Meant to Be
Castle Soulmate Semi-AU Circa Season 2 finale/Season 3. Two-Shot.
Tilting her head back, Kate Beckett drained the last drops of liquid from her beer bottle before dropping it back down to the table with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. As she slid the bottle beside another of its own kind, she grumbled and pushed herself away from the table on her way to the refrigerator. Beer certainly would not have been her drink of choice that night as it did not dull the pain nearly as well as whisky did, but unfortunately, she was out of whisky, and was in too much of a state of self-loathing to leave her apartment again. Thus, beer would have to do.
After grabbing another from the refrigerator, Kate reached for the bottle opener on the counter, but missed it. Instead, the sweep of her hand sent the object crashing to the floor where it promptly broke in half. Kate cursed beneath her breath as she abandoned the bottle on the counter and bent down to pick up the opener. She examined the pieces, but the plastic handle had split completely from the metal opener top; there was no salvaging it, so she threw it into the trash and reached into her "junk drawer" in search of another.
Kate looked for a minute, but to no avail; her spare opener could not be found. She grumbled to herself and attempted to twist the cap off with her fingers but was unable to unseal it. She continued to rummage through her kitchen drawers in hopes of finding something to open the bottle when she remembered her other spare opener. It was a gift one of her friends gave her during college and she was pretty sure it still remained at the bottom of the cardboard box she had with mementos from her younger years.
After strolling purposefully into her bedroom, Kate whipped open her closet doors, dropped to her knees and began reaching into the depths of the back of her closet to procure the box she knew she had. She had to remove several shoe boxes first, but finally she was able to pull out the medium-sized brown box. She brushed some dust off the top, and then open the flaps to reveal items she once treasured.
Knowing a small item like the bottle opener most likely slipped to the bottom of the box, she unloaded letters, postcards, and scribbled notes along with scarves, concert t-shirts, and things she hadn't thought about in over a decade. With most of the larger items removed, she dug around and finally proclaimed, "Ah-ha!" when her fingers curled around the bottle opener with a handle colored like the Mexican flag. She placed the opener to the side and began to re-fill the box, when a wayward letter slid into her lap and her skin began to prickle when she saw the logo on the upper left-hand side of the envelope. NMB—the National Matching Bureau.
While her memory of many of the box's items had grown fuzzy as the years went on, Kate vividly remembered the day she received her letter from the National Matching Bureau, two days after her eighteenth birthday. Unlike many of her friends who were quite excited to receive what was colloquially known as their "soulmate letter," Kate felt nothing but disgust. At the time she'd been waist-deep in her teenage rebel phase and all the screw-the-world attitude that went along with it. Simply put: she didn't give a shit who the government thought her best genetic match for procreation would be and swore she never would.
By the end of the twenty-first century, a few decades before Kate's birth, the world was already running very low on its finite resources. To combat this, an international committee was formed, which, among other things, instituted a global two-child-per-couple policy in an attempt to control the exploding population. As stringent as could have seemed, it really wasn't. By that point, over half of couples in developing countries required some fertility aid to have children, so most weren't having more than two; however, the policy also opened the door to more research on procreation between two people with well-matching genetic profiles—or soulmates as they later became known.
Over the next decade the scientific community pooled their resources and began profiling newborns and other young children to see what DNA profiles would mix together to create the most evolutionarily preferred children. Their research became highly successful, and by the time those in Kate's generation were coming of age, every woman would receive her match in the mail on her eighteenth birthday. The men, on the other hand, were stuck patiently waiting for their matched-woman to seek them out.
The vast majority of women eagerly opened their letters immediately upon receiving them, though not all acted on the new knowledge, particularly if they had already chosen colleges or had career paths in mind. Others found the knowledge infuriating or downright offensive, and immediately tossed the letters away. Or, in Kate's case, shoved them in a bottom desk drawer never to be thought of again.
