Disclaimer: see chapter 1
Chapter 10: Making Up
Don stood when he saw Colby emerge from the elevators. A sick feeling had settled in the pit of his stomach. Since Colby had told them he'd stop by the hospital this morning to check on David while the rest of them tried to make some progress on their terrorist case, they'd been waiting anxiously for some news. The fact that Colby hadn't simply called, but chosen to deliver them in person, didn't bode well. As he was coming nearer, Don was trying to draw some conclusions from the expression on his face, but his friend's poker-face was as impenetrable as ever, the emotions behind his forehead masked further by a thick layer of weariness.
"So?" he asked when Colby had reached him.
Colby, however, waited an immensely long second until Megan had joined them, and it was only then that he spoke. "He's gonna be fine."
Don closed his eyes, feeling sick with relief and trying to prepare himself for a more detailed report. Somehow, however, he felt as though everything that might follow now was hardly meaningful after the forceful preface. Damn it, that had been a close one, far too close for comfort.
"He was awake when I arrived, but still rather weak. According to his doctors, there were no further complications during the night, so all that's left now is for his collarbone and the artery to heal. His sister is with him now, she flew in from New York last night."
"Good," Don decided, viewing the overall picture. Then, he cleared his throat, figuring he should return to his professional self. "Did they give him any estimate as to how long his recovery was going to take?"
Colby nodded slowly. "They'll decide tomorrow for how much longer he'll have to stay in the hospital, and he'll have to wear an arm sling for at least a week, but apparently, if you believe him, he might be back for desk duty in a couple of days."
Don raised his eye-brows. Judging from what they'd learned so far, that sounded rather ambitious. Then again, he knew that David was a very conscientious person, especially with regard to his job. "Let's see about that then," he replied with a certain caution. True, they could definitely use all man-power they could get on this case, but certainly not at the cost of David's health.
He was about to turn back to the files, his mind much more at rest now that he'd learned the good news, but noticed that Colby was still there at his side.
"Anything else?" he prompted.
Colby took a deep breath in, then slowly let it out, all the while staring slightly downwards at an empty spot to Don's left. "Look," he said, but didn't go on immediately. Eventually, his head came up and he looked Don right in the eye, his gaze firm and earnest. "I'm sorry for how I acted yesterday. I was out of line. I mean, I'm still not sure what to think about the fact that we give someone with connection to Life's Matter so much access, but I should have trusted your judgment. And… you know, not attacked him."
Don paused. He could tell that Colby's apology was sincere, that he understood that he couldn't just assault people like that, especially not when they were supposed to be working together. Besides, he understood that trusting people didn't come easily to Colby, so it made sense that he would still be suspicious of Charlie, especially given the rapid turn of events. And David was his partner, he was probably the one person that Colby trusted more than anyone else, there was a connection between them that was stronger than that of mere friends, there was a kind of unspoken promise between them to have each other's back, no matter what. Don knew that in such a situation, when you were worried about someone you cared about so deeply, the fear could take hold of you to such an extent that you could hardly be held accountable for your actions. Yet, he knew that this was exactly what he should be doing as Colby's supervisor, he should take appropriate actions for Colby's misdemeanor. Then again, there hadn't really been any harm done, and Charlie, too, had let it go and shown no intention of wanting to press charges.
"Apology accepted," he therefore chose the diplomatic answer, letting Colby off the hook. All the while, however, he was keenly aware that his co-worker was wrong about one thing: he'd been right in not trusting Don's judgment. If Don knew one thing about this messy case, it was that he wasn't objective with regard to his brother.
"Don?" they were interrupted then by Harvey Miller, who was waving a flash drive in front of their eyes. "I got Charlie's analysis, well, initial analysis. We should take a look at it to figure out which of our suspects to focus on."
Don was about to agree, thinking that it was a good idea, but still couldn't wrap his head around one aspect. "When did he give it to you? I thought he was gonna take a couple of days for that?"
"I dropped by CalSci this morning," Harvey explained, "and while it's true that he's not done yet, he's put some more hours of work in it last night, so he could give us some preliminary findings."
While Don was still processing that information, Colby once again felt the need to make sure they weren't losing themselves in a wild-goose chase. "And you're sure this analysis will help us?" he asked Harvey point-blank.
The NSA agent gave them a lenient smile. "I don't think you understand the extent of Charlie's abilities. He's been invaluable for us on numerous cases in the past. If you'd seen him perform like I have, you wouldn't be asking such a question." He paused, but then added the sentence that felt a little like a low-aimed blow, "And you wouldn't be suspecting him of working against us."
