Chapter 10

Kate Beckett was a tough cookie, everyone knew it. From work to personal struggles, she always fought for what she thought was right, but this time she felt like she had to give up.

Castle didn't want her help, and he had voiced it pretty clearly.

His raspy, rough voice still echoed in her head any time she had a quiet moment. She had come to dread the silence because every time she could hear his words replaying like a broken record in the back of her head. He had sounded so threatening she was close to pulling her gun out to keep him at bay. The rage that had crossed his face, even for the shortest moment, scared the crap out of her. She wasn't one of those trigger happy cops that pulled her gun out every time she had the chance to, never been and never planned to become one, but that day... damn she was scared.

That feeling still made her skin crawl, from time to time. Even after nearly two months.

She kept tabs with Alexis and Martha, they met pretty regularly at Remy's, the diner just round the corner from the precinct, but they tried to avoid talking about him. Apparently, things hadn't changed much after he had shoved Kate out of his life, maybe once and for all.

So she dived into music. While not at work, she constantly listened to anything that came up in her mind. She raided her favorite record store multiple times and the list of songs on her iPod exponentially grew, day by day, as she purchased both digital and physical albums, getting in touch with the latest novelty in music business, though never forgetting the roots. From time to time, most of all when she went for her daily jog in Central Park, she chose old tunes as a soundtrack, mostly from her childhood.

That helped fill the void and keep her mind from replaying that scene over and over again until it drove her mad, but it also fueled her mind and made her pick up the guitar every day after work and compose new material. By the beginning of April, she had three additional songs ready to be recorded complete with lyrics, and weirdly enough, only two dealt with Rick breaking up with her in that violent, destructive way.

After all, she didn't have much to say or write at that point. Castle was right, she didn't know him. She knew of him, from what she had read in the past and the tiny tidbits he had let her know, but during those six months together, he had never opened up to her like she had done to him. He had come to know pretty much every little detail of her life, from her first struggles to hold a guitar too big for her to her first real successes as she kept practicing day after day during her adolescence.

She had told him the worst details she had always kept to herself about Marie and her experience with her struggles... everything.

Him? He had kept everything for himself. Everything. When he talked about his past, he had kept everything inside. Damn, she was a reserved person but Castle was so closed in on himself, no doubt he had imploded. He wasn't able to share, it was like a physical inability. Even when they had sex...

They got naked but not once he had let the wall he had built around his heart fall down. It was like he couldn't undress his heart.

And it hurt. Sometimes it felt like she had been cheated. She felt like she violated her trust, someway, although he never actually betrayed her. Not with another woman at least.

Or so she thought, because around mid-April she spotted a short article on Page 6 of the Ledger with a grainy photo that showed him sitting in a random Starbucks facing a blonde woman. The angle made impossible to see the face of the woman. He looked tired, way worse than the last time she had seen him, with longer, unruled hair and beard that made him look so different from the ruggedly handsome man she used to date.

Before he pushed her out of his life.

The short article pointed out that the two looked close and that Castle had been single for a long while - they had managed to keep their relationship off the media, fortunately - and that after the death of his best friend he was probably out looking for comfort.

The paper ended up crumpled into a tight ball and into the recycling bin with one swift motion.

And it hurt like a bitch.

Not because she thought it was true, damn, in those conditions not even the fiercest cougar looking to marry a rich man would even take him into consideration, but because...

Yeah, why did that hurt?

Kate didn't know why it hurt so much seeing him out of the loft with a woman. Drinking something that wasn't scotch and acting in a civilized manner in the presence of multiple human beings, or so he looked like. It wasn't Gina, she was sure. Different shade of blonde, and this looked more like fake, dye blonde.

The picture was grainy to say the least, but he looked like he was smiling. Tired, in urgent need of a visit to a barber, yet smiling.

It haunted her for the rest of the day, even catching a man that had killed his lover in order to prevent her from telling his wife about the affair didn't wipe that odd feeling away. It just felt right, for a moment, and then that picture came back, like it was burned in the back of her eyes.

That night, when she came home, she grabbed her guitar and came up with another song. She stood awake until the wee hours of the night to complete it from head to toe, lyrics and tablatures for Rob and Matt included. It needed a little bit of adjustment, most of all Jay had to add the drums pattern but it was mostly done. That way, they had enough songs to start a decent recording session. Maybe they didn't have everything, the new album still needed to take shape, and the last time they had recorded their album it had only taken a definite shape when they were recording in the presence of their producer, but they had enough to start. Nine songs weren't much, definitely not enough to make a full record, but they had something. The rest would come later. Fillers weren't hard to write.

Or that's what she thought.

Meanwhile, things had started to become a little better at the loft.

After his burnout with Beckett, Castle had walled himself up in his study one more time, for a week straight, doing nothing but drinking and writing everything he felt or saw in his alcohol induced state of alteration.

He woke up in the bathtub, dressed in the same clothes he had been wearing for at least a week, sneakers included, soaked in cold water. He had dried blood on his face, coming from his nose apparently, and his knuckles were scraped and the skin was red. An empty Jack Daniels bottle floated in the tub right beside his left knee. If only he had been coherent enough and not hungover as hell he'd be able to scold himself for getting in that situation, but it was too cold.

