"My thoughts cannot move an inch without bumping into some piece of you..."
"Have faith, darling."
They're the first words that penetrate the fog, sounding so much like Castle and yet nothing like him at all that it stings and she quivers, the first words that break through the din and they fall flat, immediately disregarded.
Have faith? Faith in what?
She's in limbo, waiting. And here, in this lonely desolate place, she finds there is no faith, no courage, no good or bad or inbetween. There is just time, in its infinity, as it stretches out before her, moves too damn slowly. It torments her with endless what if's and if only's and hows, so many that she cannot even contemplate the sheer number of them as they try to stream into her unfettered mind.
She waits.
Turning her back further from the woman behind her, Kate blinks slowly, massaging her fingertips.
They're numb.
Still numb.
All of her is numb and, though everything inside her feels frozen, at the demand that she continue to believe blindly Kate finds herself wanting to scream at his mother to just shut up and leave her alone.
Futile anger ragged under her skin and the only real thing she has left to cling to.
But she doesn't, doesn't scream or rage or yell. She waits in silence, with his daughter and his mother and the people charged with bringing her news moving too damn slowly.
Bringing her nothing at all.
The only thing she does, the only movement she finds herself capable of is a barely there nod in response to Martha's plea. She can't find it within herself to do more than that, to speak or be kind, and that lone movement, that single bob of her aching head, to soothe the pain and need of his mother, feels like a betrayal.
This whole damn day feels like a betrayal, like she was set up from the start to fail miserably, as though for all his talk of destiny and fate and universes aligning, fairy tales and happily ever afters, their happy ending is a lie, and all she's left with is the hollowed out feeling in her chest.
Her strength is gone, drained away and she waits, feeling emptier with each second that ticks by without him. And the silence inside her own mind is deafening.
It hurts.
There are tears, in fact she doesn't think she's stopped crying since the call came through and she doesn't remember how they got her away from the -
Shit.
Her eyes flood and numb fingers rise to cover her mouth as she bites viciously at her tongue to hold in the sob and the thoughts that almost spilled free.
The scene.
She was going to think of it as the scene.
Her fiance what? Burned alive in a car? Injured? Missing? Kidnapped? Dead? And she's compartmentalising already?
She's a horrible person, she's weak, useless, pathetic, and if she hadn't been a fucked up teenager, too rebellious for her own good, they wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
She married somebody else, not him. Not him when it was always supposed to be him. Castle.
He's not her husband.
She swipes at her eyes, it's her fault, all her own doing and she has no idea how they got her to leave the accident site, she doesn't even remember the car ride back, nor sitting down here to wait.
This room, less than two hours ago, could barely contain her excitement and now it feels like a tomb, a prison cell, like a hollowed out shell. This room is how she feels on the inside, devoid of purpose, useless. Empty.
Yet she's here, waiting.
She can vaguely recall the feel of fingers over her skin, remembers arms wrapping around her when she threw herself forward, desperate to descend the verge and find him, needing to be close no matter what.
Not caring what she would find.
She remembers kicking and fighting and pushing someone aside and god, did she hit Espo?
She hit someone.
She'd do it again.
There was screaming.
Was that her?
Crying too.
Animalistic noises of agony, gut wrenching and so painful that her ears still ache with the sounds, that she can't come to terms with them emanating from her own body, her own mouth, because that would mean he was d-
She trembles, blocks that out.
Until she has undeniable proof in front of her own eyes she won't even contemplate that as an option.
He's not dead, she won't even entertain the thought.
She doesn't know anything yet, they're taking too damn long and she's standing still doing nothing, waiting.
Waiting.
For news, for confirmation, for someone to tell her what the hell is going on and to make sense of the grief that is ripping its way through her like the rusted edge of a dull knife.
It slices at her heart with each second that she's left here wondering.
His car was on fire. But he wasn't inside?
Was he thrown free?
Is he laying in the undergrowth somewhere, bleeding out and waiting for her to find him?
Why can't they find his phone? Why are there tire treads and great black skid marks darkening the road? Too many tracks to just be Castle's.
Was he taken?
No one will tell her anything and Espo and Ryan swore they would take over, find out, liaise and get back to her, call down the Captain and suddenly, suddenly she was back here, useless, unneeded, a hindrance in an investigation she should be a part of. An investigation she should lead!
Yet they removed her so easily she remembers nothing.
All she can see is the burning car, hear the fire chief confirm that there was no one inside, too many tire tracks on the road and nothing, nothing makes sense.
Where is he?
With hands that shake she wipes her face and covers her mouth, tasting the bitter, copper afterbite of defeat that lays heavy on her tongue.
Betrayed by what should have been the happiest day of her life, defeated, alone and standing in her dead mother's wedding dress, she watched Castle's car burn.
What exactly is she supposed to have faith in?
If he were here, he would say something reassuring, lift her spirits, find that thin silver thread in the clouds that rage overhead, drag it down and spin it around her like a warming blanket.
