Author's Note: It looks like ff. net suffered from glitches last week so emails about updates were not sent out so if anyone missed Chapter 7, posted last week, you should go back and read it now.
Getting into "Sucker Punch" in this chapter so there's some familiar dialogue ahead. Be warned, this is a rather heavy, emotional chapter (for obvious reasons).
For All That You Are
Chapter 8
It took her two tries to open her door.
Her fingers were trembling so that she had trouble fitting the key into the lock but she managed it and then she was almost stumbling inside her apartment.
She'd held it together in the precinct because she had to, cramming her feelings as much as possible behind a padlocked steel door, controlling her inner trembling. She didn't know how she'd made it through the drive home but now, she found herself giving way to the torrent of emotion, the walls she'd put up against her emotions crumbling down.
She staggered over to the couch and fell onto it, with something between a gasp and a whimper, and then suddenly she was sobbing, jagged sobs ripping from her throat.
Oh mom mom mom…
She wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging them, as she quaked in the emotional turmoil.
Dr. Murray's words, clinical descriptions of the wounds, echoed inside her mind. Rectangular bruising caused by the hilt of the knife striking with force enough to compress the skin… She saw the pictures in her mind, not of Jack Coonan's body, but the autopsy pictures from her own mother's case file, which were seared onto her brain from the hours she'd spent poring over her mom's case file. The gaping wounds, slashing across her mother's skin.
Kills with a single blow…
Oh god. She saw it all in her mind. The deserted alley. A dark, faceless shadow of a man, the knife—she knew exactly what the knife looked like this time—the blade glinting evilly in her fevered imagining—the strike, the fatal blow. Her mom crying out, falling to the ground. Her body bleeding out. Dying.
The other repeated blows. Other wounds to camouflage the skill with which the initial stroke was delivered.
The details. The knife, the replica of which she'd held in her hand. Special Operations Group knife…
Her hand closed into a fist, the nails digging into her palm.
She pictured it again, saw the knife sliding into her mom's body—
Oh god.
She scrambled to her feet and half-stumbled, half-ran into the bathroom, falling on her knees by the toilet, and retched up the contents of her mostly empty stomach, dry-heaving until her stomach muscles and her throat ached.
She didn't know how long she stayed there, hanging over the toilet, but gradually, she became aware that her knees were aching from the fall onto the hard tile, and she was getting stiff. Moving slowly, creakily, feeling as if she'd aged by 20 years, Kate forced herself to her feet, brushing her teeth and rinsing out her mouth by rote and then splashing water over her face.
Feeling marginally more herself again, she emerged and slowly returned to the couch, detouring along the way by the side table and grabbing up the framed picture of her parents on it, focusing on her mom's smiling face.
So bright, so beautiful. Kate knew she looked like her mom but to her eyes, her mom had been prettier; pictures could never capture the radiance of her mom's smiles, the way her mom's smile had been able to make the young Katie feel like the sun had focused all its warmth just on her.
She heard her mom's well-remembered voice in her head. I'm so proud of you, my Katie-girl…
She flinched, another sob building in her throat. She put down the picture. No, it hurt too much to look at her mom's smiling face, to remember her so vividly as she'd been. Hurt too much when contrasted with the clinical description of her mom's fatal wounds running through her mind.
A sound, part sob, part gasp, escaped her throat and she collapsed back onto the couch. Oh god, she couldn't do this.
She couldn't. This was why she'd fled the precinct.
It hurt. It hurt so much.
To know what her mom had suffered, the gratuitous violence inflicted on her mom's body with the unnecessary stab wounds when the first one had been fatal. So much violence, so much force in the blows…
Something like a wail ripped from her and she keened. She sounded like a wounded animal.
Desperately, she glanced around the room for something—anything—to hold onto, to give her strength now when she needed it.
Her wildly searching gaze fell on her bookshelf—on the row of distinctive books on one shelf, the many echoes of the so-familiar name leaping out at her.
