Disclaimer :: I do not own Castle. Trust me, if I did, I wouldn't be sneaking on my laptop at 11pm trying to write fan fiction for it because I can't contain myself long enough to see the next episode.
Summary :: A case has wasted moments on everyone's minds, and it's enough to set long awaited events in motion.. / SPOILERS for '47 seconds'. Very angsty, not for fluff fans! My interpretation of how the secrets may be spilt..
A/N :: I've had this one spinning around my head for days, ever since seeing that unforgettable promo for 47 seconds. I got the raw bit of it down on paper, meaning for it to be one of the many meaningless scenes in my Castle notebook...then they released the spoilers. Then it became a one shot...and a two shot...and I think I managed to stop it there, I hope. As the summary warns, there are major spoilers (I pretty much wrote it around what I could see of the clips) for the upcoming eppy and...well, it's not a happy fic.
If you want light bouncy Caskett, I have my multi-chapter Fix You up here too. (Sorry guys, I promise there will be another instalment of that once I have all this angst worked from my system..)
The second chapter will be released tomorrow I hope, once it's been polished off a bit. Should be up before the episode hits the screens of those of you in America, though. :P
Note: Title is based off the amazing song Crash and Burn by Lifehouse. Again, I own nothing! ^.^
Now, end of longest A/N ever. Enjoy!
~Murph
Chapter One ~ Crash
He knew that watching a movie with his mother today was a bad idea.
She's had her eyes on him for almost the entire film, eyebrows lowered in a pensive frown, feet shifting a little in impatience. In fact, he was almost ready for her to jump up in glee when Alexis stretched out her arms and rose from the couch, announcing she needed sleep before dropping a sloppy kiss on his cheek and exiting upstairs. Subtlety has never been one of his mother's strong traits, so he is less than surprised when she shuffles opposite him and fixes him with a deep stare that he can't possibly ignore.
"I think you better spit it out, before you implode and ruin my living room." He tells her, leaning back against the cushions and preparing himself for whatever lecture she has had brewing over the last hour.
Martha tilts her head, fingering the vibrant pink silken gown she's chosen for today's outfit. "This case. It has you thinking."
Her son lets out a long-suffering sigh; he should have realized it's useless trying to hide things from her. "It made me...realize. Seeing all those people...everything, all their hopes and dreams...gone in a flash." His admittance isn't quite as level toned as he had planned - the deep emotions that have been coursing through him all day are managing to make an appearance.
"I thought so." A slight smile crosses the actresses' face - she still gets a little pride out of being able to read her son's thoughts so well, something he's never too happy to notice. "It's a horrendous thing to happen to anyone, Richard. And it's just as bad to have to try and figure out why anyone could do it." Reaching out, she wraps her fingers around his hand, resting them in his lap. "I can see why it would be on your mind."
Castle nods in agreement, trying not to show his surprise at how suddenly serious his mother has become. She might cover it well with her antics and parties, but she was a lot more gentle and soft than she'd care to admit to. "Well, if the bombing proves anything, it's that-" He pauses quickly, trying to erase the thick emotion crawling into his voice. "-bad things can happen no matter what you do. Nobody's tomorrow is guaranteed."
He can almost see the cogs in Martha's plotting brain turning as her eyebrows raise a little, eyes gaining an all-too-familiar spark. Here we go.
"So...how do you plan to act on this realization?"
"What do you mean?" He's sure his mother will see straight through that, but he's trying to buy himself time, preparing for what he knows is coming.
"Oh, you know what I mean. Richard, how much longer are you going to dreg your heels before you tell Beckett how you feel-" Her son huffs a breath, his suspicions confirmed, "-and I mean while she is awake, and not lying on the ground with a bullet in her chest."
For a moment his mind is lost in nightmares of blood trails on a hospital floor, soft hazel irises disappearing into darkness, feeling the life ebb out of her..
Kate.
"You don't understand." He can't do this now. Not with that in his head, with all these realizations hammering questions in circles around his brain.
"It's complicated, so you say." His mother rolls her eyes in frustration. "Only, it's not. It's not."
He shakes off his thoughts, meets her eyes in slight resentment. She's smiling sadly at him, pity etched across her expression. "Nobody's tomorrow is guaranteed, right? Wouldn't it be better to tell her, even if the timing is wrong, than never to tell her at all?"
