The door opens and Castle walks in, carrying flowers. It takes her a second to register his presence, her brain still sluggish from the pain meds. She sees him hesitate as though he's intruded on Josh's time at her bedside but all she can feel is relief, she feels it flood her veins like morphine, sedating her and taking away the throbbing ache.
Kate cracks a smile, wonders fleetingly how long it has been since she had occasion to do so and greets him.
"Hey Castle." Her voice is low and throaty, knotted with misuse and medicine. Josh, bless him, gets up to leave, kisses her head in a far too domestic manner and stalks out but she barely notices.
Castle walks slowly towards her bed, as if the measured steps can somehow ease all the words he wants to tell her, the words she can't hear sitting in a hospital bed with a fresh scar and a new thirst for vengeance.
His eyes are dark, clouded with the events of the past few days and she notices the way he rubs his finger against the thick glass of the vase, nervous, summoning up his courage to talk to her.
"Hey." She doesn't miss the catch is his voice.
"You're staring at me. I must look…really bad." She runs her hand through her hair, the motion slow and jerky, her limbs heavier than she would have ever thought possible.
"No. I just never thought I'd see you again." She can hear the unmistakable sign of happiness, the reprieve from the constant nightmare that she had led him into.
It frightens her, sets her on edge and she raises her eyes to his, sees everything written on his face like a broadside plastered to the wall.
He continues before she can respond, like he knows just how she'll deflect so he does it for her.
"I heard you were opening a flower store so I thought I'd pitch in." He gives her a goofy face, intent on ignoring the huge elephant in the room that stares at her, eyes unblinking, as Castle takes a seat beside her bed.
"They were all here when I woke up, I think they're mostly from the precinct." She latches onto his levity like a barnacle, desperate to hold on against the oncoming tide. "I don't think I'm going to live this one down Castle."
"Oh…probably not." He smiles and then so does she, ducking her head. He's so close to her and she wishes that she were braver, that she could just take his hand, let hers be warmed by it. The hospital makes her so cold.
She looks up to find him staring intently, his face a wash of hesitant hope, and her newly mended heart trips on itself.
She wants to not do this now, not talk about anything with him. She doesn't want to think. She doesn't want to be here. She feels so raw, so open. The cut to her side did more damage than she thought. Because right now all she wants is for him to wrap himself into her, hold her until she's sure that she's safe again. She wants him to crawl up next to her and cocoon her, make a chrysalis to keep her whole until she can emerge again.
Her heart trips again. She wants to blame it on the electrical current that was required to restart it.
But that would be a lie and Kate Beckett does not lie.
She does have to get them on more solid ground though, the earth beneath her feet is shifting, bone against bone, there needs to be cartilage to insulate it.
"I hear you tried to save me." She's spent enough time interrogating suspects to know how to parse her words.
"Yeah, I, um," he begins and she sees the moment he realizes her syntax. He can't keep it off his face. "You heard? You don't remember me tackling you?" There's an edge to his voice, slightly combative and she can feel the pressure building up in the room. It almost suffocates her.
"No, I don't remember much of anything." She won't meet his eye. Kate Beckett does not lie.
Not until now.
"I remember, um, I was on the podium and then I remember everything just going black." She can't look at the naked hurt on his face.
"You don't remember…" and he trails off as she raises her eyes to his, willing him to not give life to that thing that hangs over them. The specter of his confession.
"…The gunshot?"
"No." She wants desperately to reach out and smooth her hand against his cheek, take the pain that she has knowingly inflicted away. But instead she hedges further, firms up her lie like he might ask her for an alibi. "They say there are some things that are better not being remembered." She makes sure her voice has steel in it.
"Yeah," He chokes out on a whisper, flicking his eyes between her and the room. Eddies of hurt begin to run deep into the lines of his face.
She continues on, maybe if she keeps talking than she won't do something incredibly impulsive like touch him and then never stop. "Keep seeing his face, Castle, every time I close my eyes I see Montgomery lying on the hanger floor." The silence that stretches between them is heavy like burlap; on it plays out those minuets in the warehouse like a macabre pantomime. "You shoulda let me go in there." And she can't keep the accusation from her words, the wounds from that night still fresh and weeping.
"They would have killed you." He says it with such certainty that she has to rebuke him, if only to level out what precious ground she has managed to gather.
"Ah you don't know that." She wants to believe in this truth but she doesn't believe in that word anymore.
"Kate…" The way he says her name almost undoes her. There is an ache inside of her that has nothing to do with surgery.
"Castle," she cuts him off, stanches the flow of his words like his hands did her blood. "I'm really tired right now." She says it with as much ice as she can muster, she can already feel the frost creeping in.
"Course," he gets up, moves to leave, "Of course. We'll talk tomorrow."
She can't. She can't talk to him tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after that. She's too exposed right now, she'll ruin everything.
The ice creeps in further, buoys her words. "Do you mind if we don't? I just need a little bit of time."
