Ephemeris, Ch. 6-A post-For Better or Worse (6 x 23) Caskett multi-chap WIP
Title: Ephemeris, Ch. 6
WC: ~2200
Rating: T
Summary: "She's been stupid. So stupid, and now the possibilities are drowning her. All these things at the back of her mind-things she and Martha have kept mostly between them, because he's an active agent. Except he might not be. Because he's Castle's father. Except he isn't. Not in anyway that matters, and she should have been on top of this long before now."
The call is excruciating. For Kate, it's too like treading water, with Lanie and Ryan and Esposito huddled around a single phone as she sketches things in broad outlines. They answer back in non-sequiturs and innuendo. It's foolish, she knows. A waste of more time when there's so much the three of them don't know about any of this, but she's paranoid, among other things. Helpless at the the thought they might lose some slim advantage they don't even know they have. They know it's foolish, too, but they follow her lead.
On that, at least. On everything else they run roughshod over her. All of them.
Ryan insists he'll come out to the Hamptons the following day. "Jenny and I can take the train. We'll swing by the loft first and make sure there's nothing going on there you need to know about."
The loft. Her apartment. Here. Every place they might be under the microscope. Or worse.
"Jenny . . ." Kate's jaw is set. She hates the idea. She trusts Ryan to do this. Of course she does, and they've been down this road already. After Tyson. After Bracken set her up. She knows how vulnerable they've been all this time. But she's bowed under the weight of it already. The danger she's put them all in and now Jenny. The baby. "Ryan, I don't want . . ."
"Beckett." His voice is firm. She can practically see the three of them. Lanie and Esposito nodding. Urging him on. A united front, and it's a good cover. Friends visiting the grieving family. They're not above playing on her paranoia, and she hates it. "Jenny's mom has been bugging us for some grandma time with Sarah. And we don't like to think of you three rambling around that big house. We can ride back to the city with you."
"Katherine. Please." Martha's voice is low. For her ears only. She casts a glance at Alexis. Blatant manipulation, but the truth, too, and she doesn't flinch. "I'll feel better for it."
"I'll meet the early train," Kate says through her teeth.
She walks out after that.
She shuts herself away. It's childish. Unkind to leave them with silence like this, but it's better than the alternative. She's a razor-wire mess inside, the legacy of a long night and everything the morning has brought. The way they're managing her. The way she needs it, apparently.
She replays the scene in the diner parking lot. She paces. Picks things up and sets them down again, trying to stay ahead of the rush of after-the-fact adrenaline.
She's been stupid. So stupid, and now the possibilities are drowning her. All these things at the back of her mind-things she and Martha have kept mostly between them, because he's an active agent. Except he might not be. Because he's Castle's father. Except he isn't. Not in anyway that matters, and she should have been on top of this long before now.
She drags a heavy, carved wooden screen to the center of the study. She finds paper. Reams of it everywhere. Folios and notebooks and loose sheets. Lined and stark white. Rough and smooth and tissue thin. She runs her fingers over it. Pictures him fussing with pen and paper both. Hefting and chafing the sheets between his fingers.
Does it help?
She'd slid her palms over his shoulders, creeping up behind him when curiosity finally won out over shyness. When it drew her indoors, away from the sun and toward him. She'd never seen him work like this before. Writing chapters by hand. Pieces of them, anyway.
He'd set the pen down. Pushed the paper away and spun the creaking wooden desk chair to pull her into his lap even though he'd been determined to write. She'd been determined to leave him to it.
Sometimes. When the words won't come. It's . . . something to do.
It matters? The kind of paper? The pen?
She'd let her own fingers wander where his had been so lately. She'd been watching from just outside the French doors. Voyeurism half hidden by a paperback and oversized sunglasses. She'd looked on as he riffled out stacks and stacks of different kinds of sheets before he'd settled on something thick and furry. She'd picked up the pen. Leaned over him and dodged his kiss until she'd crossed his final T, loving the way the paper drank the ink in deep.
It can. When there are . . . barriers. Roadblocks. Something that lets my hand move across the page can help. Or something that makes me slow down and pay attention. Sometimes it matters.
He'd grinned into her neck, then. Wicked, but thoughtful, too. Sharing something with her. Pleased that she wanted to know.
Sometimes it's just stalling.
She writes by hand now. She doesn't let herself wonder which it is. Helping or stalling. She pulls open the drawers of the desk and upends mugs and cups. She spills pens out on to the blotter. They fan out like spokes on a wheel. She runs through them. Sets one down and picks up another when her hand slows, then stops. When fear and anger and loss crowd to the front of her mind and stop up the thoughts she needs to get out.
She strings rows of twine the width of the wooden screen and clips sheets to it as she finishes with them. Oblongs cramped with script. She's thinking out loud with those. Thinking on paper, and when that runs out, she moves on.
She moves around and past, because there's so much she doesn't know. She writes single words on oversized squares in huge block letters. Questions marks and periods. She hangs those with space in between. Pieces of the puzzle she's not filling in fast enough. Not nearly fast enough to keep them safe. To keep him within reach.
She ignores the knock on the door. Soft at first-barely audible over the drone of music-then more insistent. She ignores it. The knot of anger is still there, lodged in her stomach. Frustration she needs to work through alone. It's not fair to take it out on them. But the door opens anyway and she turns. It's Martha. She sets a tray on a low table and stands her ground.
"Martha, I'm . . ." She palms a scrap of paper she'd only just tacked up. Shuffles it under some other sheets on the desk. A small blue square.
