A/N: This piece follows the events of 'Change in Realities', in which Kate is the one to end up in the AU world we're allowed a glimpse into during 7x06, 'Time of Our Lives'.
The screams resounding through the ballroom pierce his senses, the shout of officers evacuating attendees and putting the place into lockdown. He should go, he knows she would tell him to go, but he's rushing to her side, where he never should have left, and dropping to his knees. The blood on the floor seeps through his slacks.
"Kate, no," he chokes, bowing over her massacred body. Twin bullet holes have found a home in her chest, side by side, and blood is spilling through her coat. So much blood. "Why did you do that? Why would you do that?"
Her words are garbled, the life draining from her eyes, but she holds his as she says it. "Because I love you, Castle. Always - always did."
Her lashes flutter before her eyes begin to roll back, fading from him, and his heart seizes.
"No, no, please don't go," he whispers, clutching her body in his trembling hands. "Not like this. You can't - please, Kate, stay with me. I could - I love you too, I know it," he croaks, staining her neck in streaks of red as he feels for a pulse.
He can hear the wail of sirens, but the heartbeat beneath his fingertips has gone silent.
The apologies won't stop spilling free. They flood from his lips with the tears when he calls Alexis, explaining what happened with held breath and as little detail as possible. He can't drag his daughter into this, not any more than he already has.
She meets him there only a few hours after Kate was taken into surgery, his daughter's concern for him overwhelming. Alexis promises him that it's okay, that she isn't mad, she isn't going anywhere, he hasn't ruined her Christmas. But they're spending Christmas Eve in a hospital waiting room, his heart in his throat and his eyes unseeing, when they were supposed to be decorating a Christmas tree together for the first time in too many years.
"I forgot the tree," he whispers belatedly, hearing Alexis sigh from her seat beside him.
"But you were going to get one," she reminds him, patiently. His kid is good at this, good with people. He wonders about the ins and outs of her job at that nonprofit she works for in LA, if she's able to put her compassion on display, or if it remains put on hold behind other responsibilities.
Everything I do seems so small and pointless. Nothing I do matters, so why try?
Alexis released the question last night in her room, in the time they spent actually talking for the first time in years while Kate sat in his office, brainstorming how to get back to her true universe, her home.
He wonders if she made it, he wonders what woman he'll see when she wakes up, what world she'll wake up to. Because she will wake up, she'll survive the surgery, the gunshots. She has to.
He sat down beside Alexis on the bed last night, letting his daughter vent about her job, her fears, her worries - all of it rushing from her lips like a waterfall of insecurity. Apparently, Meredith isn't a very good listener if their daughter has been bottling up so much. But, obviously, neither is he considering he hasn't been available to provide a listening ear to his kid since she was in her early teens. So he did his best to make up for it then, to tell his daughter not just what she needed to hear, but what he has learned to be true.
Everything you do matters. Every moment, every decision you make, it affects the people around you, it changes the world in a million imperceptible ways. No matter what your reality, you can make it better. We both can.
And he would, he vowed that to both himself and the grown up little girl sitting beside him. Because the best thing that came of Kate Beckett striding into his book party last night was the rekindling of his relationship with his daughter, the desire to make his reality better.
"You had every intention of coming back with a Christmas tree, Dad," Alexis murmurs, watching him with kind eyes, so soft and blue. It's been so long since she's looked at him with anything other than irritation, disappointment. It's been so long since she's looked at him like she loved him. "That's all that mattered to me. And this? Captain Beckett's life? Trumps that any day."
"You - Pumpkin, you didn't even know her," he points out, gently, but his daughter shrugs.
"No, but she knew you."
Castle freezes. He hasn't told his daughter any of the truth behind Kate's sudden appearance here in their world, in their lives. She would think he's crazy and he's already on such tentative footing with her.
"We just spent a day together, working on a case," he reasons, struck by it. Less than a day, less than twenty-four hours with her - that's all he got. "She doesn't know anything about me, just like I didn't know anything about her."
Well, not exactly true, but if Kate weren't from another universe, a world in which she loved him, then they really would be nothing but strangers.
"Maybe not technically, but she saw you. The real you," Alexis presses, reaching for one of his bloodstained hands and grasping it between both of hers. "And she brought that part of you out. I'll always be grateful to her for that."
His heart seizes in his chest, the spikes of his ribs digging into the muscle, and Castle slips his hand from Alexis's to wrap an arm around her shoulders.
"I missed you too," he mumbles into her hair, burying his nose in the scent of wildflowers and gingerbread. Alexis must have been baking. Does she even like to bake?
