I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we'd given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.
This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I'm hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
Clementine von Radics
The air is crisp with the early melancholy of November and every beat of her heels on the pavement resonates as the soundtrack of impending doom.
"It will be so good for you."
"Support groups have the best record in these cases."
She hates that no one is able to voice the actual words. Least of all herself. She hates that she can't save herself from this, hates that whenever she tries to speak her heart seems to climb up her vertebrae and into her mouth, until everything in her head becomes static and she feels like all those unspoken words might choke her to death.
Most of all she hates herself. For becoming this.
The cold clings to her chest and climbs under her skin where it constricts the strings that are rooted in the jagged skin of her scar until she feels like the pain could kill her. She pulls her jacket closer and ducks her head in an attempt to hide from the winter breeze, although it goes unrewarded and so the only thing she can do is to pick up her pace and all but run along the pavement.
The house looks like all the others. Brick wall, black door and all. She feels her heart ball up into a fist and she doesn't know what to do about it and so she just reaches out to pull the door open.
The inside is white. There are white walls with nothing else to show for and she quickly makes her way over to the already awaiting elevator.
Her heels crash on the floor with more momentum than seems appropriate and her breaths ghost through the silence like gunshots. She hates that she is out of breath from the walk here. She hates that she can't rely on her body to carry her anymore.
She hates that she doesn't know how to carry her own weight anymore.
She finally reaches the door she is looking for, a plate reading the words, "Dr. Michael George. Therapist" and she asks herself how this is better than just going to one-on-one sessions in the first place.
Her hand holds a slight tremble when she lets her fingers wrap around the door knob and she wonders when she will stop being this silent earthquake.
She bites down on her lower lip, careful not to put too much vigor into the bite as not to draw blood. She could still turn around. She could leave this place that smells uncomfortably strong like hospital sanitizers and go back home. Surely if she'd wait a while she could re-apply for duty without psychological clearance.
Except she knows better.
The words of her new captain, Victoria Gates, resonate all too clearly through her mind. "Don't come back until you can handle it, Detective."
And so she nods at herself, eyes becoming steel and her jaw tingling with the strain she has on it and she counts to three before she pulls the door open and enters as an inferno in high heels.
A woman, who introduced herself as Leila Marie Cox is talking about the loss of her husband and her love for cognac and Kate's mind wanders.
She tries not to look at him. The man sitting opposite from her. The man with the ruffled hair and eyes that hold a thunder storm at bay.
And she thinks about the way her heart fell flat when he had introduced himself. "I'm Richard Castle."
She knows that name.
But it doesn't matter.
He's staring at his hands and his lips are cursive lines with stories of their own. His shoulders seem hunched, as if something so sad had encroached itself into the junction of his neck to always keep him company.
She regards the people seated with her again. They are ten plus Dr. George. All kinds of different people with different skin colors, hair and sad eyes.
Her eyes travel to the windows across the room. They are high-framed and open the sight to a tree with empty branches. It seems to reach out into the sky, slender fingers clinging to a hint of freedom and she thinks about the autumn one year ago when she was up in her father's cabin. She watched the leaves dying and the seasons change while she was trying to live but somehow it was harder than it was supposed to be and she was left bare and empty just as the trees.
"Kate," Dr. George's voice is dark and his eyes as still as the day and she thinks that if voices could be tuned for a certain job, his was made to be a therapist. "Would you like to say something?"
She realizes that at this point everyone except for her and Castle has spoken. She glances over at him and finds he is already looking. His eyes hold something so heavy she can't break their gaze and just manages to choke out a, "no".
She wonders when speaking has become this difficult. It's definitely been a while since she had used her voice and it seems to have forgotten its purpose. The concavities of her mouth are too wide, hold too many echoes she doesn't want to hear anymore and she is scared that every word might trigger them off.
"Okay," he doesn't dig deeper and she is grateful.
"Richard?"
He shakes his head.
She only ever saw him on book jackets and high-polished magazines, with laughing eyes and a bright smile and she wonders how he lost it.
Not that she cares, of course.
Castle is the only one immediately going for the door alongside her. There is coffee and some baked goods for after but neither of them seems particularly interested in staying longer than necessary and so she finds herself walking along the halls next to Richard Castle.
They have to wait for the elevator to reach their floor and the silence is becoming strained.
"Hey, at least we're still alive," his voice is deep and with a strange edge to it, but his lips hold the resemblance of a smile as he looks at her.
She is really not sure what the hell he was expecting to happen at a support group meeting.
"What-?" she is also apparently not sure how to formulate a question.