Richard Castle. Richard Castle. Richard Castle.
She scrambled to her feet, headed straight to the bookshelf, grabbing Storm Warning off the shelf.
She opened it to the title page, her eyes immediately falling to what she knew she'd find. The reason she'd grabbed this book out of all his others.
His familiar hasty scrawl. To Kate. "If you want peace, fight for justice." Richard Castle.
Derrick Storm's motto. The words that had challenged her, inspired her, kept her going all those years ago.
His words. His world—and the hope for justice in them.
She closed the book and hugged it to herself, clutching it like a lifeline, the physical manifestation of the encouragement and strength she'd found in his words so many years ago.
Now, reeling, she needed them again.
If you want peace, fight for justice.
The words rang in her mind, in his voice, even though she'd never heard him say them aloud.
And then, his voice again, with words she really had heard him say: Most people come up against a wall, they give up. Not you. You don't let go. You don't back down. That's what makes you extraordinary.
The words seemed to galvanize her brain back into action and Kate slowly released her stranglehold on the book, although she kept it in her hands, as if it were a talisman of strength, as she straightened up on the couch.
You don't back down. No, she didn't.
Gradually, the fog of emotion cleared as she stopped simply feeling and started to think, her training belatedly kicking in.
A contract killer. Four other murders, three of them right around the same time as her mother's. The wound similarity that made up the killer's MO.
The coroner who had worked on her mom's case initially—Martin Tishler—hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. Random gang violence, just some nameless thugs. When it hadn't been random, hadn't been ordinary at all. There'd been precision, intent, training. And Tishler hadn't realized. Hadn't told her. Deliberately?—she didn't know. Did it matter anymore? Yes, it still mattered.
The surge of anger she felt did more to dry her tears than anything else probably could have.
Oh god, if she'd known this sooner… This changed everything, the entire complexion of the case. Not just one murder but five murders—a contract killer.
But she hadn't known.
In all the hours—years—Kate had spent obsessively scrutinizing every word, every detail in her mom's case file, she hadn't seen it. But she didn't have the necessary medical training to do so either; she'd been focused on the other physical evidence, what little there was of it, her mom's life. Trying to find a motive—the endless question of a homicide detective, cui bono.
A professional. Someone with extensive military training.
A contract killer.
It hadn't been personal.
Kate had come across a few mercenaries in her time—not many as most people lacked the resources to hire professional killers—it came up most often in gang contexts—and she'd seen how detached they were from the taking of a life. These were people who didn't care, whose blood ran ice cold.
A contract killer—which meant money.
Her mom had been killed for money.
Oh mom…
She couldn't decide if that made it better or worse.
Kate had seen a lot of the stupid, petty, venial reasons for which people killed each other. Money (sometimes a piddling amount of it too), sex, drugs, vengeance, ambition, anger.
She couldn't have borne it if her mom had been killed for some trivial thing, an accident, a wrong place at the wrong time sort of thing.
But this, a contract killer. That meant a conspiracy, a cover-up, which meant someone with power, resources, someone who had a lot to lose.
Three other people killed around the same time as her mother by this same killer. A conspiracy that left four bodies was a serious one.
This was big. Huge.
And she realized it did relieve one of her lingering fears, that she would find her mom's killer only to watch him cut a deal for some measly few years in prison. A contract killer with at least 5 bodies to his account was not one who would be able to cut a deal. If—when—they found him, he would be going away for a long, long time, probably for life with no parole.
But in a sense, it was also worse because it meant that her mom's killing hadn't been personal at all. Had had nothing to do with Johanna Beckett as a person really.
Who could have wanted to hurt her mother when to the best of her knowledge, her mother had generally been well-liked, well-respected, well-loved?
