((Well, we made it - the last chapter! Going up a bit early because I have to work late tonight and won't get it up otherwise. My eternal gratitude once again to OughtaKnowBetter for her fabulous beta-reading, and a big thank you to everyone who left a review so far - especially MsGrahamCracker for your kind words.

If you haven't reviewed yet, I'd love to hear what you thought. I hope you all enjoyed the ride! - Emily))

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Don sat in a horrible orange plastic chair and watched an IV feed red blood from a hanging, clear plastic bag into his brother's arm. The silence in the room was broken only by the regular beep of a heart-rate monitor.

He leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands, almost welcoming the pain that stabbed through both his torn-up palm and bandaged head as he did so. The physical pain distracted him from the ache in his heart that twisted every time he looked at his brother's motionless form.

"How is he doing?"

Don looked up to see Trainee Shelley Ramirez standing in the doorway. She studied Charlie's unmoving figure and glanced at Don.

"They said the surgery was successful," Don wrenched his attention away from Charlie. "They found a bit of sharp metal in his side – reckon it came from the SUV when it exploded – then it caused more damage when Madden -" he broke off, unable to finish the sentence. When Madden shoved his gun into Charlie's wound right in front of me and I couldn't stop him…

"Wow. He was real lucky that didn't happen before, considering how much activity he did." Shelley shook her head in amazement. "Not woken up yet?" She moved into the room.

"Nah. Should be any time." Don looked back at Charlie. So unnaturally still. It wasn't right; Charlie was never still. He watched as his brother took shallow breaths but his eyelids did not flicker. I couldn't protect him…

Yes, the surgery had been successful, extracting a shard of metal that had come within millimetres of perforating Charlie's kidney. When Madden had punched the injury, the sharp splinter had moved, nicked a major artery and caused his brother to nearly bleed to death. When they told him Charlie had coded in the ambulance – told him that they'd had to resuscitate him - Don had thought his own heart would stop.

Everyone expected Charlie to have woken by now. After two days the drugs should have worn out of his system. Don hadn't missed the grave looks passed between nurses and doctors. What did it take for mere unconsciousness to be reclassified as comatose?

"And…how about you?" Now Shelley sounded tentative. "When you blacked out - the paramedics were worried about second impact syndrome –"

"Turns out my head is as hard as Charlie always says it is," Don cut her off. He didn't need her telling him how lucky he was. He didn't deserve luck. Apparently – as Megan had told him later - he'd still been unconscious at the time – he'd been rushed into an emergency CT scan, a neurosurgeon standing by to drill a hole in his skull to let out the building pressure as his brain swelled. Turned out he hadn't needed it. "It's just a concussion, no big deal." He just wished some of his luck could have rubbed off on Charlie.

"I head back to Quantico tomorrow, to finish my last couple weeks of training," Shelley said after a while. "I just wanted to thank you for taking me on and letting me participate so much in the case. I really learned a lot from you all."

Don dragged his thoughts away from the morose and into the present. Enough wallowing, Eppes. Get with the picture. He refocused on the trainee.

"Hey, no problem, Shelley. You did a great job out there. Guess I should be thanking you, too –" Don realized – "that move you pulled on Madden probably saved my life."

Shelley flushed, smiled back. "I'm just glad I could help."

"Well, you can be sure I'll let Tom know about your role in closing this case." He'd taught several courses at the FBI Academy and knew the director well.

"Thanks, Agent Eppes, that means a lot," Shelley's eyes shone.

"The least I could do," Don remarked. "I'm sure you'll be offered plenty of positions once you graduate, but if you ever feel like L.A is the place to be, there's a spot for you with me and mine." Wow. Had that really been Don speaking? Don with his 'trust issues', as Megan so delicately put it? Guess she did save my life, and take out Madden single-handedly. Kind of makes a girl grow on you.

"Oh my gosh!" Shelley looked like she might have started jumping up and down if it hadn't been an entirely insensitive thing to do in a hospital room. She settled for clasping her hands and beaming.

"Can I give you my number? Will you text me when Charlie wakes up?" she asked hopefully.

Don nodded, a little surprised. "Sure." They exchanged numbers, and then Shelley held out her hand for Don to shake.

"Well, see you around," she smiled. "I hope Charlie recovers well." She waved and left the room.

Don watched her go.

"Nice catch," a voice croaked from the bed. Don spun around.

"Charlie!" he exclaimed. His brother's eyes were open and he was smiling. It was a small smile, barely touching the corners of his mouth, but a smile nonetheless. "You're awake." He almost choked on the words, his relief was so great. "How are you feeling?"

"Terrible. So you got her number, huh?"

The smile on his Charlie's face warmed Don's heart. He couldn't help but respond, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he grinned fondly at his brother.

"Oh, shut up. She just wanted to know when you woke up."

"That's what they all say."

