Ephemeris-A post-For Better or Worse (6 x 23) Caskett multi-chap
Title: Ephemeris, Ch. 1
Rating: T
WC: ~2400 words, this chapter
Summary: "His mother is steady as ever. An invaluable bellwether. A check on hope and despair alike. But Kate had never imagined how following where this conviction leads would open them both up to this. To the exquisite ache of memory." A post-For Better or Worse multi-chap.
A/N: A few things. First, his grew out of "Perigee" and "Apsis." I am presenting it as a separate story, because I think those stand on their own. This is more strongly informed by those two, but I still feel like it's a separate entity. I'd recommend reading "Perigee" and "Apsis" as the prologue to this. Second, this is not a grand, plot-centered work. So if you're looking for something action-heavy, this is not it. It moves through events, but the focus is definitely on character/relationships. Ok, I guess I'll leave it at that.
She wasn't counting on this part. Being elbow deep in his childhood like this. If it were her alone, there might be a kind of macabre pleasure in it. The only closeness possible now, and they've never been strangers to intimacy under grim circumstances. Her and him.
But she'd never counted on having to call on Martha like this.
His mother is steady as ever. An invaluable bellwether. A check on hope and despair alike. But Kate had never imagined how following where this conviction leads would open them both up to this. To the exquisite ache of memory.
They're piecing together his medical records. There's DNA. His, of course. It's his car. It was his car. There's no question about that. No question that he was driving it five minutes before the crash. It's open and shut as far as everyone else is concerned.
But the body itself is badly damaged. Parts of it are badly damaged. It's to be expected. The accident. The fire. And yet . . .
Not suspicious, exactly. Convenient.
Lanie had been reluctant to say anything with only the reports to go on. They're all reluctant. The five of them. They've each added things to the common stock. Nagging things. Nothing big. Nothing blatant, and that's the problem. They're careful. They weigh every possibility-every hunch and every blip on the radar-a hundred times over before the words make their careful way into the air.
I think I have something.
It could be nothing.
It's become a mantra for the five of them now. Something that goes along with a grim almost-smile. Because hope is the thing they crave and the thing they fear.
So she and Martha are sifting through his childhood hurts, big and small. Something that should be there, but isn't, maybe. Because it might not be him. It might not be, and this is where they start.
It's where they're supposed to start. Making sense of these far-flung things. Incidents in his life, scattered from city to backwater town and home again. It's the strangest kind of blessing now. That they moved so much when he was a kid, and even routine things were catch as catch can a lot of the time.
Rushed clinic visits at odd intervals. Private schools willing to bend on records. What history there is jumbled into boxes. Stained and half legible too much of the time. There are gaps upon gaps, but it's the very thing that gives her hope there's something here they can use. They're piecing it together.
It's what they're supposed be doing anyway, but Martha falls away into stories she's eager to tell. Kate leans in. She listens, rapt and hungry to hear.
She knows his versions sometimes. Castle's. They're funnier that Martha's. Funnier in different ways. Or rawer. Martha always knows somehow. When he's told Kate his side of things, and it cut deep. Martha nods. Never defends herself, exactly, but there's another side. Hurts he never fully understood. That he couldn't have understood, young as he was.
And there are stories Kate doesn't know at all. Things he never told that Martha offers with the armor of time and distance. Her own brand of resilience against unkindness and hardship. But they both see the omissions as they must have been for him. The broken down pieces of him that time couldn't build up again. Things he couldn't quite speak about yet.
"I put too much on him." Martha smooths the curling corners of the page laid out before her. Kate stirs herself. Tries to remember where they were. A prescription that went unfilled, it looks like. "It was a terrible apartment. I can't even remember why I had him up in the crawl space. Five stitches high up on the inside of his arm."
Kate blushes. She remembers the scar. Planting her chin on his bare chest and tracing it with a lazy fingertip. Raising a shiver over his his skin, even though the sun was pouring over them.
Knife fight.
She'd asked. He'd insisted on the story for the better part of a day. Embellishing all the while.
Pirates. One of them had a monkey. I didn't think he'd be able to work a switchblade. Or jump that high.
