Numb3rs AU: "Like Minds"
Title: Like Minds.
This is part of my first Val Eppes universe.
Category: AU, episode-related.
Author: Keenir.
Beta: Babnol.
word count: 2,270
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The Eppes family, the Burdick family, and all other canon characters are not my own.
Summary:
-Part One: Perhaps the longest Charlie worked on a case for Don {so far}, and it was to open a door.
-Part Two: The formative past.
-Part Three: Val helps out, digging for the truth.
Spoilers: Prime Suspect, Soft Target, First Law.
Note: it was watching Soft Target that gave me the idea which helped smooth the edges of this fic - and added a third part, which I think adds symmetry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Who are you?"
"My name is Charlie Eppes," Charlie said.
"I'm sorry then, I should've recognized you - I attended when you gave a lecture on the solution to P vs NP."
"It's okay. Not everyone recognizes me outside my native enviroment of Cal Sci."
A small smile, easing just slightly from the dizzying heights of apprehension and fear. "Wait - Eppes...any relation to the FBI officer who was here earlier?"
"Don Eppes?"
"Yeah."
"My brother."
That flicker of fear in the eyes again. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"I want to help you," Charlie said. "Not on Reimmans - you look like you've solved it."
"We don't need any help," he said, his voice giving lie to his words.
"Yes you do. I'll be the first to say that you're doing better than I would under the circumstances."
Mirthlessly, "How would you know? What do you have to lose, besides a cushy job?"
"I wouldn't have been able to solve P vs NP without my wife," Charlie said. "We don't have any children, but I do understand what must be going through your mind." And there's very few people I can say that about.
"Then you understand why I'm asking you to leave."
"I do."
"It's an honor to meet you, Professor Eppes, but I can't..." and couldn't finish his sentence.
"If someone had kidnapped my wife or anyone else in my family," Charlie said, "I'd want everything possible to be done to get her back. She's my life." All my family is.
"Like Emily."
Charlie nodded.
"And what if the FBI can't get her back? What would you have done?"
"I wouldn't give up. And neither will my brother. We'll get Emily back."
"We just have to trust you."
"It helps if you trust us. But even if you don't, at least let us help you."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PART TWO:
Eppes Craftsman Household:
Charlie and Val were sitting on the couch, alone in the room. "You can date, you know," Charlie told her.
"I seem to recall you telling me that before," Val said. "And look how well I listened."
"Not at all; not that I'm objecting."
"It's called going steady. And I'm patient."
"And I know you have needs," Charlie said. "And I understand if you want to -"
"Needs?" Val interupted. "Where did this come from?"
"Sex Ed class and my knowing how long -"
"I will wait as long as I need to, Charlie Eppes. I don't have my eyes on anyone else, nor will I ever."
"I'd understand if you did, though."
The look in her eyes convinced him to stop. "Now go, you, before your brother has to arrest me for corrupting a minor," Val teased, tapping her nose against his.
"I'm nineteen," Charlie said.
"And we're not married."
~~
CalSci Library:
Amita Ramanujan looked back over her mathematical proof. "What'm I missing?" she asked herself. To her eyes, there was nothing te matter with her work ... and yet something about it niggled at her. Something subtle, it had to be. She groaned at it, a little annoyed at not being able to manage a decent growl.
There was a knock on one of the nearby bookcases. Amita looked up, somewhat flustered at having been caught in a moment of unprofessional behavior. I'm a glorified Teacher's Assistant, she knew, but every little bit counts. "Agent Granger," Amita said with a genuine smile. Colby.
"Hey," Colby said. "Rough day?" coming over to the table she had her papers and books.
"Just a little."
"Then this won't help."
"Right now, I welcome a distraction. What do you have?"
"A rash of home invasions," pulling the relevant file out of the case, handing it over to her.
Accepting it, Amita asked, "Any commonalities? Ethnic background, tax bracket, geographic features."
