The meeting with Alexis should've allowed her to move on, she thought. It did the opposite. It brings his spectre into sharper focus, makes his absence at her side only more evident. It shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't feel like this. Not any more, not three years on…but it does. The dull ache throbs even more painfully inside her.
She fingers her phone. She deleted his number. She remembers it off by heart.
But she also remembers very clearly their last words to each other. She can't call him. She won't. Not like this, not after three years, not for an awkward, stilted conversation that will have no chance of going anywhere.
Not to mention the last time she called that phone, he didn't take her call.
She turns, in her time of pain, as she always does, to her mother's murder. The rabbit hole. He'd likened it to a drug addiction once, something she can curl herself up in to inure her to rest of the world. The irony is that it was his words, his love, which had told her that maybe he was right, maybe there was something more to live for. But then the fact he'd lied had swept all of that out from under her.
She pores over the case at home on Sunday afternoon, when normal people are out living life. In another lifetime, she'd be at Castle's loft maybe, drinking coffee, lounging with his head in her lap, watching bad sci-fi movies. Or they'd be out, away for the weekend in the Hamptons, or…
Instead she's looking at Maddox's fake identity, his perfect, unbreakable cover, looking for anything she might've missed in the previous 2093 times she's gone over this with a fine-tooth comb. There is nothing. There can't be nothing. But there is. No indication of who was paying, of why they'd come after her with Maddox now, who her mysterious benefactor was and why he'd disappeared. Why they'd never come after her again. All she's left with is more questions than ever before, questions that never make any sense.
Ghost-Castle prods her into getting up after a couple of hours, making herself a cup of tea.
This is why she can't call him, caught in this madman's land, this limbo between her love and the defining event in her life, one that even therapy hasn't helped her conquer. He might've. He might've helped pull her out of the hole, but he hasn't, and there is a small, irrational part of her that blames him for it. Another, larger part can't blame him for walking away from away from the mess she is, and blames herself for letting him do it.
The knot of emotions inside her concerning Richard Castle is complex, tightly woven and inextricable part of her.
If only she could fix herself. She's broken, and never going to get better.
The ring of her phone startles her. Few people call her. She's drifted away from her wider circle of friends, keeps in touch with only her work-family and a few core others, most of whom knew her before her mother's death. Who can remember the girl she used to be and still cling on for the potential of the woman she could be.
The ring of the phone startles her because she would not expect anyone to call her on Sunday afternoon.
"Hi, Kate?" The warm and mellifluous tone is definitely unexpected.
"Jenny?"
"Are you busy? Am I interrupting something?"
"No, no it's fine. I was just…reading." The lie feels pathetic even in her ear.
"Well, Kevin and I have brought MJ into the city for a day out. We're not far from your place. Want to join us for an ice-cream or something?"
Her instincts scream no, for her to dive back into the pile of evidence, or lack thereof, gathered in the spare bedroom. She struggles to override those instincts. Her instincts are terrible, outside of her job.
"Sure. Name a place and give me 10 minutes to get ready?"
Michael Javier Ryan, known as MJ to all and sundry, has inherited his father's sunny disposition and wide smile., and his mother's blonde hair.
He sits easily on her lap as they sit at the café, playing with the brightly coloured pair of spoons his mother has given him.
"Thanks for sending him home on time most days. I really appreciate it." Jenny flashes a smile at her husband as she speaks, who blushes a little.
"No problem." She does make sure he gets out of the precinct as on time as possible, these days, picking up some of his paperwork if she needs. Espo does too, though he has a good-natured grumble about it more often than she does, especially on a date night with Lanie. They are on-again. She has high hopes for them, this time around, Espo and Lanie.
Esplanie, Ghost-Castle chimes in.
She kisses the top of MJ's head before she leaves, and quashes any internal lament about how nice it felt to have him in her arms, in her lap for the last hour or so.
Regrets…she has a few.
Liking the frequent updates? Keep the reviews coming.
I know I'm not going easy on Beckett, but stick with it. Things will get better.
Part of the question I wanted to explore was what if they didn't have these "easy" life-threatening moments in which they realised their feelings for each other. What if they had to do it the old-fashioned way, through pain and toil and suffering like we all do in the real world. What then?