Kate would tell him to ask, to start a conversation with his kid, learn how to talk again. But his throat is thick with words left unsaid, both to the girl in his arms and the woman in surgery right now.
What could he have said to Kate, though, that he hasn't already made apparent in another life?
I don't even know you, but I know I love you.
He just knows what his heart feels, what it wants.
"She'll be okay, Dad." Alexis rests her head on his shoulder. "She has to be."
And for just a moment, he's able to believe his daughter, her words. Everything will be okay.
Alexis starts to doze against his side, her head lolling against his shoulder, dropping to his chest before she startles herself awake. He squeezes her arm every time, reminds her where she is, lets her fall back to rest against him. She's wearing a green sweater, he notices for the first time, an olive color that goes nicely with her dark hair. It's the first time he's seen her wearing anything lighter than black since she flew in a few days ago.
Rick sighs, leaning back against the uncomfortable plastic chair with Alexis heavy against him. It's been hours, nearing five since they took Kate behind those swinging doors and told him he wasn't allowed to follow any further, that he has to wait out here.
He isn't even family, doesn't even have any right to be here. Does she have family? Her mother is dead, she never mentioned siblings. He heard the nurses say something about calling Kate's father, but that was hours ago and no one has shown.
Light is beginning to fade outside, the night of Christmas Eve encasing the city. His daughter shouldn't be spending it in a waiting room.
"Alexis," he murmurs, shifting beneath her to sit up once more. His daughter's brow scrunches, her lips twisting with a frown. "Hey, my little raven haired pumpkin."
Her eyes peel open, staring up at him while the sleep clears from her gaze. "Too weird of a nickname, Dad."
"I like it," he grins. Well, tries to anyway; his mouth feels as if it has been fixed into a permanent frown. He rubs Alexis's arm. "You should go home, honey. It's Christmas Eve and-"
"I'm not leaving you here by yourself," she scoffs, using the arm of the chair to push herself up. She raises her arms over her head and stretches her spine. "Besides, Gram is probably at the loft by now and I don't want to deal with the Christmas party she's probably throwing for her acting troupe there."
Rick grimaces. "We really need to establish some boundaries."
"Should have done that years ago, Dad," Alexis mutters, but follows up with an apologetic glance. He doesn't mind the sarcasm, but he can tell she's trying to tone it down for him. Trying in many ways for him. He can't let it go to waste.
"No, you're right. The second the loft began to go from being a home to a glam cave, I should have stopped it, at least found a way to compromise," he murmurs, rubbing at the back of his neck. "And you know your Gram didn't mean any harm. She just… she's got a large personality and with no one there to balance her out, her personality-"
"Vomited all over our living room," Alexis fills in.
Castle chuckles, sighs. "Yeah, unfortunately. But I'll talk to her, Pumpkin. Once all of this is settled, especially if you're thinking about sticking around a little longer…"
He lets the sentence trail, doesn't want to be too presumptuous, put any pressure on her. If Alexis wants to go back to LA, he won't stop her, but if she wants to stay a little longer, he definitely won't discourage that either.
"We'll see," Alexis offers, reaching out to squeeze his hand once more. "For now, how about I do run by the loft, but just to grab you some clothes?"
He glances down to his current attire, the navy blue sweater he pulled over his head this morning, soft and warm and stained in Kate's blood, the knees of his slacks colored a deep crimson. The bile rises in his throat.
"And while I'm there," Alexis continues as she stands. "I'll grab the cookies I made this morning, bring the whole plate here. Should help when you eventually need to bribe the nurses."
His eyes flicker up to his daughter, watching him with a smug curl to the corner of her mouth.
His own lips quirk. "Smart thinking."
Castle rises to hook his arm around her just one more time, to savor this moment of tenderness amidst the tragedy. Kate is fighting for her life, fighting to beat the odds of two gunshot wounds to the chest, but he won't stop believing that she'll pull through and in the meantime, he's slowly mending fences with the child he unintentionally neglected for six years.
"Love you, Pumpkin," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
Alexis eases back with a soft smile, more bashful than he remembers, but a smile nonetheless. "Love you too, Dad."
She snags her coat from the chair, slips her arms through while she starts towards the elevator. Castle eases his hands into his pockets as he watches her go, his fingertips colliding with something hard-
The tape.
"Alexis," he calls, a little too urgently.
Her head swivels over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised. He jogs after her.
"Take your time at the loft," he adds, falling into step with her until they're inside the elevator and his daughter is pressing the button for the lobby. "There's someone I have to meet with."
"Now?" Alexis inquires, subtle concern leaking into her gaze.
But Castle nods resolutely, clutching his fingers around the cassette tape in his palm.
