Monday, October 27th, 2011
1:35 PM, North Brother Island
Lieutenant Kirkland emerged along with several other members of his team. Their footsteps upon the stairs of the side entrance yielded creaks and groans of protest. His men fanned out like a pack of wolves, assuming various placements along the perimeter of the building. "Alright," their fore's voice rose above the pattering rain, "it's clear. Everyone take a breather. Drop those packs for a few and get out of the rain, but don't get cozy. We're oscar mike in ten minutes."
Joseph gave a groan of receptiveness and shrugged free of the hefty backpack. Lanie did the same and arched her back in relief. Kate set her pack alongside theirs beneath a sheltering tree and breathed easier more from the resulting lack of constriction. Ethan and Logan shed theirs in turn and the company filed towards the stairs and side doorway that awaited.
The detective hung back as the others moved and talked together in low tones. A determined sense of disquiet had effectively severed any desire for company. She wanted time to be alone, away from them and this cursed island. Someplace where it could be just her and those pale grey, violet-flecked memories. They needed to be turned and twisted until she could unlock the meaning behind the enduring unsettling they had thrust like a skewering spear into her core. The figurative wound sat heavy in her breast like a real weight. Being psychosomatic didn't negate its contribution to the real dull pain in her joints.
"Seems fine," Joseph assured the others from the small porch at the top of the stairs.
Lanie followed after and gave a clipped shriek when her foot crumbled through the rotted floorboard of the third step. The doctor jerked free as if she'd been grabbed by something alive and ravenous instead and launched herself as spryly as a gazelle onto the landing above. Gasping for breath, she flattened a shaky palm against her chest. Then slapped Hawkin's shoulder and chided, "'Fine'?! Shit, son. How's it seem now?"
The younger man blinked owlishly behind his thick glasses, looked around, and thumped a meager fist upon the surrounding, waist-high porch wall. It produced no calamity. "Seems fine."
None of the buildings on the island conveyed certitude anymore, but the Nurses' Dormitory—as Castle had called it—appeared in better shape than most, hence the brief detour so that ESU could search it thoroughly.
That wasn't saying much. Castle had already acknowledged that decay had become more widespread since last he visited. They'd passed three other 'structures' along the south road that didn't even qualify for the label. One of them had been a red-brick facade that was remarkably whole, doorway and windows intact, but all three of its other sides were nothing but the bottom layer of concrete blocking and a few irregular layers of clinging bricks protruding from beds of tall weeds. The other two had been visible as they'd passed, situated beyond the treeline nearer to shore: the ancient lighthouse and its maintenance outbuilding glimpsed from the boat earlier. If not for Castle's revelation of their former purpose, the piles of crumbled debris would have remained unknown.
By contrast, the nurses' dormitory exterior was a sturdy brick and stone design that was startlingly akin to the apartment building Kate lived in before that abode was blown to smithereens. The similarities ended there. It was a cozier, homier looking place—or once was anyway—with a U-shaped design of three wings. Comparative in its layout to the hospital they were gradually progressing towards, but more domestic with its eaves, overhangs, and the wide arch sheltering a recessed front entryway.
"Beckett, can I have a moment?"
She glanced over her left shoulder to the ESU leader who stood in the rusted-ajar entrance of the chain-link fence enclosing the area. It was bent and leaning in several spots, irreparably worn down. Like so much of this place. She eyed the remains dripping dew while approaching, wondering why it had been a necessary inclusion back in the day. Had it been erected to keep the nurses safe from the patients they cared for? Was that a necessary security measure? Had it succeeded in its task?
"What's up?" she asked while pausing before John's crossed-arm stance.
The bearded man glanced past her to the side doorway well beyond them both and then back again. "Your, uh, partner…" Her hackles lifted immediately. "Does he seem okay to you?"
Beckett turned as well, but Castle hadn't come out after guiding the agents through the residence. Exploring, no doubt. This place must seem like an old friend to him. Regarding the other's dark brown eyes again, she frowned. "He seems fine. Handling this place better than most of us, in fact. Why do you ask?" The inquiry escaped her lips with a layer of displeasure bristling about it. Her own scattered thoughts were sapping her patience.
Kirkland lofted one palm where it resided as if to placate her. "It's nothing bad. I'd even agree with that assessment. His familiarity with this place has been a boon for more than just the obvious result." Oh. Good. "It's just that he seems distracted. Not in the sense of being a detriment," he clarified swiftly at her perched eyebrow. "But he's very quiet when he isn't responding to questions, you know? And he seems overly alert in the way he watches our surroundings. His head is on a constant swivel. It presents like hypervigilance, but he's outwardly calm. It's contradictory behavior, which is a little concerning."
