World Anew
Part II: Hope Beyond Hope
Give all to love
...Nothing refuse.
'T is a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope
-Give All to Love, Ralph Waldo Emerson
I woke up next to you this morning; I'm not imagining that.
His eyes open.
She hovers above, ethereal Muse.
He lifts his hand, not without a ripple of pain in his chest, and he touches the damp curl of her hair, assuming this is another dream. All of them are dreams, every time she comes to him in the darkness with her face soft and open, all of the moments where he touches her. Dreams all.
Her hair is wet, a drop rolls from the ends in his fingers and down the meat of his palm to his wrist.
Cold.
He's awake. On her couch where he fell asleep, and she's kneeling on the cushions beside him, her palm on his shoulder, touching him awake. No dream this.
"Kate," he gets out, searching for an apology.
She takes his hand in hers, her cool fingers, warm skin, the complex paradox of her reality both reassuring and startlingly arousing. He wants her all the time; it's become an ache in his chest where two bullets did their damage. All the time, he wants her. Wants her. This woman whose life he saved, unknowingly.
She dusts her lips to his fingers, her hair sliding out of his grasp.
He's not imagining this.
He reaches for her, dragging her mouth down to his for a kiss, groaning at the collision of her body against his, and yet still, some small part, questioning, asking why.
Why does she-?
(She looks at him like he's stolen her world right out from under her, but not tonight. Tonight he is her world; he can be her world. He will make it happen, he will do anything to have her mouth pressed hot and-)
She kisses him with a whine that kicks in his guts and does what she probably intended. He lets her go.
He lets her go, panting with the rush of need that swamps him every time she leaves, this angel of mercy who brings her fiery sword to their every encounter. If she wounds him, and she does wound him, at least her blade cauterizes as it goes.
"I'm sorry," he grates out, not looking at her, then looking at her because he can't bear to not. "Kate. I-"
"Stop talking," she whispers, lowers her head to his shoulder. Her forehead. As if in regret. As if to stop time. As if to collect herself.
He doesn't know; she's a mystery, always has been. He didn't know her when he woke, and he doesn't know her much more now. Captain of the Twelfth Precinct, a core of steel so unbending that she's going to break, any day now, this woman who looks at him like he should be so much more than he is.
He keeps trying for her. He keeps trying. He's not enough.
He cups the back of her neck and she shudders, but she doesn't move away, still a compact knot while he's splayed, knees open, head still tilted against the back of the couch, the impression of her mouth over his.
His fingers comb the damp hair at her nape and the sound she lets out makes him grunt, forgetting everything; forget it, damn it all, and he wraps himself around her, this woman made of steel.
She cuts him; she always does. When she stiffens and draws back, it does the job as well, and it gives her the impetus to compose herself, a quick indrawn breath and her back straight, her eyes unflinching on his.
"I want to kiss you again," falls out of his mouth.
She blinks. "Maybe."
Maybe?
His shock must blaze so totally across his face because her lips twitch, without her say, that gut-socking smile she has that lights up his whole life and he never really knew her, never can get back to that place where he did, but he wants to.
He wants to love her. Is that enough?
Her fingers touch his lips and make him still. She lowers her hand and sinks back on her heels, perched precariously on the couch facing him, eyes somehow pink.
Has she been crying?
"Do you need me - my help?" he croaks. He talked the night away with his daughter and her non-profit projects and her constant need for reassurance, is this right, Dad? so maybe he's just in that mode, offering, offering, only he thinks he's always been desperate to offer himself to her. Kate.
"I need help," she admits. "I don't know whose, but it came from you, it was your idea first, and I don't have anyone else."
"What did I say?" he says stupidly. "I told you something, didn't I? What did I say?"
She swallows again, and now there's this current riding below the normally placid bobbing of their boat, this craft they've built together that has so far managed to weather the turbulence of his own recovery, but he can't imagine testing it with stormier weather.
They will capsize.
Still, something tugs, tugs them out into open water.
"Kate, what did I do?"
"Just words," she answers then. "Words, but I've always read mystery novels and so I believed your words. There's an element of inherent trust, and I can't seem to shake it." A smile like an apology.
