Charlie was just finishing eating lunch alone when he heard Don's Suburban pull up outside the house, and he jumped up to greet his brother.

"Hey, Charlie." Don tossed him a flash drive and eyed the table. "Ate it all without me?"

"Well, to be fair, I had no idea you were going to come home and pelt me with electronics," said Charlie, grinning. "Thanks for the new flash drive, by the way."

Don grinned back. "Adim Davis used his ATM card last night. We thought he ditched his car somewhere, probably took public transportation to the ATM and then walked to a seedy hotel for the night. Only problem is, he wasn't at any of the seedy hotels we checked."

"And you want me to use the data on this to..."

"Magically-mathematically find him?" suggested Don hopefully.

Charlie gave him a playful glare. "I'll try. Give me a couple hours to cook up the voodoo equations and slaughter a goat."

"Thanks, Chuck," said Don, still grinning. It was the first time in a while that Charlie had seen Don playful, and Charlie was enjoying the banter more than he would even in a normal week. It was like palpable reassurance that things were going to be okay, that it was possible for life to return to normal and joy to reign. "What's going on in non-serial-killer-land these days?"

Charlie sat, and Don joined him. "The university is holding a fundraiser for our manmade disaster rescue research program. They asked me to speak. I've been working on it for hours, off and on, and –" he glanced out the window at the smoky haze the sunlight was filtering through "- it looks like with the fires approaching more populated areas, we may have to cancel. Everyone is going to be out testing projects and trying to assist with rescue efforts."

Don shook his head. "Okay - fires ravaging the city are inconveniencing you by maybe cancelling some speech? You got a hard life. I'm trying to catch a serial killer, the FBI is trying to decide if I'm one myself, and-"

Charlie rolled his eyes and took a sip of the horrible green drink Amita had coerced him into trying. "I didn't intend to make it sound like that. What is the FBI...?"

"Reviewing my history of lethal force. I've killed too many people, so it's back to me being a PTSD-riddled time bomb in need of psychiatric supervision that might just betray his country or murder some people." Don had started out lighthearted, but his tone was icy bitter by the end.

"Does it actually have anything to do with your -" Charlie struggled to find the right word, "- past?"

Don shook his head, his expression darkening further at Charlie's discomfort. He leaned back and sighed. "When I was arrested -" he glanced at Charlie. "I got out, you celebrated with me, and we went on with our lives. I got stabbed, everything went upside down for a bit, but I recovered and - I just wonder why I'm not allowed the same with this."

Charlie looked away. "We went through those things with you."

"That's bullshit," said Don.

Charlie snapped. Clueless. The man's utterly clueless. He stood up, stood over Don, and looked at him with something resembling fury. He didn't experience anger that often, but when he did it could rival Don's temper in a heartbeat.

"Okay, I'm going to take the gloves off. When those things happened, you weren't tortured. You were not raped, and you were not chained up naked in a basement by a sadistic killer. You didn't come home afterwards and pretend everything was okay and that nothing ever happened to you!"

Don stood, ending up almost nose to nose with Charlie, who refused to back off.

"Charlie, someone stuck a knife in my chest! I suffocated on my own blood. When I went to jail, I was looking at the literal and figurative end of my life. I had to let one of the guys who were supposed to protect me shackle and beat me. You don't think those things were terrifying and painful and humiliating, give 'em a try. While you've known me I've had agents die in front of my eyes, I've had people I care about kidnapped, I - had to shoot my damn mentor!"

Don closed his eyes, and both brothers stood stunned by Don's outburst. Charlie tried to make sense of it, tried fumbling for a reply, then ended up struggling to even know what he should think or feel.

Inches away from Charlie, Don's ragged breathing was easy to hear. His head was turned to the side, away from Charlie, and it took Charlie a few moments to recognize what he was seeing.

The corners of Don's tightly clenched eyes held tears.

"Don?" Charlie realized his voice had come out a whisper.

"When mom died, it hurt me as much as it did you, but I got myself together and went on. That's what I do, don't you get that?" Don sounded furious, but Charlie was mesmerized by his eyes. Sometimes it seemed like his darkest moments were also his most gentle ones, as if he were lashing out in pain to protect the softness within.

"You have people who love you, do you get that?" Charlie whispered, struggling to gain control of his voice and his emotions. Don looked stung by the gentle retort to his harsh words. "Maybe we want to understand, so we can be there for you."

Don walked away, stumbling over a pair of shoes on the floor before he found a chair to sit in. "I don't understand myself, okay? My own brain scares me, sometimes - I'm not sure I trust it."

Charlie stiffened and stopped mid-stride. My own brain scares me. Yes.

