Ephemeris, Ch. 7-A post-For Better or Worse (6 x 23) Caskett multi-chap WIP
Title: Ephemeris, Ch. 7
WC: ~1900 this chapter, ~14,000 so far
Rating: T
Summary: "She hates how easy it is for her to forget, even for the space of a few minutes. For a smile to settle over her and
all this to feel normal. For life to go on."
She's red-eyed and pale the next morning. She's been up all night making her peace with this. Turning too many possibilities and too little information over and over and trying to make her peace. She sees the looks Alexis and Martha exchange not quite behind her back, but they leave it at that. She's grateful.
She doesn't hate any of this any less in the light of day, but Ryan and Jenny make it hard to hold on to.
"I'm glad. So glad." Jenny folds each of them in hug. She says the words over and over, and it takes. It touches something in Kate. It settles her somehow. He's alive. It's a gift to all of them. She needs to keep sight of that.
Ryan is quiet. Smiling as Alexis and Martha crowd in on either side of Jenny when she pulls up the latest crop of baby pictures on her phone. He's steady and straight to work, though.
They leave the three of them at the front of the house, with the doors wide open and the sun streaming in. Kate drifts behind Ryan a while, but it's nerve wracking. Every tick of the sweeper has her heart racing even though she knows it doesn't mean anything. That Castle's affinity for gadgets means a host of false positives, and the house is huge.
"Beckett." Ryan finally snaps a little when she runs into him for the fifth time. "It's not really a two-man job."
"Ryan, I know the house . . ."
"Which doesn't really help." She's bristling, but he's not backing down. She sees the worry on his face, though. His sheepish, brittle smile. She must look bad. "I do a simple grid in every room. Just like the loft. Just like your place. Let me take care of this."
She folds, then, ashamed when she remembers everything he's already done. The hours they've all put in. The risk he doesn't even know about yet. She doesn't even really know about. What's likely and what worst case scenarios she's inventing. She doesn't know, because . . . this first. "Ryan. I'm . . . thank you."
"Go ahead," he says gently. He counters it with a jerk of his chin. A gruff gesture that's more Esposito than him. There's work to do. "Go ooooh and aaaaah over my kid. I've got this, Beckett."
"I know you do." She lays a hand on his arm briefly. "I'm gonna . . ." She nods toward the the stairs. "Don't want to make Jenny mad."
"You really don't."
She hates it a little bit. The ease this brings. The weight that lifts from her because Martha is smiling, and there's light in Alexis's eyes that's been missing since she came home. She doesn't begrudge them this. But she hates how easy it is for her to forget, even for the space of a few minutes. For a smile to settle over her and all this to feel normal. For life to go on.
It's hardest when Martha tugs her into the heart of it. The center of their little knot. When Alexis flaps her hand at Jenny and says that Kate has to see. When Jenny slips an arm around her and they're crowded together over pink-cheeked little Sarah swimming in a navy NYPD onesie.
"She grew into it!" Kate grins down at the screen. It's impossible not to. She's filled out in the last few weeks. Less of that alien, newborn look. More Kevin and Jenny and her own little personality as she stares fiercely into the camera.
"Almost," Jenny laughs. "We just took these last night. There's still a hair clip or two around the back. But I wanted you to see your gift in all its glory."
"Castle's," she says quietly. "He . . . they were out of the newborn size, but he couldn't wait. Had to order it the minute we found out you were pregnant."
Alexis lays a hand on Jenny's shoulder. She bounces up on her toes. "The next one. Show her the next one."
"It was . . ." Jenny hesitates. She tips the phone toward herself like she's reluctant, but Alexis nods encouragement. "Well, it was a conspiracy." She swipes her finger over the screen. It flicks to the new image. Another navy outfit, this one with WRITER in block letters across the front. "I promised I'd help turn you into a baby person."
"And of course he'd think this would do it."
It catches Kate somewhere low in her belly. A smile. A laugh that comes with that edge of sheer annoyance that he alone can raise in her. He would do that. Conspire against her once she'd confessed. He would.
She misses him. She misses all of him, but it's easier like this. It's easier for her heart to beat and blood to pump. It's easier to live in a room filled with people who love him, too. People who carry all the different ways he is with them.
She hates it a little bit.
"Clean," Ryan says quietly as he joins them. He stows the equipment away and slides the bag down the hallway, out of sight. "Just like the loft and your place. Visual surveillance is still possible, but . . . "
"But no one's listening." Kate presses her lips together. She swallows every question. Every second guess. It's hard. A good thing. A relief, but with a price. It's nothing, rather than something. She's glad to breathe a little easier, but she's tired of nothing to go on. "Good. That's good."
