Tread on my dreams
"It's about your mother."
And then she'd ripped the papers from his hand, dropped them between them, and walked away. She had walked away. No anger, no tears, no emotion evident at all. Total shut-down, and she had simply walked away.
It's all he can see, her rigid back walking away. He's come up to the Hamptons to try to remove that sight from his memory, because for a week it's been all that he sees when he thinks of Beckett: her rigid back, her long legs and heels, the curve of her neck below her edgy haircut, and all of it walking away without a glance back at him.
For a week, it's been all that he can think of, waking or sleeping, and he wants to scream and shout at her, Give me back my fantasies. Give him back his dreams and his hopes and his words. He has no words: Nikki Two is stalled: all his words and the visions that produce the words frozen in, and on, that one instant when she turned on her stiletto heel and walked away, taking his dreams and fantasies and hopes with her. Since then, he hasn't written a single word.
Now, here he is alone in the Hamptons, looking out from the back of his house – small mansion, really, but it's home to him – over the Atlantic. Nothing to see but the cold grey-blue of the ocean and the small waves lapping on the grey-yellow sand on the stretch of beach he owns and holds private. He'd thought to bring her here, dreamed of it: strolling on the beach like lovers do, kissing her softly in the morning sun, harder in the twilight. Another fantasy, ripped away with the papers she'd dropped on the floor when she left him standing as she walked away.
He stares out over the ocean, into the dawn light breaking, and wishes he had done something differently: gone after her, or called. He'd done neither, and now he has no dreams or fantasies to build on, only a single, heart-breaking picture, and too many regrets.
She'd walked away, taking all his fantasies with her, and here he sits looking out over the cruel sea in harsh sunlight, too early in the morning, too late in the night he didn't sleep through, again. He can't sleep well, he is barely sleeping at all, when in his fractured sleep all he dreams of is her, walking away.
For once, he doesn't have a game plan. He's never not had a plan, persuasion, simply words that will mend matters, make it better, get it back on track. But now he has no plans, no words, no way to solve this – not mystery. This is not a mystery: it's only too clear. He interfered, despite being warned so very, very strongly. He hadn't thought that she meant it, but in the bright cold light of icy hindsight he wonders why he had deceived himself so cruelly. She's never said a single word to him that she didn't mean, and this was no exception; words and actions equally, perfectly, terrifyingly aligned: all of them walking away from him.
He stares out over the breaking waves and the cold grey water, and all he can see is Beckett's cold, grey face and hard green-hazel eyes, turning and walking away. He should have followed her, he should have gone after her: gone to her apartment and told her – told her what?
Told her he's sorry? Except he's not sorry, only that it hurt her, because he has new information. Not that she stopped or stayed her strides away, out through the hospital double doors and into the city's streets and teeming mass of people, lost in the crowd in an instant.
Told her his answers? Except she didn't care, dropped them on the floor and, like some bastardised dragons' teeth of old mythology, let them sprout not warriors but walls around her. He'd thought that her walls were falling, until she had turned and walked away, encased in them anew. She'd said she had put it down, because it would destroy her. He should have believed her then.
Told her he thinks he loves her? But he doesn't want – didn't want – to say that softly, for fear of others hearing something that should be entirely private, the first time: he'd wanted, one day, to say it clearly, loud and proud and most of all have it returned. Another dream that's died, under the spin of her sharp stiletto, stabbing into the floor and his shattering heart.
Only the deep grey-blue sea and the cool wind off the water, only the hard yellow of the sun on the rough sand, and only he to see any of it. He should have gone after her.
He could have gone after her, any time these last seven endless, unsleeping days. Could have gone to her apartment, talked to her, made her listen. But he hadn't, and he didn't, and with every day that has passed starting becomes much harder, because after all, what can he say?
Give me back my fantasies. The soft waves splashing on the beach drum it: percussive counterpoint to his single thought. Give me back my dreams. So many dreams, so many visions, so many words which now won't come: stopped in one point-perfect moment of crystalline clarity, frozen as a fly in amber.
Staring at the sea, all he can see is Beckett's cold, grey face and then the turn of her shoulder, walking away. He turns away from it, but he can't turn from the memory: not as he goes inside, not as he brews and drinks more coffee, not as he paces his living room and tries to find any other thought.
He wonders what she's doing, and in a flash of pain believes that she's run back to searching, every spare hour God and Montgomery send her. Destroying herself behind the walls she holds against the world. He wonders if she's as sleepless as he is, if she's stuck in that one moment where everything stopped, before she turned and walked away.