After her mother's murder, Kate had even less interest in finding love and getting married and thus for many years she simply ignored the existence of the letter. The older she became, the more her friends and colleagues were deciding to settle down and seek out their soulmates. Thus, the letters were brought up in conversation on occasion, but by that point Kate had practically forgotten she even had a letter of her own. She certainly hadn't known where it was even if she wanted to find it—particularly after her father had sold the furniture from her childhood bedroom. What did it matter? Acting on the information in the letter had never been a requirement—more a guide or suggestion. As she never saw herself getting to that point with any man, she figured it mattered even less for her.
Then, Richard Castle had shoved his way into her life, turned everything upside-down and made her feel things she hadn't in years. She wasn't in love with him—such a notion was absurd seeing as she'd outright refuse to accept love even as a concept in the wake of her mother's death and her father's alcoholism. Still, he stirred things inside her—things she had thought long-since died-out like playfulness and joy.
Kate fought such feelings as though they were trying to take her hostage at knife-point, though ever so slowly, as the months wore on, she felt herself giving in and putting up less and less of a fight. She laughed with him; she had fun. She appreciated him and his contributions. They became friends; they grew closer.
Particularly in the prior few months Kate felt as though something had been brewing between them just below the surface. It wasn't something yet, but almost. The potential was there, and she foolishly was nearly ready to give in to the temptation, give in to the desires burning deep within her, open herself up and take a chance…right up until the point at which he'd shown up at her precinct with his ex-girlfriend-slash-publisher (apparently turned girlfriend again) and they'd walked off arm-in-arm towards what would surely be a romantic extended stay at the writer's Hamptons' estate.
Stupid. She had been so stupid. Yes, Castle had extended an invitation to her, but probably only as a courtesy—only because he figured she'd never take him up on the offer. Why would he want to take her when he had his blonde, perky publisher to dote on him as opposed to the surely-at-times woman who snipped at him and joked about shooting him in the leg? He would have been a fool to choose her, so she was glad he left with Gina.
…at least, that's what she told herself somewhere around the end of beer number one. Maybe by the time she got through beer number four she'd believe it.
More annoyed at the concept of soulmates than ever, Kate grabbed both the bottle opener and the letter and stalked back to the kitchen. She popped the top off her beer, took a long drink, and then turned towards the villainous envelope.
With her heart recently scraped raw by the man with whom she'd hoped to formulate a real relationship, Kate felt more offended by the concept of the government telling her who to love than ever. To hell with whatever man was being recommended to her! She didn't need suggestions or ideas from those she'd never met. If she did fall in love—which was certainly a big "if" at that point in her life—it would be organically; no other way was possible.
Kate had every intent to shred the letter in her hands into as many small pieces as she could manage, but with her slightly inebriated state mixing with rage, she only succeeded in ripping the top corner off the envelope, which tore only the smallest piece of the letter itself. Now even more annoyed, Kate rotated the object ninety degrees and tried to tear it longways, but again failed, that time ripping the envelope in half and causing the letter to flutter to the ground. Growling audibly, she stooped down to pick up the letter, but froze at the words staring back at her in boldface print.
Richard Edgar Castle.
Her chest heaving with progressively more dramatic intervals, Kate clawed at the letter to pull apart its tri-fold. She read it once. Then again. Then a third time, but the message never changed despite her disbelief. The man who was her best match in the universe was the same one who had rejected her not four hours earlier.
Swaying slightly on the spot, Kate placed the letter on the counter and then backed away until she felt the coolness of the refrigerator against her spine. How—dear god how—could this be happening? It couldn't be happening could it? Could it?
Her brain wanted to believe that the letter was a trick or a joke—that somehow the prankster writer was responsible, but rationally she knew that wasn't the case. The letter had been sealed for over thirteen years. The pages were slightly yellowed, and the ink faded. Even if Castle had managed to fake those things, he would have had to sneak the letter into her memento box without her knowledge, which would have impossible seeing as he didn't know the memento box existed. Rationally, she had to conclude that the letter was the same one she'd received in the mail just after her eighteenth birthday, which meant she'd been matched with Richard Castle long before they'd ever met.
