stillane | Fic Post (Or, just what is she on?): Breaks in the Sequence, Numbers (Reply)

Blame this on raucousraven . She’s an enabler.

Edited to add: She is also strong in the betafu. She makes Megan behave and keeps Charlie alive. All mistakes are mine, all lack thereof is hers.

Fandom: Numb3rs
Pairing: David/Colby
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None, really. Maybe a few allusions, but nothing solid.
Feedback: Will be cradled like a newborn. Even if it’s ugly.

Summary: Before, During, and After. Not necessarily in that order.

This is the calm in the storm. Everything here is still and soft, waiting. Here there is light.

Arm under his head, knees under his shoulders, the drag of Kevlar and nylon on the side of his face. A hand on the back of his skull, fingers in his hair. Another against his collarbone, two fingers against his neck.

There are others, elsewhere on him, of far less importance. They are only peripherally necessary.

Voice in his ear, soft despite the chaos around them. Words he doesn’t hear and doesn’t need. The voice is enough.

Colby knows about death. About the way everyone dies, anyway. Not just that everyone does, but the way that it happens. There are really only two possibilities: fast and slow. He’s seen both.

Everyone knows Colby was a soldier. He makes sure of this. He doesn’t want anyone to be confused, and if he states it loudly enough and often enough, no one will need to ask. He very much doesn’t want to tell.

The army taught him how to die fast.

No one knows Colby was a son. Not in any sense but the abstract. Not that his mother was 46 years old when she left him, not that she’d fought it twice before, not that she looked equally fragile and defiant right up to the end. No one knows that she taught him how to die well.

Don and Charlie aren’t part of ‘everyone’, mainly because they are part of everyone. Don and Charlie are the heroes of this story. Don’s death would be like Superman’s, or Kennedy’s. It would make the world around them all stop turning for a while.

God forbid harm ever come to Charlie. Don would stop the world all by himself. Then he’d make it pay. They’d all help.

Colby knows it won’t work that way for him. He’s transitory. He’s human. He’s mortal.

This is shelter from the world. Everything here is quiet and easy, waiting. Here there is warmth.

Sun on his toes where they’re peeking from under the blankets. Sheets tangled around his calves. A hand in the middle of his chest, heavy and broad.

A mumble and readjustment, his lips pressed against the top of a head, the slight scrub of stubble that will be gone within an hour of waking.

The promise of a bit more time before they are needed by others and not just each other.

Charlie doesn’t know very much about death. He’s got all the statistics in the world at his fingertips, and he’s far too smart to believe that they’ll be the least bit of help. As Larry is always cautioning him, a million points of data cannot compensate for a single instant of experience.

Charlie has never died.

Grief, though… Charlie knows grief better than addition or multiplication. Grief is subtraction and sometimes division. Charlie is very good with patterns, and he’s seen this one before.

Don is loud and tense, fidgeting and looking for somewhere to go to and off. Even his silences are strident and furious. Charlie recognizes this as within the standard deviation, and files it for later consideration.

Megan is quiet and still. She sits staring at reports she doesn’t see, eyes red and mouth drawn. Now and again she draws a hand over her cheek and doesn’t turn around. This is not Charlie’s field, and he decides to seek a consult with Amita or Larry, both of whom are more advanced in the understanding of female psychology.

In David, however, Charlie finds himself. The others are here because this is where they must be, where they are most needed. David is here because he can’t be somewhere else. He’s hiding. Charlie can almost smell the chalk in the air, feel the dust under the whorls and ridges of his fingers. He remembers this.

There is nothing he can do but observe. It is a system that will not tolerate interference.

This is the loss of the light. Everything here is hard and cold, waiting. Here there is pain.

Plastic taste in his mouth, elastic pinching his skin. The dizzying sensation of movement that is both not his own and too fast. A burn in his thigh, growing more distant.

Too many sounds. Beeps and sirens and shouts. Not enough. The voice isn’t here.

