Author's Note: Right. Apparently the last chapter was as clear as a particularly baffling episode of Lost. And then I disappeared of the planet for months. Um, sorry about that. I'm not sure if anyone is still interested in this fic, but here is the next chapter anyway.
Also, someone tweeted (? Twitted? Twittered? – I work over 100 hours a week. I have no social life and no concept of social media) about this fic. I can't tell you how honoured I was! Anyway, it inspired me to post, even though this chapter is a bit short. Hope you enjoy anyway.
Kate remembered the day her cousin died as a series of flashes, all overlayed with a thick blanket of disbelief and confusion.
She remembered the phone call, when that doctor told her there had been an accident and Maggie was dead.
Maggie.
Maggie was dead.
She remembered her hand going lifeless, the phone almost dropping. And Castle had picked it up and spoke in a quiet voice to the doctor. She heard him ask the doctor if the boys were in the car, and her heart caught in her chest. She should have asked that. Why didn't she ask that? But he let out a big breath and she knew they weren't and she felt relief, but Maggie was still dead and those boys had lost their mother and her heart was already so broken, it couldn't break again.
And then Castle was holding her, even though they were in the bullpen and everyone could see and it was against the unwritten rules of their partnership. Then she was in a chair. Or was she always sitting? And Castle was gone and Esposito and Ryan had come to sit with her and Javier put his arm around her and she flinched and it was wrong because he wasn't Castle and only Castle got to do that but he was gone, and then he was back, and she could have time off because he told Montgomery and Esposito and Ryan walked them to the car and then he drove. It was a long drive and Castle drove just a little too fast and the rain had poured the entire time, and it seemed fitting, as though even the weather was mourning their loss.
In the car it had finally hit her, and she had just stared out the window for the first half of the drive. She thought at one point that she should have been crying. There was something wrong with her, right, if she wasn't crying? It seemed safe to cry in the car, because it was just her and Castle, and he had already seen her at her worst. It was like a little sanctuary, just the two of them.
She just stared at the raindrops flowing down her window, as though not even the whole sky could contain the tears at the loss of Maggie.
But Kate couldn't cry.
"My name is Matthew Garcia, one of the emergency doctors here. As I mentioned on the phone, earlier today Margaret Beckett was involved in a car accident. It appears her car slid off the road in the wet weather and she was very badly injured. The paramedics did everything they could but unfortunately she died from her injuries."
Kate felt herself nod. Then found she couldn't stop. She just kept nodding and there were no tears, because her heart was a stone, heavy in her chest. The doctor looked young. She couldn't think. She should say something. But she couldn't think. She just kept thinking that the doctor was young and there was a stain on his scrubs, a quarter-sized bit of blood in a streak at the top of his scrub pants, like he had some blood on his hand and had wiped it there without thinking and was that Maggie's blood?
"I, can we-" she knew that were things to be done, but she couldn't think. "The body," she managed. "Do you need us to-" she gulped. She couldn't remember the word. What was the word? She used it every day. What was the word? Why couldn't she think?
Castle stepped in. "Will we need to identify the body?" he asked. Identify, yes, that was the word. Her cousin. The body.
Dead.
Her cousin was dead.
Then there were questions about funeral arrangements and homes and she didn't know. Why didn't she know? She and Maggie didn't talk about this.
They went to the morgue. She didn't remember walking there, but there they were.
It was smaller than Lanie's morgue. Castle held her hand. The sheet over the body - no, not the body, Maggie. The sheet covered everything except Maggie's face. She saw dead bodies all the time, but this was different. This was her Maggie. She looked perfect, just the tiniest cut on her face. She looked perfect but she wasn't. She was dead.
"I love you," she told Maggie. "I'll find the boys. I…" she wanted to say the right thing, but nothing came out. She wanted to tell Maggie to come back, not to leave them, but it wouldn't do any good.
"Thank you," she told the nurse who brought them down to the morgue. She gripped Castle's hand tight and they walked out through the double doors of the morgue together.
She knew it would do no good, but she couldn't help but look back.
The door had already fallen closed. There was nothing to see.
There was nothing.
The nurse took them to a small room with a table and some comfortable chairs in the middle. Kate knew this room. They had one just like it at the precinct. This was the room they put the grieving in, separated, delineated, as though tragedy and loss were something contagious that had to be walled off from the rest of the world.
"Why are you bringing us here? We need to find the boys. Their mom is dead and they don't know. She said they had a sleep over but I don't know if that was tonight or where and I…we have to find… we don't know where they are." Kate was frustrated with the nurse and the system and the tiny room. The boys were somewhere and no one knew where and they needed her.
The nurse glanced at the door and looked uneasy. "I'll be back in a moment with the doctor and some paperwork," she said, edging around the table toward the door.
"I'm sure the boys are fine," Castle said. "If they are at a friend's then they're safe and they don't even know to worry. We'll just get this sorted and we'll find them Kate, I promise."
The still nameless nurse used Kate's distraction to disappear through the doorway. In the silence that reverberated after the nurse shut the door, Kate did her best to calm herself. She thanked Castle for his cool head in telling the Captain and arranging her time off. She checked that he had let Alexis know what was going on, but of course he already had.
