A/N: I've received so many prompts concerning this song on every forum possible. I hope this lives up to the expectations.
"I must have called a thousand times
To tell you I'm sorry for everything that I've done
But when I call you never seem to be home
Hello from the outside
At least I can say that I've tried
To tell you I'm sorry for breaking your heart
But it don't matter. It clearly doesn't tear you apart anymore"
-Hello, Adele
"Hey, Castle," she begins, shivering beneath the cool breeze of the air conditioning and casting her eyes down to the toes of her boots. "I know that after everything I said... I know you have every right to be angry, but I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. For all of it, Rick. I'm so sorry," she whispers, touching her fingers to the damp skin of her cheeks, ready to catch any renegade tears. "Please call me back."
Kate ends the call, ceases her pacing in the hallway outside of his front door. He isn't home, he would have answered her knocking, but he's sending her calls to voicemail and she shouldn't push, should give him the time to decide if he wants her in his life or not on his own.
Especially after she was the one to kick him out of hers.
He had told her they were over last night, but… but she's said the same to him and they had managed to repair the damage done. And it was different this time, she was different now. The fight on the roof with Maddox, hanging from the ledge of a building by her fingertips had put everything in perspective, had shown her what she truly wanted - who she truly wanted – and if she could just tell him that… It can't really be over, can it?
Beckett starts back towards the elevator, wincing as her scars pull, fresh bruises flaring with every movement now that the spike of adrenaline has passed. Maybe it was better this way, for both of them; she would go home, tend to the new injuries Maddox had bestowed upon her, and maybe tomorrow, Castle would contact her.
Though, she had foolishly hoped that tonight, it would be his bed she slept in, his hands, his lips, kissing her bruises.
Kate holds onto her phone, her pockets too damp from the rain to store the device, and slumps into the wall of the elevator as the doors slide closed, gritting her teeth against the disappointment of going home alone.
The glimpse of her face, her smile illuminating his screen, causes his chest to burn, consumed by fire that chars his heart. He loves her, but it's not enough. It's too much. And he can't take anymore.
Rick silences the call, ignores the voicemail she leaves, certain it's just Detective Beckett requesting he return as her partner, offer insight on her mother's case that will send her deeper down the rabbit hole and nothing more. And every cell in his body comes alight with the need to call her back, to give her whatever she wants, no matter what it costs him.
He holds down the power button atop his iPhone, pockets the device, and pours another shot of whiskey. He'll be back home before Alexis tomorrow morning, but for tonight, he wants to drown his sorrows in the privacy of his secluded office within the Old Haunt. He just wants to drink until she no longer consumes his every thought.
Castle continues to ignore her calls throughout the summer and she eventually gives up hope of him ever answering, let alone calling her back. She returns to work as soon as possible, devotes every second of her time and energy to proving herself to Gates once more, reclaiming her place in the field and achieving her usual closure rate with ease. Every spare moment she pours into her mother's case, no longer falling into the rabbit hole, but diving without thought instead.
There's nothing left for her to lose and part of her thinks that maybe if she solves the case, finds justice for her mother, she'll finally feel whole. And that empty space he left will no longer ache so fiercely.
But she still carves out a minute for Castle every few weeks, after she arrives home from work to the dark, lonely space of her apartment. It reminds her of visiting her mother's grave, as morbid as the comparison sounds, settling atop her bed with her phone against her ear, already knowing he won't answer, but unable to resist the urge to talk to him nonetheless.
Like calling a ghost.
The greeting of his voicemail box is no longer cheerful, but it still eases the sharp pain inside her chest each time she hears it. He changed it sometime in June, replacing the goofy welcoming to a simple, somber response of "Hello, you've reached Richard Castle, leave your message at the tone".
"Hey, it's me," she murmurs, curling her knees in against her chest to quell the fissures that splice through her heart, deepening every time the sound of his voice fills her ear. "I heard about your book tour today and I just wanted to wish you a safe trip. I - I don't know if you ever listen to these messages, if you'd prefer I stop leaving them, but I just... I miss you, Castle. And I'm sorry."
Kate ends the call and presses the phone to her chest, tilts her head back against the wall, promises herself that this phone call was the last. She hasn't spoken to him in four months and his silence tells her all she needs to know.
He no longer wants to hear from her.
"Richard, why don't you just call the girl back and tell her one way or another?" Martha questions in exasperation, waving her hand at the phone in his grasp that he promptly silences.
The familiar glimpse of her face still lingers behind his eyelids, though. He should really just delete the photo, leave her contact faceless, but he just… he loved that picture of her.
"She's called you consistently throughout the last few months, kiddo. Don't you think that it would at least bring you some closure to answer just once?"
His plane boards in half an hour and he still needs to go through security, he doesn't have the time for another lecture from his mother on the topic of Kate Beckett. He's had enough this past year to last a lifetime.
