Forget, Ch. 3-A Caskett WIP set between seasons 3 & 4

[pollylynn]

Title: Forget, Ch. 3

WC: ~2500, this chapter; ~5800 total so far

Rating: T

Summary: "It's been seventy-one days since she told him that she needed time. Seventy-one days of the only silence that matters. Wherever she is, he'll never be any nearer." Set between seasons 3 and 4-really in the middle of "Rise," (4 x 01) I suppose. And AU, I guess? The premise is that Beckett is back in the city for weeks before she returns to the 12th.



He winds up in a bar. An oasis, sudden, dreadful, and necessary when he can't go a step further. When it hits him.

He looked back. It's almost enough to make him laugh. If he remembered how, he might actually laugh.

Looking back. It's not quite the oldest sin, but the next thing to it.

She followed. For a while she did. He knew. It was more acceptance than realization in the moment. Looking back with no doubt at all what he'd see, even if heart and mind and whatever else is left of him are curiously silent on how he could have known. How he could have been so certain that she had followed. How he could have known when she stopped. Which moment was his exact last chance to see.

It was. He did.

He saw her, still and alien in the streetlight. Smaller somehow. Bowed and stooped and diminished even though she was up on her toes. Even though her chin was high, and all of her craned forward. Toward him. Looking and looking as hard as she could. Shaking with effort and searching the distance for him. For him.

She followed. She stopped following. He looked back. He took the absolute last chance to see, and he has only himself to blame for the fresh blood now. For every wound ripped open and raw.

Those are the facts. He won't wonder why. He plants himself on a stool. He sets palms and elbows on the scarred surface of the bar and he absolutely will not wonder why about any of it.

The bartender wordlessly slides him a menu. Barmaid. He takes in the cracked leather covering the stool, its sharp edges digging in even through his jeans. The half-dead neon signs and the short list of drinks. Beer and a few kinds of whiskey.

He decides she's a barmaid, as if that matters. It's some echo of a habit. Something that feels ancient now. Something from back when he used to notice things. When he used to gather details to himself. Sweep them on to the page and coax them apart to use later. Back when he made things.

He orders . . . something. His tongue is awkward and the words are rough. He wonders suddenly how long it's been since he's spoken aloud. How many days.

Eighty-seven.

It's the only number he knows. The only one that means anything to him, but it's absurd. He clears his throat. He tries to meet the woman's eyes. To answer the follow-up questions he doesn't understand. He tries to remember how this goes. Human contact.

But she edges away from him. The barmaid. She turns her back to him entirely, and she's longer about pouring the drink than she needs to be. He thinks so, anyway. He doesn't remember how any of this goes.

He looks around. The bar is neither crowded nor empty. It's late. He knows that much, but he can't tell how unusual it is that someone might wander in at this hour. That he might wander in. He doesn't know what day it is for the rest of the world or if he's giving off a not-from-around-here vibe.

He thanks the woman as she slides the glass toward him from minimum safe distance. He tries to smile, but she only relents so far as a coaster. He sips at the liquor, thick and cheap and oily, but good enough to hurt a different way.

He focuses on it. The burning inside his nose. The unkind slide over his tongue and down his throat. He imagines the course it follows. Down and down, burning all the way to fill the hollow inside him. One kind of hollow.

He doesn't think about her. The way it took the little left in her to strain up on her toes and look. Why she followed. Why she stopped. Why she's gone and not gone. He doesn't think about it.

He raises and lowers the glass. Flicks his wrist and another appears. A gentler meeting of glass and wood this time. A cocktail napkin and a word or two. The barmaid must feel sorry for him.

He raises and lowers the glass and suddenly she's there. His back is to the street. To the door, the window, and the whole world outside this place. But he knows she's there. Just outside. Brick and glass and eighty-seven days standing between them. A hole in her chest, a hollow in his.

She's there.

She's moving before she realizes it. She remembers her heels dropping back to the pavement. The shockwave through shin and thigh and all of her. Pain dragging fingers along behind it. Always pain.

