Happy Castle Fanfic Monday! Hope this serves as a little comfort during our mini hiatus!
Disclaimer: I do not own Castle or the characters used in this story!
This is for my wonderful friend, Kate. She's lovely and I treasure our friendship. Happy Birthday!
Parallel
"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that,
Fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes.
You are free."
-Jim Morrison
It's utterly slow and instantaneous all at once. The rage and pain mirror each other, a fiercely similar parallel that runs far deeper than Castle ever realized. As if loving Kate from a distance hasn't been hard enough, as if the waiting game, the dance that they've been playing hasn't nearly caused him to forfeit time after time. Three words bring the progress to a blinding halt, three words throw the strategically straight lines of this love parallel into a swirling chaos.
I remember everything.
Anger blazes behind the darkening blue irises, waves of emotion burning, searing what was once a clear vision. Castle watches Kate's arms cross over her chest, witnesses her determined stride of confidence and the perfected technique that usually has amazement blooming on his face is suddenly reversed, twisting his features and his heart into an ugly, destroyed mess.
His first instinct is to run, to put as much distance between them as quickly as possible, but he can't stop watching her, can't stop studying her face as he replays the words that she just effortlessly confessed to a stranger, a suspect who knows nothing about her, nothing about them.
And then Kate's fingers are wrapped around the doorknob, wrenching it open with a force that mirrors the weight of everything she's just said, and Castle can't move, can't do anything but watch as she comes face to face with him.
Her reaction is instant, something like grief flashing across her face before she carefully regains her composure, clearly hoping that Castle missed the majority of the interrogation she just completed.
"Castle," she chokes on his name, has to clear her throat before she can continue. "When did you get here?"
If this is some kind of game that's supposed to go right along with the humiliation she's already put him through, he's no longer in the mood to play. His body physically trembles as he takes a step towards her, and the tension rolls off of him in large waves that threaten to crash over them.
"If that's your way of asking how much I heard of something that I'm sure was never meant for me to overhear, the answer is enough. I heard more than enough, Beckett."
Something like fear floods through her veins, and she takes a step back from him, clearly unprepared to have this conversation with him.
"Castle…" she tries, but her words fail after that because she has no idea what to say.
"How long?" he asks through clenched teeth, and Kate watches as his hands tighten into fists and press tightly at his sides.
"How long what?" she asks, because after so long of not saying the things that they should have, she needs clarification of what he's asking her.
"How long have you remembered?
"I…" Shit. She knew that this conversation would be difficult, it's one of the main reasons she's put it off for so long, but now she's completely blindsided, completely unprepared for confessions of truth in the middle of the precinct.
But one look at his face tells her all she needs to know. He wants the truth, and he wants it now. And she's one-hundred percent sure that if she doesn't give it to him, he's going to walk away and never come back.
And in spite of everything she's put him through, regardless of how selfish she's been in this whole mess of things, she won't let him walk away, not like this.
"Since I woke up in the hospital, right after I got shot," she confesses, her eyes dancing nervously over his face as she watches his inevitable reaction.
He turns away from her so quickly that she thinks he's going to leave entirely, but he stops after a few paces, shoulders hunched and defeated.
"All this time. You let me humiliate myself for almost a year because you were too much of a coward to tell me the truth?"
The anger that bubbles inside her is fleeting, and she takes a deep breath, tampers it down before this escalates into more unnecessary pain for both of them.
"You're right about one thing, I am a coward, but I didn't lie to you to cause you any humiliation."
Castle whirls around to face her again, clenches his fists tighter at his sides and Kate can't recall ever seeing him like this before.
"So you confessing to a suspect that you remember your shooting, letting those words slip free as if they were the easiest ones you've ever said, that's not supposed to be humiliating?"
"Castle, you know how interrogations work. I said what I needed to say to get him to talk. It had nothing to do with you."
"Nothing to do with me?" he shouts, and she's sure that anyone in the precinct will be crowding around to watch.
"Castle –"
He cuts off her attempt to redirect the conversation until they can move somewhere more private.
"You were too much of a coward to tell me that you didn't reciprocate my feelings towards you, so you decided it was better to just lie to me about it continuously and then discuss the events of that day with someone who knows nothing about you, someone who deserves to know nothing about you. And you think this has nothing to do with me? You didn't even consider the fact that I could be standing outside watching when you said those things?"
