Author's Note: Thanks for all of your continued reviews – I appreciate the support Keep them coming and I'll keep writing! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Everything seemed very foggy. His limbs felt lifeless, his head nearly empty of thought – and he felt sad. Incredibly sad.
Still lying in a coma at LA Central, Don Eppes' mind was somewhere else entirely. He wasn't aware that he was so badly injured. He wasn't aware that he was in a coma. He had no idea that for nearly a week, his family and friends had sat vigil by his bedside, willing him to wake up. He had no idea that Merrick had been there to visit, that the head of the FBI had called to check on his condition, or that the doctors were increasingly worried that he had severe brain damage. For those six days since he'd been shot and flown by Mercy Flight over the city to the best trauma ward in Los Angeles, Don had been completely oblivious to the outside world. His body, fearing total collapse had shut down everything – including as much of his brain as possible, to cope with the swelling there – and the drugs that the doctors had given him had only helped that process along.
But now, Don Eppes – son, brother, friend, boss, FBI agent – was slowly becoming aware of something at least. His body wasn't quite ready to wake up yet, but the swelling had gone down enough to allow more brain functioning. The first part of his mind to work again was the imagination center, providing the injured agent with a way to cope with what was going on.
So Don found himself in a dense bank of fog, blinking at the fine mist, yet feeling neither cold nor warm. He was just simply there. And he was sad. And tired. Very tired. His body didn't feel right – his legs and arms were almost feather-light and he could recall nothing of how he'd come to be there, standing in the fog.
The part of him that would always be FBI – that had always been observant and curious, demanding questions - was the first to flare to life. Don glanced around, but all he could see was the wall of fog, so he looked down, trying to ascertain what was going on. He noted his white dress shirt, tie missing, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, but the shirt was damaged – it had a hole in the right shoulder, below his collarbone. Don stuck one finger in it – he'd seen such holes before – the perfect size for a bullet – but there was no blood. He frowned, but having no logical explanation for it, his eyes continued down. He was wearing his favorite pair of jeans and his fingers automatically moved to brush over where the butt of his gun should be, tucked safely in his holster. His body stilled when his fingers met nothing but air. He glanced down. The gun wasn't there – but the holster was. A quick check also revealed that while his handcuff pouch was also still there, it too was empty. Don frowned – he rarely went anywhere unarmed. FBI agents were often on duty even when they were off duty.
The surprise of finding he was unarmed made him nervous, which seemed to war with his feelings of sadness and exhaustion.
"Where am I?" he questioned aloud. Under his feet he found gray concrete. Frustrated, he decided that moving was his best option. The sensation of trying to walk was all off though – it felt more like gliding and it made Don sick to his stomach. He couldn't tell just how far he'd gone because of the thick fog, but it couldn't have been more than a few feet when he came across a tall metal pole, wires anchoring it to the concrete. It was thin and was buried in a block of concrete. A lightning rod. That seemed odd because lightning rods were reserved for the top of buildings, and this one seemed to be fairly industrial – something Don had seen from helicopters and a few unforgettable roof-top chases while in Fugitive Recovery. The memories coincided with a sudden breeze and the fog slowly began to lift.
Don glanced around, just barely able to make out the shape of another lightning rod a few yards away – and there was a transformer and a small hut-like building that no doubt housed something important that needed to be kept out of the elements. He was standing on the top of the building. It seemed that as his realization was growing, the fog was thinning. Soon enough, Don could see the ledge and the lights of a city blinked below him in the dusk that came before night. Don was surprised. What was he doing on the top of a high-rise? Worse yet, he didn't recognize the skyline. If he'd been in LA… But apparently, he wasn't. Other things seemed off. From experience, he knew that it was windy as hell on the top of skyscrapers. There was none except for the gentle breeze that had blown the thick fog away.
Growing more concerned, Don racked his brain, trying desperately to figure out what was going on. What had happened? Where was he? How had he gotten on top of a building in another city?
After a few minutes of stumbling thoughts, Don let his nature take over.
"What do you remember last?" It was his own voice. His Special Agent Eppes voice – the one he used with his team or with a victim or a suspect. That made sense. So he thought about the question.
It was hard. Everything seemed to be either covered in cobwebs or locked behind doors, but slowly, slowly he remembered.
It was morning – his team had just arrived back from a raid – they were in the office. Uncharacteristically, David had already started complaining about wrap up paperwork. Don hadn't been looking forward to it himself, but it wasn't like TV – the life of an FBI agent was rife with long periods of investigation and paperwork, peppered with brief rushes of adrenaline when they were in the field. The office had just settled down, his agents lapsing into silence, the only sound was the soft scribble of pens on paper and tap of fingers on keyboards. He'd been on his way to drop his gear when Special Agent Lynch, who had a few questions for him over a similar case they'd shared a few months back, had stopped him.