But movement. That's a surprise. Something in progress when she lands back in her body. The how and why of pulling herself up and moving. Of how far she's come from the moment he turned away-that's a surprise. A mystery.

She's careful. Pushes herself as fast as she can go, but no harder than that. She wonders about it. The way she suddenly knows her body. She knows its limits, but its possibilities, too. It hurts-of course it hurts-but there's an edge to it now. A point of focus that sorts it all into the proper parts. All the different kinds of pain and what she can do with them.

Her body hurts. Muscles and joints protest. Skin stretches and there's the twist of searing pain that runs through her scars. It lights up like the bones of the city from high above. A history of all that's happened. The jolt of scar tissue, wire, and cartilage around her heart, cracked open and closed up again as if that's how it works. As if it's that simple.

But it is. Right now it's as simple as rest at a stoplight. Breath as deep as she can pull it in to herself to slow her heart and still those dragging fingers for this moment and the one after that and the one after that if she's gotten it wrong this stretch. If she hasn't picked out the cry that matters from the endless roar her body sends up. If she's gone too far or pushed too hard.

Right now it's as simple as following. Listening to her body and the city and the way she knows him. Never questioning whether he might have turned here or crossed this street. If he'd have doubled back.

If he might have tried to lose her.

She pulls up short at that. She stops and her whole body screams. Wrenching, blinding pain as everything twists with the sudden cessation of motion. Every cell screams, and her head snaps right and left. Her heart pounds and she's desperate for cover. For silence and home and all the things her body won't let her have, but at least she knows. She knows what it's like to live there. Dwell. Exist. Whatever.

She's turning now. A circle in place and a clumsy tug back in the direction she came. Late night people scatter around her. They fan out wide and come back together with sidelong glances and fast-moving feet. Eager to get past the kind of trouble she is know. To get clear of this strange, broken thing cluttering up the sidewalk.

She wants to go. Not home, but somewhere. Away. She wants not to be this anymore. This thing to be sidestepped. Avoided. Lost.

But she turns again. The decision happens somewhere else. Wherever this came from in the first place. The mystery of movement. A complete, stubborn revolution. She gathers herself in and she moves on. She follows. Again, she follows.

She traces his path unerringly. Every step she's sure he would have taken, and that's a mystery, too. How she knows and where the will comes from, just like that. Eighty-seven days and a glimpse and she's following. She's following.

Her steps slow. She drags to a stop. Gradual this time and she hurts in different places. Different ways.

She turns to face a dingy building. Brick that's seen better days and cloudy windows. She can barely make out anything through the smear and blur of neon. But there he is. Inside where she can't go.

Her feet fail. Her body stops and the will that's brought her this far vanishes. She can't.

She's steps from the door. A square of sidewalk, two panes of glass and the length of the bar between them. All that and eighty-seven days, and she wants more than anything to close the distance.

She doesn't know why. What she'd say. What she could possibly say.

But there's nothing. Nothing. She knows that.

I miss you. It hurts. I remember.

She doesn't know what she'll say, but she wants a chance to say it.

She wants a chance, and she's come this far. But he's inside.

She can't.

He says something. Does something. After a while. An eternity between the moment he knows she's there and the moment he rushes back into the world. The moment it all drags him back, kicking and screaming into the rest of his life.

Whatever it is, whatever he does and whatever it sounds like, it's enough to alarm the barmaid.

"Hey." She strides toward him. Her shoulders are stiff. She holds out a rag like she's going to shoo him away.

He looks up and it must be bad. The look on his face. Everything about him. It must be bad, because she stops. She swallows a sigh. Impatience that she drew the short straw tonight. That she has him to deal with. Whoever he is. Whoever.

"Is there . . .?"

He starts, but she cuts him off. Quick and sharp enough that he wonders what it is he's done. How long it's been and what he might have done in the mean time to deserve it.

"I think you're finished."

