Chapter 37 – A Cause Worth Writing For

"It will work out, Richard."

He felt this mother's soft hands lay over his. It took only a moment, but the unrelenting tremors that had possessed his hands since signing his name on the final custody agreement began to recede under her warm touch. With her other hand, she gently freed the scalding hot quarry from his grip and put it into the sink. "You'll be a great dad… but darling, for future reference, chicken soup isn't supposed to look like lasagna."

"How will Alexis ever understand…?" He shook his head ruefully. "Meredith, putting her career before her. Who does that? Who would ever do that to a child?"

The time it took for her to refill the small cup with a new mixture of chicken broth and noodles was all the silence they shared- anything beyond that, no matter how dour and depressing the day had been, and he would have surely checked her pulse.

"I've never told you why I stopped acting, have I?" she hummed in thought as she sat the cup by a simmering pot of water. "Since you're deep in the doldrums of being dark and brooding, I'm sure you won't mind a little tale."

With a shake of his head, he sighed. "Not now, moth-"

"The stage and marital bliss aren't so different, you know. Parts to play, roles to take. Well, you know the dance, I suppose. It had been years in the making, just like you and Meredith," she said in an almost apologetic way. A frown crept over his cheeks. What did she that he didn't? Was their ending inevitable?

"I was in the wardrobe and make-up room, holding the script for Guys and Dolls in my hands. To my left? There you were scribbling up a storm with an orange crayon on the walls. I thought to admonish you, to beg another one of the girl's to babysit you while I went over my lines. But, I took one look at you and you were… glowing. Nary a hint of worry or care in the world except for the crayon in your hand."

"I'd never seen a child smile the way you do when you're creating something. And you know what? Something extraordinary happened. Something punched me right in the gut in that moment. Thoughts I'd never even considered entertaining appeared," she snapped her fingers, "like the ghost of Christmas Future."

"Or intuition." He supplied.

"You're the wordsmith, Richard; I just know what I felt."

"And what was that?" He replied while watching her pour the water and set the steamy cup down on the counter.

"One door was shutting," a few well-worn lines in her cheeks deepened as a curiously wistful look passed over her features. "Another, my boy- another door was opening."

"I looked back down to that call sheet and asked myself, why spend my days crafting a piece of magic for strangers when I could create a whole world of it just for you? Right then, I knew my life was never going to be the same. It was as scary as hell letting that script fall into the waste bin, even worse going to the director for a smaller part to give me more time with you. But you know what? It was the best decision I ever made. Parts to play come and go, sometimes you're an extra, sometimes you're support. Sometimes you're the lead…"

With two gentle hands come to rest on his shoulders, she turned him to face her.

"… And being the lead is great. You're the center of the world, the apple in everyone's eye. But the problem is you're not the one calling the shots, not when it matters. When I saw you in that moment, for once there was a part of my life where I knew that role didn't belong to me anymore. I wanted to be the playwright. Those times are the ones that matter, kiddo. The times that you have a door in front of you, and for all the smarts you've got, you don't know what is waiting on the other side. And no matter how hard you try to turn away from it, something keeps pulling you until you have to decide to keep it closed- or step beyond the threshold. You turned out to be the best gig I ever got."

"It doesn't matter why or how Meredith left the two of you, kiddo. All that matters right now is when that little girl upstairs wakes tomorrow morning, you're going to be the one that stayed." Martha flashed a demure, toothy smile as she gave a quick, light thump against the nearly depleted bottle of Chateau Roquefort Blanc. "Oh, enough with the sentimentalities, I say. Tonight we celebrate yours and my granddaughter's freedom! Now, be a dear and fetch some more of the bubbly stuff for me."

Intuition, like any catalyst, came in many shapes and sizes. Mothers for their children, cops for their survival, the examples were as plentiful as the range of stories such a trait invoked. Often times, its occurrence felt transcendental- as if the hands of the Fates were imparting their power, and if only for one brief moment, one was able to peer into the murky beyond and wrest their destiny from misfortune itself. It was life-saving, life-altering. It was a primer for a happy ending- or a legendary beginning. Yet, for any author worth the ink they put to paper, things were not as simple. A teller of tales knows that even a gut check comes with variables. Such an ability has a price.

It was the life-blood of a writer to not only glimpse into the future, but to plot it, build it. It was theirs to shape or to destroy. The future was the easy part. After all, there had been many instances in the blue-eyed author's illustrious career where he knew the end long before the story ever had flesh.