"So, what's next?" Ryan steps up behind Jenny as he asks. She tips her chin up for a kiss, and Kate wants to tell them to go. To thank them for what they've done and tell them to get as far away from whatever's coming as they can.
But there's Martha and Alexis. Their safety. There's Castle to think of, not just what they need to do to bring him home, but what he'd want for her. For all of them. She knows what he'd say to every instinct that's rising in her now. Every move she's wanted to make since the diner. It calls up their worst moments. Anger and despair battering against her. Isolation masquerading as control.
She can't do this alone. She doesn't have to. He wouldn't want her to.
"Come on," she says, and her voice is clear, if quiet. "Let me bring you up to speed."
Martha and Alexis take Jenny on a proper tour of the house and grounds while the two of them hole up in the study with her makeshift board. Ryan pulls an old, stripped-down flip phone from his bag of tricks.
"Careful as we can be." He shrugs off Kate's sharp look. "Pretty easy to listen in on any cell, but these might confuse the issue a while."
Kate smiles at the floor. Wonders how much is real and how much is for her. She'll take it. Either way, she'll take it.
He taps out an unfamiliar number. Esposito answers after a ring and a half. "Yo. 'Bout time you two called. Lanie's here, too. What've we got?"
Kate breathes in. She takes Martha's words to heart. She tries, and it's easier as she goes on. She fleshes out the story for the three of them. Ryan studies the board, following as she leads them through the details.
He scribbles in his own notebook from time to time. He grabs a marker and a fine-point pen from the desk. He sketches things in as they go. The sight of it-his face screwed up as he puzzles something out-along with short, to-the-point questions from Lanie and Esposito is bone-deep relief to her.
"Castle's dad is a spy?"Esposito drops his voice at the last word. "Man, it had to kill him not to say anything."
Ryan pales. There's a slap sharp enough to ring out even through the phone as Lanie hisses Javi, but Kate laughs. It's good. A kind of normal she doesn't hate, but more than that. It's true, and that fills another hollow place in her. It drives out something ugly.
However Castle feels about his father-however he will feel-there's a tough, joyful, little boy in him that does think it's cool. That will always see it that way. He's the son of a spy and it's so cool.
"He was a spy." She steps up to the board beside Ryan. "A little more than a year ago, he had the standing within the CIA to get Castle and Alexis out of Paris with a cover story."
" . . . but five months ago, the CIA was calling him a murderer." Ryan gives her a sidelong look. "Ted Rollins. Beckett, did you . . .?"
"I didn't know anything until pretty late in the game." She pulls her lip between her teeth. It's an apology that's only partly hers to make. Worse, it's one she wouldn't hear herself back then. One that burns in too many different ways now. "Castle thought he was protecting his father's cover."
Ryan nods. He doesn't like it, but he understands. Esposito isn't so easy.
"Protecting," he spits the word out. "So we don't even know what we don't know. What Castle might not have told you because he was protecting the guy."
There's something sharp in his tone. Something dismissive that raises Kate's hackles in more ways than one. He's goading her. Venting and she recognizes it. The two of them are more alike than either cares to admit, but he's wrong. Castle wasn't keeping any secrets. Not any more. She knows that.
It's not even that Esposito believes it. He's frustrated. And hurt. He's mourning, too. Kate tries to hold on to that, but he keeps coming. Prodding at fresh wounds and hunting for details that just don't matter. That they don't have time for. She's is on the verge of rising to the bait. On the verge of striking back, but there's the sound of a hand over the speaker on the other end of the phone.
Ryan gives her an uncomfortable grin. They stand awkwardly side by side, trying not listen. But even muffled, Lanie's voice is sharp, and Esposito is pissed enough to bite back at her.
It eats at Kate. Guilt, but more than that. How wrong it feels-how wrong it's always felt when to work in shadows and half truths. Montgomery and Maddox and Sophia Turner. Bracken until the very end. Until it was almost too late.
Every memory is fractured and frustrating and lonely. Even when it was her rushing away from all of them at speed. Rushing away from him and life and this family they've cobbled together and fought for. It's long since felt wrong, and she doesn't have time for it.
"Javi!" The name rings out. To the walls and to the glass, then the room goes silent. Here and there. Ryan's shoulders square and she can picture Lanie and Esposito, startled and retreating to their corners. There's nothing for it but to go on.
Enough, she thinks. Enough.
"We made bad calls along the way. Castle did. I did. And that's over. Everything I know-everything Castle and Alexis and Martha know-you all know. That's how it is from here on out."
The silence goes on long enough for her heart to squeeze painfully. But something shifts, then. Esposito mutters About time, and all of a sudden it's like any other work day. Almost. Machinery coming to live and it's like she can breathe again.
It's almost like that.