"Mother, I'm handling this my way," he sighs, slinging his carryon over his shoulder, but his mother catches his arm.
"Do you even listen to the messages she leaves?"
Castle shakes his head. "I don't need to, but I do have to go Mother, so please-"
"Richard, I told you, love is not a switch-"
"Just remember to keep an eye out for Alexis, don't let her go overboard with this new internship," he instructs, reciting lines he's already stated and embracing his mother in a brief, one-armed hug before he turns towards the line for security. "And maybe try to discourage this revived sense of urgency to attend Stanford?"
Martha huffs in frustration but nods her assurances, calls out her love to him before turning on her heel, strolling back towards the airport's exit with her head still shaking in disapproval.
His mother is right, to an extent – his love for Kate has never been a switch, not one he had the power to turn off anyway, but he had done a decent job of quieting the longing over the last few months, the heartache still ever present but tamed into a dull roar that merely leaves him feeling hollow.
Castle withdraws his phone from the pocket of his jeans while he awaits the line for security to crawl forward, stares at the notification telling him he's missed her call, that he has a new voicemail from her to add to the collection. He doesn't listen to them, but he can't find the will to delete them either.
It's unhealthy and he knows his mother has a point, that he should respond to Kate in some form, even if it's only to tell her to leave him be. But he had already told her they were over once, did he really have to do it again?
He hadn't wanted to say it the first time.
Rick tucks his phone back into his pocket, inches forward with the line and prepares to transfer all of his belongings onto the cart. The book tour will be good for him, a month long trip throughout the entirety of the United States, and maybe seeing his fans, the excitement his writing can bring to others will help inspire him again. Maybe it would make him feel something other than grief.
He may not be happy, he didn't expect to be, but in this state of emptiness, it was easier not to miss her so much.
She had been doing so well, not touching her phone for anything other than business purposes for the last three months, the urge to call if only to hear the familiar comfort of his voicemail always present, but she ignores it, denies the idea that she needs him. She was fine in the years before she met him. Not happy, but surviving, making it, and she would find her footing back in that state of mind. It was just going to take some time and a lot of self-discipline.
But after only a few weeks in DC, after an overwhelming slew of high profile cases that Kate just knows he would love, she caves. She can survive on her own, she always has, but Castle had spoiled her throughout those last four years, made her want more than that.
"Hey Castle," she sighs, fiddling with a pen at her kitchen table, gripping it between her jittery fingers and damp palm. "I know it's been awhile, since I called, but I didn't want to… I don't want to bother you, I've just been working in Washington DC with the FBI and we had this case today, and I can't talk about it, but I wish - you would have loved this stuff. But um, I was just hoping that you're doing well, that you're happy. Bye."
Beckett buries her face in her hands and scrapes her fingers through her hair, trying not to replay how stupid she sounded over and over again in her head.
He haunts the precinct once he learns of her new job in DC, attempting to subtly learn how she's doing from Ryan and Esposito without asking outright, even though her boys sometimes look at him like a traitor every time he speaks her name. Which isn't often.
Saying her name makes the pieces of shrapnel embedded in his chest burn brighter.
Too many times to count, he peruses flights to Washington online, sifts through the scenarios in his head, how it would be to see her again, to surprise her. He wants to call her back, wants to listen to all of the voice messages he has saved on his phone but has yet to touch. Another three months have gone by since Kate's last call, but despite the length of time that has passed, she still hasn't given up on hoping he'll answer her apparently.
Maybe it's pointless to fight his feelings for her. They refuse to dissipate no matter how hard he tries to rid her from his thoughts, his heart. She doesn't cross his mind every second anymore, no, but there hasn't been a day since their last fight that he isn't mourning Kate Beckett in some way.
Because he still loves her.
They destroy one another, he's told himself the facts too many times to count, but it never seems to make a difference where his stubborn heart is concerned. She needs him, he thinks, whether she would admit it or not. And in the same way, he needs her too.
Returning to New York terrifies her and she hates that it's because of a man, a man who she can't seem to stop missing, stop calling. But she had been fired from her job and staying in DC was not an option she wanted to even consider.
New York will always be her home, but he still had her heart, was out walking around with it somewhere in this city, and she didn't have the willpower, the courage to go find him and get it back.
It takes her some time, but she eventually returns to the Twelfth, earns her spot back as a lead detective with the help of her former captain, and falls back into her old routines – working as much as possible, devoting every second of free time to her mother's case.
And finally, it pays off. But not without a price.
"Castle, I can't talk long, but I – something happened, with my mom's case," she whispers, hastily tossing only the essentials into an overnight bag along with a few fistfuls of clothing. She isn't running, but she did have to hide until those hunting her withdrew some of their efforts. "I have to ditch my phone, and I know that you're done, that I shouldn't even be calling but I…" Kate pauses for just a second, grips the phone tight enough to make her fingers ache and sucks in a shallow breath. "I don't know what's going to happen, and I know it's been too long, that I missed my chance to tell you this, but I love you. I just wanted you to know that."
