Go Out Fighting 3: Never
For the first time in five weeks, she couldn't do it.
It had taken an hour before she could walk back to the bungalow with him. And even then, she leaned on him too much. When she got to her room, she sat down on the side of the bed and couldn't move for a good long while.
He didn't call out after her; she was glad for that. The solitude of the room, the warm quiet, was exactly what she craved. She'd curl up in bed right now, but her swimsuit and cover-up were soaking wet.
After an indeterminate time - half conscious and half daydreaming - she slid to the floor and crawled to the dresser, pulled out dry clothes. It was a production getting her swimsuit off, an ordeal to even lift her hips, but finally she was dressed and sprawled out in the floor, panting.
And then he knocked on her door.
"It's ok," she said, covering her eyes with her arm and sucking in her breath in shallow little spurts.
"Phone log."
She couldn't do it. She wanted to, so very badly; she needed to solve this case. The passion for justice, finally to have justice; it was so very close-
"Kate?"
She shook her head, still breathing, tried to figure out how to get up. She needed this. But her abdominals wouldn't do it, couldn't. She was tapped out.
"Tired," she said finally, and realized she couldn't even roll to her side.
"Bed," he croaked. His voice sounded terrible. Like it got when he could barely move his jaw. She would open her eyes and look at him, but that required strength she could no longer summon.
She felt his knee on the floor next to her neck, his hand sliding under her shoulders. His other hand cradled her head as he lifted her into a sitting position; she dropped her arm, curled it over her stomach.
He was watching her, but he didn't seem overly worried. At least there was that. The benefit of having Castle around to see every debilitating, humiliating weakness was that these moments where she just couldn't anymore were barely a blip on his radar. He got it. He understood all too well.
"Get to your feet?" he asked, and she knew it cost him to speak.
But he was going to make her stand up, get in bed, and she really couldn't.
How depressing was it that the one time she wanted him to help her out here, he couldn't lift her, couldn't carry her? He needed to start eating, needed to stop giving up when it got too hard. If she had to do pool exercises until her body quit, then he had to eat, damn it.
She slid her feet under her, knees knocking into his body as he hovered over her. She used him for leverage, felt him rise with her. For a long moment, she swayed precariously; his arms came around her.
He started shuffling her back towards the bed while she was still unable to get her balance.
"Castle," she murmured, felt herself sink down to the mattress. She didn't know what she meant to say, only that it was important and she was tired.
"Nap," he said back.
He bent over her and lifted her legs into the bed, hands at the back of her knees and stronger than she'd expected. She rolled slowly onto her side, curled up to relieve the ache. Just past Castle's body, she could see the white index card written in his block print, though shaky: I love you. And she believed it.
Her eyes lifted to his but he didn't smile; he must hurt too. His hand rested at her hip, fingers brushing the back pocket of her shorts, intimate and familiar. And she liked it.
Kate closed her eyes, felt his fist dipping the mattress as he balanced over her.
His lips met the corner of her mouth and disappeared before she had the chance to do anything. He started to move away but she reached out and wrapped her fingers around that fist in the mattress, stroked her thumb over his wrist bone.
Her words were soft when she could pull them up out of herself. "You don't have to leave."
She could feel him hovering over her, hesitant or surprised, she didn't know. She didn't open her eyes, kept her hand on his wrist, waiting for him to decide. Her body was already drifting down into sleep.
Go or stay, it made no difference. She'd be unconscious soon.
And then she felt him move, his warmth as he settled in beside her, and even though she'd meant - what? for him to curl up at her back and wrap her in his heat? - he sat against the headboard and let his palm lay heavy on the top of her head.
And that was okay. She liked that too.
When he was sure she was asleep, he eased off the bed and crept out of her room.
He took half of a muscle relaxant and laid on the couch with the phone logs from Judge Markway. Castle kept a spreadsheet on his laptop of all the phone numbers that appeared often, and then those that didn't seem to appear ever again. A lot of department stores, if the Google reverse lookup was correct, which he attributed to the holiday season; Markway had shopped in the weeks leading up to Johanna's death.
He tried to remember what he himself had been doing in December of '98 and January of '99. Kate was nineteen, so he'd been almost twenty-seven, already with his first divorce under his belt and on his way to marriage number two. Damn, that was depressing.
Alexis had been five, turning six that year. That was the Christmas that Meredith had bought her a bicycle even though Alexis already had one, and it was the first Christmas that his daughter had flown to California for the New Year's holiday. Alone. Of course, by the time Kate's mother had been stabbed, Alexis was back in the city and at school.
Connecting their two timelines made his heart beat too hard; a sense of panic welled in his chest that the muscle relaxant couldn't abate. To think that he'd been moping about his daughter flying alone to her mother's while Kate was losing hers.
He saved his spreadsheet and put the laptop on the coffee table, then got up and headed back for her room, just to check.
