A/N: This is completely AU and perhaps a bit of a mess...
"The temptation is going to be to remain stoic in the face of adversity, to lock up your emotions so as not to appear weak. That is a mistake. Avoid that temptation at all costs. Trust me. I have been at the edge of that map and monsters lie there."
-Kate Beckett
Captain Beckett strolls into the training room with her head cocked in interest, watching the male recruit attack the mannequin that wavers with the force of his punches, the strength of his kicks. He's drenched in sweat, the grey fabric of his t-shirt sheer and plastered to his skin, his hair dripping with his efforts, trickling down the sides of his face, into his eyes. He's been at this for a while, that much is clear, and she furrows her brow when he punishes the mannequin with another round of beatings despite the visible exhaustion in the swing of his fist, the slight stagger in his step.
"Need something, Captain?" he calls out, refusing to tear his gaze from the dummy fighting to stay upright. "Or did you just stop by to enjoy the view?"
Recruit Officer Castle tosses a charming smile her way, one that she assumes gets him what he wants more often than not, but Beckett doesn't return the confident grin. It's his defense mechanism that she's picked up on after a steady week of 'teaching' alongside Sergeant Ortiz, after finding Castle here for the last four days in a row. She's technically undercover, searching through the flock of recruits for a murderer, and she doesn't necessarily suspect Officer Castle, but it's her job to investigate him nonetheless.
That, and after a week of observing him, sharing small talk that is kept to a minimum, she can admit that he intrigues her in a way no one else has in years. He hides behind his good looks, the dazzling façade that has a majority of the female recruits swooning, but there's more to the forty-four-year-old former mystery novelist with no prior police training who is currently at the top of his class.
There was a story, always a story, and she was only here temporarily, but she wanted to know his, wanted to invest in his. And hadn't she just discussed yesterday with Decker that fraternizing with fellow recruits was a bad thing?
Not that he was her fellow recruit, nor did she intend to fraternize with him. Most definitely not.
"Well, I'd intended to come ask how you were holding up after the death of a fellow recruit," Beckett responds, stepping onto the mat. "But then I noticed how poor your combat skills are, so I thought I might offer my advice."
"Am I allowed to pass?" Castle quips, tipping his head back and sucking in a deep breath that has his chest expanding.
"Not really," she returns, hooking her arm around the dummy's neck and kicking it away once it's down. "A mannequin doesn't resist arrest. If it did, you would have been in a lot of trouble by now."
"Look, I know you're just here to interrogate me about Bardeau," he mutters, crossing his arms over his chest and squaring his jaw. Gone is the man with the killer smile and smoldering eyes, a hardened, stoic version in his place, and that is the side of this recruit that she wants to understand. A side she can recognize. "And I can assure you right now that I know nothing about it. Like I told you last time you asked, I mind my own business around here."
"Really? No bonds with any of your fellow recruits, no nights out for karaoke or drinking-"
"I'm here with a purpose, making friends isn't part of that," Castle snaps, prepared to glide past her to retrieve the disposed mannequin but Beckett moves to stand in his way, watching his nostrils flare in response.
"I'm curious to what that purpose is."
"Why not just go read my file?" he inquires, quirking his brow at her. "I read yours. We have quite a bit in common. Wrongful death of a parent can be one hell of a motivator, huh?"
His eyes flicker to the toes of his athletic shoes, some of that challenge fire fading from his eyes, and Kate swallows at the pain she can so clearly identify spreading through his features, claiming the dull blue irises. She had studied each recruit's file, he knew that, but he couldn't know how she had lingered on his, how she had dug up his mother's case file in the archives, searched for the incident on the internet, studied the material late into the night.
Martha Rodgers, killed in a bank explosion she remembers hearing about on the news a few years ago. The killers who had orchestrated the plan were never identified. Instead, their presumed remains had been found on site, leaving Richard Castle with resolution but no closure.
"What is it you hope to accomplish here, Castle?" she questions, noticing him flinch at his name.
"I go by Rick Rodgers now," he informs her. "Castle is done."
Her heart crumbles just a little at that, because she had met Richard Castle once before, back when he was a bestselling author, using that same smile he had shown her earlier to charm every woman who had shown up at his hundreds of book signings, including her.
She had been a fan, but Derrick Storm was dead now, and apparently, so was Richard Castle.
"You changed it back?" she inquires, refusing to soften her voice for him despite how badly she wants to.
"It's still being legally processed," he nods, rubbing at the back of his neck, swiping the sweat that clings to his palm on the fabric of his pants. "But yeah, my daughter, Alexis, and I are both going through with the name change in her honor."
"Daughter?" Beckett blurts, biting her lip after the syllables have already slipped past, but Castle doesn't waver.
She'd had no idea he had a daughter.
"She moved to LA not long after Mother's death. My grief was too… I was ruining her."
Oh, she really wants to comfort him, to assure him that she understands better than he can imagine, but instead, Beckett fists her hands at her sides.
