Sorry for the delay, everyone, but exams are here and assaulting me with their daring probes and unwavering defiance. Until they finish, (my last is June 19th) I shall remain a ghost. Afterwards, however, I will finally feel free and will right for you all the things swimming around my mind, longing to be woven into words. Speaking of a desire for words, please enjoy!
KT X ( Green_Tiger_21)
Nothing's gonna hurt you the way the words do when they settle 'neath your skin,
Kept on the inside, no sunlight, sometimes a shadow wins.
The battle that had begun to rage through Kate was sapping her energy and her usually incontrovertible strength; it was drawing her awareness from her work and her surroundings as well as pulling her inwards so that she snapped at her friends and lost her focus mid-conversation, making it appear as though she hadn't been listening simply because she didn't care. It was taking over her life and that made her worry even more, because if she allowed her performance in key aspects of her life to falter simply for an internal debate over a simple sentence, then she feared what might happen if she did say them and the consequential commitment they implied would make it impossible to apply herself to anything else; that would be dangerous in her line of work, she knew, because she was responsible not only for her own life, which regularly hung in the balance, but others also; if her partners were lost – if Jenny lost Ryan, or Lanie lost Esposito – she knew she'd never forgive herself. She knew also that she'd lose herself. To lose someone you love is one thing, but to lose them to your own detachment and lack of awareness would plague a person until they reached their grave.
Kate Beckett was far from what anyone would consider a nervous character. She was tenacious, strong-willed and of steadfast temperament, cautious in her risk-taking, careful to follow guidelines as she broke rules and always more determined than ever when she was hiding because she knew she was compromised. So she was far from nervous; she was strong. However, her disposition would certainly provide confusion to the average observer. Even to herself, sometimes.
As she thought, Kate realised that it was during these moments of confusion, which linked, if indirectly at times, to her self-doubt, which seldom reared its ugly head, but exuded an extreme power over her when it did, that Castle had proved himself most reliable to her. Strongest. Because while he did provide her daily lifestyle with humour and fun and unique spirit, he knew when to stop the jokes, when to stay quiet and when simply to silently hand her another cup of coffee. While she hated to admit it, Rick probably knew her better than anyone, besides her dad. She struggled to lie to him, and he often saw through the smoke and mirrors she handed him. He knew her every gesture and its meaning and was able to interpret the messages able to fill a thousand volumes which she radiated with a single look or a short quip. He knew what it meant for her to give herself to him, wholly, and he gave her the space she needed, never stifling nor suffocating her.
His understanding of her had often caused an itch in Kate's hand, a longing, if you will, to wrap her palm around her phone and call him as she sat staring at countless warrant and subpoena applications, chain of evidence slips, incident reports and booking forms, signing her name a thousand times over as she prepared for a court hearing or sentencing, comforting victims, calming witnesses, re-reading her case notes yet again and jotting down a statement for the media for those high-profile cases that loved to present themselves alongside her photo should the general population require someone to blame should the trial backfire.
These words she wrote and spoke every day. She fired off basic, rehearsed lines to reporters, dug deeper and reflected on her own experiences when speaking with victims or witnesses and scrawled short hand across countless sheets of NYPD headed paper. It all seemed so routine to her. With millions of English words at her disposal every day, free to use and apply to every context and conversation, even in her internal dialogues and her strung-together thoughts, she selected those which she needed and applied them basically to each form. They were not adventurous word choices; her sentences were not structured to occupy an entire page and their content was little more than names, dates and verbs. In her speech she could use a wider range of vocabulary, often to intimidate someone she knew would struggle with her language, cruel though that sounded.
The words she wanted were not that much different from these words. In fact, they were close to the simplest a sentence could be: pronoun plus verb. "She walked, she drank, they sat, she loved..." Her sentence included two pronouns and a verb. A very undemanding, uncomplicated sentence. Yet it occupied her mind so, even as she dissected it and attempted to categorise it with clinical professionalism, hoping the distance and perspective would ease her idiopathic concern.
Kate wondered if the depth to which she delved into sometimes trivial corners of her being came from her job, losing her mother, or if it was simply an intrinsic part of her. She wondered the same thing of her unyielding nature. She'd rely on a colleague, a co-worker, a friend – her partner – with confidence; yet her unrelenting defence system kept her from trusting another person to hold her heart.
Maybe, aside from the possibility that this jagged, unfriendly world had induced this coldness in Kate, she just knew not to believe in the fairytale ending.