Chapter Ten : Not That Wounded
She ducks out the moment they've alerted Montgomery that the case is closed and the greasy lawyer has been booked. Doesn't even bother to stay late and do paperwork as she usually does. Castle takes it as his cue to go home and spend some much-needed quality time with his family. As difficult as splitting with Beckett was – before they even got a chance to get off the ground – his family comes first. He can't go thinking about his own dramas until at the very least he hears how Alexis' audition went and has either celebrated or comforted her. And his mother, if the occasion calls for the latter. She will be far more upset than her granddaughter.
With a few polite bites of ice cream that he doesn't taste and a celebration of the serendipity of getting what one needs rather than what one wants, Castle watches helplessly as Alexis prances off to research stage managing, and his mother broods quietly on her failure to produce a son or a granddaughter with her passion for the stage. Finding nothing else to do, he retires to his office. He resigns himself to the foreseeable occupation of the rest of the night and begins to lick his wounds in private.
Pouring himself a glass of whiskey, Castle rotates it lazily and paces around the room several times. He ought to be tired. He's not quite sure what day it even is at this point, the emotional and physical strains of the week finally catching up to him. But he knows sleep won't come.
After considering his options, he angrily heaves himself into an overstuffed chair in the corner of his sanctuary, settling in the least uncomfortable position he can manage whilst spitefully glaring at the captain's chair at his desk and willing it away. He wishes to god that he could burn it and in doing so, purge himself of the memories stained into the leather in invisible ink. His bed is a problem too. And the shower. Fuck, the shower. Too bad that can't be moved or destroyed. Well, he can't move or destroy even the offending chair or bed either, he reasons. Burning furniture would make a considerable mess and certainly attract unwanted questions from the resident redheads.
How could he be so stupid? But he's always been one to look on the bright side, to find one where there isn't, and to resort to outright mockery if even that defense mechanism has failed him. Silver lining: at least now he knows where he stands. She doesn't want him. Not the way he wants her. Not in a way he can accept. He wishes he could, he wishes to god that he could accept it. That he could discard his feelings and indulge in the purely-carnal offering she so willingly left upon the table. But he can't. Exactly why, he's yet to figure out. But there's no time like the present – in company of his brooding and a drink – to try to get at that.
Was it stupidity, arrogance or sheer childish magical thinking that allowed him to think she could possibly feel the same way for him as he does for her? He tries desperately to ignore the dark voice in the back of his head that's becoming louder with each passing day, prodding him to define exactly what does he feel for her that she's evidently not returning.
Perhaps his preoccupation with Beckett is an early mid-life crisis. He is nearly forty. The number swirls around and clinks in the glass with his drink. Forty. What does he really have to show for it, at the end of the day?
His books and characters are his amusement, what he's chosen to occupy his professional life with, and he loves every one of them in his own way (even Storm), but they don't keep him warm in the night. His books were the convergence of a natural imagination, luck and timing, an ability to play the publishing industry, and a bit of work. Though not particularly hard work.
He has a kid he doesn't deserve and has managed to build and maintain a semi-functional relationship with his mother; those are both things he is deeply grateful to have in his life, but not strictly achievements of his own. Martha's made just as much effort as he has in recent years – since his breakup with Gina, really – to repair their once-shaky relationship. And he certainly can't take full credit for Alexis – he rather suspects she's the product of latent good genes and her own will, along with an inner goodness that perhaps skipped two generations on both sides and concentrated into one redheaded wunderkind.
He has two failed marriages and one failed love behind him.
He has a host of friends who'd just as soon dump him if his books stopped entertaining them or if he took a significant financial hit. He has lots of women at his disposal (disposable, he supposes, is not a nice adjective, but if the shoe fits). He has easy entertainment if he wants, but easy has long-since lost its appeal.
He has a few real friends whose approval and place in his life are the rewards of actual hard work, personal change, growth in the last few years.
But his arrival at the 12th (however initially unwelcome and obligatory to its residents) and the relationships he's cultivated since, the good he's done, the small but meaningful legacy he's left on the city… that's worthiness. It's an alien feeling. He's earned that. He's worked harder than he's ever worked in his life to be good enough, smart enough, moral enough, to earn the detectives' respect and genuine friendship; to leave a small but indelible mark of good on the city he loves nearly as if it were a person (it is, in fact, his oldest and most constant friend), on the lives of the people who – like Beckett – have lost what they love most.
So, no, he won't leave the precinct. Beckett aside, he's too invested.
Maybe that's his mid-life crisis: playing cop.
