The Final Shock

As he looked into Kate's tearful eyes, he knew this why he never told anyone, even years after
it had happened. Why should anyone else have to suffer through even the emotional trauma
of what happened if he could bear the burden of it all? Why put anyone else through that…
especially his mother. God! What was he going to say to her? Would it affect their relationship?
Would she blame herself and try to crawl inside one of her bottles? It was all too much to think
about; he needed to stay focused and finish what he'd started. She deserved to know everything,
especially after how he had treated her over the past two days. He wiped away another loose
tear from her face and then dropped his hand back down into hers.

"I started locking my bedroom door after that. I thought I was safe, but the bastard found a way
in. I thought maybe I had forgotten to lock the door. I was so scared of him coming in again that
I started sleeping in my closet and I would get up five to six times a night just to check the door
and make sure it was locked. A couple of weeks later I discovered how he got in. I locked my door
one evening and gave it a tug to check it and the door swung open. I checked the lock, tried it
again, the same thing happened. I discovered that he had put a piece of tape across the latch. I
don't think I got much sleep for about a month. That was when he took off."

"What made him leave?"

"I think it was lack of opportunity, mainly. My mother was between jobs so she was around a lot.
And he knew I had gotten smarter at avoiding him. I quit spending time with him and my mother
wanted to know what was going on. I overheard him telling her about offering me the understudy
part and he told her that I had gotten scared about performing onstage and ran away and that I
was acting like a baby. He told her it was a great opportunity and that I was stupid to throw away
the chance. She tried talking to me about it but I just played the classic teen and clammed up. Marcus
used this as his out. I think he realized I wasn't going to make it easy for him and he was probably
beginning to worry that I would talk. I came home from school one afternoon and he was gone.
Mother was devastated. I think she blamed me a little. Hell, I didn't care if she hated me, just as
long as he was gone. I never saw him again till yesterday."

Kate squeezed his hand and closed her eyes in an effort to suppress more tears.

"I don't deserve you Rick, I don't"

"What? What do you mean?

"I just realized I've made my mother's death all about me. I've been the one responsible for all the
trauma in my life, I've caused it all to happen and I've even dragged you into it and I'm sorry. What
happened to me doesn't begin to compare to what you've had to live with all these years. I don't
know how you did it, but you are so much stronger than I could ever be."

He smiled at her admission. This was the last thing he had expected to come out of this, but he would
take it. Maybe now he wouldn't have to worry about her tilting at windmills anymore.

"I'm not that strong, I cheated. I had help."

She looked confused.

"I thought you never told anyone?"

"I never did. But, I discovered this wonderful place while I was trying find somewhere safe to hide from
Marcus." He grinned and waited for her to guess.

She didn't have a clue; she just raised her eyebrows and shook her head.

"That's when I discovered the New York Public Library. That place is awesome. I didn't know it at first. I just
went there because it was somewhere I could stay warm while I avoided going home. And then one day I
was playing around with the card catalog in the adult section and I started reading some of the cards. It was
all there Kate. All the answers were there in those little drawers, written on those little cards. I could find out
anything, more importantly I could find out why…why this happened to me."

"And Richard Castle was born."

"I guess you could say that. It was the first research that I ever did. My god was it tedious! That was back
when PC's were in their infancy. I had to do everything book by book. I barely even knew where to start
looking. I think I started with Psychology books. I had to read a lot to find just one paragraph that would
send me off in another direction."

"No wonder there's so much stuff in your head. At thirteen I was reading The Babysitters Club and there you
were reading books on psychopathic methodology."

"Eventually. Aside from the difficulty of the research I also had to hide from the librarians."

"Why did you have to hide from the librarians?"

I was only thirteen. I wasn't supposed to be in the adult section. They kept finding me hiding down an aisle or
under a desk reading god knows what. They would confiscate the book and send me back to the kiddie section.
That sent me on a mission to find a place in the library where I could read and not be bothered. I found the
perfect place. The back stairwell off the adult section went all the way to the basement and I discovered a large
seldom used storage room. It looked like they used it to store old and damaged books. There were boxes of books
stacked to the ceiling. There were also some old tables and stacks of chairs stored in there. It was perfect. I had
my own private office."

"How long did your research last?"

He didn't answer right away. The question caused him to drift off again. His fists clenched and his eyes darkened.

"Not long enough." His answer was clipped and his jaw tense.

"What happened?"

"I got caught." "I got caught and they kicked me out. They kicked me out of the library and they wouldn't let me back in."
He grabbed his right fist with his left. "It wasn't fair, it was all I had." He suddenly sounded more like thirteen year old
Richard Rogers than Richard Castle

Kate was worried over his sudden mood change and it looked like he was about to rub the skin off the back of his hand.
He never noticed her hand touch his arm.

"I was all I had. It was all I had."

"What did you do Rick?" Her words went unanswered, he was somewhere else.

"Stupid bitch wouldn't let me in. What choice did I have? I needed answers. I had to have answers. Without them I was nothing!"

She gave his arm a squeeze, she hoped that part of him still knew that she was there.

"Fuckin' grown ups, telling me what to do, doing what ever they want to me. I'd had enough. I was taking control over the
only thing I could control. I was gonna show them all. They couldn't control me, not anymore." His face was in anguish.

