Title: A Bridge Too Far
Author: DizzyDrea
Summary: Rick finally figures out what Kate's been up to, thanks to an unlikely source.
Rating: T
Spoilers: XX/XY, Cool Boys
Author's Notes: I wrote this about a week after the season premiere two-parter, XX/XY. I was...not happy, to say the least, about the direction the producers were taking the series. I'm still not that happy, because breaking up the Dynamic Duo after everything they'd been through to get together seems like lazy storytelling. So, this story is sad and reflects my feelings on the whole affair. Warning: this story doesn't have a happy ending. If you're looking for one, look elsewhere. This story does, however, feature what I consider a more authentic reaction by Rick to the news that his wife is going after LOKSAT.
Originally posted on Archive of Our Own; cross-posting here (finally).
The title is a play on the drabble series I wrote for Castle, way back in the early days, Bridges.
Disclaimer: Castle is the property of ABC, ABC Studios, Beacon Productions, Andrew Marlowe and a lot of other people who aren't me. I am doing this for fun and for practice. Mostly for fun.
~o~
Rick Castle sauntered through the outer office of his PI practice, whistling as he sorted through the mail Alexis had left for him on her desk. Things had been busy lately, and his practice was thriving despite the fact that there were plenty of people who still couldn't take Richard Castle, Private Detective, seriously.
Well, screw 'em, he said. There were plenty of fish in the sea, plenty of crimes to go around. Besides, it wasn't like he'd taken the path of least resistance when it came to his career. If being a writer had taught him one thing, it was to ignore the negative bullshit and focus on doing the job.
"You know, I feel like I just stepped into a Philip Marlowe novel."
Castle stopped short, eyes flicking around his office, looking for the source of the voice. He silently cursed himself for leaving his gun tucked into its hiding spot inside his desk. He still didn't carry it, even though he had a permit and everything. It still felt too weird, too much like the cop he was never going to be.
Then, his desk chair spun around and the source of the voice became quite obvious.
"Dad," Castle said, no small amount of sarcasm in the word. "What are you doing here? I'm pretty sure Alexis locked up after she left."
"The lovely and talented Alexis Castle did indeed lock up after she left," Jackson Hunt said.
"Then clearly we need to have a conversation about boundaries and breaking and entering."
Jackson snorted. "You have met me, haven't you?"
"Yeah," Castle said, sighing. He finished crossing the room, dropping the mail on his desk and crossing his arms as he gave his father his best glare. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but what are you doing here?"
"I thought you might want to see this," Jackson said, holding up a file. It wasn't very thick, but that didn't blunt Castle's curiosity.
"What is it?" he asked, even as he took the file.
He opened it up and started thumbing through the information as his father talked. "It's everything we have on LOKSAT so far. It's not much, but what's there is significant."
Castle looked up, frowning in confusion. "Why are you showing me this? And who's 'we'?"
"She really didn't tell you, did she?"
Castle's frown deepened. "She who didn't tell me what?"
"Your wife," Jackson said.
Castle winced. Kate was still a somewhat sore subject, considering she'd rebuffed his every attempt so far to reunite them. Then it hit him. The file, LOKSAT, Kate's distance.
"She's going after them, isn't she?" he asked. "Stepping back, Vikram still hanging around, all of it. She's been lying to me all this time."
"Did you really think she'd let it go that easily, Rick?" Jackson asked. "It's not in her nature. We've been trying to protect her as much as possible, but when I heard that she'd moved out, I knew what had happened."
"They tried to kill her," Castle said. "They tried to kill me! She'd be crazy to go after them again. So, what's really going on here? Does Vikram have something on her? Is that why she's doing this?"
"As far as we can tell, Vikram is exactly who he appears to be," Jackson said, shrugging. "If he's working with someone else, we haven't seen evidence of it yet."
"Somehow, that's not reassuring," Castle said. He thumbed through a few more pages, each one making the hair on his arms stand up straighter and straighter. "There's a lot more here than 'not much'. How long have you been at this? And who's 'we'?"
"I'm just the messenger," Jackson said. "The CIA isn't investigating this, for obvious reasons. But I know who is; you can trust her. That information is genuine."
"Her?" Castle asked, eyebrow raised. "Girlfriend?"
