Chapter 36: I touch no-one and no-one touches me

The rest of the precinct gang are already at the scene. It's not pretty. Beckett looks at the room, the broken body forced into a wall safe, senses Castle standing behind her, and for the first time since she was a rookie has the acidic burn of vomit in her throat. The missing finger and the pool of blood on the floor is the last straw. She pushes back past Castle before any of the others have noticed her arrival and stands out of sight against the wall, taking deep breaths and trying very hard to maintain composure. She will not throw up at a crime scene. She will not. But in her head she can see her father's blood pooling across the floor, not that of this victim. She swallows very hard and goes back in, forcing herself to do the job.

If it weren't for Ryan's sneezing and a very childish game of Jinx, she'd have had to have left again. But Castle's ridiculous teenage jinxing – she got him back, ha! – gives her just enough irritation to get through it. When he breaks his jinx and says he'll buy her a soda, it's exactly as if fifteen years were gone, falling away like the feather drifting out the door. It's enough, for the time she needs to hold on to control. But she is very, very glad to get out the apartment and let the CS techs take over, so that she and the boys can pick up in the morning. Her control is already fragmenting, and she needs solitary time and space in which to reassert it.

"What happened there?" Castle asks, as soon as they're out of earshot.

"Nothing. I'm fine."

"Really." It's not a question at all. "You looked like you were going to throw up. You backed away from the body. You've never done that before. So what's wrong?"

Beckett doesn't answer that, because she doesn't want to think about why she might have reacted so badly. Instead she deflects. "It's time I went home. I need some sleep before we get started tomorrow. Thanks for the dinner, and the wine. See you in the morning."

Castle clamps an arm round her and stops her walking on. "You're avoiding the question. What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I'm fine. I'm just tired."

"You're not fine. You're still green and you are not fine at all. You were crying earlier, you were on the edge of vomiting at the crime scene, you're shivering now and" – he has a sudden blinding realisation about the blood puddling wetly on the floor at the scene – "and it's all because of your dad." He's scared that left on her own she'll go back to that horrible contemplation of the dark and her guilt. He can't deal with that. His tone shifts, without any consideration at all of how Beckett is likely to react, to absolute this-is-how-it-will-be determination. "You're coming with me. You're not going home on your own."

"Don't be ridiculous. You can't tell me what to do. You're not my dad" – but that furious statement finishes her off. She doesn't have a dad any more to tell her what she should or shouldn't do. She's only got herself. She rips herself away from Castle and is five fast strides down the street and hailing a cab before the first tear hits her cheek. She's in it and giving the address almost before he can catch up to her, ramming the misery back down before he can see it. She doesn't want Castle holding up her own weakness to her before she's even had a chance to work it out herself. It's too much to bear: she needs to work through it in her own time, not be sucker-punched with the truth.

He only just makes it inside before the cab takes off, and the door is still closing as it does.

"You are not staying on your own tonight."

"Says who?"

"I do."

"You and whose army? I can manage on my own perfectly well. I don't need company."

"I don't care," Castle says unflinchingly. "You scared the hell out me when you were up at your cabin and you're not doing it again."

"What? How did I scare you? There was nothing you needed to be scared about. I wanted to talk to you a couple of times because I was upset and talking to you helped. That's all."

"Right. So spending twenty minutes in the middle of the night talking about whether the most famous suicidal cop in history felt guilty for not solving his case and killed himself because of it when you've just lost your father and you never solved your mother's case is a normal topic for casual conversation? Of course I was fucking scared. I had no idea what you were thinking of. Just like I've got no idea right now."

There is an appalled silence. It lasts all the way to Beckett's door, where Castle simply follows her in. She's not arguing. She's not talking at all. She is, he thinks, in wholesale shock. She takes off her badge and gun with all the conscious thought of an automaton, locks them away, and sits down on her couch. Now she's in clear light, not streetlights, she's as pale as she was immediately after the funeral, shrunken into her clothes, and clearly inhabiting the next universe over. She's certainly not connected to this one.

With some difficulty, Castle stops himself saying anything more. Instead, he searches Beckett's kitchen for coffee, finds what looks like the entire annual production of Costa Rica, and puts the kettle on. He needs some space himself, because he's only one tiny, tiny step from doing something entirely stupid; he's only one ill-disciplined word away from telling Beckett why all this matters so much to him. So he's making coffee, for himself at least as much as for her, and hoping that he can calm himself down by doing so.

He places a steaming cup of coffee in front of Beckett. She pours half of it down her throat without drawing breath, or, apparently, suffering a scald, and gradually some colour returns to her face. Castle sees it with some relief and reckons that he can now sit down close to her. But he still wants some explanations, and he intends to get them.

She hadn't thought of that. She really had not thought that she might have scared Castle, or that he might worry; then or now. He shouldn't have been scared, a resentful little voice, fuelled by unacknowledged guilt, nags. He should have trusted that you're not like that. He didn't need to get in the cab and come back with you. She'd have been fine without him. She'd have made her own coffee and pulled herself together and had some private space to deal with everything at her own pace, not his, and then she'd have gone to bed and slept just fine.

