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Title: Sui Generis
Fandoms: Castle
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Horror, Sci-fi, Romance.
Warnings: Possible squick, non-sexual content skirting dub-con
Reverse Warnings: Whatever certain scenes or warnings might lead one to believe, this fic contains neither mpreg nor naughty tentacles. I promise.
Details: Pre-slash, AU, genre!crack, angst, body horror, mood whiplash, insanity (not the characters', mine), starfish aliens, unbetad.
Characters/Pairings: Castle―pre-Javier Esposito/Kevin Ryan, Kevin/Jenny, Richard Castle.
Wordcount: 2,710
Summary: Javier confessed never expecting Kevin to believe him. Kevin didn't, but somehow, things still wound up spiraling frighteningly out of control...
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5.5 - 6 - 7
Chapter Five
"There's something inside you..." Kevin said to Javier one morning.
Or night. Day. It was impossible for Kevin to even guess anymore. He was still delirious, and he didn't know what he was saying—hell, what he was thinking—half the time. He hadn't even realized he was awake until he had spoken, catching his partner's attention. He wasn't sure what he was trying to say, only knew that there was something important...
"I've been seeing it, I think," he continued, struggling for clarity. "In parts. Like it's inside me too. It's something... Dark. And sharp. And hungry. It scares me."
Kevin fought against the confusion clinging film-like to his thoughts, trying to recover the point he was trying to make. Because he was sure...
Oh. Right.
He'd had another dream.
This dream had felt different from the other dreams before it. The imagery had been more disconnected, fragmented, and carried a frightening sense of urgency and panic where the others had seemed almost timeless.
A desert somewhere. The cold blue hours before dawn. Terror, hunger, pain—all mixed together and confusing. Gunfire. The taste of blood. A long, lonely trek through cold and heat, sands baked hard by a punishing sun burning and freezing his abraded feet. A light being shone in his eyes. A face. A human face. In the dream he reached out with tanned fingers to touch it. They asked him questions—worried, suspicious—wanting to know what had happened to him. Their words were familiar and understood, yet at the same time strange, as if he'd never heard them before. And they called him by a name he recognized as his own, though at the same time he knew it really wasn't...
"Javier..." Kevin managed to shift his head where it rested against his partner's shoulder, just enough that he could see Javier's face. And he didn't quite understand what the dream had meant, but he knew it was important. "The real Javier..."
And when he felt Javier's breath catch Kevin had no doubt in his mind that man had existed, once. Javier released that breath slowly, his eyes sliding shut as his head dipped in a faint nod, and though his partner seemed resigned—like he'd been waiting for the question all along—several seconds ticked by before Kevin could bring himself to finally ask.
"Did...did you kill him?"
"Yes," Javier answered, very quietly. His voice was nearly lifeless, almost a whisper. "But you have to understand, Kev, when I did... When I did it, I didn't even understand what murder was."
Though he could see the pain that admission clearly held for Javier, Kevin also felt some of the rigidness leave him. And it might have dawned on him earlier had he been lucid, but it was only then that Kevin realized with an uneasy shock that he was likely the only one Javier had ever tried to tell his story. Another long silence passed before Javier spoke.
"I wasn't alone, at first," Javier began, hesitantly. "There were...more. Others from the hive that got cut off from the rest—lost, I guess—though I'm not sure how."
He paused, seeming to debate with himself.
"What it was—what I was—had no concept of time," Javier finally said, "no concept of itself as an individual. The memories it carried belonged to the hive, and they're too shapeless and stretch back too far for me to know which of them, if any, were actually mine. But what I do know is that, nine years ago, it and the others with it wound up here, somewhere out in the Syrian Desert."
"They were—you could almost say confused at being separated from the hive," Javier said, "though it would be going too far to say they were afraid. They didn't possess enough sense of themselves to feel afraid, or even to try and find their way back. And there weren't enough of them—or any of them the right kind—to form a new hive of their own. They were just...
"It's like when an insect loses a leg," Javier said grimly. "That leg twitches for a long time before it accepts that it's dead. The instinctive need to keep serving their function was all that was left..."