"Aside from all of their addresses ending in 42, nothing we can see. We were hoping you could shed a little light on it." Colby had no problem with asking Amita for help: with her, you stood a chance at learning something ...unlike Charlie, who nine-and-a-half times out of ten would give you an thirty-second-or-less analogy and the answer, so he could hurry back to his classes. Colby didn't blame him too much - If I had a gorgeous wife counting on me, I'd be working my ass off to carry my weight too...then reminded him that gorgeous wives tend to go for the financial jugular when the day came that he would be outed as a spy.
"Can I help?" Colby asked after Amita had been examining the sheets for a few minutes.
"You can do better than that," Amita said. "Look," and offered her insight. We might need the supercomputer, but this is a good place to start in the meantime.
~~
Eppes Craftsman Garage:
Charlie took a step into the garage - and stopped.
The blackboards were back out. "Dad?" Charlie asked. I put these away over a year ago. I wasn't going to use them anymore.
"Yeah?" Alan asked, coming to the garage door. "Wow, been a while since I've seen these out."
"Can I take it from your reaction that you didn't get them out?"
"You can."
"Was Don out here the other day?" I was in a meeting with the dean, and didn't find out until later.
"Yeah, him and some of the people he works with. Amita too," Alan said.
"Did they do this?" The boards were blank, and looked like they'd been washed clean within the past few days.
"No, they did something with positioning and recreating a scene."
That leaves... No.
"Well," Alan said after a minute, "if you don't need me for anything else, I'm needed in the kitchen."
Did the Girl Scouts recruit you to make cookies, or is it still the 4-H? "Try not to burn anything," Charlie said, concerned.
"Said the kettle," Alan said with love as he left. "Don't stay out too late - your brother wants to take us all to dinner to celebrate his promotion."
"I'll be there," Charlie said, looking at the blank slates.
The agreement was entirely unwritten and largely unsaid, with its genesis when they had been dating. He knows how much Val knows of what he did, how he became as much of a normal boyfriend as he could - even when she said she didn't mind how he was before. As much for her as for me, Charlie had always told himself.
Unspoken, an exception was made by the both of them when Margaret Eppes had fallen ill. Charlie had thrown himself into the hardest math problem he knew, leaving his work everywhere across the house - but mostly on these blackboards. Val had copied down everything he wrote up there - down to duplicating the angles and distances between the numbers and symbols - so he could reuse the board to continue the math. The only breaks Charlie had allowed himself was going to the hospital with Val to visit his mother. As much for me as for her.
That she was bringing out the blackboards... Charlie thought over the past few days to see if he could think of anything that would make her this worried ... and nothing came to mind. I'll ask, he resolved.
Taking a deep breath, I owe her everything, Charlie thought to himself before he put the blackboards away.
~~
Eppes Craftsman Household:
From the kitchen doorway, Don watched Chuck and Val set the table for five. I really ought to tell 'em my date couldn't make it. And maybe it was the hope that his date would make an eleventh-hour appearance, maybe it was the dull ache which recurred when he saw Val (she's happy, that's what's important), but more likely because Don didn't want to disturb them: they were both busy all day at work, thus their few hours together every day were prized.
While he intellectually knew how much his brother had changed, there were days when Don didn't recognize Charlie as the little boy who had been so annoying. That's Val's doing, Don knew... it was what Charlie had done for her.
"You okay?" Alan asked, having come up alongside Don in that silent way of his.
"Yeah," Don said. "Just waiting for the doorbell."
"And people-watching?" asked gently.
"Nnnn, well maybe just a little," Don said.
"I don't blame ya. So, what's this girl like, the one you invited over."
"Funny, bright, not bubbly."
"Oh good - those never end well. And does she have a name, this funny and bright girl?"
"Rachel Coen," Don said.
"Now I've got running through my head the selfsame question your grandmother had when her daughter said she was seeing me," Alan said.
He didn't get a chance to ask his question, because at that moment, Val said with her usual decorum, "Would everyone please take their seats?"