Shock taking over her, Kate slid down the refrigerator until her butt connected with the ground. Half-dazed, she stared up at the counter where the letter sat and covered her mouth with her hands, trying her best to bite back the tears forming in her eyes.
So that was it; that was the hand fate had dealt her. Even if she decided she did want to pursue a relationship with him, it was clear he had chosen someone else over her. The possibility that the man she was matched with would not want her had never crossed into Kate's mind. In fact, as she thought about it, she realized she had never heard anyone else say that things between them and their match had not worked out, but of course the world would send her more heartbreak that way. Perhaps that was the one message from fate that she should listen to: that in the end, she was better off alone.
"I just want to let you know before you go in there: this one is a rough one."
Kate came to a halt just outside of what appeared to be an ordinary New York alleyway. She gazed down at her friend and medical examiner Lanie Parrish as she stood just in front of a dumpster near the alley's entrance. Kate glanced to her right to see a uniformed officer blocking the alley entrance and two of Lanie's colleagues readying a body bag about a hundred feet away. Then, she turned back to her friend with notable concern. Lanie had been on the job even longer than she had and therefore must have seen hundreds of dead bodies. As such, her tolerance level for grotesque and disturbing scenes was quite high, so if Lanie was warning them, this murder must truly have been vicious.
"Dispatch said it's a female DB?"
Lanie nodded. "A pregnant female, yes."
Kate glanced back over her shoulder to her partner, who stood dutifully a few feet away. "You can sit this one out if you want to, Castle."
He blinked, slow and easy. "You know I'm not going to."
She nodded, knowing that he was just as intrigued by the extra weird murder cases as she was. Still, she wanted to give him the chance to step away, because she knew there were definitely times, rare as they were, that she wished she could as well.
"We were told that the building's janitorial staff called in the body when—oh. God." Kate groaned aloud when she saw the woman propped up against the rear side of the dumpster; Lanie's assessment that this case was a "rough one" had been a serious underestimate.
While the woman's face appeared peaceful, almost as though she was sleeping, everything below her chin was a different story starting with the slash across the center of her throat. Despite the blood coating her clothing, district stab wounds could be seen all across her legs and torso. In fact, there appeared to be too many for Kate to count with just a visual sweep. The number certainly had to be well into the double digits.
Crouching down, Kate took a closer look at the woman's hands, which seemed mostly undamaged. This told Kate that the woman's throat was most likely cut first, which resulted in her death, and the multitude of stabbings took place post-mortem. Kate also noticed that a significant number of those stabs were across the woman's very round belly, which added a more distressing element to the crime.
"Jesus."
Kate heard her partner's curse and stood up once more. Knowing she didn't want to prolong the removal of the body any more than necessary, she turned to Lanie to get more of the facts. "No ID on the body?"
"Not that we found."
"And COD would most likely be exsanguination?"
"Most likely, yes, but we'll know more when we get back to the lab."
"And what about the, um, pregnancy. Will you be able to tell how far along she is? Might help with the ID."
Lanie nodded. "We can certainly try. I would think third trimester judging by the size alone. Possibly even late term but…" She lowered her head and gave it a little shake. "We'll have to see."
Kate nodded. "Anything else noteworthy I should look at?"
"Yes, here." Lanie crouched down and picked up the victim's left hand. "The ring finger is clearly broken. Postmortem if I had to guess."
"Could have been a robbery," Kate supposed. "Took the diamonds and gold to sell them."
"With stab wounds like that? No. She knew her killer," Castle said.
Kate gazed up at the writer who was looking rather pale and standing much further from the body than he normally would have.
"This poor woman knew her killer," he continued. "It may have been an angry husband or a jealous lover, but she knew the killer. No robber would have done…done… ah, excuse me."