"Yeah, it's about something important," he assures her as they begin to descend, but his daughter only continues to stare at him in question. "It's the reason Kate was shot."
Mayor Weldon provides him with Roy Montgomery's address without much question when Rick calls, apologizing for the disturbance on Christmas Eve, for going to so long without a poker game, promising to make up for the lost time. He tells his former poker buddy that he just needs to speak with Roy for a few minutes, that it's too urgent, can't wait for New Year's, and Bob listed it off with a sigh.
299 First Avenue.
The house the taxi arrives in front of is nice, modern, well-kept from the outside, and decorated in Christmas lights. Expensive. Begs the question of how a retired police captain is able to afford such a place.
Rick knocks on the door, holding his breath while he waits. Alexis made him come with her to the loft, insisting that wherever he was going, whomever he was meeting with, he couldn't show up covered in blood. She had a point.
But he left the sweater on, simply covered it with his coat.
If it comes down to it, he wants this man to see what his secrecy, his deception, has caused.
The door swings open and he's greeted by a woman in a bright red sweater, her smile wide, but her brow falling into a furrow at the sight of him.
"Richard Castle?" she asks, tilting her head just slightly. "The author, right?"
Castle hesitates before nodding. "Yes, I'm so sorry to disturb you, Mrs… Montgomery?"
"Evelyn," Montgomery's wife corrects, her eyes kind. He hears the sounds of children laughing in the background, can see the glow of a Christmas tree at the woman's back, and feels his stomach twist into knots.
"Maybe it's best to just leave him out of it this time, let him live," Kate said in the cab last night when the realization that even if Montgomery is dead in her world, he may be alive in this one struck.
This must be why.
"Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Castle?"
"Oh, I - yes, I'm so sorry to bother you on Christmas Eve, but I was hoping I could speak to Roy for just a moment?" Rick asks, doing his best to channel his charm, a smile, a warm gaze.
He doesn't think he concedes. Roy Montgomery's wife just looks concerned.
"Sure, he's here," Evelyn says, stepping back to allow Castle inside, but he shakes his head.
"I can wait out here."
"Mr. Castle, it's freezing," Evelyn points out, but he can't do it. Can't go inside their home, see their kids, their Christmas decorations, and say what he needs to say, find out what he needs to know, bring that darkness into a family's lives on Christmas.
"I don't mind," he assures her, tucking his hands into his coat pockets, flexing his fingers around the tape.
Evelyn shrugs. "Suit yourself. I'll be right back with Roy."
Castle responds with a polite nod while Evelyn eases the door closed. It takes only a handful of minutes for it to ease open again, an older man with grey hair and eyes that darken as they land on him slipping out into the cold.
"Mr. Castle," he greets, the assessing Rick with a skeptical gaze and a bob of his throat. "What can I do for you? Don't you have a daughter in town for the holidays?"
Unease ripples down Rick's spine at the mention of his child, but it's not a threat. There's no one left to threaten him with. Bracken is dead.
"Captain Montgomery, we've never met," Castle starts, but Roy chuckles, shakes his head.
"You don't have the best memory, do you? I've attended a couple of your infamous poker nights," Kate's former police captain reminds him. "But I can't blame you, that was years ago."
"Ah, my apologies," Castle offers, but his voice is straining under the small talk. Roy knows why he's here. Rick isn't sure how, but by the tension in his shoulders, the deepening frown lines around his mouth, he does. "Did you hear about Kate?"
Castle is surprised he doesn't remember such a good poker face.
"I was informed of Senator Bracken murder, it was hinted that Captain Beckett was involved. No other details have been released," he shrugs, crossing his arms over his chest. "I still don't understand why you're here, Mr. Castle."
"You know why I'm here," Rick growls under his breath. "You know I've been talking to Kate Beckett because you're one of Bracken's lackeys-"
"Like hell I am," Montgomery snarls, narrowing his gaze on Rick. Intimidating. "I don't know where you're getting your information, but never have I-"
"I got my information from Captain Beckett. Kate, who knows the part you played in her mother's death, how you kept silent for all these years, how you just - you let her drown in it without saying a word."
The wall of aggravation begins to slide from Montgomery's face. "She knew?"
"She just found out," Castle lies, smoothing his thumb back and forth along the cassette. "And she has evidence. It's why she went to Bracken's party, it's why he shot her."
"Shot?" Montgomery echoes, something like horror rippling across his face. "I - how… tell me she's still alive."
"In surgery."
Roy scrubs a hand over his eyes, looking so much older in the span of this single conversation. "This evidence she has, I assume that I'm a part of it?"
