Warning: if you're going to look for this song, it's melodic death metal. Yes, it's melodic, but it's still death metal. There's some growling vocals and heavy distorted guitars involved. One of my favourite bands of all time, but I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Also, this thing was part of a bigger plan I had about three years ago, a four chapters long character study on Beckett through season 1-4 inspired by songs by Dark Tranquillity, this was the second chapter. There was one about the first couple of years after her mother's murder and the way she dealt with her father's alcoholism, this one about Castle messing up with the case at the end of season 1, then there was one about the time she spent at her dad's cabin and one that took place after Kill Shot. I never managed to find the courage to post it in its entirety, so I'm posting the one chapter I really liked (though I changed style in the past few years so it doesn't really feel like it's something I'd write right now but hey, I like it) and here it is.


Misery's Crown

As always in these matters

You broke the deal of deals

And wasted what was given

To revel in your mess

Dark Tranquillity - Misery's Crown (From the album Fiction, 2007)


There were many ways she could describe Richard Castle. The harshness or kindness of those descriptions varied from the moments in their history, despite having known each other for only a few months.

She considered him a great novelist, a wordsmith as he liked to describe himself. She loved his books, even though she was still keeping it a secret, not wanting to boost his already enormous ego even more.

He was a good father and a devoted son. She had seen him hang around his teenage daughter and his mother and had seen how much he cared for them, how his world revolved around them and how he would do anything to avoid hurting them or how his first thought when anything related to a crime scene they had visited made him think about his family went to them and what they would do in case something happened for any reasons. In their regards, he was completely selfless, always thinking about them and not about himself.

Somehow, he reminded her about her own father, from time to time. Not that often, but it had happened.

Beneath the egotistical jackass there was a gentleman that had helped her solve a case that had hit her close to home by paying with his own money, not even asking for a refund, for some really expensive tickets to one of the biggest fundraising events of the city. Providing her an amazing dress that fit like a second skin that she would have never even thought about taking into consideration. Way out of her budget. And when she had thought he would try some of his playboy moves on her, he had kept his hands to him and not even once tried to imply anything. At least nothing more than their usual flirtatious bantering she had learned to enjoy so much.

With time she had learned to see him more as an asset than a nuisance, and his crazy theories made her laugh just enough to take her mind off the harsh reality of her job so that she would come back to the real police work made of cold, cruel facts and even more cruel motives that led people to kill someone with renewed fervor and concentration. His trivial ideas, those so impossible and unreasonable, were just figments of his wild imagination, but there were times when his radically different approach had made her see a hidden detail that had actually led to the arrest of the real killer. The Tisdale case was just the first of the list of examples she could pick.

And after a couple of cases she had come to think about him as a friend.

She had treated him bad enough to discourage even the most persistent of the pursuers, and no matter how hard she tried to push him away, he had always treated her with kindness. Sure, there were moments when his sarcastic, flirty attitude had made him insufferable to her, mostly during the first few days, but in the end she had come to terms with it and learned to appreciate him as he was. He was the funny guy everyone wanted to have around, but he was also capable of being serious and concentrated on his task. The way he had helped her with the case of the frozen woman made her trust him enough to tell him about her mother. After all, he had got half the story right like… twelve hours after he had met her, what was the point to keep him in the dark about it when he already had half of it? He had just guessed the wrong dead parent, right?

And there comes the problem.

She shouldn't have trusted him. She should have seen through the thick veil of well crafted lies and flattering he put up every day in front of her, and she should have kept her mouth shut.

It had taken her a year to tell Esposito about her mother and they had been working together since they were both assigned to the 12th, six months to tell Ryan.

Five weeks to tell Castle.

She had been an idiot.

He was basing a character on her, for fuck's sake! He was a mystery writer! Of course he would not keep it for himself, of course he would dive into the case like a piranha would dive onto a piece of meat thrown into its pool of water!

She had asked him – better - begged him to leave it alone, not to dig it up again, she had told him about the rabbit hole that damn case had thrown her into, how hard she had fought to get out of there, how hard it was for her to deal with every consequence her mother's murder had brought onto her life, from her own self-punishment for something she had absolutely nothing to be blamed for to her father's fall into alcoholism.

Yes, she had saved him. As much as he had saved her, in his own way.

But she had also been blind enough to not realize how badly her father had taken it, and who could blame him? The love of his life murdered like an animal and left to die on a pile of trash? That would be enough to throw the toughest person on Earth into a self destructive spiral, one way or another, but she had helped him when there was still enough to do to not let him slip into the trap of alcohol more than he had already done. It had taken years of work, but they had made it out of their rabbit holes.

And that… idiot still had the nerve to come up to her in that fuckin' hospital corridor and confess that no matter how hard she had begged him not to do it, he had taken the bait and had read about her mom's case, probably helped by one of her colleagues – note to self, maim that other idiot too – that apparently didn't care about her enough to keep it from the writer, and tell her that he had found something?

What the hell could he have found?

She knew that file by heart less than a month later she had gotten her hands on parts of it, during her first year in the force.

