Chapter 29: On my own
Nothing's any better in the morning, and the acid on the burn comes when the boys, grinning, read her the dedication of Castle's second book. Of course she'd seen it before, but she'd not known the subject then. She forces the thought away, notices absently that Castle's not shown up yet, and turns to the case notes. Suddenly she remembers that the groomsman's key card was missing – he couldn't get into his room. She's just starting on the sentence "Where was the key card?" when Castle comes running in bursting with the same idea and they say it simultaneously. For a brief moment everything's right, and they're heading for the hotel and talking about the case and it's very nearly normal, for a while, like it used to be before...before everything.
The key card takes them into the groomsman's room, which leads through to the groom's room. So what's their vic doing wanting the groom's bedroom? There's all sorts of possibilities, but this is a murder so of course only the least salubrious is likely. And when Beckett finds the missing earring on the floor, tucked against the bedpost, stained with blood, it's not looking at all good for the groom. He's taken in to interrogation.
Beside her in interrogation, Castle's very tense. She can feel aggression flowing off him. That's not normal. Then again, this is the guy who's about to marry his ex, for whom Castle clearly has unresolved feelings. Marry her, that is, if Beckett doesn't lock the groom up for murder first. She hopes that Castle can keep himself under control. She's having enough problems with her own emotional control without Castle losing it.
It starts going wrong for Castle as soon as it looks like the groom has cheated on Kyra. How could someone do that, get it on with the bridesmaid while still intending to marry the bride the next day? Kyra doesn't deserve hurt like that. He knows he has issues around unfaithfulness that are part of what's driving his anger. But it's also all around his feelings for the two women who've walked away from him, one who wanted him to follow and one who doesn't. Probably.
He's having considerable difficulty separating the unsatisfactory ending of his long affair with Kyra, and the pain he never fully dealt with when she went; from the unsatisfactory beginning, middle, and possibly end of his relationship and very short affair with Kate, and the current pain which he isn't dealing with at all because he's still trying to work out how to get Kate back. It's all mixed up. Finally resolve Kyra, get closure. Finally solve Kate, get opening. Kyra, Kate, Kate, Kyra. It's all muddled: he can't separate the two.
The interrogation's beginning and he needs to concentrate on maintaining some control.
The groom asserts that the vic came on to him. That they'd had a fling before – long before – he got with the bride, but that he'd thrown the victim off and thrown her out. Castle's obvious disbelief winds the groom up and in another moment Beckett's interrogation is going down the pan as the groom accuses Castle of wanting the bride and it turns into a shouting match. It might even be true, from what Beckett can tell. But when the groom refuses to answer anything more till Castle's ejected, she really doesn't have a choice. She has to finish interrogating him and she can't hand it over to Ryan and Esposito. It's clear Castle feels she's betrayed him by sending him out, but what else can she do? She finishes alone, but there's no killer information and she hasn't enough to hold the groom.
Castle is predictably furious. He's never really understood that real cops need real, hard evidence to hold a suspect, and if she doesn't have that – and she doesn't - she can't hold him. He's taken a real dislike to the groom, and that and his…attachment…to the bride (or possibly the attachment has caused the dislike) has completely impaired his normal ability to theorise. He's biased. She's surprised how much that upsets her. She's used to him covering all the bases, and a few that aren't even on the radar. But here there's a hole as big as Manhattan in his thinking: he can't see that his cute little ex is just as much a suspect as everyone else. She has to call him on it. It's exquisitely painful, after the short return to normal of earlier in the day it's all gone to hell again in interrogation and now she's going to have to rip it all open. But the case comes before anybody's wishes. She can't and won't subjugate solving this or any other case to Castle's hurt feelings.
Castle's miserable, upset and angry. He lost it in interrogation and got sent out like a child to the naughty step. He used to have control, used to have game. For the last ten days he hasn't had much of either. For the last twenty four hours he hasn't had any. He can't sort his head out and now Beckett's let the groom go. Worst of all, Beckett's coming up to him with an expression he knows means nothing good and then she tells him he's too close to the case. Too close to Kyra. Then she tells him that Kyra's just as much a suspect as anyone else and she, Beckett, knows that he, Castle, is too close to her, because if he wasn't he'd have a story about how Kyra could have done it. He has to stay away from Kyra till the case is done. And she's right about both matters. But he can't get past his history with Kyra. The longer this case goes on, the more tangled his thoughts become. He doesn't want Kyra, he wants Kate. But Kyra's sweet, and prepared to talk to him, and Kate isn't. Especially now he's lost it and messed up her interrogation. He knows that Kate's work is the keystone of her control, and messing up that is indefensible.
He needs to resolve how he feels about Kyra, close that chapter of his story, before he can move on: he needs to separate the two different sources of his current insecurities. So when Kyra calls him, upset, wanting his company, he accepts. He'll try for closure. And anyway, at least there's someone who'll accept him at face value, accept him being protective and kind. Someone who'll prop up his battered self-belief.
They meet on the same roof they used to, twenty-some years ago. For a while, reminiscing about what they used to do there, who they used to be, it's all safe and comfortable. The history begins to drain the poison from Castle's wounds, brings everything into perspective. Kyra's still lovely, but he's grown up. Grown away. It's all sorting itself out in his head, until she tells him that the groom admitted that the bridesmaid had come to his room. It's clear that Kyra's desolated by it. All Castle's dislike of the groom, all his instincts to protect and suppressed need to fix things that he hasn't been able to use with Kate, reassert themselves, merge into an overwhelming need to comfort Kyra. And so he pulls her into a consoling hug, intending to stop there, but when she looks up at him with tears pooling he leans down to kiss it better.
As soon as his lips touch hers he knows it's the wrong kiss.
