Last Song

...

"I did it Castle … I finally found them all …" Kate felt her chest ache with her confession, the words burning their way up her throat and over her tongue, leaving her lips numb. " … and I made them pay for what they did."

She reached up and pulled a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, tucking it away from where it continued to fall against her cheek. It was shorter now but still long enough to hang down below her ears to the middle of her throat. It was died dark black and the cut in the style from a few years ago; years before she admitted that she was falling in love with one Richard Castle. A love that hadn't diminished over the years that followed, nor in the weeks and months since she had turned her back on the life the she and her husband were building together.

Beckett stood stoically in the afternoon sun, the last days of winter edging closer to the warmth and beauty of spring. There were buds on the trees around her and the birds were already out, singing their merry little tunes through the limbs that swayed in the morning's gentle breeze.

This meeting was long overdue and the words from that night from so long ago, haunted her thoughts and memories. She'd told him she loved him, asked him if he trusted her, and then she had grabbed her bag and made it all the way into the hallway before the tears overwhelmed her and she had paused in her race to the elevator. For a brief moment, two Kate's had warred with each other out in that hallway.

One was desperate to drop her bag and run back into her husband's arms where she knew he was waiting for her to come back. The solace of his warm embrace would chase away all of her thoughts of bringing down the people who had so callously murdered her former teammates. Castle would smother her sobs with his kisses and hold her until her body against his until she no longer trembled in frustration and anger. They would tumble back into their life together, eating smorettes and making love until their bodies were satiated and their souls united as one. She would captain the 12th, leading the best team of officers and detectives against the worst that the city could throw at them. She would live, love, and be loved … and she would have the man that she loves beside her … always.

But there was another Kate jockeying for position and dominance. This Kate was fierce and angry, determined and driven to obtain justice for those that she had lost recently. It was true that she had only worked with these people for a few months, knew them for just a short time longer, but they deserved better than a blurb in the papers and their pictures hung on the Wall of Heroes in the federal building down in D.C. There should be justice for them and if that wasn't a possibility, then vengeance would suffice. A cause to give her focus, put her feet to the ground and give her another cause to give her life meaning. There wasn't time for bracelets, family, or attachments of any kind.

When she turned back toward the elevator, Fierce Kate was fully in charge and in command. Her steps away from the loft were no longer tentative and stumbling, but purposeful and strong. This wasn't the time for thinking about how good the concoction simmering on the stove had smelled nor how tempting Rick's pleas had been. Now was the time for the hunters to become the prey, and Kate Beckett was on the hunt.

"I'm sorry Castle … I … I can't even begin to tell you how much." Kate hesitated, not really expecting much of a response, the distance between her and her husband one of her own doing and machinations. He had tried to insinuate himself into case after case, in a vain attempt to make her see what she had walked away from and what she was sacrificing in her chase of yet another ghost.

Castle had shown up at all the most ridiculous places, almost like he had some inside information that allowed him to know where she was going to be at that particular time. It was true that the boys had been caught off-guard by the sudden separation and the writer's force exile from the precinct. Even worse was when, weeks later, they had discovered the who behind the decision. Neither of them let it affect their professional relationship, but the tear that had formed between Ryan and Espo with the woman who they each loved like a sister wasn't something that was going to be easily repaired, if ever. Kate knew they were rooting for reconciliation between Mom and Dad, letting Castle know where they were headed for an interview or a canvas in the off-chance that something would shift and the world would go back to the way it was supposed to be.

All their valiant efforts had accomplished was to push Beckett further down the rabbit hole of her quest and causing Castle even more heart ache and pain.

It had taken longer than she had hoped and a lot less than she expected, but eventually, her husband finally began to see things her way and began to withdraw himself from the world she was so desperately trying to protect him from. It was gradual, his surprise coffees in the morning morphing into an occasional visit during lunch which she always blew off for paper work or clandestine searches using off the books resources. It was almost six months to the day she packed her overnight bag and left her home, that Castle made his last appearance at a shared crime scene, his face and body haggard and tired from too many nights trying to sleep alone.

He hadn't said anything that day, just gave her one last broken smile in a vain attempt to steal her attention for more than a second or two. But she'd turned away just when she felt her resolve begin to crumble and, moments later, when she looked to where he had been standing, she could only watch as he walked away. In her heart, she ached for him to pause and turn to look back once more, but he strode away, his shoulders slumped and his feet slow. It was in that moment that she knew he wouldn't be coming after her any more. If there was to be a drastic shift in the chasm between them, this time she would have to be the one who moved to repair it.

That day, she purposed in her heart, that the moment … the very instant … that this was over, she would run to him, hunt him down if she had too … and she would beg, grovel, plead for him to take her back and forgive her for tearing up the life that they had built together. She knew that she had hurt him beyond what anyone had ever done to him before, that the trust that had been forged over so many years and so many moments together had been broken and was in shambles at her feet. It would take a herculean effort on both their parts to make it right between them once more, and she would bare the largest share of the effort to repair what was broken.

That's what she was doing today, making good on that promise.

But she knew the 'happily ever after' wasn't coming, not in the silence that surrounded her nor in the hollowness in her chest.

