Title: Brotherly Equation

Author: Signs Of Sun

Summary: One Shot. Sorry but that's all you're getting. Can't really say what you're getting with this one.

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Brotherly Equation

Part II

Charlie tucked his chin more snuggly into his chest and tugged the pillow in closer with his fingertips. The cozy cocoon of sleep still wrapped its healing hands around him. He might be a genius but his brother was clearly brilliant. This resting concept was nothing sort of amazing. This lazy thought strolled through his mind as the little clock on the wall softly chimed five o'clock. It signified that he had only been asleep for a few hours curled up on the couch but his body was grateful already. Five o'clock? He could take advantage of a couple more hours, right? He had promised on his Mathematician's Honor after all.

Maybe he would call in and have a teaching assistant leave notice his classes were cancelled for the day. Could he really afford to indulge that temptation? As his responsibilities poked at him to answer that question in the negative, he burrowed deeper under the blanket. This escape attempt was derailed by a noise from outside his cocoon. He listened for a moment and finally when enough alertness filtered back to him he recognized it as a knock. He fumbled to sit up as he discovered he had become tangled in the blanket. Finally after a few seconds of clumsy half awake struggle he managed to free himself.

He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and shuffled towards the door Whoever was calling at the early hour was going to get a visit from his big brother he commented in his head as he took a peek out to see who was there. When he saw the two people standing outside his hand stalled in opening the door for a slowed heartbeat. A small stream of hope that he was still asleep over on the couch trickled though him. If he opened the door and they were vanished then it was nothing more than a dream.

His hand finally shifted back into motion and he cracked the door open halfway. All hope abandoned him at finding David and Colby standing on the front steps. They didn't even need to speak because the tale their hearts told was etched in their saddened expressions and tortured eyes.

"No." That was the sole word that managed to escape Charlie's lips.

"I'm so sorry. He's gone," David whispered, his own devastation creating static under the words. Charlie wanted to argue that there had been some mistake. He wanted to tell them to go back and double check. They had missed something. He wanted to insist there was time to change this outcome. But the two agents, the two men that had become friends, were evidence that all those avenues were futile. His brother was dead.

"Charlie, why don't we go inside?" Colby quietly suggested and took a step closer to the open doorway. Charlie just looked at him with a bewildered expression. He had heard the words but he couldn't understand why they made no sense. Colby seem to know this and loosely guided him to turn around and propelled him to start back inside. The two agents tailed him.

"Charlie! Everything alright? I heard a noise!" the eldest Eppes called over to his son as he made it down the last step of the stairwell. The baseball bat in Alan's grasp lowered the instant Colby and David appeared over the threshold into the house. And for him too no verbal message was necessary. Simply their presence there so early could mean no other thing. His elder son was gone from this world. No doubt taken by the work he had made his life. He lowered himself to sit on the bottom step and laid the baseball bat in his lap. If Charlie's expression had been bewilderment his father's was one of breathlessness.

David quietly clicked the door closed behind him as Charlie made sluggish progress towards the stairwell. Once he arrived he took a seat at his father's side, pulled the blanket in more closely around his body, and stared at the floor.

A long silence fell over the four men, father and son seated together in their devastation on stairs and the two partners stalled in their sadness at the doorway. It was finally disturbed by Charlie rising from the spot at his father's side. He moved towards the other room. He could feel David and Colby's gazes follow him, but perhaps sensing his purposeful movement stayed behind. He headed towards the piano first. Once there he looked to the little table that stood near the window. It held nothing but a lamp. Next his footsteps traveled back to the dining room and his gaze scanned the top of the table there. He found nothing but piles of papers there. He let out a saddened sigh. The absence of Don's coffee mug on the table by the piano and the lack of any chalk on the dining room table could only lead to one conclusion. It had been a dream. His brother had never really arrived.

Charlie tucked his chin down into the blanket and shuffled a return trip to his station beside his father.

"I need to know what happened to my son," Alan's voice asked. The unsteady whisper the words arrived in told of the tears that would soon water his eyes.