"Wife, actually," Jackson said. Off Castle's astonished look, he added, "I guess Kate didn't tell you that, either."
"No, she didn't," Castle said. "So, you're telling me that not only did my wife leave me to investigate who was protecting Vulcan and Senator Bracken, but she met your wife—my stepmother, and congratulations, by the way—and has been lying to me ever since?"
"A bit simplistic, but yeah, that's about the size of it."
Castle closed the file and held his arms out. "Why? Why leave me? Why keep investigating? She caught her mother's murderer. There's nothing left for her to do. Why keep chasing this?"
Jackson leveled an unimpressed glare at his son. "Willful ignorance doesn't suit you, Rick."
"Yeah, well, it's about all I've got left," Castle said, huffing. He tossed the file onto his desk and rubbed at his forehead as he dropped into one of the chairs in front of his desk. "What is it with her and this obsession? Was Bracken actually right about her?"
"Bracken was a keen observer of people," Jackson said. He tilted back in the chair, steepling his fingers in front of him. "He had to be in order to make it as a politician. Whatever he saw in Kate, it's a good bet he wasn't that far off the mark."
"That's not reassuring," Castle muttered.
"Look, you know Kate better than I do, so I can't speak to why she's still pursuing this." Jackson leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the desk. "My wife warned her that if she kept investigating, she'd be putting those she loves in danger. Leaving you isn't going to protect you, something that should have been abundantly clear to her. Anyone who comes after her isn't going to care that you've broken up. You mattered to her at one point; they can—and probably will—use that."
"Good thing I have a gun, then, isn't it?" Castle asked, quirking a small smile.
Jackson reached over to his right and knocked on the desk, neatly catching the gun as it popped up out of its secret compartment, quickly leveling it at his son.
"Not gonna do a whole lotta good in there, is it?"
"How did you—"
"Like I said, I feel like I'm stuck in a Philip Marlowe novel," Jackson said, engaging the safety on the gun and placing it on the desk between them. "Or, at least a cheesy Lifetime Channel adaptation of one."
"Hey!" Castle said. "I resemble that remark."
Jackson barked out a quick laugh, but sobered almost immediately. "You know what you're going to do?"
Castle sighed. "No, I don't."
"The longer this goes on, the more danger she puts all of you in," Jackson said. "Think about that."
Castle tipped his head back and sighed. He'd accepted a measure of danger into his life when he'd fallen in love with Beckett. Even though he wasn't armed, he'd always felt better being the one watching her back out in the field, like he could somehow keep her safe if he was there to physically watch her.
He'd hoped that with her taking the promotion to Captain that she'd be in less danger and he'd feel better about not always being there to watch her back. Not being part of the investigations was hard, but they'd both agreed that with her riding a desk there was no more need for him to shadow her and consult on cases.
Except that now, she'd found a way to get back into the field. Or was there something deeper at play? He raised his head, mouth open to ask a question, but found his desk chair empty. He stood up and looked around the office, including the secret room behind his desk, but there was no sign of Jackson.
"Sweetheart, I—"
Castle looked up to find his mother standing in the doorway, looking quite perplexed.
"Is everything alright, Richard?" she asked as she moved into the room.
He'd been about to ask his father a question, but he realized in that moment that his father was the wrong person to ask.
"No, Mother, it's not," he said, sighing. "Can I ask you something?"
~o~
Castle sat in the dark, thinking about how he'd gotten to this moment in his life. He was a successful author, respected if not revered for his talent. He had a beautiful mother and a daughter that he was more proud of than he could ever hope to articulate. The loft, the cars, even his PI business were all marks of his ability to make something out of nothing.
Love, it seemed, was his only failure. For reasons he couldn't quite understand, he always seemed to pick the wrong woman. And even when he thought he'd gotten it right, somehow it went wrong.
Maybe it was him, though this time he was pretty sure it wasn't.
He'd tried to do as Slaughter had suggested; he'd tried following Beckett, had even searched her office looking for clues to where her heart and mind were at. Hell, he'd even tried reminding her of why they worked, repeatedly and in many different ways, but it had taken a visit from his father to pull the veil from his eyes. He should have known, should have seen the signs, and the fact that he didn't wasn't sitting well with him. He'd agonized over his next move, but in the end, he'd come to the conclusion that he had no choice.
