Ephemeris, Ch. 15-A post-For Better or Worse (6 x 23) Caskett multi-chap WIP
Title: Ephemeris, Ch. 15
WC: ~1700 this chapter, 38,000 total so far
Summary: "He wants something, and he has definite ideas about how this will go. Just like the diner. And just like the diner, she bites her tongue. She doesn't say her lines. He's waiting for just that, and not giving him what he wants-what he expects-has brought her this far."
A/N: I decided to split this chapter. Posting it simultaneously with Chapter 16. Chapter 17 will be the epilogue.
Where is he?
It's the obvious question. The one she bites back as she moves further into the room. The one she pushes down alongside all the fear boiling in some dark corner of her mind. Not for herself, though there's a chorus of voices that she's pointedly ignoring on that front. Fear that she's blown this. That Cross didn't just orchestrate this, he saw them coming, and he's long since moved Castle out of reach.
She pushes all of that down. Because there's no such place, and she's here. She's closer, even if she does't yet understand how. For all Cross's erratic behavior, there's a ruthless practicality she can count on. That and arrogance.
He wants something, and he has definite ideas about how this will go. Just like the diner. And just like the diner, she bites her tongue. She doesn't say her lines. He's waiting for just that, and not giving him what he wants-what he expects-has brought her this far.
"They're not coming," he says, finally. There's an edge of irritation under it, like he's moving along the script without her. Salvaging the scene. He steps into the room and closes the door behind him. "Your boys. Not for a while, anyway."
It should probably bother her. The nonchalant announcement and the final-sounding snick of the lock. But the room itself draws her, and for the moment, Cross pays her no mind as she paces from end to end and back.
He fusses with his pockets like he's settling in. Keys and the remains of her phone offloaded on to a kind of work bench. He tucks her weapon away. Something that closes with a metallic click. He turns to watch her again. "They're under the impression that you're headed back out to the road."
"The accident," she murmurs, like it makes perfect sense. She thinks of Paris, of all things. Castle turning a nightmare into anecdotes.
He shot my phone!
I know, Castle. I was on the other end, remember?
But he'd managed to spin the worst moments into tiny stories, each one so impossible it made her laugh. Stories like always, to say things he shouldn't or couldn't. Stories to help both of them cope.
"You cloned my phone." She spares Cross a glance over her shoulder. It's one of the things Castle shouldn't have told her-something different in the covert story-and she can't quite resist. "The GPS signal."
"Something like that." He leans back against the bench. "Simple enough."
She makes a non-committal sound of agreement, and the conversation stalls again. It surprises him. It aggravates him. She catches a glimpse out of the corner of her eye. A twitch of one eyebrow and the dissolution of an indulgent smile.
She'd like to call this defiance. Refusal to give him the satisfaction of panic. She'd like to tell him outright that it doesn't matter what happens to her, because Martha and Alexis and every friend they have in the world will find Castle, whether he's in Montauk or in Outer Mongolia, and bring him home.
But it's not confidence. It's not defiance or any certainty at all that this is finally the end. It's none of that. It's just the room. The fact that Castle was here, and the driving need to go over every inch of it. To find something that brings her nearer to him. She doesn't have the attention to spare for whatever conversation Cross thought they'd be having.
So she roams. For the moment, he lets her.
It's a modest apartment. Back near the work bench, there's a bank of cabinets and a half-sized fridge and a sink. Off that, a small, enclosed space juts out from behind the only other door. A bathroom, most likely.
The rest is wide and windowless, save two small, dormered skylights, one near each end of the room. There's tube lighting over the work bench and battery powered lanterns here and there on the floor, but it's gloomy on the whole. The roof slopes low enough at the edges that she has to duck, and the perimeter is cluttered compared with the open center of the floor.
It's meant to look disused, as if the area has long been given over to storage. Boxes are stacked in artful clusters, interspersed with hulking shapes draped in canvas. More paranoia. It's to shout that no one lives here, but when she thinks of the office-the sheer scale of his identity as Anderson Cross-she knows this is amateur hour.
The dust is wrong, and the creases in the fabric are too sharp, even though it looks like they've been dragged over a dirty surface for good measure. She doesn't have to look hard to see that it's all new. Recent things, recently used. However long he might have been holding on to the house, this is new.