Except it's not play any more. It hasn't been for a long time. Castle was willing to stand with Beckett from the day they got in the gunfight with the trafficker, to risk his life to give her a chance at getting out alive. He was prepared to die with her when he decided to stay after the man who killed her mother put a gun to his side. But it went beyond just Beckett, eventually. It was Ryan, Esposito, even Captain Montgomery. It was the city itself. Somewhere along the line, it wasn't enough to solve crimes on paper. He took a private oath to protect and serve, to do his utmost to be of use and service. He may not be a real cop (he forgets that at times, until incidents like being unarmed at the motel and letting Tyson escape remind him quite forcefully), but he can still do good. He can continue to mold himself, to be something good, something worth being proud of at last.
To this end, he will have to face Beckett sooner or later, and later will only give her time and distance to put between them. It hurts now, but if he's to stay, he'll have to learn to work with her and they'll have to learn to trust each other.
Well, he'll have to learn to trust her again. She's made it abundantly clear that she doesn't trust him and quite probably never did. Not after all they've been through. Not after all this time. Not one iota.
There's nowhere to go with her now, if her opinion of him is as poor as her actions would suggest. Just thinking about it makes his blood boil. How did he misread her so badly? How could they – they who share a brain half the time, when it comes to work – be on such different pages?
It's not so much that she doesn't want a relationship. That much he was prepared to wait out. What hurts and bleeds and aches is that she's so utterly confounded at the idea of him caring more for her than just sex. As if she expected him to just have his fun and leave her.
Oh.
But that's exactly what he's done, isn't it? It finally dawns on him as the anger and hurt cools to a simmer, replaced at last by logic and self-awareness. He walked out on her and didn't give her a chance to speak. He shut her down when she reached for him in the car, proverbially speaking. He's done exactly what she expected him to, confirmed her poor mistrusting heart's fear, helped her in her self-fulfilling prophecy, if he reads her correctly this time.
The desperation in her desire to please. The relationship with Josh. The way two people in her life seems to get the same version of her. The way she shuts herself down the moment they're alone together and molds herself into whatever form she thinks he'll find pleasing.
He piles together the cracker crumbs of knowledge he has of her life and her prior relationships.
He knows next to nothing about her world prior to her mother's death; only that with that, it seemed to crash down. It seems to have been happy and functional, from the way she talks. She was an only child, no mention of close cousins, so a lack of extended family and a close bond to her parents even above that of the peer group is probably a decent guess. She was a good girl. Alleged wildchild phase notwithstanding (he's still not seen the motorcycle or the tattoo – and he looked pretty hard for the latter when she relaxed and spent an entire morning naked in his arms – so he wonders whether that may have been an exaggeration to goad him), the years between the minor mischief and few apparently normal high school romances her friend Maddie told him of during her school days, and the time her mother was murdered, seem wholly unremarkable.
And after that? She finished college, and apparently in good time. Joined the Academy immediately thereafter. Probably not a lot of time or desire for relationships there, and she doesn't seem the type to have had many one-night stands in her belt. Which brings him to life post-Academy. And to her first partner. Ah, now that has potential.
Royce rejected her advances; that much he knows. The guy may have been a crook, but Castle didn't get the impression that he was lying, when they went out for drinks the night he walked back into Beckett's life. He's grilled Castle about his intentions like a concerned friend – and it seems that is what he felt for her – and shared stories about the good ol' days, about the best recruit he'd ever trained. Half-drunk and nostalgic, he admitted she came onto him when she was drowning in grief and obsession.
'I didn't wanna be her bottle to crawl down,' he'd said.
Her next few years are, nearly three years into their partnership, a complete mystery to him. Her father dried up, eventually. She made detective at some point. And aside from that? Nothing. Montgomery and Esposito have hinted that she spent every spare moment in the archives, unwilling and unable to stop her spiral into obsession with her mother's case. She came dangerously close to burnout, maybe even went over the edge into it. It took her a year of therapy to let go of the case.
Somewhere along the line – post-therapy, he reasons; Ryan and Esposito both recognized the guy, and he's under the impression she was more stable by the time Ryan arrived – she must have met Sorenson, dated for some time, and from the little she told him, the Feeb chose Boston over Beckett. And allegedly acted surprised when she wouldn't uproot her life to follow him. There had to have been at least a year between her break with Sorenson and his reappearance for the Candela case; she was at least somewhat over it. Enough to be able to work with him, anyway. But the hurt was still there. He heard it in the bitter resignation in her voice all the way back then. Sorenson chose the job.