Castle swallows hard, confirmation enough. He hasn't heard the tape, can't say with certainty that the man standing before him has been incriminated enough on the tape to seal his fate, but by the look on Montgomery's face, Roy already knows what's on the recording.
"Why come tell me this?" he demands, lifting his gaze to Castle, not seething, not angry, only confused.
"I - Kate cares about you," Rick replies, remembering the way her features softened, the way sorrow infiltrated the lines of her face whens he spoke of her dead captain. "I haven't known her for long, but I know she didn't want you to get caught up in all of this."
Let him live.
"The tape will be taken to the authorities as soon as she wakes up. What you do with that information is up to you."
"Why can't you just leave well enough alone?" Montgomery growls under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. "Bracken is dead. Everything we did, the mistakes I made - they died with him."
"So will justice for Kate's mother," Castle answers through grit teeth. "Kate worked too hard to find it. It's why she's in that hospital bed right now."
Montgomery's eyes flash, the concern a strike like lightning. So he does care. Shit, somehow that makes all of this so much harder.
"I - I never wanted to ruin your Christmas, Roy. I don't want to ruin your life, but if you care about Kate at all-"
"If I care?" Roy scoffs, his eyes ascending to the night sky. "I did everything in my power to make up for all I'd done, to keep her safe, keep her alive. This is exactly why. The second I gave her a name, I knew she would run straight to her own death."
Montgomery's eyes flutter, blinking away any signs of moisture.
"I just wanted to protect her the way I should have protected her mother."
Shit. Castle lowers his eyes to the ground, forcing the lump down his throat and studying the clumps of snow lining the clean sidewalk the leads to the Montgomerys' door. Has he done the right thing, showing up like this, destroying a family's lives? Has he done right by Kate, her mother?
"I can't put my family through this," Montgomery whispers, shifting back towards the closed front door.
"I - I can't imagine the position this puts you in, but the truth can't stay buried either," Castle murmurs quietly, earning the flicker of Roy's gaze.
"Vincit Omnia Veritas."
Castle's brow furrows. "Latin?"
"Truth conquers all," Montgomery translates with a nod, holding Castle's gaze. "It was a saying Johanna Beckett lived by, one Kate adopted as well . It's never stopped haunting me."
The phone in Rick's pocket buzzes and he lets out a breath, releases the tape in his grasp to claim the device instead.
It's a text message from his daughter, a single sentence that has his heart thundering.
"Kate pulled through surgery," he reads aloud, feeling breathless as he glances back to Montgomery. A sad smile crosses the other man's lips and he nods.
"You should go, I'll… I'll consider my options."
Rick's lips purse with words he wants to say, apologies for the damage he's caused tonight, but just can't. Roy seems like a decent man, a man who knew right from wrong, who tried to atone for his sins. He doesn't want her captain taken down in the crossfire either.
"If you need anything, anything I could help with, find a way to contact me," Castle offers instead, taking a step back, towards the street and the cab he paid extra to wait for him.
"Thank you, but Mr. Castle?" Rick pauses before he can turn, run to the cab and rush back to the hospital. "If you talk to Kate, tell her… just tell her that I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Castle's chest is tight, too tight with all of this, the loose ends of this tragedy that he was never meant to meddle his way into.
"I will."
He turns his back on Roy Montgomery, the guilt heavy on his shoulders, but he carries it for now. Carries it with him all the way back to the hospital.
Alexis is in the waiting room when he arrives, a plate of cookies on her lap, but despite the well-recieved bargaining chip, he's told that he can't see Kate yet, that no one can. As if that's going to stop him.
It takes only an hour of his pestering, bribing, convincing for one of the nurses to finally crack, deciding to let him take a seat in Kate's hospital room.
He forces Alexis to go home first. It's getting late, too late, too many hours spent in a waiting room for his sake, and he wants her to spend the night before Christmas in the comfort of her own bed. He promises to call, to keep her updated on Kate's progress, and finally earns the reluctant band of her arms around him in a hug goodbye and a vow to return in the morning.
And then, at last, he's being led through those forbidden double doors, down a long hallways, and into Kate's hospital room.
"It looks a lot worse than it is," the nurse, Sandra, he thinks, warns him. "She's got a breathing tube that she'll need for the next few hours at least, she's lost a lot of blood, her skin's excessively pale, there's some bruising. But she's alive and she's going to be okay, Mr. Castle. That's all you need to remember."
Rick nods, his heart pounding as his palms sweat, before Sandra eases the door open to allow him entry.
His eyes immediately search for Kate, finding her hospital bed in the middle of the room without trouble, but his breath automatically catches in his throat. The nurse's warning failed to prepare him for the way his heart would dive down to his stomach, how the acid would burn in his throat and leave him breathless.
