A/N: Thank you all for your amazing response to this story.
Chapter Two: Nothing but the Truth.
Castle wakes up early – before dawn has really broken. The winter sun is just beginning to crawl weakly over the ocean horizon, sickly and providing little warmth in the cloudless navy twilight sky.
It feels appropriate. He's slept in his clothes, just passed out on the bed where he slumped when he arrived late last night. He doesn't remember dreaming, doesn't remember falling asleep even. Isn't at all glad he's awake.
Rubbing a hand over his jaw he stares up at the ceiling again, just as he did for hours last night. The ceiling is blank, and white – clean and stark like the empty pages of a new novel waiting to be written. But Castle has no words to fill up the empty spaces right now – he can't even describe how he feels – he's just . . . maybe empty is the word.
He feels as blank as the ceiling – as a fresh page and right now that's good isn't it? Blank is way better than the unrelenting agony of the night before. Blank is at least the temporary absence of that pain – he doesn't fool himself the feeling will last. It's a borrowed state for him – borrowed from Kate maybe – because he himself always seems to experience all his emotions fully. This closed down, closed off, hollowed out state where the pain cannot touch him – this is a long, very long way from his usual M.O.
He almost likes it – and along with the suddenness of that thought comes another one, that this is exactly what she does – and then he really doesn't like it anymore. This is how she was able to shut him away from her life for three months; this is how she didn't care what he was doing – suffering – all that time. He doesn't ever want to be like that – to be capable of that – that is NOT who he wants to become.
He's a writer. Writers need their emotions. Need the ability to fully and always experience their emotions, because narrative without empathy, without communicating the nuances of a characters state of being – is lifeless. If he lets himself go down this road he'll lose the most fundamental part of who he is – no – he must not do it. He won't, he can't . . . just no. It's borrowed . . . it's not him . . . time to return it and then man up Rick, he thinks.
Castle sits up.
He searches internally for a feeling, any feeling. He tries picturing her face from their awful fight last night – the green of her eyes, her breathtaking, beautiful face twisted in anger and despair hits him like a sledgehammer - stealing his breath.
Ironic that he now feels better because he feels worse – really ironic. He breathes slowly, God it hurts again . . . like hell in fact, but he will deal. He has to feel . . . he's a writer.
He wonders if the pain will ease if he moves, and suddenly he needs to be moving again – just like the night before. He gets off the bed and hunts for some running gear in the walk-in closet. Five minutes later his sneaker-ed feet hit the sand of the private beach at the rear of his vacation home and he takes off as fast as he can. He's a little out of shape and he knows it – so much stress, so much worrying about Beckett, and forever hiding both his love, and what else he knew about her mother's case have taken their toll on him this last year. Its all wore him out so much that he stopped exercising as he always has in the past. Two hundred meters down the beach from his home and his sides are burning, but it detracts from the pain in his heart and so he just pounds it out. He'll run until he physically cannot move – he may have accepted that he needs to feel, he cannot, he will not stop that, but it doesn't mean he can't run away.
Dr. Burke can tell from a single glance at his patient that something, something unlike what's brought her to his door before has occurred.
Kate Beckett is not exactly what the shrink would term 'an open-book', but right now she's scared out her mind and doing absolutely nothing to mask it. Very un-Kate like indeed.
The last few months Kate has been more open, more verbally honest with him than she was when she was first ordered to see him. In the beginnings of their association the detective was as closed lipped and poker-faced as any cop that he's dealt with because of 'job-induced-trauma'. Because not every cop the department sends him has been wounded in the line of duty – some are ordered to counseling because they are just showing signs of stress. Some because they've been working too many cases involving children, others because they've had to discharge their firearm and take a life and the department needs to know that they're handling it okay.
There are many reasons, but he's certainly had other cops – like Kate – under his care because they became victims. Still he thinks of Kate as special though – because she was right when she told him that he very rarely sees his patients back in his office once their psyche-eval is done. And Kate, well he's been so pleased to see her struggling to make the progress she needs to make. It's very gratifying for him when he gets to witness, to be a part of helping someone turn their life around. Or in Kate's case, regain the ability to live her life on her own terms, not on terms she'd felt forced upon her.
To see this incredible, strong, beautiful woman emerging from the hollow stick-thin, shell of a person she was the first day he met her. Dr. Burke thinks that the day this woman can embrace her life fully again, can let herself be loved again – that day might be the highlight of his medical career.