Kate was too much of a cop not to know that the perennial lament of victims' families, that everyone loved the victim, was almost never true. Kate had been trained to know better but with all that, she'd still come up blank when it came to her mother's case. Sure, her mom had occasionally disagreed with some of her colleagues—inevitable that a group of lawyers would disagree; put three lawyers into a room and ask a question and you'd get at least four different answers, probably more—but the disagreements had never been serious or personal. Her mom had been kind, fair in her dealings with people. There had been no extramarital affairs or romantic entanglements or shady secrets that always set off red flags. As far as she could tell, she'd always believed that no one in her mom's life had any reason to harm her mother.
Kate had been right in that. She knew that she'd been too close to it to see her mom's case, her character, impartially. But Kate had stubbornly insisted, to herself if to no one else, that no one could have hated her mom that much. She was vindicated now. It hadn't been personal, hadn't been about her mother personally.
But that hurt too. A different kind of pain.
Her mother had been an inconvenience, collateral damage for someone who had a lot to lose and didn't care how many people were hurt along the way. Can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, as the saying went—her mother had been an egg.
Collateral damage. Killed by a professional contract killer who didn't even see her mother as a human being at all, just another job.
Kate felt a surge of anger, of bitterness, fueling her determination all over again.
The fire that had led her to become a cop, had carried her through all the endless days and nights poring over her mom's case.
The fire that had become a flood and threatened to drown her.
Drowning in her mother's murder as surely as her dad had been drowning in alcohol for all those years.
Oh god. Dad.
Kate's thoughts broke off at the reminder of her dad.
She needed to call him, needed to tell him.
What would this news do to him? How much would it devastate him?
For a moment, she hesitated, vacillated.
She tried not to lie to her father but she also didn't tell him everything either.
Her eyes found the picture of her parents, her dad looking so much younger and happier, none of the added lines that had been scored onto his face by the ravages of grief and time.
She was afraid. Afraid that this new break in her mom's case would rip open her dad's wounds again, sending him back into the bottle. Afraid that she would drown in her mom's case again. Afraid that they wouldn't find anything else and her mother's killer would have killed again with impunity.
Her gaze wandered, fell on the small pot of African violets sitting on the windowsill.
She heard Castle's voice in her mind. It's because you're afraid, isn't it? You're afraid that if you look into your mother's death that you'll go back down that rabbit hole and lose yourself again.
She'd hated him in that moment, her anger and her hurt and her sense of betrayal still raw inside her at his digging into her mom's case.
Now, she heard his words again and she acknowledged he was right.
She was afraid, yes, even terrified.
But she looked at the pot of violets he had sent her and at the signed copy of Heat Wave, where he'd called her extraordinary for the entire world to see.
She wasn't the same anymore.
She was stronger than she had been.
And her dad was stronger than he had been. He'd stayed sober through five years of Christmases and other holidays, birthdays, and their wedding anniversary. Six anniversaries of That Day.
Her dad wouldn't be alone because she would be with him. And she wouldn't be alone because Castle would be with her.
Her decision made, Kate stood and retrieved her phone. It was early enough that her dad would still be at work and he often couldn't answer his cell phone while in his office. She called the direct line for her dad's office, even though she almost never used it. Now was not the time for a voicemail.
"Jim Beckett." Her dad's voice sounded crisp and professional.
"Hi, Dad. It's me."
"Katie?" Her dad's voice abruptly changed, becoming sharp with worry and concern, as she'd known it would when she called his office. "What's happened? What's wrong? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Dad," she quickly reassured him. A marginal untruth but not a lie, she told herself. She was better, more herself again. "I just… can we meet? Something's… come up."
God, she hadn't even thought about what exactly she could tell her dad.
"What is it? Katie, your voice, you sound—are you really all right?"
Trust her dad to pick up on it so quickly. He knew her too well.
She forcibly schooled her voice. "I really am fine, Dad. It's not about me. It's…" she hesitated and then finally added, much softer, "It's about mom."
