promises in pencil
For my every-chapter muse. You know who you are.
"Is that what they do to everyone in maximum security?" Kate asks, tugging lightly on a strand of her long hair, avoiding Burke's eyes.
"Are you referring to the incident from last week?"
"Incident." Kate repeats, the taste of the word brittle in her mouth. "Yeah, I am."
"Only to those that seem to be causing a danger to themselves and those around them. The staff here are simply trying to help you, Miss Beckett-"
"Kate."
She looks up, meets his eyes. "My name is Kate." She repeats softly.
Burke nods slowly, eyes flicking down to the piece of paper in front of him. His fingers twitch slightly, as though he's about to reach for his pen. They stop twitching as subtly as they had started. Kate wonders for a moment if she's made some progress or if she'll simply continue to keep on going backwards. That's all she's ever done since her mother was killed. Sometimes when she closes her eyes it feels like the world keeps on spinning but she's trapped as a frightened nineteen-year-old girl who doesn't quite know what to do with herself anymore, who feels like everything has split in two and she's falling through the chasm in the middle. With nobody left to save her.
"Okay. Kate." Burke says, nodding. "Do you want to talk about what happened?"
Kate purses her lips, eyes flitting over to the large window in Burke's office. She sees many other patients roaming the grounds, some accompanied by nurses, some in groups, but mostly keeping to themselves. There's a dull ache in her chest as she watches, wondering what it feels like for fresh air to wrap around her body, to feel the sun on her face instead of through a barred window. Strange how she'd taken her freedom for granted before.
"I wasn't a danger to anyone." Kate says simply.
"You physically harassed a nurse, Kate. You upset several other patients. Are you sure you didn't feel any violent tendencies?"
Kate's hands curls into fists, heavy like stone in her lap as her jaw clenches. "I'm not regressing." She says through gritted teeth, continuing to watch outside. "I just needed someone to understand. I don't belong here. I'm not crazy. Please, send me to prison if you have to, so I can still suffer. Just not here. I belong with the waste, with the criminals, the very essence of evil. Not here."
She looks over to Burke, hoping to find some sort of understanding. But his expression remains neutral, inherently objective.
"Would you rather be in prison, Kate?"
Kate looks over to the view outside of the window again. Sighs at the dream of being able to roam, to not have to stick to a schedule, to not be threatened with isolation at the refusal to take her medication. To wear her own clothes and shower without the fear of being walked in on, to see anything other than the four walls of her room.
"Will I ever be able to do that?" Kate says, gesturing to outside. She knows Burke's technique now. He always replies with a question, hoping that she'll reveal more of the puzzle pieces of herself to him so that he can help put them back together again. But she doesn't want to play along anymore.
"That's for minimum security patients with special privileges. Do you understand why you're in maximum security, Kate?"
She almost rolls her eyes at his insistence to question her. Counters his questions with her own, again.
"Yeah, but will I ever be able to have that?"
Burke hesitates before he replies. "Maybe. If you work hard enough. Can you tell me why you'd want to that, Kate?"
If Kate squints when she looks out at the gardens, she can almost see her and Castle wandering hand-in-hand. Not a care in the world except for those in their hearts.
Castle startles awake with a yell, dripping head to toe in ice cold water, shivering.
"Ah! What the hell?!"
Alexis stands by his bedside, holding the now empty bucket of water, eyebrows raised. "Are you gonna get out of bed?"
He swings his legs over the bed, dripping water onto the floor of his room already. He stares in bewilderment at his daughter as he shivers. His daughter simply looks completely indifferent, staring him down. Since when had Alexis been so- so full of attitude?
"Well I am now that you practically drowned me." Castle deadpans. "I mean, seriously, what the hell, Alexis?"
Alexis sighs, setting the bucket down before gingerly sitting beside him on the bed. Her red hair falls over her shoulders and hides her face from his, his beautiful daughter trying to find space between them. But he tucks her hair behind her ear anyway, because he had abandoned his daughter when he had sworn he never would from the day she was born, and he never wants to be distanced from her again.
"Hey." He says, softer now. "What's wrong?"
Alexis looks up from her lap to him, blue eyes welling with the minutest of tears. He's struck breathless by it for a moment, because his daughter doesn't cry. Not ever. His daughter is strong, or she had been, and if it were not for his actions then perhaps she wouldn't be so world-weary now. Her shoulders would be lighter, not hunched taut, like Atlas.
"I miss you, Daddy."
Her voice is quiet, so he reaches out hesitantly, wrapping a hand around hers. It's limp in his grip.
"I'm right here."
"Physically, yeah. But…" Alexis shrugs, a tear slipping from her eyes. "I don't know. You haven't been the same for a while now."
No. He doesn't- He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to remember any of it. If he can just stick to staring at Kate's note every night, it's enough. If he can close his eyes and remember how she laughed and how it filled him to the brim, his heart overflowing with this overzealous love for her, it's enough.
He doesn't want to remember how he shot a man to save her life and she covered up for it. That body still hasn't been found. He doesn't want to remember how she murdered in cold blood, the distant look in her eyes as she approached him with a weapon in hand and promised him that she loved him, even as she planned to murder him.
"I thought we talked about this, Alexis." He protests weakly.
"You dance around the subject all the time, Dad. Just like you're doing now." Alexis murmurs, hand gripping his suddenly, eyes burning into his. "And you sleep all the time and never talk or joke or eat and you haven't even noticed that I was accepted into college two days ago. And I want my Dad back. I want you to joke with me and do completely stupid things for your books and tell me everything will be okay even if you don't know that it will. I want to see you smile again and I hate that she robbed that of you."