"Well, when you stepped inside you looked about ready to kill every single one of us."
"Well I guess you're lucky I didn't find a reason to," the elevator arrives and she is astounded by the ease of the words on her lips.
"I'm filled with relief." They enter together and he presses the button for the ground floor.
"You should be, I have years of training to show for."
"As a ninja?" he asks and he seems so honestly enthusiastic about his absurd theory her throat seems to tingle and her lips stretch in ways she isn't used to anymore and it takes her a while to realize she is smiling. It feels weird rather than comfortable but it still ghosts along her white lips and only for a second she remembers those days when she was nineteen and it was normal.
"No, as a detective."
They leave the door and enter the New Yorker sidewalk together, apparently about to head in different directions.
"Well then Detective, I guess I'll see you next week."
"I guess you will."
She wakes up and her heart is in her throat beating so hard she thinks it might shred the confines of her ribcages and just escape the debris of her body. Not that she blames it. She doesn't want to stay either.
Her eyes are still caught in the web of pictures her dreams had captured her in. Too green grass and blue skies. Blood on her fingers and people yelling. Flashes of lightning coming from a fired gun. And her small heart that is too weak to hold all that she is.
There are sounds everywhere and her arms come around her waist to hold herself together. Sometimes she's not sure how many pieces she has broken herself into. She just knows that porcelain can't be fixed without leaving a crack.
Breathing is hard and it shouldn't be. And she hates that she has to lie still for a while until she can convince the air to let her live.
She hates this.
And she hates herself.
Her hands press onto her closed eyelids, hoping to dismantle the weight of the scenery behind and it takes her a while to realize it's Wednesday.
The only day she actually has a destination and a task to perform.
She misses her old self, the one that had a purpose.
It's not like she wasn't damaged then, but she was able to function without the sum of her fears, of her anxieties and pain limiting her. She was able to be something other than a complete mess.
She doesn't speak up when Dr. George asks how their weeks have been and whether there was something to share and neither does he.
She watches the clock as the seconds hand moves along, observes the way it always seems to hesitate a little before the full minute, only to then jump of the cliff and into the oblivion of a new minute.
"Kate is there something you would like to say?"
Dr. George asks again, and realistically she knows that she should. She will only ever get cleared for duty if she takes this seriously and begins talking. Yet she can't find the words to explain how she feels. How does she explain feeling as if at some point her heart would just stutter and collapse on itself, as if her ribcages weren't able to hold all the pain inside and that she fears that at some point she will just spontaneously combust.
How does she explain that sometimes she feels as if she is drowning in emptiness while her heart holds so much fear she can hardly breathe. How could she ever possibly make him understand? And even if he did, who would ever clear her for duty after realizing what a fucking mess she is?
And so she lets her voice soar and speaks with a certainty that makes her think that maybe she should have become an actress. "This week was actually very good for me. I have been feeling much better."
She doesn't mention Friday when she sat in front of her mirror, crying at her reflection and the sound of her sobs as they scattered the darkness. She doesn't mention Saturday when she did chins and push-ups until her chest was on fire and she couldn't breathe and she most certainly doesn't mention the tremble in her hands on Monday when she held them under cold water to stop her mind from craving whiskey to finally escape the hold of her thoughts and fears.
She just smiles in a way that hurts and watches as Dr. George nods and moves on to talk to one Anna Rivera, scribbling notes into his notebook.
She finds Castle's eyes on her, observing her intently. She shifts under his gaze and her fingers clasp together in her lap.
His brows are furrowed and his eyes tell her that he sees much more of the silent war within than she likes.
She kind of hates him for that.
The weeks pass. Some are good and the breaths come easy and her heart seems to be in place. Some are hard and have her flinching at her own shadow and lying awake at night, palm pressed to her chest and listening to her own heartbeat to convince her it is still there.
She doesn't talk.
And neither does he.
Not that she pays him attention.
No, not at all.
Sometimes she thinks she wants to tell them. That right in this moment she could let her voice soar and share with them that she is scared when there is no light in rooms. That she sometimes has to take an hour before leaving her apartment to piece herself together and place that mask of strength and determination so that no one sees how fragile this shell is, how hollow as well.
She wants to ask them so desperately what to do when the breath gets tangled and the heart takes so much space that there is just no room for breaths and air and how to calm her arms when they shiver with the phantom weight of everything she keeps inside.
And she so desperately wants to know what to do when there are images stuck in her head everywhere, at every turn and every glance into a mirror and every sound tears at them and pulls them into focus and they switch so fast she could collapse. She wants to know how to escape her own filmography, the scenery of her mind and it fucking hurts that she can't speak up.
