World Anew: Hope Beyond Hope
Opening the door to the loft, the sheen of the wallpaper and the facets of the chandelier overhead grate on his already exposed nerves. Rick hesitates to open her mother's case here, something so grim and serious in the heart of his mother's lair, but it used to be his space too.
He and his mother share the mortgage but his best-sellers make enough to keep him afloat; he's not that bad off yet. Yet. It's time for reclaiming. He's becoming something here, he's a nasty worm inside a cocoon and he feels the metamorphosis taking place.
So the white and the sparkle is here now, but it will go. It has to go. His mother can have the run of the upstairs, but he needs to reclaim his life.
Rick steps inside and moves for the living room, carrying the box with him, certain Kate will follow. He hears her shut the door and he turns around, expectant. This is the first night of his transformation, the first taste of the man he can't remember. He's discovering that he does, in fact, have it in him.
"So how does this go?" he asks.
She looks ineffably lost.
He's carrying the box, not her. Standing in his living room with her palms out, beseechingly, as if she can't fathom not carrying it, she's lost. Rick settles the paper box, its compact and rectangular dimensions, onto his coffee table and waits for her lead. Waits for her to find a way.
Suddenly the Captain in her rises up and she strides purposefully towards him, takes a seat on the floor before the coffee table, on her knees like she's prostrating herself, submitting to it, the case.
Her mother's death. He still can't imagine.
Rick kneels before the coffee table as well, perpendicular to her compact form, and he watches her lift the lid on the box.
She stalls out after that. The lid rests on the rug beside her, but her hands go still on the table, and her eyes shift to his. Not for help, he thinks. She doesn't need his help with this; she just needs time, a chance to collect herself.
"If I were a new guy in your precinct, how would we do it?"
She blinks and the strength falls in place, just in that heartbeat. She's the Captain; she knows how to order her men.
"Usually, we lay it all out, piece by piece, in a timeline," she says quietly. "Known facts. We have a white board for that. Name at the top, vital stats."
"Vital stats."
"Statistics," she murmurs. "Age, coloring, occupation, family situation. That information can change, as we dig through her - a person's - life, but not often. Only additions, usually."
Rick nods, picturing her in those crisp skirts and suit jackets with her short hair pulled back in the pony tail, that strange combination of strength and softness in her femininity as she orchestrates the search for a killer from her white board. From manhunts to cold cases, she would be a force.
That's what they'll do now. Together in this.
"All right," he nods. "No white board here, but I might have something better." He gets to his feet and offers her his hand. "Come with me?"
She places her fingers in his palm without hesitation, not even a moment's faltering, and his heart surges with a joy so twined with grief that it takes him by surprise.
Kate rises to stand beside him and their fingers lace together as if by instinct, as if natural, as if she's used to having his hand. He fights a shiver, but doesn't fight the urge, leaning in to brush his lips to her cheek.
"Bring the box. I'll show you how I do it."
"Oh, really?"
She leaves him breathless.
The teasing isn't new, but the awareness behind it definitely is. He likes the tease from her, said in that low and certain voice, as if the end result is inevitable.
That's new - the inescapable, unavoidable certainty that this is happening, will happen, has already happened somehow.
Ha. In another universe, right?
Rick sits her down on the couch in his study, her dark hair sheened by city lights outside the window, her eyes in shadow. He doesn't turn on the lamp, unwilling to have the effect ruined by his mother's massive self-portrait hanging over the desk. Since they began sharing the office space, he hasn't written a single good word behind this desk. And then his mother's life-coaching business took off, and he allowed himself to be worked out of the equation of his own life.
No longer. He has words now, words again, and they are good ones. He wrote his Captain of the Precinct character sketch in the armchair in the corner of his bedroom, feeling more master there, master of his destiny, master of his house - and a mastery of words once more. And now, the Captain of the Twelfth sits here, waiting on his word.
"O Captain, my Captain," he murmurs, bringing up the flat panel television.
"What?" she startles, a laugh in her breath.
"Just, uh-"
"Poetry," she smiles. He can't see the smile, just hear it in her voice, but when he does finally look over his shoulder at her, the shadows along her cheeks and under her eyes are beautiful.
"All right, here's how I start a novel." Rick calls up the program on his laptop that feeds the monitor, and suddenly his outline for the new novel is blazing across the screen. "Oh, no, that's-"
Kate rises fast, is at his side and stilling his hand with a touch on his forearm. "That's me."
He can't move.
"My face," she whispers, moving forward and obscuring his view of the monitor. The outline for his new mystery. Her fingers touch the photograph of his central character- "Nikki Heat?"
"Uh."
"Where'd you come up with that name?" she says.
He's not sure if that's criticism or curiosity. "It was - something Alexis said. About you. About me." About us. She said she heard him say it, thought he was already working on a new character in those missing-memory two days.
"Hmm." She shifts on her feet and comes back to him at the desk, sinks down to sit right at his side, her hip to his, shoulders brushing. It feels electric. He can't think past the touch of her.
