[Author's Note: Okay, yes, I suck. This evening is the first time I've really, seriously written anything longer than about two sentences in over a month—I've been that busy. On the up side, this chapter is decently long to make up for the lag. I think you'll enjoy it because I had a ton of fun writing it! Anyway, I think this story is drawing to a close here in the next four-ish chapters, but we'll see how it goes. I'm somewhat hopeful that I can finish before school starts again, so it may be a chapter a day if things are going well… I really don't know guys. All I can say is, if anybody out there has managed not to lose interest after all this time, this one's for you. Thanks for being patient!]
The morning had begun with Kate startling awake and slamming a palm in the general direction of her shrieking alarm clock. For a long minute, she had sat in bed trembling, reminding herself to breathe. It's an alarm clock, not a rifle," her logical side had rudely reminded. "Relax. The day hasn't even started, and you're a wreck."
She'd flopped defeatedly onto the pillows and pulled in a deep breath. Just as the tension had begun melting away, the same loud beeping had shot through the room. Snooze button. Of course.
After that unexpected punctuation of her rude awakening, Kate had resigned herself to another day of paranoid unease and dragged herself to the shower. An hour later, she sat at her desk, feeling her pulse rise angrily as she stared at the crime scene photos of the burnt warehouse that very well could have ended all this misery. "This is the answer… Well, for as long as it was standing, it was the answer… So, who—"
Her thoughts were interrupted as Castle sat down next to her desk, handing her one of two matching plastic coffee cups. She managed a nod and a shy smile, barely able to force herself to meet his eyes. His presence was an all too sudden reminder of the meltdown he'd witnessed just ten hours earlier. She took a sip of her familiar (and greatly missed) daily latte and wished to disappear. Whatever thoughts she'd had of coming clean about her memory had decidedly gone out the window.
The previous night, as she lay awake, she'd thought it all out. At this point, one of two things happened if she told him the truth: he could reject her, giving up on them in light of the fact that she was a certifiable wreck, or he could reject her based on the fact that she'd spent three months a pitiful liar. Most likely, it would be some of both. But if he truly still loved her enough to forgive her and give some sort of real relationship a shot, Kate had decided, they would fail.
She would fail him.
"Look at how he writes about you," she'd thought, sitting cross-legged on the couch and paging through Heat Rises, skimming for a few of the most-talked-about scenes. "How's he supposed to reconcile some kind of superhuman icicle-wielding heroine with you? You can't even sleep with the lights off anymore." It was simple logic, she had decided later on in the night. After three years of buildup, there was no way that she wouldn't be a disappointment. Upon coming to that conclusion, she'd surprised herself by starting to cry again. She had then curled up on her side, moaning a little when her too-big T-shirt twisted around her, digging in a bit to the still-sensitive scar running up her side.
Even if she didn't ruin them by being a disappointment, she decided, she'd ruin them by pushing him away. She'd have to, or she'd never solve this case. As she lay there staring at the corner of her pillow—streaked with tearstains from the mascara she'd been too tired to wash off on one day or another—the idea of dropping the case had fleetingly invaded her brain. She'd stiff-armed it aside, though, reminding herself that it was this case that was in her way to begin with. If she could solve it, she supposed, she could then reassemble herself into someone who might be worthy of Rick Castle. But until then… "Too many demons. Too much baggage… Never going to work." Kate had spent the next thirty or forty minutes picking mercilessly at her bullet mark (still hovering near the fine line between scab and scar) until she'd finally cried herself to sleep.
"Do you remember what you told me the first time I brought up your mother's case?" Castle asked, snapping Kate out of her admittedly depressing reflections. "That if you got started again, you wouldn't stop. You said it would probably destro—"
"Yeah, well," she cut in, suddenly angry with him for trying shut her down like this, "I didn't have any leads then." She shuffled files and refused to look at him.
"We don't have any now," he said gently—too gently, and it made everything that much worse. She could feel him staring, too, and it suddenly clicked.
Kate forced herself to look mostly at him, and she did her best to tell him what he wanted to hear. "You can do this. You're a great liar. You've proved that much. You haven't proven to be good for much else, but you can certainly tell a convincing lie." "Look, Castle, I got a little… emotional last night. I'm…" "in pain, miserable, terrified, confused, panicky, frustrated, lonely…" "I'm fine."
"No, you're not," he seemed to spit back at her. He refused to drop his stare, almost like he was daring her to look him in the eyes and tell him such a blatant lie a second time. She smiled a little: that was certainly a game she could play.
Just as she was getting ready to tell him off, he softened. "And you know you're not." Kate could feel the smirk melt off her face as she stared back at him. Suddenly, she felt trapped here with him, and her chest tightened in response. "You've been back here three days, and you're already in a free-fall."
She looked away, mentally winding up to try for an eye roll, but, feeling the tears start to build up, decided to leave well enough alone. She instead stared at her desk for a moment, then returned her gaze to Castle's eyes. "I'm not telling you to walk away, I'm just saying… Give it time; you know, just until you get your bearings again."
Quietly, gravely, she returned, "How am I supposed to get my bearings when someone out there wants me dead?" "You don't get it! And this is why I'll make you hate me: you just don't get it. Nobody does, Castle. Why do you think I can count my friends on one hand?! You're all the same: you don't understand, and you get frustrated, and you tell me that I'm just throwing my life away, and then, eventually, you all leave!"
"By not letting them rob you of your life." It shocked Kate a little to finally hear someone say it out loud, say what she'd known for a dozen years now that everyone thought about her: she was throwing her life away chasing ghosts, playing with fire, befriending her demons. At that, she did roll her eyes. "I promise you," he continued quietly, urgently, "we will figure this out. We're going to find them! And we're going to make them pay… Just not today."
"Castle, I can't just turn my back on her! This has been my only real, substantial goal in the last decade. How am I supposed to just take a break? And if I walk away, there is no getting better. Don't you get it? I have problems. Really big problems: the kind of problems that most reasonable, sane people would see a therapist about. I can't fix myself without solving this case. I just want to be good enough for you, so I won't screw everything up like I always do, Castle! Why are you trying to stop me from doing the only thing that'll give us a chance?!" "Castle, if I don't do this, I don't know who I am."
"You're who you always were," Rick replied gently, but with the quiet ferocity of someone who knows he's telling the truth. And it hurt. Kate fought back tears, flashing back to the previous night of restless thought and her realization that she could never live up to the image of her he'd constructed in his head. She looked up at him, barely pausing to wonder how ridiculous it was to feel a very real need for someone to tell her who she was—even if they were startlingly wrong. "You're the one who honors the victims."
"Oh… Oh, that's… different. That's possible. That's true."
"You're the one," he continued, looking toward the weary family talking to Ryan on the other side of the bullpen, "who can bring Sonja's family some peace." When he turned back toward her, Kate dropped her eyes, hoping to hide just how much she was hanging on his words.
She would have loved to hug him just then. Reach out, and cling to him, and thank him for so often keeping her from being destroyed. But that wasn't how they worked. They operated more on half-thoughts and sideways acknowledgements than on real, productive action. So she didn't hug him.
"Hey…" she called out to Ryan and Esposito as they returned to their desks. "Anything?"