He can never remember his heart feeling this way, aching this much. He dug himself into this hole today. "I don't think I can do it."
Jack looks over to Rick, seated in the same bench they have been meeting at the past couple days, his son leaned forward on his knees, a clench in his jaw and a deep furrow in his brow. "Do what, Richard?"
"Get passed her." He feels his jaw click again, swallowing thickly. It hurts... every part of him feels like it's pulling apart from itself. "I mean, I changed myself for her." He says, twisting his expression and looking over his shoulder. Jack still stays as calm, collected, and stoic as he normally is. "For three years, I tried to make myself into someone that woman could love."
"You didn't change that much, Richard." Jack says with a simple lift of his brow.
"Like hell," Rick hisses and shakes his head back out to the ocean. "You didn't know me before. You barely know me now." He fires at him in response, out of defense for what, he really can't tell. Defense of his old self? Defense of her and the hold she's had on him this whole time?
"Richard, I think Meredith changed you far more than Beckett could ever hope to." He replies, seeming to let the slite roll off his back.
Rick grits his teeth at the thought of that woman. He was too blinded by heartbreak over what Kyra had done to realize what Meredith was doing. "I thought me and Kyra could work passed it." He thinks out loud, hanging his head down. "I thought we could work passed her family looking at me like I belonged being scrapped off the bottom of one of their shoes. But no matter what I did, she always said I was never enough. I thought my life was over when she ran away to London."
Jack waits Rick out, as he usually does. He sees in his eye, the twinge and grimaced when he thinks back to something that connects a dot.
"Meredith fawning all over me made me feel like I was the biggest person on Earth. I didn't even have to try with her. I blinked and we got Alexis. I didn't even see it coming when I found out that she'd been cheating on me. And when her lawyer handed me those divorce papers... I could barely live with the mistake I'd made falling for it all. So yeah, maybe I did spend few too many years chasing after that feeling Meredith gave me. And Gina," Rick chuckles despite himself, "all she was was a beautiful woman who said she'd watch Alexis a few times. We spent most of our marriage arguing over the fact that we just couldn't stop arguing."
"And Kate?" Jack says, getting Rick back on the path he'd started down.
Rick feels his eyes pull themselves closed as her presence seems to envelop him, the thought of her overwhelming his conscience. "She didn't demand that I be better." He says, his breath gripped in his throat. "She made me want to be. Her graceful strength, her iron-willed determination, the depths of her mind and her courage. I never once had to tell myself I was in love with her. Instead, I had to force myself to think I wasn't just so I could stand being around her. She showed me what strength of heart looks like. I've always written about death but being around her and her showing me what it looks like got me to take life more seriously."
Jack watches as Rick keeps his eyes gazing hopelessly down to the grass and knows when he has nothing more to say, knows when he's just silent and lost in some memory of the two of them thinking that's all he has left. "You ready to admit why you really left yet, Richard?"
Rick looks over his shoulder with an arched brow. He knows he won't get away with the answers he's given Alexis. Jack can smell it on him. "Because I don't want to admit one of two things to be true."
Jack looks down at Rick, calmly waiting for his answer.
"Either I'm not strong enough to stomach watching her pick the wrong guy... or I'm not strong enough to admit that it's just not me."
Jack nods to himself, looking down to his lap for a moment. "Both of those are based on you not willing to act, Richard."
That gains Rick's eyes, surprised as it pierces into a place Rick hadn't considered.
"You know, it's real easy to say you're against killing a man when he hasn't raped your daughter." Jack says, as if it's supposed to mean something deeper to Rick. He just keeps eyeing him.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean morals are very easy to keep until it comes time to act on them. Whether you believe your partner getting shot was your fault or not, you're the one who chose to leave. Even if it was your fault, Richard, what would leaving really solve?"
"If it wasn't for me," Rick defends himself and sits up, "they never would have targeted her in the first place! I was the one who pushed her to look into it."
"And at the end of the day, she was the one that made the decision, Richard. You know that." Jack says quickly, nodding his head toward him. "No matter what you did or didn't say, she chose to investigate the case, not you. It was her responsibility to know the consequences and live with them, not yours. The only person making you feel guilty for that is you, Richard."
"If I don't hold myself accountable, who else will?" He demands.
"You're not looking for accountability, Richard. You're looking for an excuse."
"Excuse for what?!"
"An excuse for your own cowardice." That seems to flank passed Rick's defenses, a level of truth on the matter he wasn't willing to admit to yet. "That's why you really left, Richard. But you already knew that. And the longer you stay here, or in Barcelona, or Dubai, or wherever, the harder it's going to be to go home. Because you know that even if you go back and she has moved on, you wouldn't have."
Rick looks back over his shoulder to Jack, his eyes stinging and wide with an uncomfortable level of vulnerability that makes him feel like a child. "But I can't be around her if I don't get to be with her anymore."