Don had a feeling his dad had timed his statement precisely.
A few minutes after everyone had begun to eat their lasagna and salad, "Trouble at work?" Val asked Don, looking at her brother-in-law with concern.
You're a little too good at reading Eppes faces, Don thought. "Nah, we're fine," Don said. "Our workload's a little full, but we're getting by."
Charlie finished chewing, and said, "I can give you the names of some former students of mine who would probably make good consultants."
Don would've waved him off, but he had a fork full of lasagna in that hand. "The job market's not that tight, bro, that you need to fob your graduates off on the FBI. Amita's helping us."
"If you're sure..." Charlie said.
"Absolutely. But thanks for offering."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PART THREE:
Val wasn’t sure how much Jessie had already gone over with David and Liz when they’d visited, but she wasn’t about to back out.
Seeing her guest looking at the tea being poured into the kettle, Jessie said, “We made that one night when we couldn’t sleep and didn’t feel like thinking about work. If you don’t mind my asking, what do you do?”
“I’m a doctor,” Val said.
“Like your husband?”
You’d be surprised how often I get that. “Charlie’s a professor. I’m a pediatric surgeon.” He helps more people.
“Hm,” Jessie said. “Then you probably’ve had a happier marriage than me,” as she carried the kettle to the fire that lit itself on the stovetop.
Val frowned at that; until just now, her host had been as polite and friendly as one could be under the circumstances…And then that. “Every marriage has its bumps,” Val said, and had a bad feeling when Jessie looked over at her briefly. More pained than haunted, Val thought to herself once Jessie had returned her attention to the stove to complete the task; and wished that Megan or Terry were in town to take a look at the widow.
She let herself be shown to the couches, and listened as Jessie said, “Danny does computer work for the government, and I have a degree in computer science. So what do we do in those precious little time we spend together? Football. We talk football.”
Acting on a hunch, Val said, “I met my husband when we were in high school,” and won’t she be surprised when she meets Charlie. “He’s not the man he was back then, and he still tries to keep himself from being that way.” Though to hear you, perhaps its as well I Minored and didn’t Major in math.
“Impulse control?” Jessie asked. “I wish Danny had that problem,” though something in her voice suggested that now she wondered if that was part of the problem. “It might have helped us.”
“Charlie’s impulses are just fine,” Val said. “What I’m getting at is that he thinks he’s keeping it from me, and I haven’t said anything.” Much. I’ve helped him where I could. Where I can.
“Mutual secret-keeping. A conspiracy of and against the conspirators,” and you could almost see the wheels in motion: I suspect and he never knew I suspected, and I knew he never knew I suspected, so I kept quiet so he wouldn’t know…
Jessie smiled and said with a smile, her tone itself conspiratorial, “You saw the house.”
Val nodded, having heard from her how they had built and improved it, piece by piece.
“There was something else we worked on. More computers.”
“Cool,” Val said.
“Nothing like he used at work.”
“Of course not,” Val said, dismissing the idea.
~~
“Prosthetics?” Don asked Val once she was in the FBI office.
“A room full of them,” Val answered.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Amita said.
“How’s that?” Val asked her. “They found something they could do together,” besides turning their coffeemaker into a teamaker.
“Something that doesn’t break any of the rules he agreed to,” Jane said, thinking about what she’d just heard.
“Robinson made Bailey to be an AI,” Amita said. “That makes her cognative development independent of a human mind.”
“The opposite of what the computers in artificial limbs do,” Charlie said, hoping he didn’t end up in the middle of a disagreement between Val and Amita. Again.
“You take what you can get,” Colby said.
David nodded. “The Robinsons might’ve talked about football a lot, but their yard wasn’t the sort you could play touch football, much less any other variety of the game.”
“So what’re the odds that Daniel Robinson was an expert in both fields of AI?” Don asked.
“That sort of genius doesn’t come around too often,” Liz said.
Jane nodded.
