A/N - As promised.
I'd like to send a big shout out of appreciation to my group message and/or group therapy Twitter pals who never fail to read and always make me feel like I can do anything. concreteangel16 and FuelDH206, who write (read their stories) and operaluvr and Deputy Hot Stuff who read. You guys are the best!
Enjoy!
~GeekMom
P.S. I also thank everyone for the kindness and enthusiasm in your reviews. I always answer my reviews and I will, but because of the deadline, I'll finish the story and then devote time to truly show my appreciation. If you have a moment, please leave a comment or question. I absolutely love answering and discussing my thought processes while writing and getting to know my readers.
The Possibility of Magic
Chapter 4
Elementally, My Dear Watson
They hardly let go of each other's hands for the rest of the ride to Saranac Lake and when he needed both hands for driving or she for her coffee, they came back together as if their palms were magnetic. The boys were still sleeping it off in the back of the car and he and Beckett chatted and played silly car games (due to his meticulous perseverance.) Still, it was better than arguing about the radio station, to pass the time. She hadn't played License Plate Bingo or I Spy since she was a bored kid in the back seat of her Dad's Buick when her family spent summer vacations at their cabin.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked as he squeezed her fingers. Her focus had been outside for several minutes. He grinned dopily when he realized what he'd just done. He liked the sensation of being able to squeeze her fingers whenever he wanted. It was a start.
She dragged her gaze back inside the car. "Hm?" She tilted her head, puzzled by the expression on his face. "Oh…nothing really: I haven't been to the Adirondacks in a very long time, that's all. They're still beautiful."
Castle frowned. "For February, I guess. I prefer the multiple greens of summertime or the autumn hues of reds, oranges, rusts and yellows when the mountainsides look like they've been set ablaze."
"Poetical," she teased.
"Writer," he replied, "and it's just poetic, unless you're under the direction of Joss Whedon or talking about me. I can be poetical, but the statement was poetic."
She rolled her eyes and directed her attention to the landscape again.
He was thoughtful for a moment. "We could ski," he suggested through raised eyebrows. "Mt Pisgah has a great resort."
Kate scowled as she considered him. "We're on the job, remember?"
"Yeah, but maybe we'll have to chase down the bad guys on skis, like in a Bond movie…or snowboards: I can do tricks," he boasted. Unconvinced, she scoffed and supported her jaw on her fist, her elbow propped on the bottom of the window while she continued to observe the bare trees like skeletal hands and fingers, pushing through the yellowed grass and stubborn patches of snow on the hillsides seeming to rush past in a backwards race. "Beckett," he continued undaunted, his voice dripped like rich, deep hot chocolate. "Have you ever seen a ruggedly handsome author do a tail grab?"
She slowly turned her head toward him and waited until her silence made him look her way. She gazed in his eyes and whispered, "Not yet," she purred, "but…" she breathily sighed, "I'm looking forward to it."
His jaw unhinged and he stared at her. If he had been a cartoon wolf, his eyeballs would have bugged out of his head making the aoogha of a Model T or A diaphragm car horn of the twenties and thirties and his tongue would have flopped completely out of his mouth only to retract like window blinds. Classic.
"Castle, the road," she yelled as he drifted onto the rumble strip carved into the shoulder.
He jerked the wheel and shook his head. "Not fair, Beckett…so not fair."
He pulled into the drive of their hotel a few minutes and several teasing looks and interactions later. Beckett got out and pulled her coat closed. The mountain air was colder than Manhattan's and definitely colder than the Mercedes' heated seats. She shivered.
Castle stayed in the car. He held onto the steering wheel, white-knuckled, as if it were the only life preserver in the vast ocean of new signals and signs to be interpreted. He vaguely noticed his partner shiver as she acclimated to the loss of heat. The apology followed by the hand-holding, followed by the easy and comfortable conversation were all conspiring to make his head spin. It was tough enough keeping focused in the swamp of Aggregate energy that permeated the very air. He didn't dare acknowledge the thought jumping up and down outside the doorway to his soul, demanding attention loudly, that she was finally ready to pursue a deeper partnership with him. The thought badgered and interrupted other thoughts rudely, until it began knocking.
