Author's Note: See notes on Chapter One for a more complete introduction. This chapter deals with episode 2.12 A Rose for Everafter.
Disclaimer: Castle and its characters do not belong to me, I make no money from this, and no copyright infringement is intended. I'm just enjoying some time with a few of my favorite characters. The story is mine, however, except where I'm directly quoting the episode.
Richard Castle, Grown-Up
Chapter Nine: Of all the Murders…
No one had made him feel like that before, and he didn't want to lose his chance to see where all of this might lead.
Kate virtually heard him think these things—it was in the way he looked at Kyra Blaine.
She felt bad for him, really: his old flame had to be considered a suspect in their murder investigation. That wasn't exactly the best way to run into someone special from the past, especially if there were still unresolved feelings involved. Last year, Kate had an old love walk back into her life, but she and Will Sorenson had worked together—she hadn't been investigating him.
Rick must have felt like he'd been given a second chance and he wasn't going to let her slip through his fingers again. It was hard for Kate to watch him with "the one who got away," knowing he saw her return to his life as an irresistible opportunity to recapture the spark they had known, preventing her marriage to another man.
Kate had been watching Rick carefully. His history with Kyra was clearly clouding his judgment and that complicated their case. Castle wasn't acting like himself: he should have been all over the juicy story of a bride murdering a bridesmaid who slept with her fiancée the night before the wedding. It sounded like an excellent plot for his next bestseller! But that wasn't his reaction at all.
"That's impossible," he dismissed the notion of her guilt with barely a thought.
She tried to point out that he was too close to be seeing things clearly. "That's not what Richard Castle would say. He would paint a picture about the night before the wedding. About how Kyra couldn't fall asleep and so she went down to see Greg only to find Sophie emerging from his room. And the thought that her fiancée could cheat on her the night before their wedding was too much. And so she follows Sophie to her room and confronts her, and when things get violent, Sophie ends up dead."
Kate watched him try to process the possibility, but he just couldn't. "You have to stay away from her, Castle, until this case is closed." She worried that Kyra was another Scarlett, using Rick's obvious interest in her to screen her crimes.
She sat at her desk the next morning, emotions rioting in her head and in her heart. She feared what Kyra's guilt might do to Castle; another moment she was angry that he had ignored her warning to stay away until the case was over. At some points, she was even jealous over the whole situation. This is ridiculous! She decided to ignore his clandestine meeting with Kyra, to forgive his stupid mistake and not even mention it to him knowing what an emotional roller coaster he had been on. She still had to remove him from this case, though; when he came in, she would send him home for a week or two.
When Castle came in, she gave him a hard time for messing with her chair. He knows how I hate that and did it to provoke a reaction from me; maybe it will soften what I have to tell him afterwards. They bantered for a moment, he apologized for the chair, and as she tried to find a way to tell him to go home, he began speaking again.
"I saw her last night." He didn't look at her but quietly admitted what he had done.
Kate released her breath as a small smile of relief curved her lips. So he had been listening when she scolded him about talking to a witness on his own. He had taken the conversation to heart about how inappropriate it was, how it could compromise their case. It hadn't stopped him from meeting Kyra, but he had told Kate the truth with no direct prompting on her part. They had made some definite progress. "I know."
"What?" His face was confused, so she passed the surveillance photos to him.
Castle was a little bit angry, but his relief that he had admitted what he had done was obvious. He had been honest with her, and knew that she realized and appreciated it.
Thankfully, Kyra had been innocent. Kate knew that Castle would have been devastated had he been wrong about her. She figured he'd take some time away from the precinct and pursue his lost love, but instead he'd shocked her by asking to be the one to show Kyra something they'd found.
"Detective, since the case is closed, can I borrow some evidence for a minute?"
"Evidence? Castle, what are you up to?"
He almost seemed ashamed. "I cast doubt on an innocent man. Kyra deserves to know the truth about—the man she's going to marry. She shouldn't have to wonder for the rest of their life about his fidelity." Kate allowed him to show her the recording that proved Greg had not cheated on his fiancée.
Castle had seemed willing to do anything to get what he wanted when they first met; for a while, she was infuriated every time she remembered how he used his friendship with the mayor to start shadowing her. But now, he was being noble. Rick accepted that once he showed Kyra the proof, she'd be marrying his rival, and he really did seem alright with that. When she coupled his selfless gesture with the fact that Kyra was a normal woman, totally unlike his ex-wives, she was finding it necessary to radically adjust her opinion of the man. I'm not sure what to do with all of this new information. I didn't think he even knew what a real woman looked like, but he dated this one for three years. She was back in his life and he let her go again, ensuring her happiness even if it's without him. Who are you and what have you done with Rick Castle?
Kate was still trying to process everything as Kyra walked out, leaving Castle sitting alone. She briefly paused at Kate's desk. "He's all yours." It shouldn't have been that difficult to understand, but Kate wasn't ready to comprehend the full meaning behind those words yet.