"Joe what’s wrong?" Fenton asked sharply not liking the rebuke he was witnessing but before the boy could answer, Fenton continued, "Actually can you guys give me and Joe a few moments alone, please. I need to talk to him."

Frank shot his father a strange look wondering what this was all about but then shrugged and followed his mother out the door. William was much more hesitant and paused looking from his new father to his brother to his father again but Fenton smiled gently, "It’s all right Will. I just need to make sure everything is okay with your brother. Please wait outside with Laura and Frank."

Reaching out, Frank hooked one of William’s arms and pulled him towards the door, "Come on…Will or William?"

"Will", William answered catching Joe’s gaze and holding it. Only his twin caught the mocking glint in the mirrored blue depths.

"Will…then. Come on let’s get a pop or something. There’s a pop machine down the hall." Relenting William allowed Frank to guide him out of the room.

* * *

"So son, do you want to talk about it?" Fenton asked gently after the small hospital room had been cleared. He sat down in the chair that Frank had just vacated and took one of Joe’s hands in his own. He was surprised to feel it trembling slightly but as his experienced eyes appraised the damage done to his son, he suspected it was just his body’s way of dealing with the trauma.

The Investigator had no words to relay how relived he was the Joe was all right and only wished he could have gotten back much sooner.

"Talk about what?" Joe asked not meaning to sound as sulky as he did.

"About what’s bothering you", Fenton said suddenly feeling like this was going to be quickly moved from a father-son chat to an interrogation as Joe’s stubbornness, even at the tender age of 15, was legendary amongst their family and circle of friends.

Joe didn’t say anything, not wanting to lie to his father but not really knowing how to tell him the truth. Behind all his projected self-confidence and bravado was really a terrified little boy who desperately needed his family’s approval, constantly fighting an inner battle of truly belonging.

"Joe. Please. I know that something is up. You don’t get to be where I am today without some perception. You’ve been moody and on edge since I showed that photograph. Now do you want to tell me about it or should I just pull out the brass knuckles and beat it out of you first?" His last comment was meant as a jest but at that moment Dr. Real opened the door and caught the tail end of the question, becoming instantly concerned.

"I’m sorry", he said by way of announcing his interruption before looking directly at Joe, "is everything fine in here?"

Fenton turned and quickly stood up, "Doctor? I’m Fenton Hardy, Joe’s father." He stuck out his hand but the doctor never shook it. Instead he just fixed Fenton with a withering look before addressing Joe again, "Anything the matter?"

Joe, realizing the doctor must have mistaken his father’s jest for a threat hurriedly tried to smooth things over, "No. Nothing. It’s okay, my Dad was just talking to me."

His blue eyes implored the doctor to believe him and after a brief moment, the doctor nodded hesitantly before picking up the chart at the foot of his patient’s bed, "Well if you’re sure." Seeing a small notation scribbled on the bottom of it, he glanced back at Fenton before saying, "I need to examine your son. So if you can just wait outside for a few moments…" He left the question open ended as it really wasn’t a choice and Fenton smiled at Joe and then ducked out into the hall promising to be right back in.

* * *

Frank grinned when he saw the sheepish look on his father’s face, "What happened did the doc kick you out or something?"

"Or something", Fenton mused still determined to find out what was bothering Joe. And then he turned and grinned at his wife and new son who were leaning against the wall outside of Joe’s room, "Well I don’t know about you but hospitals and your brother go a long way back…"and then the family began regaling William with tales of past incidents waiting outside Joe’s hospital room.

With eyes shining brightly, Will took it all in.

* * *

"Do you want to tell me where you got that burn on your arm?" Dr. Real asked casually as he untapped Joe’s ribs and gently checked the swelling.

Joe gasped slightly as the pain flared up even with the doctor’s gentle touch. Closing his eyes, he shook his head, "It was nothing…an accident…"

"An accident?" The man repeated, "What kind of accident leaves a teenager with a cigarette burn on his arm?"

Joe’s eyes flew open in shock. The doctor knew?

Dr. Real laughed softly at the surprise on his patient’s face, "Don’t look so shocked. We’re doctors, we do know a thing or two about identifying injuries or what might have caused them." He switched tactics, "Do you smoke?"