And Kevin couldn't say exactly when his eyes slid shut, but as Javier spoke he could almost see it in his mind's eye... Almost, for in his imaginings—and Kevin could pretend that was all they were—the harsh glare of the sun is overwhelming, blinding and oppressive. But the displaced abominations are there, a presence more than image, an unknown and unknowable number of them, all huddled together in a crack in the earth seeking shelter from the blistering rays. Only at night do they squirm forth into the chill darkness. And the small ones scavenge the rocks for insects and vegetation, while each night the larger ones range out in search of larger prey...
"The hive as a whole is a predator as well as a scavenger," Javier continued, perhaps unaware of how Kevin's thoughts had begun to drift— Perhaps. "Its parts can take many forms, and each of those shapes serve its survival a bit differently..."
And Javier's pause was brief, but focused as he was on his partner's voice the strain was impossible for Kevin to miss.
"And one of the creatures that found its way here was a hunter."
Opening his eyes once again, the expression Kevin saw on his partner's face was one he had no clue how to read, seeming painfully split between agonized, haunted, and outright numb.
"Usually it picked off an isolated target and consumed it before returning to the hive," Javier said, his voice dull, "but if the prey was unfamiliar, it could also try to absorb its memories. Find out where more of them could be found, and what kind of defense to expect when striking at its nest, so it could share that information with the rest of the hive.
"If the prey was very dangerous, the hunter could use the creature it had consumed as a template," Javier said, eyes sliding shut as pain finally overtook the lifelessness in his voice, "mimic the form of its prey and infiltrate its nest or herd to pick off others one by one...
"And, nine years ago..." his partner concluded, "nine years ago, Javier Esposito wound up separated from his unit, and—"
There was such horror and grief in Javier's voice that it nearly broke.
"And his tour ended when the hunter found him."
Kevin couldn't have said why, even to himself, but his arms tightened their grip on his partner—perhaps reassuring himself of the solid reality of the man beside him. Even as the fact remained that, if Javier's story were true, his partner was neither real, nor really a man at all.
"You know," Javier said finally, after a long stretch of painful silence, "there's a story I heard while I was over there..."
The shift was subtle, but all the same obvious enough that Kevin could all but feel it. A shift in posture, a shift in voice. It was a shift in the space his partner occupied mentally and finally—finally—Javier's eyes turned to meet his.
"They have stories over there about monsters like me," Javier said to him, and the smile that ticked at the corner of his mouth might have been the most humorless, pained thing Kevin had ever seen, "things called ghuls that could take human form and preyed on humans by luring them away to their deaths. So maybe... I don't know. Maybe I'm not the first. Maybe what I am now isn't something new or unique, but something very, very old."
"I've never known whether I should feel comforted by the idea or not..."
Javier paused, wetting his lips on one false start, nodding his head silently to punctuate another before he finally managed to find his voice again.
"The first thing that I—that I remember," Javier said, voice picking up a sort of false strength, injected perhaps so that he could try to feel it himself, "is coming around in a shallow ravine...maybe a dry riverbed, I'm not really sure. I look down at myself and... And its the most confusing thing. Because part of me doesn't know what it's looking at, and another is trying to figure out why that is, why it feels strange, what's changed when it seems like nothing has. And that second part, the part that recognized itself—the part that even had a self to recognize—also recognized that it was naked, that it was filthy and covered in blood, but it almost didn't recognize—"
Javier's voice cracked a little but he repaired it with a thick swallow. He shut his eyes, shaking his head, but from the confused twist of his expression it clearly didn't dismiss whatever images his memory was conjuring.
"I almost didn't recognize the scattered bones and bloody meat in front of me for what they were."
The breath that followed shook heavily, drawn deep and held for several seconds before it was released with a shudder. Slowly, Javier opened his eyes.
"I didn't get it all sorted out right there and then," he said, shaking his head, "I didn't really have the time. Naked and unarmed in the middle of the desert... I couldn't survive like that. I couldn't survive alone. I had to... I had to make a choice. And, for the first time, it really was a choice, because instinct was screaming at me to return to my hivemates, but the thinking part of me knew there was another place I could go.