"Oh." She almost heard her dad swallow and then could picture the way he would straighten his shoulders, a habitual gesture. "Just tell me, Katie."
"It's about mom's case. Something… something's come up."
"What, Katie? What's happened?" her dad asked cautiously, apprehension and concern in his voice.
There is no doubt in my mind that Jack Coonan was killed by the same man who murdered your mother.
She flinched, again, at the words.
She couldn't say that, not in so many words, to her dad. She hesitated and then answered, slowly, carefully, "We think… there's evidence that the man who… killed mom has killed again. There's some new information. It looks like he's..." She bit back the words, a contract killer, and substituted the blander term, "a professional."
Even so, she heard her dad suck in a sharp breath and knew her dad understood the implications, at least mostly. He wasn't that naive and there was no concealing or softening the stark fact.
Her dad was silent for a long minute during which Kate tried to control her breathing, her own heart rate.
And then, in a voice that her dad tried with limited success to keep from trembling, "How are you doing, Katie-girl?"
"I'm… I've been better," she admitted softly.
There was another pause and then her dad answered, his tone becoming brisker in what Kate recognized as his attempt to get his emotions under control. "I need to finish up some things but I'll leave my office within 10 minutes. See you at the diner in an hour?"
She relaxed just the tiniest bit. Yes, talking to her dad would help. She needed her dad's understanding, his steadiness. "Sounds good. See you then."
"Drive carefully, Katie."
The familiar admonition made her lips twitch for the first time in what felt like weeks. "I will. See you soon, Dad."
"Bye, Katie."
She ended the call and then set about repairing and concealing the evidence of the emotional upheaval and the tears as much as possible so her dad wouldn't worry. She changed quickly into more comfortable clothes, shrugging into her coat, and then was leaving her apartment in a matter of minutes.
It was raining outside, which seemed almost too appropriate for her gloomy mood, as if the world were crying with her. (Castle's voice that had, rather irritatingly, taken up residence in her head spoke up to comment on her adoption of the pathetic fallacy, but she ignored it.)
She was, for once in her life, though, rather thankful for the vagaries of Manhattan traffic, especially as exacerbated by the rain, as it necessitated using all her concentration just to navigate through it, effectively distracting her.
She reached the diner in good time and then simply sat there for a moment, trying to mentally steel herself for this talk.
The sound of her phone beeping startled her and she checked it. A text message from Lanie.
She had missed another text from Castle earlier, she saw. It was, uncharacteristically, brief, almost terse. Whatever you need.
For the first time since she'd heard Dr. Murray's words, she felt a little tendril of warmth unfurling inside her. And for the moment, she didn't have the energy to fight it.
She didn't respond—what could she possibly say?—and checked the message from Lanie, instead.
You okay, honey? Call if you want to talk.
Kate sighed a little. She wasn't angry at Lanie anymore, wasn't sure she'd ever really been angry at Lanie, had more been lashing out in her emotional upset.
She texted Lanie a quick response. I'm fine. Meeting with my dad now.
She looked out towards the diner where she and her dad habitually met. She expected her dad would already be waiting for her.
But she still hesitated.
Oh god, could she really do this?
She wasn't normally given to either dithering or cowardice—at least, she didn't think she was—but her mom's case was different.
Her mom's death had broken her and her mom's case had acted like a black hole, sucking her into a vortex, consuming her entire life, until she'd been in danger of risking not only her job, but her physical and mental health. If it hadn't been for Captain Montgomery intervening when he'd noticed her increasing gauntness—and the stupid, careless mistakes she'd started making in her paperwork due to sleep deprivation—Kate wasn't sure to this day where she would have ended up.
A distant memory returned to her, of her much younger self curled up in bed, trying not to cower during one of those intense thunderstorms that occasionally battered Manhattan in the summertime. And her mom, saying encouragingly, Don't be scared, Katie-bug, and the young Katie's defiant response, I'm not scared of anything.
It had been a lie then, just as it was a lie now.