Charlie just told Liz, “Thank you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The End
This is part of my first Val Eppes universe.
Category: AU, episode-related.
Author: Keenir.
Beta: Babnol.
word count: 2,270
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The Eppes family, the Burdick family, and all other canon characters are not my own.
Summary:
-Part One: Perhaps the longest Charlie worked on a case for Don {so far}, and it was to open a door.
-Part Two: The formative past.
-Part Three: Val helps out, digging for the truth.
Spoilers: Prime Suspect, Soft Target, First Law.
Note: it was watching Soft Target that gave me the idea which helped smooth the edges of this fic - and added a third part, which I think adds symmetry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Who are you?"
"My name is Charlie Eppes," Charlie said.
"I'm sorry then, I should've recognized you - I attended when you gave a lecture on the solution to P vs NP."
"It's okay. Not everyone recognizes me outside my native enviroment of Cal Sci."
A small smile, easing just slightly from the dizzying heights of apprehension and fear. "Wait - Eppes...any relation to the FBI officer who was here earlier?"
"Don Eppes?"
"Yeah."
"My brother."
That flicker of fear in the eyes again. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"I want to help you," Charlie said. "Not on Reimmans - you look like you've solved it."
"We don't need any help," he said, his voice giving lie to his words.
"Yes you do. I'll be the first to say that you're doing better than I would under the circumstances."
Mirthlessly, "How would you know? What do you have to lose, besides a cushy job?"
"I wouldn't have been able to solve P vs NP without my wife," Charlie said. "We don't have any children, but I do understand what must be going through your mind." And there's very few people I can say that about.
"Then you understand why I'm asking you to leave."
"I do."
"It's an honor to meet you, Professor Eppes, but I can't..." and couldn't finish his sentence.
"If someone had kidnapped my wife or anyone else in my family," Charlie said, "I'd want everything possible to be done to get her back. She's my life." All my family is.
"Like Emily."
Charlie nodded.
"And what if the FBI can't get her back? What would you have done?"
"I wouldn't give up. And neither will my brother. We'll get Emily back."
"We just have to trust you."
"It helps if you trust us. But even if you don't, at least let us help you."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PART TWO:
Eppes Craftsman Household:
Charlie and Val were sitting on the couch, alone in the room. "You can date, you know," Charlie told her.
"I seem to recall you telling me that before," Val said. "And look how well I listened."
"Not at all; not that I'm objecting."
"It's called going steady. And I'm patient."
"And I know you have needs," Charlie said. "And I understand if you want to -"
"Needs?" Val interupted. "Where did this come from?"
"Sex Ed class and my knowing how long -"
"I will wait as long as I need to, Charlie Eppes. I don't have my eyes on anyone else, nor will I ever."
"I'd understand if you did, though."
The look in her eyes convinced him to stop. "Now go, you, before your brother has to arrest me for corrupting a minor," Val teased, tapping her nose against his.
"I'm nineteen," Charlie said.
"And we're not married."
~~
CalSci Library:
Amita Ramanujan looked back over her mathematical proof. "What'm I missing?" she asked herself. To her eyes, there was nothing te matter with her work ... and yet something about it niggled at her. Something subtle, it had to be. She groaned at it, a little annoyed at not being able to manage a decent growl.
There was a knock on one of the nearby bookcases. Amita looked up, somewhat flustered at having been caught in a moment of unprofessional behavior. I'm a glorified Teacher's Assistant, she knew, but every little bit counts. "Agent Granger," Amita said with a genuine smile. Colby.
"Hey," Colby said. "Rough day?" coming over to the table she had her papers and books.
"Just a little."
"Then this won't help."
"Right now, I welcome a distraction. What do you have?"
"A rash of home invasions," pulling the relevant file out of the case, handing it over to her.
Accepting it, Amita asked, "Any commonalities? Ethnic background, tax bracket, geographic features."
