"Richard, are you sure you'll be alright here by yourself today?"
"Sure? Mother, I'm looking forward to it." He says with a smirk as he walks his mother and daughter out the door for the morning. "I love you, Mother. But surprisingly enough, even you can be too much at times."
His mother scoffs and waves her hand at him, "Ah, and it only took two months for you to say it. But," She says, raising her finger, "don't forget that the housekeeper is coming by today. I don't want you to be caught... unaware."
"Mother, Claudia has been coming every Thursday for fourteen years." He says obviously, trying to force the two of them out the door.
"Well, for the past few years you've had obligations with the NYPD, so I just wanted to remind you to be decent when she arrives here in an hour."
"Still wouldn't be as traumatizing as all the times she's had to clean with one of your gentleman callers upstairs." He says with a cringe. "Now go, Alexis is going to be late for school."
They finally both are out the door with a smile and he finally has the loft to himself for a day, save for the housekeeper coming in an hour. He hasn't seen Claudia in a long while, with being away in the Hampton's recovering for two months and at the precinct every morning before that. It takes just twenty minutes for him to get bored, but as he stands in the kitchen, listening to the quiet stillness of the loft, something feels like he needs a day like this. Just a day alone and still, his mind not dwelling on anything... just thinking.
He can't help but miss her. Or... miss his partner. Beckett seems to have left that part of her life behind, and he's hurt. Too deeply to admit to himself. She could barely look him in the eye. Like she couldn't stand having him near her. He misses his partner... not whoever that was. Maybe Alexis was right when she blew up at him, and maybe she was right to push him out of her life the way she did. He's going to miss working with the guys at the precinct, solving murders, catching killers, his partner... but all things must come to an end, as they say.
He's still meandering around the loft, not even really dressed other than a plain green t-shirt and blue jeans when the door opens. He looks up from the kitchen and sees the short, petite Hispanic lady in her early fifties that's been coming at this time since Alexis was little, humming a song to herself as she lugs her cleaning supplies through the door. When she looks up, she is startled. "Oh!" She lets out a breath, placing her hand against her chest. "Mr. Castle, you scared me." She says with her accent, but still fluent in English.
He smiles and lifts a dismissive hand. "Sorry, Claudia."
"I heard about you on the news. You better yet?" She asks him, coming into the loft and pulling out her supplies, wasting no time getting to work.
"Yeah, I'm all better, thank you." He smiles.
"That was so brave, Mr. Castle, what you did."
He smiles, having heard it dozens of times from fielded phone calls from people who don't really matter. Looking back on it, he doesn't feel all that brave now. "Well..." he shrugs his shoulders and looks away, not really wanting to brag about himself. They fall silent for a few minutes while Claudia goes about shining up the loft as she's done every week, and it's a few minutes listening to her hum to herself before she looks up, wanting to say something, but looks away with a chuckle. He notices and goes about pulling it out of her. "What is it, Claudia?"
"Oh," She laughs and waves her hand at him, "I don't want to pry, Mr. Castle."
"Okay, I have everyone else in my life walking on eggshells around me now, I can't have my housekeeper do it too." He says and moves around the island, just wanting to talk to someone... normal. "Especially since I pay you to keep things like that off the floor."
She laughs a few times and continues moving about the loft, "Well..." She asks as she puts her bottle of Windex back among her other supplies, "I was surprised not to see your lady friend here, Mr. Castle."
He pauses, not really knowing what she means, "Lady friend?" He asks, "You mean Detective Beckett?"
"Yes, that's her." Claudia says with a smile, "Detective Beckett, the one you saved." He just narrows his eyes with a smile, wondering how Claudia knows that much about Beckett and thought that she would have been here this morning. "They say that you two are together."
"Wha... wait, who?" He says with frozen blood.
"Oh, I read the gossip columns." She says with a smile and another chuckle.
"Ah." He says, deep hatred and annoyance flooding his system. "How could I have forgotten about the soulless, blood-sucking vultures over at page six?" He smiles.
"I-I didn't mean to pry, Mr. Castle." She says fearfully.
But Castle lifts his hand to cast away her fears. "No worries, Claudia, you're practically family." Claudia smiles and continues to clean as Castle stands at the entrance to the kitchen.
"So you two aren't dating, Mr. Castle?"
He feels his smile start to feel heavy, but he keeps it in place for her, "Uh, no... no, we aren't."
Claudia nods and looks over to him with a raised brow. "She's pretty." She says knowingly.
"Yeah, she's..." He starts, thinking about her breathtaking beauty, "she's beautiful."
"Even after you saved her, you're still not dating, Mr. Castle? That was like out of a romance novel." She says with a shrug of her shoulders. And Castle is glad that there's at least one person in his life not treating him like he's on the verge of a mental breakdown.
"Well, suffice it to say, it seems dying for someone isn't the proper way to win someone's heart." He says with a heavy smile.
"Ah." Claudia waves her hand at him, collecting her cleaning supplies, having finished. "Dying's easy, Mr. Castle. Living's the hard part."