"Then tell her that."
"I go to see her at the hospital and the first..." he trails off, the need the defend his actions, even if they were out of cowardice, getting the better of him. He shakes his head and harshly pushes his fingers through his short hair that he had trimmed differently to more hide his identity. "If I go to her again, all she'll want to do is look into that case more so than she already is. I've already lost her once, I can't go through that again."
"Son, from what you told me," Jack starts in a different tone, "killing your partner wasn't even the real objective of the person sent after her. She'll probably be fine."
"W-what..." he stops, the thick lethargic and unsatisfying blood in his veins turning warm the instant Jack's tone shifts. "What do you mean?" He asks and sits back up and turns to face him.
"Richard, put yourself in the shooter's position." Jack says, appealing to Rick's well-tuned empathy as a writer. "You're contracted to kill a trained police detective, what's the best place to take the shot? At a funeral for a police captain where the cemetery will be filled with fully trained police detectives and cavalry or something simple like when she's coming out of her apartment building?"
Rick's mind is whipped into another state of thinking and his self-deprecation and self-loathing are left behind as he turns himself over to Jack. "If killing Beckett wasn't the sniper's real goal, then what..." his eyes haze over for a moment as he trails off before it hits him. "They wanted to send a message. Killing Beckett was just a side effect."
Jack simply stares over at his son, staying silent. He's probably said too much to get his son back on track already. Jack looks away for a moment down to his lap before taking a small breath, pulling his hand out of his pocket and looking at his watch. "It's getting late, Richard."
Then Jack stands and without another word starts around the bench and back down the hill toward town. "What should I do?" Rick shouts back, still seated on the bench.
"Look for answers, Richard, not excuses." He shouts back and disappears under the hill.
With a warm, almost tentative smile, Alexis stands up from her chair. "Thanks again for dinner, Beckett."
Kate chuckles with a smile and stands up behind the teen, grabbing her own plate. "Alexis, this is the second time I've cooked dinner for you guys. I think it's safe for you to call me, Kate."
Alexis seems to blush with nervousness as she goes to the sink to rinse off her plate. Martha finished ahead of the two of them and said she'd retire to Rick's office to watch TV for a bit. It's just been Alexis and Kate for the last ten minutes or so in relative silence. It's her second night here and she's more tired than she wants anyone to pick up on. She felt obligated to treat Castle's family to another home cooked meal, courtesy of her mother letting her in on some recipes just before she went off to college.
She couldn't get comfortable last night in the guest bed. It's as luxurious, plush, and comfortable as she remembers it being, much more so than her cop's salary can afford, but she was missing Sherlock. She didn't have the heart to leave Martha and the loft right after dinner to go back and simply decided to sleep with just a few less articles of clothing. But her and Martha left for her apartment to pack her a small duffle bag with what she needed, among which was her stuffed bear tucked in the right side against her clothes, and now sits resting on the guest bed.
Kate watches out of the corner of her eye as she puts the black pepper away and grabs the cheese grater off the counter at Alexis. The teen quickly finishes her plate and puts it in the dishwasher then turns out of the kitchen and heads back into the living room, pulling her phone out of her back pocket again, seeming to check her messages. She can hear Alexis' dejected sigh from the corner of the kitchen while Alexis pushes her phone back into her pocket and looks over to the wall at the clock. She can see Alexis' eyes distance themselves from reality as she seems to be thinking something before coming up with an answer and shaking her head, sitting back down to the couch.
She can't help but notice the girl's behavior.
Kate puts it to the back of her mind as she goes about cleaning up the mess she made making her mother's spiced sausage meatloaf.
"Ugh," an unmistakable groan comes from the entrance to Castle's office. Kate turns away from the cupboard to see Martha with her hand in the air and an impatient drag on her face. "Here I was in the mood for a timeless classic. Something like Casablanca," Martha sashays with almost a yearning sigh as she rounds the chairs in the living room, "or Claudette Colbert's brilliant performance of It Happened One Night."
Kate's already smiling at Martha's antics, lifting and waving her arms theatrically as she rounds the furniture. Kate meanders her rinsing off of the bowl she used for the pepper jack cheese simply to watch Castle's mother, clearly the one who gave Castle his love to play things up simply to get her to smile.
"But alas, what do I find playing? Yet another rerun of Forbidden Planet." Martha groans next to the couch at Alexis, shaking her head, pursing her lips, and flicking her wrist in the air.
"Forbidden Planet?" Alexis chirps, pushing herself up on the couch to turn mid-air and sit longways across the cushions. "Gram, that's one of Dad's favorite movies." Kate can barely contain her face splitting, almost gloatful smile and crocked brow as she feels herself responsible for making it one of his favorites from that night they spent out together.