Then Charlie had arrived, still with a bit of chalk-dust in his hair, but spouting about the bank investigation that had been handed to them earlier in the week. His younger brother wanted to go to the bank – wanted to take a look at the computer system because he had a theory it was an inside job. It was a low impact case – just an attempt at stolen information that had thus far failed, and with the bank in complete compliance with the FBI, Don had agreed to take Charlie to the bank. A longing, almost begging look from Megan had prompted him to ask her to come. David had pinned his boss with a look of complete disbelief and betrayal when Don had dropped Megan's paperwork on his desk, handing his own stack off to Colby. Don had smiled sweetly. That would teach David to stay away from his desk chair for good. He hoped.
All of the details seemed so clear – Charlie rattling on about one of Larry's new theories while on the way out of the building, Megan's soft whisper of thanks, his own casual search for information on Amita's well-being. It all seemed like moments ago. He remembered getting out of the Suburban at the bank and only realizing then that he was still in his Kevlar from the earlier raid. Of course, Charlie had noticed, looking worried.
The Kevlar vest seemed to set something off in Don's mind. Suddenly, his chest began to ache. Wrapping one arm protectively around his mid-section, he braced his other hand on the lightning rod for support. "What is going on here?" he questioned aloud. He felt like he'd gone ten rounds with a bear – his ribs aching unbelievably. Confused, Don pulled at the white dress shirt, un-tucking it and pulling it up, baring his abdomen. Don blinked in confused concern as he noted the myriad of bruising covering his chest, punctuated by four dark spots. He'd seen them before. Bullet bruising – the after effects of a bullet stopped by Kevlar.
That brought everything crashing back, and he relived the scene in the bank, agonizing moment by agonizing moment. Each tortured look on Charlie's face seemed burned into his mind. There was the sickening feeling of fear as Don remembered trying to get between Charlie and that bullet and the sudden realization that he'd failed. Which was strange, because now he remembered the bullet striking him. His hand dropped the hem of his shirt, flying up to touch the hole in his shoulder. Pain blossomed there. It was a pain he was familiar with – the pain of a gunshot wound. So how then had Charlie still been shot? He remembered falling, remembered Charlie trying to catch him, screaming his name – but he also clearly remembered seeing blood on Charlie. He closed his eyes, trying to focus. The blood had been on Charlie's arm.
That suddenly seemed to lift a weight off of Don's chest. His arm. Charlie had been shot in the upper arm. Unless the bullet had hit a main artery and he'd bled out, then Charlie should be fine. Don sagged against the lightning rod in relief. He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting back tears.
Unbidden, there was a voice in the back of his head though, that wouldn't let him rest. "You can't trust that Don. Don't be foolish. After all your training, you would just leave it up to one, pain filled memory that your baby brother is ok?" The voice was his. It was the part of him that was all FBI agent and protective big brother rolled into one. It was his conscience – the voice that drove him when he felt like giving up – the voice that encouraged him to get the truth – to look past the easy explanations. It was the voice that had helped him survive childhood – that had helped him not hate Charlie or his parents. It was the voice that ordered him to do his best during baseball games when no one was in the stands to watch him. It was the voice that realistically told him that baseball wasn't going to be where he made his mark. It was the voice that told him that he had to be his own man – that he had to really make something of himself – that he had to prove to the world that he wasn't just the brother of an absolute genius. It was also the voice that told him not to be jealous – the voice that told him to be patient and to forgive.
"Are you listening to yourself? Convincing yourself that Charlie is really safe? Could you really see him? Were you sure he wasn't injured elsewhere? Can you really leave it up to chance? Get it together Eppes. Your family needs you."
It wasn't the first time he'd given himself such a lecture.
After hearing his father's tortured voice on the phone, revealing his mother's illness, Don hadn't known what to do. There was a small part of him that wanted to stick it to his parents – after all, they hadn't been there for him really – the last time he'd seen them was when he'd graduated from Quantico. Things had been fine at first, but when Alan had found out he was taking a position in Fugitive Recovery, he'd been furious. Don had realized later that his father had just been afraid. Afraid of what might happen to his son. But Don had taken it as another sign of just how little his father knew about him and just how much his father hated his chosen profession. Things had only escalated during those few years – Don's phone calls home were very infrequent, and for that he felt a bit of guilt – after all, he knew it was hurting them, especially his mother. It had taken him almost two months to tell them he was stationed in Albuquerque, no longer in Fugitive Recovery. And he'd never really told them about Kim. So when he'd hesitated on what to do regarding his mother's cancer, the good part of him gave him a lashing he'd never had before. He'd been on a plane that night to LA – his transfer already in progress, a moving company hired to pack and transport his belongings. Kim had stayed behind.
