FIC: "Holding on to a lie," Part 13/? (Colby/Charlie, Megan, Don, Amita/OMC, PG-13)
Title: "Background details"
Series: Holding on to a lie, Part 13/?
Characters: Colby/Charlie, Megan, Don, Amita/OMC.
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Discussion of rape.
Summary: Colby finds some data about Amita's therapist that should be taken into consideration.
Feedback: I love feedback. Every comment is a cup of coffee that keeps me posting. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Numb3rs or anything related to it. But I do own the original aspects and any OCs.
Beta: The absolutely lovely
toomuchfandom . Thank you so much!
Previous chapter: Part 12/? - "Never forget" (Amita/David, Larry, Charlie/Colby, R)
Holding on to a lie
Part 13: “Background details”
There was no point to stay at CalSci. David had acted violently and Amita certainly wasn’t willing to confess what she had done to him. Everything seemed to be upside down.
The only thing Colby could do was go back to the FBI. There was an idea that had been taking over his head since he had been hit by his best friend.
Once at the headquarters, he immediately started looking for Megan. After a few minutes of asking around, he found her talking with another agent about the current case the team had.
He waited for her to finish the conversation and only then he approached her. “Megan.”
“Hey, Colby… what happened to you?” she said, looking at his broken lip.
“It’s nothing… Are you busy?”
She nodded, still looking at his jaw, like she knew that he was trying to avoid a conversation about it. “Did you know that the guy we’re looking for had a contact with a female sergeant? Maybe you know her… Mary Miller.”
“No, I don’t know her…” Colby didn’t know how to ask her what he wanted. But as usual, Megan was once step ahead of him.
“Is there something wrong?” she said. “Oh my god, did something else happen to Alan?”
It was very important to tell her that nothing like that had taken place. “No, no.”
With worried eyes, she stared at him, like she was reading his soul. “Then what is it?”
He took a breath and guided her through the cubicles, taking her to the place they usually worked in. Only there he dared to ask, “How well do you know Bob Berenson?”
“Amita’s therapist?” She looked kind of surprised by the question, but she still answered it. “Um… I can tell you that I saw him work at the DOJ a couple of times. I talked to him only for a few minutes, but it seemed that what people say about him was true.”
“What do they say?”
“That he’s the best in his field, a respected professional in the area.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah… I mean, from what I’ve seen… He’s got a high level of understanding of victims of rape’s psychology and he’s been the creator of a good program to teach those people to handle stressful situations after their attacks,” Megan explained. “That’s why I suggested Don to call Berenson to help Amita. Sometimes, he does jobs for the FBI out of courtesy.”
“Mmm.”
“Why, do you see something weird?”
Shaking his head, Colby sat on one of the empty desks. “I don’t like him. Amita’s not better, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
When Megan came closer to him, he took a deep breath again. “Look, I wasn’t going to tell you this, because David probably doesn’t want me to, but I do it to help him. I found him at his apartment drinking heavily the other day. There were bottles everywhere, he was total mess...” He continued as her mouth hanged open. “I wanted to hear his reasons, so I stayed with him even after he passed out.”
“He passed out? Oh, my god…”
“He denied everything. Especially one thing he had told me before fainting. He said that Amita had done something to him. But didn’t want to tell me what it was exactly.”
“And it has to be important, doesn’t it? I mean, it affected him badly enough to make him not want to recognize the problem, which means he’s embarrassed of it.”
Colby got up from the desk and walked around. “He told me to go away. I did it because I thought that maybe he could handle it, but a while ago we passed Amita by at CalSci and he basically ran away from her. I followed him and… he hit me.”
“What? Ok, that’s definitely not good.” Megan immediately reached for Colby and touched his bleeding lip. “Maybe you should let someone take a look at this, just in case…”
“I’m fine… Do you have any idea of what might be happening to him?” Deep inside, he hoped Megan could come up with some kind of theory that could explain his best friend’s latest behavior.
She sighed. “I could tell you general stuff, but I don’t have any real facts about his situation,” she explained. “Besides, I just can’t imagine Amita hurting him or anything like that.”
