Ephemeris, Ch. 3-A post-For Better or Worse (6 x 23) Caskett multi-chap WIP
Title: Ephemeris, Ch. 3
WC: ~1600 this chapter, ~5600 so far
Summary: "Alexis is quiet through most of it. A stranger to Kate with her red-rimmed eyes and the careful way she moves through the world now. A mirror for now and then."
Alexis is quiet through most of it. A stranger to Kate with her red-rimmed eyes and the careful way she moves through the world now. A mirror for now and then.
She's exhausted, but it's more than that. It's more than the toll a weary journey might take. She's devastated. So pale that the light of the lamp from his desk seems to shine right through her. But for all that-for all the ruin of a life just getting started-she's composed, the serious air she's always had deepened to something grave now. Something heartbreaking to see, all the more because Kate sees how it hits Martha. How all their brave faces are fragile things.
The air is oddly formal. Alexis takes her bags to her room and reappears immediately. Even Martha foregoes any social pleasantries, simply taking up her station with her arm tight around the girl where she sits, practically unmoving, with her hands in her lap.
Kate takes her cues from the two of them. She lays out what they know and how they know it. Takes the blame for their silence up to this point. Martha swallows hard and nods her thanks at that, but there's little enough reaction from Alexis that Kate almost wonders how much she's actually taking in.
She's not alone in that. The two of them share concerned looks over the girl's bent head and Martha takes on more of the story, as though it might help. She adds things here and there. She softens the edges when Kate retreats into something distant. Something professional. She tempers the unkind details.
And she calls a halt to everything two or three times. Unfailing instinct and things hidden as far as Kate can see. A shift in the air circling around them that tell her it's too much. That Alexis is about to break. Martha stops then, and their heads bend together. Their hands find one another's, taking and giving wordless comfort.
For Kate, it's like watching from outside her own body. A new kind of anguish as she waits. Something she knows the shape of all too well, but can't call her own. She knows Castle better in that moment. She remembers all the times it hurt him to stand by and watch Alexis struggle because there was nothing else for it. Standing by, watching the two of them lean so completely on one another, Kate knows him with something deeper than empathy.
She stands ready to do anything and nothing. But neither of them asks. Neither of them says anything at all until Martha looks up. Until she tightens her arm around Alexis nods for Kate to go on.
Even so-even with these eternal moments-it takes no time at all. There's so little. So little. Kate holds out her hands. An apology. An admission that this is all they have. A promise that there are no more secrets.
They are suspended. The three of them fixed in silent space, together and apart, and Kate doesn't know how they go on from here. How they do this.
It's Alexis who moves first. Who makes the world turn again. She lifts her head. Sits forward and tucks her hair behind her ears. Kate's breath catches in her throat. There's a spark in her at last.
Somewhere deep beneath pain and beautiful gravity, there's a glimmer of the bright young thing who couldn't let a mother's memory book go unclaimed. The kind, determined young woman who worked tirelessly by Lanie's side and found meaning in ugliness. She is there. In pieces, and forever altered, but there.
She breaks the silence. Her voice quiet, but clear as she lays a steady hand over Martha's.
"Gram, I'd like to talk to . . . to Kate alone."
Martha goes uneasily. She says a quiet word in Alexis's ear. Embraces Kate and presses a kiss to her forehead. Her hand lingers on the doorframe, but she goes.
Kate's fingers flutter. A silly, involuntary gesture as the last bright flash of her disappears around the corner, even though she thinks it's easier, somehow. She's not proud of that truth, but it's a tether cut for her. Maybe for both of them.
Alexis is a stranger, but a mirror too. For then and now. Kate today. Kate at nineteen.
She sees the possibility of ugliness here. More than the possibility. Fury. Hate. Blame. Each is awful. Each wounds. But it's easier without the anchor of Martha's love. Easier knowing that at least she won't have to watch. Maybe for both of them.
She perches on the edge of a chair. Something hard and decorative. She remembers Castle swearing he'd been bullied into the piece. The upright back hits her spine and she half smiles with sympathy she'd made him work for then. It really is awful, but she feels perversely like she might deserve it.