"No", Joe said with vehemence as he was aghast at the thought, amusing the doctor.

"Does your father?"

"No."

"Your mother?"

"No."

Joe could feel the doctor’s hands rewrapping his ribs and wondered what he was getting at.

"What about your brother?"

"Yes" Joe said automatically as his mind was flooded with the image of William lighting up but then realizing his blunder he quickly corrected, "No."

"Well what is it?" The doctor pressed as he stopped and studied his patient seriously, "Yes or no?"

"No", Joe repeated avoiding looking the man directly in the face. He hated lying and was an even worst liar, "he doesn’t smoke."

"What about the other one?" Dr. Real asked wondering if this was what it was like pulling teeth.

"What?" Joe was confused, whether it was from the pain medication they had given him or from the pain itself but somewhere in the line of questioning he lost track of where the doctor was.

"Your other brother…does he smoke?" All I want to know, Dr. Real thought as he saw his patient struggling to keep up whatever façade he was embroiled in, is who burned you…why are you making this so difficult?

Joe was saved as Dr. Real was paged to the ER, stat and, although not normally one who relished other people’s pain, he was glad something had happened to someone to take the pressure off him.

Turning to leave, Dr. Real looked at him sternly, "I’ll be back." And then rushed out of the room.

Fenton immediately stepped back in and Joe thought he was going to be sick.

Ding...Ding…round 2, was all the teen thought as his father sat back down and waited for him to answer his question, "What’s going on Joe?"

* * *

William suppressed a yawn as they waited for Fenton to call them back in the room. Laura said the motion and smiled, "I guess it’s been a long couple of days for you."

"Oh yeah", William smiled shyly; "it’s not everyday that you find your other half. Being twins is weird you know…"

Frank pulled himself away from wondering what was going on in Joe’s room to hear what Will was saying, "being 5 when we were separated I never even realized just how much a part of me seemed to be missing until you guys showed up and I saw Joey again. It’s hard too…though."

"Hard? In what way?" Frank asked in curiosity.

"Well it’s kind of overwhelming. I don’t know really how to describe it…" William paused as he tried to think of a proper analogy, "I guess it’s like being born with perfect hearing but then as a child, you lose the hearing in one of your ears. It’s strange but you get used to after a while until you kind of forget what hearing with both ears is like."

Will absently rubbed his ear as he spoke, "and then one day, you wake up and get your hearing back in the other ear. Well suddenly everything is overwhelming because you can hear everything…all those things you’d forgotten and lost. That’s kind of what’s it like."

Laura wiped her eyes as she was overcome with emotion and for one second she reached towards the boy to hug him, almost forgetting this was not Joe.

Will saw her hesitation and knew what she wanted to do. Smiling, he reached out and tentatively touched her arm and that was all the permission Laura needed to embrace him.

Frank watched in rapt silence with sudden understanding into his brother’s strange behavior – he had just gotten the hearing back in both ears…and was overwhelmed!

Of course if he had asked Joe about it, his younger brother would have said it was more like waking up one morning and discovering you were losing your hearing in the other ear…and there was nothing you could do about it.

* * *

"Son?" Fenton said watching Joe carefully. The boy plucked at the blanket on his bed absently and just as he thought the teen wasn’t going to say anything, Joe gave a resolute sigh and said one word, "William."

"William?" Repeated Fenton, "What about William?"

"I don’t want him to live with us," there he had finally said it but interesting enough admitting what was bothering him did not make Joe feel any better. In fact it made him feel worst. He knew how it looked to everyone but it couldn’t be helped. This was just a bad idea.

"Joe", Fenton ran his hand over his face in frustration. This was what he expected to hear from Frank, not from Joe. Hell this was Joe’s own twin, "son…Will’s being here will not change how we feel about you. Love is not something that we each have only so much of…love multiplies with each new member of the family."

Déjà vu, thought Fenton as he thought back to a similar conversation he had had with Frank when the little boy was concerned with his new brother somehow replacing him.

"It’s not that", Joe answered raising his face so that his vibrant blue eyes could cut right through the dark ones watching him, "Dad…William killed our mother."

"I know son", Fenton said gently surprising Joe, "but it was an accident."

"Y-you know?" Joe stammered shocking shaking his voice.

