Her head hurt.
Her head hurt and her wrist ached.
Her head hurt and her wrist ached and her mouth was full of cotton and her back was on fire.
Her head hurt and her wrist ached and her mouth was full of cotton and her back was on fire and her hands and feet felt weighted, trapped.
Beckett blinked her eyes open to a dingy room lit only by a dim, flickering bulb.
"Good morning, gorgeous," she heard from a corner. Tyson moved a step toward her but stayed half hidden in shadow. "You're awake."
She started to respond, but the words died on the back of her tongue. She couldn't quite get the air she needed, and finally her still-asleep brain registered the pressure of a gag in her mouth.
"I'm sorry about all this. I really am," Tyson said, taking another step forward. He didn't look sorry, Beckett thought, her eyes flicking over him. He looked angry. His nose and cheekbone were bruised and swollen, and he walked with a limp.
She had woken with a start to the cold, sharp metal of a knife pressed against her neck and a fiery pain surging through her hip. The room was dark, but she didn't need the clock's green glow to see the contours of Tyson's face; she knew who it was, and she knew that his first instinct wouldn't be to slit her throat. She lay still for one heartbeat, two, then pushed Tyson's knife arm down and away and surged forward, ramming her forehead into his nose. A syringe's needle fell out of her hip as she sprung (too late, her brain registered as a liquid burn swam through her leg). Tyson yelled and staggered back and she lunged for the side table, yanking the drawer out, reaching for her service weapon. It wasn't there. She'd left herself open, and Tyson rammed a shoulder into her stomach and sent her stumbling against the table, which toppled to the floor with such force that the lamp and clock shattered, scattering pieces of metal and glass across the room. She kicked out from her awkward position on her side, half lying on the side table, and her feet connected with his ankle. She could feel it twist slightly, could feel his body curve and stumble sideways, and she charged past him into the living room.
Flexing, she realized her ankles were attached to the legs of a wooden chair and her hands were bound behind her. She twisted her wrists. They were tied tightly.
Tyson noticed her movement. A smile quirked his lips. "A little snug, hm? I'd ease up, but you taught me the hard way not to underestimate you."
He watched her silently as she looked around the room. They must have been in a basement – the walls were rough cement, and there were no windows. A twin bed sat in the corner of the room, a battered writer's desk next to it, two small chairs in another corner. One door, open, that led to a bathroom; the other door, closed, would be the only exit. Easy door, easy knob, but tied the way she was, she'd never get to it.
The door seemed further away than normal, and, in spite of his bloody nose and his injured ankle, Tyson caught up to her before she was halfway across the living room. She kept her distance and swung a leg around to connect with his shins, to knock him over, but her body was half a second behind where it always was, and he deflected her leg as he grabbed her wrist and twisted, hard. Ignoring the pain crackling through her forearm, she went on the offensive and lunged forward, but again she was too slow, and their brief, violent scuffle ended with her crashing back into the coffee table. The glass top shattered and she fell onto the shards, her head slamming on the floor. Her vision grayed, tunneled, and she might have passed out had she not had the fierce pain of the glass in her back to focus her, to give her a point in consciousness to cling to.
Keeping her eyes on Tyson, she mentally worked her way up her body. Both feet fine; right ankle slightly sore, but she was sure she could move on it; left hip bruised; stomach and chest fine; back twinging with every breath – lacerations?; hands probably fine but tingling from the tightness of the rope around them; right wrist had a bone-deep ache that could have been a sprain or a break; left wrist and both forearms fine; both biceps sore, but probably just bruised; shoulders fine; neck fine; head had a sharp ache that could have been a combination of coming off the sedative and a concussion.
"You feeling a little beat up, there?" Tyson asked, grinning, stalking toward her.
She didn't like that he saw into her so well. Fuck you, Tyson, she wanted to say, or, What kind of game do you think you're playing? But she was pretty certain she wouldn't have been able to speak articulately through the gag, and like hell she was going to start saying something and have it come out as an incoherent whimper.
"You were a real pain in my ass, you know," Tyson continued, towering above her.