"What happened?" She could barely breathe the words. Part of her didn't want to know. She could live with not knowing…
but he continued.

"I skipped school and I went to the library. I waited outside for a big crowd and I slipped in with them. They didn't see me.
Nobody could see me. I was invisible! I had superpowers and nobody could stop me! I went to the storage room and I undid
the rope holding together one of the stacks of chairs. I pulled a chair out into the open and stood in it. I tied the rope into a
noose…put it around my neck…and then tied it to a pipe above my head…and kicked out the chair…I hung myself…"

He started breathing erratically again as he grabbed at his throat.

"I…can't… I …can't…" His face began to redden as he leaned back in his chair and strained against the imaginary rope around his neck.

Dammit! She stood over him trying to make eye contact…they never registered her. She pulled at his hands before he hurt himself
again. "There is no rope! Can you hear me, there is no rope!"

His legs began kicking out erratically and his breathing became short frantic gasps. This went on for a minute before his eyelids fluttered,
his eyes rolled bac,k and then his body collapsed back into his chair…unmoving.

"No, no, no!" She held his face in her hands. What just happened? She quickly had her hand against his neck and her ear to his
mouth and she waited. She waited for the strong rhythmic pulse that beat against her fingers and the breath of air that caressed
her face. Relief flooded over her. He had hyperventilated and passed out.

The episode had overheated him and he was hot to her touch. She had to get him out of the sun. She reached out to the middle
of the table and opened up the umbrella that was lashed closed. The area to the right of where she had been sitting was now
shaded. She moved her chair out of the way and dragged him, chair and all into the shade. She then pulled the beach towel out
from under his shoulders and ran to the swimming pool. She dunked the towel in the water and ran back to him, placing cool wet
towel across his chest and pulling up one end to wipe at his face. She repeated this two more times before his temperature
dropped and she saw his hand move in his lap.

"Rick? You back with me?"

"Huh? What happened?"

"You hyperventilated and passed out." She pulled the towel off his chest.

He sat up slowly, like every part of him hurt to move. "I feel like shit."

"You should after what you just went through."

"What?"

"You don't remember?"

He looked around, confused. "I…"

"You were telling me about what happened in the basement of the library."

"Oh…" He closed his eyes. "…that."

"Yeah, that." She kneeled down beside him and placed her hands on his knee. "Why that Rick. Why did you do that?"
He met her eyes.

"I was out of options Kate. I couldn't get my answers and I couldn't live with it anymore."

"But it didn't happen, I mean…"

"I'm not dead. No, but it definitely happened." He leaned forward in his chair and took her by the arms and pulled her
up off the ground. "Come here." He pulled her down to sit in his lap and wrapped her in a tight embrace. She could feel
the tears as they transferred from his face to hers.

"What can I do to help?"

"Just this, this is enough."

He loosened his hold after a minute and began to talk some more.

"I don't know if it was how I made the noose or what, but I hung there choking for air for about as long as I could
hold my breath. I had time Kate, time to think about what I'd just done. Time to realize I didn't want to die, time to hear
myself screaming for help inside my head and time to claw desperately at the rope around my neck. I had time to watch
helplessly as my legs flailed beneath me, time to beg for my mother to come find me and time to piss my pants. So I think
I can say I hung myself. Why I'm not dead. I don't know. The rope broke, the pipe broke? I can't remember. The last thing
I remember is trying to make the scream louder than the sound of the blood beating in my head and then there was this
bright flash of light, and then…nothing. I don't remember how I got home. I do remember having to wear turtleneck shirts
every day for about two weeks to hide the mark on my neck, but I couldn't remember how it got there. "

Kate pulled him back into an embrace and this time it was her tears that dampened his face.

"That's what's in my head Kate. Whenever there's a quiet moment it's there and I can't block it out, I've tried. I thought at
the hotel that if I just took one more drink that would be the one that would quiet everything. And then when you showed
up I thought my anger would drive it away." He pushed her back to look into her eyes. "I'm so sorry for that."

"Don't feel too sorry, there was a lot of truth in that anger."

"Yeah maybe, but I want you to know what I did to the bathroom was not because of you. I just wanted that scream in my
head to go away."

"It's ok."

"What I did on the beach wasn't. I was using you. I was using you to make it stop and that was wrong. I was so wrong to do
that. And I'll understand if all of this has frightened you, and if we just remain friends I want you to know that's enough for me.
I can live with that."

She was determined to end this.

"What about me Rick? What about what I can and cannot live with? Have you considered that?"

Rick was flustered by her sharp reply."

"Uh…well…I…"

"I'm not about to live without you. Not now. And if you think you can use this as an excuse to run away from me and come out here
with one of your twinkies, you better think again. I'm all in. I'm not afraid, I'm not running away and I love you…for better or for worse
so you better get used to it."

"Well, I think we've just covered the worse part, so I think we could pos…"

She shut him up with a kiss that made him forget…everything.

He gasped when their lips finally parted. "That was amazing!"

"You've said that already."

He laughed and then looked at her, stunned. "Hey!...did you just propose to me?"

"God, you're slow."

Authors Note: There will be a brief epilogue to follow.