Chapter 2. A time it all went wrong

Beckett takes the subway home, fighting her way through the early evening rush hour with the single goal of getting to her apartment and finding some peace and quiet. She's been rocked by the memories that the smell of pie brought back, and she needs some downtime to regroup: return to being Detective Beckett and away from that small hurt core that she keeps locked down inside her. She'll never again be the agonised person weeping for her mother, the daughter drowning in her own grief and not preventing her father from hitting the bottle, and worst of all, for all her years in Homicide, relentlessly searching for the truth, the evidence, the killer, the cop who's failing to solve her mother's murder. She won't be that person. She'll succeed. She'll be self-reliant, independent, solo. No chance of creating new painful memories in her future.

She orders take-out, eats about half, puts the rest in the fridge where she might remember to finish it before it's inedible. She probably doesn't eat enough, but she's fit enough to do her job and that's all that matters to her. She can hold her own in defensive drills and sparring without a problem, she can run faster in heels than most of the detectives can in sneakers, and she can shoot straight. What more does she need?

Except. Except that her shadow insinuates himself into her tidy self-contained life. Except that she's read every one of his books. Except that he's already heard more of her story than she's ever told anyone else. Except that deep down she likes him.

She tidies up, pours a glass of wine, picks up a book. It's an old detective novel, one of the English nineteen-thirties "Queens of Crime". She has an extensive collection, but Gaudy Night is one of her favourite novels. Well, when she isn't reading Richard Castle's books. Not tonight. She's too irritated with him. Stupid, oblivious, tactless idiot. Always in the way, breaking up the flow, making her think about things she can't have. Oh. Where did that come from? She puts the thought away, compartmentalises it in the box marked Useless thoughts – do not open, and returns to the wine and the book. She's near the end: Harriet and Wimsey are punting and then Harriet will undergo the world-shaking shift of perception of Wimsey that changes everything. She slams the book shut. She doesn't want to read that. She puts it away crossly and finds another, with no unfortunate connotations. Maybe a nice bath to read this one in would relax her enough to sleep.

She doesn't sleep well, as a rule. Too many thoughts and regrets for the life she could, should, have had; too many murders that take too long to solve for the grieving families, their pain not helped by her practised compassion, no matter how sincere she is. Too many nights solo: she hasn't had a relationship since Sorenson and although she doesn't miss him, she misses companionship, someone to share the pressure of work with, to give her reassurance and comfort at the end of a long day on duty. Physical relief, if she wants it, which isn't often, she can always deal with herself. Likewise her mother's case.

She goes to run the bath when there's a rap on the door. She knows that particular tenor and cadence. It's Castle. What the hell is he doing here? She has no desire to see him. She ignores the door. A few moments later her phone beeps with a text. Beckett, I know you're in there. Open the door. She ignores that, too. No point talking to a rich playboy who's got everything he wants, Black Pawn's golden child, and who for some reason wants to add her to the tally. It's only because she won't give him what he wants: he's a spoilt child who wants a toy he can't have, will play with it for a short while, then break it and throw it away. She doesn't play that game. Last time she thought she could, Sorenson sacrificed her on the altar of his career, without a second glance. She's better off on her own, successful detective, sky-high clear up rate, a good team around her. Why rock the boat?

The phone beeps again, irritatingly persistent. Beckett, if you don't let me in I'll stand out here till you do. Are you prepared to face the neighbours in the morning? She's very tempted to call his bluff, except that she isn't sure that it is a bluff. He's so confident of his own charm that he'd probably do it, and old Mrs Labowski will come out to see what's going on and will then look reproachfully at her in the morning and tell her not to be so unkind to that nice, handsome man who was so desperate to see her he came to her door after 9.30pm, probably adding Kate, you'll never get married by behaving like that. She doesn't want to get married. She can live without Mrs Labowski's homespun wisdom and interference. She took this apartment so that she didn't have to meet anyone who lived in the block, didn't have to get involved in their lives, didn't have to have them interpolated in hers. She goes to open the door.

