The sunlight blinds him.
Somewhere there are sunglasses, maybe in a bag in the back. He won't stop to find them.
He scans the road obsessively, compulsively, squinting as though the sheer strength of his hope can force the slim outline of a motorcycle into existence on the road ahead.
He pushes the car past eighty, edges toward ninety. The vibrations shake his bones, rattle his teeth, knock through his body. The car skitters in the lane, shimmying from side to side as the old, battered frame protests, tries to pull apart.
The fields to the side of him are a blessing. The grass is shorter, too short to hide in. The light is clear. The road is open.
If she's pulled off somewhere, he'll find her. Unless they've found her first.
The warmth and light of day dwindles into a heavy twilight.
If he keeps driving, he could bypass her: she could pull off to the side of the road and he could fly right by without ever knowing. If he stops and waits for light, he might never catch her.
He hasn't felt this choked with terror since she was shot. He's not sure when, exactly, he got to the point where he felt like he could face anything with her, but her sudden absence highlights it, presses the cold knowledge of his need for her deep into his bones.
The eastern sky is inky and the light is slowly edging out of the west when he hits the edge of the fields. To his right, trees tower into the sky.
His hands move before his brain catches up with them, jerking the wheel of the car, swerving to the side of the road as he slams on the brake. He throws himself out of the driver's seat, his heart suddenly pounding, his feet tripping over grass, then leaves.
She's always stopped at forests. They're where she ditched their first and second and third cars. Where she changed by the side of the road on that first day. Where her muscles loosen, where she draws deeper breaths, where her eyes get an extra spark of life back in them.
If she rode all day, if she rode until her vision was tunneling grey and the road was undulating, if she had just enough self-preservation left not to stop at a field by the side of the road but not enough to check into a motel, if she was driving straight for Manhattan… she would have stopped here.
It's too many ifs to stake both their lives on, but that's what he has. That's all he has. He walks forward, catches his toe on a root and barely manages to catch himself. The sudden motion rattles his head and his arm; he expels a loud breath but bites his tongue to keep from making a sound.
If she's here, and she hears him before he sees her – he swallows, shakes his head, tries to clear the sudden mist from his mind. Best to just be as quiet as possible. Best not to use a flashlight.
He walks slowly through the trees in the gathering darkness and then in the waxing moonlight, taking care to stay near the road. If she has her bike with her, she wouldn't have strayed far from the asphalt.
If, if, if, over and over. He stumbles again, catches himself, his head spinning, his muscles exhausted, aching. He should stop. Go back to the car. Sleep in the passenger seat. Keep driving in the morning.
He can't stop.
He's nearly staggering when it catches the corner of his vision.
It's so hard to see in the forest in the pale moonlight. The shadows of trees trick him - he's constantly whirling in circles, mouth dry, body aching from exhaustion and the painful pulse of adrenaline.
An odd shadow against a tree. The severe jut of what could be a handlebar, the sharply curved line of what might be a wheel. He tries to slow the sudden thump of his heart, tries to push the frenetic hope back down his throat.
He moves slowly forward. Painstakingly places each foot down on the long-fallen bed of leaves, curses every sigh and whisper of the forest beneath his shoes. Even when he goes from wishing to hoping to knowing, knowing that it's the outline of a motorcycle and that huddled at the front wheel is a different, softer shape, he makes himself walk, slow and measured. He doesn't want to startle her. It's not, it's not that he never wants to find out if something unimaginable happened and she's lying dead next to her bike in the middle of a Midwest forest.
And then he's standing right in front of her, over her, her body crumpled into a tight knot and so painfully still. The air is thick and suffocating, but he wills his breaths quiet and steady and even as he crouches to a squat, reaches out, finds the tense angle of her shoulder with his hand and squeezes firmly.
She shudders underneath his fingers.
Suddenly, his lungs can drag enough oxygen from the air.
He can't see her eyes, but the outline of her head tilts up toward him, slowly, unflinchingly. He'd thought (he'd hoped, he'd dreamed, he'd fervently prayed) that when he touched her she'd come up fighting, swinging at him, ready to combat whatever force approached her in the middle of the night. This, this poised, tense calm of her body under his hand, is something he hadn't even begun to anticipate.
"Hey, Castle," she murmurs, her voice hoarse with exhaustion and sorrow and an undercurrent of acceptance that rips at his heart.
She's still curled on the forest floor. He realizes it must be hard for her to move with his hand clenched around her shoulder, pressing her down, gripping her too tightly. He can't make himself loosen his fingers.
"You okay?" she asks.
He laughs, a harsh, strangled sound. "What do you think, Beckett?"
Her body lurches in a stuttering sigh beneath his palm. "Your arm?"
A breeze picks up, shifts a branch near them. He startles at it, pushes her harder against the ground. She yields too easily, she lets him press against her, and that more than anything keeps the panic coiled deep within his chest. "I think most parts of me have been better," he gets out, unable to do anything about the pained rasp of his words.
"Yeah," she murmurs, just lying there, and God he wants to shake her, wants to scream, because here she is crumpled on the forest floor with him crouched over her and she should be something, repentant or furious or anything other than dully acquiescent.
