A/N - This story was originally posted as 'Battle Scars' but remained incomplete and was removed for some time due to contractual obligations I was under at the time. I am now released from that employment contract and am extremely excited to be back in this community as a writer. A lot of the story was lost, so I shall post it incrementally as I am able to piece it back together whilst working on the remainder of the story. Though I have numerous snippets of other story ideas already jotted down, I hated having to let this story drop, particularly after it initially garnered such kind and insightful support. I apologise to those who asked after the story and hope that you are able to follow along anew. Thank you.
"Kate, I love you. I love you, Kate."
Her focus blurs, everything disjointed as she hovers in the disconnect, the phantom breath of his words sweeping down her neck. The crisp edge of reality flickers, its temperamental existence unravelling in ephemeral lapses between blue and red. She turns and turns back, sways, dazed. Lanie crashes into her and knocks her away.
She catches a shock of Alexis's hair and she goes to reach for her but Ryan is there, pressing the girl's shoulder and she's gone. Everyone is moving. Going. "Beckett!" Sound comes muffled and distant as Esposito shoves at her, rough and impatient. She stumbles and his palm pushes hard against her spine. "Go, go," he yells, as the doors shutter him out.
The space is too small and Lanie keeps pushing, feet knocking into Kate's and shoving her on. Lanie twists over her shoulder and her ordinarily soft mouth scrunches up, revealing something frightful and vicious. "Move, Kate, move!" she hisses.
"Sorry," Kate wheezes and shuffles back. She presses herself away, awfully aware of her size, the clumsiness of her too tall, uncompromising body. Her shoulder blades flatten against the back of the driver's seat as she focuses on making herself small, giving them space. "I'm so sorry," she whispers, because it's all that's left.
They tip roughly into a ditch in the road and everything lurches forward. Kate's knees buckle and her body skitters down beside the stretcher with a sickening crack. "God, I'm so sorry," she repeats. The warmth of his blood leaches up through her dress blues and a sob claws its way through her chest as she bends forward to press a desperate plea into his hair, "please stay."
"Beckett!" Lanie snaps.
Kate raises her head and realises the paramedic is rushing on, barking questions at her that she's unfairly surprised to find she answers quite instinctively. "Codeine," she says, "He's allergic to codeine, and he had a stomach ulcer about ten years ago."
Blood. There's too much blood, she knows. Lanie is frantic, body surging up and into him and the EMT's shouting, pushing her away. Lanie knocks her hands away and his body jerks and crashes, electricity surging through him. It's only a second and they are all back on him. Lanie is fast and all she can think is Lanie, I can't do this, don't let him die.
The doors fly open and she's too slow. His hair slips out of her fingertips. She's running, her shoulders crash against the swinging doors as they sweep out behind him and she keeps moving. Her heel slips in the stream of blood they've left behind and she goes down. Her hip connects with floor and she pleads, wails, "Please!" though she knows no one can hear her. Nobody is listening.
It's too bright and they're leaving, they don't have time for her. She gets to her feet to go after him, to just stay with him. She rounds the corner and catches sight of Lanie, still straddled over him, pumping furiously at his chest and scolding him, scolding him even now.
She hears Lanie's voice, strict and demanding and drifting further away, "Come on, Rick, don't you die on me. Stay with me, stay with me."
After that everything is muffled and broken. She can barely make out the voices, stuttering and talking over each other, fast and sharp and useless.
"Come on, Rick, do not die. Do not die."
"Set up for a chest tube, Trauma 1."
"Switch, we got this."
"This is my friend, you understand me, he's my friend."
"Then let us save his life."
It's the last thing she hears before they disappear through another set of doors and she falters, body wreaked and trembling, frozen. Please, don't leave me.
A moment later the doors squeal, a startling sound slicing through the bleak emptiness. Kate lifts her head and finds Lanie, shadowed by the swinging doors. Her hands hang limply at her sides, his blood slowly dripping from her fingertips. The usual glint in her eyes is murky with fear, plump lips falling open on a soundless apology. She steps forward, bloodied hands reaching for her friend, but Kate stumbles back, her spine connecting with the wall.
Kate vehemently shakes her head and it stops Lanie's approach. "Don't, Lanie," she whispers. A low howling keen hiccups at the base of her throat and her hold body seems to convulse with grief. "I love him," she sobs.
The unspoken, I'll never forgive you, I'll never forgive myself, hangs heavy between them. Nodding, Lanie sighs, "I know, sweetie, I know you do." She steps forward and Kate folds down into her arms, hanging limply over her shoulders and trembling with sorrow.
