Disclaimer: See Chapter One.

PLEASE NOTE:

This is the alternate ending. The intended ending is posted as Chapter 6a; feel free to sample the "unhappy" ending. Final notes regarding the story: Thank you, to readers and reviewers. The support has been a motivating factor, and I'm more than pleased to finally complete this :) Thank you for hanging in with me, and a special thanks to those who left feedback. It was fun trying out Numb3rs in a fic ;)

I felt out of control. I was breathing numbers; calculations and symbols and shorthand – it was all pouring from the fast-drying marker tip, and for a brief, beautiful second I felt alive. Alone. Just the finite majesty of equations and solutions and variables and the entire process, alone with me, in my hand, on the wall, everywhere. And it was quiet, just for that long second. The work had vaulted itself across the room on every available surface, and by the time the bedsprings squeaked, I was scribbling on the dresser top.

"I finished," I told him softly. We weren't looking at each other, but I knew he was listening intently, with the kind of intensity that contracts every muscle and makes the pulse race. He waited; I rubbed my wrists. "You'll have to copy it."

The bedsprings squealed behind me, and suddenly Don was there, pulling me into a tight embrace with tears and mumbled words and something else that I didn't understand. "Charlie…. Charlie, don't do this. Please."

"I…"

"Don't think about it. God, I can't take it, Charlie. I need you. Stop thinking about it, please." He had a tight grip. I felt sad, wanted to push him off and go away and hide in a corner, but he was holding on too tightly and I didn't think I had the heart to do it. I didn't think I wanted to do anything anymore – just sit here and draw with this marker and trace the symbols and refine more and fix that one that Don had drawn just a little while ago. Or maybe I didn't. An awful chasm had divided me, at the very heart of the matter: math, and no math. A permeating calm had settled since the first terms of my equations, and it had been welcome in the whirlwind of activity, where the numbers had grown so agitated as to demand this release; I felt it now, standing here, felt it in the reluctance to move, to destroy whatever was coalescing. Don's shoulders shook against me, his hands clutching at my shirt. "Charlie, please."

Feeling like an observer, I heard myself say, "I'm sorry," and his embrace nearly crushed my ribs, for what I hoped was only emphasis. He swayed suddenly, still muttering into my hair. "Charlie, I need you. Here. Don't… god, don't ever… You can't leave me. Please, Charlie, I-I can't-" More tears, and I found myself wondering if I had ever seen him act this way, so raw and broken. I felt terrible. When I failed to answer after several long moments, he finally let go and stepped back, grasping my shoulders, staring imploringly with red-rimmed eyes and a tired frown.

I wanted to tell him I didn't mean it, that I never had. A mistake. I'd made a mistake. And at times, I had wished I hadn't made the mistake, wished it had worked as perfectly as I had theorized. Like a simple equation. But this had become much more convoluted, leaving me standing here now with Don, within the same room. Very acutely, I felt the bitter bile and the "I can't"s and the brittle despair. I felt the self-disgust and the aching need to break chalk. I wanted to add more to the work on the dresser and focus for once, just sit and focus after this hiatus and reabsorb it all. Take it all in. See what I'd missed. Had I been on a sabbatical? Had my students known something I hadn't? …Still didn't know?

Don had moved to the bed. The door stood open, and faint light poured in through the window. Eerily familiar. What did I want? Did I want to work again, just once more, before I finally decided it really was too much? I couldn't do that to Don – but neither could I walk out of here and into the street and in front of a car. This didn't feel like entrapment, but more like suspension. Nothing terribly apparent, no dominant emotions aside from a nervous anxiety. I sat down next to Don. Then the tears struck without mercy, and I was leaning against him and crying and saying how sorry I was and how I hadn't meant it but actually had and that I wouldn't do it again and god, but I needed some help getting myself back together and would he stay. Just stay, even if it was only for me to stain his shirt with saline and mucous and sweat and dry-erase ink.

But he just nodded and whispered, "Anything, buddy. Anything."

And when I woke up later, still leaning against my brother in the porous darkness of the wee hours, he blinked, and I told him, "Okay," and he just smiled.