I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Dirge Without Music"
X
Fate is resistant to change. Trying to alter it is like groping in darkness, feeling his way through events beyond his control. Then he'll stumble on something that he can change. There's no predicting what it will be, or if his change will actually have an outcome…let alone the outcome he wants.
X
His heart is pounding as he waits for her phone to ring. Now. Now is when I can change it.
It rings while Kate's cleaning cupcake off her fingers, and he answers. A voice—Vikram's voice, and he has to suppress a twitch of anger when he hears it—asks for Kate Beckett.
"I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number," Castle says.
"But it's—"
He hangs up. Let this work. Let me change things.
"Who was that?" Kate asks while she fastens the bracelet on her wrist.
"Wrong number. At least I think so. Most of what they said was in Spanish."
She laughs and kisses him goodbye and heads out the door. And though he hopes he's done it, his writer's brain knows differently. It won't be that easy.
And it isn't. The rest of the day unfolds just like it did before.
He tries telling her, begging her to not pursue it. But Vikram's contacted her at the precinct, and told her about the phone call, and the lie. Castle's change only drives her further away from him. Fate's not quite as cruel this time—Alexis and his mother are spared—but that's not good enough.
X
They're on the swings, and she's telling him about the request to run for state senate and that she aced the captain's exam.
"I don't know," he says. "As sexy as 'Captain Beckett' sounds, I don't think it's right for you."
She regards him quizzically. "Why not?"
He shrugs as casually as he can. "Meetings and paperwork don't really sound like what you'd find enjoyable in the long run."
After a long moment, she nods. "Maybe. But I don't know about Washington either. I got a taste of that with the AG's office."
She ends up going with the state senate run, but that doesn't keep her safe. He doesn't know how or when things go wrong, only that she doesn't come home one night, and they find her two days later. Her death's considered a mugging gone wrong, but he knows better.
Artifact in hand, Castle wishes himself back to another time. Further back this time. He's ready to go back as far as it takes, do this as often as it takes. Terrible trials that only the worthy can endure, he told her once, and he steels himself for the trials to come.
X
He'll keep rewriting the ending, even if it kills him. And it does. More than once. Because fate doesn't like being rebelled against, and sometimes it swats aside his attempts to change it.
It weakens his grip at a crucial moment and the Hollander's Woods killer's knife doesn't make a harmless nick but bites deep, too deep, and he bleeds out on the floor.
It traps his arm when their car goes into the Hudson, and the river's filthy water fills his lungs.
Sometimes fate swats others aside.
It has Cole Maddox throw Kate not just to the edge of the building but off it completely.
And in Paris…he can't bear to think about what fate deals to his daughter.
He keeps the artifact with him at all times. If it isn't on his person then it's within arm's reach, so he can at any moment, even in his last moments, find another path to their ending.
X
On several occasions, he takes a different path completely.
He goes back to his and Kate's first case together. And instead of standing there while she walks away after whispering You have no idea in his ear, he follows her. Wines and dines her. Becomes her lover that very night. And it is amazing, it is extraordinary, but it's like a firework—dazzling sparks and flash and no permanence. They aren't ready for each other yet.
Once—and he's not proud of it, but he's so tired—he takes the offer to write about a British secret agent. He moves to England and writes spy novels and learns to love tea instead of coffee. He and Kate exchange e-mails once in a while, but that tapers off after six months or so, and after that she's just a name on his Christmas card list. He becomes drinking buddies with a retired progressive rock guitarist who introduces him to a woman named Holly who becomes his girlfriend, and he's content. For a while. And maybe it's because he knows that there's a possibility for him to be more than content, or maybe it's because he's as addicted to Kate as he sometimes thought she was to her need for justice, but he writes a farewell note to Holly and takes hold of the artifact once more.
X
He thinks he knows what to do now.
In a way, it reminds him of the case of that little girl whose assassination could have sparked World War III. It's the little things that he needs to change. Small tweaks along the way. Things that won't rouse fate's ire.
