Disclaimer: see chapter 1

Chapter 9: Taking a Risk

Don was nervously drumming his fingers on the steering-wheel, pondering what to do next. The logical step was to get out of his car and go inside. That move, however, didn't seem very inviting to him. It had been a long day and he really didn't feel like fighting, and even though it wasn't his intention to confront his brother – at least not in an aggressive manner – he knew that with Charlie and him, conversations usually ended in a row, no matter what either of their intentions had been.

He sighed. He hadn't come all the way just to turn back again. He could at least say hi to his dad. Yes, he'd do that, and then take things from there. Maybe Charlie wasn't even home, who knew?

His dad looked up from his book when he heard him open the door, and when he saw him, the reading glasses were removed from his face and exchanged for a happy beam. "Don! I didn't expect to see you tonight, what a nice surprise! Have you already eaten? There's still some casserole left in the kitchen, Charlie didn't really eat much at dinner."

Don grimaced. He could imagine why. "Did he tell you about what happened today?"

The joyful expression left his father's face. "He did. Any news on David?"

Don shook his head. "We'll know more tomorrow."

He sighed, peering towards the kitchen and pondering whether he should first appease his rumbling stomach or seek out his brother, and even though his mind was telling him that Charlie wasn't going to go anywhere anytime soon, he still felt he shouldn't put this off any longer.

"Where is he?"

He could see that his dad was about to smile and instantly trying to hide the fact, and he didn't know what to think about it. Yes, Don was about to talk to Charlie, or try to at least, and yes, he was keenly aware that their dad had been trying to bring them closer together for years. However, he wasn't sure whether that wish had any chance of being fulfilled tonight, or whether they were just about to enlarge the rupture in their relationship further.

"He's in the garage," his dad answered, "working on your case."

Don raised his eye-brows. Charlie had spent pretty much the entire day at the FBI, he still didn't have enough? "You sure?"

"That's what he told me. Why? Is there a problem with that?"

"No," Don quickly replied. "I'm just surprised, that's all."

"You're surprised that your brother has buried himself in a mathematical problem?"

"One that can be solved and might actually help people? Yeah, I am," Don said with some bitterness, remembering how Charlie had locked himself up in the garage to obsess over an unsolvable math problem while their mother had been dying. An instant later, he ran his hands across his face, exasperated. This had been a mistake, he wasn't up for this. He was hungry, he was weary, and he still couldn't stop thinking about David. He wasn't ready for this, definitely not when he was still holding a four-year-old grudge against his brother.

"So how has it been so far, working with him?" his father asked in what Don guessed to be a deliberate overlooking of his new-found wish to leave.

Don sighed. "Okay, I guess," he muttered and made his way to the kitchen. If his dad was intent on engaging him in conversation, they could at least do that while he was filling his stomach.

"Okay?" Alan echoed as he came up behind him.

Don busied himself with putting the casserole in the microwave and shrugged. "His math did come in pretty handy. He certainly knows his way around this decryption stuff."

"You sound surprised."

"I'm not," Don said and had to realize it sounded a tad defensive. The next moment, he had to realize that his statement wasn't even true. "Alright, I am. Did he…" He hesitated. If their dad wasn't aware of Charlie's NSA affiliations, Don knew it wasn't his place to tell him, so he needed to approach the subject a little more carefully. "Did he tell you how he got released?"

"Of course. The NSA intervened."

"And you know why?"

His dad shrugged, but Don could see the answer clearly written on his face: yes, their dad knew, but Charlie hadn't just told him about this NSA stuff upon being released, that wasn't when their dad had learned about this, no, his silent shrug and the guilty expression on his face were telling a whole different story.

"You knew all along?!" it burst out of Don when he'd found his speech again. "You've known about this NSA stuff this whole time and you never bothered mentioning it to me?"

"Your brother asked me not to," his dad replied with calm sternness. "Besides, I didn't even know it was the NSA, not for sure. Charlie's always been very vague about his consulting work."

Don shook his head and told himself to direct his attention towards the casserole, which, as the microwave had informed them by a high-pitched pling, had been sufficiently heated. Still, he couldn't ban the thought from his mind. Charlie had always told them everything that was going on in that big curly head of his, in fact, that had been one of his more annoying habits. The fact that he'd been able to hide such a gigantic secret from them, or at least from Don… he just didn't know what to think about that.

He'd hardly sat down at the dining-room table with his dad and started eating when the door that was connecting the house to the garage opened and Charlie entered, making Don almost choke on his food. Suddenly, he felt like an intruder, a bit like Goldilocks.

"You weren't gonna eat this, right?" he asked when he'd managed to swallow the chunk down.

Charlie stared at him for a second, his eyes clearly showing Don the answer before he lied and said, "No, go ahead."

"I guess I'll go to bed then. Good night," their dad said abruptly and retreated.

Charlie looked after him with a frown. "What was that?" he asked when they'd heard the door of his bedroom fall shut.

Don shrugged and tried to hide the fact how uneasy his father's departure had made him feel. "A rather crude attempt to get us to talk, if you ask me."

"About what?" Charlie asked, still frowning.

Don gave him another half-shrug, tilting his head thoughtfully. "I don't think he cares." He swallowed down another bite, but somehow, the food didn't taste as good anymore now that he felt like he'd stolen it. "Why don't you grab yourself a fork and dig in, too?" he therefore offered.

Charlie, however, shook his head no. "You eat it, I'm not really that hungry. Have you heard anything about Agent Sinclair?"

