Missed Opportunities
A/N: This is a Pandora/Linchpin spin-off – pure conjecture at this point. It breaks my heart to even think like this…but reading between the lines, it's something we might have to face up to. Though I certainly hope not.
Disclaimer: Andrew Marlowe created them. I'm just having a little fun. I own nothing.
"Castle, you coming?" asks Kate, turning away to leave, as if the question is a mere formality, rhetorical even.
She stops when she hears the hesitancy in his voice. It calls her back.
"Eh…" he looks back at Sofia, then over at Kate, and she can see that he is clearly torn.
But torn between what? Past and present? Want and need? Easy and difficult? Available and…what, promised? Love and duty? And if it's love, love for whom?
"Sofia and I were just going to go get a drink. Catch up…old times," he admits, his tone a little apologetic, his expression a little guilty.
"Right," says Kate, her face closing to him, the light in her eyes shuttering, a blush creeping onto her cheeks that she's unable to hide. "Right. Leave you to it. I'll see you around, Castle," she adds, walking out of the door, and the way she feels right now, out of his life for good.
He makes a half-hearted move to get her to stay, catches her arm, says something about her being welcome to join them. But it's clearly just a polite formality. Something you'd say to a new friend, to include them with the old, when really all you want is to pour over reminiscences with someone who was there at the time.
New friends just get in the way, force you to edit your act, explain each story in a way that sucks the life out of remembering, ruining the spontaneity of the memory, killing the verbal shorthand. And in this instance, Kate suspects, the editing might have to cut deep to keep personal details hidden, to screen past intimacies from her specifically.
She shakes off his arm, doesn't look back or even reply. She knows Sofia is watching them, a placid, enigmatic smile on her lips. She's winning this round, and she hasn't even uttered a word. Just stands there, with her arms crossed, hip jutting out sharply, cool and in control because she knows she's got her man.
Kate knows that Castle was by no means innocent in all of this. These past few days, she watched in horror as he flirted right back, a spark of something flaring in his eyes the minute this woman reentered his orbit.
Sofia Turner/Clara Strike; a passage in his history he has yet to underline. The one woman he admitted not wanting to share his theory with, lest he look like an ass if it turned out that he was wrong. Kate's seen him look like an ass more times than she can remember. This knowledge should comfort her, tell her that he feel sure enough in her company to put himself out there, but in her present state of mind it just tells her that she matters less, that her opinion of him is less important. That Sofia means more.
And suddenly Kate is on the outside of their relationship looking in. That bubble they normally operate in, Beckett and Castle - of needs anticipated but never voiced, sentences finished without misunderstanding, promises made to hearts that were broken - that bubble is now a hard, glass shell, soundproofed and impenetrable. And now she's on the outside and she can't bear to look.
So she leaves. Walks away, with a sob threatening to escape her painfully constricting throat, choking her, unshed tears burning the backs of her eyes.
She makes it out of that damned CIA bunker, shakes off her handler, throws that bloody black cloth hood on the floor, and then she walks as fast as she can away from that place where her worst fears have been realized.
Nothing to do with being abducted, or almost drowning, or being shot at. No. Nothing at all.
Because suddenly – and why didn't she see this before – suddenly, it's clear to her that this is the very worst that could happen, even in her risk-filled, death-soaked, dangerous life.
And it's all because she made him wait. Pushed him away with some crap about walls and not being ready to be the best that she can be. But who the hell ever is, right? Everyone has flaws and baggage. Hell, he has more baggage than Delta on a good day. And now she's lost him. Lost him to an old flame who's been flashing 'I'm available' and 'let's pick up where we left off' signs at him for the last few days. Not in Morse code. Hell no. This broad might as well have hired an electronic billboard in Times Square.
She's been saying it loud and clear, with her body, and her looks, and the things she said and didn't say. And now Kate is furious and hurt. Furious at her, and at him. But most of all, just furious with herself, for feeling this way, for being such a coward, for missing her chance, and for taking them for granted.
She's great, (extraordinary, he said) but she's not that great. Figures he'd give up on her eventually. He's a man. 'I love yous' aside, he's still a man, and she's rejected him time without number. Not overtly. Well, yes, that too, on occasion, if she's honest. But also with looks, and the sharp edge of her tongue, the arch of an eyebrow that said 'don't you dare come too close'. If roles had been reversed she'd have moved on by now. Only so much rejection her ego could take before she got the message and moved on. He should get a medal really, for making it this far.
She's out by the side of the road now, hailing a cab. Her tears have disappeared beneath the whirring of her mind. Memories, moments forgotten, now re-summoned, swirl to the surface in her brain.
Her chest aches as she climbs into the taxi alone, already missing her partner with a pain that is visceral. She thinks maybe she's forgetting to breathe, her chest aches so badly.
They were supposed to be walking out of this together, laughing that they'd survived the CIA, averted W., just the two of them - invincible.
Like the Marines, she's never left a man behind…until now and it feels awful.
A tear plops fat and wet against her hand, startling her, followed immediately by another, and another, until her gloves are stained, the leather soaked through like a chamois cloth. She doesn't move, makes no effort to wipe them away. She thinks she might be breaking.
The guys are expecting them back at the precinct. So she directs the cab driver there. Doesn't know what else to do, so she falls back on protocol, because protocol is something she knows, something she's good at. Give her any situation and she'll outline her strategy for you, color within the lines, stick to the straight and narrow (until she met him), follow the rules. That she can do.