She blinked back the tears that welled up in her eyes, lifting a hand to swipe away the tears on her cheeks, and tipped her head back against the headrest of her seat to keep any more tears from escaping.
God, how could she do this again, rip open all the old wounds and try to look into her mom's case? She could feel the tug of incipient obsession, the insidious voice whispering that she had to solve her mom's case or die trying, that she couldn't call herself a real cop unless she solved her mom's case…
Another voice spoke up, drowning out the other. His voice. It's different this time. We have good leads. We have strong leads. And you won't have to do it alone. We can do it together.
She blinked until the tears cleared and looked at her keyring, fingering the small metal tag. It was too dark to be able to read it but it didn't matter. Remarkable. The word might as well have been engraved onto her mind, not just the tag.
She pressed her lips together, feeling a spark of her usual determination flicker to life. And she got out of her car, hurrying through the rain into the diner where her dad was waiting.
She tried not to flinch a little at the sight of him, noting his pallor, the deeper lines around his mouth that always appeared in the few times when she'd mentioned her mom's case.
Her dad raised a hand in greeting and then stood up to hug her. "Katie."
She tried for a faint, reassuring smile. "Hey Dad." She briefly let her eyes close as she returned her dad's hug, feeling the depth of his emotion in the strength of his embrace. "Hi."
They sat down, her dad ordering a coffee and a plate of biscuits, while Kate demurred. She didn't want to risk eating or drinking anything now, her stomach still feeling a little off after her bout over the toilet earlier.
By silent agreement, they waited until after her dad's coffee arrived before talking, her dad making an unnecessary show out of stirring his coffee and blowing on it before taking a sip. (And Kate felt a little pang at the memory of how her mom had teased her dad for taking his coffee black.)
Her dad finally looked up and asked quietly, "So, what have you found?"
How to answer that? She hesitated, thought, but finally had to admit, "I don't know yet." A contract killer, a conspiracy. This connection to Johnny Vong, whatever it meant. Nothing solid, as yet, just… new threads to follow. New leads, which they hadn't had. And as Kate knew from experience, to solve a case, you just had to keep collecting pieces of the puzzle until you got enough pieces to try to fit them together into a cohesive whole.
She didn't know if she could do that with her mom's case. Didn't know if she was strong enough; didn't know if she could be controlled enough.
"But enough to scare you."
Of course her dad would get straight to the heart of things. And he was the only person who dared to call her out on getting scared.
Except, no, that wasn't true anymore. Castle had too.
She gave a small, rueful twist of her lips. "Yeah." The difference was that her dad was the only person to whom she'd admit to being afraid.
Her dad sighed a little. "I didn't sleep well that whole first year after you got out of the academy," he told her quietly. He'd never said as much before, although Kate knew very well how much her dad worried about her because of her work. "I'd hear sirens in the night and imagine you off in the darkness someplace. I had nightmares where it swallowed you whole."
And then he drank to keep off the nightmares. The thought darted into her mind and Kate inwardly flinched. No, no, no, she wasn't going to start thinking like that. It wasn't her fault that her dad had become an alcoholic and she wasn't going to start blaming her dad for it either. Not now, not again. She'd forgiven her dad for those years, had learned to let go of the anger and the hurt and the disappointment. She and her dad had moved past all that years ago, had painstakingly built their relationship up again from the ruins.
She studied her dad's hands on the table and then looked up at him, meeting his eyes, and somehow that helped to ground her a little. Just the very fact that they were having this conversation was proof of that. Even four years ago, they couldn't have talked like this, not about her mom's case.
"Dad, I don't want to lose this one," she faltered, a little uncertainly, not sure how to express what she meant. She didn't want to fail, again, at solving her mom's case, didn't want to get sucked down the rabbit hole again, didn't want to look into this for fear that she'd fail or miss something because of how viscerally her mom's case affected her.