She was still asleep, hadn't moved. He wanted to stay in bed, her bed, spend the rest of the afternoon curled up with her. But she needed this - and it was his fault she was stuck down the rabbit hole, and hurting, and he needed to fix it. The printouts were in his hands, cradled against his chest, so he turned back around and settled on the couch again.
Phone records. If he could just find something. One thing. Cell phones were available in '99 but they weren't as plentiful, so any clandestine calls would have to be to pay phones. At least, he was going on that assumption, and he could clear that idea with Kate later. He'd need a listing of all the pay phones no longer active in the city, since they'd removed many over the years.
As it was, the reverse look-up was a slow and painful process. He wished he could pay someone to-
Oh. Well. He could, couldn't he? Pay someone to reverse look-up all these numbers. That would divide the workload quite nicely, and give them the chance to take it easy while they waited.
It wasn't like Beckett had the energy to be investigating her mother's case while also recovering from a gunshot wound. She'd been hit with an armor-piercing round; her sternum had shattered and sent bone fragments through her insides, damaged her heart.
Yeah, he'd pay someone to do some clerical work for them. Black Pawn would find someone; little chance of that person being a hired killer, right?
He'd have to get Ryan or Esposito to contact the publisher for him though. He wasn't supposed to be logging into his email or using his own phone. And now that he was using the internet, he wondered if his laptop's MAC address was tagged, being searched for-
Castle logged off the treatment center's free wireless, then turned off his computer's networking.
Shit. He hadn't thought this out, had he?
Esposito and Ryan hadn't mentioned anything about it. Did they think Markway's organization wasn't so technologically savvy, or was it just that the Judge had a lot going on right now, too much to be thinking about a tenacious detective and her pesky author?
Killing Beckett now wouldn't help his case. The evidence was already out there; grand jury had heard testimony and indicted him. So surely. . .
But Castle just couldn't take that chance. He needed to get a clean laptop to do research, set up an online email account, start paying attention again.
Now that his jaw was healing - slowly - now that he wasn't worried every day that one little wrong movement from Kate was going to reopen her wound, they had to get it shit together.
They'd come after her in the hospital, had tried to finish the job. Just because the evidence was already out there didn't mean that Beckett was safe. Didn't mean that Markway was going to give up. The Judge had been doing this for years now, had all kinds of people on his payroll.
Castle wanted to protect her? Then he better start paying attention.
When she woke, rich afternoon light was gilding the bedroom. She blinked in it, hot and sweaty in the sunbeams, then slowly curled her knees up and rolled onto them. From there she could sit up with the least amount of pain.
She wobbled at first, still stunned by the light, feeling like a newborn foal, trying not to fall over.
Kate slid one leg off the bed and to the floor, tested her weight, then shifted the other foot down as well. Okay, she was okay. The pool exercises had killed her, but she did actually feel slightly stronger after all that sleep.
She'd missed lunch. She would bet that Castle had 'missed' it too. He'd have a great excuse ready, of course, but it wouldn't be good enough. He needed to eat every meal; he needed to gain some weight, some strength, some endurance.
When she shuffled out of her room, she found him asleep on the couch, highlighter on the floor, printouts across his chest, spread out on the coffee table, his hair messy from air drying. Kate slid closer and lightly put her hand to his bangs, rubbing his forehead with her fingertips and then scratching his scalp as she scraped her nails through his hair.
He stirred at that; his eyes opened. He looked rumpled and sleepy, but completely aware when he stared up at her. His slow smile was his greeting.
She smiled back down at him. "Skipped lunch did you?"
"Hmm," he hummed and scooted his body over on the sofa in invitation. He collected the printouts, dropped them to the floor next to his highlighter to make room for her.
She sat down at his hip, just enough room as he turned onto his right side. Kate brushed her fingers over his ribs, then lay down, curling onto her side as well, pressing her nose to his collarbone and inhaling. She would get up in a minute.
He wrapped an arm loosely around her back, kept his jaw away from her head. No kiss to her temple, no cheek to the top of her head. He must really hurt.
Kate felt his legs tangle with hers, didn't try to move away. He was warm and still sleepy, and she wanted to stay here.
Even after such a long nap, she still felt worn out.
His palm traced up and down her spine, pressed at her shoulder blade to pull her closer. She wriggled in and slid her fingers up his chest to his neck, barely glanced across his jaw. She felt him sigh and his head settle in above hers.
They had work to do; she'd slept for hours. It was time to be responsible again.
He shifted them, his body laying almost over hers, hips pinning her. The feel of his thigh between her legs, his chest expanding with every slow breath-
The thought of studying those printouts made her ache, but she had to do it, had to. She needed to give her mother justice, to put down the burden of her mother's case because it was finally solved, done, laid to rest.
And herself along with it. Right here. With him.