For him, intuition was a tool to wield instead of an intangible, guiding hand. He would see the damsel in distress, the stand-off, the glorious hail of lead and adrenaline pouring over the hero before he even knew their names. In the world of creating thrills, that's all that mattered. In his formative years, he assumed the hallmarks of a good story weren't all that dissimilar to good sex: the agony and the ecstasy of the climax, the achingly raw awareness of the moment, and the grandeur- the immortality- of an unrepentant, satiating ending.

He always knew the moment he wanted, and that was the problem. That was his solemn charge, his only goal while spinning a yarn or two. If the moment was indifferent in any way or such heights were skirted in lieu of baring its baser soul, then the story would not have been the same, its power and its pull all but depleted. But that was before he met his muse, when stories were novelties and thrills were dispensable. His own future was blissfully uncertain until he met her. Now he had a moment both frightening and sublime never too far from his thoughts. Yet, for once in his life, the ending was not set in stone. The moment wasn't his to shape anymore; it was shaping him.

But the moment was all he ever had, all he ever really controlled, and somewhere beyond its enthralling luminance was a dance he and the Fates would play. What would lead him there? What would he find along the way? At every step lay a new question, a new path to that elusive climax. He could see them all, each and every one as vividly as the last fork in the road. Intuition was necessary in his line of work; it gave his pen a cause worth writing for. Yet, there were no guide stones, no foreseeable markers of any sort in this- in his- timeless tale. Never before with his heart, never.

"Kate!" his voice boomed and echoed down to the darkest ends of the cavernous hall as he tumbled out of the Observation Room. Not half of a heavy breath parted his lips before his he bore all his weight on a single heel and burst into a full sprint towards the Interrogation Room.

Now he knew that the tales worth telling for years to come drew their own breath, the characters weaved their own zenith. The paths and doorways to the soul of the story were meant to be explored, to be relished, to be chanced upon- to be bravely forgotten. And with is feet hurdling towards his goal, with an infinity of memories about her growing like the tide around a solitary island, he understood why the journey held as much power as the destination.

And why some doors put up a nastier fight than others.

Case in point: the door ahead.

Whoever the Feds were that had chosen the old school building as a prime candidate to suit the needs the Day Care would surely demand, be it by keen forethought or sheer providence, had most certainly chosen well. Its old timber frame had long since been sealed between walls of reinforced concrete. In the few times the inquisitive author had opened the thick metal door leading into the interrogation room, he had remarked of its sturdiness. It wasn't anything like the wobbly, wooden mess back at the 12th precinct, nor was it smooth in its arc like the perfectly cut and measured mass that made up the gateway into his own home. Time and ample humidity had warped its threshold. It was heavy, difficult to move over the deep, jagged arc it had cut into the floor throughout the decades. It was thick, solid, perhaps so much so that it could break a man's foot should he be stupid enough to throw his weight behind the swing.

That was the running hypothesis, as it were.

But damnit, he wasn't going to do nothing this time. Rather, that was the chief thought blistering through his veins and down to the burning muscles in his thighs as his feet thundered over the linoleum floor, as his eyes burned to the direction of the imposing door. Intuition was a fickle mistress anyway.

He could still hear her weeping, wailing; her fists pounding into the unforgiving linoleum on the other side of that door with a thumping, dulled and muffled rhythm like a thrum of distant drums. She was tearing apart at the seams, and all his skill in plucking his way through the messiest of detail, all his knowledge of anything concerning his extraordinary partner wasn't helping him find a reason why.

"Beckett! Beckett, hold on!" he yelled, his muscles in his legs twitched with anticipation as he looked down the hall at the door, sizing it up. Still in full sprint, he took one more deep, shuddering breath and rolled his head from side to side. Then, he veered sharply to his left and charged into the only barrier worth destroying in that moment with all the force his towering body could muster.

His foot crashed into a worn section below the narrow, rusty handle with a an accuracy he should have been proud of, had it not been for the locomotive of nerve-cracking agony that immediately roared its way through the heel of his foot and seemed to blast its way up his body until it crashed into the sensory-laden wall of the top of his spine.

The door didn't fare much better. It didn't splinter from the force that rammed into it; no. Its rippled and aged wax veneer hid its true strength from the naked eye, and for a barricade that should have been as strong as a slab of granite, it crumbled like a rotten log. His eyes flinched shut, anticipating a hail of jagged edges and pointy ends to fly over his exposed flesh. Instead of shards and knife-like edges scraping over his mid-flight form, he was pelted by chunks of decayed wood, brittle and soft, barely noticeable through the padding of his clothes. Then he felt the cool rush of air from the Interrogation room sweep over his clenched brow. Not a scant second later, the world slipped into a blur of color.

"Whoa, wh- whoa!"