"I know it seems pointless now … after the ways things turned out between us …" The old familiar ache in her chest began to churn once more, threatening to overwhelm her before she could finish what she came here to do. " … if … if there was a way … if I could trade anything … I would go back to that night at the loft."

Castle's blues eyes danced before her, the way they used too when he looked at her with complete love and adoration that it made her lightheaded. There was this look that he used to give her, one colored by mischievousness and mischief, as if he could simply look at her forever or if he should rip her clothes off and take her right then and there. Oh, for the days of those types of looks again. They were a distant memory now, more than simple blood of the innocents on her hands now. She had crushed the heart of the man who wanted nothing more than to love her for all of eternity.

"I would run back to you … kiss you senseless … eat one of those horrible smorettes …" Kate chuckled lightly, wiping away a traitorous tear that had escaped to cascade down her cheek. " … then I would have made love to you … I would love you, totally and completely … just like I always should have."

Beckett let out a choked sob, the pain becoming too much.

"I'm sorry Rick … I'm so … so sorry."

The silence remained.

Still and empty.

Kate leaned forward pressing her lips to the top of the headstone, her tears dripping onto the flat surface of the granite. She let her eyes fall to the name etched into the rock; the name that once ghosted her lips in the throes of passion was now the source of endless nightmares that even haunted her in the day light.

RICHARD EDGAR RODGERS CASTLE

Beloved Son, Father, Friend, and Husband

Words carved into the memorial and into her heart forever.

"Oh God … Rick … I miss you so much."

They'd been taken in the night, he and Alexis. Taken away from them to be used against her while she was lost in her crusade. The false separation doing nothing to protect the ones she had sacrificed her own happiness for, the evil ones she hunted knowing who her true weaknesses were. By the time she and her team found out, there was no need for questioning the outcome of the horror that engulfed them all.

But Castle had fought back, whether in an effort to free his daughter or in a vain attempt to make it back to Kate, no one would truly know for sure. Alexis had been found, alive but bruised and bleeding, but alive. She'd spent a few days in the hospital for evaluations and precaution against infection, but her physical wounds had healed easily compared to the pain of losing her father who died protecting her.

Castle's broken body had been located at the abandoned warehouse where he and Alexis had been held while Beckett and every resource she could muster attempted to find them. But when the trail led them to the dusty building, Alexis had been found crumpled underneath her father, his body shielding her from the maniacs bent on killing them both. The killers had been shot down, by either Beckett or members of the team but her husband had taken too many hits and his life blood had run out before medical aid could arrive.

It was a sad and bitter moment as Kate had held him, his eyes partially open and his breath ragged. Her tears had wet his face and her arms clutched frantically at him as she screamed for him to wake up, to not leave her. But his eyes never moved and the only sound he uttered was the soft death rattle that reverberated through his chest into hers as she held him while he breathed his last.

There was no dramatic Hollywood "Good-bye Kate … I've always loved you" for Beckett to cling to, just a pair of beautiful but lifeless blue orbs that were waiting just inside her eyelids every time she closed her eyes. She had no opportunity to tell him her heart, to say the things she should have said long ago … it all ended that night on a dirty floor that smelled of old wood and oil.

There was no victory. Even when the ones behind it all were either dead or on their way to a life of prison, Kate had no solace to hold onto when the darkness came. The rift between her and her team of detectives had grown to the point where a transfer to another precinct was the only option left. Her father had been there to love and support her through it all, but Martha had been both a comfort and a sad reminder of what had been sacrificed on the altar of justice and revenge.

Alexis had barely spoken two words to her since leaving the hospital, the funeral service a charade of funny anecdotes and memories of a man who loved too much for his own good that had torn away at the young woman, her eyes a scary reflection of the ones a young Kate Beckett had worn for far too long. There was no repairing that relationship and after several failed attempts at some sort of restoration, Beckett had seen the signs on the wall and had walked away from the little Castle for the last time.

It had all seemed so simple in Kate's mind. It would hurt for a while but the force separation between her and Castle could be rebuilt and restored. Yes, it would take time for him to fully forgive her and the trust that had been broken would take even longer to be forged anew, but it wasn't hopeless.

Yet, now it was.

There would be no more silly theories about time traveling vampire aliens or sasquatches running amok in Central Park stealing uranium from secret CIA labs under the lake. There would be no more weekends sneaking off to the Hamptons for slow walks along the beach and sex in the shallow end of the pool. There would be no more of those silly smirks that made her weak in the knees and sent her running into his arms.

It was all gone.

Everything that she had only wanted to protect.

Everything that she held dear to her heart.

She'd lost everything chasing after a vapor while letting go what she held firmly in her hands. What was meant to be Beckett's past, present and future all rolled into one had died in her arms, leaving her with nothing but ashes to hold onto.

"The only 'Always' I can give you babe … is that I will always love you … I will always carrying you in my heart … it's … it's the only thing I have left."

Kate walked away, the birds in the trees oblivious to the broken woman as she passed beneath them, their songs rising merrily through the air into a clear, blue sky.

…

A/N: I wrote this after watching the last episode in a fit of despondency and utter frustration. I think it was my way of venting and letting it all out before I lost my ever loving mind. I am interested in the story arc and how it will all play out, I just think that the consequences should be rather dramatic when Kate finally comes back to see Castle. This was born from that.

Semper Fi

JS