A/N: For the always lovely lousiemcdoogle, who asked for it and to whom I can't imagine ever saying no.
liberosis
n. the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.
When Katie Beckett was eight years old, her grandmother caught her biting her nails. Grammy had batted her hand away from her mouth and told her that if she bit her nails, she would get worms in her belly, and the only way to get them out was to cook a delicious meal and let the smell of it entice the worms to crawl up her throat. It was a myth, of course, a myth that made Katie puff out her chest in stubborn pride and tell her grandmother she didn't care.
That evening, Johanna took her gangly little girl to the library of her parents' house and arranged Katie in her lap, pulled out Pop's big medical encyclopaedia and looked up the entry for tapeworms. See Katie-bug, her mother had said, worms can't smell at all, so they don't come crawling out of your mouth. Whatever her grandmother's intentions, whether she believed in the old wives' tale or not, Katie never bit her fingernails again.
In front of her on the counter Castle sets down a bowl of pasta sauce and it smells so good, but Kate can feel the slow crawl of a parasite up out of her oesophagus and she gags, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth as she stumbles from the barstool. Not even sure where she's heading, only that she needs to get the hell away from the smell of her favourite dinner.
The buttery leather of the couch welcomes her and she curls up in the corner section, clutches a pillow to her chest and drops her head to the back of the chair. The slide of her husband's fingers over her knee makes her jump and she bites her lip, probes at the raw place inside with the tip of her tongue.
"Kate." He murmurs, and her eyes come open to see his face hovering close by, craggy with concern. "What do you want instead? An omelette, grilled cheese, soup? Tell me what to do."
"I can't." She moans, the thought of eating anything making her stomach turn over in revolt. Kate is doing her best, really she is, but opening her eyes and looking at him can't cure everything.
Castle chokes on something that might be a sob and wraps an arm around her shoulders, bringing her in against his chest and arranging her until they're both comfortable. "Please eat something, baby. You haven't since we came to get you and I'm sure Nieman didn't feed you either."
Just the other woman's name, just that, is enough to make her shudder and Beckett buries her face in the plaid of her husband's shirt, her teeth closing around the fabric to keep the keening inside. Last night was. . .it was bad, and so today she's too tired to fight the shadows.
"You have to go and speak to Internal Affairs this afternoon, Beckett. And you need energy for that." Castle's mouth is fleeting, like tiny footsteps at her temple, her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth. She knows that she's scaring him, that the chokehold of her nightmares was just as bad for him, and the hoarse scratch of her voice today is a terrible reminder for them both.
Kate has never killed someone without her gun before. It was so much more personal, to hold the sharp edge of the scalpel to Nieman's carotid artery and press down, a slow drag that peeled open the surgeon's skin. She screamed, raw and gurgling like an animal at the slaughter, but when the scalpel drew across her trachea she fell silent and then it was just the spirt of blood and the crumple of Neiman's body and the stuttering, slow claw of her hands against the floor.
It was fast. Beckett is far more comfortable with the warm weight of her Glock in her hands, but she knew enough to bend Neiman's head forward, that it would make it easier to cut the main arteries that way. Ear to ear in a sick grin, the ridges of her top vertebrae like teeth, and Kate stood over her and watched her die.
They made her get a tetanus shot in the ambulance, because her wrists were rubbed raw until they split open and no one could be sure just how sterile the quasi operating room was. And, with what happened. . .some of Nieman's blood mixed with her own as it dripped down her arm towards the crook of her elbow.
"She wanted my face." Kate says, and Castle pulls back to look at her, his jaw tight with fear and grief. She's doing this to him, over and over again, but she can't figure out how to stop. Kate Beckett has killed before, to save her own life and his, but this time she feels like a murderer.
Her husband's hand comes up to palm her cheek, the same as when he found her and it took that touch, the familiar heat of his skin against hers, to bring her out of the shock and tumbling wide-eyed into the present moment. "What do you mean? Your face?"
"She said that she needed a new face to go off the radar, and she had chosen mine."
"Shit." He breathes out, his fingers moving to curl around the back of her neck and bring her in, mouth settling in a kiss against her forehead. "Shit. I'm so glad you're you."
That has her choking on something that wants desperately to be a laugh but just isn't quite there yet; it makes him startle, but amusement wriggles at the corner of his mouth in echo of her own. "What do you mean?"
"That you're just. . .amazing. You got yourself out of there and you took her down, and you didn't need anyone to save you." Because he wouldn't have made it in time, is what he's not saying, and she knows he feels guilty about that.