As daylight crept its way throughout the house the story was told. On the way to Charlie's house from the office Don had rerouted in response to a call for back up. David, Colby, and a group of other agents had been at the scene of the execution of a night arrest warrant turned hostage situation. The standoff had gone from bad to worse to downright desperate. Against procedure Don had exchanged himself for a badly injured and very young hostage. A firefight had erupted and Don ended up shot three times by one of the hostage takers when he tried to fight for the remaining innocents. A long string of minutes later the bad guys lost the battle and Don lost his life.

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Charlie returned the jug of orange juice to its place inside the refrigerator. As he closed the door the mini calendar hanging on the outside of it caught his eye. Sixteen days. Sixteen days had come and gone since his brother had been lost. The number seemed too small for how long the time had felt to have lived through and the number seemed too large for a moment that still felt so raw. A knock on the door tore him from the dilemma and he went to answer it. Looking out he found the same two men standing on his doorstep that had been there that night sixteen days prior. This time though his hand did not hesitate opening the door and he greeted them with a warm welcome.

"Come on in!" he offered, gesturing for them to make their way into the living room.

"How you holding up?" David asked as Charlie shut the door and joined them standing near the couch.

"Has it really been sixteen days?" Charlie inquired as a response.

"Doesn't seem right, does it?" Colby answered.

"No. But I can't decide if it should be more or less."

"One is too many," David commented softly. To this Charlie nodded in agreement and swallowed down hard. Colby offered distraction.

"Somehow I think this was intended for you," Colby stated and held out a small brown paper bag.

"It was a bit of a fight to get it released from evidence but, ultimately, it wasn't linked in any way to the crime so I managed to get it for you," he added when Charlie finally took the bag after a second of hesitancy.

"What's this?"

"Don had it with him you know when..." Colby's voice trailed off into nothingness before the thought was complete. Charlie unfolded the top of the bag and looked inside. An odd question departed his lips in reaction.

"Where?"

"Where what?" Colby asked, shrugging.

"You said Don had it with him. Where was it?"

"In his jacket pocket I believe. We found the jacket on the front seat in his truck. Why?"

"The right or the left pocket?" Charlie asked, ignoring the agent's question.

"I don't recall. Are you alright Charlie?"

"Just tell me if it was in the right or the left!" Charlie snapped out in frustration. It wasn't what he had intended, but emotion had gotten the better of him. Colby seemed to understand and let it roll off him.

"It would be there written on the bag," David threw out in suggestion. Charlie looked down at the outside of the paper bag. When he found nothing on the side facing him he turned it around and found writing there. His gaze scanned down until it landed upon the line that was for the location found. Right front jacket pocket.

Everything and everyone else in the room faded off into some peripheral world, some place beyond the haze that engulfed Charlie. That night had his mind just created the scenario knowing that he had asked Don to bring him the chalk and combined it with the fact that his brother was right handed? Had his brain taken that information and when he had fallen asleep on the couch formulated it into a dream? That led his thought process to another unknown variable.

"Charlie, man, you alright?" David asked as Charlie tuned back into his surrounds.

"I never asked. What time… What time did Don…?"

"Right around two am," David informed him, not needing to hear the full question to know he was asking about Don's time of death. Charlie's mind skimmed through the conversation he had with brother inside the dream. It had been so vivid that every word seemed engraved into him. They latched onto the ones he sought.

"Where did you buy chalk at this hour anyway? Where does one find school supplies at two in the morning? I didn't even think about the time when I asked."

"I have my sources. Don't you worry about it!"

Charlie was silent for a moment longer. He was a man of science. How could his mind seriously be considering what his heart was proposing?

"When he passed, did he….go right away?"

"Charlie, don't torture yourself like this," Colby offered.

"No I want to know."

"You're sure?"

"It's important to me."

"Positive?" David asked softly, but the reluctance was obvious in his voice.

"Please!" Charlie pleaded, glancing from David to Colby and back again. David was the one who gave him the answer.

"He was with us for a few minutes afterward. But he wasn't connected with what was going on. Not really feeling anything."

