Change of State
"So which parts are we revisiting?" he asked finally.
"All of it," she said quietly. She wouldn't look at him much. He wondered if now was the time to explain Derrick Storm. Perhaps he could use it as a segue into her mother's murder.
No, too awkward. Darn. He'd really missed his chance last night. At the bar, on their working date, he could have gotten so much of this out of the way - she'd given him the perfect opportunity, tugging the ring out from between her breasts.
He had really enjoyed that suit.
"All of it," he echoed. "Where are we starting then?"
She growled something at the car in front of them - or perhaps at him - and turned on her blinker, making a rather snap decision and pulling a U-turn. He blinked and gripped the door handle, surprised by her.
In any universe, Kate Beckett could surprise him still.
"Let's start at the crime scene," she got out. "Since this is clearly not working out."
"The homicide," he elaborated. "Where they shot the courier."
"Yes. The beginning, not the end."
He'd gotten the impression they'd been heading for the coal factory, which is where he would have gone first. Where he had expected her to go as well, but the Captain was proving unpredictable when cornered.
And it was clear now that she felt cornered. He was in her car, wasn't he? And he'd proved to be as hard to shake as a bad penny, always turning up.
Hmm. What had Kate said, standing on that bomb? You really do think it was love at first sight, don't you?
And later that night, their love tinged with a sense of both fatalism and giddy relief, she'd said, You're cute, you know. Don't ever change.
He was going to have to seriously consider the idea that it had not, actually, been love at first sight. And it wasn't in this universe either.
She was speeding. Beckett never sped in the police precinct's car when she didn't have due cause. This Beckett was speeding.
Compromised.
"You were mentioning, last night," he brought up quickly, "how you couldn't solve 'this one case'?" He flicked his eyes towards her breasts - meaning only the ring - and sure enough, it was there, nestled in the dark shadows that he didn't need to fantasize about, he knew from memory.
She cleared her throat. His eyes snapped up to her cold gaze and she turned her head back to the traffic. He blushed.
His own fiancee - partner - friend - his Kate and she'd made him blush over what he already had seen, saw, knew so very well.
"You were fiddling with that ring," he said, trying to cover. "Was it - someone you knew - someone close to you...?"
Absolute silence.
Neat trick, Rick, but don't think you know me.
Oh, hell. This was going to be a lot harder than he'd thought.
"The boys might have told you," he tried again. "Or you overheard. I have something of a gift."
She snorted. "I'd heard something like that."
"Nothing gets past you, does it?" he smiled.
She cut her eyes to him as if she expected him to be sarcastic. It wasn't. He wasn't.
"I meant only that you're a good cop, Kate."
Her walls were up; he could see them in her eyes, in the rigid set of her jaw. This Captain was less angry than his Beckett, but not less wounded.
"Regardless," he said smoothly, "I have a gift. I can - see things. I know things about people. Like I know about you."
Her shoulders hunched, nearly imperceptibly. If he didn't know her, he wouldn't have seen it.
No, she wasn't less wounded. That killed him; it really did. It'd been a long time since he'd seen Kate as anything less than completely and utterly, devastatingly, confident. At the beginning of their relationship, some of those insecurities had come through, shining in her eyes, caught by her teeth at her bottom lip, but that had been more about him and his rather terrible track record, and he'd deserved it. So he'd done what he could to ease her mind, to guide them through that rocky first few months, and the confidence had blossomed.
But this? Kate Beckett was always confident in her professional life. Always. But for a few flickers of PTSD after the shooting-
Oh.
This Kate had never been shot. This Kate had never seen her Captain die for her, laying his life down to keep her safe. And even more - this Kate hadn't shot Dick Coonan just to rescue Castle in her own precinct, hadn't worked desperately to save her mother's murderer's life.
The worst thing he'd ever done to Kate was opening her mother's case and playing in it like it was a cool new toy. They had almost not come back from that. But more importantly, Kate had almost not come back from that.
She'd told him, she had warned him that she drowned in that case. And now here he was with a fresh start, a blank slate of Kate Beckett, and he was going to do it to her all over again?
Okay, different tack.
Castle cast a sidelong look at her. Fresh, blank slate she was most definitely not. This was a Kate with mileage on her, struggles unknown, demons wrestled. This Captain had worked hard to get where she was, had played politics and raised her precinct's case closure rate and looked at the numbers. This Kate was a different woman, with her own problems, her own impossible, beautiful complexities.
