A/N :- Just a oneshot that sort of floated to my mind while I was brainstorming for my other story, Shattered Pieces. Since Shattered Pieces is centered around Alexis and Kate, I had an idea to make a one-shot from Castle's point of view, but it evolved into an entirely different story.
This is not, I repeat NOT set in the same universe as Shattered Pieces.
Also super angsty. But then all my stories tend to be angsty.
Looking back, he can't quite pinpoint the exact moment when it began.
The beginning of their end.
Maybe it started in the weeks leading up to Captain Montgomery's death. Those were the first rumblings. The first real signs of impending trouble in paradise. The first cracks that started to develop in their partnership. Maybe he should have seen the warning signs way back then. After two failed marriages and a string of short lived romances, he should have been able to see this coming from a mile away.
Or perhaps he did see the signs, and he just wasn't willing to acknowledge them. It is so much easier, really, to just shut it out of his mind; to keep pushing it back and postponing that which he would rather not confront.
A drawback of being a professional storyteller is that a large part of his life is spent in a fantasy world of his own creation. And when he is living the dream, both in his personal life as well as his professional life, it becomes increasingly harder to keep in mind that charting the course of his own life is not as easy and effortless as writing the lives of his characters. He is the god of the fantasy world that he has created for his characters. His characteristic is that he puts hours upon hours of research into each and every aspect of his writings. And like a painting drawn in painstaking detail, it takes a life of its own. And when the world that he has created occupies so much of his life, that is when the lines between fantasy and reality blur, and sometimes he loses focus of when one ends and the other begins.
Or maybe it was the bullet that sealed the deal. The bullet that had narrowly missed Beckett's heart and shattered her ribs instead. Nearly shattered her as well. A bullet fired right under the collective nose of New York's finest, and all of them put together hadn't been able to piece together so much as a physical description of the shooter.
It doesn't occur to him until nearly a week later, to wonder why the person who ordered the attack had never tried to follow up on it. There were so many easier ways that they could have killed Beckett if they had wanted to. Easier than taking a high risk sniper shot at a cop's funeral. Maybe, for whatever reason, they didn't want her dead. Yet. Maybe the shooter intended to miss. Either way, the message was clear. There was nowhere she could hide if they decided to come after her. They could literally get to her, anytime, anywhere, and vanish like ghosts in the night.
The meeting with the man named Smith answers those questions.
It is nearly a month later when it finally occurs to him that the bullet that hit Beckett could have easily have hit him if he had only been a split second faster. He was running full tilt at the time, his body bent at the waist and angled closer to the ground. If the bullet had hit him, it would most likely have gotten him in the neck. There would have been no surviving that. Not from a sniper bullet.
The scary part isn't what could have happened. The scary part is how long it took him to realize that.
The first time he sees her in the hospital bed after the shooting, his heart shoots straight into his throat, torn with both relief and despair. Relief that she was alright and despair at how close he came to losing her.
They have much to talk about, there is so much he needs to tell her, and yet they go through their dance, full of things implied and yet left unsaid. And then the moment is gone, shattered by yet another interruption. The pattern is so familiar now, that he can't even bring himself to be frustrated. They have both been doing this dance for so long now that neither of them quite knows how to break the pattern.
Then she disappears, gone to recuperate, and no one will tell him where she's gone or even how she's doing. Meanwhile his calls are blocked, his voicemails aren't getting any replies and he is half out of his mind with panic.
It starts with one glass, then two, then three. Pretty soon he is getting through half a bottle of scotch a day just to keep going. When he is not drunk out of his mind, he is working the shooting. And when he is not working the shooting, he is too drunk to be of much use for anything else. Pretty soon, his entire life revolves around those two activities. Drink, work the case. Rinse and repeat.
Things finally come to a head when Alexis storms into his study and snatches the glass right out of his hand. He makes a swipe to get it back, but it is a mark of how pathetically drunk he is that he can't even figure out which hand she is holding the glass in.
This is followed by a shouting match of epic proportions, culminating in Alexis picking up the half empty scotch bottle and throwing it clear across the room, smashing it on the wall on the far side of the room. That finally shuts him up. He is reduced to watching mutely, wide eyed as Alexis shouts at him at the top of her voice, the only time she yelled at him. It's the ragged edge of her voice rather than the volume that leaves him speechless. After what seems like hours of shouting, she storms out and he hears the front door slam as she leaves the apartment.
Several minutes later, he suddenly becomes aware that he is still standing right where Alexis left him, frozen, with his mouth hanging open. He shakes himself out of his funk and immediately becomes aware of two things. First, his head has mostly cleared, and second, his mother is glaring at him in silent disapproval from across the open doorway. Mother and son stare at each other wordlessly for several seconds before Martha shakes her head and walks away without a word.
