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Title: Black Edelweiss
Series: Zeitgeist
Follows: One Giant Leap
Wordcount: 2,128
Summary: Two weeks after Claire Bennet's televised leap from the Ferris wheel, the 12th handles it's first case delving into the strange world of specials. Evidence points the investigation toward a former Company Agent, a man Noah Bennet would swear up and down doesn't exist.
Details: Minimal details due to inflation. Full warnings and details in main post.
PREV: Chapter Thirteen // MAIN // NEXT: Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fourteen: Broken
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.
—Measure for Measure; Act I, Scene IV
As they left interrogation, Bennet instructed Ms. Strauss to continue her watch on the doorway, to stay on guard, and to let him know immediately if Konrad tried to move, or talk to her, or did anything else unusual.
"And I mean anything," Bennet emphasized carefully as he and Kate continued down the hallway.
He told his partner nothing about the story they had just heard, and Kate found herself somewhat bothered by that. Still, she had so many other things on her mind...
Her head was still swimming from everything the interview had uncovered. Much of it had been...unsettling, to say the least, and she wasn't sure any of it was useful. It still grated on her, in an abstract sort of way, that Konrad hadn't tried to defend himself from their accusations. No matter how earnestly expressed his lack of knowledge had been. Granted, at the very least his ignorance of the past nine years seemed to support his innocence in the immediate sense. If Konrad truly remembered nothing, then he and Kevin were entirely separate. If that were true, it meant Konrad had been buried beneath Kevin's personality all along, and that Kevin couldn't remember the murder because he hadn't been a part of it. Still, part of her wanted more than that. She wanted very badly to believe that Konrad was innocent—that Kevin was innocent—not just of the crime of murder, but of the capacity to commit it.
At this point, it was lack of reassurance on that count which bothered her more than anything else.
"While that was both enlightening and disturbing," Bennet said, interrupting her thoughts, "the interrogation seems to have left us at a dead end."
Kate, unfortunately, had to agree.
"As far as the case is concerned, we're back at square one," she acknowledged. "We need to find Barbara."
Bennet looked thoughtful for a moment.
"I have a contact in Chennai who might be able to locate her," Bennet said, though he seemed hesitant. "I'll see what I can arrange."
As strange as his suggestion was, operating under present circumstances, Kate didn't even question it.
"In the mean time, I think we should keep Konrad handy," Bennet continued, stating his opinion carefully. "Just until we know more. Killer or not, I refuse to believe his proximity to this investigation is a coincidence, and until we do find Barbara he is still our best source on Zimmerman."
"Can we even keep him here?" Kate asked meaningfully.
Because Bennet had been handling Konrad like a threat of the highest order, almost from the beginning. Kate was beginning to believe that Bennet's caution—too reasoned, too calculated to properly be called paranoia—was simply part of his nature. Still, she couldn't help but be affected by his attentiveness. Before deciding whether it was a good idea hold Konrad in custody, it was important to know whether it was even possible.
"There are too many unknowns," Bennet said, unhappily. "Our understanding of Konrad's capabilities is still incomplete, and your holding cells just aren't equipped to contain some of the things I've seen."
Kate considered this, both Bennet's words and the man they concerned.
"So far Konrad seems...reasonable," Kate argued. "He knows he's in police custody, not that of the Company. He also knows we have Ryan to consider. Given his history with the NYPD, I think if we treat with him fairly—extend our good faith—then during the forty-eight hours we can legally hold him, he might be willing to cooperate."
Bennet seemed, if not quite surprised by the suggestion, as if it were not an approach that had at all occurred to him. Dubious at first, after some consideration he gave a slight nod.
"Alright, fair it is," he said, his tone almost approving.
He frowned slightly, then, his eyes moving to study her face for a moment.
"I'll leave it for you and your captain to decide," Bennet offered tentatively, "but I would suggest you process Reichardt under his own name rather than Ryan's. If this case resolves itself...favorably, you might be able to explain how your detective was being utilized as a means of communication with an unorthodox witness."
