Dreams of Future Past
Chapter 4
Kate fought the dizziness as she looked down. There were balconies not too far below her, but they were either to her right or left. If she could just swing a little. As numb as her fingers were and with one hand? She tried, and almost lost her hold entirely. She was held only by her fingertips. They wouldn't hold for long. Castle. She wanted Castle. Would she die young and alone just like…?
Kate carefully drew the watch and the ring from their special box. The oversized watch was bulky on her wrist, but the weight of it was comforting. The ring around her neck was a reminder of her failure. The thing she'd joined the force to do was not done. She'd pushed it aside, as she'd pushed aside so much. But to stay sane, she'd had to let it go. Hadn't she?
Castle was already at the scene with coffee. Thank God! Her appreciation for the gesture was cut short as he barraged her with jokes about cold cases and ruby slippers. Damn! She'd just wanted to enjoy the coffee for a moment. She countered with flying monkeys. His insights about the incident were too useful, too on point. It was galling.
The stacks of missing persons files were her revenge, but it wasn't sweet, just a reminder of how many people were lost. Sometimes she felt like one of them. Part of her was missing too. A turkey? Was Castle basing his theory on the thawing of a turkey? As annoying as it was, she was afraid he was right.
He couldn't have read the whole file in the two minutes she'd been in the ladies' room, could he? No one could read that fast. Or if they did, they'd miss something. He didn't. The man had a freaking photographic memory. She hoped Montgomery didn't know that. He'd want him around even more than he was already. She wasn't sure she could take any more Castle.
When Castle suggested that the Cavanaughs might have loved the institution of marriage but not the day to day, she couldn't help accusing him of the same. Her stomach jumped into her throat at the look he gave her when he suggested that he just hadn't found the right girl yet. Could he mean her? Her feelings were at war. Did she love the idea that she might be the one, or did she hate it? Hating it was safer, but…
She could see that though Melanie Cavanaugh's father was running around with his granddaughters, he limped. It was probably the most visible of his wounds. When the grieving Ben Davidson quickly convinced Castle that Sam Cavanaugh's behavior had been suspicious, he convinced her too.
Her anger flared. Sloan, the detective in charge of the case, had been lazy and negligent. She wanted to face the man with his failure, to make him understand how he'd failed Melanie. Castle was uncharacteristically subdued as he asked her about the watch. He had that part of the story wrong, but she couldn't summon the words to correct him.
Melanie's boyfriend was asking if Kate had ever been in love. With all the relationships she'd had with men over the years, had she really loved any of them? Had she been willing to change her life the way he'd wanted to change his, to be worthy of someone's love? She shrank at the "no" that beat against her brain. She'd never been there. She'd never let herself be touched that deeply. Was she even capable of opening herself up that much? It was hard for her to understand how someone could.
Castle could. More than that, he suggested that if Melanie had been disconnected enough from her husband to take a lover, the husband might have had one too. He did.
Castle cut right through Elizabeth Forte's excuses for why she'd ended her affair with Sam Cavanaugh, insisting that she was scared. That struck too close to home for Kate. How many relationships had she ended because she was afraid? How many would her fear prevent her from starting? Could Castle be one of them?
She was alone, staring at the murder board. She knew Sam Cavanaugh had killed his wife, but how? The case was solved, but she didn't have her answers. How had Melanie ended up in a freezer in a storage unit? She needed to know. Her nails dug into her palms as she admitted to herself that there was only one person who could help her.
The Castle answering the door was in full on man-child mode, with laser tag gear strapped to his body and goggles perched on his head. He seemed as surprised to see her as she was to be there, uncharacteristically grappling for words, until Alexis intervened like a surrogate mother to remind him of his manners. His real mother seemed unembarrassed at receiving a visitor with her face covered in green goo. Kate wondered if she'd ever be that secure.
Castle offered her a drink, and she was tempted to accept one. His loft was intimidating. She knew that places like that in Manhattan went for millions of dollars. Invading it uninvited was uncomfortable at best, but not as hard to accept as unanswered questions.
He understood what she needed. Looking at the screen in his office, she realized that he put the pieces of his stories together the same way she pieced together the answers to a real murder. Crap! Why did he have to bring up getting laid when he suggested they walk the crime scene? Sex with Castle was the last thing she needed on her mind, even as visions of it intruded on her thoughts.
Castle didn't just want to be in Sam Cavanaugh's apartment. He wanted to pretend they were husband and wife. The idea was compelling, too compelling. She pushed against it as hard as she could. But even as she did, they went through the motions of the crime, finishing each other's sentences, their minds melding. Even as she resisted, she'd never been that in tune with anyone before.
And they were right about the freezer. The neighbor confirmed it. But another cop had asked about it. How could that be? Could Sloan have known and still let the case go? Believing someone could do that, burned at her soul. But hadn't she let her mother's case go? Wasn't her mother more important to her than Melanie would have been to Sloan? The contradiction made her head spin even as the ground was spinning below.
Castle had another answer. The cop who asked wasn't Sloan. The cop with the limp was Melanie's father, who cared too deeply about her to let her disappearance go.
Castle was on Ben Davidson's side all the way. Kate could see the empathy of one father for another. This wasn't the man-child, this was the man.
She gazed at her father's watch, and the story poured out. There were no quips from Castle, just a writer's hopeful "Until tomorrow."
Kate could not be that hopeful. She'd seen too much death, too much loss. He would be returning to the love of his family. She'd be greeted by an empty apartment. She could only respond with a cop's farewell of "Night," and watch as Castle walked away.
A/N Guest, the point of this story is not to rehash what was on the screen, but what was in Kate's head. It is about what she was thinking and how she really felt about her interactions with Castle. Those are things the show didn't tell us. She is remembering how she experienced events, not how we saw them.