Looks like someone missed the previous chapter, hope nobody gets left behind!
Eteri: it was a bit more info but too soon to unveil the whole truth. As for Cal and Gillian, I think the only two oblivious to their connection are the two of them! I always liked Reynolds, I think him and Cal had some nice bro moments in the show.
As for the new chapter...
Mind over body, they say. It couldn't have been more false for Cal that night.
He did manage to fall asleep, against his own predictions, and somehow the stress and the fatigue of the day worked as a barrier to keep away nightmares and disturbing dreams. In those last moments of lucidity, feeling sleep coming over him as he laid there on Gillian's couch, Cal had been reliving the events of the day in his mind like a nefastus news reel from another world, unable to kick those thoughts out of his head. It was impossible not to and he had been ready to see an even worse version of it all in his dreams, but it turned out that his brain was simply too tired to care.
Deep asleep, Cal wasn't going to realise how much he had needed to rest until he'd woke up.
Deep asleep, Cal didn't hear the ringer of his phone until the tenth time or so.
The sound seemed to come from far away, another location in space and time, soothing him in his sleep at first and then just trying to drag him out of it. Eventually, slowly coming back to a semi-awake state, Cal realised that the noise was not in his head but coming from his pocket instead, and that he'd better get to it before it drove him insane.
Still with his eyes closed, Cal growled something and straddled his face with both hands before sending the right one to fish the phone out of his pants pocket.
"Hello?"
Still more asleep than awake, Cal hadn't put any thought at all into who the caller might be. He just about remembered where he was, but was completely oblivious to what time it was so for all he knew it could have been Emily checking on him. Except, of course, it wasn't: it all became clear rather quickly when it took the caller a little too long to respond.
"Cal, is - are you ok?"
His eyes immediately shot open and he nearly lost the grip around the phone, then in a very quick move he sat up and checked his watch, seeing it was just a few minutes short than four o'clock in the morning.
"Am I ok? For the love of God, Gillian!"
"It's just- Your voice, it sounds strange."
Cal looked dumbfounded, staring at the room as if she was there asking that stupid question instead of God knows where. Then again, how good was it to hear her voice?
"I'm ok, I just-" He bit at his lip, feeling ashamed for what he was about to say. "I was asleep."
"Ok."
"For heaven's sake Gill, it's not ok. None of this is ok!"
"I know, I'm sorry."
"Where are you? Are you ok?"
"I'm ok, don't worry."
He wasn't surprised that she had ignored the first question, but sounded way too eager to convince him of the fact that she was ok. Cal was willing to consider that Gillian was bypassing the first question to spare him another "I can't tell you", and somehow appreciated the gesture, but he was not ok with her lying about the second part.
"Your voice." He pointed out with a hissing voice, far from trying to prove a point by using her own words against her but only interested in finding out the truth. "You sound off."
"Are you mocking me?"
Her desperate attempt to liven things up failed spectacularly, doing nothing but increasing Cal's frustration and suspicion. Her voice was definitely off and she was clearly deflecting about it. If she had been simply tired or just woken up like him, or anything else reasonable and innocent, she would have told him. Instead, she had chosen a diversion, a very unconvincing one at that since trying to make fun of the situation was quite possibly the one thing Cal could not stomach. Then he focused on her breathing, a bit shallow despite the fact that she was trying really hard to keep it under control, and he realised the fact that her voice sounded so weak to him was not just in his head.
"You're hurt." He stated then, leaving no room for debate in his worried tone. "Gill, what happened?"
"It's nothing, Cal."
"Was it at the post office?" He stood up as he pressed on, unwilling to let go of the matter after her implied confirmation. "Did they get to you? Did you get shot?"
"No, nothing of the sort. I'm fine Cal, really." The painful undertone of her voice betrayed her words, sending Cal in a confusing emotional swing going back and forth from anger and concern. "Are you keeping safe?"
"Right question wrong person, love." He mumbled, slumping down on the couch once more. "Torres is home, she's ok. I'm at the office with Reynolds, we have been looking-"
"I asked you not to Cal, please." There it was again, a heartfelt plea for him not to do what came more natural to him.
"I am not, it's just online research. Listen love, you can't really expect me to sit here and just wait for bad news."
It didn't go lost on Cal that she didn' try to counter that last point, to persuade him that it didn't necessarily have to be bad news. He closed his eyes and sighed, facing mental images of Gillian hiding away in some public toilet in her night intruder attire, maybe tending to some wounds and fighting the desire to simply give up. He didn't like those images, he didn't want them in his head but now that he was wide awake his protection to them was gone.
"I just need to know you'll be careful Cal. This is too dangerous."
No shit Sherlock! He cursed in his mind, unable to get past how ridiculous all of that was. Mysterious parcels, CIA, murderers trying to cover their tracks, shootings…and she was in the middle of it all, out there alone refusing his help.
