Calls me Home

Back in the day, when Kate was younger and too proud to admit that she was lost...her heart stop beating the way it should. Her breathing became strangled, forced but a necessity to keep going. But she wasn't really living. She was going through the motions, each day blurred into the next, not quite sure where her life was leading, only that the earth still turned, and lives all around her were still breathing on, moving on. But she wasn't. She was stuck in a place too far away, too deep to be even considered a normal life. She was unhappy, and miserable. Aware of this, and yet too comfortable in the life she thought she deserved. The life she thought she was supposed to be living.

She had nothing left in her, no sense of family, of home, of happiness. She was a shell of a woman, and no one could see it. She was an expert at hiding it. Hiding in the role of a detective. Diving into work and murders that she tried so desperately to solve, still unable to resolve the one she set out to put to rest in the beginning. The sole reason for this choice of life, and she couldn't do it. But she didn't give up. Eventually her work, her life melted into something she was unaware of. She became someone who did not feel, not the way a normal person should, but she found she didn't care. She didn't realize that she wasn't living. Yet she was always moving, afraid for that realization to hit her and drag her down. But she was already down. So low and in the darkness she couldn't see the light.

She couldn't see beyond her own inner pain. Couldn't move past her tragic life and learn to live despite these things. And no one was there to show her how. And she didn't let them. She thought she didn't need them. They weren't going to get passed these walls she built anyway, so way even try? What she didn't know, is that, those walls? They only existed because she fueled the fire that built the bricks. In her mindless attempt to keep herself safe from ever being hurt like her mother's death tore a hole in her heart. Kate Beckett fed the flames with hate, and misery. The longer this went on, the more the fire grew hotter, the perfect ingredient for melding. And the wall went up, brick by brick until it became this obstacle that not even she could climb over if she wanted too. Not only did it keep people out, it kept her locked on the other side. In a heart that didn't beat normally...in a body that only breathed in the necessary things to keep her barely alive.

And then one day, Kate Beckett came a cross a castle. With walls so sturdy it put hers to shame. She studied these walls, the inner workings and soon realized that there were other things to focus on. So she made it her mission to read the lines etched in the castles stone. She fell in love with what she saw there. She saw other lives living on in the wall. Other lives striving for the same things she was, and solving, finding justice. She buried herself in the ground at the foot of the castle and lived through it's story telling walls. Mesmerized by the stories she found there. And soon Kate got lost there as well. Lost in the world made up, because she couldn't bare to deal with her own. This story had happy endings, Where as hers? Went no where at all. So she stopped caring, putting all her emotions into this castle that could do nothing else for her then to riddle her with made up stories, ones that did not really exist, but it helped her... she thought.

Years went by for Kate.

Kate's world of work and this stubborn need to keep things the way they were, without change; Made her even more lost. This way of life made it so she became afraid of everything else. She was afraid of anything becoming different, because she didn't know any other way. All she knew were the murders she solved, and the stories she heard through the walls of the castle she kept close to her heart. Yes. This castle made it there. Made her heart beat just a little more normally, and her breathing became less strangled.

That is until she met the man who built the castle; and it's many walls she's become so found of.

At first sight, Kate felt as if she was being called home to her heart. She was both surprised and a little fearful of what he could illicit in her at just one glance with his stunningly blue eyes. Eyes so blue they covered the sky of the castle he built, a beautiful contrast to the walls close to her heart. She let herself, just for a fleeting moment, think about the possibilities of letting this living breathing human into her heart like the walls he unknowingly built for her. But she was too frightened so she reinforced her own walls, even hiding behind the ones he built himself, without giving him the knowledge that those ones where there as well.

Richard Castle saw right through Kate Beckett. He stepped right up to those walls of hers, and saw a mirage. An illusion she believes to be real. It was then and there that he decided to show her how to live. How to breathe again.

Little by little, Rick saw a slight change in her. Saw her fighting her own desire to keep herself held up and closed off. But eventually, not even she could deny the things he did to her, and at first she didn't notice. Didn't feel the miniscule chips he lay at her feet from the barriers around her heart.

It started with a cup of coffee, warm and inviting in her hand. And then escalated to playful banter, teasing innuendo, and flirting. All of which she let herself fall into easily. Because it was so easy to be like this with him. It was like nothing she has ever felt before with anyone. It took this one man, to make her realize that the life she's been blindly walking through has taken her down, and she didn't fight for it. For all he has done for her now, after a little over three years; she looks back on the years left behind with regret.

He's been slowly turning her around. The moment it happened for her. That one moment in time where all was clear to her, was when he kissed her. The earth held still, and she felt like she could breathe again...It was like coming home. This miraculous discovery found from warm flesh and a gentle embrace. It ignited this flame in her, one she could use to break down the wall instead of make it stronger.

Except of course, Kate did not know where to go from there. She's been forever stuck in one place. And any sort of disruption, any minor hit to the obstacle keeping her from living the life she truly desires, terrifies her. So she acted like it never happened, all the while breathing in the feeling of his lips on hers, and out the pain she so desperately wants to let go of.

It's after her own shooting, after the bullet enters her chest, that she sees the love in Richard Castles eyes. Her castle leaning over her offering her protection, telling her he's in love with her. And again, she acts like she doesn't hear him. But he stays. He stands tall beside her like he always has.

So much has happened since then. She still hears his confession echoing in her mind...thinks of that kiss whenever she sees him, feels the warmth of his touch in the coffee he still hands her without restraint, as if telling her with this one gesture, "here is my heart." She knows she has it. But she doesn't think she deserves it. She's too broken, and even though he's helped to mend her, she's not all there, and thinks he deserves someone who's well put together.

Sitting in therapy, Kate recalls her life up until now, most of which she regrets. That is until Richard Castle walks into it. And the only thing she can think of that she regrets with him, is not giving him a chance. That's why she's here. Because he deserves that chance, and she needs to be whole first. She looks forward to the moment where she can start again, She's already breathing, and being around him now? Well it's almost like coming home.

I listened to "Calls me Home" by Shannon LaBrie over and over and over again as I wrote this.

Thoughts?