Bullets in Her Teeth
When she was just a girl
She expected the world
But it flew away from her reach
And the bullets catch in her teeth
Life goes on
It gets so heavy
The wheel breaks the butterfly.
-Coldplay, 'Paradise'
When Kate was three years old, demons visited her every winter night as she lay alone in her bed. They had horns and thin, cruel eyes. They spoke and their voices were like a hissing record, scratchy and multitude.
They spoke in her ears and the sibilant tones of their evil left her petrified, eyes squeezed tightly shut, barely breathing, fists clenched.
Upon noticing her sleeplessness, her father said she could have a nightlight, if she was afraid of the dark.
She wasn't afraid of the dark. Of course not. She was afraid of what would happen when she opened her eyes and saw the beasts in the light.
She refused to let him plug in the night light; he did it anyway. She yanked it back out even though she'd been warned not to touch the outlets. She threw a cold, merciless, silent fit, and her father backed down and didn't make her keep it in her room.
He called her mother in to deal with her instead.
So her mother tucked her in every night even though her mother's job was time-consuming and required long hours. Her mother brushed the hair back from her forehead and kissed the spot her fingers had touched. Her mother's ritual was a talisman to ward off the demons.
Slowly, over the years, Kate slept easier. She stopped needing her mother's touch to soothe her, stopped relying on the benediction of a kiss on her forehead.
She grew to understand that the demons' voices were echoes of the water heater's rumblings coming up through the vent under her bed. She put aside the images as just vivid dreams and the imagination of a precocious three year old.
Until her mother was murdered.
Tonight, she fought dragons.
Last night, they'd been slavering dogs, with wicked teeth and shark-like eyes - too much knowledge, too intent on death.
These dragons? She could kick their ass with one hand tied behind her back. She was already kicking their asses. She was getting a little crispy - she could smell her hair getting singed - but these were demons she could handle.
She had some sci-fi/fantasy geek knowledge built up in her brain (wouldn't Castle be thrilled to know that?), and she had a sword that glistened with the dragons' green blood. She went for the tender places, where the chinks in their scales were, and she slayed dragons.
Slew dragons. Castle would correct her for that.
Still, when she woke up, she smelled the heat of fire-breathing beasts in the air of her room and her skin was raw at her neck and back where the dragons had gotten her.
The next night was spiders.
Beckett wasn't afraid of spiders. But these were. . .swarming. She was in bed, her mouth was pressed tightly shut, but they found ways inside her. Tiny little spiders, tickling her skin, brushing through her hair, a column of them circling her neck and creeping inside her mouth, plugging up her nose, loud inside her ears.
She trembled, wanted to scream, couldn't move.
She couldn't move.
Down her knees, the ridge of her tibia, spreading along her ankle towards her feet. Little spiders crawling between her toenails, creeping under her skin, under her skin-
She sucked in a breath of panicked air and felt the spiders race into her lungs, crawling, spinning webs, tickling her ribs, tumbling over each other in their haste.
Oh God.
The spiders on her face, under her eyelids, digging down past her cornea, her lens, her retina, destroying her vision, darkness, blindness, black-
She had to get them all out safely.
She couldn't tell anyone the killer was in the house; she just had to get them to leave. If everyone left, then she could take him on herself, and save them all.
Every time tonight, she had managed to empty the house but for one, sole straggler. Her mother. Her father. Ryan. Lanie. Castle. Someone who wouldn't go, wouldn't leave her or wouldn't take the bait.
She couldn't get them to leave the house. The killer was inside, with his gleaming knife; he was biding his time, laughing at her as she tried to make them leave, tried to save them, but it was no use.
No use. He was still here. He would not leave her alone. The knife came, a flash in the darkness, the fear in Castle's eyes as the knife disemboweled him even as he stood before her.
His guts spilled out at her feet; she was standing in the hot, sticky weight of his insides.
No.
Please, no.
Not again.
The alley. The body.
Her mother's open eyes.
Lifeless.