Kate could hear the nausea in his tone just before he spun around and scurried out of the alley. A shiver traveled up her spine at the sight of him so rattled for it was a rare sight indeed. Turning back to Lanie, Kate said, "He's right; this was personal." She didn't even need to speak to the killer to know his or her intent; that was clear just by their vicious actions.
"Yeah," Lanie agreed in a somber tone. "I'll let you know when I have more, okay?"
Kate thanked her and then walked out of the alley to find Castle standing beside her cruiser, his hands braced against the hood, his head tilted towards the ground. She felt her heart clench and walked over to him before saying softly, "Why don't I just take you home?"
He stood quickly and turned towards her with a determined expression. "No, I…I want to find who did this. I want to her—them—to have justice."
She nodded, as it was all she needed to hear from him. "Okay, then let's go see if there are any cameras in this area."
Several hours later, Kate walked out of the morgue with a cold bottle of water in her hand. She looked left and right searching the sidewalk for her partner for several moments before she spotted him hunched over by a trash can. She wasn't sure if he had become ill or not, but she knew the water would help regardless. She walked over and held it out to him without a word. He took it with a nearly silent, "Thank you." She waited patiently as he sipped the cool liquid.
In another circumstance, Kate could see herself teasing her partner for losing his lunch over a case, particularly since he prided himself on being immune to such feelings, but in that moment it was unnecessary. She too had been caught off-guard by the sight of the woman and her unborn child on separate morgue tables. It wasn't just the sight of the fetus outside the woman's body that disturbed her, but how much it looked like a baby. In fact, it looked exactly like a newborn baby, only quite small, which was confirmed when Lanie estimated the fetus's gestation at between thirty-four and thirty-six weeks.
As children were rarely murder victims (thank god) Kate had never seen the body of a child under the age of four. Even more upsetting were the cuts and marks on this child's body from the stab wounds inflicted to his mother. It was truly a horrific situation, so she was not at all surprised when Castle had almost immediately excused himself and rushed out of the room. Lanie even admitted to being upset, but it was all a necessary part of her job, particularly since they had yet to ID the mother.
Once he'd finished off about half the water bottle, Castle rasped out, "I'm sorry; I shouldn't have reacted like that."
Kate blinked with slight disbelief. "Castle, you don't have to apologize for being who you are. You're someone who cares about other humans and that's what makes you a good man."
His lips formed a slight smile, but then his expression dropped and he shook his head. "That baby… It could have survived if the mother had…even if she hadn't, but someone found her in time to get her to a hospital and…"
"I know." She, too, had made such a conclusion when Lanie revealed how close to full-term the baby was, but she didn't let herself think about such things, as it would do little good.
"I…" Castle shook his head and wiped his left hand over his mouth. "I just… I don't know why it hit me so hard."
"You're a good person who cares about others," she pointed out.
He gazed over at her with a softened expression. "That's kind of you to say, but that's not quite it. I…I guess it's just leftover from my midlife crisis."
Kate's brow raised sharply as she had heard of no such event. "Midlife crisis? Did you buy another Ferrari?"
He let out a breathy laugh. "No, no I…I want to be a father—have a child—and I really thought that would have happened for me by now."
"O-oh," she stammered out, slightly surprised, though it did make sense in the context of their case.
"Yeah, um, my midlife crisis, I guess you could call it, was looking into adoption. I'm a single man, which complicates things. Plus the wait-list is so long. A private adoption is an option—I could afford it, of course—and I explored it a little bit, but…" He dropped his chin to his chest and then rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. After a moment, he looked back towards her. "The thing of it is: I want a family. I want to be a father, yes, but I want a family—the family I never got to have. It's not…it's not that I'm trying to make up for my childhood. Even though it was just Mother and I, I never thought I was missing out, not entirely. Sure, there were times when I wanted a father and siblings, but I wasn't unhappy, exactly I just felt…incomplete. Like there was something missing and—god." He cut himself off sharply, his cheeks turning a little pink. "Sorry, Beckett, I shouldn't be spewing all this to you."