She had re-learned it in less than a week when she had managed to pilfer it from the archive with Captain Montgomery's approval, when she made detective. And that was the complete file, much thicker than the stripped down copy she had been given when in college.

There was a friggin' murderboard in her own dress closet!

What the hell had he found, uh?

She didn't want to listen to him.

As hurt as she was, it hadn't been hard for her to tell him they were done, that he'd better not show up the next morning at the precinct and that he could go and write his petty books at home, with his fake murders and his fake friendship.

It had taken her all her moral strength not to slap him, or punch him. They were already in an important hospital after all, he would have found some prestigious plastic surgeon to stitch him up no scar would have marred his perfect, ruggedly handsome face.

When she had gone back into Will's bedroom, no matter how heavily medicated he was, he had noticed something was wrong with her and had offered her a shoulder to cry on. She hadn't cried, but hell she had lashed out against him like a wounded bear.

Damn, they had been dating for six months, on the verge of moving in together and he had never, not even once, dared to dig her mother's file out to investigate on it.

And he's an FBI agent.

A very capable one.

Still, Castle had broken the silent deal they had struck when she had confessed about that tragedy that had hurt her more than a bullet through her heart.

She had trusted him enough to share her worst memory with him and he had wasted it, not even regretting it.

He seemed to be proud of his insensitivity, boasting his founding like a child with his brand new, shiny toy.

Oh, he had tried to hide it behind his contrite face, like a puppy that had just broken a vase, but he couldn't hide the fact that he was proud he had found something she hadn't. It was written all over him.

He hadn't really thought about the fact that while he was oh so happy about what he had found she'd been thrown into that void again, that maybe her wounds hadn't really healed and that the years in therapy had just helped her to live with them, that she had learned to deal with the pain and the misery she wore like a crown and that the weight of it hadn't crushed her yet because she had to learn how to prop herself up on something else?

Finding killers was her job and she hadn't been able to catch her own mother's murderer yet, nor she didn't want any more, considering how badly she had tried and failed, multiple times, to see through the scarce evidences left by the perp.

That hurt by itself, to be honest. To let it go for her own mental health hurt.

Still…

She couldn't deny herself that she was curious. After all, she had to admit he wasn't half bad at solving crimes, only needed someone to reign his wild imagination to make him concentrate on facts long enough to come up with a decent, reasonable theory and he was quite a good investigator, she wondered what the hell he could have found in that file that made him come to her.

Because he knew that she didn't want him to investigate on it.

There must have been something serious.

But she couldn't slip again. She was like a recovering alcoholic, not so different from her father: one sip and she'd relapse again. That was the last thing she wanted.

She had learned to live with it, learned to live with the constant misery that it had brought to her, but she had also learned to compartmentalize it. Her therapist had told her she'd need to pay attention to her memories, hold them dear and take them as an example for herself, like a guiding light, and that her personal experiences could actually make her a great cop, but they also were a huge weight she needed to carry around with her, like a traveler with her suitcase in an airport. There were places she could not go yet, because her baggage was too heavy and she couldn't pay the fee for the additional weight. With time, even though the weight wouldn't diminish, her ability to carry it around would improve, making it easier for her to move around and live her life.

She was improving, she had been constantly improving as time passed and now after ten years, she felt safe enough to travel around with her suitcase of memories and experiences and share some of them with very selected people.

Apparently, she had chosen the wrong man to share those memories with.

And he had made a mess, and reveled in that mess he had made.

Now it was up to her to sort it out, to not slip again into her hole.

She needed to talk to someone about it, someone that knew and would understand her. Problem was: who?

Lanie had to work a double shift, Ryan was out with his girlfriend, Espo… well, he'd probably insist to get her drunk and make her forget that way. Then, as the closeted gentleman he was, he'd take her home and put her in bed and let her sleep it off, maybe decide she had been a bit too harsh on Castle and it was maybe worth to check on what he had found. Maybe it was Espo that had given him the file, his big brother protective instinct kicking in when Castle might have asked him if he had access to her mother's file. Esposito had always been like that, extremely protective, like an older brother to her, but sometimes what he thought was better for her didn't coincide with what she knew was better for herself.

Sometimes the way people acted around her once they knew about her mother made her realize there were millions of reasons she should just keep it to herself and never share it again. They started treating her like she was made of precious, frail crystal, so fragile even the lightest touch would break her. Or they would start inquiring, pestering her with the details of her mom's murder. Those were the two reactions she usually saw in people that got to know about it.

Castle had just confirmed that theory.

After nearly two days of having kicked him out of the hospital, the precinct and her life, she had tried her best to understand his point of view, to see why the hell he had to betray her trust like that, but failed. She didn't really understand how he could do something so stupid, something he knew, because she had warned him that they'd be done if he tried to do anything regarding her mother's case, that would make her break their so called team for good, no matter what the mayor would say. He needed to do research, didn't he? He needed to be on the team, to see what the real police did while working on cases and homicides, right?

What good could he get from getting kicked out?

She tried her best to understand and failed.


I gave up all for nothing

I tried my best and failed

There's a thousand million reasons

Never to share again