"Aside from all of their addresses ending in 42, nothing we can see. We were hoping you could shed a little light on it." Colby had no problem with asking Amita for help: with her, you stood a chance at learning something ...unlike Charlie, who nine-and-a-half times out of ten would give you an thirty-second-or-less analogy and the answer, so he could hurry back to his classes. Colby didn't blame him too much - If I had a gorgeous wife counting on me, I'd be working my ass off to carry my weight too...then reminded him that gorgeous wives tend to go for the financial jugular when the day came that he would be outed as a spy.
"Can I help?" Colby asked after Amita had been examining the sheets for a few minutes.
"You can do better than that," Amita said. "Look," and offered her insight. We might need the supercomputer, but this is a good place to start in the meantime.
~~
Eppes Craftsman Garage:
Charlie took a step into the garage - and stopped.
The blackboards were back out. "Dad?" Charlie asked. I put these away over a year ago. I wasn't going to use them anymore.
"Yeah?" Alan asked, coming to the garage door. "Wow, been a while since I've seen these out."
"Can I take it from your reaction that you didn't get them out?"
"You can."
"Was Don out here the other day?" I was in a meeting with the dean, and didn't find out until later.
"Yeah, him and some of the people he works with. Amita too," Alan said.
"Did they do this?" The boards were blank, and looked like they'd been washed clean within the past few days.
"No, they did something with positioning and recreating a scene."
That leaves... No.
"Well," Alan said after a minute, "if you don't need me for anything else, I'm needed in the kitchen."
Did the Girl Scouts recruit you to make cookies, or is it still the 4-H? "Try not to burn anything," Charlie said, concerned.
"Said the kettle," Alan said with love as he left. "Don't stay out too late - your brother wants to take us all to dinner to celebrate his promotion."
"I'll be there," Charlie said, looking at the blank slates.
The agreement was entirely unwritten and largely unsaid, with its genesis when they had been dating. He knows how much Val knows of what he did, how he became as much of a normal boyfriend as he could - even when she said she didn't mind how he was before. As much for her as for me, Charlie had always told himself.
Unspoken, an exception was made by the both of them when Margaret Eppes had fallen ill. Charlie had thrown himself into the hardest math problem he knew, leaving his work everywhere across the house - but mostly on these blackboards. Val had copied down everything he wrote up there - down to duplicating the angles and distances between the numbers and symbols - so he could reuse the board to continue the math. The only breaks Charlie had allowed himself was going to the hospital with Val to visit his mother. As much for me as for her.
That she was bringing out the blackboards... Charlie thought over the past few days to see if he could think of anything that would make her this worried ... and nothing came to mind. I'll ask, he resolved.
Taking a deep breath, I owe her everything, Charlie thought to himself before he put the blackboards away.
~~
Eppes Craftsman Household:
From the kitchen doorway, Don watched Chuck and Val set the table for five. I really ought to tell 'em my date couldn't make it. And maybe it was the hope that his date would make an eleventh-hour appearance, maybe it was the dull ache which recurred when he saw Val (she's happy, that's what's important), but more likely because Don didn't want to disturb them: they were both busy all day at work, thus their few hours together every day were prized.
While he intellectually knew how much his brother had changed, there were days when Don didn't recognize Charlie as the little boy who had been so annoying. That's Val's doing, Don knew... it was what Charlie had done for her.
"You okay?" Alan asked, having come up alongside Don in that silent way of his.
"Yeah," Don said. "Just waiting for the doorbell."
"And people-watching?" asked gently.
"Nnnn, well maybe just a little," Don said.
"I don't blame ya. So, what's this girl like, the one you invited over."
"Funny, bright, not bubbly."
"Oh good - those never end well. And does she have a name, this funny and bright girl?"
"Rachel Coen," Don said.
"Now I've got running through my head the selfsame question your grandmother had when her daughter said she was seeing me," Alan said.
He didn't get a chance to ask his question, because at that moment, Val said with her usual decorum, "Would everyone please take their seats?"
