So ... remember me? Once upon a time I wrote a bit here and then didn't but then with the Castle angst of recent times my writing brain has returned. I watched all three new episodes backtobacktoback tonight and these thoughts wouldn't leave me alone. I've not read or written any Castle fanfic in a long time so if this has been done to death then please forgive me and be nice about it.
Nothing you recognise is mine, only the thoughts are mine. Enjoy and please review :)
All In
Her head pounds. 3am. Long before her alarm is meant to wake her. But Kate doesn't need an alarm any longer. Sleep evades her and has done for the past week. A week ago she walked out of her marriage, walked out of her husband's loving gaze and walked into this mess she now calls her life once again.
Still unfamiliar with the room she now calls home she hits her phone off the bedside table instead of reaching the lamp and with a small wince she pulls herself up to sit. Gingerly she moves to the lamp, flicking it on and then the small room illuminates; the plain white walls and boring hotel accessories slowly come into view. This isn't the room she should be sleeping in and as she absentmindedly twirls her wedding ring between her fingers she cannot help but think that this isn't the life she should have any longer. But somehow it is.
Rita told her to go home, to leave all of this behind her and that in doing so she would be safe. That no one would look for her if she didn't look for them. It seems so eerily familiar that if it wasn't her life in peril she would laugh. Once long ago deals were struck to keep her alive, to keep her from looking and she broke all of them. It almost cost her her life. She looks down at that puckled scar now joined by another gained in this crusade of hers for justice for her mother or perhaps because of her mother. Sometimes and especially now she can't help but wonder what her life would have been like if her mother was still alive. Would Kate Beckett have been a lawyer uptown with the perfect marriage, 2.5 children and a fluffy puppy dog to take running around the lake in Central Park each morning? Or would she have found something else that took her fancy, something else that she felt passionate about?
She leans back into her pillow and closes her eyes, voices of people past and present race through her head. But some stay longer and repeat themselves over and over and over again.
"You woke the dragon. And this is so much bigger than you realise."
She thinks of McCallister, shanked to death in his cell. She wonders how much did he actually know. More than her at the time that's for sure. But did he know about this and is his dragon the same one she thought she'd caught. The now dead disgraced politician his body now cold in the morgue, or did he mean another dragon, the one she is chasing now. The next big great unknown. She will never know.
The next voice she hears is his, Castle's. Hears him call himself her partner.
"Plucky side kick always gets killed."
"Partner then."
She'd tried to warn him off then. Tried to tell him that this was her fight not his. But he never listened and she knows that she would have never gotten this far without him. So why is she doing it without him now? Because this isn't just about Bracken any more.
But what is this about? A redacted memo that got an entire team killed. Her Washington colleagues, killed because of a search that she did. Rita told her that their deaths weren't her fault but in some tiny way they still were and Rita is certainly correct about the next deaths being because of her. And even though she hopes there won't be any others she can't help but know that there will be.
Attachments are weakness, the people you love the most can be used as a weapon against you, as a weapon to break you. And Kate Beckett will be damned if she lets Castle be used against her. That's why she's here, in this shitty hotel box room, paid for with less than a quarter of her first week of Captain wages. She doesn't want to be here, doesn't want to be uncomfortable, doesn't want to be alone in these less than perfect sheets when across town there is a man who loves her sleeping (she hopes) in a perfect bed of fluffiness and comfort.
She doesn't want to be here. Yet she made the choice to be. Because if she doesn't choose to fight then who will. Her eyes open once again, she knows this life. This life of fighting alone singularly up against an ever-changing target. She thought those days were long behind her. Somehow they aren't. And if she's honest to herself then there is a part of her that feels like this is the person she is underneath everything. These are her insides.
"But you weren't having any fun before he came along."
Her mentor's voice breaks through her thoughts. He was right. Life before Castle was monotonous; sometimes filled with a smile or two but it wasn't fun. Life with Castle is so much fun, she remembers what she walked out on, smorelettes, dessert for dinner and most importantly a man she loves. Always. But somehow despite that she's here. And he's there. She's still willing to risk her life chasing the big bad unknown despite being someone's wife. She only hopes that when he finds out what is going on that he will understand, that he will somehow forgive her for having to chase the big black cloud, the big great unknown, the big swirling rabbit hole. And she only also hopes that she's strong enough not to fall down far enough to never get out herself.
She sighs. 4am. Her old gym opens in half an hour. If she's going to be able to crack this she's going to have to be as strong as she once was. She pulls herself out of bed, reaching down for her phone, sucking in a deep breath as she does so. She sends Vikram a text, they had a meeting at 6am. 5am at the gym sounds better to her, he needs to be strong too. She pulls on her sweats and shoes and heads out into the corridor, slipping her piece into the waistband of her pants. She cannot be complacent, cannot be too careful. For the price for not being so is her life.
She shivers as she reaches the pavement, she could stop this. She could go home. But somehow she doesn't. Somehow she keeps walking towards the gym. She teeters on the edge of the rabbit hole; somewhere between trying to stay out and between jumping in. Her next move decides it all, and somehow she already knows that despite the danger she's going to jump.
She's going all in.