"Furious?" She sits. Delicately plucks something from the tray and pops it in her mouth. "Exhausted? Terrified? Or is that me projecting?"
"Working." She turns back to the screen. One word at a time is all she trusts herself with right now.
"I can see that." Martha leans forward. She takes in the impromptu murder board with interest. "Looks like you've made a lot of progress."
"Well, I haven't."
"Nonsense. Look at this!" Martha rises. She steps up beside her and stoops to get a better look at one of the smaller pages. It's cramped top to bottom with words that crawl up the margin at ninety degrees. She'd run out of room working through too much. Her one and only encounter with Cross. Too few facts and too much emotion spilling over. "His handler . . . Richard's handler? Darling, did the people who did this think Richard was a spy?"
"I don't know." She steps away. Removes herself. "Maybe." She drops the pen in her hand and hunts for another. A green, fine-tipped ballpoint she had earlier. "It's something Blaine said when he . . . . When he had Castle. Gemini." She spits out the name. Hates the Hollywood veneer of it. Code names and potboiler fiction. "The man who killed Ted Rollins."
"Because he sent his son. Used him." Kate's head snaps up as she hears the sharp sound of rending paper. Martha's chin sinks to her chest. She's staring down at the sheet in her hand, one ragged corner still in the teeth of the binder clip securing it to the twine that spans the screen. "He used the two of you as bait."
"He did," Kate says, her voice gentler this time. At least she hopes it is.
She takes the paper from her. A small sheet of stationery with little more than HUNT/CROSS written along the top, a few bullet points underneath. More speculation than fact. Little enough of both, and at the very bottom the question that's still fizzing at the edges of her mind. Why now? It doesn't matter though. It doesn't matter why he's chosen now to show up.
"I should have seen it sooner." She clips the paper back to the twine.
"Neither of us was blind to the possibility that he was . . . involved." Martha draws close to the screen again. Kate stiffens. She's a long way from being ready for a pep talk, but Martha's tone is thoughtful when she speaks again. Turned inward. "You know, I told Richard it was a good thing. The way he'd come back. That he'd given me the gift of closure." Her head dips, but there's a rueful smile descending with the gesture. "And still . . . still . . . since the moment you told me that Richard didn't die in that accident, some part of me held on to the idea that somehow he would. . . "
"Martha . . ." Kate's hand hovers at the older woman's shoulder. She should say something, but the words cut too close to foolish things she's been pushing down since the diner parking lot. A fantasy that flared brief and bright when she'd recognized him. His father. Crushing disbelief when she'd realized that he's the furthest thing from on her side.
And churning around with all of it, there's more. All the dashed hopes she hadn't even realized she'd been harboring are bad enough, but there's more. Some perverse desire that Alexis nearly coaxed from her in the middle of the night-a need to defend him. A need for it to mean something that he saved them both in Paris. That he'd saved Castle again. Some screwed up determination to keep that hero alive for all three of them. For him and his family.
"Martha," she says again, but she falls silent the next second. She can't make herself do it.
Martha hears it all anyway, of course. She knows the whole of the complicated mess inside. She reaches across her own body. Over her shoulder to lay her fingers over Kate's where they've finally landed. "Oh, darling, maybe it makes us fools, but it's not wrong to hope that the world will do right by the people we love."
"Hope." It's a bleak echo. Too much of the bitterness she'd like to keep to herself bleeding through. Kate pulls her hand free from Martha's. She thinks of the small square of blue paper and makes a helpless motion toward the board. "Castle doesn't have time for me to hope."
The words run out entirely. She feels it then. The slice of anger between her ribs. For Martha. For Alexis. For Castle and another thing taken from them all. It pulls her back together. This cold, quiet fury she'd never feel for herself alone. It draws her gaze back from the impossibly long road ahead to the next step. Back to the board with all its empty spaces. All the work she has to do.
"This . . . it's all speculation and a handful of facts. I should have had this all nailed down weeks ago. The first twenty-four hours. . . ." She taps the board with the back of her fingers. A wide single sheet with the word ACCIDENT across the top and bullet points below. Who? Why? "There's a whole other player here that I didn't even know about until yesterday, and I thought . . . I've been working under the wrong assumptions. Hope doesn't fill up a murder board."
She hears herself too late. She jerks sharply toward Martha, an apology on her lips, but there's a glint in those blue eyes. A gotcha that's familiar enough to make Kate's heart skip.
"Maybe not." Martha turns toward the desk. She trails her fingers over the spray of pens and plucks one from it. Something bold. Red. She places it in Kate's hand. "But neither can you. Not alone, Kate."
"Martha, I don't even know what I'm dealing with. How far these people-whoever they are, whatever they want . . . I have no idea how far they'll go." She cracks open, fear and hope and everything spilling out. "I can't drag everyone into this. I can't ask . . ."
"You're not asking." Martha breaks in. "They're with you, come what may. They love you. They love Richard. We all do, and like it or not, the weight of the world is not yours alone."
Kate's head drops. Something more like resignation than agreement. Martha squeezes her shoulder. Accepts the surrender for now. She moves for the door, but she can't quite leave it.
"And Katherine?" She produces the scrap of paper with a flourish. Impressive sleight of hand. She holds it up. Tacks back to the corner of the sheet Kate's only just taken it from. CASTLE across the top in bold, emphatic capitals. And this. A small blue square and the worst of it-they want him dead-in tight script. "This is not a murder board. Remember that and hope."
A/N: Sorry for the delay between chapters. Thanks for reading.