"You hate it," he husks.
"It's... a stripper name, Rick," she laughs. Laughter is good; he can work with that.
"No, she's not a stripper. It's - she's smart, savvy, strong-"
"In love with alliteration, are we?"
His heart jolts. She's just - she reads - she knows things people don't come out with in a regular conversation, and she doesn't try to hide her intelligence, doesn't browbeat others with it either. Her self-possession comes of strength and confidence, knowing her mind and knowing when to speak.
It has the feeling of gentleness when she's with him. Towards him. Tenderness. No one has ever regarded him as being worth that kind of strength.
"She's Captain of her house. She's... hot," he finishes lamely.
"Hmm."
"You know, you're a reserved person and I have no idea what you're thinking when you make those sounds."
"You'll learn," she murmurs, insinuating everything.
He won't survive her. He sees that so clearly, how doomed he is. If this isn't it, if this winds down or blows up in his face, he's wrecked. No one will ever be as good as this, as right as this.
As mysterious and inveigling and perfect for him as Kate Beckett. Even if she does leave him, he'll spend the rest of his days writing about her.
"I'll learn," he agrees. He wants to put his hand on her knee and rub his thumb there until he can dare to go higher, but he doesn't.
He clicks the button on his remote to open a fresh outline.
"Vital statistics, right?" He takes a short breath, still feeling her shoulder against his, and he aims the remote at the wall to call up the keyboard. "Name?"
Kate holds herself stiffly for one instant and he feels the moment she releases her breath. "Johanna Beckett. Died January 9th, 1999. I was 19. Waiting for her to show up for our family dinner. While she was bleeding out in an alley. Multiple knife wounds."
Oh, Kate.
It's all there on the board, everything she knows; she hasn't held back a single detail. But it's so startlingly empty as well.
"It's really not much, is it?" she says. Her lips twist into a wince, her eyes flat. They have her name in the middle and Senator Bracken's name, but no connections, no lines, no motive.
Rick steps back and crosses his arms over his chest, studying the gaps in the diagram of her mother's case. "Those are some - large leaps. There's no direct evidence."
"I know," she mutters. "Fifteen years, Rick. Fifteen years and I got nowhere on it. So very nowhere that I shelved it. And now this name like..."
"Seems-" He stops, unsure of the line with her. There is a line; he can sense it. But he can't see it. Captain Beckett has spent years smoothing it down, smiling when it hurts, pretending it doesn't matter, collecting herself, calm in the face of frustration. Self-possessed.
Still. He's not one to hold back. He doesn't know how.
"Seems crazy," he gets out, shaking his head. "How in the world do you arrive at a US Senator with this little to go on?"
"I don't know," she says, voice clipped. "You said it. You arrived there."
"In two days," he mutters. "Two days. This is the work of a lifetime."
"You don't have to do this," she says quickly. "I told you this wasn't your job-"
He reaches forward and catches her by the elbow, tugging. She doesn't come; she resists. He has to step forward and move around her, fingers trailing at the backs of her arms, putting himself between her and the smart board.
"I didn't say I wasn't doing this. I'm already doing this. I got shot doing this."
She freezes, a catch in her breathing that then stills so long he wonders if she's going to breathe at all. Her head turns to the side, eyes on his window, her spirit moving away from him, somewhere out there. She has this uncanny ability to completely turn off, leaving only the shell of Captain Beckett while Kate is simply gone. Not hiding, just gone.
"You were shot," she says, nodding. Her eyes slide back to his but she's not there. "You didn't ask for anything of this. I understand if you need to distance yourself from-"
"Did I say that?" he growls, gripping her elbows and stepping into her. She doesn't yield, making their hips connect in a way that only tightens his tension. "I woke up in the middle of the greatest mystery of my life, Kate."
"Yes, but this case isn't a book where you get to write a better ending. This case is my responsibility. I'm the cop, Rick. Not you."
"This?" He gestures to the smart board behind him. "This isn't the mystery I'm talking about."
She opens her mouth but her words stall out into silence.
He leans in, how tall she is, perfectly fitting him, and he touches his mouth to her cheek lightly. "You. You are the greatest mystery of my life, Kate. I woke up to you."
Kate sighs, her eyes closing, and she turns her mouth into his, not speaking, not moving, their lips barely brushing, cheeks pressed together. He tries to be immobile, taking her lead; he's always trying to check his first instinct around her, stilling himself when the calm surface of her eyes is disturbed.
She brings this peace with her, no matter the situation. It's unearthly.
He's needed this for so long. Quiet the noise, shut out the critics, find a center and reclaim himself. It's amazing that the touch of her breath on his skin and the promise in inherent in her lips so near his own are what stills the chaos.
Her fingers slide to the nape of his neck and curl, stroking at his hair.
"You saved my life," she whispers. Her words are a kiss to his cheek and another along his jaw. "You are saving my life, Rick. I woke up to you. Don't let me sleep again."
He cups her jaw in his hands and kisses her.
fin