“I know. It seems like she’s trying to get Charlie ba-” Colby cut himself off and continued before he spilled out his insecurities. “That’s why I asked you about Bob. Maybe he’s having a bad influence on her.”
Thoughtful, Megan spent the next seconds in silence. But then she muttered, “I told you, I’ve seen him work and he’s good at it. However, as our work has proved to us more than once that not everything that shines is gold…” This time she looked at Colby, like she had thought of the time he worked for the Chinese. “You know that’s not your case.”
Nodding, he said, “Yeah.” It really seemed that Megan didn’t want to hurt his feelings and that she was trying to apologize for having picked the wrong words.
“What I mean is that it would be a good idea to do some research about him.”
“I think so, too,” Colby agreed. He turned to her and saw her smiling sweetly at him.
“Charlie chose you for a reason, you know. I don’t think he’s going to pay attention to anyone else.”
It was nice to hear that right now. Even if he tried not to, Colby felt that Amita was a serious threat to his relationship with Charlie. He still didn’t know why, but he got a bad feeling every time she came around. He nodded at Megan, and he was about to say “Thank you” when an agent came into the room.
“Agent Reeves, we’ve got Sergeant Miller at the interrogation room.”
“Ok, thanks,” she said, and then she turned to Colby, like she didn’t know whether to help him or stick to her current case.
“Don’t worry about it, I can do that research if you don’t need me right now,” he snapped.
“Don and I can take care of this,” Megan assured him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
As he went towards his desk, he thanked her. He heard her say “Let me know if Larry gets something on the cold pills!” as she went towards the elevator.
Colby nodded and immediately started to work on his research. He spent an hour doing research. Bob Berenson really had a huge file, full of details and the wonderful reviews he had got because of his job at the DOJ. There was a lot of data to get together, and Colby did it carefully, paying attention to every single fact and figure that popped out from his career.
And he found out about a series of coincidences.
As it should be done, he checked everything four times, just to be sure that he wasn’t making any mistakes. The same data came up every single time.
He lost track of time, and at the same moment he was staring at the files he had been revising and the photographs he had collected, Don and Megan were coming towards him with worried looks on their faces.
“Megan told me what happened with you and David,” Don said, putting his hands on his hips.
“Yeah, he’s not alright, trust me,” Colby responded. “And it might not get better, according to what I’ve got.” He got up and handed to Megan and his boss the files he had been studying. “I checked Bob Berenson’s background. It turns out that if you take a look at his job records, this guy has like twenty important people he has helped out and more than three hundred that have had some seriously disturbing behavior after having attending therapy with him. The ones who benefited from his sessions were discharged always on the week of August 12th while the ones who got worse were allowed to go home on the week of November 10th, year after year.”
In a few seconds, Megan revised the information. “Born on May 6th, 1953, early interested in Psychology and the Freudian school, first job at the DOJ in 1986… married Amy Rowland on August 12th,1989…”
“His wife was raped and murdered in an alley three months after the wedding,” Don read as he looked at other dates, “on November 10th, that same year.”
Colby explained his theory. “See? That’s a very weird coincidence. And that’s not all.” He handed his friends a photograph of a murdered man. “This man is one of his female patient’s husband. The woman said in her statement that she had been sexually attacked by Berenson during her therapy and that once she was discharged, she couldn’t stand her husband to touch her that way. Eventually, he finished the problem by killing him.”
“Oh, I remember hearing about it once… No one gave the woman credit because she had a severe mental illness and because after her first statement, she started accusing every man she saw of wanting to rape her - which wasn’t weird in a case like hers,” Megan muttered, still looking at the files. “It was pretty much of a scandal, but no one could prove Berenson was actually involved in it.”
Taking a deep breath, Don left the papers and the photograph on one of the desks. “Look, this could mean something or not.”
“And yet it makes sense, on a psychological level.” The female agent took off her glasses and continued, “It could be a way for him to relive what went good and bad in his life, trying to change the events of the past. He gets good days on the second week of August, so his sessions are successful, but three months later, it all goes to hell.”
“Theories are ok,” Don muttered, “but we need more than that.” He turned to Colby. “If this guy turns out to be a rapist, you can be sure I’m taking him down. But we need evidence.”
