaluation or anything, but, yeah - I'd say it's a foregone conclusion, depending on what you mean by crazy. Sociopath, probably, or some kind of personality disorder - something."

Charlie nodded. "How - um - how does somebody get that way, exactly? I mean, are they born like that, or…?"

Don blew out a breath and reached over to shut off the DVD player. "I don't know, Charlie, you're getting out of my area of expertise. I mean, I took some forensic psychology at Quantico, but just the basics. Megan could give you better information on something like that."

Charlie stared broodingly at the DVD player, now gone dark. He pushed out of the chair and wandered over to the window. "Megan said he was a genius."

"Yeah, well, I'd hate to think he kept us on the run for twenty years by being an idiot."

"Did she mean that literally, or - "

"Or was she just being hyperbolic? Like I said, we don't have all the evaluations in yet, but looks like literally. He had some kind of - subtle, twisted understanding of the vulnerabilities of human nature." Charlie was silent, and Don regarded his back curiously. "What's going on?"

Charlie shrugged. "I mean, it's hard to believe - you know - that someone - someone so intelligent - could - um - " he ran a hand over his hair.

"Could - ?" Don prompted, feeling lost at sea. Then the light dawned and he grinned. "What, you think somebody that smart should know better? Like genius is some kind of an inoculation against evil?"

"That's not what I meant," Charlie objected, turning around to face him.

Don lifted his brows and Charlie shifted uncomfortably. "That's not what I meant - exactly," he amended, a little sheepishly. "I just - it just seems like - " he struggled for the words to explain himself, " - like a man of such superior intellect should have - the - the resources - to - to - "

"To - overcome his baser nature?" Don was still grinning and Charlie glared at him. "Not all geniuses are benign, white food-eating college professors, pal. C'mon - you know that. You've seen your share of crimes among the intellectually well-muscled."

Charlie's glare faltered. "It's not the same thing," he said at last.

Don shook his head. "Then you're going to have to explain to me how it's different, because it sure looks like the same thing to me."

Charlie moved away from the window, his hands beginning to inscribe arcs in the air. "The other genius crimes were crimes of the intellect. I can appreciate the - the - temptation to test your skills against the system - to try and outsmart it and win. The - the restless need for discovery and - to stretch boundaries…and maybe - even - " he cleared his throat. "even a touch of - hubris - "

Don's brows rose a little higher. "Hubris, huh?"

"I said 'a touch'," Charlie corrected testily.

Don chuckled, and when Charlie didn't join him, prodded teasingly, "So, something you're trying to tell me? You got a checkered past I should know about?"

Charlie didn't seem amused. "Of course not."

"Good. Cause that would be a tough one to explain to Dad - me having to haul you in for questioning." Charlie still didn't smile, so he tried a different tact.

"Look, buddy, I don't know what to tell you. I could give you about a hundred different theories of why people commit crime - psychological, sociological, biological, and every combination in between - but at the end of the day - " he shrugged. "People make choices. Twilliger made bad ones. Why? We're still working on that. What I can tell you is that, from what I've seen, no one's immune - dumb, smart, male, female, old, young, rich, poor - we have profile probabilities and statistics, maybe, but they're all only as good as the next exception.

Twilliger's a sicko who also happens to be a genius and used it to perform sick, weird acts - it's not a reflection on every other genius, any more than it's a reflection on every other accountant, or every other white middle class father. Just him. Period." Charlie's expression softened noticeably, so he added slyly, "I mean, some geniuses are almost normal. Okay, not you, but - hey! Hey! Injured guy here - !"

Don threw an arm protectively over his head as Charlie snatched the extra pillow off of the cot and advanced threateningly. He felt pretty safe, actually - he could almost watch Charlie flip through his options in his mind - head? No good. Torso? Uh-uh. Legs? No way. The trick now was to get the pillow from him and turn the tables without damaging anything further - tough to do when you were laughing so hard…

"What's going on here?"

Both froze, Charlie in mid-blow against Don's raised forearm and Don with his hand on the pillow in an attempted counter-attack. Their heads swiveled to the door with identical deer-in-the-headlight expressions.

"Nothing…" they chorused automatically.

"Really." Alan moved into the room and crossed his arms over his chest, looking from one to the other.

"I - I was just fluffing Don's pillows for him, father," Charlie burst out brightly in a flash of inspiration.

Don shot Charlie an exasperated look. Is that the best you can do? And that 'father' thing is a dead giveaway. Have I taught you nothing?

"Yeah - I - um - was just going to take a nap…" Don winced at his own explanation, caught Charlie's incredulous look and shrugged. Yeah, okay, mine was worse, but I have an excuse - I'm hopped up on morphine.

"Really," Alan repeated, coming close to the bed and pulling out a chair. "Well, that sounds like an excellent idea."

Don glared at Charlie. Charlie grinned, giving the pillow a solicitous fluff before inserting it tenderly behind Don's back. He dusted off his hands. "Well, sleep tight, bro. I'll just - get lost so you can get some rest - " He turned on his heel so quickly that the rubber sole of his sneaker squeaked on the linoleum.