"Yes and so does your mother", Fenton couldn’t place the emotion that he saw in his son’s eyes and continued reassuringly, "when I found about your brother I did some checking to see what else I could find out about you. That’s when I found out about it…but Joe is that what this is all about? Do you somehow still blame your brother?" The senior Hardy was aghast. He had seen the police report.

4-year-old William Doe (no ID was ever found for the mother so they never did know who she was. Her landlord only knew her as ‘Karen’ in 4B who always paid in cash) had found the gun that his mother kept in her closet and while playing with it, it had gone off instantly killing her.

"It was an accident. Horrible yes, but still an accident, " Fenton tried to convince the boy but Joe shook his head.

"That’s where you’re wrong. I was there. I can remember it like it was today…William killed my mother…and he wanted to", the teen tried to keep his voice even and impressed himself by how calm he actually sounded.

His father was shocked. Joe had seen it? Nothing in the report said anything about their being witnesses and then he was overcome with emotion as he caught a brief glimpse into the baggage, and hostility, his youngest son carried. To a small boy, it might have seemed like murder…

Reaching forward, he gave his son a gentle hug before pulling back and looking deeply into his troubled face. Lovingly he stroked his cheek, ‘Oh baby, ‘ he said softly, "I had no idea. No idea at all." He bit back his own tears at how horrible it must have been to see your own mother killed in front of you and was sure that no one else had known about Joe’s witness.

A trauma like that would have required some sort of counseling but as he saw the torment on his son’s face, he was sure Joe had spoken to no one.

No wonder the boy was acting so off…he still thought his brother was a murderer. A 4-year old murderer, Fenton shook his head at the preposterousness of that thought….but probably not to another 4-year-old.

Desperately he tried to think of something to say that could convince his son that it was an accident and then he saw the brace on Joe’s leg, "Do you think Frank meant to hit you with the car? That he did it on purpose?"

Joe immediately leapt to his older brother’s defense, "No way. It was dark…rainy…and the car slid. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me!" The older Hardy worked hard to suppress the grin at his son’s vigorous defense of Frank. And he was proud at how close they were.

"So it was an accident?" Fenton asked and Joe nodded vehemently, inwardly seething that his father could have thought such a thing.

"But you could have been killed?"

"But I wasn’t", Joe shot back.

"Let’s just say for one moment that you had been killed. Do you think it would have been fair for us to blame Frank for it? To think he had done it on purpose?" Fenton saw the understanding cross the teen’s face and the boy paled as it did.

"No…you don’t understand", Joe was determined to make his father understand. This was different and he didn’t want his father to think he was being unreasonable about Will and what had happened, "Dad…Will is mean. He does things…to hurt…he wants to." Although he was 15, the boy found himself feeling like that 4-year-old kid again talking to the Social Worker when they were placed at the orphanage.

Fenton was taken aback by the sound in his son’s voice and his heart ached for the pain he saw on Joe’s face, "Son. That was 10 years ago. Children can be mean at times…but that was a long time ago. William is very excited to be back in your life, Joe. I think you should give him a chance. Everyone deserves a second chance."

Joe opened his mouth to argue. Determined that once he had finally started to admit the truths to his father, he could tell him everything…but then his father finished.

"We gave you a second chance when we adopted you."

Ping. Joe felt like an arrow had been shot through his heart and knew that battle had been lost.

Bitterness, like bile, rose in his throat as all he thought was you never let me finish…you asked me what was wrong…but you never let me finish.

Once again William had beaten him. And this time he had done it through his father and through his heart.

Sighing in defeat, Joe turned away from his father, "Can you leave…please? I’m really tired…I don’t want to see anyone right now."

Standing up, Fenton leaned over and kissed Joe’s forehead, ‘I understand son. You get your rest and we’ll be back in the morning, okay?" He figured the boy needed some time to mull over what they had talked about and to see that things might not be what he was thinking.

"Okay", Joe said holding back the tears until he heard the door close after his father and then he let them run, unchecked down his face.

He had lost…and what was worst was the knowledge that anything he would say to try and make them understand, would just make him look worst. Make him sound ungrateful and selfish.

With this reconciliation, came a recognition for the feral glint in William’s eye…William knew too.

And this knowledge gave his brother the upper hand…

And the upper bunk, Joe thought miserably.