It's the wrong woman. She's too soft and too cute and too nice and too small. She doesn't feel right against him, she doesn't fit properly in his arms. All the confusion of the past days drops away and for the first time since he saw Kyra again his mind is clear. He shouldn't be here. He'd truly loved her once, but in the intervening years, two marriages and one child he's changed. In the last year and a half, he's changed far more. And in the last six weeks, he's changed beyond all imagining. She isn't what he wants, she isn't what he needs. Most importantly, she isn't the woman he loves. He's finally over Kyra.
He raises his head, holds her for a moment, but they both know that this isn't where either of them needs or wants to be.
"Guess this is it, Rick. We can't go back in time. We've both moved on, found other people. I've got Greg and you've got your Detective." Castle makes a small pained noise. If only he did. "Time for me to go home, Rick."
Back in his loft, late in the evening, Castle's painfully working through some self-analysis, gradually unpicking his residual issues after Kyra left him from the new ones which all stem from Kate. It's not what he'd call an enjoyable experience. But if he doesn't unravel how he feels, then he's never going to be able to deal with how Kate might feel. So slowly he disentangles the threads.
Firstly, Kate is not Kyra. That's important. Well, duh. It's important because Kate won't react like Kyra did. She's older, experienced, and damaged. So treating her like a cute nineteen-year old was never going to work. She's an adult. That means not making decisions for her, however much he wants to. He processes that he was wrong not to let Kate go home when she'd wanted to, to trick her into staying, even if he thought he'd done it for the right reasons.
Secondly, Kate's life experiences mean that she doesn't rely on others. (he winces at the psych-speak. But he knows it's true.) Kyra at least had a family (even if it does include the mother from hell) to support her. Kate hasn't had anyone. She doesn't expect support, she does expect to be let down. So it's hardly surprising that she didn't just open up and tell him all her secrets and lean on him. Trust takes time. He needs to give her time. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't push a bit. Pushing, that long dark night at Kate's apartment, actually wasn't as much of a mistake as he's been thinking. It's the only time Kate opened up at all. And then he let her close down again because he didn't ask anything more when he had the chance, and then when he did ask she was already spoiling for a fight and it was gasoline on the fire. He'd let Kyra walk away because he wasn't willing to take a chance and push for what he wanted. He's coming damn close to doing the same again here, but this time he's got time to correct it.
And finally, trying to protect someone whose whole life is defined by protecting others is just plain stupid, not to mention patronising. There's a balance between support and protection, and he needs to keep on the right side of it. Kate is not Alexis, not his mother, not a college kid. She might need help but she doesn't need mothering. Smothering. She needs a partner, not a parent.
Okay. So. Don't protect her. Don't make decisions for her. Do push, carefully. In fact, exactly the opposite of how he behaved with Kyra. Of how he was behaving with Kate.
He'd better sleep on that. It's been a high-tension day and that might be skewing his thinking. Review in the morning, and if it's still right, then start to act. He's made enough mistakes through acting without thinking it through carefully first. He doesn't need to make any more.
Over in her own apartment, Beckett is also doing some thinking. Partly about the current case, partly about her mother's case, partly about Castle. None of it is either particularly satisfactory or particularly productive.
The current case is not going well. It wasn't the groom: everything tells her that. It wasn't the missing groomsman: he was out of it on roofies. And no matter what she'd said to Castle, there was no way it was the cute little bride. She'd known that even when she told Castle he was too close. She shies away from that thought, not willing to hear the small voice telling her that she'd only told him to stay away from the bride because she didn't like how close they were. In fact, she was jealous. She doesn't like that thought. She broke it off. She can't be jealous. She adds that whole mess to the over-stuffed lockbox of thoughts she doesn't like.
Then there's her mother's case. That's not going well either. After that brief breakthrough (and that had been based on the information Castle had found – that's another thought for the lockbox) she's no further forward. Familiar feelings of guilt and inadequacy surge up. All her nightmares are back. Talking about them hasn't given her any control over them at all. Except, of course, she isn't talking about them. It was just that once, which didn't go near the underlying reason for them. And she hasn't got even the temporary fix of sex to keep them away, let alone any more fundamental relationship where she could safely admit to them. Because you threw it away, whispers the annoying small voice. She tells herself that it would all have ended the moment Castle saw his miniature ex anyway, and adds it to the lockbox.
That brings her to her other problem. Castle. That's just such a confused mess of wrongness she doesn't even begin to know where to start. She broke it off, because he was overprotective and trying to make decisions for her. Well. That's not quite true, is it. She broke it off because she was scared to give it a chance. Scared to get in deeper. Yes, he was overprotective, but that was just an excuse. If she'd tried, she could have dealt with that. Anyway, he was only with her because he pitied her. One night where he felt sorry for her because she was crying: that's where it started. One night where he felt sorry for her because of the nightmares and chose not to let her go home: that's where it ended. But that's not exactly true either. She chose to start it up, before dinner at Jean-Georges, and she chose not to call him on the protectiveness but just to break it off instead.
Whatever the truth, she broke it off, and it's over. Now she needs to get past it. Him. But having him follow her around is not helping. Why's he bothered coming back, anyhow? She's perfectly certain he's got enough material for another five books. It doesn't make sense. It can't be to see her, because if he'd cared about that he'd have tried earlier. You wouldn't even have opened the door if he had tried, whispers the small voice. She hates seeing him with the ex. You're jealous, girlfriend, says a voice that sounds rather too much like Lanie for comfort. You want him back. Better accept that you weren't casual at all. Every time she sees him she remembers how good it was, how he made it all better, how he'd listened on that long dark night. It's all too messed up and unhappy. She can't untangle this knot of mixed-up feelings. She wants him back. But she doesn't want him back if all he feels is pity. And she's too isolated, too locked down, too proud to show her feelings: too scared to talk about it.
