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To Kate.
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Happy Birthday B, hope you enjoy your belated plot bunnies, and that you will speak to me after this...
Thank you to Jamie for the beta at such short notice xoxo a good thing about time zones ;-)
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This occurs in the AU that 706 created so perfectly
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"I'm sorry for your loss."
The platitude slips from her lips, a hollow condolence that means nothing because if it hadn't been for her, they wouldn't be standing here. If it hadn't been for her, there would be no need for her tailored, dress uniform to have been pulled out of the closet.
If it hadn't been for her, Richard Castle would still be alive.
"Thank you, dear."
Martha Rodger repeats the same phrase as she'd said to the person before Kate, probably the same phrase that she's said to every person insensitive enough to offer meaningless words of grief, but there's a sway to the red head's stance, a tightening on her features, and it pulls at her heart.
She did this.
The younger woman - she's just a girl, really - to Martha's right pivots, her long, black hair striking against her pale skin, and as she stalks away from the group gathering to the side of the cemetery, Kate swallows the impulse to chase after her.
"Alexis, Richard's daughter, has taken his death hard. They've been estranged, normal teenage drama, but…" Martha's hand finds her shoulder, an unsteady pat against Kate's Blues drawing her gaze away from the girl's retreating form. "I did think that they'd begun to find each other again, just before…"
The ache in her heart morphs with his mother's explanation, turning into tearing pain, air unable to enter due to the shredding of every muscle, and Kate forces herself to nod in reply.
Alexis appears young. Twenty? Nineteen? And the similarities of Kate's own life, her own choices, her own rabbit hole blaze until it burns the retinas of her eyes and she closes them, blocks out the image of a life that is now destroyed.
A life ended so she could live.
It's not the hazy shadows of black that she sees though. It's Rick Castle's smile, the way it would alter somehow when he'd turn toward her, the way his face had seemed to brighten when she'd been in his company, the way he'd declared that he loved her…
And she opens her eyes with a snap. The warmth of his blood under her hands, the smell of metal that had drenched the crime scene, the taste of salt as she'd curled into the base of her tub, crying every night since, doesn't vanish though. They haunt her every step.
"I'm sorr-" This time she shuts her lips on the sorry, traps the rest of her foolishness. "If there's anything I can do, please call. Day or night."
Pulling out her business card, Kate folds it within the aged hands, squeezing her fingers against the tremor that shakes them both.
"Oh. Oh. You're Beckett? Captain Beckett?"
Martha's surprised stare flickers between Kate's face and her name and title proudly splashed across the white, and she attempts not to cringe. She hadn't realized that his mother hadn't been aware of who she was.
That he was dead because of her.
"He talked about you the last two days of his... Was ranting and raving more than usual, and your name was mentioned." Martha drops her hands, begins searching through the oversized bag that hangs from one elbow. "I found this. In my- our office."
Pulling out an envelope, the older woman makes eye contact with her and the dimness that had been present, clears for a moment.
"He was different, right before- it was like the last five or so years were erased. There was a fire in him that had been absent. A passion that had drained from him with time." The pause settles against Kate's shoulders, and she tries to place the images that she has of their time together with the Rick that Martha is speaking of. "It was like having my son back. I'm grateful that I was able to see that again. Even if only for a moment."
"I don't know what to say."
Martha places the letter in her hand, and she drops her gaze to her name scrawled across the front.
Captain Kate Beckett
"There's nothing to say, dear."
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The sun sinks below the horizon, the grass cold where her hands dig into the ground, and the chill matches the ice in her soul. The cemetery has long since been deserted of mourners, of well wishers, of fans that needed to see for themselves that their favourite author from long ago was truly gone. And yet, Kate remains, the tears sliding down her cheeks, her nose running as her chest heaves, sob after sob rippling through her body.
A teardrop falls, splashing onto the paper below, and it trails along a crease, blurring the ink as it moves.
She doesn't need to see the words to know what they say. She's read it so many times now, and each line is etched into her heart, into a scar that will mark her for always.
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To Kate,
That should be to Captain Beckett, or even Beckett, but you have become Kate to me, even if you have no memory of how this occurred.
I'm taking a chance here and writing this letter to you in hopes that- well I don't really know what I hope. That I will see you again even if this case is wrapped up? That I will somehow convince you to give me a second chance and another date? That my plan to bring you coffee in the morning just the way you like it will be enough for you to remember what we are, what we have, and you will fall into my embrace as if nothing happened?
As if this is my universe.
It's not. And I know not even my Kate would believe in what I'm saying, so I can hardly expect you to, but I hope you are still reading, and I hope you believe what I am writing. Even if you never contact me again.
You can be happy. You are happy. And it may have taken falling through space and time for me to realize that, but you smile so easily these days, your hands flutter when you are excited, and you laugh the most breathless, beautiful sound that sends my heart soaring into the stars every time it falls past your lips.
You love being a homicide detective. You are passionate about justice and truth, the families and the victims. There is no stone that you will not turn in the pursuit of these, and to see that, in this universe, you still wear the burden of your mother's ring around your neck has me taking this chance.
The "elephants on parade" that are on your desk - your mother's elephants - hold a cassette. On it you'll find a recording of William H. Bracken's confession that he has had people killed before and that he can and will kill your mother if she continues "poking around". You can set the truth free. You can get justice for her, your dad, for yourself.
And my hope is that you can then be the person that you want to be, the one that you've hidden deep behind the walls inside of you. It won't be a cure, and it won't bring her back, but I hope that it helps you find the you that I know exists.
After all I love her every day.
Be extraordinary Kate. Stand strong and fight for the life you want, the life you deserve.
The life I know you can have.
Always,
Rick.
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Thank you for reading xoxo