"Your mother always said that life never delivers anything that we can't handle. I mean, she lived by that, you know. Called it 'Johanna's Immutable Law of the Universe.'"
Kate managed a faint but real smile, a little tremulous, but real nonetheless. Yes, she remembered that. It had been her mom's motto, her mantra for getting through hard times. So much so that whenever her mom had even started to say it, her dad and sometimes Kate too would chime in to finish the sentence, Kate usually in a teasing sing-song tone.
"And for years I thought she was wrong," her dad acknowledged, his tone changing slightly. "Because I couldn't handle losing her."
She inwardly flinched at the stark admission, the truth. Her heart twisted all over again at the memory of those early, bad years, the acknowledgement of how devastated her dad had been. No, she couldn't blame her dad for those years drowning his sorrows. She had not been any better, only her addiction had been to murder, her mom's case, more socially acceptable and less obvious, but no less destructive.
"Now I can almost hear her whisper, 'I told you so.'"
Kate had to smile at that. "Four of Mom's favorite words." They had been. She could hear exactly how her mom's voice would have sounded, the affection and the amusement and the smugness in it, the echo of all the times her mom had said just that lingering in her memory.
Her dad's faint smile faded as he met her eyes again. "Look, she was a devout believer in the truth and if she were here right now, she'd tell you the truth can never hurt you. You know, this may be your mother's way of reaching out to you, Katie, and reminding you that the truth is still your weapon to wield. Not theirs."
Kate's lips twitched a little, another memory returning to her. She heard her mom's voice in her head telling her, it's always better to know the truth, Katie. The truth might be hard, might hurt at first, but in the end, as the saying goes, the truth will set you free.
"The truth will set you free," she murmured, repeating her mom's words from so long ago.
Her dad managed a pale ghost of a smile. "See, you sound just like your mom already." He sobered and sighed and then reached across the table to squeeze her hand for a moment. "Look, Katie, I know you and I know you've been waiting for something like this, some new information in your mom's case for years now."
She jerked her head in automatic, instinctive denial. "No, Dad, I put it away, I stopped…"
She had. Hadn't she?
Her dad gave her one of his old, knowing looks. "Katie," was all he said.
She slumped a little. No, he was right. She had put her mom's case away to the extent of not looking into it but deep inside her, in some unacknowledged corner of her mind, the thought had lingered, the belief that someday, somehow, she would go back to it. And maybe then, with fresh eyes, she would see something new, the elusive thread to tie things together and allow her to solve her mom's case.
She remembered what Captain Montgomery had said earlier, I figured sooner or later, when you were ready, you'd want to take another run at it. (How had the Captain known?)
The tiny, festering thought that she didn't acknowledge, never looked at in the light of day—but it had partly been that which had made her anger at Castle last summer stronger, she realized now. Because at his words, his prying into that painful part of her past, she'd felt the threat, the insidious whisper of that unacknowledged corner of her mind. And she'd lashed out, bit Castle's head off, as Lanie had put it today.
Until he'd apologized, remorse and sincerity written all over his face, the stance of his body. It was, she suddenly thought, the first true glimpse of the real Rick Castle she'd gotten to see, the one behind his jackass persona and his mask of arrogance and bravado.
The disarming side of him that made it so hard to stay really mad at him.
Her dad took another sip of his coffee and idly picked at a biscuit. "What does Rick have to say about this?"
Kate had to fight not to startle. God, had her dad read her mind to know she'd been thinking about Castle? She mentally shook herself. No, her dad was only asking. A natural enough question, especially as her dad had taken to asking about Castle and Alexis and Martha on a regular basis since Thanksgiving. "I don't know," she answered. "I haven't talked to him about it."
Had avoided talking to him about it. His voice calling after her returned to her mind. He'd called her Kate. The aural memory of it sent a tiny little thread of something darting through her. Had he ever called her Kate before?
And why did her first name sound so… different… coming from him, affect her so oddly?