She doesn't fault him for it. He had his own battles to fight, his own ghosts to vanquish, and she finds it oddly poetic. The way that Tyson and Neiman were such an excellent team, how fiercely they defended one another, did sort of remind her of herself and Castle. Reflected as if from a pond, warped and murky, but still with elements of that solid partnership she values so much. And so, only fitting that in the end both of them had to fight with their own counterparts.
"I think I can manage toast."
He's hovering.
He knows that he is, and if Alexis were here she would roll her eyes at him and drag him away, distract him with something so Kate can have the space she craves. But his mother and daughter aren't due back until tonight and so it's just him, pacing back and forward outside the door, and the thunder of the shower in their bathroom.
It's her third shower since they got home last night, and that scares him. A small piece of him settled when she ate the toast he made for her, slathered in peanut butter, but his wife is still jittery and easily spooked, still seems like she has one foot in another world entirely.
The shower clicks off and he trips over himself running for his study. He doesn't even make it to his desk before the bathroom door opens and Beckett's voice rings out, clipped and exhausted but underneath a current of lovely warmth. "You can come in here."
His socks are slippery against the hardwood and he crashes his shoulder into the doorframe, hisses loudly and pouts just to see what she'll do. She rolls her eyes, but her body bumps up behind his and her lips press to his shoulder blade through the fabric of his shirt.
"Poor baby." She hums, meeting his eyes in the mirror, and he turns in the circle of her arms to trace the droplets of water that slide down the column of her neck and over her shoulders. Her wrist is still angry looking, but she doesn't seem to need the bandage anymore and that helps. It does.
"I wish I could go with you."
He wasn't with her when it counted, wasn't there to stop Tyson and Nieman from getting to her, and he can't even make up for it now. The captain won't let him. It has been a long time since Castle has felt this useless. He can hold her and he can feed her and he can wake her from the nightmares, but all of the heavy lifting and the emotional recovery has to be on her.
"I know. I wish you could too. But maybe this is better, I don't want you to hear-" Kate slams to a halt, her eyes flying to his, but he understands. She would rather he doesn't know exactly what went down with Nieman. As if it could possibly make him think less of her.
Rick kisses her. She tastes washed clean, fresh, and he grins against her mouth. His tongue strokes at the seam of her lips in determination and she shivers, arches her spine until her chest brushes his. He gentles her with the delicate, again-and-again press of his kiss and she turns liquid in his grip.
"You can do this. You didn't do anything wrong, and you'll get cleared, and then when you get home we'll do dinner and a movie."
"Actually, Castle." She chews on her lip, glances up at him through the thicket of her lashes. The underfloor heat in his bathroom kicked on just before she got into the shower and he's feeling it now, has to reach down and tug off his socks. They're the thick, woollen ones that Kate loves to steal from him.
He lets her nudge him backward until he comes up against the counter and he hoists himself up, reels her in to stand between his legs. Her fingers splay at his thighs and he gasps, has to grab onto her towel and hold it up for her.
It doesn't make her laugh. Not like it might on an ordinary day. But then, if this were an ordinary day he wouldn't rescue her towel at all, more than happy to let it drop and bare her to him.
"I want to go to the morgue. I need to. . .to see them."
It washes him through with sick, terrible fear. He wants it over with, wants to forget that Tyson and Nieman ever existed, but Kate doesn't work that way. She needs the evidence, has to put it to rest, and because he loves her he'll support that even though it makes his skin crawl to think of having to face Tyson again.
"Okay. Okay, Kate. We'll go." He kisses her cheek, smooths a hand through her drying hair. Her curls are riotous, spilling over into her eyes, but for the first time he gets a real smile from her, one that makes her eyes liquid and lovely.
She takes a half-step forward until their hips meet, her arms lacing around his neck, and her nose nudges at the rough scrape of his stubble. He didn't shave this morning, so tired from sitting up with Kate half of the night that he didn't trust himself with a sharp object anywhere near his face. Well, and he knows that his wife likes when he lets his beard grow through just a little bit, that when his jaw is shadowed it's easier to get her to agree that he's ruggedly handsome.
"Thank you. Now-" she presses a smacking kiss to his cheek, patting his chest and stepping out of the cage of his thighs. "Go away. Let me get dressed."
Her soft chuckle of amusement chases him and his pout out of the room.
Beckett trembles the entire way through the interview. She doesn't show it, of course. After her battle with PTSD a few years back she's well versed in hiding the physical symptoms of her distress. So her palms are scored deep with crescent moons and her neck aches, but they clear her.