He'd gathered up the papers, kept them, locked them in a seldom-used drawer: unwilling to destroy this one new clue, in case that she should ask him for it later. He had thought that maybe, when she crested the shockwave and arrived safely on the other side, she might want them. How wrong could he have been? He has heard nothing. Her walls have closed around her and he hasn't heard a word. If bodies have fallen, not one of the team has let him know: left him ostracised. He should have known that, too. None of the team will support him in this, ranged in battle formation against him: he who has shot down their leader.
He should have gone to her.
The long day passes, his laptop open in front of him, but every time he tries to type he stops. Late in the afternoon, he gives up, goes back outside and watches the sea, sightlessly staring beyond the horizon, still in the freezeframe of her walking away, still with you should have gone to her hammering in his head. He's still looking blindly out over the small swells, the occasional white horses, out over the endless sea as the night begins to fall.
Somewhere back in Manhattan Beckett is seeing that same night fall, he knows. Or maybe not. Maybe she's down in that dingy Archives floor, coughing out the seconds on the dust of her mother's case, uncaring whether it's day or night, as one bleeds into the other and then the next. It was going to destroy me, he hears her say again, and so I put it down. And hard behind it, his own imagination follows with it will destroy you. You can't put it down. And again he thinks that he should have gone to her.
Maybe if he went to her she'd give him back his fantasies: his hopes and dreams. Maybe she can give him back his words, his vision. Maybe if he goes to her he'll find himself again: he is lost, now, adrift on a sea of wordlessness, a Flying Dutchman condemned by his own hand to circle endlessly, never finding home.
He has to go to her.
He has to explain, to apologise, to ask – to beg – for his hopes and dreams and fantasies to be given back. He has to see her, to talk to her, to make her listen – to break down her walls and step inside and tell her –
And there his courage, such as it was, fails him. Sitting on the porch, staring over the darkening sea in the cooling air, the thought of saying I love you defeats him. He hadn't wanted to say it softly. Hadn't, till now, thought to say it at all. Strange, how he had only known it when it had broken, and she had turned and walked away. But now he not just wants to say it, but say it clearly. Not like this, though.
Never like this.
Night falls softly on his slumped shoulders, casting and drowning dark shadows: the Beast mourning his absent Beauty, whom he had driven away by his own hand and deed. Come midnight, he'll be the Beast forever, unable to gather bravery to seek and win forgiveness. Come midnight, his last chance will be gone.
He glances at his watch: eight thirty. It's two hours, maybe two and a half, to Manhattan: less if he's lucky with the highway patrols. And yet he delays a further moment, uncertain, indecisive, until he sees the starlight and realises that if he wants to make this right, he has little time. Somehow, he feels he has to go tonight: if he misses this self-imposed deadline then he will be doomed. Urgency sends him hurrying to the carport, hurrying out of the drive, careful in the town and then opening up the big car's power on the expressway, trying to make time, undefined dread pushing him on, the headlights cutting through the dark towards the city's lights.
As he pulls off the interstate towards the Brooklyn Bridge it's already after ten, and nervousness is nipping at his heels. Over the bridge, the East River flowing sluggish and dark beneath, ripples of grimy sodium orange light skulking across it: he should go first to his own loft, park the car and take a cab, but he can't wait: decision made two hours and more ago and he has to act on it, before he loses such little courage as he's mustered. Right, left: up into the Upper East Side, avoiding the hunting packs of taxis, cursing every crimson-flaring traffic stop; searching frantically for a parking space and manoeuvring the big car into it: tight and getting out will be a bitch but that's a later problem; a further block to walk and it's almost eleven now, late, quiet in this little patch of older buildings. One day he'll wonder how she can afford to live here, but not today.
Her block, her building, her door – no doorman, not here, not like his secure block closer to the other end of Manhattan, and for an instant he thinks that isn't safe but she carries a gun: sleeps with it, so she says; and no doorman means no let or hindrance. Momentum carries him in, through the silent hallway, the empty elevator, the corridor to her door.
And there he stops.
All his courage drained, all his bravery expended in reaching this point, he dares not knock: standing at her door; seeing again her walking away with his hopes and dreams and fantasies. Give me back my words, his mind cries out, give me back myself. And on the thought, resolve returns, and he raises his hand to rap boldly on the wood, and wait for an answer.
For a long time there's nothing: no sound, no movement. His heart fails, and rather than knock once more, he starts to retreat, dreams broken, words flown. Until there's a soft shuffle from within, and the lock turns over with a quiet clunk, and the heavy door begins to open, and Beckett looks around its edge where the chain remains on.