And then it was Kate's turn to be surprised. Because she recognized instantly what Bennet was doing. He was suggesting a possible out for Ryan. A remarkably clean one. If they booked Konrad under his own name, then in the horrible event they actually needed to charge him, technically it wouldn't be a lie. Not on paper. And if—hopefully when—he was cleared... Specials were capable of a lot of seemingly impossible things. No one was entirely sure what the limits of that might be. She supposed what Bennet was suggesting was that Kevin be recorded as having merely served as a conduit for their witness.
Which wouldn't exactly be a lie either.
"I'll discuss it with Montgomery," Kate said, uncertain. Shaken. Grateful. "Thank you."
Bennet gave only a short nod, continuing down the hallway, presumably to make arrangements with his contact in India.
The observation room was silent when Kate entered. Castle turned to look at her instantly from his lean against the back wall. Hiro Nakamura noticed her too, after a moment, breaking away from his astonished stare at the man in the other room. A nervous sort of guilt crept into his expression, as if he had just been caught in something. And Javier... Castle's glance had returned forward almost as soon as his eyes had met hers, and at first she thought he had been staring at Konrad as well, but it only took only a moment for her to see that hadn't been the case...
That the concern in writer's gaze was focused on Javier.
Javier could often be a difficult man to read. Recently, he seemed to have become even more so. Where once she might have classified him as being very controlled but still welcoming, Kate had noticed how, over the past few weeks, he had become alarmingly distant. Almost closed off. What Kate was seeing now went so far beyond that she wasn't even sure what to call it.
Javier stood very quietly in front of the window. His face was almost blank, his eyes locked with an unshakeable intensity to where Konrad sat chained to the table. He was so still, rigid in a way she had never seen from him before, and yet t even the slightest movement Konrad made in the other room seemed to draw from him a subtle flinch. At the same time, Javier hardly seemed to have noticed that she had entered the room, or her approach as she drew nearer. It was like he had completely shut down.
For the first time since this strange ordeal had begun he seemed truly helpless.
From the moment she had seen the photograph Kate had felt off balance. Trying to maneuver this case was like walking through sand, the ground beneath her shifting every time she thought she had her footing. Yet Javier had seemed to be handling things so well—or, at the very least, far better than any of them save Bennet—reacting with purpose while the rest of them were floundering. It was as if he had somehow managed to lock away all of his confusion and his doubts in order to focus on the single thing that was truly important all this...
And of course, that focus had been Kevin.
Javier had thrown himself into supporting his partner without hesitation, devoting every inch of his fierce energy into making sure Kevin wouldn't break. But now Kevin was no longer there for him to support, out of reach in a way that was incredibly bizarre and painfully abstract. Kevin hadn't left. He wasn't dead. He was simply gone, vanished behind the familiar face of a complete stranger, and there was nothing Javier could do about it. And Kate thought that was the crux of what had finally broken him...
He was off the case. Kevin was gone. Everything had been taken completely out of his hands, and now Javier had no choice but let it all catch up to him.
Her heart ached for him. She knew he must have been grappling with very similar doubts to her own. But he and Kevin had always been very close, and she knew that pain had to have cut him so much deeper. Javier had never been the type of man who was very comfortable letting others past his defenses. Not that he was antisocial by any stretch of the word, it simply took a long time for him to trust. To let his guard down. Kate had always felt she understood that. She could be very much the same way, and it was part of the reason they had gotten along so well.
For a while after Kevin had first joined their team, Kate had worried he and Javier might be completely incompatible. Usually, people expecting to become fast friends found their hopes dashed upon the rocks of Javier's personality. But Kevin had proven more patient than most. More patient and more determined. It was part of that sometimes contradictory nature of his. It had always impressed her how someone who could be so unobtrusive at one moment, easily losing himself in a crowd, could seem so loud the next—not in the sense of being obnoxious, so much as simply unavoidable. To say that he could light up a room would have been a dreadful cliché, but Kate couldn't deny the ease with which Kevin could change its atmosphere when he really tried. Kevin was warm and inviting in a way that was undemanding, and yet, at the same time, almost magnetic. And almost before either one of them knew it, he had found his way in...
