FIC: In a Mirror, Darkly: Chapter 10/?
Title: In a Mirror, Darkly: Chapter 10
Author: Valerie Vancollie (valeriev84 [at] hotmail.com)
Characters: Don, Charlie, Alan, David, Colby, Nikki, (surprise)
Pairings: brief canon mentions of Charlie/Amita & Don/Robin
Rating: 15
Summary: There was a certain irony to the situation, that the brother who was a federal agent had been abducted to be used as leverage against the brother who was an applied mathematics professor at a highly respected college. Don Whump, Charlie Angst!
Betas: aleo_70 & fredbassett
Spoilers: Uncertainty Principle, Vector, Man Hunt, Dark Matter, Spree, Two Daughters, Brutus, Finders Keepers, One Hour, The Janus List, Breaking Point, Black Swan, When Worlds Collide, The Decoy Effect, Jack of All Trades, Arrow of Time, The Fifth Man, Greatest Hits, Angels and Devils
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Numb3rs characters, items or situations. I only lay claim to the original aspects of the fic.
Part III: Charlie: CalSci
Chapter 10:
Tuesday, 07:13
Dr. Charles Eppes' Office, CalSci
The sound of the door opening drew Charlie from his thoughts about how best to overcome a wonderfully modified Hidden Fields Equation. Turning, he saw Banner step into the office and he froze. It hadn't even been two full days since his last visit, surely the man didn't expect him to have solved the problem yet, not after what he'd told him. His heart rate soared and fear clawed at his throat at the thought. What would they do to Don if they really had expected more tangible progress by now? What could he do to prevent that?
Nothing.
The inescapable truth hit him like a physical blow and he staggered back a few steps as Banner approached.
"I'm still busy working on it! This is not an easy thing to accomplish, the math involved is-"
"Exceptionally difficult, yes, yes, I know," Banner interrupted. "That's not why I'm here, though the faster you finish it, the better for your brother. The man I mentioned earlier, who was holding the gun in the second Polaroid, he's getting harder to control. If you take too long, well..."
"No! You keep him away from Don!" Charlie ordered, the sudden surge of anger giving him courage. "I'm doing what you want."
"Just make sure you keep doing it and don't tell the FBI anything."
"They know," Charlie stated. "They know something's happened to Don, that he's missing."
"Yes, but they don't know what has happened and it had better stay that way if you ever want to see your brother alive again, do you understand me?"
"Y- yes."
"Good, now, we've laid a false trail for them to chase, which should take up some of their time."
"They'll be back," Charlie declared, knowing it was true even if Banner's words caused his mouth to go dry.
If what he was saying was true, then David and the others would be wasting precious time following a bad lead. Time which could be far better spent looking for Don and potentially saving him from this man Banner kept referring to.
"They'll want me to help them."
"And you'll say no," Banner ordered.
"What if they don't give me a choice? What if to say no would make them more suspicious?"
"Then Agent Eppes will suffer the consequences."
The simple statement and its cold delivery sent a shiver down Charlie's spine and he had to fight down the horror and fear in order to think semi rationally.
"You're asking the impossible! Just 'cause they might take me down to their office temporarily doesn't mean that I'll tell them anything. I wouldn't risk Don's life like that."
"And I'm sure letting my... colleague play with your brother a little won't necessarily mean he'll end up dead. See, he'd like to toy with him a bit more first."
Charlie flinched at the wording and his eyes grew wide as Banner extracted another photo from the inner pocket of his suit jacket.
"A little incentive for you, just in case you're tempted to babble to Agent Eppes' team."
Banner put the photo facedown on the desk before walking back to the door.
"Oh, one more thing, Dr. Eppes. We're expecting some results soon, or you won't have to worry about avoiding your brother's team."
The agent was gone before Charlie could form a coherent reply and his eyes were instantly drawn back to the photo. Part of him wanted to rush forward, snatch it up and take in the proof that Don was still alive. The other part of him wanted to back away and never touch the cursed thing. He was afraid, so very afraid, to see what had been done to his brother since Sunday. This wasn't some job related injury that Don had sustained in the line of duty, protecting someone or preventing a crime from happening. No, this was because Don was related to him, this was because of the blood they shared, this was because of who he himself was. This was because of his genius.