Kate hears Ryan's voice, furious and determined, the roughly barked orders bouncing off the walls and she turns. She catches the swish of red half a second before the air is pushed sharply from her lungs and her shoulder blades crack roughly against the wall. The sharp jut of Alexis's chin presses hard against Kate's sternum and she straightens her spine, offers the girl the little that is left of herself.
Thin, quivering arms wrap around her waist and Kate bundles her up, the young girl suddenly so small, so fragile. Kate rests her chin on Alexis's head, keeps her close. "They just took him in," she murmurs.
[x]
The violescent sky begins to bruise into a battered blue as the seven of them, dressed in black and marred by circumstance wait silently in rigid plastic seats. The place is sterile, quiet and unpromising, the sharp smell of chemicals that mopped away his blood in the entrance burning at the back of Kate's throat.
The boys come and go, they pace and huddle and say things she doesn't understand. Lanie at least washed his blood from her skin but their clothes are hardening with it and the coppery smell lingers heavily around them. Martha and Alexis are pressed against each other, folded awkwardly over sharp armrests with empty eyes and her dad is folded up next to them, silently stoic, as always.
Ryan is the one who surprises her. He spreads himself thin and fills up the spaces that she has abandoned. He is fast and methodical, unwavering. Esposito is throwing his weight around like some crazed thing, but they are moving around each other seamlessly. She catches snatches of their conversations, Ryan setting unreasonable deadlines, calling in favours now because he can, because he is quiet and hard-working and more people owe him than they will ever know. Espo jerks about, shaken and restless, he settles beside Lanie, he brushes a hand to Kate's shoulder, he moves along again.
The sun drops away completely. Still, nobody speaks.
"Ah… Beckett," Ryan says, nodding to the doors at the far end of the hall before barking down his phone again.
"Kate, a sniper at a funeral?" Josh questions indignantly, clearing the doors and staunching toward her.
She jumps up, pressing her tired fingers to his shoulder and ushering him into the hallway before he can say anything more. Her father frowns; his eyes crinkling and nostrils flaring as she moves to pass him, and Kate had rebelled enough in her youth to recognize this look when his disappointment in her comes both startling and confusing. "Please don't, Dad," she murmurs.
His worn fingertips slide over her wrist as she slips past. "Oh, Katie," he sighs, nodding his head toward Josh's back, silently urging her to do right.
"Josh –" Kate starts as she rounds the corner, but her words are cut off, open mouth buried against his scrubs as he tugs her into him, arms tight around her waist.
He tucks two fingers under her chin to lift her face before he speaks, his ordinarily deep voice roughened further by panic, "Jeez, Kate, it could have been you. I heard the call in at emergency, the funeral, and I was just… I was so worried."
It startles her, though she's vaguely aware that it shouldn't. "What?" She roughs out, her throat raw with restrained anguish. Her palm presses against his chest, guiding him away, and all her sharp features twist into something almost unkind. "It shouldhave been me, Josh! That bullet was for me!"
He stares down at her, affronted by her ignorance of the fear she'd incited. "My god, Kate," he growls, undispersed panic still hunching his shoulders despite the way he reaches out and curls his fingers against her hip. "He is the one who pushed you back into your mother's murder. If he was shot, that is why. He opened her case, played cop, put you all in danger. This is not your fault, Kate, no matter how responsible for him you feel." He realise his indiscretion a moment too late, fear turning him vicious against any threat to this woman he loves despite every warning he's seen against doing just that. Loving her, he knows, is a dangerous, losing game.
Kate's hands knot up into fits against her side and she moves to tell him to leave, Please, just leave me, but Josh's eyes catch over her shoulder, widening with something this side of horror. She turns a second too late.
"Shut up! He didn't deserve this!" Alexis shouts. She lashes out from behind Beckett and shoves Josh. He stumbles, the bulky weight of his broad shoulders hitting the wall before he springs forward, clumsily righting himself.
"Whoa, Alexis," Beckett gasps, turning to grab hold of the girl's shoulders. She reels her in fast and wraps her up before twisting over her shoulder, "Go, Josh. Now!" She spits, harshly.
Alexis's body is stiff with rage and Beckett, in some unearthed maternal instinct, attempts to soften her own self in compensation. "Why was he even here?" Alexis growls into Kate's collar. Suddenly, after a long breath, she pushes against her. Breaking Beckett's hold, she turns to leave, long soft locks licking out around her in a hellish halo as she twists back toward her, "or actually, you know what, what the hell are you even doing here?" she barks. The colour drains from her youthful face, turning her aged in moments. She squares her shoulders, a reflection of her father in the way she fights. "Why don't you just go, Detective? Just leave with your boyfriend!" she finally spits, skilfully detached.