Beckett stood outside the car for more than a couple of minutes waiting for her partner to release the trunk. She rubbed her ungloved hands together and called his name. She tried to see him through the tinted back window, bending down and squinting, all she could discern was his rigid posture and his hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. If she didn't know any better, she'd hazard a guess that he was in the midst of a panic attack. Moving quickly, concern veiling her features like a ski mask, she walked to the passenger door and flipped the handle only to find that he'd locked the door. She knocked loudly on the window and called his name. The car's excellent soundproofing all but muted her cries.
Beckett ran around the car to his door and resumed her knocking. Castle blinked and looked around. He looked up into her concerned face and assessed his own condition. His palms were sweaty where he'd gripped the wheel, his eyes and mind unfocused, his heart rate and respirations were both up as was his blood pressure.
He smiled and unlocked the doors. Beckett tore open the door and squatted next to him. Castle unhooked his seatbelt.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah," he tried for a reassuring smile. "I guess I'm just tired from the drive." He silently added, 'and the source.'
He thought about the source, history and current state of the Aggregate. He, Montgomery and countless other gifted kids learned about it during their first summer at the Lake. He'd forgotten how the intense awareness of the communal Aggregate could overpower, both mentally and physically. He always felt smothered at first: the perfect elements, which were abundant on this mountain and alignment of the rocks, coalesced to make the area a perfect tuning fork. The closer the membership was to each other, the greater their influence. If they ever worked together toward a commonality or even a goal, they'd be able to accomplish great things or maybe, terrible things. Their separation was a fail-safe of sorts. Only yesterday, they'd come together for good when Rick disarmed the bomb. There had been many times that his or that of others' requests had simply been ignored, still others when the request had been detrimental or so off-the-rails that Rick had simply refused to participate. He shuddered to think about the destruction yesterday if they just couldn't have been bothered.
The Aggregate was an ancient order. No one really knew the origin: they only had the speculation, rumors and ambiguity that defined the community. Notions were across the board including that they were alien to Earth, but still human; actual aliens coupled with humans over eon, creating a hybrid; mythology and mixed genetics were the more popular theories. A superman-esque story had them barely escaping from a destroyed home world. Castle tended to favor the super-human theory when he was younger. As he grew and understood the universe more, he favored genetics, both the mutation account and the evolutionary concept, although secretly he still fantasized about super-humans and held out hope that one day he'd be able to fly. He already had the cape.
There was no central governing body, which might have been good or bad, depending on the situation. The only real control came from the universe. There was a collective consciousness of sorts and in times of need members could communicate, but not in a clear concise manner; it was mainly a feeling or an errant thought that popped into your own consciousness stream. When you received a message, it usually felt foreign, but merely as if you had a speck of grit in your shoe. If you weren't paying attention, you might miss it. Keeping an ear to the ground so to speak, was why most of those gifted seemed distracted or easily sidetracked, or like some, rumor had it, behaved like a nine-year-old on a sugar rush. Sending a mental epistle was a difficult endeavor that required absolute concentration. Mixed messages and misinterpretations happened all the time. Few Aggregate were gifted with telepathy, but it was easier to send a mass message, no matter how difficult or jumbled, than to find another telepathic person. Rick chose to use his cell phone. He had an app for that.
They all shared the ability to manipulate physics and matter in time and space, but most gifted with the skills could handle one or two tasks at once. There was also a natural order depending on your power, which could be detected not unlike a sensitive sense of smell can detect a particular type of cologne or nuances in wine, only not by using the sense of smell; it was an underlying perceptiveness. Castle liked to say it was his Spidey sense. The more strength a member possessed the stronger his or her, as he referred to it, Bat signal. It was one of the reasons most of those with skills used them for the menial or mundane. Uncle Ben was right when he said that with great power comes great responsibility.
Every once in a while, with humans being humans, someone would get out of hand and tamper with or alter world events, politics or success or any number of things that had been deemed untouchable. If you've ever scratched your head and wondered how some event could have happened in a sane world, it's a pretty good bet that a rogue member had a hand in the mess. There had been world events that had been catastrophic: Mount Vesuvius' untimely eruption was a direct result of an attempt at manipulating the Earth's core. The universe's punishment was swift, inflexible and usually, final. If only everyone gifted used his or her power for good, the world might be a better place, but even seemingly good deeds could have calamitous results in a far reaching, ripple effect way.