But ask her to follow her heart, take a risk on an unsafe bet, tread the untrodden path, put herself out there for him…and it seems facing down a sniper would be easier.
She's failed. He's gone and she's done.
She heaves herself out of the cab and makes her way indoors. The boys are so welcoming when she reaches the bullpen that she thinks she might break down all over again. They pester her for details of the case, the CIA, and finally, Castle.
Kate shrugs off her coat, and tries to shrug off that man. Her partner. Ex-partner?
The boys look at her - really look - their excitement and enthusiasm blasted to smithereens by how broken she looks. An awkward silence descends as they watch Kate get herself under control. Pulling it together, for their sakes, as well as her own.
Ryan goes to make coffee. Esposito takes her coat and hangs it up. They're not Castle, but they're damn well trying. She could weep it's so sweet. These men, her boys. A consolation prize she's eternally grateful for today.
The coffee appears, hot and wet, and she accepts it gratefully. It's not Castle's coffee, but it soothes her, leeching warmth into her bones, scalding the damaged parts clean.
Ryan's busying himself with something on his computer. They don't have an active case, so Kate assumes it's a front. Esposito is waiting in the wings for the right moment to ask, and his silence is so damn loud that she almost laughs.
"He went out with Sofia, the CIA agent," she says finally, by way of explanation. "And that's an end to it," she adds, managing somehow to keep her voice even, though tiredness seeps through.
The boys stare at her. Questions in their eyes and on the tips of their tongues. An internal battle taking place – propriety over a desire to know and to help.
Esposito breaks first, that brave boy.
"What does he think he's doing?" he asks, a question at once so 'nail on the head' and yet, so brutal it stings.
'I have no idea' and 'seems pretty clear to me', are the two answers that pop into her head.
"He's living his life," is what she finally comes up with. "Can't blame him for that, can we? He gave us four years, a lot of laughs, some crazy-assed theories and an espresso machine. And now it's over. People leave marriages with less. We should be grateful. Just move on."
She's fooling no one with her clipped remarks, but they give her a minute. Don't call her on it immediately, and she's grateful, oh, how she's grateful. Because her pithy observations dredge up a world of hurt in the form of happy memories and imagined fantasies. Fantasies of what could have been, had she been able to take her courage in both hands, and tell him. 'I heard you' and 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you too'.
Now she's on the outside she wonders what the hell stopped her. Because saying those things would have been a damn sight less painful than what she's feeling right now.
"So you're just giving up?"
Esposito's voice startles her. He's in Castle's chair, leaning across the desk at her. Ryan's scooting over on his office chair, wheels skidding across the wooden boards until they've formed a little triangle; ready for a powwow.
"I'm…I'm no good at this. I don't think I'm even any good for him," she says with as much honesty as she can muster. "So, best to just move on. I appreciate your concern guys, but I'll be fine. Really."
She tries to reassure them with a pathetically weak smile. "It obviously wasn't meant to be," she adds, with a finality she hopes will close down this awkward, too personal conversation, leaving her to grieve in peace.
"The hell it wasn't," mutters Esposito, with a fervency usually reserved for perps…or sports.
Kate's eyes find his, grabbing hold of the strength she sees there, the conviction he obviously still has for her and Castle, when her own conviction has failed. Hope flares in her chest.
"What? You're not going to fight, Beckett? How can you not? This is just wrong, man. It's wrong," he says, getting up from Castle's chair with a look of deep disappointment, trying to contain his anger. At her. For her.
Kate makes a show of doing paperwork, filing a report on their CIA adventure, but her heart isn't in it. In truth she can barely see the keyboard as she types.
Five o'clock rolls around and she's ready to give in. The physical and emotional trauma of the last few days settle into her body, leaving it feeling battered and bruised.
She aches for a bath, a little food, and her own warm, soft bed. The desire for sleep and the promise of oblivion is almost overwhelming.
The boys watch her leave, a pastiche of concern and hurt on their faces. She promises to call if she needs anything, thought they all know that she won't. Her self-reliance is one of the things that got her into this mess in the first place, but old habits die hard, and maybe she's just too old to change?
When she finally closes her own front door the pain is overwhelming. She's still wearing her coat when the tears start to fall, sobs tearing at her throat. Her nose is running, mascara streaking her face. She stumbles over to the sofa, leans against the back of it, hanging on, her head on her arms, dying inside.
When she finally manages to kick off her shoes her tears have run dry, leaving behind a fear and desolation she hasn't felt since her mom was murdered.
This man means that much to her, was such an important part of her life, and yet she never took the opportunity to tell him to his face. She missed out on that same chance with her own mother, over a decade ago, and it looks like she's failing miserably to learn from her mistakes.
Food, the bath, they're both forgotten, trumped by the urgent need to crawl under the covers and try to forget. Self-pity is making her feel sick. Her head craves a soft pillow and the deepest sleep she can find.
She pops a sleeping tablet, left over from her summer of recovery, and downs a glass of water, suddenly parched from all that crying. Too many tears, all shed too late.
Visions of Sofia and Castle together, her body draped all over him, predatory and possessive, haunt her attempts at sleep. She sees them both naked, the hunger and want in his eyes something she'd hoped to spark in him. Now just a failed fantasy that she was so busy putting off with promises of 'one day', that it's time has passed.
She finally falls asleep, exhausted, at 3am, and for the rest of the night these visions haunt her dreams.
He's gone. She's done.