Yeah, right, contradicts a nastily truthful little voice. It sounds horribly like Lanie. Like hell. You'd have sat up for hours and then you'd have hardly slept and then you'd have gone to the precinct regardless of orders.

That's nothing to worry about, she argues back. That's normal.

Only for you, Lanie's sharp twang points out. You're the only one who thinks it's normal. The rest of us have a life.

Her fruitless argument with herself is getting her nowhere and steadily winding up her unacknowledged guilt and anger at worrying Castle, which is mixing into her likewise unacknowledged guilt and anger about her father's death. When that's nicely poisonously brewed, it all adds to her innate response to any trauma at all, which is simply to bury everything as deep as she can manage under layers of work.

Then she realises that her coffee is gone but Castle is not. In fact, he's very emphatically present, and despite his finished coffee he's not taking any steps to go. She doesn't have room for explanations, tonight. She's too tired, and the shock of him shoving the similarity between her father's collapse and the victim's pooling blood right down her throat is too much right now. She just needs time and space and to make it to tomorrow and then she'll be in a better place to talk. She looks full at him.

"I wouldn't have," she says bluntly, and stops hard.

She simply does not get it, does she? He'd been terrified, that dark late night. He's still scared by it now, and by her behaviour at the crime scene, and he's hurt that she locked herself in his bathroom and cried on her own rather than letting him make it better. And now she's not helping him calm down again by pretending she can do it all herself when he's sure she can't, and because he's angry and scared and upset he can't simply leave her words lying there and wait for more.

"You did a damn good job of making me think you might," Castle says uncompromisingly.

"You thought I might. Well, you were wrong." Her voice is just as uncompromising as his, and underneath she's furious that he's forcing this discussion now. "So you needn't worry. You said yourself you're not my minder. I'll be fine."

"How was I supposed to know that? You won't talk about what's wrong and you just run off and hide on your own and then you call and talk about fucking suicidal cops and being cold and want me to keep you warm. But you don't tell me anything and worry the hell out of me" – his voice is bitter – "because big bad Beckett never needs to explain anything to anyone." His annoyance spills right over. "You run away and then you call and need something and scare the fuck out of me and then you come back and expect everything to be just the same and don't explain. Just like you used to. You haven't changed at all."

"So that's what you think," she says, as calm and cool and uninformative as a pond on a still day. "I see. Don't worry about me, Castle. I wasn't going to take the easy way out and eat my Glock. I'm sorry for bothering you. I shouldn't have contacted you at all while I was away. I'll see you in the precinct tomorrow."

There's a bitter, ghastly silence.

"Go home, Castle. This was never your problem." Her voice drops away. "I should never have involved you in the first place." He doesn't move.

"What do you mean you should never have involved me?"

"Go home. I can't deal with you too. Please just go home." No matter how hard she tries, her voice is cracking on the words. She won't fall apart with him here. Her neediness is screwing this up anyway: she won't make it worse. If she can just get herself under some sort of control then they've got some chance. If she carries on down this line of asking too much they haven't any chance. He just needs to go and let her sort herself out in peace.

Castle is too hurt and angry to notice the break in her voice.

"Fine. If that's what you want I'll go. If you think you can do this all yourself then go ahead and try." The door slams behind him.

He's halfway home, fast furious strides eating up the mile or so to Broome Street, when he starts to realise what he's done. He's backed her into a corner and shoved reality into her face instead of waiting for her to talk and she's decided he makes her life harder. So she told him to go and he did. He tries to call, but no matter how often he dials, all he gets is voicemail. (He'd rung the bell endlessly, but she'd never come down.)

Back in her silent, still apartment, Beckett has washed the coffee mugs, washed herself, and, wrapped in a robe that should be far too hot for the June night, is doing what she does best: burying herself in work. She doesn't need to be in the precinct to consider the crime and the first steps that she and the boys will need to take, and if she's not in the precinct she's not, technically, disobeying Montgomery. She starts to write, and, when it sounds, ignores her phone. Then she switches it off. The chirping is distracting her, and she needs to concentrate on her work. She doesn't have any ability to talk to anyone right now. Far too late, she falls into bed, far too early, she rises, and starts again. She arrives in the bullpen shortly before the start of shift.

It's fair to say that Montgomery's not impressed to find that Beckett is already on a new case and was out on it – even with Ryan and Esposito there – at midnight on her first day back. But he can't argue with her, because she'd had the call from Dispatch, and he is especially in no position to argue since he himself had forgotten to tell Dispatch not to call her in. He kicks himself, hard. However, it seems that she only showed up a few minutes before shift started, which is within his tolerance for variations in travel time.

Beckett ignores Montgomery's beady eyes on her and concentrates on her murder board. Maps, information and possible timelines appear. Ryan, Esposito and preliminary results also appear. Castle does not appear. This is a considerable relief.

When he finally does show up, she's so deep in the case that it's easy to treat him just like she does Ryan or Espo. Friendly, neutral, and absolutely no hurt or upset at all. She thanks him when he gets her coffee from the break room, treats his suggestions just like she normally would – and makes absolutely sure that she's never alone with him for a second. She manages that right up until the victim's daughter has come in and her interview is over, and even then it's fine until the elevator doors close.