"Kate?" Dr. Burke shakes himself out of his musings and utters her name as question.
His patient replies with a single word. "Help." Her tone so frightened she sounds almost unrecognizable, so the doctor smiles reassuringly and indicates his office door.
"Come on it Kate. Let's see what I can do."
Once the heavy office door is fastened behind them, Kate sinks into her usual chair and raises anxious eyes, clouded by uncertainty at him.
"What has you so upset Kate?" The shrink inquires softly.
"It's Castle." The cop answers. "I let it slip – what I've been lying to him about. That I remember everything."
"Stay with me Kate. Don't leave me – please. Stay with me okay. Kate – I love you. I love you Kate."
A startled bark of a laugh escapes her. An unhappy sound, full of shame - for her partners words to her that sunny May morning are not only etched into her memory but branded on her heart. They scare her, they ensnare her, and she will recall them as clear as day until she does take her last breath.
"He was upset then?" The doctor asks.
The dark haired detective bows her head and nods, just barely perceptively. Staring at the floor she tries to explain.
"We were fighting. We were screaming at each other. Castle . . . Castle's been working on my case; on my mother's case – behind my back. He's deliberately withheld information from me – because he was told if he didn't keep me away from the investigation – the next time they tried – they would kill me. And I was SO angry at him . . . that he thought he had the right to decide for me. That there were leads when I thought there were none. I felt so betrayed . . . "Kate trails off.
"And then?" Dr. Burke prompts.
Her green eyes find the doctor's kind brown ones. "I don't know exactly what happened . . . one minute I was furious and he was just as mad at me – kept yelling about me not understanding that he could not lose me again. Didn't I understand how impossible telling me had become for him? That he knew me. He knew me so well that he didn't think for a minute that I would listen, would let him handle it if I knew. That it was his life at stake too . . . because he couldn't do it again, couldn't go through it again – not when he'd lost me once. And then before I knew what I was saying it was out my mouth. That I knew he loved me. That I'd never forgotten what he told me that day in the cemetery, but that loving me did not give him the right to make decisions for me. I kept going on and on. Until I realized he wasn't arguing with me anymore. He was just looking at me."
When she stops this time there are heartbroken tears falling from her eyes. Silently they slip down her pale cheeks and fall unacknowledged to the ground. She stares at her doctor helplessly, her normally squared shoulders slouched.
"Looking at you – looking at you how?" The calm voice still somehow manages to demand an answer.
"I don't know that I can describe it. No one has ever looked at me like that." She says brokenly.
"You need to try." Dr. Burke encourages.
Kate covers her face with her hands. Recalling it – reliving and trying to articulate it – it's SO painful. It hurts as much as getting shot ever did – in a different way. Her face still covered she begins to speak. Her words . . . disjointed . . .
"Like . . . it wasn't just . . . it was betrayal - definitely. And it was heartbreak. But it was more – worse – so much worse – like I'd taken everything from him – everything he held dear – and smashed it into a billion pieces. All his dreams – his hopes – and it was like I was someone he'd never seen before - almost a stranger in his eyes."
Silence greets her admission. When she risks looking at the shrink again he looks thoughtful.
"So what happened then Kate?"
"He left." She says.
"He left?"
The detective nods. "We were in his study – all of my case, my mother's case laid out on his electronic storyboard behind me. He turned it off. He didn't answer me when I spoke to him. He walked to the door of his apartment, took his car keys and his jacket and he just left. I waited all night – he hasn't come home. And then I came here."
"You're worried about him." The doctor says.
The cop nods but then shakes her head.
"This isn't worry. This is fear. I sat there in his study when he was gone and I looked all night at what he's been doing. He doesn't have much more to go on, but someone out there – someone he won't tell me anything about has fed him some things. And the more I re-thought it – the more I saw that he's right. If he'd told me when he first got this lead – I would be dead by now. I would have run at it – I was freefalling already and he was the parachute. He's always my parachute. He gives and he gives . . . and I pull him in, and I push him away. Those three months I ignored him – I've tried but I can only imagine how much that hurt him. And his only comfort was that I didn't remember what he'd told me – it made that silence bearable somehow. I took that comfort away last night – and something broke between us – something broke in him."
Dr. Burke nods. "His vision of you."
Beckett chokes on a sob – but this is why she came here – to get the awful, no-holds barred truth.
"So help me fix it – I beg you – please tell me what I'm supposed to do."