For Want of a Rose
A/N: After watching the season finale I couldn't leave this unaddressed. This is my first Castle fic (though hopefully not the last ;)) This is from Castle's perspective during and after 'Knockout'.
Disclaimer: I do not own Castle or the supreme awesomeness that is Rick Castle, if I did I too would have a bullet-proof vest that says 'writer' on the back ;P
The glint catches his eye at a sharp angle, deep and skewing like a knife. He's learned never to ignore the bizarre; and a sinister silver glint amongst ivory and emerald tops his list of bizarre.
His mother told him once that writers have eyes like ravens, they notice every detail but are easily distracted by anything with a metallic shimmer.
He remembers how a moment after she told him that he was distracted by a ray of sunlight blinking off a coin on the table.
But this is something of another nature entirely.
When he realises it, he doesn't think.
He acts.
He lunges out for Kate as a shot rings through the air, shrill like a scream.
"Kate!"
He falls on the ground next to her, his body partially overshadowing hers amongst the speckles of sunlight on the grass. His face is nestled along the curve of her shoulder and he pushes himself off the ground.
The he sees her face.
She's pale like a broken china doll, her face contoured with the stark purple of veins and wrinkles of fear. He looks down and sees the wound, blooming open on her chest like an angry crimson snap dragon. He feels his own heart pounding, his limbs feel heavy. Even though he's terrified he looks back to her face. Her eyes; rich pools of cocoa, are hooded but frantic.
She's searching for something.
"Kate," he whispers.
Her eyes stop on him.
"Stay with me Kate."
Something sputters from her lips, a mixture of a sob and whisper as he cups her face; her skin slips along his like ice, cold and damp against his palm. He wonders for an instant if she's melting.
But the red webs in her eyes say otherwise, it's the ultimate betrayal of her facade, but he doesn't give a damn.
His heart speeds up when her eyes droop a little more.
"Kate," he whispers again, but he trails off; there are words that he's afraid to say.
He's a writer; words are his medium that he moulds onto the canvas of his choosing. But Kate Beckett has never been the subject of another's control; she moulds her own medium that's marked with the neon steps of her determination.
Little bright lines.
Castle can only wonder how many times he's crossed those lines, and he's about to cross one again.
"I love you."
The words quiver on his tongue like wobbling crystals; dangerously close to breaking.
There's a slight stutter in his voice, distress stepping on his tongue between every word. He runs his thumb over her face, curling beneath her glassy tears before stopping at the corner of her lips.
"Shh," he whispers again, "It's gonna be okay. Kate, stay with me."
But there's a hiss of air that slithers past her lips; the faint echo of a sigh, and her eyes droop. Her body slumps into the ground, the bed of grass taking her and Castle holds onto her because he's afraid that the emerald bed will swallow her.
It's too early for there to be a white marker above her head.
He doesn't even notice when the paramedics arrive and try to move him aside, he grips Kate. He holds her as if some part of his life is slipping between his fingers, because in reality it is. She's been a constant in his life for the past few years, a link in the chain of his coherency.
Now his sensibility lies in shambles that clatter like bones at his feet.
Then she's not in his hands anymore, and something inside him breaks and floods him with pain. It's raw and bleeding, as if someone's just skinned his heart.
He slowly looks over to her in the arms of the meds, eyes closed like sleeping tulips, her mouth curved into the shadow of a smile. He brings a hand to his face as his eyes burn; his vision is blurry like the spatter of rain against a window. Then he feels a hand on his shoulder. Alexis, her own eyes are frightened and teary, clear lines mark out her pain on her face. He hugs her.
Then he sees his mother, who even behind the shroud of her obsidian sunglasses is endearing.
"Richard," she says as she nods towards the ambulance, "You should be with her."
He knows that she's right, there just wasn't enough left of him to submit to admittance.
He goes anyways.
He sits next to her in the ambulance, his hand curled around hers in the creepy ambiance of white and red. To Castle it screams Memento Mori.
Amongst the wails of sirens and the brief exchanges between the meds Castle hears it, and for a moment he thinks that it's a dream amongst the chaos.