"I tried to ring you last night," Castle opens.

"Oh?" She's not going to have this discussion. He's made himself perfectly clear: calling from the cabin had been one step too far. He'd been fine when she wasn't trying to lean on him: in the bar and at dinner. Okay. She can live with that. She simply won't lean on him. "I must have been asleep."

"I…" He founders on her calm, friendly demeanour, which somehow manages to be wholly off-putting. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I was just worried."

"That's okay. I didn't mean to bother you. I'm sorry too."

But although that sounds sincere, she maintains a deliberate physical separation from him, and it doesn't seem in any way like everything's fixed. At the end of the day she claims to have calls to make, disappears before Montgomery can cast a disapproving glance her way to indicate that her presence should become absence, and later on her phone is constantly busy.

The next day, and the next, are just the same. The boys and Montgomery have picked up a serial offender, who turns out to be a complete washout. Beckett continues with perfectly normal friendliness and not a single jot of anything more. Every time Castle looks at her he can see the shutters in her eyes and behind her expression: nothing revealed except the same casual interactions that she has with the rest of her team. It only changes when Montgomery tells her that they'll have to let their serial offender and best – only – suspect go if his alibi checks out, when sheer frustration replaces it.

He finally finds her in the old range in the precinct basement, firing off shots and in no mood to talk. Even some deliberate winding-up doesn't lighten her mood, though her annoyance is not particularly directed at him, more towards the world at large. Matters improve somewhat when he gets to have a go, and with a little bit of intentional klutziness Beckett has at least touched him. It's just a shame that it's more impersonal than his doctor and involves less interesting areas. She's not wholly impressed with his real ability, either, but since he's not dead yet, and she's agreed to let him take the files home, it's a positive.

"You could come round for dinner and we could look through the files together," he suggests. He needs to find a way to bring back the Beckett who actually talked to him about real issues, however limited that talking was, the Beckett who'd leaned on him when she needed to; because right now he might as well talk to a wall for all the depth of personality she's showing. The wall would certainly show more of what it was feeling.

"Sorry," Beckett says, "I've got things to do." She doesn't offer an alternative. It's all so perfectly polite and friendly that his annoyance is wholly unreasonable. She's not doing anything at all that he can object to: she's treating him just as she does everyone else. But she's shut him out, and shut herself down, and now he not only has no idea what's going on in her head, he has no idea how to mend matters. She's closed her doors on him, hidden everything: she's missing at lunchtime, she's never within reach, she's going home at end of shift claiming things to do and people to see, and her phone has been constantly engaged or unanswered since their fight and despite their mutual apologies.

It occurs to him, as he trudges home with the files, that neither of their apologies actually mended or explained anything at all. Manners without meaning. And, he further realises, he started it. Again. He pushed reality in her face and demanded that she open up. He knew that every time he's pushed she's backed away and closed down. He knew that when he stepped back, she came nearer. And he just couldn't keep his fat mouth shut. He'd been angry and hurt that she wouldn't lean on him and let him help, and he just couldn't keep his mouth shut till she was ready. She'd – oh hell.

She'd smoothed it over last time she thought she'd asked for too much – oh fuck, he thinks: she thinks once again that he's upset because she asked for help: oh fuck – and that first time she let him leave perfectly happy that it was all better – except suddenly he thinks it was only he who'd felt better. She'd effectively hidden from him for four of the worst days of her life, and didn't ask for a single thing – and thought she'd asked for too much. Then he'd taken her home – and she wouldn't ask for that either – after the funeral; she wouldn't ask him up, and it was only after hours of silence and undemanding contact that she asked him to stay and hold her until she fell asleep. He'd thought then that he should respect her need for space and privacy, and doing it had worked. She'd called. Twice. And then she'd answered his text. But then she'd dropped out again. But, right back at him, but then she'd invited him out. On a date. And then come home with him for dinner a day or two later.

And now he's screwed it up. Forced the issue and tried to tell her what to do and then painted her into a corner and told her that he thought she was suicidal. Way to go, Rick. Really great way to go. He knows she doesn't show weakness easily – or at all; he's sure that he's the only one she had discussed any of this with. So telling her he thought she was weak and she was asking too much of him to support her – and that's how she's taken it – and being angry with her because he was so worried about her state, has just guaranteed that she'll never show him the slightest hint of weakness ever again. Or indeed show him anything except her friendly, uninformative, sardonically humorous precinct face. And she as good as flat out told him that she shouldn't have asked him for anything in the first place and wasn't going to ask him for anything more and she was sorry that she'd bothered him.

She won't dislike him, she won't even be angry with him. She won't be anything with him. She'll be just like she is now. Perfectly civil and friendly and happy to work with him and under it all completely and entirely aloof. In a week or so she'll probably even go for a drink with them all – but not with him alone – and shoot pool and pretend that everything's perfectly fine. She'll pretend it's all perfectly fine that – she thinks – he's ditched her.

It's not fine. She's not fine. And he doesn't have a clue where to start.

And it was all going so well... now you all hate me. They just can't get anything right.

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