"She didn't- Alexis…" His voice is thick with emotion, his words getting stuck somewhere.
"She did. And maybe she didn't mean to do it, and maybe she loved you and you loved her but she's gone now and it's over, Dad." Alexis's voice turns gentle suddenly, compassion leaking from her eyes. "I know it's hard to get over. But you've got to try, Dad. You won't get anywhere if you don't try."
They sit in companionable silence for a moment, staring at their laced hands. Her skin is so much more frail compared to his. How can she not understand that all of this, everything that happened and everything that's been caused as a consequence, was all for her? He just didn't want her to get hurt. Now look what he's done. He's ruined everything, not just himself.
He leans into her slightly, smirking when she flinches at his wet clothes. Presses a kiss against his daughter's hair. "I love you, Alexis. More than anything. More than anyone."
"Love you too, Daddy." She whispers, letting him wipe away her tears.
She hasn't done that since she was six.
She thinks about him between the spaces of every heartbeat.
And the spaces between each blink.
Castle stands hesitantly before the plain white door, hand raised mid-air. Does he really have the right to be here? He knows that he promised, but he told her a lot of other things too, and he had all these dreams that had never worked out so why on Earth would he torture himself like this by continuing to blur these dreams with reality?
His hand falls to the wooden door regardless. Knocks once. Waits patiently. Knocks again. There's shuffling on the other side of the door so he waits again, hands shoved into his pockets.
The door opens slowly, an elderly man who probably looks older than he is answering the door with a worn, tired face. His facial expression changes once he sees Castle, though, standing up straight and staring at him with eyes of steel. "Yes?"
"Uh, hi, Mr Beckett. I'm Richard-"
"I know who you are, Mr Castle." Jim replies, smirking. "If I'm not mistaken, you're the reason my daughter decided to commit herself to a psychiatric ward for the rest of her life."
"Oh- I- Uh." Castle stammers, face turning a light shade of red.
Jim sighs. "What do you want, Mr Castle?"
Castle looks down at his feet, then back up at Jim once again. The man still glares at him, no matter how sorry he tries to be.
"I-I promised Kate that I'd look out for you while she… I mean, she told me about… I- I don't wanna let her down. Again."
Jim nods slowly, accepting the news.
"Tell me one thing, Mr Castle."
"Anything, sir."
"Did you love her? Did you love my daughter?"
Oh. How could he- Who could ever doubt his love, his devotion, his irrevocable admiration for her?
"I love her. Present tense."
Jim smiles, body language lighter now. He steps back into his apartment. "Come in, Mr Castle."
She hears the shuffling of feet every now and then, hears the laughter of Mindy, another patient, and her parents in the visitor room. Kate presses her face against the small square gap in her door and watches the nurses bustle past, carrying forms or lost medication and sometimes, the medication they give to patients when they need to be moved to isolation. Kate's witnessed it happen a couple of times in the four months she's been here- The way the patient's knees buckle beneath them so quickly after ingesting it, their eyes falling closed, caught only by the gentle hands of nurses. Sometimes she's not quite sure if that's even legal.
A nurse walking past- Nurse Connelly- spots Kate staring through the door and stops as she passes. "Got a problem, Beckett?"
Kate likes Nurse Connelly. She's direct, and not falsely sympathetic like the other nurses. Sometimes Nurse Connelly will slip her a sleeping pill when she notices how red Kate's eyes are from another sleep of not sleeping, or how hoarse her voice is from a night of screaming about the nightmares.
"Why do Mindy's parents still visit her even though she's crazy?" Kate asks, heart thumping in her chest.
The nurse frowns. "You know you ain't 'sposed to use that word in here."
"And you know how to speak properly, but you don't see me complaining."
Nurse Connelly smirks, moving closer to Kate's door. "You don't have family, Beckett?"
"I do. My Dad. He's on my visitor's list. But we don't… We're distant." Kate says around the lump in her throat.
Nurse Connelly nods slowly. "You miss him? Your Dad?"
"I didn't see him much before I was in this five star joint anyway." Kate drawls, avoiding her emotions.
"And what about that writer guy? You miss him too?"
Kate pushes away from the door, retreating further into her room as the Nurse watches. "Who- Who told you-?"
"You were all over the news, Beckett. Not like I wasn't ever gonna find out." She tilts her head. "Do you miss him?"
"They wouldn't let me put him on my visitor's list." Kate whispers, nails digging into her palms.
"Well, I ain't gonna say I'm surprised, Beckett. You pulled one hell of a stunt with that guy. Ain't exactly ethical. Not that I blame you, I'da done anything to have my wicked way with him too."
Kate shakes her head from side to side, at a loss for words. She likes direct, but not invasive, and this is bordering on harassment. Nurse Connelly isn't her therapist. She doesn't have the right to comment on such personal things, and Kate doesn't have to share anything with her. Just because they're amicable and sometimes she makes her smile, it doesn't make them friends.
No, she lost her friends a long time ago. She hadn't asked to have them put on her visitor's list. She knew that they wouldn't come. And even if they had, she would probably refuse to see them anyway.
Nurse Connelly smirks, walking on and tossing over her shoulder, "See ya, Beckett."
Kate crawls under the covers of her bed and remembers the way Castle's skin had felt against hers, just right, like home.
And not for the first time, she wonders where he is, if he's found someone new, if he even thinks of her anymore. The damaged woman with a ghost heart.
Drifting, endlessly.
TBC
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