Don was pressing his lips together, still not sure what to think. The only explanation seemed to be that there were two different Charlies: there was the one hiding away in his ivory tower, and then there was the one who would donate his time and energy to fight the evil in the world, like Don and his colleagues were doing on a daily basis. And Don had to admit, this new side of Charlie, the crime-fighter, fitted much better the notion of the idealistic do-gooder he still had of his younger brother, it just didn't fit the egotistical recluse who hadn't given a damn about his dying mother. Then, however, when his eyes fell on Colby, he remembered what excuses he'd been making for his fellow agent only a minute ago. He knew, he'd learned this lesson the hard way, that it wasn't easy to see a loved one suffer, and he knew that sometimes, you just didn't have any strength left to do what you knew in your heart to be right. Sometimes, fear turned off your common sense, and sometimes, you made mistakes and let people down that you had always thought to protect with everything in your power. It was the world's course, the crux of human existence. Human beings failed every once in a while, and once they did, all they could do was try to redeem themselves and hope to find forgiveness.
Charlie was staring hard at the blackboard, at the network that was assembling before his eyes, trying to put the finger on what he was missing. It felt as though the answer was right there in front of him, screaming at him, but it was elusive, he could never grasp it, no matter how hard he stared.
"Hey," a soft female voice made him turn around. For a moment, the relief of seeing a friendly face instead of the cold green that today was giving him nothing in return made him feel at ease, but it was closely followed by a pang of a guilty conscience. He couldn't allow himself to get distracted from this.
"You seem busy," Amita remarked.
Charlie swallowed. "I am," he said truthfully, and the guilty conscience was multiplied by two. "Why, what's up?"
Amita shook her head with a faint smile on her lips, one that seemed more sad than anything else. "Nothing. I just felt we haven't been talking much ever since you got arrested, that's all."
Charlie bit his lip. Yes, she was probably right about that. Ever since he'd started working on this case, there had been little room for anything else on his mind, including his budding relationship with Amita. He remembered how Don had referred to her as his girlfriend, and it was true, he did like her a lot. He just wasn't sure whether he was ready to commit to her the way she deserved. There was so much going on in his life right now, with his job at the university and all the projects he was working on outside of that, especially his Cognitive Emergence Theory. He just didn't have the energy for a proper relationship at the moment, and it was unfair to her to just string her along. On the other hand, Amita, too, had a lot on her plate, with her second doctorate in astrophysics, which made it hard to find the time to go on dates together. And while doing that… it just seemed so forced, so complicated, and Charlie couldn't rid himself of the impression that things might be much more comfortable between them if they went back to just being friends. Then again, he was reluctant to broach the subject, for as much as his mind kept telling him that they were both just not ready for a relationship, he felt in his heart that no matter how complicated things were between them, he just wasn't willing to let go of her.
When this case is finished, he made a compromise with himself. Then we'll work this out and see where we stand.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It's just this case that's been eating up a lot of my time."
"I noticed," Amita said, and her smile grew a little more genuine before it was accompanied by a frown. "I have to say, I'm still not sure I get it. Why would you sacrifice so much of your time to work on that? I thought you said you didn't want to get tricked into being their pawn."
Charlie sighed. Yes, he'd said that. And still, he was standing here trying to work out this social network. "Things have changed," he claimed, even though he wasn't sure whether that was true.
"How so?" Amita asked, seeming genuinely interested. And Charlie had to admit, as much as his mind was telling him that he shouldn't get distracted from the problem on his board, he also had to concede that he hadn't been on top of his game in this entire case. Maybe it was time to clear up the things that had been weighing on his mind and slowing down his thought processes.
"Have you sorted things out with your brother?" Amita went on when he stayed silent, and he could barely hold back a huff. Sorting things out between them seemed like the task of a century – after you had entered a parallel universe, one where a reconciliation was still possible.
"Not really, no."
"But you trust him now that he's not using or manipulating you," Amita supposed, stating it like a thesis, one that she seemed to have some reason to believe was true.
Charlie was silent, biting his lip. "I don't know," he eventually admitted. True, he felt like he could trust his brother, he'd always felt that way, but after everything that had happened, after Don's accusations, after the ups and downs they'd been through, he just didn't know what to believe anymore. Maybe Don was indeed using him. Maybe he was just trying to play the brother card, maybe he was pushing his buttons to get him to collaborate with them, maybe he still thought that Charlie knew more than he'd told them, but it didn't matter. "I still have to help them."
Amita had drawn her eye-brows together, still not looking as though she understood. "Why?"
Charlie shrugged, indicating the network analysis behind him. "They're suspected of terrorism," was his answer, as though it was that easy.
"But I thought you didn't believe that the charges were justified?"
Charlie sighed, running his hand through his hair. "I didn't. And I don't. I mean… I'm not sure." He sighed again. "And that's the thing. I can't be sure. I didn't think they were dangerous, but then they go and shoot Agent Sinclair, and as far as I know, he's still in the hospital. And if… if I had finished the network analysis before that, we might have seen that there was something off about Rivers's position in the network, so they would have known to be on their guard. I mean, I'm not saying that this was my fault, but I definitely could have done more to prevent this from happening."