"And I don't usually like to think about what might have happened if I'd done differently," Javier said, a distant fear in his voice, "if I'd gone back into the desert where the others were denned up in the rocks. Because... Because I could shed this form at any time, if I chose, and I think I would have if I'd gone back. But if I had, I would have lost that part of me—the part that thinks, the part that's me. And theoretically I could get it back—reset the template and become Javier again—but in my natural form I wouldn't even have a mind capable of wanting to."
He shook his head, dismissing the thought.
"It's best that I didn't," Javier said—almost managing to sound certain of it, "I'm just... I'm too different from what I used to be. I don't even know if I could have connected with them in the way I would have needed to, and if they couldn't recognize me as one of their own, I'd have been attacked as an intruder."
"Still...it bothers me that I left them out there to die," Javier said, voice edged harshly with regret, "that thought bothers me almost as much as the fact that I left the real Javier to rot unmourned and unburied out in that desert."
Javier continued rapidly, pushing past the bizarre grief that threatened to carry him down.
"I was half dead by the time I made it back to civilization," he said, "and when I came around again, they were already talking about sending me home. I...I didn't want to be taken from the others, but...I was trapped in the role I was playing. There was no sane reason for Javier to stay, and I couldn't risk telling anyone what had happened—what I really was. People would have thought I was crazy. And God even knows how much worse if they believed me...
"So they shipped me home, and I just had to try and make my way..." Javier said after a moment, "even if it was never meant to be mine. And maybe I have no right, but..."
A slow breath punctuated another pause as Javier seemed to weigh his next words with a hesitant, cautious care.
"I can't say I don't feel guilt for what I did," Javier continued finally, his voice still soft, yet very certain, "but it would be pointless to obsess over it. Blaming myself for that death would be pointless. A shark that kills a man doesn't do it to be cruel, it does it because it's a shark. What I was was no better or worse. I've made a sort of peace with that. And a part of that peace has been accepting there is no way to fix the damage I've done, but that what I can do is try to fill the hole the real Javier left behind. To do right by him, and by the people he cared about—people I've hurt, even if they'll never know it."
"And... And no one ever has?" Kevin asked muzzily. "Known? In nine years?"
Though his voice was faint and his words confused, he still surprised them both a little by speaking. It was hard to tell, but it felt like the longest he had managed to keep his focus for a very long time. Javier's eyes searched his closely and, hesitantly, he lifted his hand to touch Kevin's cheek. Those eyes, as always anymore, were difficult to read. Kevin saw pain and worry in them... Though it warred with something that seemed treacherously hopeful.
Then there was a slight shift in his expression, and with a very self-aware blink, Javier pulled his hand away.
"You should rest, Kev," Javier said, very softly, though his voice was rough.
And Kevin wanted to say a hundred frustrated words about how he had done enough resting to last the rest of his life, but he couldn't find the energy for it.
"I'll rest," he said, closing his eyes, his voice a whisper across the bare skin of Javier's chest, "just...please...keep talking."
Kevin felt his partner draw an uncertain breath, hesitating, but after a moment the tension in his body eased. Javier even rested a hand on Kevin's shoulder.
"It's... It's never been easy," Javier finally said, gently stroking Kevin's arm with an almost absent rhythm, "the confusion or the guilt or the fear...but also just the...the loneliness of it."
Javier let out a weak snort, and Kevin felt him shake his head.
"That's such a stupid word for it," Javier said, "but it feels like it could kill me sometimes. The thing I was was never meant to exist on its own, and after my discharge even the human part of me was left with a need to belong to something. Maybe not the same—God, nowhere near the same—but still strong enough that it hurt. I mean, my family still means everything to me, and they were more than happy to have me back. But when I'm around them there's no escaping the fact that every breath I take is a lie convincing them a person they loved is still alive.
"I needed something more," Javier concluded wearily, "something that belonged to me, for whatever that was worth. So I joined the NYPD and it was...it was almost what I needed."
Kevin's awareness of his partner's words had begun to drift, falling apart into sleep or something like it. So he couldn't quite understand why his throat suddenly felt so tight. Or why, though still safely skin to skin with his partner, he was beginning to feel a cold, heavy feeling in his gut.