The green-eyed agent bit his lip in worry because he knew that what he had wasn’t exactly enough proof. “I know that, and that’s why I’ll keep looking. I’m telling you, Don, this guy isn’t as good as everybody thinks he is.”
“If you get anything, make sure to let me know,” Don said as one agent signaled him from the back of the room. “Megan, we gotta go.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” Colby said as they went away.
He sat at his desk, looked at a couple more files and didn’t find anything about Bob Berenson who could be useful. Tired, he finally decided to go to see Charlie at the house, help him for while to take care of his father. After all, what Megan had said to him was true. If Charlie had chosen him, then he wouldn’t fall for any tricks Amita would display.
A knock on the door.
Things looked shaky and out of place when Amita became aware that she was in her bedroom, on the floor, surrounded by photographs of Charlie and Colby together. The pills had hit her system hard, and she had fallen asleep for more than an hour.
Someone was calling her. “Amita, do you hear me? Open the door!”
It was Bob, but she didn’t move. She didn’t want to see her like this, because then she couldn’t avoid the questions about the state of the rooms. Bob hadn’t been at her apartment yet; all the times they had been together, it had been at his place.
“I’m not leaving until I see you’re ok, do you understand that?” Bob continued, as he knocked harder on the door.
“Dammit,” she cursed, getting up. She stumbled and stepped on the photographs as she went to open the door.
Bob frowned as soon as he saw her. “What happened to you?” She had to look bad for him to say that.
“I took a couple of sleeping pills, that’s all. You woke me up,” Amita managed to say as he entered the house and checked the rooms.
“What the hell is this?”
“What, the great Bob Berenson doesn’t recognize obsessive behavior when he sees it?” she joked.
He turned around with angry eyes. “This is not part of the deal. I’m supposed to help you, people are supposed to see that you’re getting better.”
“Really? ‘Cause I don’t remember you saying anything remotely similar to that. All I remember is you calling me ‘dirty, little thing’ and putting your hands on me, nothing more.”
That left Bob speechless for a few seconds. But then he snapped, “What about my reputation?”
“I think you should have thought about that before getting into bed with me,” Amita stated, and she went to grab her things, including some photographs and one of the copies of Charlie and Colby’s love scene. Then she stumbled a little bit more as she walked into the kitchen, chose a knife and put it into her bag, too.
When she returned to the living room, she ran into Bob again. As he wasn’t saying anything, she turned to him. “Look, I’m not trying to damage your career, Bob. All I want is my all life back, that’s it.” He looked at her with worried eyes but remained in silence for now. “I’m going to Charlie’s house, I need to see him, see how his father’s doing,” she added.
“But you’re not ok.”
“I don’t know about that. But I’m going to do this anyway.” She got closer to him, put her arms around him. “Patrick messed up my head, everybody knows that. I know that. I try to stop the bad feelings, but I can’t. I’m just going to fix things so everything can go back to normal.”
Now Amita kissed Bob on the lips; then she went towards the door. But before leaving, she turned to him and muttered, “Just in case, I’d tell you to get out of town as soon as you can if you don’t want to be related to this.”
“Amita! Amita!” he yelled at her as she ran though the corridor and got into the elevator.
Get out of town as soon as you can. Why the hell had Amita said that? Bob tried to find an answer to that by analyzing the rooms of her apartment. It was a total disaster, the food was decomposing and no one had cleaned anything for several days.
He had agreed for her to watch Charlie Eppes and Colby Granger’s video while they had sex, he hadn’t protested when she had decided to burn it into a DVD. He didn’t care what happened to her as long as he got what he wanted and got out of it unharmed.
Yet, the situation seemed to have changed. Obsession cases like hers didn’t usually end well. And that would certainly affect his career.
Slowly, Bob picked up a photograph of the gay couple from the floor. Eppes and Granger were just happily talking at the university. So she’s been taking pictures of them there, too… Then he saw a portrait of Amita and Charlie on her nightstand, and he also picked this one up.
With both pictures in his hands, he went to the balcony. The windows were open; the sun was high in the sky.
And he could see Amita get into a cab.
Maybe he had made a big, big mistake by taking her as a simple, desperate, easily-influenced woman who needed some affection. He didn’t know whether it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing for him, but she was definitely a lot more than that.