Somehow that makes him feel a lot worse than if she had stayed and joined in the yelling.
He moves tiredly to close the door and sinks into his chair, rubbing his face in exhaustion. The pace of the past few days has been wearing on him and frankly, he is not sure that he can last much longer. Dropping his hands, he catches sight of himself in the wall mirror and he almost doesn't recognize himself. Somehow as a result of this chase he has engaged in for the past three years, for reasons that he can't even remember anymore, he has turned into this mockery of a human being; a shadow of his former self. And he is so goddam sick of it.
That is when he realizes for the first time that he isn't the only one hurting as a consequence of the shooting. His mother and daughter were just as devastated, probably more so, having watched him narrowly dodge the bullet that nearly killed Beckett. He would give up his life for Beckett in an instant, and he knows that she would do the same for him. But as his daughter's face, red with anger, eyes gleaming with unshed tears, and his mother's silent disapproval flash through his mind, it occurs to him that there are other people in his life who would not be thrilled to see him make the switch.
When the dust settles and the heady thrill of pursuing the case has worn off, he still has his own life to live, his own family to look after. And in his all-consuming focus on Beckett, he has neglected both.
He has been called a lot of things in his life, not all of them complimentary. But he is pretty sure that no one has ever accused him of being perfect, nor has he ever claimed to be. He has had to plod and stumble on occasion like everyone else, though those occasions became increasingly fewer and far between over the years. He was a terrible writer at one point. He is known to be a terrible person on occasion. But never in his life has he been a terrible father.
Until now.
Next day at the precinct, he finds that Montgomery's replacement has arrived, and that her first order of business was to boot him off the team and shut down the investigation into the shooting for lack of evidence.
He doesn't have to take it lying down. There are still moves he can make. He can dig in his heels, make a few calls, raise a fuss, but somehow as he gathers up his stuff, he simply can't bring himself to care. Somehow, having the decision taken out of his hands feels like an enormous relief. He simply puts the files away, goes home to his mother and his daughter, and starts piecing his life back together, one piece at a time. Without Beckett.
The gulf widens when he meets Elizabeth Tenembaum. 'Meets' might be misrepresenting the situation. It is more like she runs into him, literally, making him spill scalding hot coffee all over himself. It is immediately followed by several minutes of stammered and horrified apologies as she attempts to help him mop up the coffee, but instead ends up just spreading the stain, much to the amusement of the passersby.
They end up having coffee. He finds out that she is an international war correspondent with CNN. She finds out that he is one of her favorite writers. Or at least he used to be until the Nikki Heat series which she ranks below Death of a Prom Queen.
They talk about writing in general. He bounces some ideas off her. She shares some of her own stories with him. She was in Rwanda at the worst of its troubles, in South Africa following the dissolution of the apartheid regime, in Afghanistan during the fall of the Taliban and in India during the 2008 terrorist attacks. She had investigated piracy in Somalia and human rights abuses in Africa. By all accounts Elizabeth has had an interesting life.
She admits ruefully that the strain of a high octane lifestyle can get heavy after a while. She has had her fill of conflicts and looks forward to spending the remainder of her career behind the safety of a desk. Everything about Elizabeth is worn and crinkly, just like her smile, and it speaks of a lifetime of hard travel and life experiences. In some ways she is just like Kat Beckett. In some ways, she is the exact opposite. Castle doesn't dwell on it. For once, it feels good to simply enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee with an attractive woman who isn't Beckett.
One coffee leads to another. And working lunches. And casual dinners.
Beckett shows up after three months out of nowhere. One look into her eyes and all the effort Castle has put into piecing his life back together crumbles like a badly constructed sandcastle. They talk about some things. Leave even more unsaid. But the gist of the story is that Beckett can't commit to a relationship until her mother's killer is behind bars.
So all in all she hasn't told him anything that he doesn't know already. And just out of habit, because he is used to the status quo and has come too far to give up on her now, he decides to give it one last go. Things go back to normal, and after everything that has happened, nothing has changed. They are like two binary stars locked in orbit around each other, sometimes drawing closer, sometimes pulling further away, but never connecting.
Meanwhile he continues to see Elizabeth on occasion. He pretends not to notice the faked casualness and sometimes open disdain that Beckett uses when talking about her. Having been on the other side of the fence, he knows exactly what that feels like. But he refuses to break off relations with Elizabeth just because Kate has a problem with it. If Beckett has a problem with him seeing another woman, let her come out and say it. He is tired of subtext and things unsaid. He is just about ready to lay his cards out on the table, and this time when Beckett withdraws, he doesn't try to give chase. He has no energy left for the games they have played for so long.