Then there was nothing to do. She stared at the wall, counting stains. She looked over at the box of Kleenex the nurse had left in the middle of the table, felt it staring at her dry eyes in judgement. Somewhere, a clock ticked loudly. It was the only sound in the room. It seemed far too silent to be a hospital. She'd lost all sense of time. It seemed impossible that it had only been hours since she got the phone call about Maggie.
It was just too quiet. She wanted to shout and scream, to make a loud noise. She wanted people to look. She wanted someone to see that Maggie was gone. She wanted everyone to know that the world was broken, that things would never be the same.
Then Castle reached out and held her hand and she remembered to breathe.
She concentrated on the point where his thumb rested on the back of her hand. It wasn't much, but there was peace in that.
They sat like that for long days, until she was in control. Gradually she became more aware of the man beside her.
He was still, something that was so unnatural for him, and so tense. She could feel in the lines of his body that there was something he wanted to say but wasn't sure if now was the time to say it. She wondered when she had got to know him so well that she could read hesitation in his body language with such ease. She knew that he understood her just as well.
Then he had said the words that crushed her once more.
"Kate," he had said, so gently, like she was made of spun glass, precious. "Has anyone told your father yet?"
It was unfair. It was all too unfair. Why did she have to be the one to tell him his only niece – almost his last remaining family member – had died? Why did Kate always have to be the strong one?
"I can do it for you, if you need," Castle offered.
For a moment she thought about saying yes. But she knew she needed to do this. Her father had to know, and Kate knew she had to be the one to tell him.
But Castle offered. Because this man would do anything for her. And it meant the world.
"No, it's ok," she said. "I mean, it's not ok. I don't think it will ever be ok again. But I should be the one…"
He nodded and began to stand and move toward the door. She knew he was only going outside the room, to give her some privacy, but a feeling of panic filled her. "Don't leave," she blurted. Any other time she would have blushed at the need in her voice, hated her dependency. But this wasn't any other time.
He sat. "Not going anywhere," he murmured. His hand reached out for hers on the table top and his thumb settled on the back of her hand again, and somehow that inch of skin where their bodies met gave her strength.
She took out her phone and stared at the blank display as though it contained all the answers to the questions of the universe. With one final deep breath, she dialled.
The phone rang and rang, until she thought no one would pick up. Finally, her dad answered, sounding a little out of breath. He was always losing his cell and then he could never find it when he actually needed it.
It suddenly struck her as completely ridiculous that everything in her father's world was so normal. She pictured her dad, scrambling around, looking for his phone, unaware of the horrible news waiting on the other end.
She wondered if he would wish he never answered it.
"Dad, it's me," she managed, but her throat closed and her voice broke and the words came out as a gasp and she couldn't do it. She physically could not force the words out.
Jim picked up on the pain in her voice regardless. "Katie," he replied, his tone urgent, panicked. "Are you ok?"
She nodded, then remembered he couldn't see that. "Yes," she managed. She tried desperately to push more words past the lump in her throat.
"Is Rick ok? Alexis?" She wasn't surprised that her dad asked about them first.
"They're fine, dad." She reminded herself that her dad was strong now. That this wasn't going to be like her mother's death all over again. She closed her eyes and broke his heart. "It's Maggie."
Then there was paperwork. A different nurse came back and the Kleenex box was still unused because Kate couldn't cry and there was paperwork. Kate held the pen in her hand and stared at it, because she wasn't quite sure how to make her hand work. Castle slid it gently from her and started writing.
He had long fingers. She hadn't noticed that before.
The doctor came back. He still had the stain on his scrubs.
"Ms Beckett," said the young doctor. Kate had forgotten his name. She should know that, right? "I understand your cousin had two children? Do you know where they are?"
"There was a sleepover. It's their first one. Maggie -" she broke off, remembering how Maggie had been so worried about the boys, how they would go away from home for the night.
"You know the family they're staying with?" the doctor asked.
"No, I don't know the boys' friends. We live in Manhattan. I don't have much time to visit." She should have made time. She should have called more. She could have come up for a weekend.
"But the sleep over is tonight?" the doctor asked, glancing at the clock.
"I don't know. I think. Maybe tomorrow or-" it felt like there were spider webs in her head. Why couldn't she think? And what kind of person was she, that she didn't know? Why hadn't she kept in better touch, seen Maggie and the boys more?
"Is the boys' father around? Is there someone to take care of them?"
She stared at him, because the words didn't make sense.
"Maggie was a single parent," Castle answered for her. "The father is not involved."
"Ok. And Maggie's parents? Could they look after the children?"
"No. They're dead," said Kate, staring at the doctor in confusion.
Kate spent her life putting the puzzle pieces together. She lined up facts and fit them together until the picture was clear. But now everything was in a haze, and a voice at the back of her head kept repeating over and over that Maggie was dead. She felt like she was trying to do the puzzle but it didn't have a picture on the box.
"Ok, if you can locate the boys, I'll contact Child Services," the doctor was saying, but Kate wasn't really listening. She was missing something. She knew they had to find the boys and she was sick of being at the hospital with the paperwork, but no one was letting them leave. She had to find the boys and take them –
Oh. The boys. Because their mother was dead. And their dad had disappeared when the stick turned blue. And their grandparents were dead and all the had in the world was –
Oh.