Series: Holding on to a lie, Part 13/?
Characters: Colby/Charlie, Megan, Don, Amita/OMC.
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Discussion of rape.
Summary: Colby finds some data about Amita's therapist that should be taken into consideration.
Feedback: I love feedback. Every comment is a cup of coffee that keeps me posting. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Numb3rs or anything related to it. But I do own the original aspects and any OCs.
Beta: The absolutely lovely
toomuchfandom . Thank you so much!
Previous chapter: Part 12/? - "Never forget" (Amita/David, Larry, Charlie/Colby, R)
Holding on to a lie
Part 13: “Background details”
There was no point to stay at CalSci. David had acted violently and Amita certainly wasn’t willing to confess what she had done to him. Everything seemed to be upside down.
The only thing Colby could do was go back to the FBI. There was an idea that had been taking over his head since he had been hit by his best friend.
Once at the headquarters, he immediately started looking for Megan. After a few minutes of asking around, he found her talking with another agent about the current case the team had.
He waited for her to finish the conversation and only then he approached her. “Megan.”
“Hey, Colby… what happened to you?” she said, looking at his broken lip.
“It’s nothing… Are you busy?”
She nodded, still looking at his jaw, like she knew that he was trying to avoid a conversation about it. “Did you know that the guy we’re looking for had a contact with a female sergeant? Maybe you know her… Mary Miller.”
“No, I don’t know her…” Colby didn’t know how to ask her what he wanted. But as usual, Megan was once step ahead of him.
“Is there something wrong?” she said. “Oh my god, did something else happen to Alan?”
It was very important to tell her that nothing like that had taken place. “No, no.”
With worried eyes, she stared at him, like she was reading his soul. “Then what is it?”
He took a breath and guided her through the cubicles, taking her to the place they usually worked in. Only there he dared to ask, “How well do you know Bob Berenson?”
“Amita’s therapist?” She looked kind of surprised by the question, but she still answered it. “Um… I can tell you that I saw him work at the DOJ a couple of times. I talked to him only for a few minutes, but it seemed that what people say about him was true.”
“What do they say?”
“That he’s the best in his field, a respected professional in the area.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah… I mean, from what I’ve seen… He’s got a high level of understanding of victims of rape’s psychology and he’s been the creator of a good program to teach those people to handle stressful situations after their attacks,” Megan explained. “That’s why I suggested Don to call Berenson to help Amita. Sometimes, he does jobs for the FBI out of courtesy.”
“Mmm.”
“Why, do you see something weird?”
Shaking his head, Colby sat on one of the empty desks. “I don’t like him. Amita’s not better, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
When Megan came closer to him, he took a deep breath again. “Look, I wasn’t going to tell you this, because David probably doesn’t want me to, but I do it to help him. I found him at his apartment drinking heavily the other day. There were bottles everywhere, he was total mess...” He continued as her mouth hanged open. “I wanted to hear his reasons, so I stayed with him even after he passed out.”
“He passed out? Oh, my god…”
“He denied everything. Especially one thing he had told me before fainting. He said that Amita had done something to him. But didn’t want to tell me what it was exactly.”
“And it has to be important, doesn’t it? I mean, it affected him badly enough to make him not want to recognize the problem, which means he’s embarrassed of it.”
Colby got up from the desk and walked around. “He told me to go away. I did it because I thought that maybe he could handle it, but a while ago we passed Amita by at CalSci and he basically ran away from her. I followed him and… he hit me.”
“What? Ok, that’s definitely not good.” Megan immediately reached for Colby and touched his bleeding lip. “Maybe you should let someone take a look at this, just in case…”
“I’m fine… Do you have any idea of what might be happening to him?” Deep inside, he hoped Megan could come up with some kind of theory that could explain his best friend’s latest behavior.
She sighed. “I could tell you general stuff, but I don’t have any real facts about his situation,” she explained. “Besides, I just can’t imagine Amita hurting him or anything like that.”
“I know. It seems like she’s trying to get Charlie ba-” Colby cut himself off and continued before he spilled out his insecurities. “That’s why I asked you about Bob. Maybe he’s having a bad influence on her.”