As does Josh. As will Josh. And she lets him. She likes that about him; something about dedication and blah blah. She doesn't. She can't like that. She just thinks… she thinks it's easier. She thinks that's all she deserves, she thinks that's safe.
It's not safe, Castle shakes his head as if she's actually here in front of him. It's just sad. She's spent her entire adult life with one foot out the door in relationships. Though, given his history, barreling into them headfirst and dizzy is likely equally dysfunctional, if not an opposite-but-equal way of avoiding potential hurt.
Aromantically… now that's an entirely different can of worms, isn't it?
Obviously her mother's loss was a devastating and defining blow. That much has been clear from day one. She doesn't know who she is, if not the pursuant of justice for her mother (and, absent that case to work on, justice for others as a temporary substitute). She was so young. Too young, really, to not become defined by a single horrific event, as he understands all too well. Her mother never would have chosen to leave her, but leave she did.
Her father, though. Castle can't help the swell of anger he feels toward the man, one he's never even met. He left her too. Down a bottle. For five years. She loves him, that much is clear, but Castle's certain she doesn't trust him. It's a sad reality, but he understands: once bitten, twice shy. Especially when it comes to addicts.
His brow furrows as he produces a sheet of scratch paper, mapping out a crude timeline of her life. There's not a lot of room for other relationships, if his assumptions about her lack of casual/incidental hookups and about the years she spent buried in the archives are correct. Which leads him to the uncomfortable conclusion that she's quite a bit less experienced than he once casually assumed based on her constant innuendo, natural flirtatiousness, and the hints about knowledge he's now not quite sure is first hand.
As the city outside dims from a twinkling galaxy of artificial stars to a landscape dotted with beacons for the hopeless and the lonely, Castle finds himself hours into his examination of his partner's life and the potential motivations for her actions. He comes up certain of only one thing: nobody's ever chosen Kate.
He understands better, now. He's never been anyone's prize. The stage called. London called. The director called. Better opportunities called. He's survived it with no shortage of issues of his own, but Beckett has just as many, on top of the ones surrounding her mother's case, the horrors she's dealt with daily since she was a young woman and still developing a view of the world. According to his timeline, she couldn't have been more than 20 or 21 when she became a cop, and a detective the bare minimum three years' requirement after that. His world has been stable, if not always perfect. Hers, though... her life has been a freefall of nightmares to chase down dark alleys the entirety of her adult years, and one rejection after another from people she trusted.
No one's put him first, and nobody's ever put Kate first either. Not over their own interests. Not over their jobs. Not over their vices.
And not over their wounded pride.
The surprise to see him is written all over her face when he turns up at the precinct, 8AM sharp. Clearly she expected him to be done with her (those were, regrettably, his words – he can't take them back, and she'd not accept it right now if he did) and done with the precinct as well. Neither will be the case, not if he has anything to do with it. He's already resolved to stay on at the 12th, no matter what, but he's not done with her. Not by a long shot. He'll just have to keep showing up. It will probably take time before his apology is accepted, but she hasn't kicked him out, so there's reason for hope. He'll just keep coming back, keep proving to her that he's not going to run, that he's not the one who'll take her for what she offers and leave her in pieces.
Flustered, she takes his coffee with the look of a polite adult who's just been presented with a child's beloved, warty toad. Murmuring a robotic thank-you, she keeps her eyes resolutely on her paperwork and promptly banishes him to the archives.
A slow day begets slow work, but once into it, Castle finds he doesn't mind. Philadelphia called and asked for the NYPD to look through its cold files for homicides in the 1990s matching a maddeningly non-descript M.O., and without an active case to work, they've finally gotten around to it. Simply glad to still be welcomed at work, Castle shifts into research mode and loses himself in the solitude of the cold files, developing his own system rather quickly and slipping into the flow of work.
"Castle?" he jolts, spins around from the desk he's been working at, a 'maybe' file he's been combing for detail. Ryan blinks from the doorway. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."
Castle waves him off. "It's fine. What's up?"
"You've been down here all morning," Ryan remarks with the air of one fishing for detail but unwilling to ask outright, "Beckett said to come ask you if you wanted to ride along. Out to pick up lunch. You in?"
His stomach gives a loud growl and he's left little choice. Though, fresh air and some natural light (even in the drizzle of a New York autumn day) sound good anyway. Shrugging, he agrees. Beckett's mood must have softened beyond his original hope, if she cared enough to remind him about lunch. Even if she sent Ryan to do it for her.
"Sure."
