Thanks to the wonderful Jaime for reassuring me that I wasn't insane when I started writing this early in my morning and to the amazing Sophia for her incredible beta skills.
I don't own anything you recognise.
She and Him
It is late by the time she makes it home and, as the door closes firmly behind her, she sinks to her knees.
Again. She'd almost lost him again.
He'd almost lost her. Again.
They'd left the precinct together. Just like usual. They'd both gone to examine her car, he'd been pleased with the new passenger seat. It no longer had a piece that poked him in the back and he was less embarrassed by the idea of having criminals ride around with them in this refurbished vehicle.
Then they'd stared at each other for a few moments, having one of those conversations without words. They seemed to excel in those conversations, ones with no words, or ones with words that hid other words that should have been said. It's become about the subtext, about the unsaid, about the secrets.
She wonders how close to death she has to get again, before she tells him she remembers. That she remembers those words he told her. That she remembers the pleading tone in his voice.
-Castle-
He excuses himself from his mother and daughter, both of whom know exactly what has happened today, minus one small detail. He steps forward to the bookcase and kneels down to retrieve a file.
"Your father would be very proud."
Her voice echoes through his head tonight, it's a different voice than the one that normally haunts him. But this voice haunts him all the same. It's a snippet of information to a story he's never found the answer to.
He's always been told his mother loved a lifetime in the night he was conceived and that was the end of it. He never dug around, he never fished for information. He never investigated and he could have. He's a man with contacts, he has the mayor on speed dial. He scoffs at himself, at how conceited he sounds. How privileged he really is and then he remembers.
He remembers boarding school. He remembers the boys and their stories about their fathers and the stories he invented so as not to feel left out. He remembers that they were the beginning of his imagination. He could weave any life for his father that he wanted to: astronaut, whipped cream inventor, postman. Anything he wanted. He's always thought that fiction was better than the truth, and fiction paid his bills.
"You don't think you gained special access to the CIA back then because of your charm?"
By now he's sitting at his desk, the file on his lap. Character notes from Clara Strike, character notes for the original sit on the top. A brave but ruthless woman, hell bent on destroying everything, but she didn't stay that way. Somehow despite what happened between Sophia and himself, Clara gained a kind nature, she became less ruthless and more clever. More like the woman he follows around now, the one who is different.
Sophia's words about Beckett do not rattle him. He knows Beckett is going to be angry and upset when she finds out about his investigating, when his dalliances with the mystery man are revealed. But what he hopes is that she'll understand. That she'll realise his intentions come from a good place, a place of love.
He has to wonder how close they need to get to death before he tells her what he's been doing. Hell, before he tells her that he loves her again.
The thought that she doesn't know how he truly feels hurts when he allows himself to think about it, sometimes he thinks she must remember. He's caught her staring too long lately, tonight after they'd examined her car was a prime example. But perhaps she was just being her kind self, caring about what they had been through in the last few days. Caring he had been told something about his father he'd never known before.
He slams the file shut, sometimes even he shouldn't be left with his own thoughts for too long. They don't always make great best-sellers. Sometimes they just drive him crazy.
-Castle-
"I remember."
The two words have been on the tip of her tongue, they sit there, waiting for an unprepared moment. Waiting for a second when her carefully placed wall will shatter just that little bit more. But even after plummeting into the Hudson, even after facing death by the traitorous Sophia, the wall remains upstanding. The words remain inside.
She could have lost him today had Martin been too late. Neither of them could have been here this evening, or one could have been without the other. Then what would two words have meant? They would have meant nothing but regrets. Nothing but what could have been.
She sighs and pulls herself up from the floor, her stomach protests as to lack of food and she decides resignedly to fix that problem first.
-Castle-
His hand pauses before he knocks on the door. He didn't mean to end up here, honestly. He'd just intended to go for a 'head clearing' walk. But head clearing lead to food and food lead to his favourite takeout – hers too - which of course lead to her apartment.
She's just opened the fridge when there is a knock at the door. Sighing and hoping it isn't one of her neighbors, she moves quickly to unlatch it and the door swings open.
"Hi," she says, as she steps back and allows him to enter her apartment. He does so and heads straight for the kitchen counter.
"I was hungry. I thought you might be, too."
She nods and moves to retrieve plates and cutlery before the two of them step around each other in a well-practiced routine. He doesn't touch the food he knows she likes best and she does the same.
Eventually they are sitting side by side on her couch, each of them eating carefully. Neither of them has said anything and neither wants to break the silence. But eventually he speaks, "Beckett," he begins, "do you think that I am fond of the CIA theory because deep down I always knew that my father was one of them?"
She blinks, almost confused at the audacity of the question. It's very forward for either of them, it's not something drowned in subtext. She almost rolls her eyes at the connotation and then remembers the man next to her and how he has just asked her a serious question. "You are fond of the CIA theory because," she begins, turning her whole body to face him, "because you are a man with a tremendous imagination. And today, you just happened to be right."
"I never wanted to know." He replies, "I never wanted to know who he was really."
She stares into his eyes and sees the pain inside them. She knows he did once want to know more, but he buried that because it hurt too much. She understands that feeling well. She's pleased that Sophia isn't around anymore, she'd kill her herself for making the man she loves doubt himself and where he came from.
She smiles at him, allowing him to see one of the smiles she normally gives him when he's not looking. "Sophia told a lot of lies," she repeats both for his sake and for hers, and for the seeds of doubt Sophia tried to plant about her relationship with Castle.
"But what if once she told the truth?" Castle asks. He can see the look on Beckett's face, this is the look that he sees rarely, it's the look that tells him it's more than just concern she feels when she looks at him.
"I am a detective," she begins, "we could find out. The truth could set you free."
The final sentence catches in her throat, her truth or his fatherly truth she doesn't know. The wall is breaking, piece by piece, and maybe finding out the truth of where he came from could free them both.
He shakes his head. "What if fiction is better than the truth?" he questions her intently. "What if the truth changes everything?"
Beckett smiles again, in some way it's nice to be the one that is reassuring him for a change. Normally, it's so often the other way around. "Finding out who your father is won't change who you are Castle."
"Even if he's horrible?"
"Even if he's the worst man in the world. You'll still be you."
He smiles, before questioning, "You promise?"
The two words are on the tip of her tongue, they want to be said - they need to be said - but still the cost is too high, the pain on his face too real, too vivid. Tonight she cannot add to it. He needs reassurance tonight, not her unloading on him.
"I promise." Beckett replies instead and it's not only a promise that he won't be different. It's a promise that she will be. She will tell him what she knows, she just needs more time. She will keep believing despite the danger they've faced that they'll always have more. She refuses to believe anything less even when the stakes are high.
He's her one and done. She knows it. And one day he will too.