Forward the Light Brigade! Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldiers knew someone had blunder'd, theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred. Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Frank walked Cathy to the door, kissing her for five minutes just in the foyer. It was late, but also (finally) Friday. "You did great with Joe. See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah." She kissed him again, for good luck, maybe, and pulled the door open, letting Frank gape at the huddled, crouched form of his brother, asleep or unconscious against the door.

"Joe?" Frank's voice came out automatically soft, gentle, but his movements were contrastingly quick and sharp. A pulse, steady breaths, but Joe was shaking, shivering, quaking with a force that Frank had rarely seen. The blue-black mess of his barely-healing hand stood out against the white paleness of the rest of his skin.

He lifted the blond head onto his lap, estimating, thinking. "Cathy, I need blankets, and get hot water boiling." He thought, "And start a bath."

She left, fleeing the room and a conscience that she had long ago forgotten. Frank cradled Joe's head in his lap. "What's wrong with you, little brother?" and he wasn't just referring to this incident. He was thinking about Brent and the beating, about the accidental near-poisoning at the hands of his girlfriend, about the hand and the lost weight and that leg. He buried his face in Joe's hair, hoping that the unseeing boy could recognize and understand this gesture.

Slowly, blue eyes opened, and stared at Frank, large, betrayed. "F-Frank?" the stutter made Frank's heart break even more.

"Cathy!" He called, causing Joe to flinch and curl in on himself. Cursing quietly, Frank tried to transfer whatever heat he held to the boy that deserved it so much more. Joe, even crushed against his chest, was feather-light. He needed to redress that. Soon.

His girlfriend rounded the corner, her long, lithe body moving like a cat. In her hand was a stack of blankets and, amazingly, towels, an oversight on Frank's part. She was unfolding the blankets, draping them with the uncanny ability of a female over Joe before she even reached him. She looked between the brothers, true sympathy on her face. "The bath is running. I figured luke-warm was better than hot. Do you need anything else? Should I call someone?"

Frank shook his head, bowing over Joe. Hypothermia was terrible, but they'd dealt with it enough to know how to treat it. Joe would be okay by morning. Aching and sore and probably suffering from a cold, but okay. "Thanks, Cathy!" He called to her retreating back, already beginning to hoist Joe into his arms.

It was tribute to how out of it Joe was that he didn't protest, though his hands did clench a little tighter to the fabric of Frank's shirt, the only sign that he was still mostly conscious. He winced as Joe let out a small moan of pain and knew that he was hurting him, however unintentionally. "'M sorry, Joey." He murmured, wrapping the blanket tighter around Joe's trembling body.

The bath was full by the time Frank got to it. Another tell of how sick or in pain Joe was that he didn't object to Frank pulling off his clothes. In a few minutes, the tremors lessened to the point where Joe's eyes opened, looking at Frank blearily. He opened his mouth, croaked, and shook his head.

"You probably shouldn't talk, bro. Nod if you want soup. Tea?" Frank laid some clean clothes next to the bath, letting his hand fall on Joe's skin before sitting on the side of the tub, head in hand.

"You have to stop worrying me, Joe." He murmured, words muffled by big hands, words muffled in a throat closed by unshed tears, unvoiced anxieties. "I don't know what to do anymore. Should I tell mom and dad that I can't take care of you? Should I…break up with Cathy again?" he ran a hand through his hair. "You're getting so thin, Joe, and so quiet."

Joe's breathing had evened, though his body continued to shake, quake. Frank would wake him up, make him drink tea, force him into warm clothes and under blankets. He wished that the younger boy was awake, so they could talk like they used to in those months after the accident, before Cathy, talking about a now-uncertain future, about a more exciting past, about an embarrassing present.

Frank wanted to tell Joe that he was the bravest person he knew, that, even though he knew Joe idolized him, it really should be the other way around. He wanted to say that, but he couldn't. The old Joe, the one before the accident, the reckless, careless, cocky boy, would never want to hear that sentiment. The new Joe was afraid of it.

He added more hot water to the bath, watched Joe sink deeper into the steam, into dreams that made his face screw up in pain, his mouth open in an O of frustration, anguish. Frank fled the bathroom, leaving behind the most important person in his life. He made tea, because that was something he'd been able to do since he was a child.

Since they were very, very little, he and Joe had wanted to be detectives, because they saw their father doing that. Because, when the time came, they ended up having the skills: they were nosy, and Frank had the right mind for clues, and Joe was so good at talking to people, at getting information out of them. They worked seamlessly, as a team, and they were good at it.

Frank's only regret was that they'd been hurt far too often. Just about every case one or the both of them would end up in the hospital – and even Frank had to admit that it was usually Joe more than him, because Frank drew the line at reckless while Joe seamed to go barreling over it. But the process of being injured only to turn out remarkably fine, in the end, had led to believe what all teenagers, at some point, had faith in. That they were unbeatable apart, invincible together.

Until that day. Until Joe's leg. And Frank had never, ever been so ashamed, to guilty about what happened. It had been his stupid mistake: he wanted more evidence, Joe wouldn't leave the house without him, and Joe had ended up paying the price.

And now this. Every day, Joe getting hurt in increasingly dramatic ways, every day, bits of the old Joe dropping off until the ghost of a person left behind was meek, scared, even.

His hand shook as he reached for the tea bag, ripped it open. Everything, all of this, had been his fault. He saw that now. He just had to figure out how to make it better, somehow.

The familiar motions of making tea were calming, anchored him to the world, and coaxed tears onto his cheeks. The past few weeks had been one screwed up event after another. Even when they were doing cases regularly, when one would be up for trial and another would be on the dockets and a third would be in active pursuit, even when the boys had so many awful people who would love nothing more than to see them hurt, neither had been this…unlucky.

The hand. The beating. The medication. The storm. Frank sighed, poured the tea, breathed in the scent.

He thought of his mother, who would always fuss when the brothers came back from a case, broken bones and bruises and pride in tow. He thought of his father, who would hide his anxiety as best he could but would turn white when he came into a hospital room and saw one of the boys hooked up to tubes and beeping machines.

And Joe, asleep in the bathtub upstairs (that thought sent him running, thinking of drowning and water in the lungs), Joe, who had always done everything in his power to make people around him happy. His little brother.

Joe was indeed asleep in the bathtub, but his head rested on his bare chest. Frank coaxed him out of the bath, wrapping him in a towel and pressing a cup of tea into his shaking hands. "You okay, kiddo?" He asked, rubbing Joe's hair dry as the younger boy clutched the towel closer to his shivering body.

It wasn't until Joe was asleep and Frank was sitting in a chair next to him, staring, waiting, watching, that he realized that the reason Joe had been out in the rain and the cold in the first place was because the door, always left open because of Joe's inability to keep a key on his person, had been locked.

Frank is so, so close to piecing it together, but we can't help but torture Joe just a little bit more.

As always, please review.