A/N: Thank you for the awesome reviews! They kind of lit up my life, ha! I appreciate the encouragement. I'll try continuing this story- I can't promise fast updates or an ending, but I'll do my best. Please let me know what you think!
"Mom?"
At her mother's answering smile, the ache which had lingered for twelve years under the apex of Kate's previously beating heart vanishes.
"Katie," Johanna's full of contradicting emotions. Happiness presses itself onto her face, nearly superimposing the grief and regret. The two women move together, mother embracing daughter in timeless tradition.
Kate doesn't know what kind of reality this is and for the moment she really could not care less. Not when she's falling into the solid comfort of her mother's arms, shaking with some silencing mixture of desperation and reprieve. It's disconcerting at first- she doesn't remember being taller than her mother- but Kate clutches tightly at her mother's back. Listens to the soft, faltering hushing noises Johanna makes.
"Oh, Katie. How did you end up here? "It's something of a question if Kate fully recognizes the situation she's in. Her head shakes against Johanna's shoulder, mouth refusing to move. Johanna tries to pull away, get down to business. "Katie, will you-"
"I don't know, mom. I don't- I can't. Please. Can we just- can you just. . ." Kate doesn't know what she's trying to ask for. She wants answers, she wants a moment to soak in the comfort of having a mother again, she wants never to think about anything ever again. She wants this conversation with her mom to be well and truly happening. Kate drops her head, a curtain of honey colored hair hiding her face. "Are you actually here? Real?" It takes every iota of strength not to choke on those words. "Am I dreaming this?"
Johanna feels like a whale is trying to breach through the crevices between her ribs. "Of course I'm actually here," she finally answers. "But I'm not real. And you're not dreaming." Kate furrows her brows, and Johanna feels it tug at her with familiarity. "You don't change, Katie. Still the same frown when you're trying to work something out. Put an obstacle in front of you and you'll run straight at it. I was that way, too."
'I give you a name, I know you, you'll run straight at him. I might as well shoot you where you stand.' Montgomery's words are almost mocking this time around. He would have saved everyone a lot of trouble- he'd probably still be alive.
Kate's silent for a minute, contemplative. "I don't understand," she tells her mother. "You're dead." Johanna confirms this, nodding decisively. "This is some kind of limbo- right? I mean, there were no bright lights- no pearly white gates. You said I'm not dreaming. So you're here to.. What? Help me cross over?"
Johanna offers her daughter a half smile, tainted with regret. "It's not that simple."
"Well, make it simple. Explain this to me. What the hell is going on? Am I dead or not?" She does this prolonged blink with the last two words- like she's so agitated she can't talk unless her whole body takes part in pushing the words past her lips. One hand arcs outward in question, offering a parabolic platter for her mother's answer.
"Katherine Beckett, I may be dead but you will show me more respect," Johanna gently chastises. Frustrated, Kate runs a hand through her hair and half turns away from her mom. Forces a heavy rush of air out and turns back. Since her mother died and her father felt he lost the privilege, few people undertook the daunting task of reprimanding her behaviour. Yet, as alien as it was Kate welcomed her mother's rebuke.
Kate pulls her lower lip under her front teeth and looks at her mother from under apologetic lashes. "I'm sorry. Could you please just.. Help me figure this out? I don't understand what's happening right now."
Johanna tucks her palm at Kate's unruly waves, pushing it out of her eyes. "My little girl," she murmurs. "My sweet girl. How did you get here?"
Where is here? Kate barely keeps herself from crying out again. Where are her answers? Instead of starting another song and dance with her mother, Kate struggles to recall the sequence of events which led her … here. Her mother's case, so long covered by the dust of undiscovered leads, had come to light. Chasing the case down the rabbit hole. Her fight with Castle. The hangar blips through her mind; desperate for Montgomery's truth, struggling against Castle's grip, finding the only solid link to truth marinating in the deep red of his own blood. Meeting with the boys in her apartment, making sure their family secret stays within their circle. The funeral. Castle. Castle.
"I was shot. Speaking at my captain's funeral," Kate responds simply. "He'd died trying to protect me."
"Oh, Katie. That's not what I mean. I know what happened- I've seen it all. I saw you save your father, I saw you join the academy. I watched you become detective and I've seen you every day since. I've seen you slay dragons like Koonan. The biggest downside to being dead- you can see the ones you love, but you can never get inside their heads. What I don't understand- what I've never been able to figure out- is how you let yourself get so lost? How did my murder become your entire life?"
Kate's looking at her in utter disbelief, vocal chords struck temporarily mute as she gapes. "What do you mean, how could I? You're my mother. Somebody murdered you in an alley, stabbed you nine times and left you to die. Alone. And the person who did that to you has never had to answer for it. You, mom- you were my moral compass growing up. You taught me right from wrong, you taught me that truth conquers all. You showed me justice is the most important thing; no act of evil exists for which there are no consequences. The truth can't stay hidden. That's what you always told me. And knowing that nobody else cared to find your truth? It killed me. Every single day. How could I? How could I not? I wanted to give you what you deserved. You gave a voice to the innocent, the victims, and made the guilty atone. The world owes you the same. I owe you that." Kate's impassioned speech tapers at the last sentences, softens as guilt sucks at her insides.
Both women are crushed beneath a weighty guilt. The burden of the world Atlas carries has nothing on the presumed culpability shouldered by mother and daughter.
Johanna strangles a sob before it escapes, equally incredulous. "Kate, maybe you're right- maybe the world does owe me something. You've never owed me a thing. If anything, you owe me your life- not to throw away running after something you may never have caught- but to live it."
"I couldn't disappoint you," Kate whispers, looking down again. "I couldn't let you down by giving up." She can hardly look at her mother for having failed. "I'm sorry I wasn't enough." Kate is suddenly pulled into a hug, ferocious and consuming.
"Katie, you have always been enough. Listen," Johanna demands when Kate pulls away again, shaking her head. "Kate, I never wanted anything but for you to live. I know you don't understand- you don't have a child of your own. Richard Castle knows, he could have told you." Kate's head snaps up, surprised to hear his name. "He knows how I felt without ever having to know me. Any parent, no matter what the circumstance, wants their child to live a long, fulfilling life. Happy, with people who love them."
Kate can't hold the emotions in check any longer, doesn't know how to make her mother see that happiness was never an option.
Johanna can tell her daughter is stubbornly resisting the message she's trying to convey. "I never, not even for one second, wanted justice for myself more than I wanted you to let this all go and find your life. I would have had all the justice I needed, then." Tears run hot down Kate's face, eyes aching from the salty sting.
"No, you don't understand," Kate repines. "Everything was different after you died. Dad wasn't there, you weren't there; our family didn't exist anymore, I didn't exist anymore. I don't know what was harder- losing you or the twelve years that came after. I was somebody else all of a sudden and the only thing that made sense was what you taught me- to find the truth, to seek justice. If I could get closure for you, for dad.. Maybe I could put it all to rest. Don't you see? Until that happens, I don't believe in happy or moving on." She's sputtering as her reasoning winds down, loses her ability to put together words that could explain half of what she was feeling.
Her mother pulls her close. "Kate, you ridiculous girl. If I could choose between your life and my retribution, I'd pick you in a heartbeat a hundred million times over. It's my fault, not yours, that this happened. My fault, your mistake." Something warm and damp is spreading across Kate's chest as they embrace. Johanna steps back as Kate glances down. Blood pops and sizzles out from the hole in her sternum, burning in a way it should never know how.
Kate's horrified, grasping at her shirt to provide some relief to her scalded skin. "Mom-?"