As she picks up her supplies with a smile and waves at him while she moves toward the door, Castle feels a strange opening in his heart. "Thanks, Claudia."
Beckett stands nervously, bordering on plain scared, in the hall outside his loft.
She has to be prepared for any number of reactions to her appearance unannounced at his home. But she needs his help because the more she's tried to make sense of any of this case so far, the more confusing it seems to get. She needs his 'forest for the trees' perspective. On top of that... she knows now. She finally knows that she's in love with him. And her heart just pounded and her breath turned into a large rock in her throat as she thought that. It sends a deep seeded longing, laced with guilty desire and shame into her spirit.
But with the case file tucked under her arm, she reaches up with thick blood in her veins and knocks on the door, her gaze falling to the floor. It's a moment of waiting until her heart stops when she hears his footsteps on the other side of the door, then seeing it open just a second later. She holds her breath and when she doesn't hear him greet her, she looks up. Her throat opens up and she feels weightless at the mear sight of him. "Hey." She breathes.
"Beckett." He says lightly, "uh..."
It's then that she notices the black recurve bow in his hand, then the quiver full of arrows on his back. Her brow knots at the sight, curiosity pushing out a new feeling from her. Out of all the outfits she's seen him answer the door in, this is by far the most interesting.
On the other side of the door, he can't help but stare at her. Standing at his door with her tumbling curls falling down her shoulders, with her bright red wool raincoat on that accents her perfect blush, he feels a hot yet cold sweat flare up in his neck.
"Can I come in?" She asks nervously, anticipating the door slamming in her face for some reason. Maybe it's the way their last conversation went.
"Uh..." He pauses, but eventually, his weakness for her gives way with a smile, "Not at all, I-I mean..." He squeezes his eyes shut, "I mean sure." He smiles and steps aside.
She laughs an airy chuckle and steps inside with a few long strides. She feels herself relaxed and warm being in his presence, but a tingling nervousness at the same time. "So..." She starts, turning around and giving him a long, jealous once over, "the city hire to you be Green Arrow or something?"
His eyes narrow a bit and he looks down, taking in his archery equipment and a light green t-shirt. He laughs, "No, I'm uh..." then starts around her, "I'm more of a Green Lantern guy."
She laughs silently with him, her body following him as he moves into the loft, keeping herself facing him.
"No, I picked up archery as physical therapy while I was recovering." He explains as he stands in front of the glass table, facing into his office and pulling out an arrow. "Now it's," he shrugs, "kind of a hobby."
"You mean a distraction from writing?" She jives.
"Well, I don't have you anymore, so..." He didn't really mean to say that. It sounded like a joke, and that's how he meant it, but... both of them take it too seriously. He just pushes out a hard breath and goes through his shot sequence, landing the arrow just off center.
She watches him, her mouth starting to turn into a drought, seeing him in a new light. The way his biceps bulge under the thin fabric of his t-shirt, the sliver of his tan stomach she can see when he raises his arms to shoot his bow, the wide breadth of his firm shoulders, how soft his hair looks, the intensity his deep blue eyes have in them as he focuses on the target. New light... she rolls her eyes to herself at the thought, berating herself because she knows she's ogled him like this before.
"I uh..." He starts and looks back over to her, "I meant to call and thank you."
"For what?" She asks casually.
"For talking to Alexis for me." She silently answers him by raising her brow. "Yeah, she's her old self again... save for actually beating me in laser tag the next day."
She finds herself pursing her lips as she fights off a smile. But words lose her and they fall into an awkward silence. Until she feels the need to thank him also. "I got the book."
He looks up to her, not really knowing where this is headed, but he can see the case file she thinks she's hiding under her arm. He wants her to just get to it so he can be mad. He just smiles neutrally and nods.
"And the note, it was..." She struggles, not knowing how to explain it was that gesture of him showing her that he still had hope, hope that he seems to have lost as she looks at him now, that made her want to go back to therapy.
"Well, the painkillers I was on made me a bit emotional, I'm sorry." He says... like he's honestly sorry about it. And she feels her heart wrenched. She wants to tell him that it meant a lot to her, that she's sorry for everything, that she wants to be with him. But he's starting to seem so out of reach now. "So, to what do I owe this visit, Detective?"
His tone, it's serious. Usually when he calls her 'Detective' it's with a joking, humorous tone, when he thinks she can't tell when he's flirting with her. "I can't just stop by and say hi?" She asks, a little too desperate for her own liking.
But he knows her all too well. "Not with a case file under your arm." He shakes his head, pointing to her with the tip of his bow.
She lets out a breath, having been caught. "Right." She says under her breath. He nods his head and starts to move away, taking off his wrist guard and setting his bow down on the couch. "Well," She starts, taking the case file out from under her arm and holding it in front of her, "I caught a case this morning, and uh..." She shuffles, "some of the details aren't really making sense, so... I thought you could lend us your 'forest for the trees' perspective."