She's shaken him but he recovers almost too quickly to tell. "Sure, sure. How much time?" The forced cheerfulness is back. It makes her eyes hurt in the florescent light.
"I'll call you ok?" She holds his gaze, her eyes shuttered against her need to call him back, to wrap her fingers against his wrist and feel the pump of life against the tendril of hers.
"Sure." He lets his eyes linger over her once more before walking out and she can't watch him as he leaves.
Book signings used to be fun. Castle used to enjoy talking to his fans, connecting with them, making them smile. It was one of the best parts of his job.
But today.
Today, every single book was a knife to the stomach. Every time he put pen to paper was a deep nick into his flesh.
Three months and nothing from Kate. Not a call, not a card, not even a god damn smoke signal.
Three months with nothing but agonizing worry and now he has spent the last two hours getting hit repeatedly with her memory. The etched silhouette on the front cover, supposed to be Nikki but shaped like Kate assaults him every time. One fresh crime after another. He begins to not see them, his fans. He turns on autopilot, which he knows isn't fair but is the only way he can cope.
It's here where she finds him, clad in leather, her hair soft with curls.
"Kate. You can make it out to Kate." She responds in answer to the question he asks by rote. Her voice is rich, honeycombed with warmth, and it takes him a minuet to register her presence and assure himself she's not some strange aberration conjured up by his desperate heart. His breath is short, his lungs compressing every time she blinks. He can't get over her, even as his anger bleeds out quickly within him. She's dark like winter, lean and sinewy, with cheekbones sharp and angular. She's all beautiful lines and cautious optimism. It makes his heart hurt, to see her, and he signs her copy with slightly shaking hands. She says nothing more and neither does he, just watches her leave feeling hollowed out, like the burned wreckage of a tree stump, eaten by fire.
He wants to run to her, snare her and hold her to him, never let her from his sight again. But he still has people in line, waiting to see him and his anger begins to gnaw at the soft spot in him that bruises every time he sees Kate Beckett.
Finally it's over and he can leave, get back home, away from this place that will now forever remind him of Kate.
He shakes hands with the employees, thanking them for their time and work. He doesn't see her at first so when he catches sight of her, leaning against the wall like it's the only thing holding her together, his stomach tumbles. But anger flares within him, reminding him acutely of the last three months he spent on the razor edge of despair. It's the anger that allows for him to move past her, ignoring the urge to crush her body to his and kiss her until he absolutely cannot breathe.
"Castle, wait." This shocks him, Kate not only calling to him but coming after him. He finds a perverse sense of poetry to that and wants to share it with her.
Instead he says, "I did. Three months. You never called." He doesn't slow down, doesn't think that he can.
"I know you're angry…" she begins, like it's any other conversation and they're just arguing theory.
He spins on his heal, unwilling to let her have even a small piece of this one. He is glad for his anger because it keeps him from doing anything stupid and with Kate Beckett, he has a litany of stupid.
"You're damn right I'm angry. I watched you die in that ambulance. Did you know that?" He watches the memory thread through her, flicker across her face like a silent movie. "You know what that's like watching the life drain out of someone you…someone you care about?" He catches himself just in time, before he lets slip the words that have bound around his heart, trussing it up like a chicken. He thinks she flinches, but he can't be sure.
"I told you I needed some time."
"You said a few days." He wants to yell at her, shout out all the hurt he has been suffering but he can't. Not when he all he can see when he looks at her is a lost little girl.
"I needed more."
"Well you shoulda said that." He turns to leave, his neurons firing off stupid ideas again. His fingers itch to touch her, want the assurance of her life against the palm of his hand.
"Castle, I couldn't call you. Not without dragging myself into everything that I was just trying to get some space from. I needed some time to just work through everything." It's the honesty in her voice that makes him turn. He has the sudden urge to push on her vein of truth, to see if it's real.
"Josh help you with that?" He can't keep the resentment out of his voice or do away with the images of Josh helping a healing Kate. It makes him nauseous.
He sees a flash of the old Beckett, the one annoyed with persistent personal questions before she gives him the happiest news he's had since the phone call that told him she woke up.
"We broke up." The slightest of eye rolls, like she's chastising him for the ask. She turns from him, crossing the street without looking, her body fluid like clear water in a creek.
He doesn't want to follow her. He wants to give her a taste of her own medicine and walk away, but the sway of her hips lulls him in. He has never been able to resist her siren's call.
She sits delicately in the swing, palming his book reverently, caressing the front cover before gingerly easing it back. He loves the way she handles books, like all the secrets in the world are written between the bindings. She holds them like they are sacred. Maybe they are.
"I like the dedication." Her voice lilts up, the smallest of olive branches but he's not feeling particularly magnanimous since he lost his footing and followed her to the park.
"Seemed right." He won't look at her. He needs her to know his anger in this.
"Must have been hard writing that ending." Her hope stretches out between them and despite himself he recognizes her trying.
