For JeuxDeVagues, who made Kate Beckett a writer.
And confess your love, your love
As well as your folly
And can you kneel before the king
And say I'm clean, I'm clean
- Mumford & Sons
She can't avoid their faces as she finally turns around from the spot she feels rooted to and hastily grabs up her stuff from her desk with numb fingers, but she can avoid home. At least for now. She could stay, be with these people she trusts, but she knows she would never be able to bear the weight of the pity in their eyes. It is enough that their stares cut like blades as she shoves her index finger against the elevator button, the careless hurt it produces quickly rushed away by her insides' act of arson against her skin, the cave-in that threatens her knees. She makes herself breathe and blink away the gleam in her eyes, and by the time the elevator finally arrives, she is sure there is no remaining evidence, however briefly it existed, of the ache that exploded in her heart when she realized that what she wanted to say was never going to find its way out of her mouth. She is a brave woman at an interrogation table, or running after a suspect down an unknowable alley, but not even she can be brave enough all the time, even when it counts.
She mechanically puts her car in drive with no clear understanding of how she got to the garage that fast, shuts off the radio before it even has a chance to offer her a song. She sees her empty, perfectly lovely, newly rented apartment and feels this discomfort like she drank too much but not enough to be pricked by the merciful bite of drunkenness. She sees her aloneness, the thing that usually greets her lovingly after a closed case, but she hears him saying goodbye as he walks away from the Precinct, from her, with another woman.
She had been so sure this time.
She shakes her head, jams the gear into reverse a little too harshly, and pulls out on instinct, without even looking in the rear view. But it doesn't go away. It's like her nerves have been doused with water and then fried by a jolt. She tells herself it doesn't hurt, but it does, because she had been certain that all of those moments with him had not only actually meant something to her, but to him, too. They had left surprisingly lasting impressions, beyond faint amusement and impermanent irritation, beyond palpable, mutual attraction. At the end of the day, she had had a great guy waiting for her call, but there he was, ruining everything, just like always, smiling and looking at her in a way that burrowed beneath her chainmail, and for the first time in what felt like a stunted lifetime, she had taken a dive, only to find herself flailing around in the shallow end.
She had been so sure that their hearts wanted each other.
She drives along the Westside Highway, her building tornado of unwanted emotions lined on one side by tall towers of city lights and the river on the other. She feels as big as a city, as stubborn as a river. She feels... cheated, and wronged. She feels stupid and embarrassed. She feels rejected. But mostly she feels blindsided, because it's not that she misunderstood her own feelings. She has not misinterpreted what had given her the courage to pull him away from his party with the intention of suggesting they take the next step. He pulled her pigtails. She has a good detective's certainty and near-sterling sense of discernment, especially of character, but he constantly makes her do a double-take. Sometimes the apparent playboy is a great, dedicated father. Sometimes the one who spouts off like it's some sort of party trick the event that has driven your whole adult life is the one who promises to be there when the killer is caught. Or brings you food and puts his hand on your shoulder when your last clue bleeds out under your hands, by your hand. Sometimes… the one who finishes your sentences is just what your story needs.
She doesn't get off at her exit, because she won't go home, not when a smooth-talking ex-wife is going to the Hamptons in her place (no, not her place; she had said no). Instead she speeds around a few perfectly innocent vehicles and drives nearly the whole length of Manhattan. She takes an exit and cuts through the ever-present maze of New York construction, circumvents a few hordes of people, some who move briskly from one late-night destination to the other with the quickness and ease of locals, others who point more and take greater note of the surrounding area, tourists who dare to see New York at night. She usually spares a reverent, heavy look towards the looming block where the Twin Towers once stood, but not tonight. The sting isn't as raw as it was in the Precinct, but there is something coursing through her veins that won't relent, that is as stubborn as she is, that is howling like a wounded beast at being deprived of what it wants. She is too distracted to feel lucky at seeing an available parking spot only a block from her destination. She cuts the corner on Cedar without waiting for the light to change and melds into the foot traffic that thrives on Broadway even at this hour. Her next motions are just as automatic, thoughtless: she emerges from Barnes & Noble with a copy of Storm Shelter in her hands, holds it like an errant case file that needs to be put away, avoiding looking at it as she crosses the street and finds a seat on a bench in the graveyard of Trinity Church.
She spends all day concerned about the dead, but these tombstones sitting silently, without judgment, in the dark of the deepening night are so antiquated that they look more like movie props than markers of a life ended. They don't seem real. They can't hurt her. But neither can the book lying in wait in her palms, which have finally stopped trembling.
After looking over every other person occupying the cemetery and distracting herself with gazing at the top of the church spire that reaches so confidently for the starless sky, she contains the deep breath her body yearns to draw and looks down at the cover. She knows it well, but not in this pristine condition. She is used to slightly frayed edges, bent pages, a tiny tear that slices the letter 'H', a sticker within that reads "From the library of Katherine Beckett." But that book doesn't exist anymore. It went up in flames, and so did his signature, just a few pages deep, and the message he had written to her back before either of them knew that one day they would be of… greater use to each other.
She opens up to that page, and it's like going out with someone new. He looks like the person who once had your heart, maybe shares a haircut or a dimple, wears the same cologne, but he doesn't make you feel the same way. The difference is fundamental, chemical. There are the words "STORM SHELTER: A Derrick Storm Thriller" and his name, big and proud, just above that. She hadn't even look at her signed copy since he consulted her on their first case together, but she still remembers his John Hancock, and it's not because she's seen it on paperwork and other things over the past year. She remembers thinking he had nice penmanship – just as she'd imagined – and that his little flourish looked seasoned but practiced. She once read that Bob Dylan used to try on different clothes and stand in front of the mirror for hours trying to nail down the look he was going for; the same went for the signature, like the once-young writer had spent years crafting the perfect autograph, something that brought to attention all the desired details. Just his name, and his message, and then he returned to the haze that is the celebrity who has no idea how much he affects your individual life.
She wasn't brave enough. Maybe it was the shock of the moment, at seeing him and her together, that stilled her tongue and kept her proposition at bay. But maybe it was also the doubt. Yes, she had changed her mind about him in the last year, but then he did just as he was wont to do and surprised her. This time, the surprise lacerated, caused her to end up in a graveyard, fishing for a pen from her pocket.
She doesn't always let on what's on her mind, but he always has the right words. That should send them crashing into each other like a burst that will create a bright star, but instead they just orbit each other. The connection never holds. The kindling starts, and then a cold wind puts it out. But today she had wanted to be defiant of the elements and start a fire.
She writes with her special brand of determination that smokes out the hesitation from her hand.
Today you started taking my orders, probably for the very first time. I didn't pick you, or so you thought. You walked away because you thought that you were doing what I wanted, and your obedience is worse than your disobedience has ever been. Maybe I've taught you some humility, curbed some of your recklessness, but now I'm sitting here so mad that you couldn't unlearn my lessons. I don't know if I'll be able to unlearn yours.
She looks at it but doesn't read it. Things she wants to say but can't, won't. She had briefly imagined going home with him tonight, ending up in his bed, in his arms, on the receiving end of the smile he had instead shone down on his beautiful, polished publisher, but instead she braces herself against a sudden breeze that ruffles her skin like a wave and accepts that maybe he is not a millionaire playboy who treats every life like a plot line, but he is a man, no more, no less, and he can only take so much. So can she.
When she does go home that night, and she's lying in bed, staring at the ceiling like a cliché, she realizes she'll only be able to sleep once the words are out. Sleep, the immediate goal, and move on, the distant dream.
And so writes to him, of what she can have of him on those pages, in his words:
It would have been great, Castle.