"But I never knew just what I needed, not for a long time..." And though it was faint, Javier's voice had begun to tremble, filled with an audible ache that felt so close to tears Kevin's own eyes stung. "Not until I met you, Kev. The way we clicked, just like that, the way we've always worked so well together, almost like we were in sync... Like we were living in the same skin. It was the closest thing I've ever felt to the hive. It felt... It felt like you were the only one that could make me complete again. And I've had partners—I've had lovers—but neither one has ever made me feel that. Only you.
"And I'd been thinking for a long time whether it might be possible to take that connection even further, but then..."
And somehow, as it drew out, the emptiness of Javier's silence managed to feel sharp and almost anguished, even through the weariness that was sapping Kevin's attention. He tried desperately to hold on to it, just for a few more moments. Because he felt a painful certainty that what Javier was saying was somehow very important. But it was a losing battle, and finally Kevin's exhaustion won out, only a few final words managing to follow him as he slipped back into a blessedly empty sleep.
"Then you met Jenny."
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5.5 - 6 - 7
Author's Note:
I'm normally very anal retentive about details. My history here is based on the following assumptions and considerations:
a. That the progress of Kevin and Jenny's engagement sets this story takes place in 2011-2012.
b. That the first season of Castle took place in 2009 (so 2-3 years ago).
c. That it is unlikely for Javier to have become a detective without at least 5 years of police experience.
d. That they've hardly given us any info on Javi's military career apart from that he was some form of special forces, and probably a sniper. I did not want to do the research to figure out necessary training, or possible durations or locations of his deployment, and so...
e. It's at this point I basically said: "Javier's an alien. Fuck it."
And then,
f. Decided on nine years ago for the events described here. Because it's a nice number, sets the "birth" of this Javier in around 2004 which feels possibly correct. And I chose the Syrian Desert, because it's fucking huge, so he really could have been stationed anywhere, and is vaguely geographically correct as far as the ghul legends are concerned.
Fandoms: Castle
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Horror, Sci-fi, Romance.
Warnings: Possible squick, non-sexual content skirting dub-con
Reverse Warnings: Whatever certain scenes or warnings might lead one to believe, this fic contains neither mpreg nor naughty tentacles. I promise.
Details: Pre-slash, AU, genre!crack, angst, body horror, mood whiplash, insanity (not the characters', mine), starfish aliens, unbetad.
Characters/Pairings: Castle―pre-Javier Esposito/Kevin Ryan, Kevin/Jenny, Richard Castle.
Wordcount: 2,710
Summary: Javier confessed never expecting Kevin to believe him. Kevin didn't, but somehow, things still wound up spiraling frighteningly out of control...
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5.5 - 6 - 7
Chapter Five
"There's something inside you..." Kevin said to Javier one morning.
Or night. Day. It was impossible for Kevin to even guess anymore. He was still delirious, and he didn't know what he was saying—hell, what he was thinking—half the time. He hadn't even realized he was awake until he had spoken, catching his partner's attention. He wasn't sure what he was trying to say, only knew that there was something important...
"I've been seeing it, I think," he continued, struggling for clarity. "In parts. Like it's inside me too. It's something... Dark. And sharp. And hungry. It scares me."
Kevin fought against the confusion clinging film-like to his thoughts, trying to recover the point he was trying to make. Because he was sure...
Oh. Right.
He'd had another dream.
This dream had felt different from the other dreams before it. The imagery had been more disconnected, fragmented, and carried a frightening sense of urgency and panic where the others had seemed almost timeless.
A desert somewhere. The cold blue hours before dawn. Terror, hunger, pain—all mixed together and confusing. Gunfire. The taste of blood. A long, lonely trek through cold and heat, sands baked hard by a punishing sun burning and freezing his abraded feet. A light being shone in his eyes. A face. A human face. In the dream he reached out with tanned fingers to touch it. They asked him questions—worried, suspicious—wanting to know what had happened to him. Their words were familiar and understood, yet at the same time strange, as if he'd never heard them before. And they called him by a name he recognized as his own, though at the same time he knew it really wasn't...
