A/N: just an idea that came to me on a bad day - the product of not enough sleep, and a whole lot of stress (makes my mind come up with somewhat depressing thoughts about our favourite brothers)

WARNING: just a heads-up: this fic does have to do with an attempted suicide (not graphic, but still there), so if you tend to avoid that sort of topic like the plague, i suggest that you do not read this. and if you do end up reading, please leave a review - i live off those things :)

Numb3rs: When Tears Aren't Enough

By: BanishedThought

Chapter 1 - Hurts

He couldn't stop crying, had long since lost the energy to sob while the tears fell, resorting to silently shaking as the salty drops stained his cheeks and dripped off his lower jaw. The bottle of pills he'd taken however long ago were making him desperately tired, but he refused to close his eyes yet, choosing instead to stare just a little while longer at the family picture that was still clutched in his trembling hand. It was one of his favorite memories, the last time he could remember feeling truly, honest-to-goodness happy: it had been mid-way through their mother's bought with cancer, the picture having been taken after dinner, a week after Margaret Eppes' last chemo treatment; the doctors had sounded so positive, so optimistic about her survival that they'd all spent the week laughing, joking, smiling... actually living for the first time since the initial diagnosis, now that a full recovery seemed imminent in their eyes.

Boy had they had it wrong.

A large teardrop splattered onto the photograph and Charlie did his best to wipe it off, though he had little success, with how much his hands were shaking now. He couldn't be sure if the shaking was the pills finally taking effect or if it was the shaking that he had become use to, for they hadn't been tremor-free since he'd watched his students being shot, one-by-one, the crazed man having had the gun's barrel pressed right up against Charlie's forehead, his finger beginning to pull the trigger when the SWAT team had burst in and killed the man first. He had spent a long six weeks fighting the overwhelming despair that had taken root in his heart, and he just couldn't do it any more; he'd hardly slept, eaten or spoken since the incident, and he had reached a point beyond worn-out, which is what the bottle of sleeping pills had been intended to remedy.

'I guess on some level, they're going to serve their purpose now,' he thought vaguely to himself. He let his now tunneled vision roam over his family's smiling faces, marveling at the sheer joy he saw there, and wondering how it was that he could've been filled with that emotion at one point when all he felt now was sadness, pain and... emptiness, the void in his soul having grown with each bullet fired, each life that he'd watched end. Their eyes had almost always sought his out right before the man pulled the trigger, tears streaking down their faces as those eyes seemed to plead with him to do something, to stop this man, to save them.

But he hadn't - he'd done nothing to stop any of it, had done nothing but sit there and let them all die... praying silently near the end that he would die with them so that he wouldn't have to face his massacred students' parents afterwards to try and explain why it was that their children were taken from them while he himself was left un-touched.

He sniffed loudly and finally lost the energy to stay sitting up on his own, slumping back against the wall beside his bathtub, his jean-clad legs stretched out in front of him. Unable to lift the hand that held the picture any more, he let both of his arms rest limply in his lap, making sure to hold the picture right-side up so that he could keep on looking at it. He wanted to be annoyed that his vision had become too dim for him to really make out his family's faces any more, but he was far too tired to do so. The only emotions he felt right then were the ones that had been suffocating him for the past month-and-a-half, ever since the day it had all happened, the tragedy striking much too suddenly for him to be prepared, and at the same time lasting far too long for him to be able to move on past it when it was over. Even as he felt his life begin to slip away, those emotions never left him, and his tears and shaking never eased, though he hardly noticed either now, his mind racing round and round the same terrible thoughts and memories, refusing to grant him peace to the very last breath.

He didn't hear the pounding coming from the other side of the bathroom door he'd closed and locked, didn't hear the frantic, familiar voice demanding that he open the door; nothing but the pain registered, all other rational and hopeful thought processes beginning to shut down, at last loosing in the taxing battle for dominance - that battle couldn't be won...

...it just hurt too much to fight.

TBC...

plenty more to come folks -- lots of brother-to-brother, father-to-son, etc. angst in store, so stay tuned, and don't forget to review