"Do you remember what I said in class the other day? About the temptation to remain stoic in the face of adversity, about how locking up your emotions so as not to appear weak is a mistake?" she asks, reciting words from her previous lecture, but Castle shakes his head at her, shutting her out.
"Are you going to correct my combat skills or what?"
Beckett plays it off with indifference, shrugs despite how far towards the edge of that map she can see him drifting, and stands in the middle of the mat, raising her hands behind her head in the standard arrest procedure.
"Try to take me in, Cas- Rodgers," she states, awaiting the presence of his body behind hers, bracing for the touch of his broad hands to her wrists, securing them behind her back. Beckett allows him a matter of seconds before she slides her hand from beneath his hold, maneuvering out of his grasp, his control, and spinning them around.
She knocks his feet out from under him, listens to him grunt as he lands on his knees, but Rick rises without preamble, not a hint of frustration on his face once he's in front of her again.
"May I make a suggestion?"
"Let me try again," Castle murmurs, his voice heavy with concentration, and she sighs, turns back around, hands behind her head, and waits.
Again, she doesn't resist the restrain of her arms cuffed behind her until he thinks he has her, his grip on her wrists loosening by just a fraction, and then she breaks the hold for a second time, using her grip on his arm to flip him forward.
Beckett stands over him when he remains on flat on his back after a couple of seconds, catching his breath and wincing at the pull of a muscle in his back, staring down at him with one of her eyebrows arched.
"Okay, fine, suggest away," he relents, ignoring the hand she offers to him and forcing himself to his feet without assistance.
Kate stands with her hands behind her back, instructs him to resume his position. "You're relying too much on your brute strength to hold me in place when you should focus on stabilizing your center of gravity."
She walks him through the procedure, demonstrates on him once before allowing Castle to yank her arm back, send her tumbling to the ground with enough force to knock the air from her lungs. The momentum rolls her back to her feet, too quickly for Castle to offer his hand, but she catches a glimpse of his arm outstretched in preparation and it urges her lips to flicker upwards.
"Quick learner," she compliments, grinning when something akin to a real smile threatens to lace along his lips, but he bites it back, swallows it down.
"Thanks for the help, Captain," he states with a polite smile instead. "But I can take it from here."
"You've been at it for hours, day after day," Beckett points out, receiving no answer and snagging Castle by the arm before he can attempt to grab the mannequin again. "I get it, I do, but overworking your body like this is liable to do more harm than good, Rick."
He notices the way his first name falls from her lips, but he pretends not to – for her sake or his own, she isn't sure – and narrows his eyes on her.
"I'm in a group of twenty year olds here. I'm older, less experienced, and that means I have to work that much harder unless I want to end up working mall security," he argues, his lips pursing to form a tight line.
"You never answered my question," she deflects, withdrawing her hand from his arm, ignoring the stupid sparks of electricity fizzling through her fingertips. It's all in her head, has to be. "What is your actual purpose for being here?"
"My mother was killed," he growls, his chest puffing with the harsh intake of breath, his jaw squaring with the words, sharpening the prominent angle of bone. "She didn't die in the explosion, Beckett. We were hostages first and she was the last one they killed, right in front of me, and I - it should have been me."
The confession seems to surprise him, his eyes rippling, wide in a heart-wrenching mixture of realization and devastation.
"No," she argues softly. "No, Rodgers, that's not-"
"It should have been me. Not her," he breathes, scraping a hand through his hair and pacing away from her. She doesn't stop him this time when he drags the mannequin from the floor, positioning it back and upright on the mat and taking a rough swing, his knuckles colliding with the hard chest. "I should have been able to protect her, to stop them. Done something, I should have done something."
He doesn't cry, but his chest stutters, his arm shaking as he draws it back.
"Rick," she tries again, drifting in closer, but keeping her distance.
"I couldn't write anymore after she died, I couldn't - I had to do something, Beckett. I just wanted - to make a difference," he chokes out, his fist slamming into the mannequin once more with a loud smack, and Kate finally steps in, places her hand atop the tape covering his knuckles before he can beat his bones raw. "I could have-"
"No," she murmurs, catching his gaze and clinging to it, willing him to see. "I'm not patronizing you when I say I know how you're feeling right now. I've been there. Gone over every 'what if' scenario imaginable, but no matter how many times I changed the outcome in my head, there's no changing the reality."
Castle drops his hands to his sides, sways a little on the spot as if he may stagger to his knees at any moment, and Beckett steadies him with her hands at his sides, her fingers fitting between the spaces of his ribs.
"My - my mother was murdered, Rick," she begins with the information he already knows, inhaling a slow breath through her nose to keep any emotions threatening to rise at bay, especially when he looks down at her with so much agony staining his eyes, sorrow carving out a frown along his lips. "Stabbed to death in an alley and left there like garbage, and when I got into the Academy, all I could think about was graduating so I could find her killer, find the justice she deserved."
