Another case wrapped, reports written, evidence filed away in its proper place. The boys leave for the night with waves and fist-bumps. Castle is ready to go too, waiting to walk her out, but she isn't. Kate Beckett isn't ready. To walk out.
She's just sitting at her desk, twirling a pencil, zoning out. Beckett doesn't zone out. It's making him anxious.
He stands beside his chair and says her name, tentatively. "Beckett?" Then a little louder, "Beckett? Kate?"
She comes back to earth, looks up at him. Oh, huh. He doesn't know what this look on her face is. If he didn't know better, he might call it fear.
"There's something I have to do," she says quietly, and he wants to make a joke about paperwork, but her demeanor is unsettling him. His gut twists with an unnameable sensation of dread and he wishes, not for the first time, that he could just make it all go away. Go back to a time when things were easy. When he wrote books about her, carefree, and she pretended to hate him, and he flirted outrageously, and it was all safe and fun and he didn't wonder what it looks like between her breasts. That place where the blood welled out and drowned his hands. Sometimes he dreams about it and it's a gaping dark hole under her shirt, a hole that she carries around with her, pretending it doesn't matter.
It matters.
There's something she has to do, and he doesn't know anything except that he doesn't want her to do it alone.
He looks down at her, still flipping the pencil over and over between her fingers, and he forces words past the tight knot of his throat. "What is it?" His voice comes out soft, gentle, so much calmer than he feels.
She takes a quick breath in, and pulls her gaze up to him. "That therapist I've been seeing?" Her eyes are wide and serious. He nods encouragement. "He, um, he thinks it would be a good idea for me to go back. To where it happened. To see it again."
"The graveyard?" Bright flashes of green grass, blue sky, black clothing in his mind's eye. He feels goosebumps prickle his flesh. "He thinks you should go back there? Does he know that you, uh." That you lied?
Solemn, she nods. "He knows everything."
Castle knows it's stupid, but he feels a quick hot stab of jealousy for this stranger, this faceless other man who knows everything about Kate Beckett. Does he really? Everything? Does he know how she feels about- But he cuts off that line of thought ruthlessly. The man is her therapist for god's sake. He's been helping her. She said it's helping.
"Just because he's your therapist, it doesn't mean you have to," but that dark look in her eyes, her fingers trembling around the pencil, "...to do what he says."
"No, but he's right." She puts the pencil down carefully. "I wa- I need to." Carefully she lifts her eyes up to his again. "Would you...?"
"Of course. Absolutely. Of course." Anything. Always. He reaches behind her to peel her jacket from the back of her chair. Slowly she stands up and lets him help her into the coat. "I just called the car service, they're probably almost here." He straightens her lapels, fusses with her buttons until she nudges his hands away and does them up herself.
"Okay," she says quietly, reaching for her purse. "Thanks."
Castle's chest is tight with worry for this wan, bruised version of Beckett. This Beckett whom he usually doesn't get to see. But now it occurs to him to wonder if this means progress. Is she showing him something, telling him something? If he had already left, and Esposito or Ryan were still around, would she have-?
But he takes her hand and threads it through the crook of his elbow as they wait for the elevator, and she doesn't pull it away.
They ride in silence to the cemetery. She stares out the window, seeming a little calmer now, actually. The pinched tension around her nose and eyebrows has eased. Her hands lie still in her lap, relaxed, not fidgeting. He's the one who can't keep his hands still, his knee from jiggling against the door. After a few minutes he takes out his little notebook and tries to jot down some thoughts for a new Nikki Heat chapter. It goes nowhere, but putting words on the page, even stupid ones, keeps him occupied until the car is pulling in at the entrance to the cemetery.
And then they're out of the car and walking. Side by side, elbows jostling each other once or twice as they follow the winding path.
It's a different kind of weather today, gray and cool, the air heavy with the suggestion of rain. Entirely unlike the bright crisp sunshine of that other day, and he's grateful for the contrast. This day is not that day.
