Author's Note: Hi everyone! So I started this story a while ago, as a sort of way to help me deal with the death of my mom. This is different than anything I've written before, and I actually spent a long time working on it - but it's not necessarily finished. Honestly, I couldn't find a way to finish it, so I finally just decided to put it up the way it is. If you give this story a chance, I hope you'll take a moment to leave a little feedback - a lot of love (and other stuff) went into the making of this.
Spoilers: None. Kind of jumps through the seasons without really revealing much.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
She had discovered long ago that one of the great horrors of life was that it just kept going, even if she had thought that it must surely stop; even if her heart was broken.
She had cried that first day, upon learning of her mother's fate. She'd sobbed and shook and collapsed into a heap on the floor as her brain simultaneously tried to work it all out and bury it as deeply as possible; she'd lost all sense of time and space and simply floated in a cocoon of silent nothingness. She couldn't say how long she'd stayed that way, numb to everything but the relentless litany of we'resorryforyourloss and she'sdead that stomped its winding way from her head down to curl steel claws around her heart.
Kate had stayed on the floor, blinking blind eyes at white walls as she desperately tried to commit her mother's face to memory even as it faded away, for years. Years that she had mistaken for one single, terrible day.
After that day, she didn't cry again for a long time.
When she had finally managed to drag herself off that scratchy piece of carpet, she had found herself living in a strange new world. A world where senseless killings were a daily occurrence; a world where her dream of following in her mother's footsteps to be a lawyer was shattered; a world where coming home to find her father senseless and passed out with a bottle in his hand was as regular as her breathing. She had hated that new world, raged against it within the confines of her mind whilst learning to adapt to surviving its harshness. She'd moved home and finished school in a haze of desolation and madness, her days an endless stream of disappointment and disillusion. She had stopped going out with friends or returning their phone calls, partly because it was just too hard to keep up the illusion of being okay and partly because she had found that she no longer had anything to say. Kate had been too lost to reach out, and eventually they had stopped trying.
During that time, Kate had watched her father circle the drain and been helpless. She'd called out for him, reached out through their shared cloud of sorrow and tried to pull him through it with nothing but the force of her will. His failure to recognize her effort – and her failure to succeed – had been another blow to a heart already bowed in defeat. Still, she had buried that pain and simply resigned herself to shouldering yet another burden: that of caring for her now distant, alcoholic father. She didn't remember a lot from those first months – only the sheer exhaustion and hollowness of heart that had sent her to bed at the first opportunity.
Many nights had passed in which she would simply lay in bed, staring at the pictures of memories now collected on her walls, and wonder if she believed in a Heaven. She didn't think she'd ever found an answer - just more questions: if there was a Heaven, was her mother looking down on her and her father and lamenting what they had become? Did she see how her loss had ripped them asunder, tearing and clawing until they were mere specters of the people they once were? Did that transformation disappoint her?
Kate had stopped believing then. She didn't believe in Heaven, or an afterlife, or much of anything really. She believed only what she knew: that her mother was gone, lost to her forever, and that if any of that other stuff did exist, it didn't matter. It didn't matter, and she didn't care, because it had absolutely no impact on her life. If there was a Heaven, and her mother truly was watching over them, then Kate didn't want to contemplate the depth of her disapproval. She didn't want to think about what her mother would say to her drunkard husband, or her bitter daughter. Those were thoughts best left untouched.
The idea to go to the Academy and become a cop hadn't come to her straight away. In fact, sometimes she was amazed that the idea had come at all, or really that she'd stuck with the decision long enough to see it through. The years leading up to that choice were filled with everything except decisiveness; in fact, even when she looked back upon them now, Kate barely recognized herself. She knew now that it had been a manifestation of her grief: her father had turned to the bottle, and Kate had turned to … well, she didn't really know, actually. In a way, she supposed that she had turned to everything. She drank, but she was careful never to let it go too far – her father was enough of a drunk for both of them; in a fit of childish rage, she chopped off the long hair her mother had so loved and bleached it blonde, only to let it grow out again and dye it a shade lighter than black; she forgot to eat regularly (or, some days, at all) or swung to the other end of the spectrum and finished off whole pizzas by herself because her father couldn't drag himself out of the bottle long enough to be bothered with food. The cycle went on for months, a strange pattern of not enough or too much that permeated almost every aspect of her life; her steadiness of character was being worn down by the chaos of constant emotion, the tension that the pull of opposites created undoubtedly being one of the few things that actually helped keep her from falling apart.