"Oh, jeez," the detective emitted softly. "Okay, I hear you. Look," She halted though, exhaling a breath while considering where to begin. "He's, uh...damn. It's hard to explain." Frowning, she started again from a different track. "Castle has an extremely vivid imagination." John didn't react either way to that admittedly inane announcement, but he didn't interrupt either. "That's a blessing and a curse, Lieu. It doesn't prevent him from paying attention, but it's easy to assume as much on his behalf. You and me? We look around and see what we see of what's left. Rick does too, obviously, but he also pictures what it might have been like when this place was operational and full of people. Hell, maybe he even imagines what the area was like before settlement. Or before glaciers carved the landscape into what it is," she added somewhat ruefully. "Rick can't help picturing how all of this could go terribly awry on us too, you know? He can almost see it happening. Imagination doesn't come with an on-off switch with him."
"Hmm. I guess that makes sense given his side gig."
Side gig, the woman parroted mentally and sighed inwardly. She didn't know whether to be sad or amused that Castle's status as a novelist had become a secondary detail in the minds of her fellow police officers. The passion and focus with which her shadow has thrown himself into her world, especially over the past year—and doubly so since her shooting—has eclipsed most of any associated glitz and glamour.
Was that a good thing, or bad? They have helped people as a partnership. They've brought justice to both victims and perpetrators. But at what cost? Your books provide hope and a refreshing sense of curiosity for exploring the human mind and heart. A message that's conveyed to millions. Most certainly to me. God, what if encouraging his work with the twelfth meant she was preventing some other young woman in need from being likewise comforted and inspired?
"Okay, well, thanks for the clarification," John added at length. Her brief silence seemed to have concerned him. Kate offered a small smile and nod to set him at ease before he stepped apart but was hardly aware of the receding footsteps as he rejoined his agents.
What would Castle say about the matter?
He'd sniff with disdain and boldly state: You're not the boss of me, work-wife, so kindly stop assuming responsibility for my choices.
The detective's upper half rocked with a huff of amusement. That thought had not dispelled her worries, but it was a welcome reminder that Rick was not, in fact, the youth Lanie put it 'writer-boy'. She trusted in the man's ability to balance the forces within himself, including the aspect which demanded freedom through an outpouring of words. Mentally, the subject was added to the long list of things that there never seemed to be enough time to discuss with one another.
Beckett turned to face the dwelling nearby but frowned again. It struck her after the fact how strange it was to have worried about something beyond her control. There was some culpability involved in encouraging her partner, yes, but nowhere near so much as to demand guilt. Castle would never levy an accusation like that against her.
It was those goddamned eyes. It felt like they were still on her even now. Probing. Boring like diamond-tipped drill bits. Slicing like scalpels through her layers of self-defense and self-deception in the seeking of...she couldn't even fathom what. She rubbed at her arms while studying her surrounds warily.
This is your PTSD acting up, Katie. That's all. Snap the fuck out of it.
The detective forced herself into motion towards the three-winged house, refusing to acknowledge as she went that no symptoms of the psychological disorder had manifested physically. Her heart-rate and breathing were normal as she ascended the steps.
They remained normal when she sank a booted foot straight through the hole Lanie made. "Ack! Damn it."
The medical examiner leaned out of the doorway, wide-eyed, and beamed. "Twinsies!"
"Fuck off," the detective singsonged with a sedate elongation of the syllables. The other woman chortled. A ripple of amusement emitted from some of the ESU agents outside too. She ignored them and strode up into a long, rectangular foyer. Dark hardwood stairs slanted up towards the north wing of the house at her immediate left, stained by copious amounts of water damage and pale ovals of clinging mold. An archway at the right led up into what must have been a den or sitting room once but now lacked any identifiers either way. The hallway also continued forward into environs unknown. The faint odor of rot clung to the place like a miasma that had been bottled but improperly stoppered. It seemed to lurk behind the walls. "Where's Castle?"
Lanie glanced up from a tattered-looking book in her hands, bluish and hardcover. She shrugged. "Upstairs maybe? He was a few minutes ago."
"Whadda you got there?"
"I think it's a diary from one of the nurses that used to live here."
"You know how to tell whether you have a true nose for gossip? When you find yourself sniffing for it almost six decades into the past." Lanie answered with a furrow of her brow and tilt of her chin. She inhaled audibly through her nose a couple times and hmm'ed aloud. Kate hummed with mirth and, after a quick scan of their likely sturdiness, took the staircase up to the second floor. The wall-paper was faded but mostly still in place, a dated floral print that was actually rather quaint. Patches of its off-white, purple bloom surface shown paler than others, and the causality was readily evident in picture frames that lay shattered where they had fallen upon the steps. There was no trace of whatever photos or artwork might have been housed within them.
A trace of sorrow threatened to invade at the sight of such deterioration in what was once a probably lovingly tended to place. Swiftly upon its heels lurked the recollection of that unnerving stare, pale like smoke arising over charred ruins, obscenely famished for whatever she might be willing to unveil for them next.
Her voice was a bit strained around the name when she called it aloud, "Castle?"
Radiance was fairly abundant in its spill through the windows in the north wall. The author appeared, leaning head and shoulders out of a doorway halfway down the hall. "Hey. Time to move?"
