MAJOR SPOILERS FOR COPS & ROBBERS!
Belong
Kate barges into her therapists office the morning after the bank incident. "I could see it!" She says angrily, catching Dr. Burke off guard. He looks up from his desk alarmed. "You told me." She says through her teeth, pointing a shaking hand at him. "You told me if I imagined it, I could work through this, I could have it..." Even as she says this she knows how foolish it sounds, but she's really been doing much better.
Dr. Burke stares at her and just listens.
Her hands drop to her sides, fists clenched around the fabric of her gym pants and sweatshirt. Her hands going white and shaking so bad her whole body quivers. She's staring down at the floor and trying to catch her barrings. But the more she tries, the worse she gets. She keeps imagining how she felt when she heard the shot, and then the C4 blow up; how horrified she was that it was all over. That she would never see Castle again, that she wouldn't ever get to tell him how she truly feels.
"You said it would work!" She yells letting go of her clothes and bringing a hand up to her sweaty hair as she starts pacing in front of her chair.
Dr. Burke stands up and her eyes flash to him with a deadly glare.
"I believed it could work..I really did, and you know what it got me!" She asks menacingly. "It nearly got Rick killed!" Her hand comes off her forehead and her fingers curl over her mouth.
"Kate." Dr. Burke says calmly, which only seems to piss her off more because she's about to fall over the edge. "Please sit." Kate clenches her teeth and shakes her head while looking away from him. He nods his head in complete understanding. So he sits instead, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and waits her out.
She can't. She needs to keep moving. After a while her pacing slows to a walk, and then she stops completely. Kate shakes her head several times, and a tear glistens as it slips from her eye and drips to the carpet at her feet. Her knees go weak and she falls into her chair in sobs. Kate did not get any time to herself from when she got the call, to when they got everyone out of that bank. And part of her was okay with that. It meant she couldn't feel it. Couldn't feel the raw emotions of her day, her fears. She couldn't let her weakness break through. But she was absolutely terrified. From the instant she heard the bank was in the throws of a robbery, to the moment the suspect told her Castle was the first to die. She kept it together in the car on the way to the scene, fingers white, gripping the steering wheel trying not to slip into a blind panic. She had to keep a level head...but she found it extremely difficult, especially because it was Castle in there. She stayed level the entire day even though the love of her life was held hostage. The love of her life who still does not know she's in love with him.
Kate's body racks with the sobs she's held in since yesterday. She couldn't sleep last night when she got home from Castle's family dinner. She ended up working out at the gym instead of going home. She wouldn't allow herself to get like this, and she just came undone in the first few minutes of stepping into therapy. She's curled into her chair with her tired face in her knees and she can't stop. Now that the flood gates are open, she's going to let it all out until there is nothing left. She can't keep it in any longer.
"Kate." Dr. Burke tries again. Kate hiccups and looks up, still crying with the same intensity. "Can you tell me what happened?" He asks gently even though he's already heard about it. Kate needs to get it off her chest. He also knows that her anger is misplaced. It's her way of coping.
Kate opens her mouth, trying to take in a deep breath but a sob catches in her throat and her head falls to back in frustration. "I...I..." She frowns deeply. "I gg Ot a call from C cas le th, y yester day morning." She manages to get out, sniffling.
Dr. Burke pushes over a box of tissues but Kate refuses them. "Go on." He sits back slowly.
"He called to ask if I ne needed him for anything because he he was at the bank with his mother to help her get a loan and want to get out of it." Her voice becomes more steady. "We teased each other like we always do... and then he tells me that he thinks the bank is about to be ra robbed." She stops, looking at her hands. "I thought he was making it up because he was bored..."
"But he wasn't?"
Kate purses her lip, another tear falling. She shakes her head. "No he hhe waas n't." She stares far off, her eyes misting over. "When I her heard one of the suspects tell everyone to get down on the grround...I ...I didn't reeally have time to fully panic. I I needed to get all the information from Ca castle...and I just..."