No more touch in the darkness of her room, no more kiss good night.
He touched her elbow and she jumped.
"You - okay?"
She jerked her head in a nod. "Okay." She didn't want to tell him, but something of his honesty this summer had rubbed off on her; she couldn't help giving him pieces of herself, one at a time, like tokens to collect for the bigger prize. "Just. . .woke a few times in the night."
He didn't frown, didn't patronize, didn't try to softly cajole her into revealing more or going home early. He just nodded, dropped his hand, sat beside her on her desk as she stared at the half-erased murder board.
It wasn't even the closed case that had gotten to her.
"You closed this one early," he said with a chuckle.
She glanced over at him, feeling the edges of her mouth creeping up. "We did."
"We," he amended with a happy grin. As if he'd been fishing for it. Silly man, he probably had.
"Still," she said softly, glancing back to the board. "It didn't use to surprise me."
"What?"
"When people kill the very ones they claim to love."
"And now it does?" he asked, his arm brushing hers.
She let the warmth build between them, grateful for it, and studied the face of the woman who had pushed her husband from the top turret of Belvedere Castle in Central Park. "And now it does."
Kate could hear the next question so loudly, he might as well have asked it. What's changed? Between then and now.
Enough. Enough had changed.
She would never push Castle from-
Enough.
Castle sighed. "And from the castle. That's just too sad for words."
She huffed a laugh and turned her eyes towards him, slanting her body so that her knee brushed his thigh. "Just because Nikki Heat finds. . .what did you call it? Salvation. Salvation in the Castle?" She paused, watched his eyes catch fire, a slow burn. "Doesn't mean that everyone necessarily has such a good impression of Castles."
His lips quirked into a smile, then he laughed, shaking his head.
Point for Beckett.
She turned back to the murder board, resolved, and stood up to wipe it clean.
It wasn't like she had to be talked into it; it wasn't like she let him con her into it either. She cleaned up the board, did her paperwork, and he was still there waiting. Like he did sometimes when he didn't have to run home or meet with the publisher or attend one of his daughter's recitals.
He held out her coat and let her shrug into it, then he wound his scarf around his neck and followed her down the hall, putting his own coat on. In the elevator, she was still battling with her gloves; her own scarf was falling; he looped it around her neck and gave it a quick tug.
She was pulled.
A little.
She came in close, looked up at him from under her lashes, gloves forgotten.
And then the moment wound out, unspooled, and was gone.
She stepped back.
They stopped for coffee first, something to keep their hands warm while they walked the rest of the way towards Remy's. Again. Second time, she realized.
Second? Unofficially. Still.
Knowledge was power. And relief. And soothing at the right times, in the darkness, when she needed her mother's touch.
Remy's was moderately filled, but not annoyingly so. They had a good table, a corner booth, one of three spots they always managed to get.
She sipped her takeout coffee and stared out the window at the night, the people, the traffic, the busyness. Castle sat across from her and finished ordering; the waitress left them alone.
"No milkshake?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Too cold."
"Ah."
"No Alexis?" she parried.
"I really want to answer that with Too cold but I got nothing."
She laughed, surprised to hear it from her own voice.
"Actually, Alexis is still a little. . .mopey about Stanford. I don't know exactly what to do."
As it always did when he shared his parenting woes, her heart softened towards him. It was when she first saw him as a father - a good father - that she began to really look at him, really see him, rather than let the facade blind her to all the good underneath. "I don't think there is anything you *can* do, Castle."
"I know," he nodded. "I've sheltered her. . .I've had to. . .but this is something that can make her stronger. With time."
Stronger. Kate dropped her eyes to her coffee and inhaled the steam. "She'll make it. You're here for her. She won't get lost."
And she knew as she said it, that it revealed too much about herself. But this was Castle, and yes, he was the only one who would understand her words and what they said about her own life, but he was also. . .also Castle.
She had nothing to fear.
"Seriously, who throws someone off a castle?" he said suddenly, exasperation in his voice.
