Time Heals All Wounds
Phoebsfan
Rated: T
Disclaimer: I am very happy with the hands that own Castle and company. I do not claim to own them. I just wanted to play with them a little bit.
Summery: A story about a watch. Post ep/filler for Boom.
Her world was in charred little pieces around him. People milling and poking around in the ashes. It felt like a violation. For a woman who remained so private, even after a best-selling novel, this was too much.
He could tell she was going to play tough. It was what she did. But the woman in her had to be screaming. Had to be squirming as fingers shuffled through her life looking for evidence, for clues. For answers. Cold impersonal fingers, fingers that didn't know her well enough to be touching her life, pawing thoughtlessly through the remains of her memories and dreams.
It made him sick.
Kate Beckett for the world to see.
No welcome. No invitation. No offer of drinks or small talk to break the ice.
It was an intrusion. It was forced.
And it was her job.
Investigate. Interrogate. Solve.
They caught killers. They brought justice to those left behind.
But where was the justice in this? In her world literally being blown apart.
And all she asked about was her father's watch. Like it didn't matter that they were tearing through what was left. Like it didn't matter that so much was taken from her. Like everything would be alright, and she had simply misplaced the item.
But he heard it. That small quiver in her voice. The way she fought it all. Locking her heart away in that steel cage and pretending it didn't touch her. That those fingertips weren't brushing over little bits of her soul. Just stuff.
He knew that she wasn't the kind of woman to get attached to things and he would bet that a lot of what was lost was just that—stuff—to her. But the way she sifted through the ashes looking for her mother's ring, her father's watch. He knew there were other things she could never replace.
But he also knew it was a sacrifice she was willing to make.
He watched her brush a bit of ash from some of the rubble, caught the emotion she choked back as she hurriedly brushed it aside.
It made him want to yell at them all to leave. Even if he knew the importance of finding that one clue they needed so badly. Even if he knew she would have it no other way. He just wanted them gone so she could take the time to grieve properly, collect herself. Go through the wreckage and say goodbye.
She was so unbelievably strong, but he knew this was killing her.
Sighing heavily, he turned away from them all. He wanted to hold her close and wait for her to fall apart, even though he knew she wouldn't. She would push him away and tell him she was fine. Her bandaged arm contradicting her words.
She would tell him there was a killer out there. That the best thing they could do was to stop him.
He didn't know what to look for, didn't know why they even let him in. This wasn't like a normal crime scene and as much as he would have been near delirious at the idea of getting to know Beckett so intimately at one time, this was not the way he wanted to do it.
He couldn't make his hands move. Couldn't make them obey his mind and join in the hunt.
He wanted to grab Kate and take her away from this place, this dark ruined shell of her life. Make her smile over some stupid thing he said. Listen to her taunts. Wanted to help her forget.
Wanted to not feel like part of this was his fault. Logically he knew it wasn't. But it was hard to put the two together when she asked about her father's watch. When he watched her secure that brave face and stiffen her spine. Hard not to feel like if he had just been faster, smarter, better, that they would have caught on in time to stop it from happening. To wonder if he hadn't been so selfish with her, needed her so much that it blinded him to possible consequences of his actions. What if...
He was a writer, not a detective.
He turned—with no apparent direction—but as he turned his foot hit something solid and it skittered out from under a pile of debris. Leaning over he brushed aside some of the ash that coated it and the watch shined back at him.
His fingers tightened around it, lifted it from the refuse as he rose to his full height. The crystal was cracked but it still ticked on, as if declaring to the world that it couldn't be stopped, couldn't be broken. He loosened his fingers and opened his hand, traced the crack with a finger from his free hand. Almost a caress, breathless and light as a whisper. Like he would touch her, that marble goddess of a detective who braved hell because she had to. Had to stop others from hurting the way she did.
He closed his fist around the watch again. Shoved it in his pocket.
They would fix this. They'd find the bastard who did this and make him pay for it.
Though he doubted anything could possibly make up for it, only make it hurt just a little less.
Her fingertip grazed the face of her father's watch long after he had left for the evening. She had thought it gone, like so much of her life. Irreplaceable. Then he had set it down in front of her, and part of her exhaled for the first time in what felt like forever. He hadn't missed a beat and had kept her from becoming emotional over it.
But now, hours later, she felt the tears burning and threatening. She wasn't going to do this. Wasn't going to cry over what she could not change.
His thoughtfulness surprised her sometimes. That sweet understated side of him that asked for nothing, such a contradiction to the loud little boy who always wanted to tag along and pull her pigtails.
He didn't need to get it fixed for her but she was glad he did. Glad he didn't return it when he found it, covered in ash and broken, so much like she had been. She would have lost it for sure then, it had taken everything she had to keep it together as people tossed around bits of her life like garbage.
In front of everyone she would have broken down and let the tears, that were even now threatening, spill out in a mess.
How did he always know the right time? The right time to hold back. To joke. To leave her to her own thoughts. To keep her from her own thoughts.
How did he always know what she needed, when she needed it?
He offered her a place to stay, a bed to sleep in while she looked for a new home but she turned him down. He had done far too much as it was. She would survive, like she always had.
But having the watch... She smiled as she fastened it around her wrist where it belonged.
Having the watch back made it all just a little more bearable.
Just like Castle, she mused to herself as she pushed back from her desk and gathered her things. Somehow he always made things a little more bearable as well. And while it would be a pain to replace everything she had lost, there were some things that couldn't be replaced. If her books, or her couch, were among the last casualties of that mad man she could live with that, happily even.
What she still had far outweighed what she lost.
Her phone chirped in her pocket and she pulled it free, then without looking answered.
"Beckett."
"Did you know that the author Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel with over fifty thousand words and none of them contain the letter 'e?'" Castle's voice greeted her.
She smiled as the elevator doors opened and she stepped in.
"You planning on taking him on?" She played along, as she pushed the button for the parking garage.
"Though we both know I could, I'm thinking that has to be one of the most boring novels ever. I mean think of all the words you couldn't use. Love. Hate. Anger. Envy. Greed. Sex. Murder..."
She let him continue on, enjoying the company.
"But you still have your favorite fall backs: lust and passion." She teased.
"Oh Detective Beckett, I love it when you talk dirty." He taunted as she stepped out of the elevator and made her way to her car, digging her keys from her jacket pocket.
"If that's your definition of dirty, you need to get out more, Writer Boy."
"Wanna corrupt me then? If you think I need to get out more it only follows that you have some unique personal experience that I should be introduced to." She bit her bottom lip as she popped open her car door and climbed in. Unique experiences were something she was certain Castle excelled in. If anyone could stretch her boundaries, it would be him.
But she could give him a run for his money.
"You only wish you were so lucky." She fired back in response as she started her car. Sometimes she wished she was that lucky too, until she woke up and realized that for all his sweetness, he could also be a royal pain in the ass. Still, she wouldn't trade him for anything.
He was her pain in the ass after all.
"Every night my dear, Detective. Every night." He sighed theatrically.
Her eyes drifted back down to her father's watch and wondered if he wasn't somehow tied to it now as well. If her first thoughts when glancing down would now mix Castle with those of her father.
Somehow that didn't bother her. Not even a little bit.
And as Castle continued to verbally spar with her, she almost hoped that they would cohabit. A reminder of what she saved, tied with what he saved.
So much more than a watch.