He stares into nothing, mind awhirl with whispered confessions and summer days spent locked away in his office, hiding from the world that had stolen everything he had. His mother's words are like sharp pin pricks at his heart, because they're true, they're completely true and yet he's still trying to invent excuses against them.
"What if she isn't ready?"
His mother's gaze is hard and honest. "Then she never will be. Then, you move on."
Castle makes his decision standing in line for coffee.
He's been reeling in thoughts since that morning, unable to focus on the case at all. It's not just his mother's fault, but Beckett's.
"Those people...they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time."
"And their future, and all their plans.." Castle turned from where he was stood by the door, staring aimlessly into the rest of the precinct, and fixed her with a piercing look, as if he was trying to read her every little thought.
A pause fell. Beckett weighed her words on her tongue, shifting a little from where she was perched on the table. "It makes you think about all those things in your own life that you don't want to put off anymore."
Castle's brow creased, mind working a million miles an hour, eyes dancing as they tried to decipher what answers were lying in hers. She started to open her mouth, trying to gather things together, so close to-
"Yo."
Both turned to see Espo, head in through the doorway, catching himself abruptly as he realized what he'd just walked in on. "Captain's gathering the troops."
He left, and Beckett turned back, but Castle's eyes had dropped to the floor. Always so close, but never enough.
She had been seconds from admitting something. Something that he was almost certain of the importance of. He has no doubt in his mind that she has been having the exact same fears and premonitions that he has been tossing around inside his head for the last few days, and perhaps she has reached a conclusion too; even without the help of his mother.
Martha is right. Nobody's tomorrow is for certain. All you can do is seize the moments you have, and never waste a second of them.
Kate's blank eyes and still body jar into his mind, and Castle knows for sure what he's going to do.
He jitters impatiently for the coffee, all but grabbing it from the attendant's hand and high-tailing it out of there, speed-walking up the street as if he had a pack of dogs after him.
How could he have waited this long? All he wants to do is bolt into the precinct, grab Kate, steer her into a room and pour out all the feelings he's had locked away in his heart for her, that have been close to growing a sheen of dust.
The elevator seems impossibly slow. When the doors swing open he's bounding down the hall, coffee cups clutched in both hands, shooting a wild and boyish grin at the first person he sees. Popping a container on his partner's desk, he looks around. He needs to find her, now.
"Hey!" Esposito turns as the writer catches him, a little taken aback by his enthusiasm. "No luck with those witness statements, you guys catch a break?"
No luck was an understatement; he'd been up half the night trying to rid his mother's word from his head and focus on the paperwork Gates had so surprisingly bestowed on him.
"Better yet, we caught the suspect." Espo's attempt at nonchalance doesn't disguise his obvious pride in the lead.
Castle is momentarily distracted, and his eyebrows shoot up. "I missed it? Where is he?"
Esposito flicks his hand back. "In the box, with Beckett."
The writer has to stop a beam spreading over his face - two birds with one stone. He tears off.
"Why did you plant that bomb?"
Castle settles against the table, noting carefully how small the distance is between Beckett and the suspect. She looks a little too far over the edge - this case has been getting to her too.
Now that she's perched on the table, the man seated next to her is beginning to look nervous. He's young, looks shaken, as if his excuses are beginning to fall through. Kate leans into his face, teeth gritted, eyes cold and hard as rock.
She needs to calm down; he should have got here earlier, made sure he could go in with her.
"Come on, he's playing you! And you let him get under your skin, acting like a damn rookie." Castle suddenly misses the Captain, in a sharp, unexpected blow to his chest. She needs his security, the settling presence he brought with him into every room and word.
Silently he watches her flex her fingers, freeing them of the death grip they had been in around the edge of the table. Her hair looks lighter today, in long messy waves around her shoulders. He wants to run in, suspect and all, pin her against the wall and kiss her senseless while he murmurs everything he's been holding back into her ear.
"I don't remember!"
He can almost see the fury rising in her throat, throwing words into her mouth as she leans into the suspect's face, voice laced with malice and steel. "I was shot in the chest!" Her calm, trained tone rises abruptly to a shout, hand rising in a fist to emphasize her point. "And I remember every second of it!"