Now, years later, Kate was watching Javier mourn the loss of his partner like the absence of a missing limb.
Kate looked back at Castle, and at his raised eyebrow gave a faint nod. The writer quickly pushed himself away from the wall, declaring very loudly that he was going off for coffee, and who would like some, and how very kind of Hiro to lend him a hand, dragging the young man away with a bewildered expression. Kate waited until the door had closed behind them before she spoke Javier's name.
He didn't notice at first, nor did he notice when she came up close beside him.
"Bennet thinks there's a way for us to get Kevin clear of this once it's all over," she said finally, "but for now we're going to keep...Reichardt available for further questioning."
And that managed to capture Javier's attention. His eyes pulled away with some apparent difficulty, wavering as they searched hers cautiously. Almost as though he were trying to determine whether it was some kind of trick. Kate knew that Javier carried some unexplained and intense distrust of Bennet, and no doubt the offer had him wary, but what she saw in his eyes struck her as a sort of desperate struggle against a hope that he was afraid to trust.
When, after a few moments, he failed to respond, Kate tried again.
"How are you holding up?" she asked, almost casually, trying not to make it seem like he had been showing his hurt as much as he had.
And maybe it was the fact that he didn't even try to front it off that worried her most of all.
"I— I don't know." Casting another glance at Konrad over his shoulder, Javier dragged a hand over his mouth. "Just— Jesus, Kate. I don't know."
Javier's voice sounded so small and thin that Kate almost wouldn't have recognized it. Shaking his head, his eyes roamed over the room on the other side of the glass, seeming almost reluctant to settle back on the man who occupied it now that his daze had been broken.
"I promised him, Kate," Javier said, his voice a weary, broken thing. "I promised Kevin I wouldn't take my eyes off him, but..."
He shook his head again.
"I don't think I could stand to be in the same room as...as that man," he said, taking a shaking breath. "I don't think I could do that without losing my mind."
In his face, in his eyes, in the weary list of his body, Kate could see the way the shame was weighing on him. She could see the horror living there and knew that, to Javier, his giving in to it was nothing short of betrayal. And she knew he must have felt very weak because of it, but Kate thought that admitting it might have been one of the bravest things she had ever seen.
"We should be moving him to lockup soon," she said. She briefly considered placing a hand on his shoulder, but with what he was feeling, she thought the attempt at comfort might only make it worse. "You're no longer on the case, but I could ask Montgomery to let you take over the desk down there. That way you could keep an eye on him from the monitors."
He blinked once in faint surprise, nodding in a way that seemed almost numb.
"Yeah," he said, finally, almost a whisper. "Yeah, okay."
PREV: Chapter Thirteen // MAIN // NEXT: Chapter Fifteen
Author's Note: A lot of the insights in this chapter almost made it into this author's note as justification for Javier acting so out of character. Then I realized "Hey, what is Beckett even for if not this kind of observation?" And just that change made me feel a whole lot better about the chapter in general.
He still feels somewhat out of character to me, though there is one thing Kate can't know that I feel it is important to note:
Everyone is reeling from what they've learned about Kevin, and Javier is more invested in that than most, but for everyone else, it began with the photograph. Javier, on the other hand, has been a bundle of nerves ever since the case began, first stressing over Zimmerman, then Reichardt, then Bennet, all before there was even a whisper of the connection between Konrad and his partner. For him, this crash has been a long time coming.
Series: Zeitgeist
Follows: One Giant Leap
Wordcount: 2,128
Summary: Two weeks after Claire Bennet's televised leap from the Ferris wheel, the 12th handles it's first case delving into the strange world of specials. Evidence points the investigation toward a former Company Agent, a man Noah Bennet would swear up and down doesn't exist.
Details: Minimal details due to inflation. Full warnings and details in main post.