The girl begins pacing, movements jerky and trembling despite the vehemence with which she moves, stalking dangerously around Kate. Kate's fingers furl and unfurl against the still damp material of her uniform. Her hand reaches out and falls back again as Alexis's tightly wound body begins to falter, trembling as she turns herself around and around, falling into hysteria.
Kate takes a deep breath and strikes out, a quick move that reels the girl in and tucks her against her own shaking body. Kate's arms wind tightly around Alexis's shoulders, trapping the girl's bent arms and balled fists between them. The angry shudders coursing through the girl knock against Beckett and she holds on tighter, squeezes her arms and gets an ankle around one of the girl's. She curls down around her and shushes her gently, rocking back and forth. "Alexis, hey, stop. Honey, stop… stop. Just look at me."
The girl is adamant in her anger, still twisting roughly against Kate, struggling to pull away. Kate sighs and shifts, wrapping her hands tightly around her shoulders and swiftly pushing her at arms-length. It startles the girl into stillness as she blinks, stunned, at Kate. Beckett ducks down, gently wiping the wet tangled locks from Alexis's face. "It's him, Alexis," Kate quietly assures, her face softening into a sweet, saddened smile, "Your Dad. It's always been him."
Alexis hurtles back into her. She wraps her arms around Kate in a hold too wild, adrenaline and anger leaving her muscles taut and straining. Kate runs her hand through the girl's hair, palm curving over the base of her skull and tucking her gently under her chin as the girl shatters. Her lithe frame shudders, racked with gut-wrenching sobs as Kate takes the weight of her, crying softly into his daughter's hair in shared grief.
Alexis sniffles, twisting her face into Kate's neck like a toddler seeking home. "Kate," she whispers into the wet skin at the base of Kate's throat, "Kate, I hate you."
Kate nods. "I know, Alexis, I know you do," she whispers just as gently. She presses a kiss to the crown of the girl's head, tightening her hold for a moment before she lets her go.
Alexis's deflated form rounds the corner and Kate slides down the wall, body collapsing under the weight of herself as she sobs quietly, hitting the ground.
[x]
Moments later familiar arms loop over her shoulder, the warmth and weight of a curved palm tugging her against a solid chest so steep in memory it makes her feel small, unbroken. "Katie, listen to me," her father murmurs against her hair, "I know you're hurting, but she's still so young, his little girl needs you to be strong now."
Misplaced nastiness rises in her, something about hypocrites squaring her shoulders, but she bites her tongue, knows it to be a coping mechanism that's never really helped. She presses her chin further to her chest and shrugs against the tension. "She hates me, Dad," she finally admits.
"No, Katie- " his instinctive rebuttal comes but Kate breaks over him, can't stand some useless platitude now.
Her voice is scratched with remorse, "She does, Dad, she told me and it's… fair. I deserve it. God, what have I done?"
"Katherine Beckett, neither stupidity nor self-pity sit well on a woman like you."
Jim's arm tightens around Kate's shoulders as her head shoots up, eyes scrunched as she squints to bring Martha's silhouette into focus. His mother is a shadow against the fluorescent light, the stiffness of her spine highlighted by her sudden height.
"Don't you dare venture down that path," she scolds, her usually colourful voice straightening out in unorthodox strictness, "I do not want to hear that nonsense again. You are not the one who shot my son."
"No," Kate dips her head again, pain weighing down her neck, "but I put him in the crosshairs. Castle, he… that bullet was meant for me, Martha, I'm so sorry." She whispers, almost plea-like.
"Now you just listen to me, right now," Martha demands, no space in her voice for compromise as she steps forward, "I will nothave this family tearing themselves apart while my son is in there fighting for his life. Do you understand me?"
Kate glances at her father, squirrel-like eyes searching his soft face for some anchoring thing just as she did as a child. Martha steps closer, towering over Kate for a tense moment before she reaches a hand out to her.
Kate shakily takes the older woman's warm, thin palm, rising as her free hand wipes roughly at her face. The two women stand, hand-in-hand in a moment of solidarity and re-affirmed strength, before Martha nods silently, decisively, and tugs Kate along, heading back to the waiting room.
[x]
For thirty five minutes Alexis holds herself in stiff isolation, intentionally unrecognising of Kate's returned presence beside her. Thirty five minutes and then she sighs with the exhaustion of holding anger, her thin shoulders curl in and she quietly drops her head onto Kate's arm.
Beckett lays her head down on top of his daughter's, fingers combing gently through the tangled end. "I know, sweetie," Kate assures in a gentle whisper, relief uncoiling her body as Alexis nods against her.