In the end it is Elizabeth who confronts him. She corners him and asks him point blank if there is a chance for them or if she is just holding on for something that is never going to happen. He hesitates and confesses that his feelings for Beckett run too deep and that he might never really be over her. Elizabeth gives him a small sad smile and with a light peck on the cheek, she turns and walks out of his apartment and out of his life.
One week later, he is standing in interrogation, watching silently as Beckett spits the words out like bombs at the suspect.
Do you wanna know trauma? I was shot in the chest, and I remember every second of it.
He is not even surprised really, just resigned. Deep down, part of him had always been suspicious of amnesiac routine. It was too convenient, and entirely too coincidental. It was possible for it to be one or the other, but not both. And now he had confirmation. It was a lie. The past eight months had been nothing but a charade, centered on a supposed occurrence that had never occurred. His lizard brain had known the truth all along. It was his very human heart that ultimately betrayed him.
And not for the first time, he ponders the fact that he has given up his chance with a woman who clearly wanted to be with him, just to delay the inevitable rejection from the woman who clearly did not.
They have a lead on the would be assassin who shot Beckett. By an incredible combination of resources and dumb luck, they've managed to track him to his last known, and most likely present, location in the hotel room.
They gather to make plans for the takedown in hushed voices. Castle can clearly see the gleam in Beckett's eyes, so close that she can almost savor the victory, never mind the risks involved. Esposito is willing to go along with whatever she decides. Ryan wants to hold off for backup. Castle wants to hold off entirely. But as he hears the fevered pitch of her voice, he knows that there is no stopping her now. Not at this point.
For months, he has run circles around her, deflected and sidetracked her efforts to search for her shooter, all to keep her alive just a little bit longer. But that is done now. He has finally run out of time and options. There are no more moves left to make, no more cards left to play. It's make or break moment, all cards on the table. He has known her secret for quite a while now, and it is time she knew his. He can't put it off any longer.
In that moment he wonders if he is being hypocritical, resenting her for hiding things from him while he does the same. But in his defense, he isn't doing it to protect himself.
The shouting match that follows is their longest and loudest one yet. She accuses him of lying and making decisions for her behind her back. He responds by flinging her own lie of omission back in her face, feeling a momentary twinge of guilty satisfaction as he watches the barb hit home.
The confrontation plays out almost exactly as it had in his mind. He knows her pretty well by now, well enough to be able to anticipate her responses in advance almost down to the sentence. Well enough to know that he should have seen this coming a long time ago. His mind flashes back to Elizabeth, and eerie similarity of their situations is not lost on him, both of them waiting in vain for someone who was too busy chasing something they might never have, to have a chance at life.
He has been chasing Beckett for so long, that he has finally become just like her.
It is then that he fully understands that Beckett's life is truly her own, in the simplest most basic sense of the word. There is no room for anyone or anything else. Not even for him.
He isn't built to function like Beckett. He can work and he has a tendency to really get caught up in it, but at the end of the day, he puts it down and goes home to his family. He plays laser tag with his daughter and has friends over for poker nights.
Beckett isn't like that. Her life isn't demarcated into professional and personal. She has no family other than her father and few other friends. Her job is her life, and it has been ever since the tragedy that robbed her of her mother. The subsequent trials forged her and honed her into a specialized instrument to serve a single purpose, utterly useless for anything else. The difference between them is the difference between a commercial plane and a jet fighter. The former is built for convenience and comfort, with room for all. The latter is designed solely for efficiency for one single purpose, and has no room for anything that does not contribute towards achieving that purpose. Unlike him, Beckett can't leave work at the end of the day. Her work is her life. And that is what makes her who she is.
That is also what makes it impossible for them to be together. He knows that now. Maybe he has known for quite a while. So he does the only sane thing left for him to do.
He quits.
He turns all the information he has over to her and walks away. He has to force himself along every step, knowing full well that if she called out to him before he moved out of hearing range, he would go straight back to her and this time he would be too deep into the quicksand to pull out. Part of him hopes that she will. The other part is terrified that she will.
She doesn't.
That night he shows up at Elizabeth's apartment and he tells her that he is all in. No holds barred, nothing held in reserve.
It is his daughter's graduation day and despite all foreseeable preparation, the rush minute is unavoidable. The call from the 12th precinct just as he is about to leave doesn't help. He rejects the call and switches off the phone. Today belongs to his daughter. Beckett can wait until tomorrow.
Later as he watches his daughter walk up to the dais in cap and gown, he feels a surge of paternal pride that threatens to overwhelm him. Whatever mess he has made of his own relationships, there is at least one thing that he got right.
Later in the day he gets a call a call from Ryan. He takes it, just to tell him to buzz off and not call him until tomorrow.