PREV: Chapter Thirteen // MAIN // NEXT: Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fourteen: Broken
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.
—Measure for Measure; Act I, Scene IV
As they left interrogation, Bennet instructed Ms. Strauss to continue her watch on the doorway, to stay on guard, and to let him know immediately if Konrad tried to move, or talk to her, or did anything else unusual.
"And I mean anything," Bennet emphasized carefully as he and Kate continued down the hallway.
He told his partner nothing about the story they had just heard, and Kate found herself somewhat bothered by that. Still, she had so many other things on her mind...
Her head was still swimming from everything the interview had uncovered. Much of it had been...unsettling, to say the least, and she wasn't sure any of it was useful. It still grated on her, in an abstract sort of way, that Konrad hadn't tried to defend himself from their accusations. No matter how earnestly expressed his lack of knowledge had been. Granted, at the very least his ignorance of the past nine years seemed to support his innocence in the immediate sense. If Konrad truly remembered nothing, then he and Kevin were entirely separate. If that were true, it meant Konrad had been buried beneath Kevin's personality all along, and that Kevin couldn't remember the murder because he hadn't been a part of it. Still, part of her wanted more than that. She wanted very badly to believe that Konrad was innocent—that Kevin was innocent—not just of the crime of murder, but of the capacity to commit it.
At this point, it was lack of reassurance on that count which bothered her more than anything else.
"While that was both enlightening and disturbing," Bennet said, interrupting her thoughts, "the interrogation seems to have left us at a dead end."
Kate, unfortunately, had to agree.
"As far as the case is concerned, we're back at square one," she acknowledged. "We need to find Barbara."
Bennet looked thoughtful for a moment.
"I have a contact in Chennai who might be able to locate her," Bennet said, though he seemed hesitant. "I'll see what I can arrange."
As strange as his suggestion was, operating under present circumstances, Kate didn't even question it.
"In the mean time, I think we should keep Konrad handy," Bennet continued, stating his opinion carefully. "Just until we know more. Killer or not, I refuse to believe his proximity to this investigation is a coincidence, and until we do find Barbara he is still our best source on Zimmerman."
"Can we even keep him here?" Kate asked meaningfully.
Because Bennet had been handling Konrad like a threat of the highest order, almost from the beginning. Kate was beginning to believe that Bennet's caution—too reasoned, too calculated to properly be called paranoia—was simply part of his nature. Still, she couldn't help but be affected by his attentiveness. Before deciding whether it was a good idea hold Konrad in custody, it was important to know whether it was even possible.
"There are too many unknowns," Bennet said, unhappily. "Our understanding of Konrad's capabilities is still incomplete, and your holding cells just aren't equipped to contain some of the things I've seen."
Kate considered this, both Bennet's words and the man they concerned.
"So far Konrad seems...reasonable," Kate argued. "He knows he's in police custody, not that of the Company. He also knows we have Ryan to consider. Given his history with the NYPD, I think if we treat with him fairly—extend our good faith—then during the forty-eight hours we can legally hold him, he might be willing to cooperate."
Bennet seemed, if not quite surprised by the suggestion, as if it were not an approach that had at all occurred to him. Dubious at first, after some consideration he gave a slight nod.
"Alright, fair it is," he said, his tone almost approving.
He frowned slightly, then, his eyes moving to study her face for a moment.
"I'll leave it for you and your captain to decide," Bennet offered tentatively, "but I would suggest you process Reichardt under his own name rather than Ryan's. If this case resolves itself...favorably, you might be able to explain how your detective was being utilized as a means of communication with an unorthodox witness."
And then it was Kate's turn to be surprised. Because she recognized instantly what Bennet was doing. He was suggesting a possible out for Ryan. A remarkably clean one. If they booked Konrad under his own name, then in the horrible event they actually needed to charge him, technically it wouldn't be a lie. Not on paper. And if—hopefully when—he was cleared... Specials were capable of a lot of seemingly impossible things. No one was entirely sure what the limits of that might be. She supposed what Bennet was suggesting was that Kevin be recorded as having merely served as a conduit for their witness.