"Yeah. Yeah." He checks his watch obviously, letting her see the movement. He is not ready to cave yet. "Given the circumstances, yeah."
He decides to poke some more, get at the places that Beckett won't ever let him see. Maybe Kate will. "So why'd you guys break up?"
He waits for a second, can practically see the war going on inside her but she surprises him and answers, for the second time that day, honestly. "I really, really liked him. But that wasn't enough."
He still doesn't look at her. Waits for her to continue, he feels she owes him this and maybe she knows it too because what she says next nearly unravels him. "After my mother was killed, something inside me changed. It's like I built up this wall inside. I guess I just didn't want to hurt like that again. I know I'm not gonna be able to be the kind of person that I want to be. I know I'm not gonna…" Her voice catches, a snag of cashmere against something sharp. He turns to her now, her face a lattice of uncertainty, grief, determination. "…be able to have the kind of relationship I want until that wall comes down. And it's not going to happen until I put this thing to rest."
He looks at her, really looks at her, for a long while. She holds his gaze, as if she is trying to telegraph her meaning using just those dark eyes. Those mysterious eyes that shift like the seasons, they are like autumn now, dark and light. He wonders if she tastes like fall, or maybe spring. She is ever shifting, mercurial and clever. Liquid amber against him. He bets she tastes like the wind. He wants to kiss her now, the idea urgent in him, scorching his soul. He has to look away before he is consumed by her.
"Then I suppose we're just going to have to find these guys and take them down." He pretends to not notice her fighting the smile. "Doesn't mean I'm not still mad."
But he's really not, not anymore. Kate's back and he can't stop the joy from leaching all his anger away.
Her apartment is darker than he remembered and he sits watching her, like a caged lion. Fierce and irate, mad as he pokes holes in every one of her comments. He can't help it, they are clutching at straws and all he sees when he looks at her are those large eyes, scared and shocked as she bleeds out against him in the cemetery. She paces the floor, frustration in every movement. She feels filleted, the sharp end of the knife digging deep into her bones; every single time she thinks she has a lead on this case she ends up stonewalled. A huge part of her wants to run, run as far and as fast as she can to ease this unending ache that sits deep within her. She wants to scream, to loose control, to feed this beast that sits inside her until it is so full it decides to lay dormant, for a long time. But she doesn't. Of course she doesn't. Detective Beckett doesn't loose control. Detective Beckett doesn't back down.
"Ok so maybe he was a target of opportunity. He mighta needed the money." She hears the desperation in her own voice. She doesn't like that she can't keep it hidden.
"Nothing in his financial records indicate any problems and given his record, he's…." She doesn't want to hear that from him. He is supposed to be on her team, not discrediting her theories.
Wild theories but theories nonetheless.
She feels the frayed end of her rope nearing and she tightens her grip.
Hold on Kate.
"Given his record what?" She can't help the challenge in her voice. She turns to him, halts her anxious stride. Suddenly she wants him to not be so far away but she knows what's coming next, knows exactly what he'll say. She holds her breath, waiting for the grief to come. It's always right around the corner, lurking, waiting to strike her when her vulnerable places are exposed. To crack her open like an oyster.
"I'm just saying what if he's not our guy." He softens his voice, as if that will make the blow hurt any less. "What if the fire was an accident?"
No.
She won't believe that. She won't.
Her hold feels more tenuous; her hands ache from her tight grasp.
"It wasn't an accident. I know it wasn't an accident." She doesn't want to let his logic twist around her, tie her up like a ribbon bow. She wants so fiercely for this lead to pan out.
"You can't know that." He looks so concerned, so comforting in his worn flannel. She wants to run her fingers against the fabric, to draw warmth from the soft checks. The desire bursts into her, out of nowhere, and her frayed rope creaks, unwinds itself further.
"I can because if this was an accident then I've got nowhere to start. If this was an accident then I've got nothing. The guy who shot me is gone. Dick Coonan, gone. Hal Lockwood, gone. Montgomery, gone. My mom," and the rope snaps, she feels it within her, the quick and dirty uncoiling. She can't keep the tears from dewing on her lashes, filming her eyes. "Everybody is gone Castle."
She hasn't felt this hopeless since the day her mother died, as if the world turned off all the lights and left her to fend for herself. All alone in this depth of night. She sucks in a breath, holds back the emotion that pours from the cracks in her. She feels like a leaking ship, taking in water with no one to bail her out.
Never in her life has she wanted someone to comfort her more than she does at this moment but Castle, adhering to her own ridiculous rules, doesn't move. He just looks at her as she works to pull herself together. Maybe it's better this way because surely if he touched her now, she wouldn't have the strength to let go.
He thinks she looks like spun glass, fragile and delicate, and it takes every single thing in him to not go to her. He wants only to hold her, let her fall apart against him and then help her pick up the pieces.
Together.
But he watches her regain control, slowly, with heavy effort. Sees what it cost her to even let him witness her slight break.
And he knows that they still have so far to go.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.