"You went into cop mode." Dr. Burke says for her. She looks at him wide eyes glistening and nods. "That's understandable." He then says. "Your trained to keep a level head during situations like that, it's not surprising you acted as such." He gets up from his chair, checking the time. "I'll get us some coffee, I'll just be down the hall." He places a hand on her chair for a moment and then leaves the office.
Kate lets out a long slow breath. The sobs have stopped, which is a relief because her chest and throat are starting to hurt from the effort to stop them. But the tears are flowing freely, and she wipes at them with the back of her sleeve. She can feel the sweat from her work out clinging to her skin, and she's starting to feel cold now. Dr. Burke walks in a minute later and hands her a cup of hot coffee. She grips it in both hands and breathes in the smell. It makes her think of Castle...and the feeling of how she was so very close to losing him yesterday jumps out at her again. She stares into the cup unblinking.
"So the bank is being robbed, and your on the line with him?" He asks, wanting to walk her through it at her own pace.
She nods. "Yes he was telling me everything they were doing, up until he realized there were 4 of them instead of 3, I am assuming...It was Trapper John, and he had pulled a gun on him..." She trails off.
"Trapper john?" He inclines his head.
"Yes. There were three men, Dr. Huxtable, Trapper John and Dr. Doogie Howser. The woman was Dr. Quinn medicine woman. They were dressed in scrubs and wore surgical masks. Trapper john was running the show."
Dr. Burke nods.
"I ended up being the negotiator because he took the phone from Castle and made his demands, I guess he liked my..what did he say? Oh my "bedroom voice."
"That must have made you feel a little better?" He asks.
She frowns. "I didn't want to screw it up."
"Of course not. So what were Trapper John's demands?"
Kate sinks lower into the chair and drinks from her cup. "For one he knew our game plan, he wasn't an idiot...He told me if I lie to him, He'd kill the hostages, if I jerk him around..." She gives him a look and he gets it. "If we stormed the bank...he'd kill Hostages...and then..." She looks down, running a finger over the rim of her cup. "He told me he'd start 'with my boyfriend'" Her heart rate quickens at the threat.
"Castle?"
She bites her lip and nods. "He wanted a bus with tinted windows...something about the bus taking him, his partners and all the hostages to the airport, where he would pick a foreign country of his choosing...if we did that, then he would let the pregnant bank teller inside go."
"What about the other Hostages?"
"He said he'd let them go when he landed. Then he gave us three hours."
"That's a tall order."
"Yes but they were not planning on letting those suspects have it."
"I didn't think so."
Kate vaguely shakes her head, putting her lips to her cup but not drinking. "After the call." She says to the cup. "One of our guys catches something on the cameras."
"What was it?"
Kate actually smirks at this. "Castle..." She smiles into her lid, eyes shining. "He sent me a message via Morse Code. With his mother's bracelet."
"That's smart." Dr. Burke smiles.
"Castle is very clever..." She sounds so proud and in awe. "The message was Safe Deposit Box 120...which turned out to belong to an old couple who would access it monthly...but when I sent Ryan and Esposito to find them...They found the old woman murdered in her apartment. Dead a week. Her husband died 4 years ago. She didn't have any existing family left aside from a son in law. Her daughter and grandson were thought to have been killed in a boat accident."
"Thought? You mean they are still alive?"
"Yes...but while my team were digging up more on the family... one of the hostages had a grand mal seizure. Trapper John calls me." Kate lowers her cup. "He wanted me to send in one paramedic to go in and get him...in exchange for his bus outside in twenty minutes." She sighs. "It wasn't enough time. But he wasn't hearing it. He said it had to be out there in 20 minutes or he was going to start killing the hostages."
"And you were afraid for Castle."
"Terrified." She admits... "But the bus was 35 minutes out, and they wanted to storm the bank...I had to think quickly...I said we could use the sick hostage to our advantage."
"Oh?"
"Instead of sending in a paramedic, Send in a cop with tactical training. That way we could get Intel for when swat goes in to breach the bank." Her voice is stronger now.
"Who was the cop?"