In the confines of the car, the two men catch up on the polite details of each others' lives – safe topics. Alexis; Jenny. The damn Knicks who couldn't locate their own asses with a toilet seat last weekend, let alone keep a handle on the ball. Once that is established, the conversation dwindles naturally, leaving them in easy silence as the traffic stalls with businessmen and union workers alike heading back to the job after lunch.
"So, what'd you do to piss off Beckett?" Ryan asks from the driver's seat, as if this is all part of casual conversation.
Castle jerks, but recovers quickly. From Ryan's raised eyebrow, not quickly enough.
"Why do you think I've pissed her off?" he asks instead, hoping to gauge what the detective has found out or at the least guessed at.
"When I first joined homicide, I got overzealous with a suspect in interrogation and kept questioning him after he asked for a lawyer. Ended up with a confession inadmissible in court. Standard in narcotics, but that don't fly under Montgomery. I was sent to the colds for a week."
He's not sure where this story is going, but the good thing is, Ryan is not angry at him, so he likely doesn't understand the context of the coolness from Beckett, only that it exists. This he can work with, perhaps even play to his advantage. As far as Ryan's concerned, he could have simply made a particularly bad joke to get himself banished, or changed the cruiser's radio station one too many times.
"So this is the standard punishment? I'm surprised I haven't spent three-quarters of my time there," Castle remarks glibly, to Ryan's chortle.
"Yep," Ryan confirms, but presses again, "what'd you do this time?"
Castle shrugs again, figuring it's best to evade answering rather than tell an outright lie – even a small one – to a detective and the precinct's resident gossip. "Dunno. She's been stressed since the Tyson case, must have done something to set her off."
Ryan nods sympathetically, distracted by the mention of Tyson more than anything else as his fingers unconsciously trace the back of his head where the aforementioned serial killer had pistol-whipped him. Chef Ho's and the promise of steamed pork buns is a welcome distraction, and Ryan digs into one the moment they pack back into the cruiser.
"Beckett's been on edge for weeks, come to think of it," Ryan brings up conversationally as the rain grows steadier and the traffic slows. Talking between bites, he blabbers on. "Not surprised if she blew up at you. Man, before you came along, Espo and I couldn't take a piss without being sent to the colds or made to go door-to-door like Girl Scouts. She was a dragon."
Castle is intrigued. He's not heard this, though he guessed as much. She turned all the charms of a snapping turtle on him in the beginning, and it stood to reason that he was simply a more annoying target than whomever was on the wrong end of her pointy sword before his arrival. Perhaps if he presses for detail, plays dumb, he can secure an informant in Ryan.
"Really?" he asks curiously, "And here I thought it was just my particular brand of irresistible that brought that out."
Ryan bites.
"Ah, man. She wasn't that bad normally, but when she gets stressed... One time she got in it with that Sorenson guy – near the end of their run – and she wasn't even in charge of us back then, but you know. We couldn't breathe loudly without her getting angry. She had us dumpster diving for days. In July."
He nods sympathetically, secretly overjoyed with the in this has just provided him.
"So she gets cranky when her personal life is rocky?"
"Man, you don't know the half of it," the Irishman gushes, his mouth working before his common sense, "I mean, we figure she doesn't get out much, but when things were bad with Sorenson, they were worse on us. He was a real tool to her."
"How so?" Castle cuts in.
"Well, you didn't hear it from me, but Espo said he thought the guy was controlling. You know, never wanted her to come out for drinks, belittled Espo and I in front of her. Big FBI jerk. Always talked for her when they were together. He wanted her to pick up her life and move to Boston, you know? When they broke up, talking to her was like kicking a wasp's nest. But even that was nothing compared to when she broke up with Demming for-"
Ryan stops cold, realizing belatedly that he's said more than he intended, that his mouth has run with him and not given his common sense a chance to catch up. Castle schools his face into neutral bewilderment.
"Broke up with Demming for?" he prompts, eager for this missing piece in his puzzle. He always wondered what Demming did. Or what Beckett did. She's not said a word about the Robbery detective since his return, so he naturally assumed they broke up at some point over the summer, but there was no talk around the espresso machine about some big blowup, and the moments they've passed Demming in the halls of the precinct have been nothing but cordial since, so he assumed they'd just not worked out and parted without significant trauma to either.
The younger detective considers him for a moment with confusion, followed by scrutiny as if he's suddenly realized this conversation was not quite as off-the-cuff as he'd been led to believe, then evidently makes some kind of decision.
"She broke up with Demming. For you. And you showed up minutes later with your ex-wife."
Well. Shit.