It's thinking about simple, fun nights out like that that remind her that no matter what they say or what they label each other as, they were friends. They shared much more than just the precinct together.
"You don't like it?" Alexis asks her grandmother.
"Forgive me, darling, but I just find it rather childish. That's all." Martha defends herself.
Kate bites the inside of her lip, thinking back to the half-serious argument along these same lines with Josh the last time they showed Forbidden Planet on TV while she was still in recovery. "Well, I liked it." Alexis sighs and pulls out her phone again and brings her knees up to her chest, checking her phone only for a moment.
"Oh, Katherine," Martha sighs happily and quickly moves into the kitchen once she sees Kate at work on the dishes. "Please, dear, let me take care of those. After all, you did cook dinner."
Kate, still fighting an intense smile at the thought of her imparting one of her favorite movies onto Castle all on her own, isn't able to react to Martha grabbing the white plastic bowl from her hands and pushing her lightly by the arm, ushering her out of the kitchen. "No, Martha," she chuckles, "I can-"
"Katherine, you are a guest as part of this house, not- a live-in maid. Now..." Martha says slowly and turns Kate by the arms and points her toward the couch. "Go and relax. Treat yourself to some wine, put your feet up, and let me handle the rest of this."
Her eyes only glance wantingly at the wine cooler next to the fridge as she moves out of the kitchen before rounding the couch and sitting in the opposite corner of Alexis. It's a brief second that Kate notices that Alexis is simply staring at the screen of her phone before Alexis pulls her phone closer to her and hides it.
"I didn't know you liked Forbidden Planet, Alexis." Kate starts, only partly with the intention of setting herself up for a moment of gloating.
Alexis smiles with a small nod and looks back down to her phone. "Yeah, Dad and I watched it together all the time after my mom left."
Kate feels herself freeze, her smile flying off her face and her eyes staring off into a space on the rug. She replays the girl's words in her head, but... "Huh?"
Alexis looks back up with the same naive smile. "Yeah, I was home sick from school for a few days when I was eight and we stayed in watching our favorite movies."
"Y-you mean..." she tries but ends up failing, letting the words remain stuck in her throat before she realizes what had happened. Kate lets out a breath and grins, biting the inside of her lip again. "I'm going to kill him."
Kate turns over again in bed, kicking out the tangles of the plush comforter and comes to rest on her right side, hoping the dull pull of her scars will stop of she sleeps on this side. She tugs Sherlock closer to her as she pinches and punches the pillow under her head before setting it back down with a bounce. It's one o'clock in the morning and she can't, for the life of her, get to sleep. She should be exhausted, but when she tests her eyes by blinking a few times, there's not even a hint of drag, which tells her she's no closer to sleep than she was the moment she pulled the sheets back three hours ago.
She enjoyed her first full day here. Martha kept her distracted for most of the day. Kate likes talking to her. Martha's exuberant and vibrant personality is tough to contain at times and not always called for, but she can tell that her motherly instincts know when to switch it off and be nurturing. Martha knowing how she feels about Castle seems to be helping. She's not so afraid to dance around the issue and have to keep excuses and quips lined up in her back pocket in case the topic comes up. She doesn't have to skirt the issue.
And the more she thinks about all of this, the farther away from sleep she knows she's getting. Maybe she just has to go to the bathroom and doesn't know it, maybe that's why her body is keeping her awake. So with a fitful flail of her limbs to untangle herself from the bedding, her bare feet hit the hardwood and she moves to the door and into the hallway, padding on the front of her foot to avoid noise as she walks to the end of the hall to the bathroom.
But when she passes the first door on the right, a noise whisks into her ear that makes her stop and listen. And when she listens, the volume only increases. She'd know that sound anywhere. As quietly as she can, she pads over to the door and puts her ear to it, hearing the clear sound of someone's ragged breathing and silent crying. When she hears a sniffle, her knuckle is already at the door.
The knock is soft, but there. "Alexis?" She calls quietly. When she doesn't hear a response right away, but instead hears a bit of a rustle from behind the door, she tries again. "Alexis, is everything okay?"
She can hear the girl sniffle again before calling back. "Come in."
Kate slowly pushes open the door just as Alexis is clicking on a lamp at her bedside. "Hey," she starts, trying to sound like a friend and overly careful not to sound like a mother. She knows what it would feel like if someone barged into her life trying to be her own mother. She sees Alexis curled up at the head of her bed, her knees up at her chest, her laptop open and her phone sitting beside it. "You okay?"
Alexis doesn't look at her and instead focuses on a spot on her dresser on the opposite end of her room. "I'm fine."
Kate notices the signs, clear as day. Alexis has been noticeably distant and at first, she played it off as her just being uncomfortable with Kate's staying here. But there's a part of her that's telling her it's something else because she doesn't only seem distant with her but her own grandmother. She's been focusing a lot on her phone, and at first, she played it off as Alexis being another teenager glued to her cell phone until she noticed that Alexis is glued to the home screen of her cell phone as if she's waiting for it to ring.
