Disclaimer: see chapter 1
A/N: Thank you for your interest in this story and for your kind words! This second chapter might not be what you were hoping to read, so please, bear with me.

Chapter 2: Sensible Suspicion

Charlie was regarding his hands, more to the point the faint red marks around his wrists that were a painful reminder of the transition he'd made, one from a well-respected math professor to a national enemy. Thinking of it like that, he almost felt like laughing, but had to find that it wasn't very funny after all, not after having spent a night in a detention cell. Granted, yesterday, after the first, very brief interrogation with two rather serious-looking FBI agents, Charlie's lawyer had told him that they had no grounds to charge him with anything, but even so, since he was a suspect in a terrorist interrogation, they could detain him for another six days, until they would have established his innocence or guilt.

Another six nights in detention.

The door opened, making Charlie flinch. He closed his eyes in concentration, telling himself to not lose his head, to remain firm and not say another word until his lawyer would be present. One never knew.

When he re-opened his eyes, however, he froze. Don was standing there, behind the table that Charlie was sitting at, his arms crossed before his chest.

"Hey," Don said.

Charlie raised his eye-brows. Given that Don was the primary reason that Charlie had spent the last 20 hours in confinement, 'hey' seemed a rather inapt way to initiate conversation.

"So?" Don asked, apparently waiting for something, even though Charlie wasn't sure what it was. Don could hardly expect him to confess to the crimes they were charging him with, could he?

"So what?" he therefore asked, trying to show the same kind of irritation and reservedness that was detectable in his brother's demeanor. At the same time, he realized that his voice didn't sound as stable as he would have liked, and that his throat was very dry. He couldn't help it, though, he just couldn't figure out what was going on behind the facade of professionalism Don was hiding behind.

So maybe it was a good thing that the facade came off then.

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!" Don exploded with a suddenness that made Charlie flinch again while his brother was hitting his flat hand against the table. Once the initial shock abated, Charlie could feel his anger level increase, he felt like fighting back, like continuing the aggression. Yet, he tried to remain calm, for despite all the insecurity and confusion numbing his brain, he knew: as pissed as Don was and as much as he resented his little brother, there was a good chance that right now, he was the only person in this building to believe Charlie's story. "Why in the world would you join a group like that? You realize you're facing terrorism charges now? How on earth could you have been so stupid?!"

Despite himself, Charlie could feel the confusion in his mind making way to give the irritation he was experiencing more room. In an attempt to control it, he clenched his jaw and stared at the table in front of him, struggling to keep his breathing regular and stop his hands from trembling. The effort was enormous though, and suppressing his anger was becoming so challenging that the exertion was starting to make him sick. "Is that all you want to know?" he asked in an undertone of sarcasm that he hadn't been able to banish from his voice.

"Listen to me," Don hissed and bent down towards him, "listen very carefully. I don't know what kind of shit you did, but I'm pretty sure you weren't stupid enough to collaborate with foreign terrorist cells. I'm pretty alone with that opinion though, so you need to give me something to work with here. So unless you can give me anything specific about that side-business of your little eco group, you're gonna get into trouble so deep that not even I can get you out of there."

Charlie looked up at him at the words, and when he realized what it was that his brother was doing, he smirked, but felt his chin tremble at the effort it took to let his face show something akin to humor. Yet, it was funny somehow, wasn't it? "You really thought you would be your best choice to play the good cop?"

"Just stop it!" Don shouted. "This isn't a game, Charlie! There are lives at stake here, actual human lives, so I suggest you finally open that big old mouth of yours and start talking, it's not like you've ever had a problem with that!"

Charlie closed his eyes in a continued attempt to control his still rising anger, then stared at the table in front of him. For a moment, he was deliberating whether or not he should talk, but as long as he only said things he'd already told them yesterday, while his lawyer had been present, there could be no harm in it, right?

The next moment, he shuddered, because he realized that he was actually fearing harm being done to him this way, he was expecting them to do everything they could think of to trick some sort of confession out of him. True, he knew that Don didn't seriously believe him to be a terrorist, but he still seemed to think that Charlie had valuable information to give them, information they couldn't obtain by merely asking him in a normal conversation, so they seemed to resort to trickery and deceit in the hope of getting something, anything, that would justify more drastic actions, making uncovering the truth take a backseat. Yet, up to this very day, Charlie would have sworn to anybody who would have cared to listen that Don would never do something like that, especially not to his own brother. That conviction, however, had been lost sometime during the past 20 hours.

There was a knock at the door, and the sandy-haired agent who had conducted the interrogation yesterday was sticking his head into the room. "Don, a word?"

Upon seeing the serious expression on his colleague's face, Don stepped outside, and Charlie couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. Given Don's level of anger, it wouldn't have surprised him a lot if this had turned into a physical altercation, and Charlie knew that he had no chance against his brother in such a case. That, however, was something else that Charlie normally could have never seen his brother do to a suspect. Then again, he realized that he wasn't your usual suspect. While growing up, Don had shown his physical superiority to him for far less serious things than terrorism charges.

For a long time, nothing happened. There was no clock in here, and upon the arrest, they had taken his watch, but Charlie was sure that it was at least thirty minutes that they were leaving him there, alone. Was this another interrogation tactics? Wearing him down through the tension of waiting?

Then, finally, the door opened, far more slowly and softly than the last time, which made Charlie turn around with surprise and rising apprehension. Then, when his eyes fell on the expression on Don's face, he felt his blood freeze. He'd never seen his brother like this. His complexion was very pale and there was something stony about his features that made Charlie think of marble. Yet, it didn't fit, for the harmony that could be found in classical marble statues was missing, there was a burning fire in his eyes, a smoldering source of energy that was seething under the facade, bereaving it of its calm.