"Javier..." Kevin managed to shift his head where it rested against his partner's shoulder, just enough that he could see Javier's face. And he didn't quite understand what the dream had meant, but he knew it was important. "The real Javier..."
And when he felt Javier's breath catch Kevin had no doubt in his mind that man had existed, once. Javier released that breath slowly, his eyes sliding shut as his head dipped in a faint nod, and though his partner seemed resigned—like he'd been waiting for the question all along—several seconds ticked by before Kevin could bring himself to finally ask.
"Did...did you kill him?"
"Yes," Javier answered, very quietly. His voice was nearly lifeless, almost a whisper. "But you have to understand, Kev, when I did... When I did it, I didn't even understand what murder was."
Though he could see the pain that admission clearly held for Javier, Kevin also felt some of the rigidness leave him. And it might have dawned on him earlier had he been lucid, but it was only then that Kevin realized with an uneasy shock that he was likely the only one Javier had ever tried to tell his story. Another long silence passed before Javier spoke.
"I wasn't alone, at first," Javier began, hesitantly. "There were...more. Others from the hive that got cut off from the rest—lost, I guess—though I'm not sure how."
He paused, seeming to debate with himself.
"What it was—what I was—had no concept of time," Javier finally said, "no concept of itself as an individual. The memories it carried belonged to the hive, and they're too shapeless and stretch back too far for me to know which of them, if any, were actually mine. But what I do know is that, nine years ago, it and the others with it wound up here, somewhere out in the Syrian Desert."
"They were—you could almost say confused at being separated from the hive," Javier said, "though it would be going too far to say they were afraid. They didn't possess enough sense of themselves to feel afraid, or even to try and find their way back. And there weren't enough of them—or any of them the right kind—to form a new hive of their own. They were just...
"It's like when an insect loses a leg," Javier said grimly. "That leg twitches for a long time before it accepts that it's dead. The instinctive need to keep serving their function was all that was left..."
And Kevin couldn't say exactly when his eyes slid shut, but as Javier spoke he could almost see it in his mind's eye... Almost, for in his imaginings—and Kevin could pretend that was all they were—the harsh glare of the sun is overwhelming, blinding and oppressive. But the displaced abominations are there, a presence more than image, an unknown and unknowable number of them, all huddled together in a crack in the earth seeking shelter from the blistering rays. Only at night do they squirm forth into the chill darkness. And the small ones scavenge the rocks for insects and vegetation, while each night the larger ones range out in search of larger prey...
"The hive as a whole is a predator as well as a scavenger," Javier continued, perhaps unaware of how Kevin's thoughts had begun to drift— Perhaps. "Its parts can take many forms, and each of those shapes serve its survival a bit differently..."
And Javier's pause was brief, but focused as he was on his partner's voice the strain was impossible for Kevin to miss.
"And one of the creatures that found its way here was a hunter."
Opening his eyes once again, the expression Kevin saw on his partner's face was one he had no clue how to read, seeming painfully split between agonized, haunted, and outright numb.
"Usually it picked off an isolated target and consumed it before returning to the hive," Javier said, his voice dull, "but if the prey was unfamiliar, it could also try to absorb its memories. Find out where more of them could be found, and what kind of defense to expect when striking at its nest, so it could share that information with the rest of the hive.
"If the prey was very dangerous, the hunter could use the creature it had consumed as a template," Javier said, eyes sliding shut as pain finally overtook the lifelessness in his voice, "mimic the form of its prey and infiltrate its nest or herd to pick off others one by one...
"And, nine years ago..." his partner concluded, "nine years ago, Javier Esposito wound up separated from his unit, and—"
There was such horror and grief in Javier's voice that it nearly broke.
"And his tour ended when the hunter found him."
Kevin couldn't have said why, even to himself, but his arms tightened their grip on his partner—perhaps reassuring himself of the solid reality of the man beside him. Even as the fact remained that, if Javier's story were true, his partner was neither real, nor really a man at all.
"You know," Javier said finally, after a long stretch of painful silence, "there's a story I heard while I was over there..."
The shift was subtle, but all the same obvious enough that Kevin could all but feel it. A shift in posture, a shift in voice. It was a shift in the space his partner occupied mentally and finally—finally—Javier's eyes turned to meet his.
