milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Richard hasn't ventured out of his room. He's been afraid to. But...he's hungry. And thirsty. And...well, the walls are closing in on him.

So there's a Richard in the bar. Looking very bewildered. And hoping his sister isn't around, because she totally creeped him out the night he arrived.

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Richard nods. "Audrey was...She got me a room. And then...I haven't seen her since."

"She didn't explain anything about this place to you?"

How could you let someone wander around Milliways without explaining things to them?

"She...she tried. I wasn't...she kept...she kept saying things I didn't...she knew things that hadn't happened...havne't happened." Richard rubs his neck. "Like that phone call. You said something about my phone and Marwan. I don't know. I honestly don't know what you're talking about. But Audrey said the same things."

You, Castle does not say, are dumb as a bag of hammers.

"Yeah. This place exists outside of time and space, so when people come here, they come from all different times. You're obviously from a little bit further in the past than your sister and me."

"My father allowed your people to torture me." Richard tells him, looking up to him in a way he looked up to Audrey. As someone to help him along.

"And then...I came here."

"That chick whose boyfriend you were sleeping with killed me," he says cheerfully. "And then I came here."

Just as long as they're comparing stories.

Richard's lower lip trembled. "I...I didn't...no..."

He looked away, eyes closed.

Now Castle feels like an ass. Especially if Richard doesn't know he's been outed to everyone who was at CTU that day, which has only just belatedly occurred to him. If there's anything he can really identify with, it's that.

"Look. It's okay. Nobody here is going to care about that. I promise you."

"How do you know? Look, I'm sorry you got killed. Really sorry if I...if I had anything to with it. I never meant...I didn't know...I don't know why that phone call is so damn important." Tears leak from his eyes, it's too much for him. He covers his face with both hands and sobs.

"Aw, jesus..." He hadn't meant to make anybody cry.

He sits down, helplessly, realizing that he's going to have to fix this somehow. "Forget about me getting killed, first of all. That was the terrorists' doing, nothing to do with you.

"That phone call..." He sighs, rubbing his eyes. All he can tell Richard is what he'd learned from the briefing, which hadn't been much.

"I don't know exactly what happened. All I heard was that some couple you went home with stole your phone, and the woman called Marwan--the terrorist behind the April 24 attacks--from it and activated a wiretap while you were, uh, distracted. After you confessed that, we managed to get an address on the couple, arrest the woman--the guy was dead when we got there--and, uh, I'm not sure what happened after we found the woman, but eventually Marwan was captured and his next major attack was prevented."

Richard listens, absorbing what he's being told.

"He's dead?" He says finally, choking a little. But he's stopped crying,a nd used the sleeve of his flannel shirt to dry his eyes and his face.

"I don't even know your name."

"Agent Castle," he says, instinctively being formal about it, but relaxing. "You, uh, can call me Lee."

Maybe he should have been more tactful about mentioning the man's death, but the guy had been a terrorist, and Castle finds it difficult to feel too much sympathy for him. And at least Richard's calmed down some.

Lee has been decidedly more helpful than Audrey.

Richard sighs. At least now, he understands a little more.

"I'm really tired, Lee. I think...thank you, for telling me that stuff. But I just want to...go upstairs to my room now."

"That would probably be a good idea." Poor kid, he thinks.

He gets up. "Just get some rest. It'll be fine."

With a sympathetic smile, he turns and heads off.

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