He follows her gesture to his own hand. It looks like his, anyway, wrapped around an empty glass he vaguely remembers. His second. Third? He's lost again. Disoriented and unsure why he stopped here. Why he looked back. Why he keeps showing up to every single day just to hurt like this.

"Another way," he says. He blinks up at the barmaid. "Is there another way?" He knows he's not making sense, but he can't remember how any of this goes. "Out." That seems right. Out. It's what he wants right now. He turns on the stool. The neon hurts his eyes. He turns the other way and peers hopefully into the darkness. "Is there a back way?"

The barmaid softens. Not softens, exactly. Unbends a fraction. She's amused. Perplexed, but it must be funny to her. A little bit, anyway. It must look like he's running the way a hundred men have run before. It must be taking the shape of something she understands.

"Stock room." She sets her rag down and tugs at the strings on the apron.

His mouth opens and shuts. He can't make sense of the words. The jerk of her head toward the comparative kindness of the dark back end of the bar is a mystery.

She rolls her eyes. Calls something over her shoulder to a burly guy who takes up her station behind the bar.

"Stock room," she says again. "There's a door to the alley out back. I'm due for a smoke anyway."

He pushes up from the stool. He follows, then turns back. He digs out his wallet. Empties the bills on to the bar and follows.

She's gone already by the time he follows. He stands under the bare bulb of the stock room and twists in place. It's cramped and dusty and dim and he doesn't see a door. He doesn't see much, but a curl of cigarette smoke tugs him in the right direction.

He makes his way through the door. The barmaid leans against the filthy wall ten steps down. He opens his mouth to thank her, but the words are gone again. He nods. She waves him off. Stares up into the narrow gap between buildings and huffs out a ribbon of smoke.

He turns. He makes his way up the alley, away from her. He sees the city ahead. Hears it. Loud and angry and alive. It hits him, low and sudden. He draws in a sharp breath.

He turns back to the barmaid. Holds up a hand, but she's glaring at him anyway. She's throwing down her cigarette and stubbing it out. Folding her arms and glaring.

"I . . . one thing." He doesn't know what he's doing, but the words come anyway, loud enough to carry to her and it all feels so strange. He wonders again how long it's been since he spoke to anyone at all. "I'm going, but . . . will you do one thing for me?"

She goes on glaring a minute. She makes him wait. "Is it a good idea?"

He shakes his head. His eyes drop to the ground.

"No." It's not and he was going. He was, but he looks up at her and asks. "Will you do it anyway?"

She's rigid on the bus stop bench. The metal is hard and cool beneath her palms. The curve of it is agony against her back. All up and down her spine and clutching around at her ribs.

But she doesn't know how to leave. Whatever will brought her this far is gone. It's long since burned up, and she's stranded.

He's inside. She can't. She doesn't know how to leave.

"Hey."

The voice comes from behind her. She ignores it. She's gotten good at that, however long she's been here. It's victory of a kind. That she stopped shaking at some point and she's an expert now at keeping still. Keeping her eyes on the dirty elastic of her slip-on shoes as the words come at her.

But this one comes again. This voice sounds out again. Closer this time, and she tries to twist around. Away. She tries to move as her heart slams up and hits the roof of her mouth, but it's been too long. She's stone and the pain is too much. Panic can't move her now. Fear can't. She's stone.

The words come to her, though. They come again, moving in front of her now. Feet and legs. Skinny jeans and an annoyed looking woman holding out a paper cup. Something crushed on the bottom with flimsy wings pulling away. One of those handles that never works.

"This is for you." She thrusts the cup forward. "Just coffee. No booze out the door."

Kate stares. She watches the steam twist over the rim. She's still. Stranded.

The woman takes pity on her.

"It's from him," she says more gently. "Your friend."

Kate's mouth opens and closes. A shuddering breath makes its way out. It's almost a laugh. Something somewhere inside her meant it to be. She shakes her head. Half an inch in each direction and it hurts. Of course it hurts.

"He's not my friend." The words open her eyes wide. They startle her.

The woman snorts. She looks away and back down again. Back down at Kate.

"Didn't think so."