Amita regarded him with compassion. She hesitated for a moment, then decided to speak her mind after all, "I get why you think you're somehow responsible for what happens in this case, but you're not, not really. And I also understand that you think you can help people with that, but I don't think you've thought this through. At the rate you're going… I don't think you've had a lot of breaks during the past couple of days, and frankly, you don't look like you've been sleeping a whole lot either. I'm just saying that this doesn't seem to be a healthy input-output ratio. I mean, maybe your analysis would have put the agents on guard, but they know they should be on their guard anyway."
Charlie gave a small sigh at that and a wry smile. "I know," he said. "And I'm aware that I might be doing more good with my time if for instance I tried to further enhance that biopharming analysis for Professor Amin, but… I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because," Charlie said with a little shrug, accompanying the gesture with a faint smile, as though he was meaning to apologize. And somehow, that was what he was trying to do, because he knew that his answer wasn't a very satisfying one, he wasn't even sure whether he understood it himself. He was, however, one hundred per cent certain to have found the right answer, the reason that made it impossible for him to turn his back on this case. "Because they're not afraid of lashing out at people who are in their way, they're dangerous. They already hurt Agent Sinclair, and there's a chance they're gonna hurt Don next."
As Don was slowly getting out of his car, he became aware that he wasn't even sure which entrance he should use. It had been a while since he'd last been here, and he only needed the fingers of one hand to count the number of times that he'd come here since his mother's funeral. Today, however, the urge of visiting her had been so great that he just hadn't been able to resist it, and that was probably because it had been building up over the course of the day, ever since his conversation with Colby.
The iron gate was screeching when Don opened it, disturbing the silence that had laid itself over this sacred place. There were only few people here, and so, it couldn't slip Don's attention that his mother already had a visitor.
He stopped abruptly. Charlie was standing before the grave, some distance away, his back towards him. He hadn't seen Don yet, so there was still time to turn around and come back later. The cemetery was definitely no place for another argument.
Yet, Don felt himself drawn in the opposite direction, towards his brother and his mother's grave.
He was still at a couple of yards' distance when he noticed that something was wrong. He couldn't see Charlie's face from this angle, but his posture seemed unnatural, it seemed stiff and tense, but it was only when he noticed the slight rocking of his shoulders that he realized: Charlie was crying.
He stopped, again. The urge to turn around and leave was back, and it was strong. This wasn't right. This was obviously something between Charlie and their mother, something that Charlie needed to resolve with only her and himself. It seemed to Don as though he was invading Charlie's private space, as though he was spying on him doing something that he had no business to watch. Yet, he did have a business, didn't he? Charlie was his brother, and they were standing at their mother's grave. If there was anyone who had a right to be here, it was Don.
Before Don could deliberate on the subject further, Charlie, apparently having become aware of the presence in his back, turned around. For a moment, they were set in stone, and Don had time to take in his brother's face that was wet with tears before Charlie hastily wiped the moisture away.
"Don!" he said, almost exclaimed, but his voice was choked. "What are you doing here?"
Don regarded his brother's glittering face, the red-rimmed eyes, the pain in their depths, and he understood. "Same as you," he gave back in a low voice. "Feeling sorry."
Confusion was added to the conglomeration of pain and grief and embarrassment in Charlie's eyes. "What would you feel sorry for?"
Don didn't answer, just kept looking into Charlie's grief-stricken face, into the sorrow in his eyes that made it seem as though he was looking right into his brother's soul, and he felt the answers fall into place, felt how everything was making sense. It was a bittersweet moment, the clarification bringing with it a leaden feeling of guilt.
"Let's go someplace where we can talk without disturbing anyone," he said quietly and put an arm around his brother's shoulders.
Charlie let him lead the way, towards a bench just outside the cemetery wall. It was standing under an old tree whose low branches were protecting them from the setting sun, rendering the place shady and pleasantly cool.
They'd made their way here in silence, a silence that had been agreeable at first, but now that they had sat down, it was growing thicker the longer it became, and the thicker it grew, the harder did it become for Don to free himself of its grasps. Yet, he knew that he had to, he knew that the moment had come to resolve this once and for all.
"She was never upset with you," he finally said, staring ahead in concentration. He couldn't allow himself to go wrong, he needed to make this right. "She always understood."
He could feel Charlie shake his head beside him. "I shouldn't have left her alone," he contradicted, his voice thin and husky. "Any of you."
"You were there during her first chemotherapy," Don reminded him, remembering how he himself had been torn on whether or not to return to L.A. at the time. It hadn't really been possible work-wise, and his parents had told him to look after himself and not act rashly, so in the end, he hadn't come back home, not then. "You simply had no strength left to cope with it when the cancer returned. She understood that."