Which wouldn't exactly be a lie either.
"I'll discuss it with Montgomery," Kate said, uncertain. Shaken. Grateful. "Thank you."
Bennet gave only a short nod, continuing down the hallway, presumably to make arrangements with his contact in India.
The observation room was silent when Kate entered. Castle turned to look at her instantly from his lean against the back wall. Hiro Nakamura noticed her too, after a moment, breaking away from his astonished stare at the man in the other room. A nervous sort of guilt crept into his expression, as if he had just been caught in something. And Javier... Castle's glance had returned forward almost as soon as his eyes had met hers, and at first she thought he had been staring at Konrad as well, but it only took only a moment for her to see that hadn't been the case...
That the concern in writer's gaze was focused on Javier.
Javier could often be a difficult man to read. Recently, he seemed to have become even more so. Where once she might have classified him as being very controlled but still welcoming, Kate had noticed how, over the past few weeks, he had become alarmingly distant. Almost closed off. What Kate was seeing now went so far beyond that she wasn't even sure what to call it.
Javier stood very quietly in front of the window. His face was almost blank, his eyes locked with an unshakeable intensity to where Konrad sat chained to the table. He was so still, rigid in a way she had never seen from him before, and yet t even the slightest movement Konrad made in the other room seemed to draw from him a subtle flinch. At the same time, Javier hardly seemed to have noticed that she had entered the room, or her approach as she drew nearer. It was like he had completely shut down.
For the first time since this strange ordeal had begun he seemed truly helpless.
From the moment she had seen the photograph Kate had felt off balance. Trying to maneuver this case was like walking through sand, the ground beneath her shifting every time she thought she had her footing. Yet Javier had seemed to be handling things so well—or, at the very least, far better than any of them save Bennet—reacting with purpose while the rest of them were floundering. It was as if he had somehow managed to lock away all of his confusion and his doubts in order to focus on the single thing that was truly important all this...
And of course, that focus had been Kevin.
Javier had thrown himself into supporting his partner without hesitation, devoting every inch of his fierce energy into making sure Kevin wouldn't break. But now Kevin was no longer there for him to support, out of reach in a way that was incredibly bizarre and painfully abstract. Kevin hadn't left. He wasn't dead. He was simply gone, vanished behind the familiar face of a complete stranger, and there was nothing Javier could do about it. And Kate thought that was the crux of what had finally broken him...
He was off the case. Kevin was gone. Everything had been taken completely out of his hands, and now Javier had no choice but let it all catch up to him.
Her heart ached for him. She knew he must have been grappling with very similar doubts to her own. But he and Kevin had always been very close, and she knew that pain had to have cut him so much deeper. Javier had never been the type of man who was very comfortable letting others past his defenses. Not that he was antisocial by any stretch of the word, it simply took a long time for him to trust. To let his guard down. Kate had always felt she understood that. She could be very much the same way, and it was part of the reason they had gotten along so well.
For a while after Kevin had first joined their team, Kate had worried he and Javier might be completely incompatible. Usually, people expecting to become fast friends found their hopes dashed upon the rocks of Javier's personality. But Kevin had proven more patient than most. More patient and more determined. It was part of that sometimes contradictory nature of his. It had always impressed her how someone who could be so unobtrusive at one moment, easily losing himself in a crowd, could seem so loud the next—not in the sense of being obnoxious, so much as simply unavoidable. To say that he could light up a room would have been a dreadful cliché, but Kate couldn't deny the ease with which Kevin could change its atmosphere when he really tried. Kevin was warm and inviting in a way that was undemanding, and yet, at the same time, almost magnetic. And almost before either one of them knew it, he had found his way in...
Now, years later, Kate was watching Javier mourn the loss of his partner like the absence of a missing limb.
Kate looked back at Castle, and at his raised eyebrow gave a faint nod. The writer quickly pushed himself away from the wall, declaring very loudly that he was going off for coffee, and who would like some, and how very kind of Hiro to lend him a hand, dragging the young man away with a bewildered expression. Kate waited until the door had closed behind them before she spoke Javier's name.