It's all thrown together, and she knows at a glance that he's got nothing like the resources he commanded a few months ago. He's not just "on the outside." He's alone in the world. Even the boxes and cast-off things are functional. They're turned on their odd sides so they take up too much space. They're all makeshift tables and chairs, other than one low, wide trunk off to the side, carefully clear of crates and tarps and other obstacles. That's his arsenal, most likely.
She turns her back on it. On him. There's no point in approach. He's the one with the gun in hand, and the space is small enough he'd hardly miss if he decided to shoot. That surprises him, too. He probably expected a confrontation by now. That she'd try to arm herself or overpower him.
Still, he's complacent. Confident enough to watch, silent and bemused. He's patient for now, like she's a child and he's letting her wear herself out.
She makes the most of the mood while it lasts. The far corner of the room draws her further away from him. Heat and a low hum reach out from that direction. She moves toward it and he follows. Just few quick steps before he stops short enough that she knows he wishes he hadn't.
Not so casual now.
That's interesting. There's something he's not eager for her to see, though he's given the impression so far that she has free run of the place. It buoys her. It gives her hope that she's not imagining it. That there's actually something here. Not him-not Castle-but something, if she can just hang on. If she can put this together.
She stops in front of the tallest heap. The dimmest corner of the room. It's layered in tarps, paint-splattered and genuinely old in this case. She holds her hand out toward the looming shape, like she's warming herself by a fire.
Electronics. Surveillance. It's obvious enough that she wonders why it's this he's taken pains to hide. Why he's hiding it still. He brought her here, after all, and it's nothing she wouldn't have expected.
She reaches for the edge of the outermost layer. She pulls her hand back and shoots a glance over her shoulder. The hunch pays off. She catches him out completely. The fingers of his free hand flex and straighten. A quick fist and a flick of his other wrist that brings the barrel of the gun up. There's casual confidence in the movements. Muscle memory that's completely at odds with the look on his face.
It's not that he doesn't want her to see. He doesn't want to look. He's devastated by the very thought. Old, she thinks again, and she's cold with fear. It's Castle. Whatever's done this to Cross, it's mostly about Castle. The realization galvanizes her. She has to know.
She jerks at the topmost tarp and heaves it aside. She pulls at the next and the next. They're heavy. Dusty and deliberately pinned down in places. There's a nightmare quality to it. How slowly she's moving, and it feels urgent, even though he just stands by now. He doesn't want to look, but he makes no move to stop her.
Monitors come to light first. Familiar blue-grey with fuzzy-around-the-edges of them shows anything but leaves and plastic fencing shivering in the wind. A steady flick from one view to the next. The coverage is impressive, but there's nothing much to see at the moment.
They're not coming . . . Not yet anyway.
She looks back at Cross again, but he's blank and still. No reaction. It's not this he cares about.
She's drawn the wrong way at first. Instinct tugs her closer to the skylight-to where she might actually be able to see, but there's . . . something. A shift in his posture. Fractional relaxation, as if he's staved off the inevitable for a moment more. It has her spinning on her heel. Heading away from the light. It comes into focus, then. A shape about three times as long as it is deep, hip high.
It sits at a right angle to the row of monitors, not quite concealed by the junk piled on it or the boxes hastily pulled around to its front. She moves quickly, pulling things off and casting them aside. She drags at overlapping tarps as she goes.
The fabric snags on something. A tall, awkward shape that lists to one side. It shifts before she can pull the tarp free of it. There's a clatter of casters, and she thinks for a moment that it's a desk chair. Something on wheels that spins, but it's heavier, and the upper part is wrong.
It's a screen. A flat rectangle that tilts up, and it doesn't make sense at first. Coils and wires looped around a pair of hooks on the pole that rises above it. The various windows in it. A scatter of letters in different colors. Red and green and blue. A zero in every square.
Vital signs.
She knows what it is, but she doesn't. There's a sudden, sick feeling of things colliding in her mind. It has her kicking boxes and clawing the last of the canvas away until she's unveiled all of it.
An empty hospital bed.
Cross's voice is in her ear. Right behind her, all of a sudden and she's shocked white inside, even before she understands the words.
"I didn't think he'd live." It's a flat kind of afterthought. Like something he'd meant to mention earlier. "For weeks, I didn't think he'd live."
A/N: Again, sorry for the split, but the next chapter is live simultaneous with this one.