It was just her name. Lanie called her Kate occasionally; the Captain had called her Kate before, at rare moments; and even Esposito had called her Kate once before that she remembered. The first time she'd told him about her mom. It had been her mom's birthday a few months after she and Espo had first started working together and Espo had found her in a bar, tossing back a whiskey. And Espo, being Espo, hadn't asked, hadn't said anything at all aside from ordering a drink, and had sat there with her at the bar in companionable silence for more than an hour, Kate remembered, until finally, after enough alcohol in her system to loosen her stubborn tongue, Kate had abruptly blurted out her mom's story, just the bare bones of it, not that it was her mom's birthday or anything else. Then she'd stood up to flee. And Espo had stopped her with a single word, her first name. And when she'd turned to stare at him, he'd only said, very simply, "I'm sorry."
And then Kate had run. She and Espo had never spoken of it again. But if Kate had to pinpoint a moment, she thought that was the one where she and Esposito had become friends, not just colleagues at work and partners.
It was just her name—she suddenly, inconsequentially remembered Kyra asking, "It's Kate, right?"—but somehow coming from Castle, it sounded… different. More personal.
"Don't you think you should, Katie?" her dad asked, pulling Kate out of her thoughts.
"I don't know," she said again. She didn't. He had already intruded once, ripping open the healed scars from her own drowning in her mom's case. But he wouldn't do that again, she thought. She thought about the flowers he'd sent her on That Day, thought about the text message he'd just sent her. Unobtrusive, thoughtful, cautious. No, he wouldn't do that again.
Her dad shifted and straightened up. "Look, Katie, I can't tell you what to do but I wish you would talk to Rick about this, let him help you." He paused and made a rueful sort of face. "I know I'd feel better knowing that he's by your side."
"Dad, Castle—he… he's not a cop, Dad," she finally settled for saying, lamely. She didn't even know why she said it. He wasn't a cop—but he was helpful on their cases and anyway, she knew that wasn't her dad's point.
"He's not a cop," her dad agreed but then went on, "but he is your friend."
Yes, he was her friend. He was… possibly, probably, the closest friend she had right now, except for Lanie. Huh. When had that happened? When had he switched spots like that in her mind, supplanting even the boys in her hierarchy of friendship?
"He cares about you, Katie," her dad said, again, "and if I'm any judge of character, he's a good man."
Kate's lips twitched into a faint smile in spite of herself. "He is," she confirmed, very quietly. Because she couldn't deny it and wouldn't deny it to her dad.
"He cares about you and you care about him."
"No, I…" Kate started automatically and then stopped. She tried not to outright lie to her dad. And she did care—she didn't really want to—she was trying to stop—she still cared. Oh, damn.
Her dad gave her a look. "Don't give me that, Katie. I know you, remember?"
Kate shut her mouth, forcing herself to meet her dad's eyes steadily, even though she could feel the blush heating her cheeks. Averting her eyes would reveal too much.
"Castle and I… it's complicated," she finally admitted. Inane thing to say.
Her dad smiled faintly. "I know that feeling."
She managed a small, answering smile. Yes, she knew how her parents had worked together, been friends first.
Not that she and Castle were like that, going to end up like that. They weren't. Absolutely not.
"Look, Katie, I'm not telling you what to do with your personal life; that's always up to you. I just…" He hesitated, sighed, and then met her eyes. "I know how hard this is for you, what your mom's case does to you, and while no one knows better than I do how strong you are, I worry, Katie-girl," he finished simply.
"Dad…"
"I'm just saying… don't try to do this alone, Katie. Even the strongest of us need friends, people who have our back and can hold us up when we falter." He paused and then added, quietly, "Just like you've held me up."
She swallowed back the lump of emotion, blinking back the prickling tears. "Oh, Dad…" was all she could manage in a shaky whisper.