Whether it was inertia or the slippery soles of his Oxford's over the haphazard pools of still-fresh blood that sent his tumbling and falling form into a prone pretzel of limbs and grunts, the detail was utterly lost on him. A familiar fragrance pierced his fervent thoughts.

Cherries.

He picked himself up onto the palms of his hands and fell back to rest on his knees. He looked to his left, and just beyond arms reach, there Beckett was, crumpled to her knees and huddled over her own quivering form as though she was bracing beneath the fury of a ceaseless chill.

There he stilled, and waited. Waited more for some sign of cognizance from his partner, yet none came.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Details were beginning to take shape in the author's mind. Not of the woman before him or the state that made her that way. No, the details were buried deeper than that. These, like a snapshot of clues at any given murder scene, were a quarry of roots- things beyond the source. Things that held their own story.

She did not flinch when the door burst apart, or when he slid to a halt beside her. Her hands were still fixated with the blood-stained white fabric covering the two bodies she'd curled in a ball over. A finger would graze over the grizzly linen before recoiling back to her huddled form as though she had been scalded- again, and again, and again.

"Beckett…?" he whispered with no small air of confusion.

He pushed himself up to his knees, uncaring of the throbbing pain in his foot as he twisted his torso to reach her. His arm raised on its own accord, apprehensive and-

"Cas…"

His hand froze inches from the bowed and trembling curve of her shoulder. He heard a word, a mantra-like call crackling and disjointedly forming through endless, uninhibited sobs pouring from her lips.

"Castle… Ca… stle…"

His target instantly evaporated from his mind, and in its place, a new thought began to take shape. Placing both hands on the floor, he began to pull his weight over the slippery floor towards her, and all the while, he kept his gaze trained on the sun-kissed wall of honey brown hair obstructing any discernible feature of her face.

"No…no…"

From the corner of his vision, those timid hands unfurled from around her rocking waist and reached for the white sheet once more. And just as her fingers gripped the edge of the sheet, they flew back once again. Then, his eyes caught sight of the very spot she had tried to lift up. Sticking out from underneath was a pair of shoes… a pair of well-made, rather expensive Oxfords to be precise.

"Kate…" he ventured as his eyes darted between the Oliver's fallen form and her. An acute feeling of icy air traveled down his spine. "Oh, no…"

She thought it was him. She thought he was dead.

But how, he thought desperately. She wasn't the kind of person who mistook anything. Her gut was unflappable when it came to clues.

Well…

Not every clue, he thought, but if her reaction to his apparent death affected her like this, then it was rather evident his uncanniness for subtleties were found wanting as well.

Sure, they were friends and partners, but this grief, these soul-wracking wails of pure agony filling the tiny room were not for just friends, just partners. He wrote of such emotions before, but seeing them was something entirely more visceral. He could feel her sadness permeating him, and for a moment, he wondered if this was what she looked like when Raglan informed her of her mother's death. Not a single other time in his life had he seen someone so completely and openly broken. And considering this was Kate in the throes of upended sorrow, it made the visage before him that much more surreal, intimate- galvanizing.

"Kate," he said, this time a little louder.

God, she was deep, too deep to hear a single thing. He had to do something, anything to pull her out of the state she was in. Without wasting another moment, he shuffled on his hands and knees until she was within arm's reach.

"Kate!" he said sharply as both of his arms shot towards her shoulders.

"That's not me. That's not me!" He shouted, shaking her as he tried to get her attention. "Look at- damnit! Kate, I'm right here!"

Whether it was the desperation in his voice or the volume it blasted from his lungs, something broke the spell that had befallen her. In an instant, but only long as such, her gaze snapped up to his eyes. There came a shudder of air from her lips, a lilt of broken sounds that wavered and fell to the floor along with her gaze.

"Talk to me!" Castle shook her again. "I'm here. I'm right here!"

"…Rick?" She said in a quieted, quaking voice.

"It's me, Kate!" His hands traveled to her cheeks, stilling her face from veering back to the ogre's cloth-covered body anymore.

Wide, watery eyes leveled on him, unblinking and void of their piercing focus he knew all too well. "You… you're…"

"Yes, it's me!" he repeated, uncaring of the panic lacing his voice. "I'm not de-"

At once, a pair of shaking hands shot towards him, threading through his hair, pulling him closer, frantically and desperately closer to a pair of delirious, honey-flecked eyes- and the heavy breath carrying the rest of his plea met no more air. A soft pair of lips came crashing down upon his, and all the words and all the panic bedeviling his mind dissolved within the span of a muffled gasp.

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AN: More to come.