Don had a feeling his dad had timed his statement precisely.
A few minutes after everyone had begun to eat their lasagna and salad, "Trouble at work?" Val asked Don, looking at her brother-in-law with concern.
You're a little too good at reading Eppes faces, Don thought. "Nah, we're fine," Don said. "Our workload's a little full, but we're getting by."
Charlie finished chewing, and said, "I can give you the names of some former students of mine who would probably make good consultants."
Don would've waved him off, but he had a fork full of lasagna in that hand. "The job market's not that tight, bro, that you need to fob your graduates off on the FBI. Amita's helping us."
"If you're sure..." Charlie said.
"Absolutely. But thanks for offering."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PART THREE:
Val wasn’t sure how much Jessie had already gone over with David and Liz when they’d visited, but she wasn’t about to back out.
Seeing her guest looking at the tea being poured into the kettle, Jessie said, “We made that one night when we couldn’t sleep and didn’t feel like thinking about work. If you don’t mind my asking, what do you do?”
“I’m a doctor,” Val said.
“Like your husband?”
You’d be surprised how often I get that. “Charlie’s a professor. I’m a pediatric surgeon.” He helps more people.
“Hm,” Jessie said. “Then you probably’ve had a happier marriage than me,” as she carried the kettle to the fire that lit itself on the stovetop.
Val frowned at that; until just now, her host had been as polite and friendly as one could be under the circumstances…And then that. “Every marriage has its bumps,” Val said, and had a bad feeling when Jessie looked over at her briefly. More pained than haunted, Val thought to herself once Jessie had returned her attention to the stove to complete the task; and wished that Megan or Terry were in town to take a look at the widow.
She let herself be shown to the couches, and listened as Jessie said, “Danny does computer work for the government, and I have a degree in computer science. So what do we do in those precious little time we spend together? Football. We talk football.”
Acting on a hunch, Val said, “I met my husband when we were in high school,” and won’t she be surprised when she meets Charlie. “He’s not the man he was back then, and he still tries to keep himself from being that way.” Though to hear you, perhaps its as well I Minored and didn’t Major in math.
“Impulse control?” Jessie asked. “I wish Danny had that problem,” though something in her voice suggested that now she wondered if that was part of the problem. “It might have helped us.”
“Charlie’s impulses are just fine,” Val said. “What I’m getting at is that he thinks he’s keeping it from me, and I haven’t said anything.” Much. I’ve helped him where I could. Where I can.
“Mutual secret-keeping. A conspiracy of and against the conspirators,” and you could almost see the wheels in motion: I suspect and he never knew I suspected, and I knew he never knew I suspected, so I kept quiet so he wouldn’t know…
Jessie smiled and said with a smile, her tone itself conspiratorial, “You saw the house.”
Val nodded, having heard from her how they had built and improved it, piece by piece.
“There was something else we worked on. More computers.”
“Cool,” Val said.
“Nothing like he used at work.”
“Of course not,” Val said, dismissing the idea.
~~
“Prosthetics?” Don asked Val once she was in the FBI office.
“A room full of them,” Val answered.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Amita said.
“How’s that?” Val asked her. “They found something they could do together,” besides turning their coffeemaker into a teamaker.
“Something that doesn’t break any of the rules he agreed to,” Jane said, thinking about what she’d just heard.
“Robinson made Bailey to be an AI,” Amita said. “That makes her cognative development independent of a human mind.”
“The opposite of what the computers in artificial limbs do,” Charlie said, hoping he didn’t end up in the middle of a disagreement between Val and Amita. Again.
“You take what you can get,” Colby said.
David nodded. “The Robinsons might’ve talked about football a lot, but their yard wasn’t the sort you could play touch football, much less any other variety of the game.”
“So what’re the odds that Daniel Robinson was an expert in both fields of AI?” Don asked.
“That sort of genius doesn’t come around too often,” Liz said.
Jane nodded.
Charlie just told Liz, “Thank you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The End