Don took a seat at the table opposite from Charlie and laid down a file before him. As he did so, Charlie noticed the tremble of his hands, and surprised, he looked back into his brother's face. He noticed that Don's nasal wings were trembling as well, and that was when he realized: Don wasn't nervous or scared, he was furious as hell.

"You know what this is?" he asked very quietly, but the anger made his voice tremble, too.

Charlie looked down at the file. It had his name on it, but it was closed. "No," he said, fighting to give his voice a firm tone.

"Yesterday, you told my colleagues that Life's Matter wasn't a terrorist organization," Don said coldly, and there was a formality in his tone that was starting to scare Charlie. This wasn't his brother he was talking to, this was an FBI agent, one that was trying to establish his guilt. "You claimed that you've never been in contact with known terrorists."

Charlie paused. "Not to my knowledge, no," he specified.

Don nodded slowly and opened the file, taking out a document of several sheets of paper stapled together in the corner. "Then I'm sure you don't mind explaining this to me," he said and put the document down in front of him.

Charlie looked down, skimming the lines and making sure that he wasn't misidentifying the document. "Did you search my office?"

Don's answer came sharper this time. "You're a suspect in a terrorist investigation, of course we searched your office. We're searching the garage and we're searching the house, so you better start talking now before it's too late."

Charlie frowned. Too late? What was that supposed to mean?

Aloud, he asked, "What happened to the right to an attorney?"

Don scoffed, and his tone was bitter when he replied, "Not even an attorney will be able to talk your way out of this."

Charlie shook his head with confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about?" Don exclaimed and finally let go of the calm facade. He grabbed the stapled papers as he continued, "I'm talking about this! How stupid do you think we are, you actually thought we wouldn't find this?"

Charlie was shaking his head, still lacking understanding. What were they doing? Was this also some interrogation tactics? But if it was, what were they trying to achieve by that?

He raised his head to study his brother, but couldn't draw a lot of conclusions from that. Don was still breathing hard from his outburst, but seemed to slowly calm down again. There was a hardness in his eyes, and something… Charlie couldn't quite put his finger on it. Strangely, it seemed kind of sad, and he was wondering... was it hurt? Disappointment?

"You know," Don spoke again, "I've always had trouble believing we were related, but this?" He shook his head, and that mysterious emotion intensified. "I just don't get it. We were raised beneath the same roof, with the same values. How can it be that I grow up to defend them while you decide to betray everything I thought we all believed in?"

He let the question hang in the air as though he was expecting an answer, but when Charlie didn't find anything to say, he continued more forcefully, "Come on, explain this to me! You were always so idealistic as a kid, and you've received so much from your country, and this is how you repay them?"

Charlie was torn between his self-imposed rule of caution to keep quiet and the ardent wish to defend himself against those vague allegations. Yet, he couldn't shake the thought that this was exactly what they were trying to achieve, to elicit some sort of confession from him by angering him with their nebulous allusions.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, thinking that nobody would be able to use that against him. He hesitated before going on, but then decided that figuring out what they were charging him with was his priority now, and as long as he only confessed to what they could prove, there wouldn't be any harm done, right? "It's true that I sent this document to a colleague of mine. But it's a mathematical analysis of the effects of different biopharming agents on the crops they're used on, on the people's health and on the environment in general. I can't see why the FBI would be interested in that."

Don shook his head with a huff. "You're so conceited. Don't you think we had our people take a look at it? They might not be certified math geniuses, but they're sufficiently competent to realize that you're helping them to build bio-chemical weaponry."

Charlie's eye-brows went up while his jaw dropped. "I'm what?"

"For G-d's sake, don't play it naive, it won't work with me, not anymore."

"I'm not playing naive, Don," Charlie said, driven by a new sense of alarm. "I sent these documents to a colleague of mine in Afghanistan to help them grow their crops. I can't imagine anyone would be able to use my analysis for weaponry."

"Save it, Charlie. Our technicians went over it all. Sure, you were clever enough to disguise it as something scientific, but it wasn't enough to fool them."

"Then why are they coming up with such foolish ideas?" Charlie exclaimed. "Don, I'm telling you, they're wrong! If they really cared to look at the analysis, they would realize what you can and can't do with it!"

"So you really want to stick with your story? You're sure that this document can't be used for weaponry?"

Charlie went over the analysis in his head, then clenched his jaw with new conviction. "Positive."

Don cast down his eyes then, shaking his head in a gesture that still seemed to be fueled by anger, but also by disappointment. "That's not what our technicians are saying."

"And you choose to believe some random technicians over me?"

Don leaned forward, and when he spoke, there was a fire in his eyes that, somewhat counter-intuitively, made shudders run down Charlie's spine. "These random technicians serve this country on a daily basis, they're far more my kin than you have ever been, and in contrast to you, they understand a thing or two about honor and loyalty." Once again, he shook his head, and Charlie could see how his jaw was clenching as well. "Have you ever stopped to think what this is gonna do to Dad? Of course he doesn't know about the evidence we found, so he still thinks this is some sort of misunderstanding. Can you imagine what this will do to him when he realizes that his own son has betrayed all the values he taught him? Or do you just not care about him, just like you didn't care about Mom?"

Charlie was staring at him. He wanted to say something, to defend himself, but the accusations were so outrageous that he couldn't find anything.

And anyway, didn't Don have a point with Mom?

"You know what," Don said as he stood, "you're the most egotistical person I've ever known. You should be ashamed of yourself, I know I am."