Another incentive to stay below the radar was the primitive and instinctive response to the unknown by their fellow humans. Which was and still is that when faced with an unknown quantity or a significant difference, humans react with fear and self-protection from the perceived threat, because until we learn about something and accept and define it as benign, it's a threat to our way of life. How many spiders have been squashed out of existence because of a perceived threat when in reality there are very few that can actually harm us? Not that the Aggregate were spiders, more like bees or ants to stay with the insect analogy, but there had in fact been several periods in history that they were almost squashed out of existence: Salem, Druids, and the disappearances of the Maya, Atlantis and Roanoke, The Spanish Inquisition, McCarthy Trials and many other examples throughout history. Secrecy was an unspoken but communally established fundamental rule. You just didn't break the trust.
Like many other human endeavors, the Aggregate was split into factions. Those that wanted to go about their lives, which were the majority, those who were zealously seeking unity and cooperation and those who wanted to harness the collective's powers for personal gain and domination. The universe and karmic justice generally kept the peace and the zealots in check. Generally.
Something had happened to upset the balance, which was why Castle had been asked (forced) to go to Saranac Lake. The Aggregate referred to that place as the source. Saranac is an Iroquois word meaning cluster of stars and indeed, to the gifted, the area seemed to glow and emanate a concentration of power, but whether that was because the Aggregate was centered there or because the Aggregate was focused there because of the glow and magnified power was a chicken and egg ages-old question.
It seemed like pure coincidence that the local and state authorities had convened the task force to solve a multi-jurisdictional crime wave and had followed the breadcrumbs to Saranac Lake. Montgomery and Castle both knew better: that the two were interconnected and woven tightly together. Castle's task was to break through the barriers and bureaucracy inherent in humanity's approach to any problem, find the cause of the disturbances and seal the breach as quickly as possible. The breach was costing the Aggregate psychic power, but had also robbed the victims' karmic banks. Whoever was behind the events had somehow skirted universal authority as well as the local law enforcement and that was troubling. Getting crap past the universe's radar was damn near impossible.
The undertaking was daunting, but Castle, in his unique position, would be able to tackle both sides at once. Not only was he associated with the NYPD, but also had an unusual allocation of Aggregative gifts. It's how he could accomplish many tasks concurrently. His grandmother had been the first to sense it and then it was identified and studied by the counselors who cultivated him and the other gifted kids at Camp Saranac.
He had been approached many times to lead, which he flatly refused every time. He believed that any kind of formal organizing of the Aggregate would lead to the world becoming decamped to two classes: gifted and non-gifted. That and he'd have to give up his lifestyle and move to Saranac and become a monk of sorts, dedicated to the Aggregate. He wanted no part of such a world order and certainly did not want to be the poster child for the restructuring of humanity, let alone the way of life he'd worked hard for his entire adulthood. There was also an underground movement of a small percentage of gifted who believed that the Aggregate had become too watered down and advocated purity. That philosophy terrified him as well as most of the gifted he knew.
"Castle?" He looked at her and saw a combination of humor and concern.
"Yeah," he answered languorously.
"Seriously, are you alright?"
"Yeah, just distracted, I guess." At some point he had gotten out of the car and was standing near the trunk, which was opened. He must have been on autopilot. The boys still snoozed in the back seat. "What do you want to do with Sleeping Beauty and Rip Van Winkle?"
"Which is which?"
"They're interchangeable." He finished unloading their luggage and placed it onto the cart.
"Wake their asses up."
"I think you should."
"Why?"
"Because they wouldn't dare make you the target of any fiendish payback."
Her eyes twinkled. "Together?"
"Deal," he agreed.
They each went to a door and opened them. Leaning down, together they counted to three silently then screamed their respective partner's name.
"Esposito," Kate shouted along with Castle's, "Ryan!"
The two men would have shot through the sunroof if Castle had it open. Luckily, they were still belted, and torpidly, they stared at their partners
Beckett winked at a smiling Castle and continued, "Get your asses awake, it's time to get to work."