"I think you should stay, Charlie." Somehow, despite Alan's pleasant tone it sounded like more than a suggestion. Charlie stopped dead, looking trapped. Alan gestured with some papers in his hand. "Art and I have a contract with a new client, and I'd really like your opinion on it." He looked from one to the other pointedly. "Both your opinions." He pulled out his glasses and perched them on his nose, clearing his throat. "Let's see - the party of the first part - that's me and Art - " he looked meaningfully at Charlie, who opened his mouth to say something, then closed it abruptly, deflating into the chair on the other side of the bed.

Alan smiled.

Don snickered silently until Alan turned his gaze to him, then he immediately sobered, arranging his face into attentive lines.

Alan's smile spread. "Now, where was I? Oh, yes," he cleared his throat again. " - the party of the first part - "

Don shot Charlie a look, eyes bright with laughter, and Charlie returned one of longsuffering, huffing a deeply felt, if inaudible, sigh, before slumping further into the chair.

"…agrees that, in conjunction with the party of the second part…that would be our client…"

Don suppressed a yawn. Looks like we'll both be taking a nap in another minute, in self defense. He yawned again, openly this time, then tried to look alert as Alan shot him a look over the top of his glasses.

Sneaky. Man. He fought down a smile as he felt his eyes closing. Maybe me and Charlie should take lessons.

000

Charlie wasn't bored, exactly, but he was restless. His father had told him to go home, Don had told him to go home, but somehow or other, he didn't want to. It wasn't that the small hospital room was that intriguing, but he had taken a week of leave anyway, and there was something oddly comforting about having all your focus within a small compass for a while. He smiled to himself. A little like working in the garage.

Still - he slid deep into his chair until he was almost sitting on his spine - it wasn't exactly a hotbed for excitement. He needed something to do.

He glanced at his laptop, then decided against it. The connection he could get from here was slow as molasses anyway - at least by his standards. He looked next at the stack of books, but he'd worked with those all morning. He wanted a change. His eyes drifted to the television and paused there, before shifting speculatively to Don.

Don slept fairly heavily, dopey from the drugs, but he was restless too - muttering in his sleep and repeatedly trying to turn over, only to be stopped by the narrowness of the bed and the device propping his leg. It was a new prop since Don's adventure in walking - nearly twice as high as the old one. The doctor had given some cheery technical explanation about draining and the infection, but Charlie couldn't help wondering if the real reason was that the new, higher prop was much more difficult for Don to maneuver his leg off without help. He could tell from the narrow, probing look that Don gave the doctor that he was wondering the same thing.

Charlie smiled. Now that Don was less ill and disoriented, it was kind of entertaining to watch him - a revelation. He wasn't used to seeing his brother anything but confident and cryptic and in control, so now seeing him a little fuzzy, a little vulnerable, a little helpless was - well - just the teeniest bit amusing. Even a little bit gratifying. Especially since it was only temporary.

He grinned as Don mumbled something and kicked at the blanket. He grabbed the tangle of fabric deftly as it fell, arranging it carefully back over the bed. Don's hand came up and he caught it in his own and hung on.

"Hey, Don," he whispered. "Ssh. It's just me." After a second, the hand in his went limp and Charlie tucked it under the blanket. I'd give a lot to know what's going on in your head.

He moved to push the tray table to the end of the bed, out of the way, so he could adjust the blanket, then paused with his hand on it, his eyes drawn to the stack of DVDs and the DVD player. There was even a set of headphones - so he wouldn't have to worry about waking Don. And it wasn't like anybody had said he couldn't see them - he had watched part of the first one, after all. He pushed down the voice inside that suggested that that wasn't really the point - he was already warming up the machine and sliding the headphones over his ears, adjusting the sound so that the residual echo if the headphones would be barely audible.

He shuffled through the DVDs, arranged neatly in order and in two stacks - ones Don had already viewed, ones he hadn't. He carefully noted which was which so he could return them exactly as he'd found them. Not that he was trying to be sneaky - he just - didn't see any reason why Don needed to know what he was doing.

He read the label on the first one. Press conference. No point in wasting time on that - nothing there he couldn't get from the news. Underneath it was Interrogation #1, and he popped the jewel case and pulled out the DVD, sliding it into the machine.

He had seen a lot of interrogations by now, both with Don beside him and Don on the other side of the glass, so he was familiar with the routine. Wainwright had his own style, but he could still follow what he was trying to do. He wondered how many people had been standing on the other side of the glass for this one - watching.

The byplay sucked him in immediately: Twilliger, after some initial reluctance, seemed so willing - almost eager - to share the details; unemotional and matter-of-fact as if he was describing his evening commute. The first one was over before he knew it, and he popped in Interrogation #2, making mental notes of some details he wanted to explore further later.

He was well into Interrogation #3 when he became gradually aware of a change in the atmosphere of the room, but the onscreen conversation held him spellbound, and it was awhile before he consciously tried to identify what was missing around him. It struck him then what he wasn't hearing - Don's deep, even breathing and occasional sleepy muttering - and he lifted his eyes reluctantly from the screen and directed them to the bed just beyond it.

His mouth opened silently, then closed, one finger pumping the power button, as though that would make the small machine and the headphones on his head magically disappear. He met Don's eyes, trying to decide between defensive and apologetic as a stance, then remained silent instead.

He couldn't quite read Don's expression, but the plaintive words in the sleepy growl were more than a little familiar:

"You always go through my stuff."

TBC