"He was out of it, Charlie. Like David said he wasn't suffering," Colby added with a reassuring confidence.

"In between," Charlie mumbled. Could this really be the case? Had his brother been dying at the same time he had fallen asleep and dreamt of his visit?

"We apologize, Charlie. We just thought it was fitting that Don had the chalk in his pocket. We didn't mean to upset you," Colby apologized.

"No. No. Not at all. It's just…it's just that night I called him and asked if he would be coming by the house. I had completely run out of chalk. I mean I had the dry erase boards but sometimes certain things demand to be done in chalk. He said he was leaving the office right then and would see what he could do."

"So that was like emergency relief chalk?" Colby proposed with sarcastic smile.

"Chalk famine relief. Now there's a cause you don't see very often," David tossed in. The words brought warm smiles all around the trio.

"Only Don!" David continued after a beat.

"That's what…well…what made him…Don," Colby added. Charlie's voice followed right after it.

"No. That's what made him the best brother ever!" Charlie concluded. His voice was gentle in volume but strong in love and pride.

"Listen, Charlie, if you ever need anything we're only a phone call away. He never had to say it aloud but it was crystal clear that looking out for you was an unbreakable rule if anything ever happened to him. We'd like to do that for him," David offered. It was followed by Colby's thoughts.

"I'm not entirely sure he's not still watching. Cuz I swear I heard his voice tell me to fix that report I had on my desk this morning. So anything you need, day or night, let us know."

"He did say that last time I talked with him that if anyone messed with me he would pay them a little visit. So I guess you two should hop too," Charlie responded, a teasing expression filling his features.

"I guess we'd better not screw up then!" David answered back.

"I really appreciate you bringing this to me. It means more than you might think."

"Glad to hear it!" Colby stated.

"You guys caught any new cases? Need any math?"

"Not right at the moment."

"Promise to let me know?"

"Absolutely!"

"Thanks so much for stopping by. Remember you're always welcome here."

"Well, in that case, next time you fire up that grill give me a call. I'm sure I could squeeze in the time to swing by," Colby teased.

"Why does this not surprise me? There's barbeque and suddenly Colby's social calendar is wide open," his partner commented.

"What? I was just being neighborly!"

"You were just being hungry. Not two hours ago you were wolfing down a double order of the lumberjack special. Now you've got Charlie here firing up the grill." Before Colby could pose a defense Charlie piped in.

"Actually you know what! That's not a bad idea. Why don't you guys come over this evening? Perhaps see if you can bring Liz and Robin."

"Are you sure you're up to that?" David asked.

"Don gifted me many things--his advice, his protectiveness, even chalk--but there's one thing he never realized he gave me."

'What's that?

"Friends who I can share the memory of him with."

"Barbeque it is then."

'Excellent! See you guys around seven?"

"You can count on it!" Colby replied and with that he and David headed out the door. Charlie stood in the living room at the window for a moment, watching them climb into a Bureau vehicle and pull away. Once they had driven out of sight Charlie wandered out of the house and off to the garage.

He settled into a chair and opened the paper bag. After a long inhale he reached in and pulled out the box of chalk. Discarding the bag onto the floor he held the box up in front of him with both hands and focused intently on the cover art. The design and writing there were simple and generic. To any other set of eyes it was nothing more than chalk. To Charlie this was no ordinary box. It was so much more, something that transcended being a material object. It was a connection. It was the thread that, though frayed, tied his mathematical destiny to his brotherhood with Don.

Letting out the breath he had been holding captive inside Charlie closed his eyes. Science and math did not support the thoughts that came with holding that box of chalk in his grasp. But he could not deny their existence either. The answer eluded him time and time again. Was it possible for a box of chalk to hold other properties beyond the physical materials that constructed it? He did not know at that moment in the garage surrounded by his math and silence.

He was certain though that the chalk would not serve any ordinary task.

The time would come when it would accompany him in some greater purpose. It would be in his grasp in the brightest shining moment in his mathematical journey. A moment that he would not travel alone into because Don would be there enabling his accomplishment.

The equation would be between brothers just as the journey towards its creation had been.

The End