"They have stories over there about monsters like me," Javier said to him, and the smile that ticked at the corner of his mouth might have been the most humorless, pained thing Kevin had ever seen, "things called ghuls that could take human form and preyed on humans by luring them away to their deaths. So maybe... I don't know. Maybe I'm not the first. Maybe what I am now isn't something new or unique, but something very, very old."
"I've never known whether I should feel comforted by the idea or not..."
Javier paused, wetting his lips on one false start, nodding his head silently to punctuate another before he finally managed to find his voice again.
"The first thing that I—that I remember," Javier said, voice picking up a sort of false strength, injected perhaps so that he could try to feel it himself, "is coming around in a shallow ravine...maybe a dry riverbed, I'm not really sure. I look down at myself and... And its the most confusing thing. Because part of me doesn't know what it's looking at, and another is trying to figure out why that is, why it feels strange, what's changed when it seems like nothing has. And that second part, the part that recognized itself—the part that even had a self to recognize—also recognized that it was naked, that it was filthy and covered in blood, but it almost didn't recognize—"
Javier's voice cracked a little but he repaired it with a thick swallow. He shut his eyes, shaking his head, but from the confused twist of his expression it clearly didn't dismiss whatever images his memory was conjuring.
"I almost didn't recognize the scattered bones and bloody meat in front of me for what they were."
The breath that followed shook heavily, drawn deep and held for several seconds before it was released with a shudder. Slowly, Javier opened his eyes.
"I didn't get it all sorted out right there and then," he said, shaking his head, "I didn't really have the time. Naked and unarmed in the middle of the desert... I couldn't survive like that. I couldn't survive alone. I had to... I had to make a choice. And, for the first time, it really was a choice, because instinct was screaming at me to return to my hivemates, but the thinking part of me knew there was another place I could go.
"And I don't usually like to think about what might have happened if I'd done differently," Javier said, a distant fear in his voice, "if I'd gone back into the desert where the others were denned up in the rocks. Because... Because I could shed this form at any time, if I chose, and I think I would have if I'd gone back. But if I had, I would have lost that part of me—the part that thinks, the part that's me. And theoretically I could get it back—reset the template and become Javier again—but in my natural form I wouldn't even have a mind capable of wanting to."
He shook his head, dismissing the thought.
"It's best that I didn't," Javier said—almost managing to sound certain of it, "I'm just... I'm too different from what I used to be. I don't even know if I could have connected with them in the way I would have needed to, and if they couldn't recognize me as one of their own, I'd have been attacked as an intruder."
"Still...it bothers me that I left them out there to die," Javier said, voice edged harshly with regret, "that thought bothers me almost as much as the fact that I left the real Javier to rot unmourned and unburied out in that desert."
Javier continued rapidly, pushing past the bizarre grief that threatened to carry him down.
"I was half dead by the time I made it back to civilization," he said, "and when I came around again, they were already talking about sending me home. I...I didn't want to be taken from the others, but...I was trapped in the role I was playing. There was no sane reason for Javier to stay, and I couldn't risk telling anyone what had happened—what I really was. People would have thought I was crazy. And God even knows how much worse if they believed me...
"So they shipped me home, and I just had to try and make my way..." Javier said after a moment, "even if it was never meant to be mine. And maybe I have no right, but..."
A slow breath punctuated another pause as Javier seemed to weigh his next words with a hesitant, cautious care.
"I can't say I don't feel guilt for what I did," Javier continued finally, his voice still soft, yet very certain, "but it would be pointless to obsess over it. Blaming myself for that death would be pointless. A shark that kills a man doesn't do it to be cruel, it does it because it's a shark. What I was was no better or worse. I've made a sort of peace with that. And a part of that peace has been accepting there is no way to fix the damage I've done, but that what I can do is try to fill the hole the real Javier left behind. To do right by him, and by the people he cared about—people I've hurt, even if they'll never know it."
"And... And no one ever has?" Kevin asked muzzily. "Known? In nine years?"