He breathes out a small chuckle and looks away again. He feels a brutal honesty rise up in him. "So you just came by because you need me for a case."
"Well-" She tries.
But he cuts her off. "Not because you really wanted to see me or anything. You just need some crazy theories."
She feels blindsided, but she was supposed to expect this out in the hallway. She did want to see him. She's wanted to see him since she said goodbye. But she just couldn't face him. And, as she thinks about it in the brief silence he's left her with, she can't help but be surprised. "Castle, I-I thought that... I thought that you'd jump at the chance to work a case after this long."
"Well," He starts with a walled off chuckle, "you ended things, remember?" He asks, knowing he's starting to sound like a jackass. "It's your life, after all. Not my own personal jungle gym."
That hurt... deeply. She remembers saying that. She remembers trying to pull something out of him. Then getting angry with him because he didn't say whatever she was looking for and lashed out, then lashed out even harder when he came back at her. "Castle..." She says with a tight voice.
"You know, a couple of days ago, I would have." He says seriously, finally turning to her with a blank expression, getting them back on track. "But Beckett, you couldn't even look me in the eye when I came to see you. So forgive me for not wanting to be in your life if you don't want me there that badly."
She feels a deep, bitter guilt wash over her, thinking back to that day. Had he known what she really wanted to do... "Castle." She says, but he just shakes his head and looks away. She feels the last bit of breath escape her, and she finally starts. "You said that you understood, so... maybe you'll understand when I tell you that..." She has the words in her head, but... she knows they won't fix anything right now. She closes her mouth after that barrier in her throat is up.
And he just waits her out, not really knowing what she has to say, but being fully prepared to be angry with it and shrug it off.
"Castle, I watched you die." She says, her heart feeling exposed, vulnerable, a feeling she doesn't like. That makes his eyes turn back to her, surprised. "I still remember it... clear as day, the way you... the way your eyes faded, the way your head went limp in my hands." It's the teary sound of her voice that makes his defenses drop. "I had to watch the life drain out of your eyes all because of me, and... when I said goodbye that day, it was..." She lets out the breath she was holding with a shake of her head, "it was for a lot of reasons, but the real one is because I couldn't let another person that I-" her breath hitches as the words make a violent u-turn, her fear and insecurity stopping her, "that I care about die because of those people."
He feels guilty for his behavior of the last few minutes toward her, maybe even guilty for not wrapping his arms around her when he first answered the door.
"And I'd rather have you alive but have to sacrifice our partnership than have you dead because of it. I've..." She says with an eye roll to herself, "been making a lot of mistakes lately, okay? I've quit my job after Gates wanted to drop the case, and... now I got my job back and dropped the case anyway. But... Castle, none of that means I don't want you in my life. And maybe saying goodbye the way I did was a mistake, but..." She starts slowly, "I've been trying to learn to rectify the mistakes I make, so..." She extends the file in her hand over to him, "here I am."
He lets out a sigh, pausing to take her in. He wants to say that none of this would seem her, but... looking in her eyes now, he can see his partner. And despite what a part of him would want, he still loves her, and he did have hope for them when he sent her that note in his book. He decides and reaches out, taking the file from her, holding her gaze as he flips it open.
"Victim was found in a pay-by-the-hour motel, stabbed. The murder weapon wasn't at the scene, and we can't identify what type of weapon it was."
He looks at the first photo, seeing the triangular wound, a slight discoloration from a bruise surrounding one edge of the wound.
"Ryan had the idea that it might have been something like a tent stake or a railroad spike, but... then the lab came back and said that the metal the weapon left behind was almost one hundred years old, so... now we're at a loss."
His mind flips back and forth for a minute, his brain trying out different theories before it finally decides to voice the one idea that seems to hold water. "Trench knife."
She feels a light, relaxing breath leave her, feeling like she's... whole again, having her partner with her again. "Uh... a what?"
His eyes catch hers again and he quickly moves into his office, pausing to move the large target out of the way and turn his laptop around. "A World War One... M-1917 Trench Knife." He says with a smile, turning back to her. Her eyes flit between his proud smile and the screen. This looks like exactly what they're looking for. "They're pretty rare among collectors because they were outlawed from use in warfare by the Geneva Convention in 1929 because of the wounds they'd leave behind."
"Is that something that would get local collectors talking, maybe?"
"Might be worth calling a few." He adds.
"Okay, well," She nods, looking away and swaying from side to side, "why don't you take your Green Arrow costume off and I can explain the rest on the way to the precinct." His brow raises, and she continues, "There's something else that... might require one of your... special contacts."
"Okay, what is it?"
"It's..." Her brow quirks and she feels her lips tuck inward, "a surprise."
A/N: Kudos to anyone who caught that 'special' reference. ;)Also, Claudia will be making another apperance. Decided to try and shoot for a 24 to 27 chapter story with this one. Get two more cases in, maybe raise the rating in a few chapters, who knows. I could write the story without raising the rating, but some people really seem to love it when I raise the rating. Let me know in the reviews! :)