Internal Affairs decided that she did nothing wrong, that she acted in self-defence, and that she can return to active duty as soon as her captain sees fit. Kate stands tall in the elevator, straightens her shoulders and bites down on the inside of her lip, and when the doors open she doesn't even wither under the stares of her colleagues.
The last time she stepped off of this elevator, her husband had his arm around her shoulders and his free hand clutched tight in hers and she had never felt smaller. This time, she has her highest pair of heeled boots on and a power suit that made Castle whistle appreciatively when she emerged from their bedroom. Serious and professional, and no one sees fit to applaud her now.
She catches Gates gesturing at her from the window of the captain's office and she nods, weaves her way through the bustle of the bullpen to reach her superior.
"Kate." The captain smiles, squeezes Beckett's hand. She's around the front of her desk, leaning against it instead of putting the barrier of the wooden surface between them, and Kate appreciates that more than she ever thought she might. "How are you?"
"I'm. . .good. Thank you, Sir."
It's not a lie, not exactly, but the captain's eyebrow arches and she folds her arms across her chest. "Mr Castle has been taking good care of you, I'm sure. And I'd like to let him continue doing so. I'm putting you on leave for a week. I don't want to see you back here until next Wednesday."
A year or two ago, she would have riled against it, would have complained, but right now? Kate can't think of anything she wants more than a week to laze in bed with her husband. And really, she needs it. Needs to give herself a break, time to rest.
"Thank you." Beckett ducks her chin to hide her smile, accepts a last nod from her captain before she heads out of the office and back out into the roar and the pulse of the city she loves.
On her way back home, she stops at their favourite Thai place and grabs dinner for them, keeps the boxes of food close to her chest as she waits outside for a cab. This February is brutal, biting, and she's grateful for the warmth of the takeout even through several layers.
She's hungry now. Finally.
When she unlocks the front door and steps inside her home, Castle is already there hovering, trying to take her coat and her scarf and the food from her all at once. She laughs and shrugs off his wandering hands, her octopus husband, shoots him a pointed look before she hands him the takeout boxes. "Could you plate this up? I wanna change."
"Course." He beams, darting in for a fast kiss that robs her of coherent thought for just a minute. By the time she's changed into sweats and a t-shirt of his, he's got two place settings laid out at the island, a generous glass of wine at each one.
God, she loves him.
"How'd it go?" He asks, reeling her in with a fist in the material at either side of her hips. She nods, frames his face in her hands and kisses him the way she hadn't felt able to with the weight of the IA meeting so terribly heavy on her shoulders.
"Good. They cleared me, and I've got a week's leave."
He wriggles his eyebrows at her, a wry grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, and she's blushing before he even speaks. "Why Mrs Castle, however will we fill the time?"
"We could watch TV. . ." She laughs, tracing a line down the placket of his shirt with her fingernail. It has him shuddering, wriggling under her touch and then he turns over his shoulder, glances towards the staircase.
"Please don't summon my mother."
Kate slaps at his chest for that, biting his bottom lip until he growls and pushes her back from him. He runs his fingers through her hair and she curls her fingers around his wrist, thumb circling over the soft skin where his veins push close against the surface. "Are the girls back?"
"They landed about a half hour ago. Mother said they'll get the car service." Castle leans in until his forehead meets hers, their noses nudging together, and Kate touches her fingers to the timid lift of his mouth for her. As if he's afraid, not sure if he's allowed to laugh around her, and she never wants him to feel that way.
Her husband has always been her laughter. "I'm really okay, you know. I'm getting there."
"I know you are." He nods immediately, but he's still frowning. "It's just. . .everything you went through. It's okay to not be there yet."
She hums, and then her stomach growls loudly and she blushes, slipping into the barstool next to him and tucking in to the food she bought. Castle eats with one hand on her knee the entire time, but it's not as suffocating as she might have found it even a year ago.
"Have you thought about seeing Burke?" Castle asks her when they're done eating, his back to her. The muscles of his shoulders ripple enticingly under the thin cotton of his shirt as he rinses their dishes and Kate's mouth goes dry; she takes a sip of her wine to earn herself a moment to think and to get it together.
"That might be a good idea. But can I just. . .give it a little bit of time? See how I am by the weekend, and then I'll call him."
"Of course." He says immediately, spinning around to face her and casting a panicked glance from his soapy hands to her and back again. Kate laughs, feels her face unravelling into tenderness for him as he grabs a towel and dries his hands before he comes to wrap her up in a hug again. "Whatever you need. I just want you to be alright."