Thoughtful, Megan spent the next seconds in silence. But then she muttered, “I told you, I’ve seen him work and he’s good at it. However, as our work has proved to us more than once that not everything that shines is gold…” This time she looked at Colby, like she had thought of the time he worked for the Chinese. “You know that’s not your case.”
Nodding, he said, “Yeah.” It really seemed that Megan didn’t want to hurt his feelings and that she was trying to apologize for having picked the wrong words.
“What I mean is that it would be a good idea to do some research about him.”
“I think so, too,” Colby agreed. He turned to her and saw her smiling sweetly at him.
“Charlie chose you for a reason, you know. I don’t think he’s going to pay attention to anyone else.”
It was nice to hear that right now. Even if he tried not to, Colby felt that Amita was a serious threat to his relationship with Charlie. He still didn’t know why, but he got a bad feeling every time she came around. He nodded at Megan, and he was about to say “Thank you” when an agent came into the room.
“Agent Reeves, we’ve got Sergeant Miller at the interrogation room.”
“Ok, thanks,” she said, and then she turned to Colby, like she didn’t know whether to help him or stick to her current case.
“Don’t worry about it, I can do that research if you don’t need me right now,” he snapped.
“Don and I can take care of this,” Megan assured him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
As he went towards his desk, he thanked her. He heard her say “Let me know if Larry gets something on the cold pills!” as she went towards the elevator.
Colby nodded and immediately started to work on his research. He spent an hour doing research. Bob Berenson really had a huge file, full of details and the wonderful reviews he had got because of his job at the DOJ. There was a lot of data to get together, and Colby did it carefully, paying attention to every single fact and figure that popped out from his career.
And he found out about a series of coincidences.
As it should be done, he checked everything four times, just to be sure that he wasn’t making any mistakes. The same data came up every single time.
He lost track of time, and at the same moment he was staring at the files he had been revising and the photographs he had collected, Don and Megan were coming towards him with worried looks on their faces.
“Megan told me what happened with you and David,” Don said, putting his hands on his hips.
“Yeah, he’s not alright, trust me,” Colby responded. “And it might not get better, according to what I’ve got.” He got up and handed to Megan and his boss the files he had been studying. “I checked Bob Berenson’s background. It turns out that if you take a look at his job records, this guy has like twenty important people he has helped out and more than three hundred that have had some seriously disturbing behavior after having attending therapy with him. The ones who benefited from his sessions were discharged always on the week of August 12th while the ones who got worse were allowed to go home on the week of November 10th, year after year.”
In a few seconds, Megan revised the information. “Born on May 6th, 1953, early interested in Psychology and the Freudian school, first job at the DOJ in 1986… married Amy Rowland on August 12th,1989…”
“His wife was raped and murdered in an alley three months after the wedding,” Don read as he looked at other dates, “on November 10th, that same year.”
Colby explained his theory. “See? That’s a very weird coincidence. And that’s not all.” He handed his friends a photograph of a murdered man. “This man is one of his female patient’s husband. The woman said in her statement that she had been sexually attacked by Berenson during her therapy and that once she was discharged, she couldn’t stand her husband to touch her that way. Eventually, he finished the problem by killing him.”
“Oh, I remember hearing about it once… No one gave the woman credit because she had a severe mental illness and because after her first statement, she started accusing every man she saw of wanting to rape her - which wasn’t weird in a case like hers,” Megan muttered, still looking at the files. “It was pretty much of a scandal, but no one could prove Berenson was actually involved in it.”
Taking a deep breath, Don left the papers and the photograph on one of the desks. “Look, this could mean something or not.”
“And yet it makes sense, on a psychological level.” The female agent took off her glasses and continued, “It could be a way for him to relive what went good and bad in his life, trying to change the events of the past. He gets good days on the second week of August, so his sessions are successful, but three months later, it all goes to hell.”
“Theories are ok,” Don muttered, “but we need more than that.” He turned to Colby. “If this guy turns out to be a rapist, you can be sure I’m taking him down. But we need evidence.”