"I know it is love, getting the hang of it alright." Cal hinted, equally tired and defeated. Then he caught on to something, in the depth of her prolonged silence to his words and clenched his sweaty hand on the phone again to fight back a wave of anger. "You're not asking me what we found."
Once again, it was a statement rather than a question. Once again, it took Gillian way too long to respond.
"You didn't say you found something."
There it was, another lame deflection thrown at him. Sure, she was relying on the words he had used and that was her shtick, but whether it was the physical pain in her voice or the long pause she had taken Cal found it insulting that she had even tried. There was more than one explanation for that of course, and he didn't like any of them. Maybe she knew, or imagined, what they had found and didn't need to hear it; maybe she didn't want to hear it because there was no point; maybe she thought someone might be listening, that the office was not as safe as they thought and that the little information they had found might have been compromised.
"Let me help you Gill, please." It was his turn to plea, he was ready and willing to grovel if he had to. "I'll stay here, I promise. But in the meantime we can gather information and get them to you. We can find a way to get you help-"
"There is something I need, something you can do for me."
"Yes Gill! Anything."
Cal felt energised, he sprung on his feet as he spoke feeling a rush of adrenaline going through him. But it also was deeply depressing, the whole thing was but even more the fact that he was so happy she was finally asking him to come into play, one way or the other.
"Your safe," she said then, her voice low and slow, lingering on every word.
"I should really change the code, right?"
"Yeah, you should." He could hear the little huff of breath on the other side, could easily picture her rolling her eyes and perhaps smiling for a second. But then her voice changed, going back to the previous tone. "I left something in there, for you. On the bottom shelf, behind all your stuff there's a brown envelope taped to the back."
"Got it. What is it?" He was on a high, his drug of choice being able to help. "Do you want me to give it to Reynolds?"
"It's for you, Cal. Papers about the company, about me-"
"Giilian, don't-"
She didn't have to rush and prevent him from going any further.
The moment her words got to him, their true meaning sneaking in, Cal felt his throat seize and the oxygen provision stopped. He felt his breath stop, air stumbling on invisible obstacles on the way in and out, and before he knew it Cal felt a build up of tears forming behind his eyes and deep within him. No, no she wasn't-
"Cal?"
"I'm here." He managed to say after a while, chewing words he didn't fully hear himself saying. "Gillian, you can't ask me-"
"You said you want to help." This time she did silence him, but her voice was sweet and soothing and if Cal had been in the right mindset he'd probably detected the trace of tears in her as much as in himself. "I need you to look after that. For me."
"Ask me something else Gill, anything else." He sniffed and closed his eyes shut, trying to fight back the tears. "I can't- You said you were going to take care of this."
"I am, I will. I'm just…I need to be ready."
That was what she said, which was bad enough. What Cal truly heard was "I need you to be ready".
But how could he? The magnitude of the implication of what she was asking was inversely proportional to the size of the small gesture she was tasking him with, and even though his brain had a good understanding of what she meant his soul was stubbornly refusing to accept the evidence.
"Promise me, Cal." She came after him again, breathing him down when he was at his most vulnerable. "Can you?"
"Gillian, please. This can't be it, you-" He swallowed but it was too late, tears were at the door and they were about to tear it down. "You'll be ok. You'll be back and you'll tell me all about it at dinner and I'll never let you live it down because this sounds way worse than any shit I ever got myself into."
"That sounds nice," she whispered, and when Cal heard her sniffle he knew he wasn't the only one crying anymore. "I have to go now, Cal."
"No, Gillian please don't go."
He begged. Cal Lightman was crying and he was begging and for the first time in years he felt the world as he knew it was about to end.
"I'm sorry Cal. I am trying, I really am." A ray of hope, feeble and desperate. "I just wish it could be enough."
Tears were now flowing free from his eyes and he could barely speak, let alone think straight. The last glimmer of hope had gone, Gillian had quashed it with carefully selected words and it didn't really console him in any way that she was being so gracious and polite about it. Cal felt himself close to hyperventilating and tried to fight back what had gone from sorrow to panic, and all he could do was trying to conjure up in his mind the scenario he had just described: the two of them, having dinner or just sharing a drink in his office, Gillian at his desk with her feet up to play into the fact that she had pulled the biggest Lightman move of all.
"Cal." He opened his eyes, the idyllic image painfully fading away. "Will you do this, for me?"
"Yes."
He should have said no, he wanted to say no, but it wouldn't have done either of them any good.
"I know you will." Wherever she was, whatever she was doing beside that phone call, Gillian took a deep breath and winced in pain before getting into the last stretch. "Cal?"
"Yes love?"
There was a long pause, one that Cal hated. He closed his eyes and held his breath, bracing himself fearing what might come next as her last words to him.
"Thank you."
It wasn't what she had wanted to say, it was clear by how she sounded surprised at the sound of those words coming out her own mouth. It wasn't what Cal had feared she would say, which was all the best to him: if it wasn't the last thing he'd hear from her, he was glad it could be the last word she'd heard from him.
So...sorry?
Chapter 9: Snakes and ladders