For an instant there's a flash of something across her face: almost hope, but then it shuts down to the same cold expression he'd seen in the hospital.
"What are you doing here?"
"I came…" he starts, and stops again. Came for what? "You took my words," he blurts.
"You're drunk," she says contemptuously, and makes to shut the door in his face.
"No!" He shoves a foot in the way, counting on her manners to avoid a fracture, hoping that she doesn't have her gun in the other hand, her form blurred in the darkness, half-hidden behind the barely-open door. "I'm not drunk," he says more temperately. "I had to see you."
"Because I took your words?" She sounds incredulous. "Look for your words elsewhere."
"I can't," he answers desolately. "They're all here." She looks bleakly at him.
"You're going to stay here till I let you in, aren't you?"
"Probably. You don't understand, Beckett. You have to give me back my words." He's punch-drunk, frantic for her to hear him, not drunk on liquor but on deprivation. She has to understand that she's stolen all his words and dreams, that this is his best, only, chance to take them back. But the door is closing, shutting on his hopes. Sleeplessness and desperation have made him honest, but it isn't working. She walked away with all his words.
And then the door opens fully.
"You'd better come in."
She's tousled and damp around the edges, swathed in a robe that should never see the light of day, face bare. Seeing her, being here, all his words are pressing back towards him, but they're still locked within her: she has to give them back.
She switches on a small table lamp, enough only to lighten the darkness but not to illuminate, and moves silently to the kitchen to put on the kettle. She's small, he realises, smaller than he's used to – not small, of course, but when she's barefoot he's so much bigger. But her slim frame encompasses all his words and she has to give them back. He needs them, for who is he without words?
"Now," she says sharply, all hard edges and command voice, contrasting with her robe and damp tendrils of hair, "what on earth are you talking about?"
"You took all my words," Castle says, unable to move past that one idea now he's here, stopped. Sleeplessness has left him unable to think, or reason, all his energy used up in driving back. "You took away my words and now I can't write anything at all. You have to give me them back, Beckett." He gazes desperately into the gloom, trying to see her. "You walked away from me."
"You pried into my mother's death when I told you to leave it alone. I only let you in because otherwise you'll clutter up the corridor. I have nothing to say to you." The kettle boils, steam loud in the silence, hanging in the tense air. Beckett does nothing with the kettle at all. He's not sure why she put it on: maybe habit, maybe displacement. He simply stands, unsure what to do or say, watching her silhouette turning in the dim light trickling through the unshielded windows.
Turning and walking away from him, again.
"No," he whispers, almost to himself, and more strongly, "No. You…" and courage returns to him, make or break, do or die – if he can't write, he may as well give up on the precinct, Beckett, anything other than his family – and he speaks again.
"I'm sorry. I should have followed you. You've stolen all my dreams, Beckett, all my words. I should have come after you to say sorry. It's the only way I'll get them back."
"I took nothing from you. I don't want your dreams or words. I don't want you interfering in my work and my case. Take it all, and go."
"You don't understand," he says again, softly, stepping closer to her, less diffident now that it's fairly likely she won't shoot him. "I can't find my words until I tell you I'm sorry; and until you accept it and let me follow you like I used to."
"I'm not stopping you following me."
He steps closer again, almost within reach. She doesn't seem to have noticed, or worse, she doesn't care: her walls armouring her against his entreaties. She's as cold and remote as the grey sea he'd stared over, all this day: his desperation drowning in the depths of her eyes.
"Beckett, you don't get it."
"Then explain. If that's the only thing that will make you end this discussion, explain."
She's stolen all his words: he has no words to explain, and so there is only one last throw of the dice, because if he can't mend this there is no hope that he will find his words.
He takes one last step, and gathers her into his arms, and kisses her, for after all, words come from the mouth, and if he has her mouth maybe he'll find his words there. He searches as he holds her; his word-thief, caught: smaller against him, trapped in his bulk but yet she's not resisting him, she's curving closer and he pulls her tighter, plundering the strong-room where she's hidden all his dreams and words: giving back his hopes and fantasies. All his words are returning as he holds her there close against him: flood-tide flowing over him as she flows into him.
"You're my words, Beckett." He kisses her again, glorying in her swift response. "You're all my words." Another kiss, harder. "I love you."
And he doesn't say it softly.
Fin.
Yet another prompt - well, two, from Mobazan27, who, I have to admit, gives good prompt.
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