"Soon," she answered, smiling as his presence helped banish that inner discomfort. "I was just making sure you hadn't fallen through the floor. Or some kinda sudden tear in the fabric of space-time that would've brought you back to this place in its heyday."
He flashed the breadth of a grin to hear her assume his usual role of depositing a crazy theory. "Mhm. I'd probably be surrounded by cute nurses right now if that were the case. They'd be gasping in startlement. Maybe giggling prettily. Or coquettishly," he gasped with a waggle of his eyebrows and darted back out of sight into the room. Goodness. The man was surrounded by ruination, but he shone to her like a beacon of the warm golden sunlight denied to them in favor of the day's hazier offerings.
"Keep that commentary up and you might need their clinical expertise." She paused in the doorway and blinked at the sight of a fully furnished bedroom. Most of the places they'd seen had been utterly stripped of possession. A vanity, cream-toned bergère, bed, and dresser stood as if held in a vigil for their previous owner. An old gramophone stood on its last legs with its tarnished brass horn corroded so thoroughly there were a few chunks missing. Grime coated the vanity mirror, rendering it into a flat and gaping opaque eye staring back at the room without iris or pupil.
"There are still clothes in the closet," the author stated, though he was standing at one of the room's two windows presently. "What happened that the occupant didn't have time to pack? Why didn't anyone else tend to her belongings in the aftermath when they were closing this place down for good?"
Beckett knew they were rhetorical questions. He was sharing them aloud because he thought she might be curious too. You do that sometimes. "Is this where Lanie found that diary?"
"It was in the dresser. I tisked at her for taking it." He rubbed his right bicep after saying so, indicating an amusing impact that must have resulted from having taken the trouble to do so.
"Three minutes, folks." It wasn't shouted, but Kirkland was clearly audible outside over the sound of rain spattering against the roof.
The novelist turned from the window and they headed downstairs together with her in the lead. A firmer gust of wind swept across the exterior as they went, moaning where it hung-up in the eaves. The abundance of broken windows allowed its invasion to stir and tumble loose debris in the hallway.
"Do you think this place will survive Harbinger?"
"It's weathered plenty so far," Castle answered neutrally.
She nodded while considering the evidence they had seen first-hand up to that point. Her lips conformed to a plump, pensive line. "Maybe it would be better if the rest of it fell over this time. Then this place could finally rest."
Beckett paused in the porch doorway at the feel of his palm resting on the ball of her left shoulder. She turned, frowning somewhat at his seconds-long, silent stare.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
She hesitated a second too long. "Sure." Her companion arched a dubious eyebrow, nothing more. "I am," the other stressed mildly, covering his gloved fingers with her own. "I'm feeling a bit sore is all, you know? It's making me a little tired and cranky, that's all."
Castle nodded silently at first. He hesitated a moment before continuing, "I don't question whether you can handle this. I'm sure you know better than that. But there are legitimate, documented impacts that arise from wandering around places like this, Beckett. A sweeping sense of abandonment in places of prior habitation is unsettling on an intrinsic level for almost all of us. That effect can be compounded for people who place larger amounts of faith in the systems of governance which hold civilization together—like some cops, for one example. Seeing places like this where it's been rendered effectively meaningless isn't something everyone simply shrugs off."
Hazel eyes were swept by a few quick swoops of sable lashes. "Y'know, I hadn't really considered the island in those terms." She pursed her lips into a firmer line while facing out the doorway ahead again. Down at the group gathering their things and shouldering the heavy packs. "It's true though. In a way, I look around this place and perceive an unsettling, underlying failure on all of our parts as representatives of society." The woman turned back to him with a small quirk of a smile. "That's some pretty good shrinkage. And here I am paying for the service from Dr. Burke like a sucker."
It was his turn to blink rapidly. "You're in therapy?"
"Oh. Yeah." A soft sigh worked its way out. "This, uh, isn't really the time or place to get into that. Add it to the list, huh?"
He sighed too, not needing to ask what she meant regarding all that had gone sadly unsaid between them. Still, the writer smiled somewhat. "Next summer maybe. All summer at this rate." Kate huffed briefly in something akin to an amused agreement and led the way down the broken porch stairs.
She jolted to a halt at the sound of footsteps following after the two of them and turned. Castle did the same. Ethan Dickson stared back at them. There wasn't time to conjure some sliver of hope that he hadn't overheard the mention of her being in therapy. His small dark eyes found hers while a smile crept gradually outward. It called to mind a dagger being slowly and irrevocably pulled from its sheath.
Shit...
A/N: Yeesh. It's unreal how fast the gap between these updates accumulates. And this wasn't even so bad of one. Dang life and its necessities. You folk remain a most welcome distraction from that with your reviews and messages. Oh! I also wanna make a special thank you to our own Lord of Kavaka for including this story on the twitter feed for CastleFicPromoter. That's so cool. I remain entirely bemused how I only just recently discovered that resource, but I'm glad I did.