He didn't notice at first, nor did he notice when she came up close beside him.
"Bennet thinks there's a way for us to get Kevin clear of this once it's all over," she said finally, "but for now we're going to keep...Reichardt available for further questioning."
And that managed to capture Javier's attention. His eyes pulled away with some apparent difficulty, wavering as they searched hers cautiously. Almost as though he were trying to determine whether it was some kind of trick. Kate knew that Javier carried some unexplained and intense distrust of Bennet, and no doubt the offer had him wary, but what she saw in his eyes struck her as a sort of desperate struggle against a hope that he was afraid to trust.
When, after a few moments, he failed to respond, Kate tried again.
"How are you holding up?" she asked, almost casually, trying not to make it seem like he had been showing his hurt as much as he had.
And maybe it was the fact that he didn't even try to front it off that worried her most of all.
"I— I don't know." Casting another glance at Konrad over his shoulder, Javier dragged a hand over his mouth. "Just— Jesus, Kate. I don't know."
Javier's voice sounded so small and thin that Kate almost wouldn't have recognized it. Shaking his head, his eyes roamed over the room on the other side of the glass, seeming almost reluctant to settle back on the man who occupied it now that his daze had been broken.
"I promised him, Kate," Javier said, his voice a weary, broken thing. "I promised Kevin I wouldn't take my eyes off him, but..."
He shook his head again.
"I don't think I could stand to be in the same room as...as that man," he said, taking a shaking breath. "I don't think I could do that without losing my mind."
In his face, in his eyes, in the weary list of his body, Kate could see the way the shame was weighing on him. She could see the horror living there and knew that, to Javier, his giving in to it was nothing short of betrayal. And she knew he must have felt very weak because of it, but Kate thought that admitting it might have been one of the bravest things she had ever seen.
"We should be moving him to lockup soon," she said. She briefly considered placing a hand on his shoulder, but with what he was feeling, she thought the attempt at comfort might only make it worse. "You're no longer on the case, but I could ask Montgomery to let you take over the desk down there. That way you could keep an eye on him from the monitors."
He blinked once in faint surprise, nodding in a way that seemed almost numb.
"Yeah," he said, finally, almost a whisper. "Yeah, okay."
PREV: Chapter Thirteen // MAIN // NEXT: Chapter Fifteen
Author's Note: A lot of the insights in this chapter almost made it into this author's note as justification for Javier acting so out of character. Then I realized "Hey, what is Beckett even for if not this kind of observation?" And just that change made me feel a whole lot better about the chapter in general.
He still feels somewhat out of character to me, though there is one thing Kate can't know that I feel it is important to note:
Everyone is reeling from what they've learned about Kevin, and Javier is more invested in that than most, but for everyone else, it began with the photograph. Javier, on the other hand, has been a bundle of nerves ever since the case began, first stressing over Zimmerman, then Reichardt, then Bennet, all before there was even a whisper of the connection between Konrad and his partner. For him, this crash has been a long time coming.
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Date: Sunday, 8 July 2012 06:02 am (UTC)From:You're a great writer. Really stellar. I grabbed this phrase because I love it and might use it somewhere else: "the familiar face of a complete stranger". Can't imagine where I'd use it, but I love the idea of it, the disjunction of it. Really drives home the unsettled tone.
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Date: Sunday, 8 July 2012 06:20 am (UTC)From:I love playing with dissonance. The way you talked about calling up limerance while writing, I have the same thing with dissonance. I love putting myself in a character's head and just sort of owning that feeling of confusion and insecurity and panic when the world stops taking its cues from what they think of as reality. That moment when they step off the path and nothing makes sense any more. It's a very unique flavor of fear, and I just love it to death.
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Date: Sunday, 8 July 2012 06:34 am (UTC)From:I can dig the dissonance thing. Once upon a time, I was totally in that head-space and it was what fueled a huge pile of my writing.