I let this chapter go a little longer than usual, so I'm sorry if it drags. I'm hoping it won't, though. I'll skip the long, rambling author's note this time and let the chapter speak for itself. Hope you like it!
She was able to relax a little as the bits of faded, broken video tape played through her mind. It started with the earliest memories. Johanna tucking her into bed at night, singing softly in her beautiful alto. Cooking dinner, allowing a very young Kate to think she was helping by giving her things to stir that were already thoroughly mixed. Then later, actually letting her help, working up to the point where she was able to make whole meals with very little assistance. Her mother taking her shopping. Teaching her to put on makeup. Trading favorite books and then talking about them for hours.
Her tears slowed as she thought of these things. She would always feel a measure of pain when she remembered her mother and she knew and accepted this, but these memories were good. They were the best things she could remember about an amazing woman.
The problem with these memories came when she realized how they were fading. Every year the details got a little fuzzier. It took longer for her to formulate a clear picture of her mother's face, to hear her voice in her head. Specific memories were becoming snapshots, glimpses through frost-covered windows at rooms she'd once been able to enter through doorways. That scared her. It scared her a lot. It was part of the reason she kept doing this year after year, to try and hold on to the moments she remembered for as long as she could. In a way, losing these memories would be like losing her mother all over again, and the very thought made her sick to her stomach.
Also, it was inevitable that as she drew to the end of these pleasant memories, the slightly more recent ones followed. The ones she wished she could forget. Detective Raglan breaking the news, too detached, too objective, simply stating facts without giving any indication that he realized this moment would shape the rest of her life. Her mother's lifeless body, her clothes stained with blood. The funeral, with the obscure relatives she'd never met and acquaintances she could only pretend to remember. The way it had all felt so inconsequential, so fake. And then her dad's downward spiral, how having a few drinks to dull the pain, normal, to be expected, had morphed into a dependence, something he could no longer control.
These were the memories that she wished would fade, not completely, but enough to dull the color. Of course, they refused. They seemed permanently burned onto her subconscious, with her always, and readily available at the end of her Johanna video reel every time she dug it out.
These were the memories that brought her tears back full-force, that sent a fresh wave of sobs coursing through her body. She'd been so focused on her own thoughts, carefully concentrating on her memories of her mother, as the day required, and pushing away thoughts of Sunday and Josh, that she could almost have forgotten about the man she was leaning against. Could almost have neglected the fact that the object her head rested on was not an object at all, but a person's shoulder. Could almost have failed to notice the warmth that enveloped her, the feeling of his body heat so close.
But Castle had never been one to allow his presence to go unnoticed, whether he intended this or not. When the crying started again he reacted immediately, wrapping his arm around her a little tighter, pulling her a little closer. "Shh," he whispered, so soft that it would've been inaudible if not for their sheer proximity. "Hey, it's okay, it's okay. Shh."
She inched just a little bit closer to him, grateful for the support, for the comfort of closeness, even for the sound of his voice. There was something grounding about it. It didn't prevent her from slipping into her memories, but it gave her a pathway back to the present, kept her from getting lost in her own head. If she could've seen this moment from the outside she would've realized its absurdity and asked herself what the hell she was doing, but from where she was, without the hindrance of logic, there was something about it that just felt right.
She tried to let her mind go blank and her breathing slowed again. As it neared its normal rhythm, still a little heavier than usual, but no longer the gulps of air in between sobs, he seemed to relax as well, and his hand strayed away from her shoulder and began stroking her hair. His fingers combed through it, ever so gently untangling some of the knots she'd neglected that morning. It was surprisingly soothing, and she let her eyelids slide closed, focusing on nothing.
She had no idea how long they sat like this, whether it was two minutes or two hours. Time seemed like a very abstract concept, not something that could be kept track of. At some point it was punctuated by his voice, very soft, but still cutting through the silence that surrounded them. "You know—" he stopped himself with a sigh, and started again. "Know that I'm not trying to push you, but if you want to talk about anything, I'm here."
She didn't respond right away, but she thought about what he'd said. The man that was sitting here with her today—was this really Castle? He'd said he didn't want to push her. Since when? Normally, pushing her was his specialty. He wouldn't relent until he had whatever information he wanted, and eventually she always did give in. But this, she guessed, was different. He had all the information (well, all the information that he knew there was… he still knew nothing about the situation with Josh, and she intended to keep it that way) already. He was just trying to be supportive. He was trying to be a good friend. And she couldn't help but note that he was doing a damn good job.
It wasn't hard to see that he was unnerved. Castle was a tough person to shake. They'd seen some crazy things at crime scenes, and most of it didn't even seem to surprise him, let alone disturb him. But now? Maybe "disturbed" was too strong a word, but he was definitely thrown off balance. And she understood why. He was used to seeing her at work, very calm, very professional. And now he had to deal with her like this? She felt bad, but then, he didn't seem to mind.