Though his voice was faint and his words confused, he still surprised them both a little by speaking. It was hard to tell, but it felt like the longest he had managed to keep his focus for a very long time. Javier's eyes searched his closely and, hesitantly, he lifted his hand to touch Kevin's cheek. Those eyes, as always anymore, were difficult to read. Kevin saw pain and worry in them... Though it warred with something that seemed treacherously hopeful.
Then there was a slight shift in his expression, and with a very self-aware blink, Javier pulled his hand away.
"You should rest, Kev," Javier said, very softly, though his voice was rough.
And Kevin wanted to say a hundred frustrated words about how he had done enough resting to last the rest of his life, but he couldn't find the energy for it.
"I'll rest," he said, closing his eyes, his voice a whisper across the bare skin of Javier's chest, "just...please...keep talking."
Kevin felt his partner draw an uncertain breath, hesitating, but after a moment the tension in his body eased. Javier even rested a hand on Kevin's shoulder.
"It's... It's never been easy," Javier finally said, gently stroking Kevin's arm with an almost absent rhythm, "the confusion or the guilt or the fear...but also just the...the loneliness of it."
Javier let out a weak snort, and Kevin felt him shake his head.
"That's such a stupid word for it," Javier said, "but it feels like it could kill me sometimes. The thing I was was never meant to exist on its own, and after my discharge even the human part of me was left with a need to belong to something. Maybe not the same—God, nowhere near the same—but still strong enough that it hurt. I mean, my family still means everything to me, and they were more than happy to have me back. But when I'm around them there's no escaping the fact that every breath I take is a lie convincing them a person they loved is still alive.
"I needed something more," Javier concluded wearily, "something that belonged to me, for whatever that was worth. So I joined the NYPD and it was...it was almost what I needed."
Kevin's awareness of his partner's words had begun to drift, falling apart into sleep or something like it. So he couldn't quite understand why his throat suddenly felt so tight. Or why, though still safely skin to skin with his partner, he was beginning to feel a cold, heavy feeling in his gut.
"But I never knew just what I needed, not for a long time..." And though it was faint, Javier's voice had begun to tremble, filled with an audible ache that felt so close to tears Kevin's own eyes stung. "Not until I met you, Kev. The way we clicked, just like that, the way we've always worked so well together, almost like we were in sync... Like we were living in the same skin. It was the closest thing I've ever felt to the hive. It felt... It felt like you were the only one that could make me complete again. And I've had partners—I've had lovers—but neither one has ever made me feel that. Only you.
"And I'd been thinking for a long time whether it might be possible to take that connection even further, but then..."
And somehow, as it drew out, the emptiness of Javier's silence managed to feel sharp and almost anguished, even through the weariness that was sapping Kevin's attention. He tried desperately to hold on to it, just for a few more moments. Because he felt a painful certainty that what Javier was saying was somehow very important. But it was a losing battle, and finally Kevin's exhaustion won out, only a few final words managing to follow him as he slipped back into a blessedly empty sleep.
"Then you met Jenny."
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5.5 - 6 - 7
Author's Note:
I'm normally very anal retentive about details. My history here is based on the following assumptions and considerations:
a. That the progress of Kevin and Jenny's engagement sets this story takes place in 2011-2012.
b. That the first season of Castle took place in 2009 (so 2-3 years ago).
c. That it is unlikely for Javier to have become a detective without at least 5 years of police experience.
d. That they've hardly given us any info on Javi's military career apart from that he was some form of special forces, and probably a sniper. I did not want to do the research to figure out necessary training, or possible durations or locations of his deployment, and so...
e. It's at this point I basically said: "Javier's an alien. Fuck it."
And then,
f. Decided on nine years ago for the events described here. Because it's a nice number, sets the "birth" of this Javier in around 2004 which feels possibly correct. And I chose the Syrian Desert, because it's fucking huge, so he really could have been stationed anywhere, and is vaguely geographically correct as far as the ghul legends are concerned.
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no subject
Date: Thursday, 26 July 2012 10:02 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: Thursday, 26 July 2012 09:10 pm (UTC)From:Then I can focus my attention on other bizarre crap. XD
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 8 August 2012 11:54 am (UTC)From:Poor guy. Please, Kev. Make him better?