The green-eyed agent bit his lip in worry because he knew that what he had wasn’t exactly enough proof. “I know that, and that’s why I’ll keep looking. I’m telling you, Don, this guy isn’t as good as everybody thinks he is.”
“If you get anything, make sure to let me know,” Don said as one agent signaled him from the back of the room. “Megan, we gotta go.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” Colby said as they went away.
He sat at his desk, looked at a couple more files and didn’t find anything about Bob Berenson who could be useful. Tired, he finally decided to go to see Charlie at the house, help him for while to take care of his father. After all, what Megan had said to him was true. If Charlie had chosen him, then he wouldn’t fall for any tricks Amita would display.
A knock on the door.
Things looked shaky and out of place when Amita became aware that she was in her bedroom, on the floor, surrounded by photographs of Charlie and Colby together. The pills had hit her system hard, and she had fallen asleep for more than an hour.
Someone was calling her. “Amita, do you hear me? Open the door!”
It was Bob, but she didn’t move. She didn’t want to see her like this, because then she couldn’t avoid the questions about the state of the rooms. Bob hadn’t been at her apartment yet; all the times they had been together, it had been at his place.
“I’m not leaving until I see you’re ok, do you understand that?” Bob continued, as he knocked harder on the door.
“Dammit,” she cursed, getting up. She stumbled and stepped on the photographs as she went to open the door.
Bob frowned as soon as he saw her. “What happened to you?” She had to look bad for him to say that.
“I took a couple of sleeping pills, that’s all. You woke me up,” Amita managed to say as he entered the house and checked the rooms.
“What the hell is this?”
“What, the great Bob Berenson doesn’t recognize obsessive behavior when he sees it?” she joked.
He turned around with angry eyes. “This is not part of the deal. I’m supposed to help you, people are supposed to see that you’re getting better.”
“Really? ‘Cause I don’t remember you saying anything remotely similar to that. All I remember is you calling me ‘dirty, little thing’ and putting your hands on me, nothing more.”
That left Bob speechless for a few seconds. But then he snapped, “What about my reputation?”
“I think you should have thought about that before getting into bed with me,” Amita stated, and she went to grab her things, including some photographs and one of the copies of Charlie and Colby’s love scene. Then she stumbled a little bit more as she walked into the kitchen, chose a knife and put it into her bag, too.
When she returned to the living room, she ran into Bob again. As he wasn’t saying anything, she turned to him. “Look, I’m not trying to damage your career, Bob. All I want is my all life back, that’s it.” He looked at her with worried eyes but remained in silence for now. “I’m going to Charlie’s house, I need to see him, see how his father’s doing,” she added.
“But you’re not ok.”
“I don’t know about that. But I’m going to do this anyway.” She got closer to him, put her arms around him. “Patrick messed up my head, everybody knows that. I know that. I try to stop the bad feelings, but I can’t. I’m just going to fix things so everything can go back to normal.”
Now Amita kissed Bob on the lips; then she went towards the door. But before leaving, she turned to him and muttered, “Just in case, I’d tell you to get out of town as soon as you can if you don’t want to be related to this.”
“Amita! Amita!” he yelled at her as she ran though the corridor and got into the elevator.
Get out of town as soon as you can. Why the hell had Amita said that? Bob tried to find an answer to that by analyzing the rooms of her apartment. It was a total disaster, the food was decomposing and no one had cleaned anything for several days.
He had agreed for her to watch Charlie Eppes and Colby Granger’s video while they had sex, he hadn’t protested when she had decided to burn it into a DVD. He didn’t care what happened to her as long as he got what he wanted and got out of it unharmed.
Yet, the situation seemed to have changed. Obsession cases like hers didn’t usually end well. And that would certainly affect his career.
Slowly, Bob picked up a photograph of the gay couple from the floor. Eppes and Granger were just happily talking at the university. So she’s been taking pictures of them there, too… Then he saw a portrait of Amita and Charlie on her nightstand, and he also picked this one up.
With both pictures in his hands, he went to the balcony. The windows were open; the sun was high in the sky.
And he could see Amita get into a cab.
Maybe he had made a big, big mistake by taking her as a simple, desperate, easily-influenced woman who needed some affection. He didn’t know whether it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing for him, but she was definitely a lot more than that.