He'd seen her in difficult situations before. He'd even seen her cry before. It wasn't like this was something entirely new. But this situation was different. At work, it was a brief wave of emotion, stifled as soon as she could manage it. And that being the case, he knew his role: to help her to pull herself together as quickly as possible. He followed her lead. The friendship, "I'm here for you" angle at first, until she pulled herself through the initial crash, which never took very long, and then he'd switch over to a slightly gentler version of standard Castle mode: joking, teasing, mocking, anything to get her to crack a smile. Once he achieved that, his goal was more or less complete, and they went back to business as usual.
But now, this? She wasn't, had no intention of, following her usual pattern. She was swinging back and forth like some kind of spastic pendulum, from upset to fairly okay and then back to upset, and he couldn't tell what he was supposed to do. She didn't even know what she wanted him to do. She wasn't even entirely sure why she hadn't told him to leave yet, but really, she had no intention of doing that any time soon. Maybe it was selfish, but she liked that he was here.
She did realize that, although she wouldn't tell him to leave, she probably should give him an out. She knew he was uncomfortable, and if he had other things to do, or even if he just didn't want to be here, she didn't want to force him to stay. "Look," she murmured without looking at him, or even lifting her head off of his shoulder, "You don't have to stay here. If you want to go, if you have things to do…" She let her voice taper off.
He shifted a little so that he could see her, and put one finger below her chin, coaxing her to change the angle of her head so that he could look her in the eye, which this time he did without shrinking away. "There is nowhere," he said, the look on his face ridiculously sincere, "that I would rather be."
It was the perfect response, exactly what she'd needed to hear. She was still looking at him and wanted to give him a small smile to let him know that she'd appreciated it without actually having to say anything, but she was so far from the smiling mood that she couldn't even seem to summon the energy to fake it. Instead she nodded and whispered a nearly inaudible, "Thanks."
The almost-smile that he returned fell a little short as well, and wound up looking like more of an exhausted grimace, but she understood its intended purpose completely.
She took another immeasurable stretch of time to consider the other part of what he'd said. Did she want to talk? Her default answer was no, in general, but especially when it came to her mother. But the main reason that she didn't like to talk about her was that she was afraid she was going to fall apart, and now? Now, she was pretty much already apart. She didn't have much farther to fall, and she was surprisingly confident that Castle would be there to catch her before she hit bottom. Even more surprising was how comfortable she was with the idea of being caught.
Talking honestly didn't sound like such a bad idea. All the remembering and crying she'd been doing had drained her energy and talking sounded tiring, but no more tiring than holding the thought inside that had been torturing her all morning. "I just… I don't want to forget."
He frowned, shaking his head. "You won't."
"No," she choked, frustrated, picking up her head to look at him straight-on. That was the default answer for him, the one she'd known he'd give. "I am. Every year I remember a little less about her." She didn't need to say who. He knew. "Who she was. How she was. Her face, the way she acted, the way her voice sounded. The details you can't see in pictures." She felt a few of the tears that had almost completely subsided start to roll down her cheeks again. She swallowed, and then whispered, "I can't lose her again."
She'd pulled away from him before commencing her little rant, and he now held out his hand, a simple invitation. She accepted it with very little hesitation, and he hooked his fingers around hers and squeezed gently. She expected another assurance that she would remember, and with his talent for persuasiveness she simply hoped that he could make her believe him. But what he gave her was something entirely different. He took a second before he responded, carefully turning something in his head as she had very seldom ever seen him do. "Do you want my advice?" he finally asked.
She nodded. Anything that caused him to think so carefully was something she needed to hear.
"When I want to remember something, I write about it. Sometimes I'll put it in one of my novels, but most of the time I just write it down. I have flash drives full of documents that will probably never be seen by anyone but me. And notebooks full of stuff from when Alexis was growing up. I know they say 'a picture is worth a thousand words,' but words… words can capture things that pictures miss. And a thousand words?" The corners of his mouth curled up just slightly, the first trace of a smile she'd seen him form that day. "Not that hard to write."
"Yeah but… Castle, I'm not you. I'm not a bestselling author. The only things I know how to write are police reports."
"Ah, I don't believe that." He looked at her with those big, ridiculous puppy dog eyes of his, so comically serious that she found herself dangerously close to a smile. "You, Kate Beckett, are a brilliant woman." She started to roll her eyes, but he wasn't done. "No, stop. I mean it. You notice details. And you're incredibly well read. I have no doubt that you could be an amazing writer. Plus I've read your police reports, and while they could do with a little spicing up, they're actually not half bad."
This time she did smile. It was a weak, watery smile, but it was a smile.