Hadn't Don already suffered enough due to his gift? Charlie hadn't been able to see it at the time, but now, looking back on their childhood, he could see some of the sacrifices his older brother had been forced to make for him. Oh, he still hated how Don had treated him at times, or the way he'd made him feel far too often, but those events were no longer viewed through a child's self-centered lens. Difficult as it was at times, he could now put himself in Don's shoes and imagine what things had been like for him. The knowledge of how strained his parent's relationship had become due to the burden of supporting someone of his talents had been the catalyst that had allowed him to go back and take a long hard look at things he'd been so sure he understood as well as he needed to.
In the end, the need to know, to have all of the available data, won out over his desire to bury his head in the sand. Charlie knew that he wouldn't be able to ignore the photo forever and it was better to get it over and done with quickly so that he could focus on the problem once more, without being distracted by the images his mind would create in lieu of the Polaroid if he allowed it to.
Decision made... now he just had to follow through, which turned out to be harder than he'd thought it would be. Finally Charlie managed to get his body to act, stepping up to the desk. He noticed how his hand shook as he reached out for the Polaroid, so much so that it took him a few attempts to pick it up. Once he did, he quickly turned it over before he could loose his nerve.
Charlie gasped in horror and then moaned as his eyes were drawn straight to Don's face and the spectacular rainbow colored bruise swelling around his left eye. He'd been right, it had been puffy in the other photos. The knowledge did nothing to help soothe the shock of what he was seeing now, though. He'd seen his brother with bruises on his face before, generally as a teenager after he'd gotten into a fist fight with a bully or gotten a little too rough and tumble with one of his friends. The knowledge that this wasn't something like that, that it had been done to Don while he was already overpowered and unable to resist or defend himself, it was overwhelming and threatened to crush him.
Finally able to tear his eyes from the bruise, Charlie carefully surveyed the rest of his brother, looking for any new injuries. He found far too many for his liking. There appeared to be an angry red line running down the side of his face and two more, lower down on his body, one on his throat and the other down his chest. Now that Don's dress shirt had also been ripped open to reveal his torso, Charlie could see the source of the blood that had stained the shirt on the previous two photos. It was a long cut that ran across his ribs and bisected the red line. It looked painful, but, thankfully, wasn't too deep or life threatening.
There was also some dark bruising on his side that showed he'd taken a hit or a beating of some kind there, though Charlie couldn't quite figure out how. The upper half of Don's shirt and his head were also wet, as if water had been poured over him, but not vertically, as the rest of his shirt and pants weren't soaked. Perhaps it had been thrown at him? That would fit the light spray pattern he could make out on the lower parts of the shirt.
It was while glancing at the shirt that Charlie caught sight of Don's left hand. He moaned again as he noticed the unnatural angle of two of his fingers and swelling that seemed to only just have started appearing. What the hell had they done to his brother? Banner had said that they'd leave him alone if he cooperated. If they considered this nothing, he didn't even want to contemplate what they considered to be real damage.
The worst thing by far about the image, though, was the pain he could detect in the depths of his big brother's eyes. Charlie knew he had to be in serious agony to show it like this and he wondered what else had been done to him to cause it. It was as he was trying to prevent his mind from providing him with answers to that question that he realized that the angry red lines on Don's skin were burns.
Charlie barely made it to the trashcan before he lost what little he had in his stomach.
/
Tuesday, 12:50
Dr. Charles Eppes' Office, CalSci
Charlie felt a rush of satisfaction and relief as he finally managed to peal back the second layer of the security program. The swell of positive emotions didn't last for long, though, as he found himself confronted with yet another layer of security features. Frustration threatened to overwhelm him followed swiftly by despair. This wasn't working, it was taking far too long!