They don't make it to the morgue the next day. It's Lanie's day off, and just a glance at his wife told Rick that going to visit the dead bodies of Tyson and Nieman while Perlmutter is on shift was entirely unappetising to her. Instead, they spent the day with Alexis and his mother, and Dr Parish for a brief time as well.
So many people care about Kate. So many people love her, and he adores the flush that blooms at her cheeks when she's reminded of it. When his daughter curls up close at her side on the couch, or his mother kisses her cheek and tells her just how grateful she is that Kate made it out okay.
Friday morning though, he wakes to his wife already showered and dressed and coffee in a travel cup instead of the mug she gave him for Christmas. It's their family, himself and Kate, his mother and daughter and Jim. Their faces superimposed onto the bodies of a gathering of Santa's elves, and it was so deliciously unlike her that he had choked on his laughter before he kissed her, tongue and all in front of everyone they love.
No mug this morning, and he can see that she's antsy so he doesn't waste any time with his own shower. She's already picked out his clothes when he comes out of the bathroom and he lifts an eyebrow but says nothing, slides into the deep purple button down she picked out.
"You could have woken me earlier, you know."
"You needed the sleep." She shrugs at him, but her fingers are drumming against the side of her own coffee cup and she can't stay in one place for more than a few seconds. "But now you're awake."
In it, he hears what she's too polite to say. Hurry up. And that's not like her either; Kate Beckett has never been one to tiptoe around what she means, and it sets his jaw on edge. At least she lets him hold her hand all the way to the car, hers still warm from holding his cup while she waited.
He really doesn't understand why she's so eager to do this. Maybe it's different for him because he's already seen both of the bodies. He watched the life drain out of Tyson right in front of him, and then he couldn't help but stare at Nieman's prone form over the top of Kate's head. She hasn't seen Tyson yet, and the way she was so vacant when they got there. . .he's not convinced she really saw Nieman either.
When they make it to the morgue Lanie is ready for them and she pulls out the two drawers without a word to either of them. Both of the bodies are covered with sheets, but Rick shivers regardless. He really doesn't want to do this, doesn't need more fuel for his nightmares, but he loves Kate more than his own self so he pushes it back. All of it.
"Are you ready, honey?" Lanie squeezes Beckett's hand, and on her nod the medical examiner pulls back the sheets and reveals the dead bodies of Tyson and Nieman to them. "I'll be right outside when you're done."
"Thank you." Castle says, because his wife doesn't seem able to tear her eyes away from Neiman's body. And actually, that might be a way for him to deal with this. Watch her instead of them, keep his eyes on her to make sure he can catch her if she needs it.
Her teeth are cutting into her bottom lip and he searches for her hand next to her thigh, snags it in his own. She lets him knot their fingers together, doesn't fight him on it, and he allows a sigh of gratitude to escape him. With her fingers in his he's no longer afraid to look.
Tyson looks just the same as he always has. A little greyer maybe, waxier, but not any different than he was expecting. But Nieman. . .Nieman's throat is livid even having been stitched closed and somehow the blood having been cleaned away only makes it seem worse.
And he's glad. As much as he despises Tyson, Kelly Nieman wanted to take his wife's face and sick satisfaction rises from the pit of his stomach to see her like this. Mutilated.
Kate chokes on a breath and he realises that she's been holding it this whole time. He watches her from his peripheral vision, sees her brows furrow and the slow nod of her head. And then she turns in to him, buries her face into the material of his shirt. "Okay. That's enough. I can't look anymore."
"Okay. Alright, Kate. You don't have to." He makes a half turn to see Lanie waiting for them just outside the door and nods at her; she comes inside immediately and slides both of the drawers closed. He lets go of his wife when Lanie reaches for her, turns Kate into her best friend's embrace instead.
Dr Parish's hands comb through Kate's hair and she rocks her a little, murmurs soothing nonsense into Beckett's ear. He feels almost voyeuristic watching, but he doesn't dare take even a step away incase she needs him again in a moment.
He felt so useless the entire time she was missing, channelled his helplessness into rage, but now that she's back he can help. If she needs hugs and laughter and someone to wake her in the night when the screams claw out of her throat, he can be that for her. Can make up for how much he failed her.
When they make it outside, the sky a crisp blue sheet above them, Kate tilts her face up towards it and smiles, soaks in the light even in spite of the biting cold. He lets her have it, whatever it is that she's doing. Making peace with the world, he hopes, and when she turns back to him with her smile stretching wide he knows that they're going to be okay.
"Castle." She reaches for his hand and pushes the tangle of their bare fingers into the depths of his pocket. "Let's go home."
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