Don looked up at the lightning rod, wondering why his brain had conjured it up. At this point, he knew none of this was real – that he was either dying or lying injured in a hospital
somewhere, but why the roof of the building? He made his way to the edge and looked down. It was strange, but he was sure he could feel his father and brother somewhere below him, perhaps in the building.
Of course. That made sense. He'd never been much for symbolism, but at Quantico, everyone took a course on serial killers. A whole section of the course had been on the clues that serial killers left behind – what would ultimately be what helped them be caught. Symbolism had been heavily talked about – many serial killers were trying to show the world something – it was up to the FBI to figure out what that something was.
He realized that the lightning rods were him, the building his family. It was his constant effort to keep them safe – to prevent them from coming to harm in any way. He'd rather take the brunt of any storm – would rather be the lightning catcher if that meant they were safe.
"So, I have to get out of here…have to wake up. Have to make sure Charlie's ok. Dad…. Dad will be devastated if I let Charlie get hurt…get killed."
The guilt was heavy. Almost as thick as the fog that had surrounded him before. All of that effort, and he'd still managed to let Charlie get hurt – and not just physically. A feeling of anger surged up in Don. Would it always be like this?
If Don had refused to let Charlie continue to help him as an FBI consultant, then this wouldn't have happened. They may have never been in that bank at all. But he couldn't say no. He had wanted to at first – partly for this very reason. Ever since the incident with the sniper, Don had wanted Charlie far away from his work in the FBI. There was also the familiar tickle of jealousy and uncertainty. Did he need Charlie to do his job well? Did he need his genius brother to be successful? Would Charlie eclipse him there as well? In the only world that Don had ever had to himself? The rational part of Don had pushed it all away. He had new rules for Charlie to keep him safe and the good FBI agent in him forced him to put aside his insecurities for the greater good – especially considering that Charlie really only helped with part of his case load – there were plenty of cases that he and his team handled that had no need for any math consulting. His high case closure rates weren't only due to Charlie. They were due to the dedication and hard work of himself and his team. Still, it had been intensely hard for him at first, to share that world with someone else.
He didn't regret it – at least not completely. Besides being terrified that he'd nearly gotten Charlie killed, the experience beside that hadn't been bad at all. In fact, he and Charlie were closer now than they had ever been. Even better was that both Charlie and Alan had the chance to see that Don was not only good at what he did, but he was well respected and well thought of – and despite the inherent risks associated with the job and the long hours he put in, Don could see that his father was slowly beginning to see that the FBI wasn't quite so evil as he thought it was, and that Don wasn't completely out of his mind for giving it his heart and soul. There was a sharp pain in Don's chest – but it had nothing to do with his injuries – it had everything to do with the fact that it had taken his mother's illness and subsequent death to bring them to this point, and even after that it had been touch and go for a while.
Don squeezed his eyes shut, trying to picture his mother's face. Lately, it had been becoming harder and harder to make out the details, despite his acuity with memories.
He missed her more than he could admit. He'd always missed her. From the day they'd found out that Charlie was a literal genius who would need as much fostering as possible, Don had begun to miss his mother. He knew she had tried – knew that she had wanted to be there for him. It didn't change things though. Her time had primarily been spent with Charlie.
The old ache of hurt, confusion, betrayal and outright pain was back when he thought about his childhood. Don knew he would always wish things were different, despite knowing that Charlie had really needed his parents' full attention.
The memories of childhood brought back something both bitter and sweet. There, on the wind, Don was sure he could hear a piano. It was playing the most beautiful music and he recognized it instantly – his mother's work – her hidden passion. Don had the same thing in him, buried deeply under the surface. Charlie had always been more like their father, and whether he'd known it or not, he'd always been more like his mother. She had bestowed on him the gift of music. Piano lessons had at first started out as an attempt to ensure Don was well rounded, but Margaret had quickly seen more. From the moment he'd put his hands on the ivory keys and had played his first piece through, she had known Don had skill. He remembered seeing it in her eyes. It was almost the same fascination, joy, pride and sudden horror she'd displayed upon first finding out Charlie was a math prodigy. Although Don knew he was no concert pianist, he wondered if that was the reason why Margaret had suddenly abandoned him, immediately hiring a piano tutor and no longer teaching Don herself. Had she been afraid of how to handle two specially gifted children? Don didn't know. If that had been the case, she was sorely mistaken. Don wasn't bad with the piano – some might even call him a natural – but he was no prodigy.