She chuckled and raised her eyes to his, saw he'd been angling for it, saw how happy he was to get the laugh out of her.
Point for Castle.
The rain had been falling steadily for an hour now, and she wasn't crazy about going out there in it now. Castle seemed reluctant to leave as well, so they ordered dessert and more coffee, and she stood up to use the bathroom.
When she got back, he had already delved into the huge piece of chocolate cake, leaning back in the corner of the booth with the fork in his mouth and scraping it with his lips to get the last of the frosting.
Without thinking, she sat down beside him and grabbed the other fork, attacking the cake. Her elbow bumped his side as he sat back up; he grinned at her and nudged her fork aside, taking another frosting-rich bite away from her.
"Hey," she murmured, narrowing her eyes at him.
"You snooze, you lose," he shot back, putting his fork in his mouth.
She carved a bigger bite and worked on matching his pace.
His arm had sneaked across the top of the booth. When she leaned back, full of chocolate cake, her head hit the perfect cradle of his elbow, and she stayed there.
"Tired." He didn't ask, just observed.
She hummed something positive in response and propped her feet up on the bench seat across from them. His hand dropped down to her shoulder and pulled her against his side.
Her heart sped up for a second, then settled back down. She stayed there. Eyes closed.
"It's still raining," he whispered, and his voice was so close, so soft, a rumble that washed over her.
She turned her head to look, the sheen of water on the street, the tires spraying rain, and the people threading their way along the sidewalk with umbrellas that reminded her it was cold outside, and wet, and she was warm and comfortable right here.
"I don't want to go," she said.
"Don't have to," he replied, his fingers stroking up and down the round edge of her shoulder.
"It's too cold."
"It is."
At this angle, the night was out there and she was in here, and safe.
In the end, he called his car service, and they ran from the awning to the open black door, hustling inside, shivering in that short exposure.
In the dark and warm interior of the car, he rubbed her shoulders to ward off the chill, pulled her back against him again. She shivered, wrapped in her wet coat, and drew her knees up.
The drive to her apartment wasn't long, but the weather had made people careless or anxious, and the car was delayed behind accidents or flat tires or pedestrians jaywalking.
At some point, she must have slipped under the waves of exhaustion lapping at her, because she startled awake when he brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek.
"We're here," he said softly.
Oh.
She lifted up, brushing her hair back from her face with a hand, reached for the handle of the door just as the driver got to it, opened it for her.
Castle came out onto the sidewalk with her, walked her to the front door of her building, took her keys to unlock it for her.
She waited, watched the shadows painting his face, studied the line of his cheeks and nose and mouth, the deeper shadow of the scar over his left eyebrow, the faint stubble patterning his neck.
Kate reached out her fingers and brushed them across the line of his jaw in thank you, just as he got her door unlocked.
His head turned into her touch, his eyes a soft smile.
"Get some sleep," he said, and then he took her hand down and wrapped her fingers around her keys, his own hands warm around hers.
"I'll try," she promised, giving him a smile back.
His hands cupped her cheeks and tugged her closer, and she found she didn't mind, she had nothing against it, and then he was angling her head down, kissing the soft place on her forehead, his lips warm and tender.
He held open the door for her and she went alone inside her building.
Kate shed her coat at the closet door, couldn't find the energy to hang it up. She stepped out of her shoes even as she unbuttoned her pants, peeled her jacket off her shoulders and down her arms.
The holster and firearm next, which she carried into her bedroom with her, put into the box. She slid her pants off, the necklace after that. It coiled in a rope in the box, the ring dim in the darkness of her room.
Her bra went next; the rain licked the windows and made strange shadows along her skin. She pulled on the oversized tshirt, the leggings, and crawled between her sheets, pulled the duvet up under her neck, curled around the phantom warmth she still carried.
When she closed her eyes, her body still faintly hummed with the familiar touch of him.
She slept.
In the night, the stormy night
She closed her eyes
In the night, the stormy night
Away she flied
She dreamed of paradise
-Coldplay, 'Paradise'