It wasn't the first time her dad had credited her with saving him—and in her better, stronger moments, Kate could accept the supporting role she'd played and even acknowledge its importance. But she also didn't think it was all on her. She knew that now. Ultimately, it had been her dad's choice, her dad's decision, to stop drinking and to stay sober. Just as all her pleas to him had been ineffectual for the years he was drowning, she didn't think her support alone had saved him in the years since.
But perhaps, her support had made it possible for him to be strong enough to quit.
Someone to hold her up when she faltered.
She hadn't had someone like that in a long, long time. Not really. Not since… her mom had died. Even when she'd been with Will, she'd stuck to her usual habit of insisting she was fine, the strong, capable cop, able to hold her own with him, the tough fed. At work, she knew Esposito and Ryan always had her back; they were her partners and it was part of the code, the brotherhood of cops, but, well, they were colleagues and, in a sense, her subordinates and she couldn't allow herself to look weak in front of them. Outside of work, well, she had Lanie and, of course, her dad. But she didn't let herself lean on her dad too much; she still couldn't quite do that. And where her mom's case was concerned, her dad was just as vulnerable, if not more so, than she was.
What would it be like, to have someone to really lean on?
Her dad reached out to pat her hand where it rested on the table. "You can trust Rick, I think, Katie. Let him be your friend, let him help."
She tried but couldn't quite manage a reassuring smile. "I'll try, Dad," she promised. It was as much as she could do.
To let Castle—anyone—help her like that, let someone else in like that—she didn't know if she could.
Her dad's expression eased just a little. "That's all I ask, Katie-bug."
The old, childhood moniker elicited a faint smile, as usual.
The rather wistful mood was abruptly broken as their server returned to clear off the plate and her dad's mug and to drop off the check.
Her dad dropped a couple bills onto the table and Kate couldn't help but notice how tired her dad looked. And felt a pang of self-reproach. How could she ask her dad to reassure her when she knew all too well the toll that any mention of her mom's case took on him?
"Will you be okay, Dad?" Kate asked, with the faintest emphasis. She couldn't ask outright if her dad felt like he might relapse and she didn't—she really didn't—expect it to happen but she couldn't quite rid herself of that fear either. She'd been too scarred by all the times her dad had promised that it would be the last time only to fail again. It was something she had, slowly, come to terms with, that one was never "cured" completely of an addiction like alcoholism; recovery was an ongoing, chronic thing.
But her dad, of course, knew what she meant, what she was asking. He met her eyes squarely. "I'll be fine, Katie," he promised and then added, "I'll call Daniel." Daniel Suarez was his sponsor, whom Kate had met a number of times.
"Okay," she agreed. "I'll let you know… what happens," she said, not quite able to promise that she would let him know what they found out because she didn't know if they'd really find out anything more at this point.
"Right. Say hi to Rick for me whenever you see him."
"I will."
Her dad stood and pulled her into another hug, clutching her for a long moment. Kate closed her eyes, returning the hug, breathing in the familiar scent of her dad's aftershave, and for a few seconds, she could pretend she was a kid again, pretend that nothing had ever changed between her and her dad. Pretend that she'd never seen her dad fall, never seen him as anything other than the quietly strong, reliable father that she and her mom had both been able to turn to.
Just for a few seconds. And then she opened her eyes and stepped back and the fantasy was over, replaced by the reality of her dad as he was now, aged beyond his years by grief and alcohol and worry.
But he was her dad again, the one from her childhood memories, still. "I love you, Dad."
He managed a smile. "Love you too, Katie."
They left the diner arm in arm to find that the rain had stopped so it was mostly just misting now and she saw her dad into a cab before she turned to return to her car.
And found she'd decided, without consciously realizing it, where she would go now. To Castle.
~To be continued…~
A/N 2: Apologies for the lack of Castle in this chapter but I think the next chapter should make up for it. And the next chapter, in case this site decides to be stupid again, will be posted next Thursday evening, as usual.