But it's not Sandra's fault. Nothing could have prepared him for the visceral reaction of seeing Kate so damn near death.
"You can take a seat in that chair beside her bed," Sandra says, patting him on the back. "Just don't touch any of the wires or move anything, okay?"
"I - okay," he get outs, feeling the nurse disappear from his back, leaving him alone in the room with the woman in the hospital bed. The gorgeous police captain whose skin has turned sallow, whose eyes are taped shut, lips opened around the tube shoved down her throat - the only reason her chest rises and falls.
She looks so small, so devastated, and even though he's only known her a day, it's just so - so wrong.
Castle forces himself to shuffle forward, to pull the chair beside her bed just a fraction closer, needing to be as close as possible. The chair puts him at eye level with the railing of her bed, an uncomfortable position, but a perfect view. He sighs, rests his chin to the cold metal and tentatively slips one of his hands past it. He bypasses the over-starched sheets to drape his palm over her knuckles, startled by how cool to the touch her skin is.
Rick shifts closer, sitting up to cradle her freezing fingers between both of his palms. He's careful not to lift her arm, to upset the fragile state of her body, knowing one wrong move could break her.
"You're going to be okay, Kate," he whispers, gently squeezing her hand between his, willing whatever warmth left in his own body to transfer to hers. "Everything will be okay."
It has to be.
He remains at Kate's bedside for the rest of the night, her chilled hand in at least one of his at all times. He's allowed to stay when they extricate the breathing tube from her throat, watching in horror as her body violently spasms with the withdraw, squeezing her hand even though she's still immersed under a sea of drugs that keeps the pain from eating her alive.
Two gunshot wounds, one to her heart, the other just a little higher, right below her collarbone. The recovery process for this will be hell. The doctor tells him she's lucky to be alive, but she'll be just as lucky to survive the healing.
Castle begins to drift just as the sun begins to rise on Christmas morning, his cheek against the metal railing, his neck aching with the uncomfortable position and the tension building at the base of his skull. The stench of antiseptic is in his nose, the slim bones of Kate's hand wrapped in his, Montgomery, her mother's murder, her bullet wounds all swirling through his mind, drowning him in much needed sleep.
The twitch of her fingers drags him back to the surface.
Rick blinks, opening his eyes to witness the flex of her hand in his. He jerks his head up, just in time to find her eyes struggling to stay open, her brow creasing.
"Castle?" she rasps and his heart surges to his throat. Her eyes are in slits, staring at him in the dim light of her hospital room. The gold of her gaze that he grew accustomed to seeing every time she looked at him has been crushed, turned to tiny flecks that try and fail to spark in the murky ambers of her irises. He blames it on the morphine, the fact that it's her first time waking since she was shot less than twenty-four hours ago. "Richard Castle."
"Yeah, hey," he breathes, stroking his thumb over her knuckles, trying not to encase her hand in a death grip between his. But she's alive and she's awake and she knows who he is. He shouldn't be so giddy, hates himself for feeling so selfishly overjoyed that she stayed, that she didn't make it back to the alternative universe she came from. But he can't help it. She's here and he may get to keep her after all. "Hey, Kate. I'm right here."
"Why?" she slurs, watching him with drooping lids. "Why here?"
"Because - because it's where you are," he manages, tenderly squeezing her hand.
She hums, lets her eyes fall closed. "Happened?"
Castle quietly clears his throat. "Bracken - he shot you, but it's over now, Kate. We have the tape, we'll-"
"Talking 'bout?" she mumbles, eyebrows coming together in a confused furrow once more.
His heart starts to sink. Maybe it's just the medication, the pain induced haze, maybe she just can't remember right now because she's barely even awake. Yeah, that makes sense.
But deep down, he knows.
This isn't the same woman who crashed his book party, who called him on his bullshit and proved the idea of other worlds to be true. This isn't the woman who opened his eyes and pried at the walls around his heart, shedding light inside for the first time in years, who made his fingers buzz with the urge to write again, who looked at him like she was in love with him.
"Kate, do you know who I am?"
Her throat works through a swallow, eliciting a wince that ripples across her face. He can't help reaching out with the hand not encompassing hers, brushing back the hair from her forehead with gentle fingers, feeling her exhale a soft breath that heats along the skin of his wrist.
"Favorite author," she murmurs as her features begin to fall slack, sleep taking over once more.
Castle lets her go, withdrawing his hand from her forehead to join the other around her warmed fingers even while his heart splinters down the middle.
No, this isn't the same Kate. This Kate doesn't know him at all.