Disclaimer: I deny ownership in a most gracious manner. I also do not claim to remember each and every detail in canon. More's the pity.

A/N: I think with a large chunk of my fics, I can easily tell how I've been inspired to write them. This is courtesy of the sleepless night before my last A Level, Literature.

Mucho reference to Season 2's Assassin. Set after When World's Collide, so be vary of spoilers.

Parallels

He remembered Gabriel Ruiz.

He remembered Gabriel Ruiz as a young man who, after having lost his father and brother to evil in an attempt to do good, had come to America to escape, only to have an assassin remind him how impossible it was to cut off your roots, making him remember who he really was: his father's son, and his brother's brother.

He remembered Gabriel Ruiz because he, of all people, would know and understand what it felt like to have your older brother go missing and have no answers as to where, how, with whom and… why.

Charlie understood with much deeper clarity than he would ever wish on another human being what kind of horrible scenarios must have passed through Gabriel's head for the three years his only surviving family had been missing until their bodies had been discovered by a highway dig team.

He also wondered if the revelation had been a blessing in disguise for Gabriel, knowing for sure that his father and brother would never return; that never again would he meet them in life but to at least have confirmation of their demise, to have bodies to put to rest once and for all, to no longer harbour the foolish hope of thinking maybe, perhaps maybe, his family might just show up alive and well on his doorstep one day.

Although the number of similarities between him and the young and the young Columbian were striking, there were a number of differences as well.

To be fair, Don hadn't been missing for three years, or their father along with him. The time period was closer to five months and Charlie couldn't decide which would be worse – to have both father and brother (since they'd both lost their mothers at a relatively young age) disappear together, like Gabriel had, or to helplessly watch the disastrous change Don's disappearance had wrought on their father, knowing that no matter how hard he tried his efforts couldn't straighten his father's bent shoulders, or remove the increased lines of worry and pain etched seemingly permanently on Alan's face or worst of all, to see their father lose an ounce of hope with each passing day along with what Charlie feared an increased desire to shuck off this mortal coil and to reunite with his wife and eldest born in the after-life.

The after-life…

Charlie also didn't know which would be worse: to have confirmation one day that his brother was well-and-truly dead, never to return, or that Don was somewhere out there in the continental United States, maybe even beyond, unable or perhaps unwilling to return to his family, where he belonged.

The only reason Charlie was even willing to entertain the notion that Don had disappeared under his own steam without a trace was due to the utter lack of information regarding his whereabouts and who might be responsible in regards to them.

However, Charlie was sure there was no shortage of people who wouldn't mind if his brother disappeared from the face of the earth. But then again, there were plenty who would, too.

He'd last seen Don the night before he vanished. He and his brother had shared a quiet dinner at the house with their father before Don had gone back to his apartment. Dinner itself had been alright – the slight strain that had manifested between the brothers ever since Charlie had had his security clearance revoked was present in the guise of conversation often reaching an awkward lull. It hadn't been possible for Don to talk about his cases, as he had been won't to do on previous occasions, in front of Charlie and any questions regarding how work was would be met with a succinct 'fine' – the definition of fine not being that no one had been murdered or robbed today, but that Don or anyone in his team hadn't been murdered.

Whatever the definition, things sure as hell weren't fine now.

After dinner and a quick see ya later months ago neither Charlie nor anyone else he knew had set eyes on Don since. His brother's failure to show up for work in the morning with no-one able to reach him had sent up red flags and David and Colby had gone in search of their boss in vain before raising the alarm. Don's gun and badge had been at his apartment in their usual place, nothing out of its position to suggest foul play in the form of a tussle, security cameras revealing no visitors, known or unknown, to Don's home with Robin having been in Miami for a fortnight already on business. Even the neighbours when questioned couldn't think of any suspicious activity that might have occurred to account for Don's disappearance.

Don's cell-phone however was traced to an unusual location, some seventy feet away from his government tagged SUV, the communication device half buried in sand at the beach, sparking off a search of the ocean for a body, Charlie running the numbers on where and when his brother's body would wash ashore, if at all, the young mathematician never believing his brother would have done such a thing even as he wiped tears of frustration away from his eyes as he worked.

No body had turned up, there had been no calls from unknown numbers on Don's cell nor any to the FBI demanding a ransom or anything similar, and the search had fully turned towards land once again, potential suicide temporarily being shoved under the carpet for a better reason.

Don's popularity and the loyalty he invoked in people worked in his favour at this time of need. Not only had the entire LA branch of the FBI been dead set on finding their own, Lt. Gary Walker had taken up the gauntlet in the LAPD. Multiple informants and sources had been pestered for information, valuable favours being called in just to gain a scrap of information floating around in the criminal underground regarding 'that missing Fed'.

All of this, Charlie knew through frequent contact with his brother's two remaining team members. Though having all their energy focused on finding Don through official means, they'd risked their jobs and careers, and to an extent their freedom, by slipping data to Charlie so that he could work his magic before it was too late. It must have been the world's worst kept secret but he had a feeling that just like the brass had pointedly looked the other way on Edgerton's and Don's interrogation of Buck Winters to sooner find the abducted Megan, they'd done the same with Charlie in order to find the head of their Violent Crimes division.

Violent Crimes…

Gabriel Ruiz had mentioned that his brother had sheltered him from their work… Charlie could have agreed once but not anymore, not after all the FBI cases he and his brother had collaborated on.

Charlie no longer had the luxury of ignorance.

After nightmare filled and fuelled visions of what might have happened to his brother, a faceless mask representing those responsible, Charlie sometimes found himself wishing that rather than being abducted, Don had simply walked away from his old life to start afresh somewhere else. Lord knew that for the last few years, especially since Don had moved to LA, life had not been kind to his older brother. Even if Charlie could be selfish enough to think that perhaps the improving relationship between the two siblings would have been reason enough for Don to stay, recent events – Charlie's breaking federal law, for one – had probably swept all the previous positives away with one clean swoop.

Charlie had learnt many things from his brother over the years but lately, he'd learnt to fear for his brother. The conversation he'd had with Gabriel when Condor was a viable threat had made him fear for his brother's safety in the work that he did; the supposed suicide of Don's ex-girlfriend, the ATF agent Nikki Davis, had made him fear for Don's emotional well-being. He feared what Don may have had to experience in the five months he'd been missing. A large part of him feared knowing what Don might have gone through, if he was going though it even now, after all this time.

Charlie now feared that there may come a day that when waking up in the morning, Don's whereabouts wouldn't be the first thing on his mind, the first thought, the first concern.

So yeah, he had plenty to ask Gabriel Ruiz if he ever saw the young man again.

He would ask Gabriel whether it ever got any easier, not knowing if his brother (or even father) had been made to wish for death; whether if his brother had still believed in a rescue the days he would get up in the morning, have breakfast and go to work like nothing had changed because after five months, what more could the family hope for other than a body to bury?

He would ask Gabriel how he'd survived losing his brother, because Charlie sure as hell didn't know how he could.

Khatum