It places her directly opposite Alexis. She clasps her hands loosely on her knees and waits. The subtext isn't lost on her. An interrogation tableaux, though she doesn't seem to be in her usual seat.
"He's not dead." Alexis is slow and deliberate with the words, like she's tasting them. She looks up sharply. A warning that she's not finished. That Kate has had her turn. "I know what you said. That just because it wasn't . . . because it was someone else's body in the car doesn't mean . . . but you don't believe he's dead."
"I don't." Kate hears the words. She tastes them as they leave her mouth, swift and unexamined. She waits for regret. She hesitates, but it's too long in coming if it's there at all. "Whoever did this could have killed him in that accident. They didn't. They went to a lot of trouble . . ."
Alexis breaks in. " . . . but you don't believe it." Anger clouds her face, visible for the first time. Frustration as she lays her hand over her heart. As she makes a helpless gesture to Kate's.
"I don't believe it." Her voice cracks. The words break. A flood of other words rises up to choke her. Caveats and disclaimers. Cautions, because she knows but she doesn't know.
But Alexis nods. It's austere. Sober, but . . . pleased? Satisfied. She's satisfied by it, though Kate doesn't know why. She hasn't the faintest idea.
"Whoever did this . . ." Alexis moves on. She's brusque, even though she's turning Kate's words over in her mouth. A leaf from Martha's book. "Is this about your mother?"
It startles Kate. It's painful. The hard edge of suspicion underneath. The bitterness and fear lessened with time but not forgotten. It hurts to see from here-to see it this way, across from another grieving daughter and only the table is different.
Alexis has grown up in the shadow of it all. She knows that, but this is seeing. The grim history is written in the shadows behind her eyes, so much a part of this new, grave face she wears. Montgomery. Her own shooting-she'd been there. She'd watched Castle run headlong at her. Headlong into the path of a bullet for all they knew. And after. The long months and the toll it took on them. All of them. The way this has spiraled out and taken hold of so many lives.
It hurts, this raw confrontation that's a long time in coming. It opens yet another wound.
But it . . . impresses her, too. The steely way she sets everything aside for one dispassionate question. Kate wishes badly that Castle were here to see this. To see the beauty in the way she puts the pieces together. All order and logic and leaps of intuition that would make him beam. It makes her wish she had any right to lay a hand on the girl's shoulder and tell her how very proud he'd be.
But she owes her an answer.
"It's a possibility," Kate says when she thinks her voice is steady enough. "But I think it's unlikely."
"You think."
"I believe." Kate rises to the challenge in her voice. Satisfaction of her own creeping in that she doesn't understand any better. "Bracken is done. Any friends he might've had have distanced themselves. His assets are locked down tight, and a lot of people from local government all the way to Washington stand to gain by making an example of him."
It's nothing she hasn't said before. It's no more than thinking out loud, but it takes on a different realness here. To look, unflinching, in his daughter's eyes and tell her that it's over. "We have to consider it-we are considering it . . ."
"We?" Alexis folds her arms. Hardness where she was just beginning to soften. "Not you?"
"Not me." Kate shakes her head. There's a kind of light dawning. Something coming clear, even as she speaks. "Bracken would try to play me. Details he's held back . . . whatever he thinks I might give a damn about. I don't have time to waste on that. Ryan has the coolest head, and Bracken doesn't really know him. Esposito is on it, too, but Ryan is taking the lead."
Alexis nods. A sharp gesture and there's satisfaction in that, too. Like Kate has given the right answer. Exactly the right answer.
But it ends with her head bowed, as though the effort costs her the last of whatever's propped her up this long. She takes a shuddering breath, but it's no good. Her shoulders shake and when she lifts her eyes, all the years she carries are gone. She's a fatherless little girl, pleading.
"You'll find him?"
She's pleading, and every caveat evaporates. Every qualification and cautionary note disappears. There's nothing left in Kate but determination. Will.
"I will find him, Alexis" She reaches her hand across the infinite space of the table between them. She breathes out when Alexis takes it and a weight she didn't know she'd been carrying lifts. "I promise you."
A/N: Again, thanks for reading.