Title: Faraway, so Close
Disclaimer: Oh, Castle! I wish I owned it but nope, I can barely write so that would be some kind of miracle!
Summary: What happens when the love of your life gets shot and it's your fault? Rick Castle is debating on whether to protect Kate from whoever shot her, and solving her mother's murder. What if he can't do both? Is leaving Kate alone the solution? A series of events will tell him and Kate if they are made for each other, and if they can leave aside the dangers the case has brought to their lives to finally be happy. Post-Knockout.
Author's Note: Oh hello there, you must be thinking, what is this person who always abandons her fics, doing writing a Castle fic? Well, after the finale I had this idea, I've developed it a bit, but still haven't decided much where to take it... I did feel I should share it, considering the season premiere is almost here (YAY!) and basically I didn't want to influence my writing with what they will be showing, if you what I mean... Anyway, I hope you like this and if you do, please let me know, since I'm a bit scared about the response to this! I wonder if it's too short? haha well, let me know also if there's a bit typo out there, because hey, I'm not a native english speaker so I might make a couple awful mistakes :P Okai, enough, let's read!
Chapter I
It all happened in a matter of seconds. Just ten of those ago, Richard Castle was holding his lover's gaze. Her eyes, filled with fear and regret, told him how much she feared what they had experienced. The lost of a friend, of a leader. But they knew, and she made it present in her speech, that they would be there for each other, standing for the other, no matter what. And then, it was all over.
Kate Beckett was not talking in her strong intonation anymore, neither hearing anything around her. The popping sound of the bullet in her chest echoed inside of her. 'pop, pop, pop' she would hear. And a whisper.
She would only hear a whisper, as her tearful partner held her head and bleeding body close to his. The popping sound was replaced by his fast beating heart.
"Stay with me, Kate"
She thought of how she had never felt that heart so close to hers before, and regretted once again taking so long to feel it. "If Only..." she would silently repeat in her mind. It was only then when she realized it was her heart the one she was feeling, an a warm and racing palpitation that was the only thing deviating her from the excruciating pain of her wound.
Detective Beckett had been shot before, put down on the ground by a bullet that partially scratched her arm. At the moment, she then thought that was painful. Funny thing, she thought, she had not thought of how worse it could get. She felt her defined abdomen relent with blood as Castle tried to, unluckily, identify the entrance of the bullet. The pressure building up in her stomach found its way out through the tiny hole left by the projectile somewhere close to her heart, Castle calculated. Her blood became more visible to Castle, and desperately he tried to put pressure on the wound.
Blankly staring, she could feel the weight of his hands in her chest, and when in every other moment she would have pushed him away for touching her, this time, she wishes she could feel the warmth of his hands instead of the coldness of an open wound. His lips were moving, and even though she could not hear him, she knew what he was saying. "I love you" She could make out of his lips now wet in tears, the same tears that fell on her face and made her pain grew even more. From the corner of her eye, a single tear dropped. It was almost as if she had realized the light was gone. The sound she heard before was fading as seconds went by, and she was battling to keep her eyes open, and try to hear the soothing words of her partner. The battle was lost before she could even reciprocate his words. I love you too, was her last thought before it all went blurry and black.
"I always thought, being a cop, I'd take a bullet" She once said to him. Thankfully, who knows what power on Earth, decided Richard Castle would be relieved this was not the time to let his partner go.
On a Monday morning, Rick walked near the benches on Battery Park. It was not his usual walk; most of the time he would go to Bryant Park, for its closeness to the 12th precinct. This day, however, he walked recalling a story Kate had once secretively shared with him.
On one of those late night in the precinct, it would not be weird that Beckett shared a little story of her childhood with Castle... Especially with him. After closing a case of a body washing up on the river, Beckett had remembered a walk she had with her parents when she was a kid, long before her mother's murder. While playing in the park, she had lost a stuffed duck that had been recently given to her by her mom. As a way to comfort her, Johanna Beckett took her for a walk away from the playground, while her dad looked for the yellow puppet. She even remembered her mom gave her a cinnamon pretzel and took her to the benches to sit as they looked at the Statue of Liberty.
"I cried for hours!" She smiled, in a way that could only be when talking about her mother "As a child, I wondered if the duck had swum to Liberty Island" Said as she took a picture out of her wallet; it was folded in four parts, a picture of her standing with her pretzel in her right hand mimicking Lady Liberty. "Mom said that I was as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and when I saw this picture I believed her" She sighed, looking up with a small and painful smile, still remembering her mother's voice. "I still believe her, even when I know it's a lot bigger than I was".
"Silly thing" she had told him after finishing the story, trying to give it less significance. But he knew her better than that; Everything involving her mother had more significance than he could ever comprehend.
He nearly smiled at the sight of the bench. Almost twenty five years later, a bench sat on the same point where a young and tearful Kate Beckett played with her mother. The wooden benches had been replaced by concrete ones, but there was no doubt that was the same location of the picture. Placing a stuffed duck next to him, Castle sat on the bench and pressed the puppet as close to him as possible.
"If I had only given this to you earlier..." he whispered, directing his pain to the Universe, "If I..." He hesitated. "if I hadn't just waited until it was too late".
He sat there for a couple of minutes, feeling the breeze of the river, one similar to the one he had felt in the cemetery when Beckett was shot. He closed his eyes tightly trying to fight the horrid memories. It had been weeks since the incident, but he could still feel the density of her blood in his hands, her own getting colder with every second the blood left her body. Instinctively, he rubbed his hands together to make sure he was just thinking of it, and it wasn't real. Sometimes his mind would take him to the moment, he would re-live it thinking of things he could have done to change what had happened.
"I could have jumped to cover her as soon as I saw the shine"
"I could have told her to wear a vest before the ceremony"
"I could have been the one shot, not her"
He couldn't take it anymore, and tears slowly dropped down his cheeks, just like thousands of them had in the silence of his room, at nights, thinking over and over again of Beckett.
"I could have just left her mother's murder untouched... like she asked..."
His partner had been almost killed. She was lucky, he thought, because it couldn't be any other way, that her operation had gone well. After all it was a benefit to know a Cardiac surgeon...
In the midst of the moment, a vibration in his pocket dissolved the thought. It took him a moment to pick it up, for he knew what the call was about.
"Castle" He said as he usually did, but tone was not the playful one he would use when Beckett called, it had been a while since he used it. No witty comments or literary brilliance in his speech... no... not when Beckett was not around to call him out on it. The man on the other side of the line, spoke comfortably. He had gotten used to his voice. Jim Beckett would visit him every a couple of days to update him on his daughter's condition. For a moment they just stayed on the line, none wanting to speak first, but the writer assumed he was calling to talk about her.
After a couple of seconds the older man sighed and said, "She's awake".
That was all Richard Castle needed to get up and start walking away from the quiet park. "I'm on my way" He answered, dryly and clicked off.
Quickly after he got up, he realized the the duck was no longer in his hand, and with a crooked smile, he looked back at the bench, where the yellow plush still sat. He was not going to disappoint Kate again. He couldn't.