He came at her and, still fighting for consciousness, she kicked up at him ferociously. She connected with his groin, and he stumbled backwards into the television, knocking it to the floor, shouting, "Bitch!"
She grabbed the edge of the couch to lift herself, but her arms weren't responding right and her legs were weak, trembling. She tried to scream, to shout for help, but her thoughts were jumbled and the yell tumbled around her throat, coming out incoherent and slurred and far, far too quiet.
She felt a brief surge of panic claw at her and breathed steadily through her nose to quell it. Tyson smiled down at her. She glared back up at him.
"I have plans," Tyson told her, conversationally, pulling up a chair so that he was sitting close, too close to her. "Good plans. Not like the past week – I scrambled, I didn't think things through enough, and I paid for it. It should have been a better week for me."
His eyes roamed over her. "Has it been a good week for you and your writer, Detective Beckett?"
She couldn't help it – her jaw clenched when he mentioned Castle.
Tyson smiled.
She was only just able to jerk herself out of the way when Tyson lunged at her with the knife; he missed, and, enraged, dragged it through a couch cushion. She stumbled towards the door, but clumsily, and after three steps she staggered, her ankle wrenching. Tyson must have gotten control of himself; he walked calmly around and placed himself between her and the exit. She awkwardly lunged for him, unwilling to give up but unable to make her body cooperate. She missed and fell to her knees, then, her muscles failing, dizzily spiraling towards unconsciousness, she slumped into a sitting position on the floor.
Her head was spinning and there was a distant roaring in her ears and she felt like vomiting or passing out, but a distant rapping brought her halfway back. Tyson was next to her in a second, his hand clamping over her mouth. She jerked her head, weakly, but his hand was firm and she didn't think she could have yelled anyway.
"It's almost sad," Tyson said, still smiling, "how stupid you all were. I mean, I get putting guards on Martha and Alexis and Gina, but, really, did nobody think to watch you?"
Hindsight being what it was, Beckett could acknowledge his point. She'd been too worried about Castle to think of her own safety, Castle had been too worried about his daughter, and Montgomery and Ryan and Esposito and Kennedy and Jones and everyone else involved in the investigation hadn't questioned how she'd allocated manpower and resources.
"I know, I know," Tyson said, "After that little redhead in the alley, you were obviously worried about the kid, and that blond bombshell of a girlfriend was an obvious target, too. But," he cocked his head, reached over, and patted her shoulder (she jerked away so fiercely that she had to fight a sudden, violent bout of vertigo), "there's just something about you, Detective."
As the drug burned through her veins and she slid towards unconsciousness, she heard Castle's voice, echoing through the roar in her ears, calling her name. It was enough to pull her back to some wakefulness, enough to put the fight back in her, enough to make her swing up and connect with Tyson's jaw. He tipped backward with a thump, but so did she, trembling and spent, stars shooting through her vision. "Where's your fucking phone?" she heard him hiss as she slipped toward blissful unawareness.
As her vision blacked she thought she heard Castle's voice again, and it soothed her, melding into a hazy recollection of the night before – "You, my dear Detective Beckett, need sleep" – and with the memory of those words and of his fingers tumbling through her hair and of the warm rough stubble of his jawbone scraping against her cheek, she sank into unconsciousness.
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THANK YOU again to all of you out there reading and reviewing! Even though now most of your adorable singing elf reviews have picked up pitchforks and I believe are often engaged in doing something ominous like dancing evilly around a bonfire at midnight in the freezing cold (I am sure they are still singing happy Christmas carols as they do this, but given their creepy behavior it's really turning into something like an episode of The X-Files with the juxtaposition of the adorable happy music on one hand and the horrifying Oh Sweet Jesus Something Bad Is Happening on the other hand).
(Yes, thanks for noticing, I am incoherent).
(Also, no, this insanity will NOT be the usual pace of updates. It's either the holiday season or I've started taking uppers without realizing it, but I'm pretty sure I'm currently on a sleep schedule that is sustainable only for Will Ferrell in Elf or a giraffe, which, fun fact, sleeps the least of any mammal).