"That's good," he surrenders. "That's good, you trust me, good - even if I don't remember being him, remember how that is exactly, I'll do my best-"
"No," she sighs. "It's not you, really, not this time. It's your words, Rick. Your writing. The whole plot. I trust your clues because I've solved twenty-two mysteries with your clues, and how can I not follow them? Even the red herrings."
His jaw drops.
She frowns, that assessing eye. "Don't start."
"I knew you'd read the books but you didn't say you were-"
"I said I was a fan."
"Of the genre," he gets out. Did she kiss him or did he kiss her? Does it matter? It might matter. He touched her hair and she dusted a kiss to his fingers and he mauled her. He's not sure that matters. "You're a fan of the books."
"No," she sighs. "Truthfully, a fan of yours. I told you this. That first day in the hospital, Rick. I stood in line to have you sign a book."
It does come back now, pieces that fit into place in the overall picture he's hoped he's been making correctly of her, but it just never made sense without those key elements. "I didn't remember until just now."
"I should have realized," she pushes out, swallowing. Her eyes avert. "Dr Barnes said the anesthesia would muddle things for a few days. You made me repeat it so many times that I..."
"I don't remember those first few days in the hospital but for you," he admits. "I remember you. Telling me stories."
"They were true stories," she gives, her head tilting, eyes sliding back to him. A sigh, a shake of her head. "Supposedly true. I don't blame you for thinking them unrealistic, I did too. But now."
"What's happened now?" He sits up, finally clued in that this is more than just will they/won't they. "Kate."
"Right before you were shot," she begins slowly, hands clasped in her lap. "We were walking across the coal yard. You looked scared. Of me, I think; I don't know. I was angry with you for things you'd said in the car."
"That sounds like me," he tries, hoping for a smile, his usual response when she tells him things he doesn't remember that nevertheless sound true. "Always opening my mouth."
"You made a decision - terrible timing, the middle of this case and the coal plant looked like an active scene - you started running your mouth..." Kate sighs, a kind of wistful sigh, like those were the days. "You said you had information about my mother's killer."
Oh.
Back to that. Yes, he should have - right. He should have realized the surfeit of emotion comes down to her mother's tragic slaying in Washington Heights. It always does; their conversations loop back around to that night - time and time again. She's looking for something from him that he just doesn't have it in him to give.
Oh, but he would. If he knew at all, if it would just come back to him. I'd give you everything.
"I'm sorry," he gets out now, staring down at his hands splayed dumbly on his knees. "I'm sorry, Kate. I've tried. I just - I come up blank."
He will never be that man. It's gone. He's gone. How torturous to wake up in a better life but have it all slip inexorably out of his clumsy hands.
He should probably leave. She ignored him for weeks, and with every right, and how long can he play the I took a bullet for you card when the basic premise doesn't even hold? He's not that man.
Her hand folds over his. "No, Rick, that's gone. It's done."
He wanted so badly to be that man.
"You don't have to try," she murmurs. "There's no need to try. I don't need anything else. You've already given me the clues."
He sucks in a long, unstable breath. But her hand remains over his, strong and cool.
She strokes over his knuckles. "You said to ask Montgomery."
He lifts his head. "Who?"
"My old Captain and mentor. He was at the Twelfth when I made detective. You told me to ask him, that his name came up your research. You wanted us to go see him, talk to him. Ask him how he can afford a house in the Hamptons."
"I have a house in the Hamptons," he blurts out, disconnect. "Wait. A former NYPD Captain has a house in the Hamptons? No way. He's taken in some work on the side, bribes, graft-"
Rick cuts himself off at the look on her face. Mentor. Oh, hell, he's remembered that too late.
Her lips twist and then compose, instantly, barely a moment, but he's been studying her face for two months now, searching for any indication of where he's supposed to go next, of what response is the right one, and he knows that look.
He's hurt her.
"Kate," he breathes, breaks all their usual rules to touch her again. His fingers at her shoulder first, and when she only breathes, so still, he lets his hand move up to her neck, thumb coasting the arousing line of her jaw. "Your mentor. Was he involved?"
Her chin trembles.
(Oh, she's killing him.)
Her stoicism is held so severely, her eyes staring into some distance he can't see. "He's part of this, Rick." Her voice is agonized.