If he were here.
But he's not.
So she waits.
There is no movement in her limbs or relief in her gut, no contentment in a missing gold band that should be wrapped around her finger. There is nothing and no one but loss and grief and the absence of the man who should be her husband.
Castle.
Have faith?
She has no faith left.
But, if he were here, he would repeat his belief that their story isnt over yet, their ending not in sight nor written over the page, their battles far from over.
But all she has to do is keep going, take that next step forward. Read on.
She stands on legs that wobble, heels stained with mud, rising from the bed like a ghost. She's a broken marionette, her strings cut, her body sags and she lifts the skirt of the wedding dress to free her feet only to stumble forward anyway.
A parody of what she should be.
She's not the tipsy wedding night bride. She's dishevelled and broken.
She smells like smoke, tastes it at the back of her throat and the acrid stench feels seared into her skin. Long dispersed, she imagines the greying plumes swirl up from the wreck of his car and taint the hairs in her nostrils.
Nothing will ever smell the same again.
Nothing will ever be the same again. But if he was here he'd tell her now is not the time to give up and his voice is a pinprick of memory poking at the back of her mind, nagging, incessant and persistent. Like him, god, she loves him, and his words, loud and unrelenting, the siren song of familiarity and longing. He is the one voice she hears louder than all the rest.
Kate, I love you.
Deafening to her own ears, drowning out the rest of the world and filling up the inside of her head, so clear, as though he's standing next to her, she trips and stumbles and rights herself in half a step.
Alexis looks up as she teeters, wobbles and sighs and she squeezes the girl's shoulder in passing. If he were here he'd remind her to hold on, like he has so many times before, if he were here he'd take her hand from his daughter's shoulder, wrap it within his own and squeeze it back.
She moves on, the skirt dirty now with her blackened finger print smudges and ripped where her heel tore through it. Her mother's dress is probably just as ruined as the first dress, and she can't bring herself to care, or mourn the loss of another garment.
It's beautiful, it served it's purpose, but it was never truly hers.
She was never really a bride.
And if he were here, he'd tell her that she will be, that she never backs down, never stops, that's what makes her extraordinary, the urge to keep fighting for what they can have together, and his voice in her ear is the whisper of strength that keeps her moving, keeps her striding toward his mother.
She tries to speak but the words won't come, not her forte, not her wheelhouse, she's the one to act and her mouth opens in the silence, desperate.
His mother is at her side instantly, before she can even chastise herself for failing at the simple task, Martha is there. And if he were here he'd tell her it was because she's family, because she's loved.
Martha's voice is quiet when she speaks, laced through with pain, "What do you need?" The unspoken anything lingers and Kate turns, slow eyes, slow body, shattered heart, all easing their way toward his mother.
If he were here, he wouldn't ask, he would know.
Her lips quiver, tears race up her spine, icy through her veins as they travel higher, burning her throat as they rocket skywards seeking freedom, shattered glass blurring her vision as they break across her pupil. This great boulder weight of betrayal and hurt and heartbroken agony falls heavy on her chest, her fingers flying to her breastbone, trying to stem the waves of unending pain.
He'd hold her. He'd know. If he were here.
"Off." She gasps, swallowing down the sobs, trapping them deep, "I need to - to - to take this off." She tugs at her neck and Martha catches her fingers.
"Alright, Katherine." A heavy hand lays over her shoulder and she freezes, chest a frantic quiver and that place, that place he kissed so long ago, that scar almost forgotten, it burns. "Alexis?"
The girl comes slowly, eyes downcast and bloodshot, and together his mother and his daughter pop apart the buttons and draw down the aging zipper. The material parts at her back and she draws a deep breath, allowing the oxygen to fill her up and letting the wedding dress slip down her legs to pool at her feet.
When they come she's dressed. Hair pulled tight at the nape of her neck, eyes wiped clean of make-up and tears, sorrow bottled up and buried down as deeply as she can keep it.
When they come, she's the bride no longer, wholeheartedly the detective once more, her Armour in place and Ryan and Espo don't meet her eyes when they speak, when they tell her they have tire tread and a possible partial print on a door handle, when they tell her the fire was deliberate and no, no, no they haven't found any trace of Richard Castle anywhere in the vicinity.
"Have faith, darling." His mother says again, her arm around his daughter and she meets both of their eyes with an unwavering stare.
She doesn't have faith, she doesn't need it. She has the voice in the back of her head, and the drive that it inspires, she has his words, his beautiful words on loop in her head.
And this is what she does.
This is what Castle sees in her, what he has always seen in her. She doesn't give up. She doesn't back down.
Kate holsters her gun and draws the leather of her jacket around her body, exiting the house in the fading afternoon sun, Castle with her every step of the way.
"...you can't give up. That's the deal, if we want the happy ending, we can't give up."
And more than anything in the world, she wants that happy ending.