"What?" Don had to laugh. It was such a relief to have Charlie back in the land of the living. "What are you talking about? Besides, it's true! Look – I'm texting her now."

"Already? Fast mover!"

"You little brat!" Don grabbed an ice cube from the cup beside Charlie's bed. "You must still be dehydrated. Your brain is malfunctioning." He pushed the ice cube between his brother's lips. Charlie spluttered, but the slowly melting ice liquid felt so good in his mouth that he settled for rolling his eyes.

"My brain never malfunctions," he mumbled around the ice cube.

"What's that? Your brain never functions? You don't have to tell me that. I grew up with you, remember?" Don grinned. The argument was childish to the extreme, but that didn't matter. It just felt so good to be able to joke around with Charlie, after coming so close to losing his brother forever.

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"Hey, guys." Charlie opened the front door and smiled at Megan and Colby, allowing them to step past him and enter the warm living room. "Thanks for coming -"

"Thank my personal chauffeur here." Megan rolled her eyes over at Colby, who shrugged and grinned. With her hand still splinted Megan was unable to drive and it was grating on her nerves. Luckily Colby was good-natured enough to not complain about his unwilling passenger.

"Good to see ya on your feet again Charlie," he said, just as a voice called out from the kitchen.

"Charlie you promised you were going to stay on the couch!" Alan's voice sounded rather grumpy. Charlie grinned mischievously at the two agents.

"Sorry, I lied," he called back cheerfully before whispering to Megan and Colby, "I'm driving him crazy because I won't stay put. He thinks I'm going to fall apart if I so much as take ten steps between the couch and the front door!" They walked in towards the dining room, where Alan's voice could now be heard berating Don for not getting to the door before Charlie.

"Why do I have to get the door as well? I'm helping with dinner, which is more than Charlie's doing!" Don protested, followed by the sound of a snapping teatowel as Alan swatted his eldest. "OW!"

"David and Larry are already here," Charlie couldn't keep the smirk off his face as he showed Megan and Colby through to the dining room.

An expression of relief crossed David's face as his teammates arrived sat down. Larry barely glanced up from a passionate monologue that had been going on since David had admitted physics was a closed book to him.

"According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality actually arises in the limitations of our language. It is not surprising that our language should be incapable of describing the wondrous processes occurring within the atoms, for it was invented to describe the experiences of daily life, and these consist only of processes involving exceedingly large numbers of atoms. Furthermore, it is very difficult to modify our language so that it will be able to describe these atomic processes because words can only describe things of which we can form mental pictures, and this ability, too, is a result of daily experience."

Charlie leaned against the table and smirked at Larry. "Fortunately, math is not subject to the limitation of language. That's why quantum theory as a mathematical system is entirely adequate for dealing with sub-atomic processes."

Larry sighed. "Yes, Charles, but for visualisation, we must content ourselves with two incomplete analogies — the wave picture and the corpuscular picture. The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use it for the interpretation of the experiments. However, he must additionally speak about his results to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in a more pedestrian language."

David shook his head. "Well, I'm definitely a non-physicist, and I still don't get it. I think old Heisenberg did a good job when he named it the Uncertainty Principle. It sure as hell is uncertain to me!"

Larry put his chin in his hands. "As Heisenberg himself said: after conversations with Tagore about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of quantum physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense."

David laughed. "Well, I guess if even Heisenberg was confused by it all I don't feel so bad!"

The doorbell rang again and Charlie turned, about to head back over but was stopped in his tracks by a bellow from the kitchen.

"Donnie! Get the door now!" Don shot out of the kitchen door and almost collided with his brother.

"Charlie, for my sake sit down and talk to Larry or dad will never give me any peace," Don pleaded as he went to welcome Amita, and Shelley who had showed up at the same time.

When everyone was seated and served, Alan looked around at the gathered guests. Every one of them was dear to him. The three agents Don worked with and trusted as much as he could trust anyone had long ago surpassed "colleague" status and become close family friends, the beautiful Amita was so much more than just another grad student and he had high hopes for her and Charlie, although his youngest didn't seem to be picking up the hints as well as he would like…Larry of course was one of their oldest friends and was always welcome at the Eppes household.

The new kid on the block, of course, was young Shelley Ramirez, and Alan reserved an extra warm smile for the pretty trainee. She seemed like a nice girl, and smart too. He'd heard all about how she'd taken out that bad man all on her own. Maybe Don would like to show her around L.A a little…

"Thank you all again for being here," he began. "I wanted to offer you all my sincere thanks, especially to Megan, Colby, David and Shelley, for working non-stop to bring home my sons…and to Larry and Amita for your invaluable friendship and support through this difficult time. Without you all Charlie and Donnie might not be here today and there are no words I can say that could ever begin to express my gratitude."

He smiled softly at his boys, who returned the affectionate look. They weren't a demonstrative family and the short words were all that was needed.