The mystery of Kate, the wound in her eyes. (He wants to kiss and make it better.)
Oh, hell. That would be a very stupid thing to do right now.
He strokes her jaw, won't pull on her, won't move until she tells him. Thumb swiping at her throat as if to encourage words. A tear leaks from her eye, one at a time. Left eye first, trailing down to meet his palm, the right giving way only when he's swept her skin clean.
"He wouldn't tell me who," she pleads, her voice twisting so badly that she closes her eyes.
The tears slip faster, but still she's unbowed, unbroken, unbending. Eyes closed, lips parted to breathe or speak, but her hand slowly covers his wrist, hanging on to him as he hangs on to her.
She opens her eyes. "But I already knew the name. You told me that too."
"I did?" He has backtracked his google search history for weeks, months, using its archive and cookies to browse the same trails over and over again from those two days, looking for the thing that unlocks his memories.
Ancient Incan artifacts, all he's got. Alternate universes. That's what he was searching through online the day he was shot.
He's never told her that; he hides it, terrified she's in love with a man who will never come back. He believes in parallel universes, because it's happening to him right now. This amazing, extraordinary woman who lets him touch her neck and hear her secrets.
"You told me his name," she scrapes out. Her lips hesitate, and he can't tell whether that's because she doesn't want to share it - or she can't believe she actually has it to share. "Senator Bracken."
A terrible sense of inevitability claws through him.
William Bracken.
The plot for a book he's written a hundred times, worn out and tired. "I - did I make that up?" he whispers.
"I wish you had," she moans.
He's pinned to the couch by her pain, unable to move. She gets it together quickly, almost quickly, but he can see the edges where she's fraying, like threads unraveling. If he tugs, he knows she'll collapse.
He doesn't tug.
"I drove out to the Hamptons to talk to Roy. I confronted him. He was so - broken, Rick. I broke him; it broke him. I said I already know, and stood there. He wouldn't tell me. He was scared. I tell you, Kate, and he'll kill you, sure as you stand."
"Kate, please, don't-"
"But I said, I already know. I already knew, because, Rick, you already told me, what... I said, It's William Bracken, Senator Bracken, you've been doing his dirty work for years."
She laughs, bitter and sad. Her shoulders slump and her head goes back. He touches his fingers to her pulse, feeling the heat of her, the damp of her hair against he back of his hand.
"You know what he said?" He can feel her swallowing. "He said, I did it to save you; I was saving you. You were the one I could save. I couldn't get to Johanna."
Her mother. Her mother. "Oh, God, Kate."
"Me. I'm the reason he has a house in the Hamptons? I'm the reason he's retired and - and did I even make Captain on my merit, Castle? Did I even deserve the responsibility, or was it a way to shut me up?"
"No. Stop. This is your work and effort and sheer force of will. I've seen you, the nights you do make it for dinner, the thirty minutes to pay off a debt you think you owe to me - I've seen you."
Her head comes up, throat bobbing, her eyes dark pools. The light is gone, the night has sunk in around them. He feels her fingers come to his chest, the pocket of his dress shirt. She catches her bottom lip with her teeth.
"You're beautiful," he murmurs. He wants to kiss her but it's - more than that. "You're strong. You can survive this."
She takes a sharp breath in and releases it, all at once, something in her look that makes him think it would be a smile, any other circumstances. "William Bracken killed my mother, hired a contract killer. He paid someone to do it. I will find that man. I will bring down the senator."
"Of course you will."
She straightens, the bow in her spine lifting, and her fingers curl in at his pocket. "Of course I will."
He grins; he can't help it. She kissed him, or let him kiss her; she's indomitable and pressing her knees against his thigh and curling her fingers in his pocket. She's opened up her secrets to him and here they are, at the start of something.
"I hope I see it happen; I hope I have front row seats," he says with relish. He means it. Her mother. The wound in her eyes.
"You'll be there," she says. "You'll be right there for it. Right here, Rick."
She presses her hand into his shoulder and leans in, breath dusting across his fluttering eyelid before she kisses his closed eye. Kisses his lashes, moves down to press her lips to his cheek.
He doesn't know what that means.
But he has hope.