Change of Sate
A/N: Please note the change in verb tense, an indication of the reality of the alternate universe. It is. It was not a dream.
Part II: The World Anew
"Out of spent and aged things, I formed the world anew."
-'Song of Nature' Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Family of Richard Castle?"
Kate presses her elbow against her sides and straightens her spine. His mother and daughter are standing rigidly in the middle of the waiting room, frozen, voiceless. They don't seem to hear.
The silence stretches to the breaking point.
"I'm Captain Beckett," she says clearly. "I was with him. You have news?"
The doctor comes over to her, a glance of his eyes towards the other two women before he decides she's the best one to speak with. He clasps his arms in front of his body, glances down.
No.
Not today. She will not-
"I'm one of Mr. Castle's surgeons - Dr. Barnes. He's in recovery."
Kate lets out a stuttering breath.
"It's going to be touch and go for a few hours. His heart isn't steady. Both bullets entered his thoracic cavity and the damage was extensive."
She forces herself to stay standing. "What can I do?"
"Nothing to do. We're watching him; he's in ICU on a breathing machine. The surgery was long and he lost a lot of blood-"
"There are a hundred and more NYPD officers giving blood downstairs," she says crisply.
"Yes, ma'am, Captain. I had heard. The Twelfth?" He nods again. "We gave him eight pints all total. Blood bank can use it."
Eight. The human body only has ten.
"We've managed to repair the damage to his lungs and heart, but we just can't know the outcome."
She nods, but her eyes catch the daughter, the black of her hair making her face too pale in her grief.
Kate clenches a fist. "Is he receiving visitors?"
"No," the doctor says quietly. His eyes cut to the daughter and grandmother, then he gives Kate a knowing glance. "Not a good idea. He's - rough looking. It's not pretty."
"When will he wake?"
"As soon as the anesthesia wears off, he'll start to come around. Hard to know when - his body might keep him under to heal. Soon as he's with it enough, we'll take him off the vent and see how he does. When that happens, then he can have his family come in."
Sounds smart. But she's going in there now.
Her heart slows to match the sound of the machine measuring his own.
She stands with her arms folded just inside the privacy curtain and she stares down at the man in the bed who said impossible things.
But she believes them. Somehow. Believes him.
There will be an interrogation, subtle and deft and careful, but an interrogation nonetheless. She will be gentle, but she has to know.
The machine beeps, some kind of warning, she doesn't know, but it draws her eyes to him. The impossibility of him.
He's swollen, face puffy, fingers like sausages. Her own chest aches with the tubes running in him and snaking out again, like she's witness to a lion that has been felled by a mouse. It's unnatural - Richard Castle immobile in that bed.
She takes a breath in time with his, forces her eyes away. The curtain sways with a gust of heated air from the vent overhead and she puts her back to the bed, slides her phone out of her pocket. It's supposed to be off, but a Captain of the precinct is never out of reach.
She texts Ryan. Will you go into my office and send me a list of all the case files on my desk?
He told her it has been with her, on her desk, all this time. She caught him in every nook and cranny of her house, the Twelfth, and she doesn't doubt he read or skimmed each one of those case files, nosy as he is.
Curiosity killed the cat.
William Bracken, he said. She laughed it off. But he also jumped in front of those bullets for her without even hesitation.
She doesn't understand, but so much of his words were like that: incomprehensible.
I love you, Kate.
If he were a stranger. If he were a random conspiracy theorist who showed up at the 12th. If he were anyone other than her once-favorite author, his words would be dismissed out of hand. Entirely.
But Kate Beckett has never dismissed the words of Richard Castle - even that pretentious and overwrought book of 'literature'. She's read him, she is used to taking in his words like gospel, devouring, ravenous for more, never quite content with the final chapter. He ends his novels on a cliffhanger, leaves her wanting, imagining possibilities, and he did the same this afternoon.
He's her writer, the sole tether in a world oblivious to her grief, derisive of her needs. He was the one who-
His books. His books did that for her. Not him. Not him until today.
She usually flinches when Page Six catches her eye; she turns off the Late Night show when he gives an interview. She finds herself lurking on twitter and then renouncing her stalkerish ways when she sees what he actually thinks about the world. He has always been a bitter disappointment in real life.
Except today.
She never wanted to know him. She wanted only his voice. His authorial identity which never judged from the page, the words that gave the world a fresh and sharp-cornered meaning, provided justice and a good-guys-win-in-the-end.