No.
Richard Castle's world crashes down in splinters and shards around him.
She remembers. She knows. Every second.
For a moment he tries to grab himself by the shoulders, shake some hope into himself. Perhaps the memories returned only a day or so ago? Maybe she's still coming to terms with it? Was planning to tell him, soon?
The amused voice of truth sneers at his efforts. Of course she's known. All those moments where her eyes flashed, just for a second, when she thought he couldn't see it. The times when he could almost see the memory reflected in the hazel irises, glimpsed her breath catch in her throat. All this time, she's known...and strung him along behind her, like the devoted, blind idiot he is.
"All this time. You remembered." His voice escapes in a hard whisper, directed at Kate but saved for his ears only.
The writer is overcome with too many things to contemplate at once. Anger, in great curling flames that make his jaw tighten and eyes flash in shards of ice. Frustration, that he hasn't realized before, has been so utterly led on by the woman sitting in the next room. Disbelief, still crying to him in a broken voice that perhaps she really has just remembered, that she never meant to hurt him, that this doesn't mean anything but that she was scared. Because it means so much more.
What an idiot. What a complete, sappy idiot. Like she would ever love him back.
The strongest of the lot, grief, sweeps over his chest like it's suffocating him. Castle wasn't built for things like this. He's built to love people, and when he loves them he does it with everything, no little catches. Hhe will throw himself forward in the fire of a bullet never expecting them to do the same, buy them coffee every day expecting none to be bought for him, forgive them for every cold word and insult and try to never say one back.
He'll love them every day...and try to expect nothing in return.
But low expectations are easy to try and tell yourself to believe in. When you let someone so completely and fully into your heart, they can shatter it in a single beat.
To much pain. He needs to get out of here, run, and never come back.
Slowly, he rises from the table, hand stinging as the blood rushes back into dead fingers. He doesn't let him look through the glass. There's enough glue to hold himself together until he leaves; seeing her face would truly tear him to pieces. The writer in him is strong enough to do a mental eye roll at the metaphor, but the grimace doesn't leave his face. It's the first thing that people notice as he shoves out the door, planning to leave as quickly and silently as possible; but unable to hide the fact that his broad shoulders are slumped in defeat, and that he's saying goodbye to the precinct with his every glance.
"Castle?" Ryan's eyebrows begin to knot together at the sight of him, taking in the steel that is normally so absent from his face. The younger detective grabs Esposito at the elbow, tugging on him like a little kid.
He'll miss those two, their teasing and that ongoing bromance neither of them ever want to admit to.
"I'm heading home. I said...to Alexis that I'd help her with something today. Just came in to drop off the coffee and those files." His excuse is pathetic, but it's all he can think of. He needs to get out of here. Grabbing his coat from his seat by Beckett's desk, he straightens up ready to head out, ignoring the disbelieving looks both Detectives are treating him too.
The door to the box swings open at the other end of the corridor, and he can barely bring himself to watch as she brushes past Ryan, arrives at her desk and downs her coffee in a single scalding mouthful. Her eyes are wild, and she looks shaken. But she doesn't know he heard her.
The realization is like a wave of relief and pain at once.
"You okay?"
He can't believe it's he asking her that. She nods, brushes her hair away from her face, then suddenly registers the blankness in his own expression. "Are you?"
"Fine. I have to go see...Alexis." He tries with everything he has in acting inheritance that his mother has given him, levels his voice, wipes the emotion from his eyes. It only hurts more though when she nods, believing him.
"If you're sure, then I'll follow this lead up with Espo." She glances back at the other two Detectives, still frozen by their desks. "Any luck with those witness files?"
"Nothing."
Nothing indeed.
He turns for the elevator, saying goodbye to the precinct with his eyes. He has no reason to return any more.
The doors open and he lets himself have one last look at the woman that's broken his heart, stepping back against the wall. She glances over at him, lifting her hair as she puts on her jacket, and that suspicion and worry begins to creep into her hazel irises as he lets all his emotion show on his face. She may as well see it now, when it's too late to do anything about it. All the pain and heartbreak rise up, consuming him, and he hopes irrationally that the psychic connection between them he's always insisted on still works.
I loved you.
The doors slam shut, and the world spirals as he crashes down.