That was the only time in Kate's life that she had thought that, maybe, falling apart wouldn't be so bad.
She had been watching the news recap one night after making sure her father was in bed when the telecaster had started in on a story about a local cop who had died in the line of fire. They interviewed his wife – they were newlyweds – and rather than talk about the horror of losing the man she loved or how she hated the person who had taken his life, the woman had chosen to talk about the way her husband's precinct had stepped in to provide her with support and companionship. The telecaster had faded to scenes of men and women, some in uniform and others not, collecting money for the widow, bringing her homemade meals, and even the police Captain presenting the woman with the plaque they had made to commemorate her husband's life – and death.
Kate hadn't known it then, but she had been looking at the men and women of the 12th Precinct, and that Captain had been none other than Roy Montgomery.
The identity of those people hadn't mattered to her all those years ago sitting on her couch, however – all that had mattered was what they represented: unity, support, and companionship. When she looked at those nameless people and saw what they had done, Kate had felt the first stirrings of something she had long been devoid of: belief. Belief that even in this new, colorless world in which she had come to live after the loss of her mother, people could still be decent to one another; belief that, although she may never get closure for what had happened to her, there was still closure out there to be had.
That was when the idea had come to her: perhaps she could find meaning in a senseless act. Perhaps she could turn her personal tragedy into something that more closely resembled a triumph.
She had applied to the Academy that same week.
Kate's driving need to find support and purpose had brought her to the Academy, but it wasn't what had kept her there. She had stayed because, surprisingly, she found that she actually enjoyed what she was doing. She had learned to shoot a pistol and to love cross country runs; she had learned to understand and even revel in the gallows humor that came with the uniforms and shiny nametags. Gradually, the Academy, with its people and codes and lessons, had begun to strip away the layers of chaos that encumbered her. Kate learned to control that darkness that wound its shadowed way through her heart, finding that it only threatened to pull her under every once in awhile instead of nearly every day.
Bit by agonizing bit, her belief had come back to her.
By the time she had graduated, Kate had absolved herself of the responsibility of looking after her father. She told him, in no uncertain terms, that he needed to get himself together and get clean. In hindsight, her words had probably been sharper and more harsh than necessary, but she had still been a little too angry to care if she was causing additional pain. She had moved out that same day, into an apartment closer to the Precinct she had been assigned to – the 12th, of all things - and settled into creating some normalcy and stability for herself.
There were pitfalls, of course: she simply couldn't resist the draw of her mother's unsolved case. For all that she had managed to stitch the pieces of herself into something resembling a functioning human being, the stitches were threadbare and weak. So she had let herself be sucked down that rabbit hole without much of a fight, learning to devote what free time she had to sitting in the half-lit precinct archives with a full mug of coffee to keep her going while she drowned in her mother's file.
Mike Royce had been the first person to throw her a line.
Well, he hadn't so much thrown her a line as he had just pulled her out of the hole, set her on her feet and demanded that she do better. He had been gruff, relentless and firm in his teaching and guidance; by the time her awe of him wore off enough to let her get her mind straight, she'd been in love with him. When she had finally told him of her mother, he hadn't shied away from her or condemned her for her obsession – he'd just pushed her harder, and aimed her at the bad guys. In fact, she thought that he'd probably pushed her harder than anyone else ever had. If you want it, get up and take it, he'd say, because no one is going to give it to you. Instead of hating him for what others may have called his callousness, Kate had seen it as fierceness and not only admired him for it, but strove to emulate it.