The piano lessons had ended far sooner than either Margaret or Alan would have liked. Don had held out hope that his mother would dismiss the tutor and come back to teach him herself. He remembered all the times he had silently rehearsed begging her to continue to teach him. He'd never said the words, prideful even then. Then Charlie, wanting so badly to be like Don, had decided that he too should play piano. When Don had come home one day after little league practice to find his mother helping Charlie practice, everything had shattered inside of him. From that moment on, he'd refused to touch the piano. Predictably, as soon as Don no longer wanted to play, neither did Charlie, and the piano sat silent, only disturbed when Margaret stole the few precious moments she had without anyone in the house to play her own work.
Don had seen her once – doing that – and had been somewhat unsurprised when they had come across her written music. He'd come straight home after high school one day, skipping practice because he hadn't been feeling that well. His dad and Charlie were gone for the day – Charlie was visiting local colleges – and Margaret had no doubt thought herself alone. She must not have heard the front door open and close, or the rough motor of Don's first car, because she was there, sitting at the piano, playing away like she was in a concert hall. Don had been shocked and had stood out of sight, watching and listening. He knew instantly he'd been intruding on a private moment, and he'd felt bad, so he slipped from the house, leaving his mother to her dreams.
He played since then – at Quantico, in the chapel where no one bothered him – and in New Mexico. He'd bought a piano then, had it moved to his apartment, but it was still in storage there. And he remembered his mother asking about it, lying there in the hospital.
That was a painful memory – it had been one of her last days. She'd stopped asking if Charlie was coming, and for the first time in forever, she gave her full attention to Don. He had read to her, tried to sooth her, sat with her, with and without his dad. They had talked – and hesitatingly he'd told her a little about the life he'd made for himself. Then she'd asked him about the piano. Wanted to know if he still played – and why he stopped. He'd been frozen to his seat, more afraid of answering his mother than he had been afraid of any criminal in his life. How could he tell her how badly she'd hurt him while she was lying there, dieing? She must have seen it in his eyes.
The apology that had come next was almost to painful to listen to as she bared her soul to him, apologizing for every shred of damage she'd felt she'd inflicted on him. And it was all so detailed. Specific missed games, specific missed moments, specific missed words… She'd touched his face, begging for forgiveness. He'd broken down then and cried like he hadn't since the day of the piano lesson. In halting words she told him how proud she was of the man he'd become.
He'd struggled to tell her not to apologize. He tried to explain that what hadn't killed him had made him stronger – how the man he was today was a direct result of how he'd been raised. He wasn't sorry. Yes, he regretted things – but all in all, he wouldn't be who he was today if he hadn't been forced to deal with his own childhood. "I'm doing what I'm good at – what I was always meant to be – and I owe that to you and dad – and Charlie." It was a backwards sort of way to get to it, but it was the truth.
As she lay there, she'd asked him for promises, not all he was sure he could keep, but he'd promised anyway, and it would be hell and high water that would keep him from defaulting on those words he'd sworn to his mother.
"I know it's unfair of me to ask this of you – especially considering everything else, but please Don… Stay here in Los Angeles. Stay with your father and Charlie. They need you desperately. I'm not sure they're going to survive without you."
If he was honest with himself, Don hadn't known if he would survive without them. Coming home had opened the gaping wounds he'd buried – but it had also uncovered the painful longing to be loved and accepted by his family. He missed his father's cooking and sage advice and he missed Charlie's infectious grin and easy laughter. He missed his mother and the piano.
So, he'd promised her. Promised her that he would stay – and with that promise came a multitude of other promises unspoken – that he love his family, that he protect them – that he be there for them no matter what. That he would not abandon them – and that he would try to open up, try to share himself and accept his father and brother for the men they were – with no prejudice.
Don had known then it wasn't going to be easy and after they'd buried his mother, he'd been tempted to flee again – back to New Mexico – to his neat apartment with Kim. But she was gone, and so, he realized, was the true longing to be the Lone Ranger. He'd been away from home for too long.
What had come next had been a gradual process, but it was more than he could have ever hoped for or imagined – and he wasn't about to give it up now. He wanted to be back in the Craftsman, propped up on the couch, listening to his father puttering in the kitchen, drinking a beer with Charlie. He wasn't going to give that up – and he had to make sure that Charlie was ok.
So, with his mother's music all around him, he closed his eyes tightly and willed himself better – willed himself back – so he could continue his job – to love and protect the only family he had.