Treading Water
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Always 4x23 - Part One
"Beckett, hang on."
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Her fingers cramp. Burn. The weight of her body is too much.
"Beckett?!"
"Castle," she gasps. He—came back. He's here. He—
"Beckett!"
"Castle, I—"
She loses her grip.
x
3 Days Earlier
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Beckett.
She wakes sharply, but he catches her by the wrists and presses her hands to his chest. She orients to the man crouched beside the couch, peering at her in the darkness. "Castle?"
"It's late. Or rather, early," he whispers. "Alexis needs me."
She sucks in a breath like pain. "Oh."
"She's freaking out trying to write her valedictorian speech. She graduates in three days."
Kate blinks and tugs her hands from the manacles of his grasp, scrubs at her eyes. "I forgot," she admits. He's only been moaning about his daughter's graduation for months, and she's been so wrapped in her own—
"You should come," he whispers. "To her graduation I mean."
Come?
She sits up. Wonders if he was referring to their nocturnal, uh, emissions? Oh gross—his bad jokes are rubbing off on her. She's too tired for this. "Yeah, maybe I could."
He smiles. Looks far too pleased for her half-hearted agreement. "Good. Then it's a date."
"Oh."
A date.
His thumb touches her chin—all the warning she has—before his mouth finds hers. A slow stroke of his tongue which awakens her, slow and rich. She moans, clinging to his neck.
"You taste... beautiful," he murmurs.
And then he leaves her apartment in the dead of night.
Or, well, four a.m.
When the call from dispatch comes, it's not like she's sleeping anyway. Too wired, too wondering.
She calls him next, breathless.
x
"How was the speech?" She has a crooked soft smile when she takes the coffee from him. "She get it finished?"
"She was confused, trying to borrow words from the greatest minds," he murmurs. An alleyway steaming with early morning sewer grate exhaust on their walk up to a dead body is hardly romantic, but the way she looks at him— "She'll get it in the end."
"Of course, you wouldn't understand why she's taking it so seriously. You're probably the guy who had only boxers on underneath his gown."
He can feel the sly appreciation in her gaze, loves that she teases him now, openly. "Frankly, that's insulting, Beckett. I'll have you know I was naked under that gown."
She smirks, lips twitching—he can see by the look on her face that she's imagining it.
"I stand corrected," she murmurs. She shifts the coffee cup from one hand to the other, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear as if she's nervous. "Um. What time is the ceremony? Three days from now, right?"
"Starts at five, but seven is the convocation."
She flashes him another soft-but-quick smile. "I'll be there." She glances ahead of them to where the body waits, stops him a moment with a grasp of his sleeve. "And after the ceremony? If... the father of the graduate wants some, um, company?"
"The father of the graduate most assuredly would like company. I was planning on drowning my sorrows. But now..."
She suppresses a smile and turns to the crime scene. Tosses off her rejoinder over her shoulder. "Now you'll drown them in me."
x
At the Montgomerys' house, officers going in and out of the crime scene, Evelyn showing Esposito where the burglar—also their victim—went out, Castle draws her aside.
"Don't, Rick," she says, holding up a hand.
"Me? What about you. Don't jump to conclusions here, Beckett. We can't say for sure this is related. Isn't that what you're always telling me?"
"We're not talking CIA conspiracy theories here," she hisses. "This isn't about aliens or ghosts. The connection is right in front of us."
"But you know what happens if you..."
"I don't know anything, Castle. What I know is that I follow the case where it leads."
"And?" he croaks.
"And I have a dead man in that morgue who deserves justice," she tells him.
"Kate!"
"Don't." She moves to turn away and he has the audacity to grasp her by the hand. She cuts him a look and he drops it, stepping back.
Kate ignores the officers, the setting, all of it, and rounds on him.
"Marisol Castaneda deserves to know what her husband was doing and why. Why he was murdered. Just as my father and I do, but we never got those answers. I don't see why you can't support me in this."
He remains wordless.
She stalks out.
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Castle presses both hands to his face, breathing hard.
But he has to. He promised her. No more secrets.
She answers on the first ring. "Hey. Sitting in the precinct staring at the murder board, if you want to—"
"Smith called me."
"What?" she gasps.
"Smith. He called me. Just now."
"Castle," she hisses. "You promised to not—"
"What, talk to him? I didn't promise that. I promised I wouldn't hide it from you."
She's silent. Sharply silent. Painfully silent.
"Kate. He says if you keep investigating this, he can't keep you safe."
"Smith? I was shot in the chest on his watch, if you don't remember. Keep me safe? I'm not sure he ever could."
She hangs up on him.
He stares at his dark phone.
x
The moment she gets a face on a surveillance screen, a photo of the man whose prints match those of her sniper, he knows he's lost.
He's lost her.
Doesn't mean he stops fighting.
He heads to her place that night, not sure what he'll say but knowing he has to say it. She has to listen this time.
"I know it's a needle in a haystack," she's saying, pacing her living room. "But it's something. At least it's something."
"It's—"
"Yeah, I know, it'll just be a fake ID. He wouldn't be obvious. But it's still another piece of the puzzle, a string to follow."
"Kate. You have to stop."
That brings her up short. She turns slowly to him.
"You have to stop. They know you're investigating, and you have to stop."
"I told you," she says quietly. "I will not stop."
He scrubs both hands down his face. "Why are you so damn frustrating?" he growls. "Can't you see what happens next if you keep chasing this down?"
"Not if I—"
"They'll kill you."
"Then let them come!" she snaps, stalking towards him. He flinches back and she sneers. "Let them come. I had a bullet in my chest, Castle, and I'm still here—I'm alive, while Coonan and Lockwood are dead. I'm ready, I'm more than ready for this."
"Ready for what, Beckett, a damned showdown? You know I'm the first one to back you up, but this is a war—"
"Then it's even more important you back me up," she hissed. "They want a war, I will bring it right to their doorstep."
The fight drains out of him. Desperation is a sour taste at the back of his throat.
He saw her die. He watched her die on that grass. "Don't do this, Kate."
"This is my job. This is my life."
"I'm asking you not to do this. I'm asking you, as the man who loves you—"
"If you loved me, you wouldn't ask."
He closes his eyes. The world tilts precariously away from him. "Then I guess... there's nothing else to say." He drags open his eyes, tries not to look at her. He doesn't want this to be the last— "I won't stand by and watch you throw away—watch you die again. I can't." He turns for the door, can't look at her. "This is over. This... we're over."
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Her fury flames so high, so bright, so sharp, there is no room for tears.
There's no time for tears.
They're so close. No.
She is so close.
She is so close.
She can do this alone.
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