"I was."
He smiles at this.
"I dressed as a paramedic, and they let me in with a gurney. That's when I saw Castle." Her breath hitches in her throat. Remembering how scared yet relieved she was to see him. She swallows. "They searched me. Castle was with the sick hostage, when he saw me... he discreetly found something to write on, and when we got close enough... I asked Castle how the Hostage was doing. I told the Hostage, named Sal, that everything was going to be okay, and that there were people out there that cared about him..."
"But you were talking to Castle."
She nods. "I put my hand on Castle's, who's hand was on Sal's..." She closes her eyes, remembering the feeling of his hand gripped with hers. "I looked directly at Castle when I said this." She looks Dr. Burke in the eye, her eyes still swimming with tears. "And then Dr. Huxtable ordered Castle to help me get Sal onto the gurney...I had to let go..." She wipes at her eyes. "I strapped Sal in... Castle slipped me the paper..." A tear slips passed her fingers and she shakes a little. "I can't even begin to tell you how hard it was to walk out of that bank without him..." She rests her face on her knees.
"I can't." He admits softly. "What did Castle write down for you?" He then asks after a respectable pause.
"C4" She says darkly. "I thought I was going to lose it. But Alexis was out there...and I needed to be strong for her..." Kate wipes a hand over her face and hair, leaving her fingers to tighten at her scalp. It's like she's there again. "Now we were running out of time, the Bus was still 20 minutes out and we only had 5 minutes to get it to him...He was going to start killing Hostages."
"What did you do." he asks evenly.
"I needed to buy more time...so I called Trapper John." Kate closes her eyes again, as if to compose herself for her next statement. It's still so fresh in her mind, the sound, and the terror in her own heart. "He told me that the hostages would be dead in 2 minutes. I told him no one needed to die, that the bus was coming and that it was just stuck in Traffic." She opens her eyes and looks passed Dr. Burke at nothing, as if seeing the inside of the van she was in, feeling her own heart beat against her chest as she tried to keep calm. Even then she was losing that mind set. "He wasn't having it. He said he had rules and he was living up to his... I told him, less calmly then I would have liked, that I was going to live up to mine..and then he said... That he told me not to jerk him around and asked me if he needed to prove how serious he was."
"Was he?"
"At the time...he made me think he was..."
"What did he do."
Kate looks at him, " I told him as calmly as possible...that he just needed to calm down and talk about it..." She looks away. "He told me he was done talking...and then I heard a shot." She stiffens in her chair and then lets out a breath. "It was a warning shot." She says slowly..."But I thought he shot Castle..." Her hand goes over her mouth. "But he said the next one was for the kill..." Another tear slips. "He put the gun to Rick's throat...and told me he was going to paint a Jackson Pollock with his insides." She grits her teeth.
"What did you do?"
"My inner homicide came out...I didn't hesitate...I said "Listen to me Jackass,...I couldn't stay calm anymore..I told him I couldn't control traffic so he was going to have to give me more time." Her voice drips the same way it did yesterday while on the phone with him. "He said I only had one minute. I said No, I had twenty, asked if he heard me. And then I said..." She stares right at the Doctor across from her and quotes her self word for word. "If you pull that trigger, I will personally walk through those doors and put a bullet in your skull."
He blinks.
"He was silent, and then he says, 'okay Kate. You have 20 minutes." As if he was never going to do it in the first place.
"That's odd."
"That's what I thought." She says. "He didn't ask for anything in return. He just gave me the 20 minutes no fuss. If he wanted to maintain control, he would have asked for something."
"It was too easy."
"Exactly..something else was going on. For one thing, why would he bring C4 to a bank robbery? What did the old woman's murder have to do with any of it?"
"I take it you found all this out."
"Yes. I called Esposito and asked him if he found anything else out about Agnes, the old woman. But nothing stuck out. But someone was obviously pretending to be her dead husband to get to her safe deposit box every month. The only thing we had was a former son in law. But they couldn't reach him. That's when the explosion went off." Her eyes blur for a moment. "I was beyond terrified...I ran outside and saw a cloud of debris coming out of the front of the Bank. I froze."