"Wha—no!" she said quickly to quell his embarrassment. "We're partners, Castle; don't apologize for sharing how you feel. It's…what you're saying is very sweet."
Kate believed she managed speaking her words in a convincing and kind tone despite the panic exploding inside her chest. Castle wanted children; he wanted a family. He wanted a family presumably with his soulmate. She was his soulmate. And that…well, it exponentially complicated things.
Obviously convinced by her words, he smiled at her. "Thanks. I just…I know you're not interested in having a family so-"
"What?!" she cut him off sharply, shocked by his opinion of her. "Is…is that what you really think?"
He tilted his head and his brow wrinkled. "You…you are interested?"
"Well, I, um…" She stammered for several moments trying to collect her thoughts on the matter. "I've always been so focused on my career that a family was never forefront in my mind. I, well…I guess I never specifically thought about it."
He quirked his lips. "Well, yeah—especially not after you threw away your soulmate letter."
"I…right…" Her voice drifted off as she cursed inside her mind. Shit! Of course, he would remember that detail way back from the early days of their partnership. That day she had already been quite annoyed with him when one of her coworkers came in and excitedly told everyone that his soulmate had finally contacted him. This, of course, sparked a discussion about the letters, which Kate shut down by saying she'd thrown hers out because she thought they were ridiculous. At the time, she had not specifically remembered throwing the letter away, but had no idea of its whereabouts (and didn't care to know, either) so the letter may as well have been trash.
In reality, the letter was not lost forever; it resided in the drawer of her nightstand where it had been for nearly eight months, ever since she'd discovered it in her box of memories. She'd almost thrown it out that day, but then thought better of it and chucked it in the drawer instead. For the next two months, she hadn't thought about it at all, but then the writer had charmed his way back into the precinct and, with each morning coffee he brought her, the image of his name on the yellowed letter popped into her mind's eye without her permission. He was still with Gina then, so the image made her angry, but as the months passed and he and Gina separated again, he began to wear her down little by little. For the prior few months things had been good between them. Very good, actually—just like they had been before his Hampton's invite sent them into a tailspin.
"Anyway, um, sorry again about what happened in there. I…I think I'm just going to take a walk. Maybe I'll walk home."
"A-are you sure? It's getting late."
He shook his head. "I'll be fine, Beckett. Have a good evening—text me if the ID comes through, okay?"
"Ah, yeah…" She still felt rather stunned as she watched him turn and walk away. She stood on the sidewalk until she could no longer see his figure loping away. Only then did she get in her cruise, sit down, and think.
Castle was having a self-proclaimed "midlife crisis" because he wanted a child, a family. He wanted a family and everything he didn't have as a child, so he could feel complete. As his soulmate, she could provide him with that family. In fact, in many people's opinions, she was the only one who could do so to enable his full happiness, which meant that technically—
No. No. Though guilt nipped at the edges of her fingers and toes, Kate refused to let it in. She could not control Castle's feelings, only her own. Besides, it wasn't as though she'd hidden the truth for him for years and years. She hadn't known until eight months prior! And, okay, eight months was eight months—she should have told him. She would tell him. She needed to tell him, but, god—how could she tell him now? What if he expected them to marry and have kids right away?
She had been truthful when she told him that she never thought about having a family before. She never had because she had closed herself off to love. She didn't dislike children and was not dead-set against them by any means, but she was also not yet ready to think about herself as a mother.
After thinking on it for several hours, Kate decided that she did need to tell Castle the truth, but in the right way. She would tell him that while she was interested in exploring a romantic future with him, she wanted to take things slow. No—she needed to take things slow. That was the only way her heart and her brain would be able to survive.
Part two will be up Tuesday. Thank you for reading!