Duh. Monkeys jump, Castle.
She'd played along. Laughed out loud in spite of herself.
She remembers the scar.
"Your mother's cigarette holder," Kate says softly. He'd told her as they were dropping off to sleep that same night. No particular reason for him to give up his story, except he did that sometimes. Playful to serious with the setting of the sun, and sometimes he'd tell her things in the dark. "You had a box of your parents' things up there."
"Vera!" Martha gives a startled laugh. Something small with a little delight in it. "I was auditioning for Vera in Mame. I strolled into the audition all decked out. Got the part, too."
"Vera." Kate smiles. She tucks away the detail. "He couldn't remember the play."
Kate starts to clear the table. Martha is fading. The drive to the city wears on her. The stories-good and bad- take their toll, and anyway, they've been at this a long while. She crosses stacks they have sorted by year at least. A few flags stuck to the edges. A pageful of notes, but not much.
Martha rises to help. Kate thinks about telling her no. About pressing her shoulder. Taking her hand and leading her up to her room. Settling her into the cool dark and whispering rest, but she holds her tongue. Martha wants to help, and it's the idle time that's worst for her here.
They both fall into quiet. The lure of the past and the weight of the present-the future maybe-tug them one way, then the other. A scrawled note catches Kate's eye. She can barely make most of it out. Doctor's handwriting, for sure, but the name tugs a thread.
"He named a character after him." She holds the note up for Martha. Taps the bold MD that ends the page with a flourish. "A Skull at Springtime."
"He was a neighbor of ours." Martha takes the paper from her. She flinches back from it. The name. "There was . . . oh, some girl about Richard's age. Somebody's daughter. Richard jumped off something backstage to impress her and hurt his foot. I brushed it off like it was nothing, but by the middle of the night the pain was unbearable. It wasn't like Richard to complain."
Kate's glance is swift, disbelieving.
"Then, darling. He wasn't one to complain then." Martha chuckles, but it fades all too soon. "It was a hard time. And he had it in him to be stoic when circumstances demanded." She toys with the edges of the paper. "Dr. Lindholme was . . . oh, very man-to-man with him. Richard adored him. Probably needed that from someone. As for me, the good doctor was very direct. He read me the riot act for stalling. But the emergency room was out of the question. Money. Time . . . "
"It was just a sprain, though." Kate takes up the story. She remembers this. Staying up late and talking about their childhood rooms the night he'd hung their shells in place of Linus. "He had an x-ray?"
"Yes!" Martha nods eagerly. "I'd forgotten. He was fascinated with it. A sign of things to come, I suppose. He punched a hole in the top and hung it from a piece of fishing line in his room. Every room for a year or two. I don't know what became of it. I should have . . . " She presses her palms to the flap of a disintegrating accordion file. "I should have taken better care."
"No, Martha. No." Kate ducks to catch her eye. "We've made a lot of progress. And . . ."
She breaks off. Something about the story that strikes her belatedly. "The doctor thought it was broken, but it wasn't . . ."
"I that . . . would that help?"
"No." Kate's mind is racing. She rests a hand on Martha's elbow. It snaps her attention back. She's trembling. Agitated. "No, Martha, not that one . . . the lower body . . . " She chokes back the cold, clinical details, but Martha waves for her to go on. "The damage to the lower body was too extensive. That's why the x-ray from last year-from his knee-doesn't do us any good."
Martha looks at the haphazard stacks littering the table. Her eyes are wide. "I don't think . . . I don't remember him breaking any bones as a child. And you have everything from college on."
"Not everything," she says. "When he came to DC . . . but it could be . . ."
"It could be nothing," Martha finishes, but there's a spark in it. She stands straighter. Moves easier.
It scares Kate. She wants to say it again. To warn her, but she holds her tongue. Martha knows. They all know.
It could be nothing.
It's not nothing. She knows with steely certainty that it's not. She tells even Martha as little as she can. It's too fragile. This tiny flicker of real hope. Real evidence. She folds herself around the notion and begs Martha not to say anything to the others just yet.
Martha nods. She bends, though Kate knows she won't bite her tongue forever.