Whereas normally he'd relish the challenge this problem provided as he had for most of the weekend, now Charlie hated it. Instead of being able to charge his way through it and help his brother, he kept running into obstacle after obstacle after obstacle. A sense of failure swamped him as he thought of all the times Don had helped or saved him over the years, he'd long since lost track and yet now, the one time Don needed his help, he was unable to provide it. The worst thing was that what he had to do to save his brother was math related, his area of expertise, and he still couldn't do it.
The rush of emotions churning within him boiled over and Charlie suddenly found himself on the floor, breathing hard and fast. Before he'd fully decided what to do, he found himself reaching out towards the drawer with the photos, needing to be able to see his brother. But then he snatched his arm back, the image of the latest Polaroid flashing across his mind. He moaned at the memory of the new injuries Don had sported. Injuries his brother had received because he'd been too slow with the math. He was trying to resist the compulsion of looking at the photos again and found himself rocking back and forth as a result.
Charlie pressed his face to his knees in despair and tried in vain to reel in his wayward emotions. He didn't have the time for this! Every moment he wasted was a moment longer that Don was in the hands of those who'd kidnapped him. Every moment longer was a moment more that Don was at their mercy, helpless to resist or protect himself as they injured him further.
Instead of helping to spur him on, the thought only served to distract Charlie further as his mind started conjuring up images of what his brother might look like in the next photo he received. Would his other eye be bruised too? What about his right hand, would it have received the same treatment as his left? Would there be more burn marks? And that was without even considering the host of other things that could be inflicted on Don. Unfortunately his mind was more than able to imagine all kinds of horrors due to the crime scene photos he'd seen over the course of his work for the FBI. Don did his best to protect him from those sights, but he'd always been so determined in his insistence that he didn't need to be protected anymore or to get all of the available data the he'd seen his fair share of them. Now he sincerely wished he hadn't then his mind wouldn't be able to conjure up the images so easily or realistically.
"Charlie!"
The cry drew him out of his thoughts and he lifted his head to find Colby dropping into a crouch beside him.
"Are you alright?" Colby inquired worriedly.
Charlie just looked at him, blinking as he tried desperately to remember what his plan was. He knew he'd had one for how to deal with this moment, the inevitable arrival of someone from Don's team to try and get him to go to the office and help them locate Don or figure out what had happened to him. He just couldn't remember what he'd decided to do no matter how hard he tried.
"Charlie? Come on, man, are you with me here?"
"Colby," Charlie said for lack of anything better as his mind remained stubbornly blank, failing him yet again.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," the words were out of his mouth before Charlie realized what a Don like response it was given that Colby could clearly tell that something was wrong.
The quick grimace that crossed the agent's face indicated that it had occurred to him as well.
"It's not making any sense!" Charlie exclaimed, his mind back on what Banner wanted him to accomplish.
"What's not making any sense?"
"The problem," Charlie explained impatiently. "And it's so familiar too!"
He didn't know why he kept coming back to that. Charlie knew that one of the mathematicians involved was Harvey, so he wasn't surprised that some of it looked familiar to him as they'd collaborated together during his time at MIT. Yet, somehow, he didn't think that was quite why he had the feeling, at least not pertaining to the parts of the program he was most interested in. In unveiling the third layer, he'd gotten more of a glimpse of the peculiar algorithm that seemed to run straight through all of the layers of the security program and which he'd first noticed at the very start on Thursday evening. Of course, back then he'd assumed it was a feature of the second layer of the security program, not realizing how deep it truly ran.
"Familiar? Charlie, what-" Colby began. "Never mind, look I'm here to see whether you can come help us or not. I know it's a lot to ask, but-"
"Ask!" Charlie exclaimed, shooting to his feet.
Too fast, much too fast and only Colby's quick reflexes prevented Charlie from tumbling back down to the floor as the world went white for a second.
"Whoa! Careful. Are you sure you're okay? Why were you on the floor to begin with? Did you fall down?"
"Ask, that's it! That's why it's so familiar!"
"Charlie? What- when did you last eat something?"
"Toast," Charlie muttered, only half paying attention to Colby as he pondered this new revelation.
Chapter 11