Ryan speaks just one sentence, and the words die inside Castle's throat.
Beckett is dead.
From what Ryan can tell, Castle gathers that the three of them had gone ahead with the raid as planned, without backup and despite misgivings from Ryan. To cut the long story short, they had tracked down the shooter to the hotel room registered to the alias he was using. Beckett and Esposito had gone in and left the hotel manager as a lookout. But somehow the assassin had snuck up on them, killed the manager and knocked Esposito out.
There were no credible accounts after that, but from what they had been able to piece together, the shooter had escaped to the roof and Beckett had pursued on her own. Shots were fired and somehow the gunfight had devolved into a brawl. One which ended with Beckett being pushed or thrown off the roof.
Castle cuts off the call before Ryan can finish, and slumps back into his chair, staring at his computer with unseeing eyes. He knows that he should be grieving, but strangely he feels no emotions, no grief, nothing at all. Some small corner of his mind knows that he is going into shock, and when the crash finally hits, it will hit him with the force of a tidal wave. But that will have to wait. He needs to find Mr. Smith first. Their agreement needs to be renegotiated.
He doesn't need to bother. Half an hour later his phone rings again. It's the man known as Mr. Smith. They need to talk. Face to face.
Their meeting takes place in the basement of an abandoned warehouse, which has been repurposed to serve as a makeshift bunker of sorts. Castle arrives to find Mr. Smith waiting for him, flanked by six bodyguards. Apparently Mr. Smith is taking no chances with his personal safety.
In the presence of a lawyer, they work out the details of the whistleblower operation, their last tribute to Roy Montgomery and Kate Beckett. In the weeks and months to follow, the whole country would be rocked by a political scandal, the magnitude of which would dwarf even Watergate. There would be appeals, accusations and counter-accusations, with the trials stretching on for years. Deals would be cut, with every political analyst and their mother clamoring to get their opinions heard in live media. But as far as Castle is concerned, his involvement is over.
Despite the political bomb that his actions have dropped, Castle cannot help but think that the ending is rather anti-climactic. This isn't how it is supposed to end. Beckett should be here to see it through. She should be the one to slap on the cuffs and watch as he is led away. If he were writing a book, that is how he would have written the ending. But real life doesn't mirror fiction, as he has learned the hard way.
Beckett's involvement in the Bracken Conspiracy, as it would come to be known would send his book sales through the roof. Castle supposes that would make Gina a very happy woman. Somehow he can't bring himself to be outraged about that either.
The irony of the fact that it is Beckett's death that brought her life's work to fruition is not lost on him.
The funeral for Beckett is a somber affair, oddly at contrast with the bright sunny day. The NYPD turns up en masse, to honor one of their own, killed in the line of duty. There is no mention of Beckett's long list of indiscretions, including but not limited to withholding evidence and lying to her superiors, not to mention her rash decision to head off on her own without backup. Later there would be reprisals and reprimands. Academy instructors down the line would hold Beckett as an example of what happens when a police officer bites off more than they can swallow, but none of that mattered now.
Ryan and Esposito had approached Castle earlier. They wanted him to speak at the funeral. Castle declines, with whatever little tact he can muster. He doesn't trust his voice to remain steady. He supposes that he is being a little too hard on his two former partners. He knows that they blame themselves for Beckett's death, but he can't muster up the will to console them. Quite frankly, he is not sure that a part of him doesn't blame them as well.
Not that he doesn't have his own share of guilt to carry around. He was supposed to be her partner, and in the end he left her to go alone. If he had been there, thing might have been different. She might still have been alive. Of course there is also the very real possibility that he would have died right alongside her, unless he had somehow managed to stop her from going. It wasn't that he didn't try it was just that maybe he should have tried harder.
One year from the date of Beckett's death, he walks back into the cemetery. The weather is much the same as it was the day of her funeral. He stands silently in front of the headstone bearing her name, searching for words that refuse to come, until he realizes that he has nothing left to say.
Everything he had wanted to say, he had already said to her that night in her apartment, one year ago, when he saw her for the last time. If there was anything she wanted to tell him, she never had.
And now she never would.
On paper, Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook will go on to have their happy ending. The Nikki Heat series will sell millions, breaking bestseller records, but for Kate Beckett and Richard Castle, the story ends here.
He presses two fingers to his lips and transfers them to the headstone, tracing the engraving of her name. Wherever Kate is, he hopes that she is finally at peace with herself. And when he finally speaks, it is just to say two words. Two words filled with wistfulness and longing, of roads not taken and all the things left unsaid.
"Goodbye, Kate."
And this time as he walks away, he knows that he won't be coming back.
Alright let the hailstorm begin.