"What are you doing here?" She makes as if to shut the door. Castle smirks and says "If you shut the door in my face I'll stay put out there." Temporarily defeated, she waves an unwelcoming hand in the vague direction of her living room and turns her back on him to go and switch off the water. She doesn't care if it's rude: she didn't invite him here and she just wants him to go away again. When she returns he's sitting on her couch with a smaller bakery box in front of him, the logo one of a new, trendy cupcake maker. She doesn't sit. She doesn't offer coffee, or wine, despite her half-drunk glass in full view on the table.

"What are you doing here, Castle," she repeats. "I don't remember inviting you. Did I miss some mysterious communication that said I'm visiting Beckett tonight? And did I miss some further part where I agreed?"

"I brought you cupcakes. Since you didn't want any pie. It seemed a bit unfair for you to miss out on all that lovely dessert." Castle is entirely unsure if this will work. He's just bulldozed his way into her apartment, largely by threatening her with the sort of embarrassment that he is confident she absolutely could not tolerate, and he's bearing gifts for a woman who has made a habit of never taking anything from anyone. But he needs to do something to try to move her closer.

The arctic glare from Beckett, still standing, makes him wonder if this is possibly his last act before dying. If so, at least he's earned some spiritual credit for trying to provide charity.

"If I had wanted dessert, I'd have got it myself. I don't need a mother. Shut the door behind you when you leave, please." The icy tone doesn't exactly leave room for misunderstanding.

She picks up her wine glass and marches out. Castle hears the click of a door shutting and the noise of running water. Um. Well. That has not gone as planned. But since he's here, he might as well take advantage of it. He silently toes off his shoes, and pads through the living room, scrutinising the bookshelves, recognising his works with glee, looking at all the little items that make up a Beckett that he's never seen. He sits back down again with a certain amount of satisfaction at having stolen a march on Beckett, and then straightens, horrified, as he realises what she has just revealed by her word choice. I don't need a mother. It's then that he falls from only wanting Beckett in bed to something far deeper. Beckett's more wounded than he'd ever understood, back when he facilely said You're wounded. But you're not that wounded. Oh shit, has he ever got that wrong. And now he's illicitly in her apartment when she told him to leave, and this is in no way going to go well when she reappears.

The bath is hot, and soothing, and Beckett doesn't notice that her front door hasn't opened and closed again. She breathes a sigh of relief. It's all too raw, too open. She hasn't got enough resilience tonight to get over the smell of warm pie, bringing back the nightmares. She'll just lie here, wine in hand and book comfortably in reach, till the water cools, and then she'll go to bed. And she won't think about those days, back home in their kitchen, when her mother would stone the cherries, and always let her steal one or two, pretending she didn't see Kate's small fingers; roll the pastry, and let Kate have the trimmings once the lid was put on. She won't remember the smell, and how good the hot pie tasted when it was ready at dinner time. She won't remember them all together, smiling round the table, her mother wiping smudges from a smaller Kate's face after. She won't.

Castle hears the soft splash of water, the chime of a wine glass being set down on tile. All of that is sounding rather interesting, when he hears a different sound. If he's any judge, that was a sob. Muffled, as if Beckett's trying to hide it from herself. It comes again. The small hurt noises scrape his heart, seeing in his mind the 19-year old Beckett whose life was split apart by some killer. Maybe that was when she lost her dreams, he thinks poetically, and abruptly realises that that is precisely true. He's still sitting, trying to reform his conception of Beckett from the hard-ass cop who's steel right through, to this woman covering something so painful she's walled it off for years, when he registers that she is standing right in front of him.

"I told you to leave. Get out." There's no passion, no annoyance, no emotion in her words, just a flat statement of this is the way it will be, as if she can't care enough about him to put effort into it. But under the soft exterior, the charming easy-going man, Castle is no complete pushover himself. He's been put on edge by her all day, since the dream, since the pie, since the cupcakes, and it's mixed toxically with his hurt that she's crying alone, rather than letting him comfort her. He sees, idiotically, that she's barefoot and so much smaller than he's used to, wrapped in some lightweight confection that under other circumstances he would have delighted in seeing.

And so he goes for the other option.

"You need some company. You're upset."

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