When he left, his instruction stayed. She had floundered for awhile, but soon discovered that his imprint stayed with her like ink on a page; the memory of him barking at her to keep going, to reach the point of giving up and then soldier on drove her forward.
In Royce's absence, Kate had discovered that she truly liked Roy Montgomery. He was a good Captain and a kind man, and one that understood her better than she could have known. She had come to like him even more when, in the face of her resistance at being partnered with someone else, he had let her talk herself dry and then told her matter-of-factly that he was the Captain and she was shit out of luck.
Javier Esposito had not been what she expected. An ex-Army Ranger turned beat cop with no shortage of good looks and sharp retorts, their first few cases together had been a study in how to successfully engage in a power struggle using as few words as possible. He had resented her inexperience, and Kate had flat out hated the way those sharp eyes of his seemed to see through her carefully constructed barriers and straight to those crooked, hidden stitches that held her together. Only several months later, when they had begrudgingly decided that the other merited respect and consideration, did they discover that they actually kind of got along. She didn't mention his past as a sniper, and he didn't talk about her brokenness; friendship had come quickly after that.
Right about the time she and Esposito had found a rhythm for themselves – one that had worked exceptionally well, if their solve rate had been any indication – Captain Montgomery had thrown a wrench into their routine.
Kevin Ryan had been a surprise to them both. Young and baby faced, he had thrown their infant team into a dizzying nose dive at first. His idealism was in direct opposition to Kate's hidden anger, and yet despite their differences he and Esposito had somehow managed to hit it off right from the start. She hadn't begrudged them their easy friendship … too much. She couldn't understand what they could possibly have in common; a few weeks and scattered conversations later, she had come to realize that it was difficult for anyone not to like Kevin Ryan.
Somewhere in that time, between learning how to keep herself afloat and creating a niche for herself at the precinct, her dad had found it in himself to sober up. He'd called to tell her of his accomplishment, and to beg her to give him another chance without ever actually saying the words. She had held out for a few days, but in the end she had (metaphorically) run crying into his arms. Regardless of his transgressions, he was still her father, and the only parent she had left; her last and only tie to her mother.
He had seen the ring she had taken from her mother's jewelry box and fastened around her neck with a chain almost immediately, but he had never questioned her about it. Deep down, she had always known that it wasn't because he didn't care, but because she didn't need to explain. Where the external world would see only a ring, he saw it for what it truly was: a tether, a reminder, a lifeline to a person and a life lost.
Kate had considered it a testament to their relationship when her father had presented her with his watch some days later. When she'd raised an eyebrow at him in question, he'd pointed with a sad smile to her mother's ring and told her it was the symbol of the life she lost; the watch, however, was the symbol for the one she saved. His words had almost made her cry – if crying was something she had done then – because she had recognized them for what they were: the acknowledgement of her effort, her push to get him back on his feet. That had been the first time since they'd lost Johanna that Kate had felt like she had a father again.
Kate had lived a half- life, a shadow life, for many years. She had done surprisingly well, considering; she had been working her way up the ranks within the precinct rather quickly, throwing herself into the job at a breakneck speed with very little reservation. The fire that drove her – the desire to find the person responsible for her mother's death – never really lessened or went away, she merely became adept at directing it somewhere else. She had convinced herself that this life could be enough for her, that she could be content knowing that she caught the bad guys. She had not been happy – she wasn't sure she was even capable of being truly happy anymore – but she had been content.
She would have stayed that way, too, if it hadn't been for Richard Castle.
Kate doubted that she could have prepared herself for someone like him even if she had had some advanced warning of his arrival. Their paths would never have crossed, should never have crossed in any world she could imagine. The idea of her favorite author – the man whose books had been the first thing a desensitized and angry Kate could find it in herself to connect with; the one whose books were widely responsible for pulling her through her darkness - waltzing into her life one day had seemed as impossible to her as time travel. Waltzing was exactly what he had done, however, - or, perhaps more aptly - blowing into her world like a tornado over a cornfield, and leaving just about the same amount of destruction.
