A/N: Since I completely forgot to do so in the first chapter, I must state that all recognizable characters and situations herein are not mine. This story is meant solely for entertainment purposes. No infringement is intended.
Just a short piece in anticipation of a much (and when I say "much," I mean long. Like, Tolstoy long. /Alias pilot quotes) one coming your way in the next few days. Set post "Under the Gun," so spoilers apply.
This is for Meggie. I love you, doll.
Though she's seated in her car, Beckett feels as though she's straddling the unsteady apex of a teeter-totter, endlessly going up and down; endlessly unsteady.
Since she slapped the cuffs on Royce, it feels as though she is the one being held prisoner. She's in a cell of second guessing. Doubt is her jailer, walking back and forth tapping the bars with a chastising finger, whistling a lamenting song that instead sounds like wind – and sends shivers down her spine.
She wonders how she could have missed it; how, after all the hell she has experienced, she could still so blindly hope.
She grants herself probation and (mostly) on instinct, heads to Castle's apartment. Looking up things so far out of reach, she wonders what the fallout will be with the only other man (excluding her father) that she'd truly and fully trusted – and loved.
But if she was wrong about Royce – if she listened to his stories thinking them true but then finding out that he was an unreliable narrator – logic tells her she's wrong about Castle.
His words are written in pens whose inks are stained with inevitability. The pen cap had remained on at her request, and he had acquiesced, since they had no deadlines looming.
But then she realizes that he'd been secretly writing their story all along, and now she's not sure who the unreliable narrator in their story is. Him for implicating a happily-ever-after with her was possible when he clearly wasn't done with Gina? Or is it her, foolishly believing his words instead of seeing the actual narrative: that everyone, even fairy tales, can lie?
It doesn't matter anyway, she thinks as she turns the ignition over. He's finished our story and closed the book. Put it high on a shelf to collect a thick dust of wasted time and what-ifs, probably never to be read again.
Though it wants to yell above its frenetic pace that she has her own story and that she can edit it any time she likes, the city keeps its distance as she drives the prison bus back to her now-familiar cell.
FIN