Not Who He Was
The elevator's door closed swiftly, the 12th precinct's emblem replacing Castle's impassive face. Beckett shrugged on her long grey coat, brain whirring as her eyebrows furrowed at the sight. Castle's face was never impassive. He always had on some sort of expression - even his poker face had emotion to it, a sly look that she had come to know screamed, 'Whether or not I win this hand, I'm going to give you a run for your money.'
But when he'd gotten onto that elevator, it was completely devoid of a facial expression. No smile, no wave, not even a nod in her direction. Just emptiness. No, that wasn't it. It was something else…
The word popped into her head.
Blankness.
Beckett stopped buttoning up her coat, frowning. What would cause Castle to be so…un-Castle? After a few moments of hard thinking, she came up with no specific triggers, so she just chalked it up to the case. It had been a hard one for all of them, and she knew Alexis had really struggling.
That must be it, Beckett decided, walking out of the precinct before hailing a cab to take her home. He must be worried about his daughter. Putting her worries about the pair aside, she rattled off her address to the cabbie before leaning back into the cracked black seats to contemplate more pressing matters, such as what on Earth she was going to eat tonight.
Over the next few days, Beckett began to notice a disturbing trend in Castle's behavior. At first, it had been just how he greeted her when she called to send him to a new crime scene.
"Hello, Detective Beckett," he said politely. No funny quip or friendly jibe to start off the early morning, no hint of the light teasing voice he had when he answered her calls. Just a colleague getting directions, nothing more.
Though it hadn't been much, it had made her watch him a little more carefully throughout the day. And the more she watched, the more concerned she became. He wasn't outright shunning her or giving her the silent treatment, nothing like that. It was little things.
For example, while he joked around with Espo and Ryan, he was quieter around her, more professional than he had been just days before.
He bought coffee, not just for her, but for the whole team, all four of them. It was like he was trying to make their morning ritual unimportant, trying to break their special caffeine bond by including everyone, treating all of them equally.
She'd invited him out to the Old Haunt and Remy's three times, for lunch or dinner during and after work, and each time he'd turned her down with a polite, "No thanks, Beckett." Before, he would've jumped at the chance to spend even half an hour alone with her. Now, he was the exact opposite.
The most concerning thing to her, though, was how he said good-bye. Back when he had first began consulting, she vividly remembered how she had shunned his standard exit phrase of, "Until tomorrow." Now, as he headed off with a brief, "Night" in her general direction, she would've given anything to hear it just one more time.
And the next day, that wasn't even the worst. The absolute worst thing, the thing that frustrated her, and confused her, and made her angrier than everything else was his new girlfriend, Brittani Hamilton.
She'd shown up at the precinct at around noon, looking around for Castle. Oblivious, overly cheerful, with bright blonde hair and overly blue eyes, she was exactly the type of girls that Castle went for when he'd started at the precinct. His cocky grin when he'd returned from his "lunch" didn't help Beckett's frustration, either.
After Gates had sent the four of them home, Beckett found herself in need of company. Usually, she would turn to Castle, but since she couldn't do that, she turned to another.
Entering the morgue at nine that night, she went to the one person she knew she could count on right then.
"Lanie," Beckett called into the room. "What are you doing?"
The M.E. looked up from a file on one of the tables. "Hey, girl," she crowed, a grin spreading across his face. "What're you doin' in my neck of the woods?"
Beckett smiled in return, but hers was small and sad. "I really need a drink right now. Do you want to come over, make a night of it?"
Lanie's smile fell. "Aw, Kate, girl." Putting a friendly arm around her friend, Lanie led Kate out of the cold morgue and into the night.
The pair collapsed onto Kate's couch, dropping a bottle of wine onto her coffee table, each holding a glass of the dark red liquid. "Alright," Lanie said, settling in. "Spill it, girlfriend."
Kate gave her an oblivious look, which her best friend scoffed at. "C'mon," she pushed. "Castle's new girl?"
Sighing, she admitted, "I just…I don't get it. He's different. It's like he's pulling away." Her voice became angry, frustrated, louder. "I just don't understand it! We were so close. He was going to tell me something important, during the bombing case. Something about us. But then we got a lead, and we had to go, and now, he's so different!"
She knew she was ranting, but she didn't care. "I can't believe he picked her," she practically spat. "She's nothing like me! She's got blonde hair, mine's brown. I have green eyes, not blue. And have you seen how she acts around him?" she asked, disgusted.
When Lanie didn't really respond, Kate continued. "She's so enamored by his money, his fame, his craziness. She's everything that I'm not."
"Maybe…" Lanie's voice trailed off, then came back, louder this time. "Maybe that's the point."
Kate's face dropped, and her heart stopped.
Oh.
She knew Lanie was right, and that knowledge hurt more than anything else. Swallowing thickly, she continued sadly. "He acts like he does when he first showed up, back when I hated him. But this isn't the real Castle, the Castle that I know, that you know, that we know."
Kate turned to Lanie, her eyes swimming with tears. "He's not my Castle anymore, Lanie. And, God, it sounds cliché, but I miss my Castle."
And that was the cold, honest truth. This man that she was seeing now, the cocky, over-confident playboy, was Rick Castle, best-selling mystery writer. She didn't want Rick Castle.
Kate wanted Richard Alexander Edgar Rodgers Castle, writer, father, son, friend, teammate, partner. She wanted coffee, she wanted apples and cherries, but most of all, she wanted him. His presence, his easy smile, the way he always could make her laugh, his knack for saving her life (though she still was pretty sure he'd miscounted somewhere in his tallying).
Slumping back onto the cushions, she twisted her head to look at the M.E. with a bleak expression. "He told me he loved me, Lanie. He told me he loved me, and then he turned right around and went after the first girl he saw." Laughing self-deprecatingly, she said rhetorically, "You know what the worst part is? The thing that makes all of this so completely infuriating?"
Lanie glanced curiously at Kate as she answered her own question, voice quivering with the unexpected rush of emotion her confessions had brought on. "I think I'm in love with him, too."