Even though she is sure no one would know.
She sounds insane even to her own ears.
And as much as she is scared of the images and the memories, she is way more scared of the abyss of her own mind. Because there is no bright green exit sign to your thoughts, no voice telling you, "in case of emergency use the doors to your left and right".
And so she just sits still on her chair, fingers clasped and lips sealed, confining all those words within her chest.
She wishes she could open up.
She watches the trees outside the window. They blossom late that year. And March already begins to end when they turn bright green.
Doctor George still asks her every time whether there was something she'd like to share and every time she shakes her head and smiles, "I'm good." An ordinary lie.
He uses it too.
The session is like the others. She rejects talking and gets lost in her mind until the clock strikes and she can leave. It's so unsurprisingly boring that she is almost used to hearing all those stories by people that are braver than her. People that can talk about all the things that hurt without feeling as if the world would collapse if they did, and even if they do, they still have the courage to actually speak. She wishes she were one of them because then at least she'd have a good track record here.
She gets up as usual, reaches for her black leather jacket and walks over to the door.
Except today, for once, there is a change in routine. And she is not sure she likes it.
"Kate," it's Anna, the Spanish lady, whose daughter died from cancer. Anna, who yet always manages to smile at her with all the sun she has left in her eyes to make her feel better about herself. Anna, who is now standing at the table filled with baked goods and tea and looks a little frightened.
"Why don't you stay with us today?" Her accent has the words floating through the air, forms them in a way that makes them seem less of a threat, less of an impending catastrophe. They are round and soft like polished glass and maybe she can stay today.
She keeps her jacket on and brushes her hair back before she moves over to the group of women surrounding the cookie plate on the table. She only knows Anna. The rest of them are somewhat of a mystery. She knows all of them have spoken in the group at least once, but she still can't even remember all their first names.
And she hates that she has become like this.
Before she reaches the group she decides to go for tea first. It isn't necessarily her first choice and she would prefer coffee over tea any time but she still isn't ready for the rush of caffeine adding to the swirls and churns of anxiety deep in her stomach and so she grabs one of the cardboard cups and pours herself a cup of what seems to be Peppermint tea.
"I didn't think you'd stay," she hears from behind and the tea pot slips from her fingers and has boiling hot water spilling everywhere over her hands and wrists.
It doesn't hurt as much as she would have expected, as maybe it would have in another life. With less pain. But she still feels aching blisters starting to build on her paper skin and she hisses a "fuck" from under her breath.
"Shit," Castle says at the same time and quickly reaches out for napkins to press onto her skin.
"You have to cool that," he seems worried and his eyes hold the same expression as her father's when she fell from a tree when she was seven.
"It's fine," she replies and just wipes off the liquid, ignoring the soaring pain underneath her skin.
They have gathered the attention of the group and she cringes at their worried faces.
"I'm really sorry Kate," Castle says and she believes him.
"It's fine," she repeats and tries to give him a reassuring smile.
Anna hands her a towel soaked in cold water that she got from god knows where and Kate accepts it with a tight smile.
"Thank you."
"So why did you stay?" She asks Castle then, trying change the focus away from her burned skin.
"Oh, I don't know, I started staying a couple weeks ago, it's actually quite fun."
She nods. Not sure how this is his idea of fun.
"So you are a Detective?" He asks and it stings her in unexpected places.
"I was," she sees the next question burning in his eyes, "can we not talk about this please?"
"Sorry," he's sincere and it's surprising, "writer's habit, we can talk about something else."
"You just poured steaming hot water over my hand, what makes you think I want to talk to you?"
"First of all, technically you poured that over your hand yourself, and secondly you already are talking to me."
She rolls her eyes and tries to push away the irritation at the smile tearing at the corners of her mouth.
"So what do you want to talk about then?" She sighs in defeat.
"I asked you first."
Is he actually five years old?
"Okay," he appeases and seems to consider her for a second, "if you could be any super hero in the world, who would you be?"
His conversational skills are more than questionable, but soon enough she finds herself stuck in a conversation with Richard Castle surrounding super powers and heroes and for the first time in months she has a conversation in which the word "alcohol" doesn't appear even once.
AN: I did not originally plan on ever uploading this. This story is super personal for me and has been written whenever I was at the lowest point. It was initially only for myself but my best friend has convinced me to upload this in despite of it. A lot of this story is already written although it is still a complete mess and needs a lot of work but somehow I can't seem to really let this one go. I don't know whether anyone will be interested in joining me on this little journey and whether this story is likeable or not, but it is very important to me and I hope you can find something within this.