He sighed, couldn't help wanting to connect with her, because Kate Beckett in any universe drew him like a moth. "'And out of spent and aged things I formed the world anew.'"
Her eyes shot to his, bewildered and a little hurt. "Emerson?"
"Wow," he whispered. "I keep forgetting you read."
"My gift works like this," he explained. "I see something, images if you will, as a kind of burst of static in my brain. It's rather noisy."
"I'm sure it is."
He slinked a look at her and she was deadpan. But he was pretty sure she was making fun of him.
Kinda made him excited. Normal Beckett behavior, poking fun at him, at his expense. He was built to take it like affection, conditioned by years with his mother and his exes to feel special when they snarked. Snark made him feel at home.
"What that means is," he went on, "sometimes my impressions aren't entirely dead on. Sometimes they get tweaked in translation, if you will."
"Right. So of course, that gives you room to be wildly inaccurate and still claim to have a gift. I know your kind. Profiting from people's misfortunes."
"I don't do it for money," he protested. "It's a limited ability. Only works with people I lo-love."
Whoops. That had come out of his mouth before he'd thought it through.
She didn't look at him.
"I meant, the transmission is clearer with a stronger emotion." Yeah, even he didn't believe him. "Forget trying to explain it. I know things, Beckett. Call it psychic abilities, call it looking into the future, call it whatever you want. But I know things I shouldn't know. Things about you."
"You talk a lot, don't you? You really like the sound of your own voice that much?"
"Yes," he hummed. Wow, it just buzzed straight through him, didn't it? Felt like love. Felt like Beckett, more precisely, and Beckett loved him.
She sighed. Traffic had finally begun to thin. They'd started at the airport where the courier had been picked up and had taken the same route to the crime scene that the car had gone. Getting nowhere - but not very fast.
"You're a fascinating woman, Kate Beckett."
She frowned.
"Call my knowing an incredible gift for observation," he said. "Take, for instance, your upper Manhattan reserve, good breeding, definitely not Bridge and Tunnel. The impeccable suits, today's and yesterday's - name brand, expensive, designer brands that aren't possible on even a Captain's salary. The watch, which is a man's, so most likely a gift-"
"You can stop," she said, flint in her voice.
Castle closed his mouth, blinked. He'd done it again. Fallen right into his usual habits, picking her apart to prove himself to her. To impress her so he could preen like a peacock. Did he never learn?
Well, this time, he was going to stop right there before he was the one who did the wounding.
"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I'll stick to safer subjects."
"Or you could say nothing," she said easily. "Sit there in silence as repayment for my letting you ride along."
"But where's the fun in that?" he grinned.
She let out a little breath, a sound he knew well: amused despite herself.
He thought, maybe, she was cracking.
They stalked the cracked pavement on foot side by side, but Beckett kept trying to pull ahead of him. The street hadn't been closed down - not for a mere crime scene - but Beckett didn't seem to mind the hurtle of cars just past her shoulder.
"I don't believe in psychic abilities," she told him curtly.
"How else would I know that stuff?"
She ignored him.
"And you're worried about it stretching," he blurted out. "Worried that when you get pregnant, the tattoo will be deformed and never go back the way it should." But I told you, right there, so close, so provocatively close, you wouldn't have to worry.
The Captain gave him a discerning look, faintly triumphant. "See? Entirely guesswork. You think every woman secretly longs to have children. I do not." Case closed.
Oh, right. Like he believed that. She clearly-
Oh, well, um. She didn't look at all perturbed by the knowledge. She had been visibly disconcerted with his knowing about her tattoo and motorcycle, about her wild child phase and her geek Nebula 9 cosplay, but now she looked settled again, firmly certain he couldn't possibly know her.
Kate didn't want kids? But she had told him, they'd had a whole conversation in a trash dumpster about-
Huh. Maybe Kate wanted kids with him, now, and... never had thought it possible before him.
That was sobering.
Made his heart hurt. Kate was - alone back there, that other universe. All their plans for the future disappearing in front of her eyes. Whatever had happened to him there, he was now here, and not there, and what if she had to deal with the Rick-Asshole of this world over there?
What if she had to deal with just - his disappearance? Again. He'd ditched her again.
Kate was alone. This Kate was alone too. Standing apart from him, head bowed to scrutinize the pavement, the crime scene photos in her hands as she retraced her steps.
"I miss you," he husked, quiet, the words lost in the rush of traffic.
She didn't lift her head. He hadn't been expecting her to.
"I miss you, Kate."
But it didn't send him home.