Title: And the Rain Came Down
Author: Floss Aus
Pairing: Rick C & Kate B
Rating: T, just suggestion of adult emotions.
Summary: Kate's thoughts to and from the swing set in Always 4x23
Spoilers: Up to and including Always 4x23
Disclaimer: ABC and Andrew Marlowe own them, Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic inhabit them and I'm just borrowing them. I' promise to return them all – except Fillion.
Feedback: OH YES PLEASE, seriously love it!
AN: My first Castle story – a small one-shot following Kate's thoughts as she sits in the rain but also most of her thought process during Season 4 in general.
He wasn't home, his doorman confirmed it but she already knew. Silently, she stepped away, walked aimlessly, not wanting to settle, not wanting to go home and retreat into herself again. The rain was already tumbling from the sky, pedestrians darting for cover, dashing for safety. She found herself there accidentally, but drawn like a beacon in a lighthouse. It was quiet now, the misting drizzle felt quiet and still against her skin. As if the voices in her heart had finally stopped arguing, the battle over, the war won.
He always held her. At moments when she felt she'd fall apart, at times when pure adrenaline coursed through her veins and at times when she'd push away from the very arms he was offering her.
Hiding from it was so much easier that facing him. It's so simple to pretend he wasn't there. So much easier to believe that it couldn't be more. To play blind and see no one in front of her.
But he wouldn't walk away, wouldn't stand down and wouldn't pretend or play her game of denial.
It frightened her, his ability to put himself on the line like that. To offer himself so bravely, so boldly and want nothing but her in return. She wasn't frightened of her ability to love him back, she already knew that was a certainty.
She was frightened of the intensity that she knew would take hold, frightened of its crowding in her soul. Frightened of the places it will take her if it went wrong.
Because she'd risen before, from the ashes of a lost loved one. She'd built a wall around herself, a force that men had broken themself against trying to reach her. She raised the noise levels and had let the shots, and the sirens and the blood fill her days.
But now, in the silence she'd finally opened up to, she was scared. Not for herself, more than her own death, she was petrified of losing him. Because she knew, irrevocably knew, it would destroy her.
She stopped swinging and stared at the empty seat; his seat. Not like this, no she wouldn't go down like this.
Pounding the pavement, marching to him, she knew. It meant nothing, if you did it alone. And he meant everything.
'Beckett what do you want?'
'You.'