To this day, she wasn't entirely certain exactly how he had managed to stay, or when exactly she had discovered that she wanted him to.
Kate had thought at first that Richard Castle was the antithesis of all that she was. His carefree lifestyle and generally flippant attitude grated on every nerve she had because it was fundamentally different from the person she had become. She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but the flirtatious and outrageously self -assured man who dared compliment her eyes during an interrogation hadn't been it.
She would have been rid of him too, right there in the beginning, if it hadn't been for Roy.
Instead, she had found herself saddled with the larger than life author-pretending-to-be-detective; only years later had she learned about the bet that Ryan and Esposito had started to decide how long he would make it before she'd killed him. Surprisingly, Ryan had won that bet, and she had actually laughed when they'd told her about it one night over after work drinks at the Old Haunt.
Kate had been (quietly) surprised at just how helpful Castle was as a partner. Barring his silly mob and CIA theories that he insisted on throwing out, he had displayed a talent for critical thinking and problem solving that would have made him an excellent cop. She had resented it a little at first, if she were honest, because he had seemed so out of place in the middle of the bull pen with his baby blue eyes and easy smile. She had resisted his charms, his attempts to lighten situations or just generally draw her out, for what had felt like forever. The last thing she had wanted was this man to write a book about her, to hang all of her dirty (and still painful) laundry out for all the world to see. Her dysfunctional way of operating had worked for her; she had perfected the art of reinforcing those stupid stitches one at a time, over and over again, and then here came this man who just wanted to rip her open for his own entertainment.
She didn't know when she'd first realized that he wasn't actually trying to rip her open; for a long time, she had not allowed herself to acknowledge that under those shrewd eyes had been something more akin to genuine warmth than to malice. Kate had not wanted to be reminded of how broken she was, or face the idea that there might actually be someone out there who would not run from her tragedy. He had been so damn considerate, however, such a mix of boyish impishness and adult compassion that she had found herself blooming like the first flower of summer before she'd really even been fully aware. He had succeeded, despite all her efforts to block him, at drawing her to the surface; he had called for her, guided her with halting and sometimes painful steps out of the bleakness of the shadows and into the light. She had balked so many, many times, but he had just kept showing up – just kept turning around to metaphorically take her by the hand and show her how and where to place her feet until she'd not only found the rhythm, but adapted it to his.
Where the Academy and the Precinct had reestablished her belief in the world and her fellow human beings, Richard Castle had restored something much more dear to her: he had given her back her faith and belief in herself. Not as an officer of the law – she had known that she was a good cop, and Royce had made sure to make her better – but her belief in herself as a person; as a woman, and a worthwhile venture. Even as he had peeled away her layers (and she had let him), he had never shown her anything but acceptance and support. He had taken one look at those stupid crooked stitches of hers and, instead of writing her off as hopeless or wasted, insisted that she did not have to live the rest of her life that way. He had challenged her, driven her to do more and be more and live more; he had been the first person to come along and make her see that she was still the Kate that had loved ice skating and strawberry milkshakes and life.
Richard Castle had been the wildfire in a cold, colorless world that she had thought herself doomed to spend the rest of her days in.
Kate had fallen in love with his creativity, his zest, his insatiable quest for experiences and knowledge and happiness; unfortunately, these had turned out to be the same things that held her in check out of fear. She had no guarantee that, once combined, the individual flames that burned so brightly within each of them would not sputter and die; or, worse, swell into a raging inferno that consumed both of them and left them exhausted and hollow. He had already been married twice, and in their four years together she had never been able to ferret out the reasons they had failed, and that scared her. She had held her tongue, forced herself to turn away from all of the opportunities that had come for her to tell him that she knew because she had wanted to be certain; maybe a little certain of him, that he was in it for the long haul, but mostly certain of herself and that she was ready and capable of making the same commitment. She had waited because it was important – perhaps one of the most important things in her life.
She had waited, and the wait had nearly cost her everything.