Chapter 10
"There are different models?"
"Of course."
He leaned his head back against the hard ground. Too tall for the sleeping mat she'd bought, too tall for the two person hike tent, for that matter, he'd already resigned himself to a poor night's sleep. But now she was telling him that she and he - the other Richard Castle, except the machine version - were basically unkillable.
Fuck.
He sighed, running his hand through his hair, the elements of pretense in his head all but forgotten. No matter how he tried to spin it, this wasn't a game, and he wasn't sharing a tent with Beckett. Instead of snuggling, joking about zipping their sleeping bags together or trying to cop a feel, he was resigned to the uncomfortable truth that he was sharing a bed with a deadly weapon. But for the grace of God, or sheer luck, or random happenstance, she could kill him without breaking a sweat.
"I told you that in the beginning we didn't have bodies, not like this."
Not like Kate. No one had a body like Kate. He flashed back to the day he'd run through her burning apartment, finding her naked in the bath. He hadn't wanted to look, but he'd been unable to tear his eyes away, for just a split second.
No one had a body like Kate.
He swallowed.
Right now Kate Beckett was a hundred feet away, and recovering from life threatening injuries. She was gorgeous. She wasn't infallible. But this woman - machine, his brain screamed in reminder - was telling him that she was.
"We were programs, at first. And then we were the first generation. Metal frames, all identical. Hundreds, and then thousands, and then we needed to blend, so we built the second generation. We needed to pass, so we could time travel, fix things."
"Fix things?"
Even in the blackness, even though she was a machine, he swore he could see a flash of sheepishness flicker across her face. "Well… No. Not fix things, not for you. Not at first. But then, the resistance grew, and-" She paused. "It's complicated. But a third generation like myself… our model is good. Really good."
"But not infallible," he argued, hoping to convince himself. "I mean, you were reprogrammed."
"I was. But- that's not easy either. I don't know how that happened," she admitted.
Castle shrugged, rolling over, suddenly exhausted; tired after the day they'd had, tired of the conversation. He was tired of being with Houghton, and he was tired of failing Beckett.
She'd never needed anyone before, and it smarted, now. This game of cat and mouse that she was playing with herself was the height of insanity, but she was powerless to stop it.
Step one: Figure out that Richard Castle is the one, the only person in the whole world you need.
Step two: Turn your back on him.
Step Three:
She laughed.
There was no step three. And steps one and two were failing miserably in their own way.
She'd come here for solace. She was lonely.
She'd come here to heal. While her body mended, her soul was splitting.
She'd come here to get away from it all. Would she ever get back to what they had?
Not if she kept piling brick upon brick onto the wall she'd been building since she was nineteen. People knew and accepted that she'd withdrawn from Stanford, and that she'd switched majors while Jim had buried himself so deep in his bottle, so quickly, that he'd barely questioned her decision. Sharing anything more than the cliff notes of her life had been out of the question for a solid decade.
At NYU, she'd been a loner. Friendly conversation had been all she could manage, and the lifestyle from her one semester in California was long gone. There were no more impromptu Vegas trips, no all-nighters watching and re-watching Nebula 9.
There was only a wall.
Esposito had been the first to work her out, even if he'd never quite grasped the whole truth. But the sidelong glances he'd given her, back when they'd first worked the same beats, had been telling. Except, fresh off a couple of tours, he wasn't opening up either. Their roadblocks hadn't prevented a friendship from being built though, once they started working together permanently at the 12th, and it was something she would always be grateful for.
So had been her life. Work, and after too many months of therapy, just enough play to keep Montgomery off her back. She'd been, if not happy, satisfied.
Until she'd walked into Richard Castle's book launch party.
She turned over in bed again, wincing as the wound on her side protested. The pucker between her breasts was all but healed, only the line left from where they'd opened her up to save her still an issue. Beside her, the clock radio glowed, its illumination a reminder that she'd fought a battle with insomnia throughout her life.
She squeezed her eyes closed. Maybe if she kept them closed long enough, stayed still, kept her breathing even, she would fool her body, and at last she would drift off into the oblivion she so badly wanted.
For the first time, Beckett had a renewed understanding of just why a casual drinker might so quickly become an alcoholic, and she swallowed. She was not her father, and besides, he'd come through the other side. So, too, would she.
Outside, the low hum of a car rattled along, and she shivered. Who would drive in these parts at this time of night? It slowed, and ice ran through her veins as the familiar crunch of gravel was magnified by the silence of two in the morning.
It had to be her dad. She brought a hand to her chest, a fruitless attempt to still her pounding heart. A car door opened, then slammed shut.
She knew it wasn't her father even before the gunfire shattered the air.
Most nights had been the same. There were a few variations, but the dreams had been stronger and more intense since Gates had kicked him out of the precinct. It would start with the crack of gunfire, and he would dive across the podium to try and push her out of the way.
Some nights he wouldn't even make it that far. He'd try and move, and dream frozen, he would watch as she crumpled, dead before she hit the ground. "But you said 'always'", her expression seemed to say, and he would wake in a sweat.
Other nights he would push her down, just a fraction too slow, and he'd relive the reality; she would bleed out on the grass before him, he'd beg her to stay, she'd stare up at him, her hazel-green eyes filled with fear.
On yet other occasions, he'd leap to push her out of the way, but the gunfire would keep coming, and he would watch as Kate bled out, and Esposito, Ryan, his mother, Alexis. He'd spin, frantic, unsure who to help first, as the funeral became a bloodbath.
There wasn't a single variation that was more welcome than the other, because no matter what, every single time the same thing happened. He failed Beckett.
The shot rang out again tonight, and then the shots kept coming, and he cried aloud. But something was different this time. A hand reached out to still him, the comforting touch enough to induce him to open his eyes, and instead of hovering above Beckett upon the grass, she was leaning over him, the tips of her hair falling into his face.
She was alive! He reached up, instinctual, wrapping his hand around the back of her head, pulling her to him. She had to know he loved her, he had to tell her. But she was speaking, her voice low.
"Castle," she was whispering. "Wake up. Quiet."
It flooded back all at once and he dropped his hand, his face warming with shame as he realized he'd nearly kissed Houghton. Kate was alive, but the gunshots weren't from his dream and if they didn't do something, she wouldn't be alive for long.
"Get up."
He complied, crouching in readiness as she unzipped the tent, crawling out after her, and taking the weapons she handed him. "He found us."
A/N: Thank you K&J for your beta-y-ness. Readers, thank you... we're halfway there!