"There's an old man sitting
On the throne and he's saying
I should probably keep my pretty mouth shut."
-Ashley Frangipane , Castle
Days crawled like crippled snails while Gillian and the rest of the team were still on the mend. Ron was discharged from the hospital before Gillian was authorized to start moving a little around with crutches. Fred had trouble with the stitches in his back, after all his comings and goings when Gillian and Brock got trapped in the blasted building, so he ended up in bed for a whole week, hating every minute he spent lying down, forced to rest on his sides or his belly. Hank was doomed to the sling for at least another couple of weeks, and Aldana limped for ten days, refusing to use a crutch or even a cane.
Tanya hated that the office was so quiet and empty, despite—or maybe because—Kurt did his best to fill it with his music. They invested their time on digitalizing all the paperwork dusting up around, putting up some very questionable software of their own making and spending an unhealthy amount of hours gaming online.
Stuck in her bed with Connor watching over her like a damned hound, barking threats if she tried to move further than her bathroom and back to the bed—and tall and strong enough to drag her back to bed if she even tried to do otherwise—Gillian looked for a way to kill that hideous dead time.
Nightmares receded. Soon she did no longer wake up covered in sweat, feeling again the horrible jolt of the explosions, the crushing weight on her, the excruciating pain. Then those dreams gave way to Brock getting hurt as he tried to help her, in a weird, dreadful mix with what had happened at the Heights back in December. And no matter how hard she tried, she could never keep him from harm. Finally she was able to sleep a whole night through, but only to keep dreaming of him. Now it was the way he'd brought her back to life and gotten her out of the blasted building, everything flooded by the reassuring, soothing sensation of his presence and that stubborn, somehow fierce determination to protect her he'd displayed.
Maybe because of that, even though the idea came to her out of the blue, she thought it would be a good moment to read his manuals all over again and take notes. It'd been years since she'd last done it, and not like she had anything better or urgent to do anyway.
So she sat up in her bed with the FBI manuals, assorted color pens and a brand new notebook, and put to read as if she were about to be thoroughly examined about each and every subject in the index. And it turned out to be actually exciting, because since she'd had the chance to talk and work with Brock, everything gained a more complete meaning.
Even so, only a couple of hours later she put down the papers, cursing under her breath.
Damned Brock! As she read, it was like hearing his voice saying the words. She could even picture him, walking slowly by a board in some imaginary classroom, with his serious scowl, explaining the basic features of psychopaths only for her. She could even tell he wore his navy blue suit, with his wine red tie and the Bureau's golden pin on his lapel.
That picture was enough to push her hopping to the coffeemaker—which Connor had agreed to deploy in her room, to spare himself from spending his days coming up and down the stairs to bring her coffee after coffee.
There they were, all the sensations she'd acknowledged before leaving the blasted building, while she looked straight into his piercing green eyes. Breaking free from their seven-lock prison to riverdance and laugh in her face. And she knew it made all the sense and none at all at the same time.
And yet, she thought, lingering by her window to watch the noiseless swirling of the snow out there. Yet why would she be so surprised, or pissed. She'd spent half her life molding her mind to his teaching, respecting and admiring him from the distance. It was sort of obvious, after working by his side, and finding out he wasn't only a frigging genius, but also so reliable and straight, and that he had that gentle and understanding side to him—no matter how hard he struggled to hide it. It actually didn't matter how bitter and uptight he'd become—uptight on the outside, bitter on the inside, out of grief and loneliness.
So it was only natural, that affection of sorts for him she just couldn't fight. It didn't mean she was in love with him or anything like that—God forbid—just like she'd never been in love with Banks or Russell. It was just caring about him. It was weird, though, she knew, because most of the time she felt like punching his lights out every five minutes But she still enjoyed the simple fact of his presence.
Okay, enjoying was a bit of a strong word for it. But she wouldn't lie to herself either: she liked working with him. A lot. Yeah, he was an ass with her on regular basis, and maybe she was way too indulgent about it. But it was so understandable for her, that her ways would get on his nerves every time, surely striking him as rogue and smartass. It was curious though, she thought idly, sipping her coffee, that such a sharp mind as his still hadn't figured it out—that it was the only way she'd found to come out from under her father's overwhelming shadow: stop being the King's daughter in everybody's eyes, and build something of an identity of her own.
So he hadn't seen it, or had and didn't care, and got a heartburn every time they worked together. But she could tell that even so, he couldn't help feeling a secret joy at the simple fact of talking to somebody who understood what he meant when he got technical, someone able to keep track of his mind of cogs and wheels. And that sort of guilty pleasure possibly was what annoyed him the most, because it was her.
Gillian chuckled against the steamy mug at the idea.
"Mom! What the hell are you doing up?"
Nothing, son. Just planning to have a tee done for the next case I work with the stupid caring man. One reading, 'I'm your guilty pleasure.'