He doesn’t want to be, either.

Don knows fear. He’s been in a profession that makes getting shot at more of a hobby than an accident for a long time. He never knew true terror, though, until his brother joined him in it.

Now, he fights to be brave enough to let Charlie know fear, too. He doesn’t need to like it.

He owes David. Without him, Don wouldn’t know how to be afraid anymore. He’d be dangerous, and Charlie would be dead.

He didn’t pretend ignorance because of this debt. He did it because he genuinely likes David, and Colby for that matter. They are his.

He would have kept pretending, indefinitely, if he hadn’t needed to call on the knowledge. Instead, in the middle of an instant war zone, he saw the look on David’s face. He grabbed for him, caught his vest, and held on. He kept him from throwing himself into the crossfire until the quiet returned.

Don knows fear, and what he saw in David’s face when Colby fell was the purest kind.

This is the den of the lions. Everything here is balanced and ready, waiting. Here there is strength.

Quick glances in the open. Casual positioning within personal space. A lean against the nearest wall, a hand on the back of a chair. No need for discussion when pairing up.

Laughter, sometimes.

Low murmurs in the break room. The coffeepot is scandalized.

Megan knows anger. She’s spent years in training to recognize and classify emotion and response.

She’d like to say that it helps, sometimes, to understand the things she sees here. She’d like to, but she knows herself. It comes with the territory.

She’s never been closed off or clinical. What she is is level headed, calm in the face of turmoil.

It’s never been so much of a challenge.

She watched the ambulance doors close behind Colby and before David and waited for the fallout. David’s body screamed signals she could have read blind. When the time came, she stood between him and a man in handcuffs, nothing but her open hands and quiet voice to stop him.

She did it because she is the one who can.

And because Megan’s anger burns white and cold.

She wipes her eyes and files the report, meticulous in her detail. She will not lose anyone else, and she will see justice done.

This is the match to be struck. Everything here is tense and coiled, waiting. Here there is power.

Adrenaline making them jump and fly. Crouched in hiding by a doorway, concrete against his side and beneath his feet. Gun texture digging into his palms, keeping the grip firm despite the sweat there.

Across from him, dark eyes wide and wild. Body drawn taut and so still it vibrates. The brief flash of teeth.

The world blasts open, and they move.

Alan knows love. He’s been married for more than 37 years. He’s also held two sons as they gave their earliest cries, and watched them cry without his help. This makes him an expert.

He understands forever, and how it only really requires one to continue. He’s spent most of his life learning how to build things, but part of that is knowing how things fall apart.

He comes because his sons need him. He stays because they do not, yet. He leaves because another does.

David is silent beside him in the car, staring out the window and seeing much farther. He doesn’t ask how Alan knows, or what. It doesn’t matter to either of them.

David pulls himself from the car and down the long corridors with obvious effort. Alan remembers harboring the notion that ignorance equaled untruth. He’d taken physics courses once upon a time, and learned that life continues so long as he does not open any doors. It is a safe and persistent illusion, but it traps the observer as much as the subject. He has recently learned to open the doors and even to look inside.

The inevitable comes, finally. David freezes, and if he were one of Alan’s sons, Alan would put a hand on his shoulder. He isn’t, and Alan doesn’t, but he wants to. Just now, David is Alan, and Marie is in that bed, and he couldn’t help the tears in his eyes if he wanted to.

Alan is a man too bright for sentimentality. He calls it what it is, instead, and feels no shame in loving.

This is the aftermath. Everything here is clean and smooth, finished. Here there is peace.

Two hands around one of his, fingers interlaced. Lips moving against his fingertips, breath and sound brushing them.

The words of a prayer he’s known since childhood, simple and soft. Now and then a beat of quiet too long.

Dark head bowed forward, eyes closed. A twitch of his fingers brings the eyes open and up. Wonder there, and hope.

Light and warmth and peace.

Everything.