He talks more to Kate in the early days of their relationship. Tries to make sure his contentedness isn't mistaken as boredom or complacency. Reveals more of who he is. Builds her trust not just in him, but in them.
And she does get the offer with the AG's office, only she doesn't keep it secret. They talk it over, and he doesn't dissuade her—he knows better by now. But one night, when they're discussing the offer, on his couch with wine glasses in hand, she mentions that she could use the department's resources to find evidence against Bracken.
Now. Here is the linchpin. Careful not to overplay his hand, he gives an approving nod. And then: "But…if it's not part of an active investigation, couldn't you get in trouble?"
She giggles and takes a sip of wine. "So it's your turn to be the voice of reason?"
He shrugs. "I have my moments. Once or twice a year."
"More like once or twice a decade." Kate stares into her wine glass for a moment, swirly the contents thoughtfully. "It's…no, you're probably right."
Letting the subject drop is one of the harder things he's done. He lets it all play out as it has in the past: letting her go to DC, getting poisoned (and wondering the whole time if fate will swat him aside again and keep the antidote from him). Then she's fired, just like it's happened before.
He doesn't want to ask, for fear he'll jinx things. But one night, they're strolling home from dinner. She walks a lot these days, to take her mind off the restlessness that comes from being between jobs, and he can't reassure her that the NYPD will take her back soon. Kate's quiet this night, and he asks what's wrong.
"A missed opportunity," she says.
"The DC job?"
Kate shakes her head. "Not the job itself…in the end, it wasn't the right fit for me. But I could have tried to dig up something on Bracken."
"What happened?"
"I thought about it, but I figured it was a bad idea while I was still on probation." She sighs. "Now I wish I'd done it."
No, you don't. "We'll find something," he assures her. "Some other way. We always do."
She stops, and smiles up at him. "You know, I think you're right," she says, and kisses him.
Her kiss tastes like hope.
X
His heart is pounding as he waits for her phone to ring.
It doesn't.
She fastens the bracelet on her wrist, kisses him goodbye, and heads out the door.
He goes to the PI office and spends an uneventful day there with Alexis, going through the cases and ordering in pizza. There's no phone call from Espo. No crime scene with a pool of blood and Kate's bracelet. He does get a call from Ryan, but it's just to pick his brain about pediatricians; Ryan's coverage has changed, and he needs to choose a new doctor for Sarah Grace.
Castle leaves the office and goes home, where he channels his nervousness into making spaghetti carbonara for dinner. Kate arrives home ten minutes after he expects her—the ten longest minutes of his life.
He greets her with a kiss and a glass of wine and "Oh Captain, my Captain." Over dinner she tells him about her first day in her new role, and afterward he can't recall a thing she's said. He's too busy drinking in the sight of her, reveling in the ordinariness of their day. That night, he holds her by a waist that's unmarred by a bullet graze and after she falls asleep, he keeps close to her all night long.
He spends the next few days on tenterhooks, not daring to hope that he might have finally, finally changed their fate. He keeps the artifact with him always; it's been so long since he's needed it. He doesn't risk hoping he never will again.
And when a week has come and gone—seven days, a number that seems safe—he relaxes. He can probably never let his guard down fully, or at least not for years. But he feels safe enough in their new fate that he slips out of bed late at night and goes into his office.
Though he's always had a vague, nondenominational belief in a higher power, Richard Castle has never been one for prayer. He goes to his knees now, though, much as Ebenezer Scrooge did after his Christmas Eve visitations, giving thanks for the fate that was spared him and the life that lies before him and all his loved ones.
One last chapter (or maybe two, depending) should give us a glimpse into the future. Don't worry. It's a happy ending.
For any who were upset by the deaths mentioned in the previous chapter and this one: I honestly didn't think to include a warning because none of them are permanent. I'm sorry—I'm a johnny-come-lately to fanfic, and the convention of these warnings is new to me.