Beckett ends the call and drops the phone to the floor, stands with her duffel bag, and crushes the device beneath her heel before she leaves.
Rick had made a deal with himself.
It's been a couple of months since her call from DC, but Ryan had informed him of how she had been fired for a rather admirable reason, always seeking justice and doing right by the victim, and how she was now back in the city, working for the Twelfth again.
He had listened to all of her voicemails in one sitting, his heart in his throat the entire time, and now, he had only one left, the one she left only twenty minutes ago. And once he listened to this one, he was going to call her back, finally call her back, tell her that he was sorry for never answering, and invite her to meet him for coffee or dinner, whatever she wanted.
He was going to make this right, find a way to make them work.
But from the second Beckett's last message begins to play, Castle can tell that it's different, that something is wrong. The mention of her mother's case confirms it and he stands from his office chair, a cold sweat accumulating along the back of his neck the longer he listens.
I don't know what's going to happen, and I know it's been too long, that I missed my chance to tell you this, but I love you. He nearly drops the phone, nearly chokes on his own breath. I just wanted you to know that.
The line disconnects and Rick is stumbling out of his office, trying to call her back while he strides through the living room, but receiving the monotone voice of a recording telling him the number he's calling is no longer in working service at this time.
"No, no, no," he mumbles, scrambling for the front door, shoving the useless phone in his pocket and sprinting out into the hall, bypassing the elevators for the stairs. He doesn't know where she is now, but he'll head to the precinct first, consult with the boys.
He'll find her. He has to.
The alcohol is coursing through her veins, numbing everything, slowing the function of her brain that she fights to keep working, to keep focused. The world around her blurs with every blink, the dim lighting of the hotel room she had checked into tilting, threatening to spin.
Flashes of memory mingle with the distortions, glimpses of his face, the calming blue of his eyes. She wants to close hers, remain with the man she sees every time she drifts. In dreams, he is still hers even if in reality he never was. In her dreams, he was home when she showed up on his doorstep that night after the roof, during the storm.
"Get the gun, she's wasted."
Kate forces her eyes back open, watches Bracken's man with the alcohol place the half empty liquor bottle on the table nearby, and tries not to flinch at the deafening click of a gun's safety at her back.
She's been running for the last 48 hours and she's tired, so very tired, and no longer sure what she's running towards. Justice for her mother, punishment for the politician behind her murder, but then what? What without him-
"Let's get your finger in there," the leader of the two men coaxes, arranging her hand around the gun, her finger atop the trigger and the barrel to her temple while the man at her back steadies her shoulders. "It's almost over."
Beckett waits for the leader's nod, for the other to step back, and for the slightest pressure on her index finger. And then she slaps the gun away from her head, fires it backwards and hears the man at her back go down as she rises.
She struggles with the leader of the two, lands a high kick to his jaw before she can reclaim the gun he knocked out of her hand, fire two rounds into his chest and spit the pill he had shoved past her lips onto his dead body.
The break of glass over her head, the shower of whiskey drenching her hair, jerks a scream from her throat, the shards of the liquor bottle embedded into her scalp searing with pain, but she spins before she can acknowledge it, shoots the other man until she's certain he's dead.
Heat spills down the side of her face, trickling along her ear to cling at the hinge of her jaw and Kate lifts her hand to her head, sways with the swipe of her palm to the hot leak of blood oozing from her scalp and staining her skin.
The room is spinning, the combination of the alcohol and the fresh head wound has her balance wavering, and oh, this is so not good.
She turns, stumbles with it as her eyes roam over the floor of her hotel room, littered with dead hit men, and searches the blurring walls for the door. Her body dips and threatens to fall with every step, but she manages to reach the exit, closing her fingers around the doorknob and attempting to suck in a breath. She already knows, though, that her chances of making it much further are damned.
She's a fugitive, hunted by both William Bracken and a police force for a crime she didn't commit. She can't seek refuge in a hospital, can't drive, she's – fuck, she's not going to make it.
And she's so exhausted, in enough pain, that she may be able to make peace with this bitter end.
She had called him, received the familiar answer of his voicemail for the thousandth time, the last time, and said her goodbye. It was enough; it had to be.
Kate staggers out of the hotel room, glad for it, that she was able to have at least some small form of closure since she was never able to have him, and sways into the wall. The searing burn of the lacerations along her skull increase as her head makes contact with the hard surface, a glimpse of crimson smearing the wallpaper blooming in her peripheral.
Beckett loses all hope of staying upright, collapsing into the wall that had held her up and landing on her back. It's too much and she can't - can't even see straight, can't find the strength to heave herself back up.
She can only stare up at the blinding light of the ceiling and surrender.