"Come on," he says abruptly, tugging up at her shoulder.
He doesn't want to let go of her, but it's too awkward for her to stand while he's still holding on. In the end all he can do is let his hand fall away from her shoulder. His knees crack as he straightens, his arm pulses, his head spins, but he keeps his legs under him, keeps his body tilted over her, as though he had any chance of stopping her if she actually wanted to run.
She pushes up stiffly, slowly. He hates how carefully she's moving. He wants to see more of her than just her silhouette, as if seeing her will actually help him understand her, as if he'll be able to forgive her if only he can look into her eyes.
When she moves toward the motorcycle instead of toward him, he can't quite stop his broken noise of protest, can't quite keep himself from grabbing the sleeve of her sweatshirt and tugging at her firmly. "Leave it," he growls. He can't believe that he needs to say it.
"Right," she murmurs.
He's not sure how far they are from the road, how well-hidden the bike is, but he can't stand the thought of moving it, can't stand even looking at it. He can hardly even stomach glancing at Beckett's slouched outline. He's fairly certain he's never been so angry.
He leaves his arm clenched around her sleeve as he tugs them forward in silence. He has only a vague sense of where the road is, and for a heart-wrenching moment he thinks they might be lost, but then he sees the trees thinning and the glint of moonlight off what could be asphalt. They stumble out onto the shoulder of the road. He can't see the outline of the car, but he's just oriented enough to turn left and keep walking. She follows silently, still doesn't even bother to jerk her arm away from him.
They're so exposed.
"You still have the guns?" he asks.
"Yeah," she murmurs, reaching into the waistband of her jeans, pulling out one of the Glocks and awkwardly reaching across their bodies to hand it to him.
He wraps his fingers around the cold metal as he shoves it into his own jeans, resolutely keeping his eyes fixed anywhere but her.
They walk, walk until he's worried that there is no car anymore, that someone has come and taken it and is waiting to shoot them from a tree and there will be no escape this time, there will be nothing but a fast and brutal end. His mind drifts, and he finds himself hoping idly, stupidly, selfishly, that if they have to die the first bullet hits him. He doesn't have it in him to watch her leave him again. Doesn't have it in him, tonight, to watch her fade away, not even knowing that he would be a heartbeat behind.
"That it?" she finally whispers, pulling him out of his haze, and yes, there, the low shadow of their sedan, seemingly untouched.
The relief feels more hollow than he thought it would.
He leads her to the passenger door, pulls it open, presses her down into the seat. She yields to him, pliant in a way she never is, in a way that rattles against every part of him.
He closes the door, walks to the driver's side, gets in, violently flips the locks down and the light on.
Her eyes are bloodshot. Her eyes are bloodshot and her face is starkly, terrifyingly pale, deep, bruised shadows beneath her eyes, streaks of old tears still too obvious on her face.
She shrugs self-deprecatingly. "If I'd known you were coming I would have brushed my hair," she says, trying for a wry smile, and no, no, she does not get to joke about this.
"When did you last sleep?" he growls.
Her fingers pluck at a hole in her jeans. "About forty-five minutes ago."
"When did you last sleep somewhere that wasn't the woods?"
"Before you were shot." The way her voice cracks over the word shot – he simultaneously wants to comfort her and yell at her, because it was just a graze, a graze, and how can she not handle that when he watched her slowly die in the grass on a sunny spring morning.
He swallows the words. "When did you last eat?"
She shrugs. He just keeps staring. "Not sure," she finally offers.
"Was it when we last ate together?"
She dips her head once in confirmation, then, maybe feeling his eyes boring into her, speaks. "Eating wasn't really my first priority."
"Why did you buy a motorcycle?"
Her throat works as she swallows, closes her eyes, leans her head back against the passenger seat. "It was what I could afford," she says, her voice a low monotone.
"You could have taken more money," he grits out.
"I didn't want your money."
"What was suddenly wrong with my money?" He can't stop pushing, can't stop growling questions at her, can't stop the anger from thrumming through his blood.
She opens her eyes, turns her head to look at him, and finally, there's a spark of something in her eyes, something that's more than the hopeless, anesthetized look she's had since he's flicked on the light. "Castle, I was leaving you after you'd been shot."
He'd been so expecting righteous indignation that he's not sure what to do with the open self-loathing in her voice. He ignores it. "You were going back to New York," he prompts.
Her head bobs in a short nod. "I was."
"To die," he growls, and damn it, his voice still cracks over the words.
"Not…" she starts, trails off, rotates her shoulders and looks back away from him. "To keep you living."
"Look," he starts, but she cuts him off.
"You want me to drive?" she asks, words dripping with finality. He's not dumb enough to think that his impromptu interrogation is anything but over right now.
"No," he bites out. He doesn't say I don't trust you, but from her long, slow blink, he thinks she might hear the echo of it.
x
Sooooo, we are going to be hopping over to the other side of the M line next chapter. I'm... sorry?
Extra special attack love snuggles to everyone who's reviewed/poked/prodded/tweeted/consoled me on gchat about this story; it fills me with all kinds of happy tingly butterflies of love and then the only thing I can do to get them to stop flapping uncomfortably about my intestines is just write more.