"Yeah, thanks for saving our necks, you guys," Don added with the contagious, unexpectedly boyish grin that lit up his face. Alan was glad to see it. Don didn't smile enough these days, he decided.

"It was our privilege to save your necks," Megan retorted.

"I hear we're also celebrating Shelley's successful graduation," Charlie grinned at the young new agent. "Congratulations!"

"Thanks," Shelley smiled as the others clapped and cheered.

"It's no joke graduating from Quantico, I can tell you that!" Colby grinned.

"So Megan, what exactly did you do to your hand?" Charlie asked as they began eating, eyeing the plastic splint that kept her left hand immobilized. Megan sighed, foreseeing being asked this question many times before the splint was off and she finally got off desk duty.

"It was in that crash, the one that was staged to stop us getting in pursuit right away," she explained. "I was driving and the door got dented right in and trapped my hand behind the wheel while I was thrown sideways," she demonstrated the action, "it twisted around and one of the bones spiral fractured. It was sticking right up like this – " she showed the angle of how the snapped bone had pushed up from the back of her hand and everyone winced in sympathy. "So they operated and put in four titanium pins to screw it back together –"

"Because she made such a fuss at the hospital refusing to have a cast!" Colby interjected. "And now every single time she comes to work she's gonna set the security gates off!" He started cracking up at the idea of Megan having to be searched with the metal-detector wand every single day.

"Well at least in in two weeks I'll be able to drive again, instead of six to eight!" Megan defended herself, mock-glaring at Colby. David nodded.

"Plus you don't have the itching problem," he agreed. "When I broke my arm as a kid the itching under the cast was driving me crazy. I swear I lost at least six pencils down it, trying to scratch."

"I know! I broke my wrist twice already, that's why I refused!" Megan explained, stabbing her knife into her ribeye in the vain hope that it would miraculously disintegrate into bite-sized pieces.

Colby paused. I really shouldn't, but…"Not looking too handy with that knife, Megan," he commented slyly.

Perhaps Megan could be forgiven for forcing Colby to drop his own cutlery and defend himself against a sudden stab attack with the aforementioned knife.

"God Colby, is that the best you can come up with?" David half-groaned, half-laughed.

"Like to see you do better," Colby returned, ducking as Megan gave up on stabbing him with a piece of cutlery and attempted instead to swat him above the head with her good hand. "Aw c'mon, don't take it to heart…let me give you a hand with that," Colby just couldn't leave well enough alone as he grabbed Megan's plate and began to cut her meal for her.

"Colby if you don't shut up making lame jokes and give me back my plate I will make Don put you on desk duty for the next few years," Megan threatened in exasperation.

"Oh, yeah? How're you gonna make me do that?" Don wondered, grinning at the unusual spectacle of Megan attempting to pull her plate away from Colby, who was fending her off with one muscular forearm and still managing to cut her food at the same time.

Megan gave him a sweet smile, desisted from attacking Colby, and pointed at her broken hand. "You owe me," was all she said. Don started to protest, was it his fault she had stuck her hand behind the wheel where it had no right to be in a car crash? But Charlie was still back on the jokes.

"I have a good one," he interrupted eagerly. "At least, my advanced calc class thought it was hilarious…anyway a constant function and e^x are walking down the street –"

"Oh no, not another math joke," Don groaned. He never understood Charlie's jokes, though it didn't seem to stop his brother from telling them.

"No really, it's good," Charlie protested. "Well, suddenly the constant function sees a differential operator and he screams, runs away and hides behind a mailbox. E^x isn't about to let this behaviour go unexplained so he follows and asks "Why are you so scared of that differential operator?" and the constant function says, "He's gonna differentiate me, and there'll be nothing left of me!" E^x puffs up with pride. He says, "Huh, he doesn't scare me, I'm e to the x!" With that e^x swaggers up to the differential operator and says, "Hi there! I'm e to the x!"

Charlie almost lost control here, but managed to hold it together long enough to deliver the punchline. "And the differential operator replies, "Hi! I'm d/dy.""

There was a pause, and then Amita started laughing so hard she almost choked on her asparagus. Larry rolled his eyes.

Everyone else looked at each other in complete and utter blankness. That was the punchline?

"Charles, simply allow me to bring a chain rule to the party, and e^x will be completely safe," Larry sounded a little smug. Charlie stared at him for a second.

"Oh! You mean… d/dy (e^x) = d/dx(e^x)· dx/dy so that d/dy (e^x) = e^x· dx/dy ... and this way no one gets hurt. Wow! That's great!"

"What the -" at this Colby started laughing too, "Charlie, how come it makes you so happy that e^x doesn't get differentiated?"

"It's amazing, I can actually feel my IQ dropping," Megan murmured as calculus-related babble erupted around her.

"Are they always like this?" Shelley's eyes were so wide that Don started to laugh.

"All the time, Agent Ramirez. All the time."

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THE END