"For now." She tells her. She swallows against everything that rises up. Hope and fear alike. "I need . . . I need the pieces first."
It's not nothing, but it might still get them nowhere anyway. Something more than suspicion that it's not him. The body in the car isn't his and nothing more than that. It might be the worst of all possible worlds.
Martha doesn't know about the car accident. Bronson crashing them into a bus shelter as he died. Kate had half forgotten it herself. Something so minor in the grand scheme of things. Then and now.
Relief. That's her first memory of it, really. Relief when he started complaining that his hand hurt. That's what reminds her. That rush of joy at his over-the-top whining and bids for attention, both surer signs than anything that he was getting better. That he was going to be fine.
I told you it was broken, Beckett.
And it had been. A hairline fracture of the left fourth metacarpal, probably from bracing his hands on the dash. A minor thing, and already so well on the way to healed by the time they'd x-rayed it that the doctors shrugged and gave in when he refused the splint. He was too eager to write to let that slow him down, but he insisted on a bandage for show.
Maybe I'll finally get some sympathy, Beckett. Maybe the girl I like will sign it.
She hadn't, though. She'd unwound it with shaking fingers. Fallen over his body and pressed her lips to his bare palm. Apologies and weak protests against his skin.
We can't. Too soon. The doctors said . . .
Don't care. Don't care, Kate.
The records are gone. Everything from the accident on never happened. That's the official story from Walter Reed. From Goldberg. The EMTs can't even verify they were there. She remembers that now, too. Suits at the scene of the accident strong-arming them into handing over the records because it was an active investigation. She backs off casual channels after one too many suspicious voices on the other end of the line.
She doesn't give up, though. It's not an option. Everything that might or might not have existed is officially gone, but she knows. Even from so short a time there, nothing is ever really gone. Someone, somewhere might want to use it some day and "gone" is a matter of perspective. Leverage is the only constant and she has less than none.
But she rushes headlong at it anyway. She pushes every button she can think of.
It's Hendricks who comes through. A call out of the blue after McCord has put her off again and again.
Beckett, do you know what you're asking?
I know what I'm asking.
But there's silence, then. A handful of words before she hangs up.
I'll see and there might be something.
Nothing more than that before she drops off the face of the earth again. She's never says no.Not once, and Kate can't decide if it's better or worse. The thread of hope drawn taut or having it snapped entirely.
It's Hendricks who calls, finally. Under a minute in the middle of the afternoon when she hasn't heard from him in months. She hasn't heard from anyone-not a word-because it was a job and nothing more. She's hardly had time to register that it's him. That McCord must have asked him in the end. That this all takes forever to filter through back channels and innuendo and still she's grateful for it. She's grateful to them both.
Hendricks is hanging up before she really grasps any of it. But it stays with her. His last words.
No promises. But I have a friend. It might be nothing.
But it's not nothing. It's an envelope a few days later. She almost doesn't open it. She gets these every few weeks, even a year on. Mounds and mounds of paperwork. She tears into the envelope, though, because hope is all she has, even when she tells herself it's nothing. And there it is. A picture of a X-Ray. Something the size of an old snapshot buried in all that. Buried among parts of her past she signs away.
But she has this now, and it might be worse than nothing.
"Kate!"
Lanie pulls her inside. It's the middle of the night, and Kate didn't mean to come. She meant to wait until morning, but here she is, shaking from head to toe.
It's not nothing, but it might be worse.
She hands it over without a word. She doesn't explain. Lanie doesn't ask.
She paces while Lanie checks and rechecks. As she holds it up to the light and rifles through the meager file. Through the little they have.
She sets it down, finally. She tucks it inside and closes the folder. She sits staring. Silent.
"Lanie . . ." Kate breaks. She drops into the chair across the table.
She reaches out, desperate to have it back-something the size of an old snapshot-but Lanie stays her hand.
"Leave it," she says gently. "We'll need it."
Kate presses her forehead to her fists and the tears don't come. For the first time she's dry eyed and gulping air.
"It's not him, honey." Lanie coaxes her chin up. She waits for Kate to look at her. Nods when she's satisfied and gives her the words again. "It's not him."