Maybe he never did.
The sound of a door being unlocked drew him out of his musings. A dark shape moved through the room, resolving into the figure of his wife, gun raised, as she moved into the pool of moonlight visible through the window.
"Castle!" Kate said, lowering her gun. "What are you doing here? I could have shot you!"
"Unlike Kevin, you don't normally shoot first and ask questions later," Castle said.
"What are you doing here, Castle?" she asked again. "How did you even know where to look?"
"You told me your cousin was going on a semester abroad, remember?" he asked. "I figured this was the most logical place to start."
Kate's sigh was layered with exasperation. "Castle, I thought I told you—"
"I know what's going on, Beckett," Castle said, not even feeling a little bit guilty that he'd interrupted her. "I know you've been chasing LOKSAT."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't lie to me, not anymore," he said, leaning forward in his seat on the couch. "I know about all of it. I know about my stepmother, about Vikram. Everything is in that folder."
Kate crossed the room and flipped on a light, washing the room in a faint glow. She took the folder from the coffee table and began thumbing through the information. Information that Castle knew by heart now. He didn't miss the eager, almost obsessive light in her eyes.
"Where did you get this, Castle?" she asked, barely looking up.
When he didn't answer, she looked up at him. He had to work hard to keep his reaction from showing. This was the woman he'd fallen in love with, all those years ago. The woman who let her passion for justice lead her down the road to near-ruin because she couldn't let go. He'd hoped that, by helping her solve her mother's murder, he'd be able to help her turn that fierce need for justice back toward a healthier outlet, but maybe that was a pipe dream.
"Where I got it isn't important," he said. "What's in that folder should help you uncover the CIA mole. I wish you luck. Just, don't get killed."
He stood up and headed for the door, knowing that Beckett probably wasn't even aware of the fact that he was leaving. It broke his heart a little more, knowing that he didn't matter to her as much as she mattered to him. But just as he reached the foyer, he heard her speaking once again.
"What's this, Castle?"
He turned, hands in his pockets as he faced her. "That is a request for an annulment."
"I know what it is," she said, annoyance in her tone as she brandished the piece of paper. "What I want to know is what's it doing in this file?"
"You've lived with this obsession for practically your whole life," Castle said. "And I get it, I do. Your mother deserved justice, and you helped get that for her. But it's finished now."
"Oh, it's far from over, Castle," she said, shaking her head. "I haven't even found out—"
"It's over, Kate," Castle said forcefully. "Your mother's killer is in the ground. You solved the case, but you can't put it behind you. See, I didn't understand this before, but I do now. You don't know who you are without this obsession, and you're too afraid to find out. So, you found a way to keep pursuing it. It didn't matter to you that you might get hurt, or get one of your friends or family hurt. Or killed."
He looked down at his feet, mustering the courage to say what needed to be said. "I fell in love with you in part because of your passion for justice. And I helped you solve your mother's murder because I knew you needed closure. I'd always hoped that the work was fulfilling enough that you'd still be the same woman, once that chapter of your life was closed, but I was wrong. You're not her. You're like a heroin addict, jonesing for a fix. And I can't be part of that anymore."
"How dare you, Castle!" she shouted. "How dare you judge my choices! I did what I did to protect you! Do you get that?"
"You could have made a different choice, Kate," Castle said quietly. "You could have left it alone. Left it to those whose job it is. Instead, you chose to follow the evidence because without this, you don't recognize yourself. Well, fine. If this is the choice you want to make, you can make it. I won't stop you, but I'm not going to stay here and watch you self-destruct. I can't. I love you too much."
"Where are you going?" she asked, taking an abortive step towards him.
"Somewhere I can write in peace," he said. "I thought I'd take a stab at that Great American Novel thing. Who knows? Maybe I can change people's opinion of me. It's worth a shot, anyway."
"Will I ever see you again?" she asked in a broken voice.
"Maybe," he said, clenching his jaw. "When this is all over, if you're still alive. If you can find me, we'll talk."
"But, how will I find you?"
"You're a detective, Kate," Castle said, the corners of his mouth lifting in a smile entirely devoid of humor. "You figure it out."
And then he turned and did the hardest thing he'd ever had to do.
He left Katherine Beckett.
~Finis