Her pace slows as they draw near the spot. She had been looking straight ahead, resolute, but now her gaze casts all around, unable to settle. The trees, the gently rolling hills, the gravestones each with its neat plot, some adorned with small bright spots of color. She sees it all. Does she take it in?
"Over here," he coaxes, keeping his tone as quiet and nonthreatening as he can. She looks at him, and her eyes are still wide and dark with trepidation, but she's okay. It's okay. They're okay.
"Here?" She follows him across the grass, and he swivels briefly, making sure. That clump of trees, this dip and rise. Yes, this is it.
"Right here." And this is Montgomery's headstone, his name and dates and badge number carved neatly, and Beloved Husband, Father, Friend and A Hero To Us All. Kate stands looking at it for a long moment. Castle stands beside her and looks at it also. He doesn't try to imagine what she is thinking. He just listens to her breathing, barely audible against the ambient noises of the graveyard, and lets his mind drift through memories of Roy Montgomery.
Then Kate is in motion, opening her purse, taking out a flower. A single red rose. She bends over to place it on the grave, next to the small bouquets that must have been left by Roy's wife and children.
She straightens up. Turns, looks around at the trees, then at him. Her cheeks are wet. He thinks maybe his are too.
"Show me?" she asks hesitantly, and his breath catches. He has to push aside a childish mental refrain of don't wanna, don't wanna before he can nod and take a step back.
"You were standing here. The podium," he says, indicating its shape vaguely with his hands. "The, the coffin was right there, and all the chairs over there."
"And you," she says softly, "you were right here, next to me."
"I was." He gets lost for a moment in the depths of her eyes, just now, the liquid mysteries he still doesn't know how to solve. He still doesn't have the right words.
"Tell me," she urges, not breaking his gaze. He knows that he'll have to be the one to do it. He inhales carefully and looks away, pointing.
"Over there, between that tree and those other two trees. I saw the glint of sunlight on the sniper's gun. He was behind one of the gravestones." She knows most of this, of course, but she follows the line of his finger and stares at the spot.
"Way over there," she murmurs, probably not even aware that she has spoken, probably not realizing that her hand has come up and is pressing itself between her breasts. She is standing exactly where she was standing that day and he isn't sure he can bear it.
"Do you ... do you want to go over there?" He can hear the hesitation in his own voice, the tremble, but he will be strong for her if that's what she needs. But she's shaking her head and he hates himself a little for the surge of relief he feels.
"No." Slowly she's surfacing from whatever murky place her mood has been in this whole time. "No, this is good." Her shoulders come back, her chin lifts, her expression clears. She wipes her cheeks with her fingers and looks directly at him again. "Thank you, Castle."
He fights the urge to scrape his toe in the dirt and say aww, I didn't do anything. "You're welcome. I'm glad I could," he flounders for a moment, "be here."
"Me too." She pauses to take another long, slow look around. This time she is definitely taking it all in. The sky, the earth, the trees. The place where a man crouched and sighted his crosshairs on her. The place where a man who taught her and fought for her lies buried. The place where a man who loves her told her so. "I'm glad I could be here too," she says at last, "and now I'm done with this place."
She walks away, and he hurries to catch up.
The driver has been waiting for them, as they asked him to do, and Castle gives him Beckett's address as they get back in. They sit in silence again, comfortable this time. He feels lightheaded from the lifting of that tension, that dreadful feeling in his gut.
The car stops outside her building and she slides over to the door, opens it. Then she pauses and looks back at him, and there's a moment where they both acknowledge with their eyes that she is tired of are you okay? and he is tired of thank you.
So he smiles and says, "Check that off the list? Therapist homework completed. You get an A."
He isn't completely sure that humor is right for this moment, but it turns out he guessed right. She smiles back, full and genuine. "Yeah," she agrees. "I aced it. G'night, Castle."
"Until tomorrow."
"Until tomorrow," she echoes, and she's gone, striding into her building, her steps confident again.
That night, in his dream, she opens her shirt to show him that there's no more hole. Just a pretty little patch of green grass quietly growing on her chest. He wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks geez, what an awful cliché, but he's smiling to himself in the dark. He falls back to sleep and doesn't dream at all.