I love you, Kate.
If he were a stranger to her, lying on the cold concrete with his eyes unfocused but his words so clear, she could pretend it meant nothing.
But Richard Castle's words always mean something. To her.
And she can't pretend. He did this for her; she'll believe in him.
Her phone vibrates with a text, a list of all of her open cases, but Ryan has included a camera shot of her desk, being a little irreverent even though she's repeatedly scolded her boys about their gallows humor.
The photo captures her eye. Her desk is precise, if not immaculate: the cases neatly stacked in their tray, the laptop closed and waiting, the blotter arranged with the calendar below, the landline phone angled perfectly for her hand, the pen perched atop her planner.
The nameplate is brass but it shines. The parade of elephants adds one of the only personal touches in her spare, spartan office. She doesn't like mementos, and she doesn't like her worlds colliding. Who she is at home, among her books and eclectic art and bronze knicknacks and oversized couch - that is an entirely different woman from the Captain of the Twelfth.
A woman he talked straight to, as if he had seen her in her own home. Never has a person ignored the exterior and gone straight for her heart.
Familiarity, compassion, curiosity, challenge-
She strokes her thumb over the elephants and inadvertently selects the image. The photo blows up full screen and she regards the careful troupe, her ears attuned to the heart monitor and breathing machine.
It's on your desk, it's been right there with you for years.
She blanks her phone and the screen goes dark. She shoves it back into her pocket, swallowing roughly through the things that want to surge in her, the messy things, the things that will hurt.
It's not hope. She can't hope.
Beckett closes her eyes to count slowly to ten, but a sound breaks into the room.
A groaning, a terrible breath that won't come, an animal in pain.
Kate opens her eyes, jerking forward, encloses his IV-laced arm. "Mr. - Castle? Rick. You're okay. You were shot, but you're going to be okay."
It's a lie, but his eyes flutter open.
He has beautiful lashes for a man.
The doctor is not happy to see her, but he proceeds with the extubation as she stands sentinel is his room.
Richard Castle has no need for police protection, but there is a faint whisper of a voice that says he knows something. He has knowledge of her mother's murder and that needs to be guarded at all costs.
While his lungs and chest work to expel the breathing tube and the nurse twists and pulls it free, Beckett has to grip her elbows to hold back the noise in her own throat.
She has never seen such violence done to a living body before.
Lanie would tease, but no one should sound like a keening wild beast caught in a trap - just to breathe.
She won't interrupt to ask, but when the flurry calms down and the nurse is checking vitals and manipulating his head, when the doctor flashes a penlight into Castle's forced-open eyes, she steps to the foot of the bed and waits. The nurse leaves.
The doctor glances her way and she takes it as invitation.
"He's under police protection," she lies. Not a lie. "I'll be on duty in here until I have back-up. Can you tell me his prognosis?"
The doctor glances her over. "I'm his heart surgeon. Dr Davidson. But you can call me Josh."
"Dr. Davidson," she nods, "can you tell me what the next few days will look like - as far as consciousness goes? There are some important questions I need to ask him."
The surgeon straightens up, taking her put-off but remaining professional. Too professional, since he says, "I'll need some forms to be signed, officially, from you. And his family members - next of kin - will have to authorize a release of medical information to an outside party. That is, unless you're getting a warrant."
Touche. "I'll talk to his mother about it," she says, quickly. "Can you please send her back this way - with a nurse as escort? I won't leave, but I need to stay informed. I'm sure she would like to see him as well."
Davidson looks frustrated by her, but she's learned in her tenure as captain that the best way to get things done is to assume a degree of civil cooperation and proceed as if they are indeed capable.
"Thank you," she continues. "This is a rather sensitive matter. I appreciate your willingness to work with the NYPD, Dr Davidson." She offers her hand, and a soft smile, because he's attracted and it always works.
And it does. He shakes hands, all business, but his fingers are perhaps warmer along her knuckles. When he pulls back the curtain to leave, she sees him heading towards the door at the end of the hall and the waiting room beyond.
Good, he's cooperating.
Kate turns back to the bed and studies the man breathing on his own. His hair is flat against his forehead and shadows his closed eyes; her fingers twitch.
The rest of him is a sea of white and cream, seriously washing him out, completely not attractive.
But she can't take her eyes off of him, and when she hears footsteps on the other side of the curtain, she realizes she's got her fingers wrapped around his ankle.
As if to hold him here.
She has a thousand questions and he is the man with all the words.