"Ever since it happened, it's like who I am got split in two. There's a part that's a sociopath. I'm a killer, and often a remorseless one, I - I'm capable of violence and of looking at horrors and not even feeling them. That could take me over, easy. It doesn't hurt and it - the other half of my soul feels so much pain and compassion that it makes me too weak to do this job, because I can't bear the harm that comes even with me doing my very best. Sometimes, when I'm with Robin, or you guys, or a case goes well, I'm just a normal, happy guy. I can't just -summon that, you know?"

Don wouldn't look at Charlie, and Charlie was grateful that his brother couldn't see the dizzy mix of understanding and self-absorbs ion that had taken him over. I get it. I get it. The words came out in a blur unstopped by his knowledge of the hijacking of the moment.

"Mine too. My brain frightens me too. Ever since I understood, and the world understood that I was a genius, a math prodigy, there's been a threat of insanity lurking behind every corner. I used to be angry when my teachers would keep looking at me and expecting me to turn into John Nash on them, and when I realized how thin the line is in there between reality and sheer construct I would panic. When I was a kid I got diagnosed with social anxiety, and I didn't know how to understand that I wasn't anxious around people, I was actually frightened of what my mind built out of the blocks of reality and how little they resembled me, or reality -"

"OW!" A shoe had come flying through the air and connected squarely with his nose.

"You aren't crazy, little brother, but you're gonna send me over the edge if you don't stop for breath sometime soon."

Charlie held the shoe, a little dazed. He wasn't sure if they were fighting, sharing a moment of revelation, or just what was happening any more. Don was unpredictable on a good day, and this was anything but.

"Okay, so -" Charlie looked at him narrowly. "Doesn't trauma usually make people shut down inside? My understanding is that aside from specific triggers which might engender an exaggerated reaction, you are more likely to emotionally barricade yourself from the world and from other people to protect yourself from pain than you are to develop an enhanced sense of empathy with others like yourself."

Don obviously couldn't decide whether to smile or be indignant. "You know, I do have a fair amount of training in this stuff. Don't think that reading a textbook entitles you to know what's happening in my head, okay?"

Charlie looked at him with hesitation, angled sideways away from Don, finally giving voice to what he really needed to know. "So what - is - going on in there?"

Don didn't know how to answer, and finally went with something rare and uncomfortable. Honesty not pre-screened for advisability before it was allowed to exit.

"I'm not sure I know. I - take antidepressants, and I think they make me feel just - normal. Without them, yeah, I go a bit dead and a lot angry. I feel like I think logically and react to things like the guy I would be-" he drew in a deep breath and braced himself.

"Nothing scares me more than the idea of being that afraid again. I don't remember the actual pain graphically, and violence doesn't frighten me. Fear like that does, and - being alone. Feeling abandoned."

Don was visibly pale, and he unconsciously folded his arms tight across his chest for warmth. Charlie gulped. Witnessing such vulnerability in Don was terrifying. Touching, but also frightening in the way that it would be if solid rock melted away in front of his eyes.

"I needed them so badly, and they didn't come. That - there's just no word for that level of terror."

Don sat, probably without even realizing it, down on the floor. He crossed his legs, planted his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands. His fingers twisted in his dark hair, seeking something to cling to.

"You guys - didn't know I was missing. Mia died in my arms, and as awful as –" his voice shook, and he kept his palms firmly planted over his eyes to hold in the emotion.

The tiny sniff he wasn't able to contain drew Charlie close, silently standing next to Don, afraid to breathe. "She had someone - at the end. I..."

He couldn't continue.

"...was alone?" finished Charlie, almost whispering.

Don closed his eyes, for the first time in years able to surrender to the memory of those few emotions that held the power to break him. Help. Save me. I need you right now, why aren't you here?

Don nodded, and something shifted deep below the atmosphere of the room.

Charlie stood motionless, feeling uncomfortable standing over his indomitable, always-in-charge idol. He didn't know whether to sit beside him, stand there and put a hand on his shoulder, or give into the tears he was fighting off so desperately.

Instinct was telling him to stay frozen where he was, and even though it felt wrong, he obeyed. A few moments later he understood, and it brought a lump to his throat of an entirely different kind.

Right now, he was the protector.

Right now, his place was to stay in control and stand guard over this person who had, possibly for the first time in his life, placed himself in a position of utter vulnerability and was trusting Charlie to protect him.

It was one of those quiet moments in which an entire life, or outlook on life, can change. Charlie felt any inclination to cry vanish as his senses sharpened, his awareness expanding from the tiny bubble surrounding him and Don.

It encompassed every creak of the wooden staircase, the scent of basil lingering in its journey from the kitchen, the distance between the two of them and every door and window, even the intensity and quality of the light filtering through those openings. The light was hazy and yellow, and under the scent of the fragrant basil was that of smoke.