The he hears it again.
Beep.
Beep.
The doctors tell him two days after she goes through surgery, and it smacks him right across the face with such a blunt force that the air in his lungs seems to evaporate.
She isn't going to wake up.
He wants to ask them how. As he curls his hand around hers, which is warm and creamy like honeysuckle, he wants to ask them how she can't wake up when he's there.
She has to wake up, but he doesn't mean it in the sense of an order.
If anything, it's a fearful plea.
She has to wake up for him because he has so many things that he wants to tell her, so much yet to learn. He doesn't even know what her favourite colour is.
He grips her delicate hand a little tighter and bites at his lower lip, blinking at his eyes. He needs her to wake up because he needs to see her smile and watch her blink those big brown eyes at him. He needs her in his life.
They offer him condolences, but they are no better than thin sheets of papyrus; flimsy and easily stolen by the wind. He craves reassurance, deep and warming like fire. He wants the hope to burn through him and incinerate the disease of doubt that's festering in him.
"What are her chances?" he asks.
"Mr. Castle," one of them says; his voice tinted with arrogance.
"Is it possible for her to wake up?" he asks with a little more force.
There's a sigh in the air, heavy and thick like fog.
"There have been rare cases where patients who have received this kind of trauma have regained consciousness, but those were one in thousands."
He looks at her face, a mural of serenity speckled with droplets of sunset and reaches his hand up to her face, brushing a strand of her hair behind her ear.
"Then there is still hope," he whispers.
Something crackles inside him, embers churning in an abyss.
And under obsidian's shroud, there is a spark.
He looks over briefly to the crimson rose that he brought for her, nestled safely in the white vase by her bedside. He's always thought that there was value in simplicity.
He also thinks that there's more potency in his simplicity. The rose stands on its own, thorns protecting it but also betraying it. Nothing can touch it but also it cannot allow anything to touch it, the thorns rule out that possibility.
In regards to roses he's learned that all it requires is an ounce of caution and a deep reserve of patience. Navigate through the thorns carefully, and rush nothing.
It's a shame that thorns were never designed to withstand bullets.
It's ten days after she was first taken into the hospital that he gets the call.
They've found them. The ones who shot her, the ones who almost killed her. They ask him to come along, and he only obliges because she still hasn't woken up. She still rests under the canopy of monitors and white sheets.
His heart pounds in his ears as they race to the building, and when he sees it Castle knows that it's the place. There's something gaunt and ghastly about how the windows droop slightly and the doors hang off their hinges. There's the occasional shriek of a cat, and the smell of gasoline and something sourly rotten.
It's ideal in far too many ways.
But nothing in the past few weeks has been ideal.
As he steps out of the car, his heart is still pounding:
thump thump thump
The sun has already set when there's a stir of movement in her room. It's nothing significant, just the slight twitch of her eyebrow and the soft crinkle of her lips.
Then she opens her eyes.
It frightens her at first, the sheer emptiness of the room and the dark, ominous potential of every nook and cranny. Colour has been robbed and she finds herself in front of an audience of black and white.
Then she sees the rose on her bedside table, and she feels the want for a presence that isn't there. She reaches for the assistance button to call a nurse and one appears a moment later.
"Ms. Beckett, you're awake. I'll get the doc-"
"No," she says, "Get me a phone, now."
"But Ms. Beckett, th-"
"I said get me a damn phone!"
He's left his phone in the car, and he never hears it ring. He's outside, only half-listening to the plan as the others nod. He's given a bullet proof vest, and then he sees it.
He places his hand on it, trailing his fingers over the cool, smooth contours. He'd be lying if he said there wasn't something appealing about it.
An officer with a face he doesn't recognise says to him: "If you're going in on this, you'll need one of those."
He looks to the man and then back to his hand, still resting on the black curves.
She would have taken it without pause.
But there's an absence in the air, a vacancy of vibrancy. There's a lack of colour in the atmosphere and the supreme desire for a splash of life.
But something inside him has gone out, and all the embers have turned to ash.
And so it's for the want of a rose that he picks up a gun.
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