Kate takes a fortifying breath and takes a step inside. "I don't think it would be right for me to force you to tell me anything, but..." Kate starts, taking a moment to decide on her approach. "You know, when my dad was still drinking, we'd get complaints from the neighbors sometimes." She says and sits on the far corner of Alexis' bed. "It would have been easy to just tell them that he was a drunk and that's what he does, but..." Kate purses her lips with a shrug, "he's my dad. So every time they'd complain, I'd fight it and make up excuses because... that's what a daughter does when all she has is her dad. You feel the need to protect him because if you don't... he's all you have."
Alexis's teary red eyes flick back over to Kate, wanting her to understand. And when Kate just smiles in the understanding Alexis is looking for, she nods. "Dad always said you were a great detective." Kate can feel herself fight a blush rising up her cheeks as Alexis hugs her legs tighter to her chest. "How'd you know?"
"Well, normally, I wouldn't call it out of the ordinary for a teenage girl to have her head buried in her phone as much as you have today, but usually they're doing something on it. You kinda just been... staring at the home screen." Alexis gives her a nod, knowing she's been caught. "I didn't want to think you were waiting for him to call considering that Martha told me neither of you had heard from him."
Alexis swipes at the bottom of her nose with the sleeve of her pink long-sleeved t-shirt. "I thought if Gram knew he'd been calling me, she'd force me to make him come home, so... I just didn't tell her."
Kate tries to battle the swell in her heart, knowing she finally found a line to Castle, a way into his life, a lifeline to find out how he is and what he's doing. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"I came home one afternoon about two months ago and found him in his office with the lights turned off. His hand was bloody and he looked hurt. He said that you'd woken up, but... I couldn't get anything more out of him before he told me he was leaving. I told him that I understood, gave him a hug and then he left. He called me from Italy three weeks later and he's been calling me every other day or so since then, but..."
Kate doesn't want Alexis to lose it, she doesn't want to let her off. She quickly leans forward and puts her hand down onto the bedspread, halfway toward Alexis. "But what?"
Alexis looks back down to her phone on her bed. "He hasn't called me in over four days. I tried calling him myself but I can't get through, otherwise, I would have told him you were here."
"Lex..." she hesitates, not wanting to assume she's developed a rapport with the girl, but also not wanting to sound as an invasive step-mother figure looking to take control. She knows how it would feel if some one came around at her age. No matter how good the woman, she just wouldn't have been her mother and that's the way she would have treated her. "Has he told you why he left? Your grandmother can't seem to give me a straight answer."
Alexis' eyes dilate with fear and she seems to shrink, hugging her legs tighter to herself a bit. "I-I... don't want to-"
"No, it's..." Kate lifts her hand up, giving the girl an out. "I know how it would feel having to speak for my dad."
Alexis nods, looking honestly thankful that she's not being too pushy and demanding answers. "I know he blames himself for your shooting." It's probably what she was most afraid of. That whatever Josh had said to him that day at the hospital had actually convinced him that he had a part to play in that man, whoever he is, pulling that trigger on her. "He says that if it wasn't for him pushing you to investigate, it never would have happened."
A slew of thoughts gallop through her mind. John Raglan still would have been diagnosed with cancer and would have called her, Coonan still would have murdered his own brother, Pulgatti might have still come forward with what he knew. At the end of the day, it was her that made the decision. All he did was stick by her side when no one else would. And when all the thoughts just swirl around her mind faster, it all seems to verge onto two conflicting emotions that seem to go too perfectly together in her system; absolute love and guilt.
"Alexis, Josh was the one who blamed him. He told me when I was breaking up with him yesterday that he told him to leave."
All Alexis does his nod silently and lean her head down, pressing her lips to her legs and looking away, her eyes flaring with red.
"Something happened," Kate starts, deciding to be as honest as the girl can take, and it earns her Alexis' eyes back, "when I was shot... between me and him. Something I can't remember but it changed everything, I can feel it in my gut. I..." she tries, but knows she's going to fail. Being honest with Martha proved a lot easier.
But Alexis seems to look straight through her and picking up on a silent communication that Kate is sending out. "I know he'd come back if I told him I needed him, but... but I don't want him to come home just because of me. I want him to be happy."
And I want to make him happy, she says in her mind, but stops the words.
After a long moment between them, Alexis looks back up to Kate. "You promise to bring him back?"
"I'll be on the next flight out."
Alexis nods and looks back down to her phone for a second. "Doolin, Ireland."
A/N: I would have posted this chapter this morning, but my writing isn't good enough to become a real writer, so I still have a day job, sadly. What'd ya think? :)