Straining against his creaky, rigid joints and muscles, he pulled the plug and let the cold water go down the drain, then turned on the hot shower spray until the cascading droplets were scalding his skin. It took him ten good minutes to gather enough strength to get up and slowly take off the dirty, soggy clothes. Another minute to make up his mind and decide to grab the shower gel and wash himself.

The water had to turn cold again before he stood up from the wall, closed the tap and dried himself up with a towel and got dressed again, this time in clean clothes.

He purposefully avoided looking at his reflection in the mirror, not ready to face the reality of how down he had fallen that time.

For the first time in months he pulled open the dusty curtains in his bedroom, opened the windows and let some fresh air enter. The smell of New York during springtime was invigorating, with a soft breeze bringing the different scents from Central Park that covered the awful odor of smog.

He brushed his teeth, thoroughly, to get rid of the foul aftertaste left by the booze. A disgusting glaze had formed in his mouth, it felt like sandpaper mixed with molasses, thick and grainy at the same time. It stuck to his tongue and teeth, felt like someone had stuffed a dirty sock in his mouth. It took him three additional swipes of toothpaste to get rid of it. He added some mouthwash too, just to be sure the foul breath had gone.

He breathed deeply for long minutes, sitting on the edge of his bed, as he gathered the strength to do something normal. He needed to do something normal, or he'd reduce his life to a conscious vegetative state. Wobbling a little bit, he pulled the filthy sheets away from his bed, flipped the mattress over and put new, clean sheets on. Despite the tremors in his hands, he did a decent job.

Normal. He needed to do something normal.

He cleaned the room from all the garbage, losing count of all the bottles laid in disarray on the floor when he reached forty two. He sweeped said floor, thoroughly, and cleaned the bathroom too. It took him one hour to do something he usually did every Saturday morning in twenty minutes, even less sometimes.

Once his quarters were once again habitable and presentable, he got rid of the garbage and moved into the kitchen. That almost drained his energy. Alexis was still in school and there were no signs of his mother's presence. Good.

Fixing himself a healthy breakfast, he took a look to the newspaper left on the counter. As he realized he had spent more than two months walled up in his room, doing nothing, it made his heart sunk. He had fuzzy recollections of what had happened during those months, but he was sure as hell going to get out of there.

He just needed more strength. His arms looked like two deflated balloons. Not that he was the kind of man that would kill himself in the gym just to look pumped, but he was a big man by nature and doing even just a little sports had always made him look more buff than the average. He was a decent basketball player, though he usually preferred football and rugby, given his size. The building had a gym, he'd better take a visit there sooner than later.

Right... sort things out. Get back to a healthy lifestyle. Do something.

He needed to check into rehab as soon as he could. Or if not rehab, something similar. He needed help. And he needed it fast.

He had hit rock bottom, but he hadn't started digging even lower yet. There was still hope. He had done it once, he could do it again.

Kate was right, alcohol wasn't the way and...

Kate?

Where the hell was Kate?

He shoved a mouthful of eggs in his mouth then went looking for his phone. It lay forgotten on the nightstand, battery dead. He pulled the cord out of the drawer and powered it up quickly. There were dozen of missed calls and text messages from two months before, people sending their condolences and people trying to call. As he checked the dates of each missed call or text he noticed they had gradually become more and more rare until they disappeared altogether. The last text was dated from two weeks before. The last call one month.

He had completely isolated himself he didn't even know how his own daughter felt.

Yet he had that nagging feeling something was deeply wrong in all this, he couldn't get past it. He needed to know.

Luckily, he heard the door open and close. Still a bit weak and limping, he scrambled to stand up and walked barefoot towards the door. His mother was just taking off her jacket when he arrived.

"Oh, good to see you awake," she said, her voice tone definitely verging towards indifference.

"Mom I..."

"Don't say it Richard. You need more booze?"

He shook his head. "No Mother I... I quit. That's enough. I'm done. I'm done with this. I need to get better and I need your help."

She turned around and gave him a long, good look, from head to toe. "Help? Are you even serious Richard? You shoved us away for two months and you expect me to believe you right now? Just because you showered?"

He nodded. "Yes. I'm done with alcohol. I'll see if I can make it by myself and if I can't, I'll check in rehab. Just... give me some credit and tell me what I did."

"Are you sure?"

He nodded.

"Sit down kiddo, I'll make the coffee."

Once Martha was done, Castle was sitting at the kitchen counter, arms crossed on the wooden surface and head cradled in them. "Please tell me this is a nightmare."

His mother was punishing him, that was for sure. "No, pure and simple truth. Ask Alexis when she comes home."

"And Kate?"

"She's going on with her life I guess."

"Do you still see her?" he asked, his eyes peeking from his forearms.

"Yes, she's been keeping tabs on us, why?"

"Don't tell her I'm doing this. I'll tell her myself, when I'll feel better."

Martha sighed. "I hope you know what you're doing Kiddo."

"Me too Mother. Me too."

The next day he had his first appointment with his shrink, a tall, blonde doctor that treated him with firmness and steadfastness. Exactly what he needed.

Word Count: 2369 Total Word Count: 26174