There was a huff beside him, then Charlie's bitter voice, "She was pretty much alone with that opinion."
"Maybe," Don replied calmly. "But it's her voice that counts." He took a deep breath, then swallowed before he finally said, "She never blamed you, so I don't have any right to blame you either. I shouldn't have said those things yesterday, and not just then. I'm sorry I've been so hard on you these past few years."
He'd made an effort and turned his head around towards his brother at his last words, studying his profile. Now, he could see the frown form on Charlie's forehead, furrows of confusion. "But you have every right to blame me. I should have been there for her, like you were, I should have cared for her. But I… I was just too weak, I just couldn't take it, but I know I should have tried harder. I should have been strong, like you."
Don shook his head. He wanted to believe in his brother's words, he did, but he had to realize that he could no longer pretend. He owed it to his family to finally come forward and let all masks fall. "I wasn't strong," he admitted what he knew in his heart to be the truth. He cleared his throat when he felt a lump in there, like some oversized tumor that had decided to finally come to light. "I ran away, just like you did."
"But –" Charlie tried to protest, but Don wouldn't let him. He needed to say this, now, it was long overdue anyway.
"I should have looked after Dad," he said rather thickly and swallowed, trying to give his voice its strength back. It worked somehow. "After Mom had died, I should have stayed. But I couldn't, I just couldn't see him mourn." He swallowed again, forcing himself to go through with this until the end. "But that wasn't even the worst thing I did."
Charlie's big brown eyes were looking at him, lacking understanding. "What are you talking about?"
Don took a deep breath. "I didn't just turn away from Dad, I tried to make you responsible for everything on top of it, and I..." He paused, looking into his brother's eyes. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for that. I don't know where exactly I went wrong, but it felt so natural at the time, and then I just couldn't go back anymore. It was just so easy, as long as I didn't forgive you for abandoning Mom, I had a reason not to go by the house, a reason not to visit Dad. And when it became better, when the grief became less… I just couldn't turn it off. Forgiving you would have meant that I'd been wrong, that I wouldn't have had a good reason to leave you and Dad alone with this, so I couldn't do that. It was so much easier to resent you rather than to resent myself. So when I started visiting Dad again, something in my mind kept telling me that I had to hold on to that kind of resentment, but I didn't have any right to do that."
Charlie wasn't looking at him, but even in profile, Don could see that his words hadn't convinced him, that he was still trying to make sense of it all, and he couldn't very well blame him for that. The epiphany had been some time in coming for Don, too, and up until now, he had managed quite well to keep the truth buried. He'd chosen to keep his focus on his brother's wrongdoings, which, due to their extravagant nature, had admittedly been more easily to spot than Don's own. He'd chosen to forget about the fact how he himself had turned his back on his family, diving back into his job with an energy that had been almost obsessive, and leaving it to his brother and his father to pick up the broken pieces of their family and keep it alive.
That had to end now. "I should have stayed with Dad when Mom died," he repeated, "I should have been there for him, but I wasn't. You were."
Charlie was shaking his head, the despair still visible in his eyes. "But it's not the same thing. Maybe you weren't around as much afterwards, but you never shut yourself off completely. Besides, I didn't do anything for Dad. You took care of Mom, you helped her eat and wash and everything. Dad kept doing most of the cleaning and cooking even after Mom's death."
"But you were there," Don insisted. "That's what matters."
He bit his lip when his comment made his brother tear up again, and it didn't help much that Charlie instantly tried to wipe the moisture away.
He put his arm back around his shoulders, bringing his head close to Charlie's. "You need to let it go, buddy. Mom understood you, just like Dad understood me. We may both have made mistakes, but that doesn't matter, because at the end of the day, we're still a family, and we forgive each other."
Charlie's head came up, his eyes looking at him, still shining brightly. Don could read the question there even before Charlie put it into words, and that was probably a good thing, because the whisper was so low and so choked that he had trouble discerning the words. "Do you?"
Don fought the impulse to once again bite his lip and tried not to think about how wrong the question felt. He knew that he had about as much reason to ask for Charlie's forgiveness as his brother had the other way round, but he knew that another apology wasn't what his brother wanted, what he needed to hear at this point. So instead, he tried to give his voice a firm tone and replied, "I told you, I have no right to blame you."
He could see that the answer didn't appease his brother, so he quickly added, "But even if you think I do, it doesn't matter anymore, for I'm done blaming you. So yeah, I forgive you."
He saw Charlie bite his lip and nod, first slowly, then with more conviction, and Don felt that maybe, finally, they'd managed to do something he wouldn't have thought possible anymore, to put this behind themselves and to repair that deep rift that had been separating their worlds.
"Come on," he said softly and gave his brother's shoulders a tight squeeze, "let's go home."