"Castle's okay though, isn't he? And his Mother?" Dr. Burke asks after watching her for several long moments. She doesn't look at him right away.
She looks up. "Yes." She croaks out. She wipes at her nose. "He's perfect." She sort of smiles taking a large gulp of her coffee.
"Good." He says drinking from his own cup.
"I ran in there with Swat...calling for Castle. I found him and his mother, and all the other Hostages unharmed in the room with all the safe deposit boxes. They had zip ties keeping their hands together, But they were all all right." She sighs in relief. "I went straight for Rick, I couldn't stop smiling... I wanted to cry and hug him all at once...I was so beyond happy to see that he was safe. And he had this huge smile on his face and was telling the others "I told you."
"He knew you'd get them out."
"He did..."
"Tell me you need me."
Turns out...he needed her, and she was there for him like she always is, and like she always will be.
"I knelt down in front of him...I cut his zip tie and reached out to him, asking him how he was. We just..sort of stared into each other..." She says, her voice lowering, deep. She smiling. "And then Martha's voice broke through. She says "He's not the only one here you know."
Dr. Burke chuckles.
"I helped her out of her ties and we got them all out. Everyone was reunited with their families. Castle was with Alexis again..."
"What about the Robbers?"
"They were killed by the blast." She says. She fills him in on Sal, who wasn't really Sal, but Agnes former son in law, who was abusive to her daughter. It was so bad that her daughter had to fake her and her sons own death to get away from him. But he found out.
"So he found them."
"Yes...but we got him. And they are okay."
"And what about you Kate?" He asks her.
By now she's stopped crying, the tears drying on her face making her skin feel stiff. Her coffee sits cold in her less shaky hands. She looks at the lid, and then back up at him. "I'm okay...I haven't been...but I am now."
"You held this in, it's better to let it out." He says.
"I realize that." She agrees feeling sorry for blaming him earlier.
Dr. Burke checks the time his eyebrow raising when he realizes that she's been sitting here for almost 2 hours. "And what happened after this whole ordeal?"
"First. Castle had to pat himself on the back...which was adorable." She laughs quietly. "He said, he solved this case even as a hostage."
"Of course he did." He lets out a soft chortle.
Kate laughs again biting her lip and shaking her head. "He said I had the perfect Partner."
"And do you?"
"Yes, except he doesn't like to do paper work." She smirks.
He nods with a smile. "Ah, and then what?"
"I invited Castle to the Old Haunt for drinks, but he had a better idea." She smiles almost rolling her eyes.
"Oh?"
"A family dinner." She says, knowing that there is definitely meaning in it. "Martha gave me...such a hug...I felt...I felt like I belonged."
This was long. I wanted to do that very awesome intense episode justice. And seeing how I left the other Chapter I thought Kate would be frustrated at the things Dr. Burke told her she was capable of...have her believe in it so much that when it went sideways she wanted to blame him for it. But was really upset with herself. Or more like she was being lied to.
(sometimes...when I feel like I can get something by being positive, and it goes haywire, I think it's my fault or something. The whole Idea that if your positive enough, the universe will be there for you. If you've done this. You know what I mean. It's called The Secret)
Also. We all know that Kate held all that in the entire episode and probably then some. She really didn't have time for herself. She went from the bank to solving the case to then dinner at Castle's loft. Which...btw, was cute but didn't end the way I would have liked, but nonetheless, AMAZING!
I believe this episode has shown her that she's in Castle's family. Also that...how to explain? Well...Something can happen to Castle whether he is with her on cases or not...and I think maybe this will help her...She can stop thinking she's always putting him at risk. You know? I could explain this better but I have been writing this chapter on and off all day.
Curious to see about next episode, the ramifications of the stares and longing looks these two gave each other this episode (She wont want him out of her sight)..PLUS! Next Monday is My Birthday!
Reviews are my favorite and would be especially appreciated for this particular chapter. THANKS!