For a moment, Don stopped chewing, not sure whether Charlie was trying to be nice or actually cared or was merely trying to ruin his appetite. Then, he simply shook his head as an answer.

"That can't be easy," Charlie murmured softly.

Don sighed deeply, but tried not to lose his optimism about David's condition. "It's not," he then confirmed. He was silent for a moment, then decided that he wouldn't get a better chance than this, that this was in fact something he should have said earlier. "But it still doesn't make it okay for Colby to just attack you like that. I'm sorry for how he came at you, he can be a bit of a hothead sometimes." He hesitated before following through with this, but knew he just had to make sure. "You're okay though, right?"

"It's nothing," Charlie rejected his concern, even though Don noticed that he was avoiding eye-contact. "He just startled me."

They both were silent for a while, but Don could tell that there was something weighing on Charlie's mind, so he decided to wait for him to come forward. When he did, however, Don was surprised not little.

"Thanks."

He looked up at Charlie lacking understanding, and when Charlie seemed to realize that, he added in just as low a voice as before, "You know, for stopping him."

Don frowned. "Of course," he said, refraining from telling his brother that he hadn't just done that for his sake, but also for Colby's.

They were silent again, and again, Don felt there was something else Charlie wanted to say. It wasn't until Don had put the last fork in his mouth though that he finally chose to speak. "I didn't want to say anything at the office, because I wasn't sure how Agent Granger was gonna react, and I wasn't entirely certain, I thought I might be mistaken. But I've done some thinking about this and… I know Marcy, the girl that he says was part of the shooting. She was one of the two people who first greeted me when I came to their meeting Monday night, and I… I really can't see her as a terrorist."

Don stood from his chair, taking the emergency exit by taking his plate to the kitchen and putting it in the dish-washer before he'd say something that would come out too aggressively. Thus, there was only some sarcasm left in his voice when he returned. "And that's something you can see after, what? Five minutes of small-talk?"

"Fifteen," Charlie corrected him levelly.

"Oh, fifteen! That's okay then. Then of course she must be completely innocent. Why don't you tell that to David when you get the chance – if you get the chance?"

"I never said she was completely innocent!" Charlie exclaimed. "But there's quite a large range between 'completely innocent' and committing terrorist attacks! Maybe they felt threatened when your agents came after them, maybe it was some kind of knee-jerk reaction."

"And you really think that people who start shooting at other people as a knee-jerk reaction aren't people we should consider as suspects?" Don gave back and shook his head. "Why do you keep defending them? I thought you didn't even know them that well, so then why can't you just take a look at the evidence?"

There was a fire in the look that Charlie gave him back. "I think we've established that evidence can be misleading," he said with brimming emotion. "It's true I don't really know them personally, but I get what it is they're doing. They're a group of eco-activists, Don, they're not driven by violence or vengeance or greed for power or… whatever. They called themselves Life's Matter for a reason, lives matter to them, all lives."

Don raised his eye-brows. "You do realize though that names can be misleading, too, right? I think you know that French Fries don't really originate from France, and I don't think a lot of people would say that the Democratic Republic of Congo is particularly democratic."

"Look, I get it," Charlie claimed. "You're surrounded by violence every day, so you see terrorists everywhere. And you're right that I may not know these people as individuals, but I know their kind, and I understand them, because they're my peers. Most of the groups members are students, or they work in academia or as scientists. They use science to guide them, knowledge and logic and reason, and they use those things in an attempt to make the world a better place. Acts of terrorism are diametrically opposed to that idea."

"And what about shooting federal agents? I guess that's okay then, because everything that comes from this evil, narrow-minded government is the enemy, right?" He saw that Charlie had opened his mouth, but he wouldn't let him interrupt him, not now. "And these people are your peers? People that won't hesitate for a second to get me and my colleagues killed?"

"I don't think they were planning to hurt anyone –"

"And since they weren't planning to do so, it's okay to shoot at us?!" Don interrupted him with barely contained anger that was stemming from a feeling of hurt. The fact that there were people out there who would hate him and his colleagues for the work they were doing, for putting themselves out there on a daily basis and making so many sacrifices to keep the rest of the population safe, had always been a hurtful one. But to see that now his own brother, someone he'd believed to look up at him, was sympathizing with such people was far worse, and it was shaking the foundations of his world.

"You can't deny the fact that they shot at David," he went on, "and I don't care what their reasons were, you'll never hear me say that they were right in doing so. They're dangerous, Charlie, and being scientists doesn't make them saints, and it doesn't make them right."

Charlie drew his eye-brows together. "Are you listening to me? I'm not saying they can't be wrong or –"

"Oh, good," Don interrupted him, "we can agree on something then. Listen, Charlie, why don't you stick to your own job and leave it to me how to conduct a terrorist investigation!"

"I don't want to take over your investigation, I'm just asking you to keep an open mind and let more than only one interpretation count!"

"We are keeping an open mind, but we can't just rule someone out as a suspect because you think they're good people, we still need to interrogate them and make sure! But you don't get that, do you? This isn't academia where you play around all day long and make up theories that don't have any impact on the real world, this is the real world, where all your actions have reactions, and where you can't just hide from the responsibility of making a decision!"

"I understand that –"

"The hell you do! Every time things get rough, you seal yourself off in your garage and let the world outside go its course without so much as a thought of anyone other than yourself! You just retreat to your ivory tower and close your eyes and ears from the truth, just like you did when Mom was dying! You have no idea what it's like to deal with real life problems, so don't you dare telling me how to do my job!"

With that, he turned around and stormed out of his childhood home, feeling that he should have known better than to come here.