"What do you mean I don't reciprocate those feelings?" she retorts, boldly stepping towards him this time, but she can hear the whispering murmurs from outside the door so she curls her hand around his arm hoping that he'll follow her silently until they're somewhere alone.
She's actually surprised when instead of jerking away from her, he lets her lead him out of the room and down the stairwell until they're outside and effectively alone. She rounds the corner with his arm still clutched in her hand and then she lets him go and turns to face him once again.
"You think that because I lied to you that I don't feel the same way as you? That's your justification for it?"
"What the hell else do you expect me to think? If things had been reversed, if I had been the one that was shot and you confessed that you loved me as I was slipping away, the first thing I would have wanted to do when I woke up and remembered is tell you that I feel the same way. Because you know what, Kate? I loved you way before that day in the cemetery. That wasn't just some rushed confession that I didn't really mean in an effort to make you hang on."
"We're not the same people, Castle. And you can't say what you would do after getting shot because you've never been shot. I was in excruciating pain, someone had just tried to kill me and on top of all of that, you told me that you loved me. I couldn't deal with all of it at once."
"Why couldn't you just tell me that then?" he asks, uncurling his hands and relaxing a little for the first time since they started this conversation.
"Because, Castle. I was scared, okay? I knew that if I didn't focus completely on getting better that I would spiral out of control. I was messed up then, hell, I'm still messed up but I've been working on myself. I've been trying to get myself to a place where I can let go of that fear."
"But I thought that our conversation on the swings when you came back meant something. I thought we were on the same page, heading in the same direction. I thought you were asking me to wait for you."
"I was, Castle. I was asking you to wait for me," she huffs, frustrated with herself for not being clearer about her intentions.
"But even then you knew. You knew that I loved you and you still couldn't admit it."
"It's not because I didn't feel the same way, though. I just wasn't in a place to tackle those feelings. It wouldn't have been fair to you, because I wasn't ready."
Castle huffs, letting his back hit the wall behind him at the same time that he drops his head back against the hard brick. And for the first time that day they seem to finally be parallel again.
Only Kate doesn't want that any longer, she doesn't want their paths to remain headed in the same direction yet separated. She wants them to converge.
"I just wish that I made you feel like you could be honest with me," he confesses and his head is still tipped back and his eyes are still closed, but she can feel the weight of his statement burning through her.
"Castle, look at me," she demands, stepping up to him and reaching her hand out to graze his arm until he lifts his head.
"I needed to get my life together. I needed to get myself better. I know that lying to you was one of the worst things and that I've gone about this all wrong, but is it really so bad that I just wanted to try and make myself someone you deserve? If I had tried to start something with you right after I got shot, it would have ended in a disaster."
"You don't know that, Kate."
"Yes, I do. I know because I know what a disaster I was. I would have ruined us. And that would have killed me."
Castle watches the honesty that washes over her, breathes in the clarity of her words and for the first time in almost a year, he catches a glimpse of a future for them.
"I guess that makes sense. I still wish I could have been there for you while you were recovering."
"But you were, Castle. Every time I wanted to stop pushing forward, every day that the pain was almost unbearable, every new exercise that I thought was impossible to do, you were with me, you were carrying me through. I kept telling myself that I'd fight until I was someone who knew how to love you like you love me."
She takes tentative steps closer to him, one foot in front of the other until her body is flush with his own and then she lifts her arms, drapes them around his neck and pulls him even closer to her, until their lips are almost touching.
"I do love you, Rick. I think I have for longer than I ever realized. I just didn't know how to accept it, how to let the love bloom into what it really is until now. What I did was selfish, but please don't ever doubt that I love you."
His eyes widen at her confession, and he lets is wash over him like a cool, refreshing rain on a hot day. And her words expose his deepest fear, the thought that she would never love him, never give him a chance to love her properly.
"You love me?" he asks, letting his hands circle her waist so he can hold her against him.
"I do. I'm so sorry it took me so long to tell you, so long to get us here."
"All that matters is that we're here now," he states seconds before his lips connect with hers.
Kate separates their connection for only a brief moment to whisper words against his lips.
"Tell me again?" And it's a plea that he's all too happy to answer.
"I love you. I love you, Kate."
Their next kiss is love conquering fear, a battle that's already been won even as their lips slide perfectly together. And he lets it take over, lets her touch and her love become his freedom.
Once again, Happy birthday, Kate. I hope this was a bit of joy for your day!
Would love to hear your thoughts! xo