For an instant, Charlie's heartbeat spiked. Fire. The wildfires were dominating the news, overshadowing even the reporting of LA's newest serial killer. Charlie calculated the fastest way to get himself and his brother out of the house and which escape route to take on the roads. Then the mathematical side of his brain spat out the certainty that even the most violent wildfire would not have had sufficient time to reach their Pasadena home.

Slowly, Don nodded again, an affirmative answer to Charlie's question. His shoulders were shaking, and it took all of Charlie's self-control not to kneel down and hug him. Oddly, it was not any emotion or sense of the appropriate which stopped Charlie, but the refusal to place himself in a vulnerable position while Don was down.

From the earliest moments of Charlie's existence, Don had been a force of strength to which Charlie could never aspire. If his father and mother had been the gods of his young world, Don had been the mythical white knight.

It seemed there was no force and no obstacle Don could not overcome, and indeed this had been borne out more deeply than Charlie had ever known. That fierce, irrepressible side of Don had survived torture and rape and rescued himself. It had come home seemingly untouched and stood unflinching in the face of a level of violence that was unthinkable to most people.

It had not once in Charlie's life occurred to him that Don could need protecting, and even more distant had been the possibility that he would actually want anyone to protect him.

Don's voice startled him, but it was soft and utterly vulnerable. "When - it goes on for days, and the things that might help you deal with it are gone - I felt like I would rather shoot myself in the head than risk feeling that fear again. I thought about quitting. Idea of handing over the tools the FBI gave me to at least have a fighting chance was - intolerable."

"Thinking about other people I might save who were going through that - I stayed, and I unleashed all that fear and anger on the agents who were screwing up, making dumb mistakes, trying to do things they weren't trained for."

A car door slammed outside, and Don didn't seem to notice. Charlie's whole body tensed, every nerve on high alert until he identified it as their next-door neighbor's return home by the excited yelping and whining of the family's golden retriever.

"You know, we humans, we can cope with a lot. I made myself okay with the whole lone wolf thing, I really did. I was kinda proud of being the guy who rescued himself from a serial killer and went back on the job a month later."

"When did you stop being okay?" asked Charlie.

"I dunno - whenever I really thought about being afraid, I guess. Not really sure."

He shifted and raised his head, his voice regaining some of its normal calm strength. "One night Billy and I found a fugitive. We got split up, and the guy got the drop on me for a second. I - didn't lose it completely but I took that guy down hard, I made some horrible threats, and I terrified him. There's this double murderer, handcuffed, my knee on his back, and he's looking up at me with absolute terror and - it just tore me up. I knew that fear and couldn't handle that I'd done that to - anyone. They transferred me to Quantico the next week."

Don fought with himself, and came up with a better memory, one that made him smile.

Getting stabbed.

"When I woke up in the hospital after I was stabbed, there were these awful few seconds where I thought I was back in that basement, coming to after passing out. When I realized all of you were there around me, I was just so - happy. Looking at you guys...Dad thought I was being brave, smiling, but I was truly happy, you know? Like more content than I'd felt since it happened."

Charlie smiled too, a faint, pale smile that deepened as he remembered. "I thought it was the drugs," he admitted.

Don shook his head, true warmth in his stressed gaze. "It was joy. Relief like you can't imagine, I don't even know how to say."

Charlie shivered from deep within, chilled as realization and emotion sunk in. "You'd finally been rescued. All those years later - you had to wait for what should have happened back then."

Don was okay now, his gaze steady. Charlie wasn't, and he fell to his knees in front of Don, knowing what he wanted to convey, but not how.

"We love you," he floundered. "We love you, and - we're always, always going to have your back. There's never going to be another basement, but no matter what happens we will care and we will fight for you with everything we've got, and we won't ever give up or stop caring about you or being with you. And we won't screw it up."

"I know, buddy," said Don softly. "I know. In jail - God that was hard."

Charlie gulped. "You were in solitary."

"It was more than just that. I was helpless and there I was with the worst kind of precedent with relying on other people to save me."

It was Don's turn to gulp. "It was - putting my whole soul on the line to maintain some sort of faith through that. I think if I'd gone to prison - that would have been the end of me. It wasn't. Everyone was fighting for me, and I realized I had this wonderful team of people who - were going to save me. Maybe I spent my whole career building that just in case, you know? Even - I swear to God Kevin Anderson must have talked to his men and said - look, we're going to protect this guy and we're going to keep him sane. You guys - you and Dad and Amita made me feel so loved."

Charlie broke, diving head-first into Don's arms and hugging him with a schizophrenic blend of love and grief, joy and hysteria.

What Don had described was what he thought he was alone in feeling; that desperate need for the reassurance that was solely responsible for his own ability to cope with the FBI work, maybe even life. The reassurance that he was loved and cared for and backed by a family and an utterly expert team that if need be, would fight with him and for him with everything they had.

Don had lost that, and was somehow finding it again.