"And you did," he murmurs, the corner of his mouth twitching, dispelling some of his anguish. "Saw it on the news last year, you escorting Senator Bracken into a cop car. Pretty badass, Captain."
Beckett lowers her hands from his torso. "It took me a long time to achieve that, an even longer time to feel even close to okay. Sometimes I don't even think-" She sighs, shakes her head. "We'll never be completely okay, Rodgers. That hole our mothers left will always be there, painful and irreversible, but I can promise you that one day, it'll be a little less raw. One day, it won't hurt so much."
Castle nods, sucks in another shaky breath and averts his eyes to the ceiling for a handful of seconds. She allows him the moment to collect himself before she reaches for his dominant hand, watches him wince at her touch.
"In the meantime, physically hurting yourself accomplishes nothing."
"I have to admit, times like these make me wish I would have stuck to writing," he mutters, hissing when she applies to gentlest of pressure to one of his knuckles with her thumb.
Beckett sighs and nods towards the nearby locker rooms, picking up a cup of ice from the cooler behind the table lined with water bottles, and walking with him into the changing room where they take a seat on the closest bench.
"You could still write, you know," she muses, acquiring his hand once more and gingerly removing the tape, cringing at the sight of his knuckles swollen and blooming with color. "It's just as beneficial as what you're doing now."
Castle scoffs and then whines a complaint when she places the small hand towel filled with ice atop his knuckles. "Yeah, right."
"Hey, that whole 'the pen is mightier than the sword' saying isn't always wrong," she defends, earning a quirk of his brow for it.
"You're actually saying writing could be better than getting out there on the streets, taking down bad guys and making this city safer?" he questions, teasing, yet his eyes beseech her, desperate for an honest answer.
"I'm saying that becoming a cop is not the only way to help people, including yourself," she explains carefully, folding her legs beneath her on the slim bench, balancing their tangle of hands on her crossed ankles. "After my mom died, yeah, I threw myself into training, but I also read a lot. There was this mystery novelist and in his books, the good guys always won, justice was always served, and I knew it was fiction, but it made me more hopeful and I needed that."
The hardened lines of his face soften and his fingers flutter against her palm. "Saying I should drop out, Captain?"
"Definitely not, you're too good for that," she murmurs with a smirk, and she should really give his hand back, he can hold his own ice, but his fingertips are touching her wrist, resting along the line of her pulse, and – and just a few more seconds. "Just know that you have options and that I believe your mother, along with your daughter, would want you to do what you felt was best for you. They'd want you to be happy."
Castle nods, his adam's apple bobbing, and glances up to her with some of the grief that inhabits his eyes draining, allowing enough room for the bright blue spread of curiosity.
"How long will you be here?"
"Until I find what I'm looking for," she states, breathing a silent sigh of relief when knowledge sparks in his gaze.
"I'm more than willing to help in any way possible," he offers, determination flaring through his features, and Beckett squeezes his wrist in thanks as she unfurls her legs from beneath her, releases his hand and ensures he has his grip on the ice before she moves to stand. "And - and what about after you've found it? Then what?"
Kate chews on her bottom lip, her hands still frigid from the ice but beginning to perspire with indecision.
"Then I'll let you know," she murmurs, her breath catching in her lungs as Castle stands too, his hand cradling the ice to his opposite knuckles, but his eyes intent on her. He makes no move towards her, though, his gaze is gleaming with admiration, the same shimmer of intrigue she had felt for him, still feels where he is concerned, and maybe something more, something she yearns to explore despite herself. "And for the record? I'm glad it wasn't you."
She turns to go, leave him with what she hopes are words of comfort, encouragement, but he calls out to her before she can reach the locker room's exit.
"Kate?"
She pauses at the use of her first name, turns just in time for Castle to step into her, wrapping a gentle arm around her shoulders that she could easily break free of. Her spine goes stiff, but he's simply giving her a hug, gratitude spilling from his frame into hers, and it's against protocol, this entire meeting is so against protocol, but Kate returns his embrace.
It lasts for only a moment before he's pulling away, his arms falling back, the warmth of his hands and the chill of the ice grazing her sides as they go, and she grins as the tips of his ears shine with color.
"Sorry, that was - it's just been a long time since anyone has-"
"I know," she cuts him off, reaching forward to skim her fingertips along the neck of his t-shirt, pretending to adjust the loose collar. "While I'm here, though, we keep any form of contact to a minimum."
"Of course," he concurs without hesitation, that lopsided smile that she's beginning to recognize as genuine spreading across his lips for her. "But after…"
"We'll see," Beckett muses, withdrawing her hand from his shirt and nodding towards the bruised knuckles. "Take care of that."
"Will do." She starts towards the door for a second time, halfway out when his voice follows her with a question. "Will you tell me who that mystery novelist was? The one whose work helped you? I just - I wondered if I knew him."
The smile breaches her lips and Kate doesn't stop walking, but glances back over her shoulder to let him see it. "You'll find out soon enough."