Title: Bent, Not Broken- Our Souls
Rating: T
Pairing: Castle
Disclaimer: I couldn't begin to take credit for the beauty that is Castle. That would be Andrew Marlowe's pride and joy. I just play with the toys and put them back in the toybox.
Author's Note: Nothing would please me more than to share the thoughts and love I had for 5x15 "Target". I can't stop watching the episode, and when I can't watch the episode, I watch clips. I was blown away by Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic and Molly Quinn. After I watched it the first time, the Castle muses began whispering the fiction you see before you now. I would like to thank Andrew Marlowe and the Castle crew for their hands in making something we love and believe in. And I would like to thank Vertical Horizon and Three Doors Down for giving me the rock music that inspired each one of these chapters. The music for each chapter is as follows, and if you'd like reasons why, please message me:
Our Rules (Gates/Perlmutter): "Miracle" by Vertical Horizon
Our Lives (Ryan/Esposito): "Citizen Soldier" by Three Doors Down
Our Hearts (Lanie/Beckett): "Won't Go Away" by Vertical Horizon
Our Souls (Castle): "Train" by Three Doors Down
Enjoy. This builds on top of my "A Day In the Life of Perlmutter" fiction, and happens right before Chapter 8 "Where We Stand".
Summary: Our souls will never be broken. (Spoilers for 5x15 "Target")
Alexis. Alexis. Alexis. His beautiful baby girl. The separation was excruciating. To know what happened but not the why slayed him, and he couldn't believe in his better angels to cope with the anxiety eating away at his stomach like acid. There was no sense to this. Why his daughter? Why did they take her? What was she doing that they would take her? Was she truly just at the wrong place at the wrong time? And what did that say about her life expectancy? He believed that she'd just been taken as extra leverage, as a victim of collateral damage, but there was no way he couldn't take this personally. It was his daughter, his daughter, and he knew he would make her captors suffer for every second away from her that he experienced.
Paris. They took her to Paris, and this wasn't one of Meredith's hair-brained whimsies for the latest fashions and melt-in-your-mouth croissants. How could they take her and Sara out of the country? What kind of regulations did TSA have nowadays that they'd allow them to take the girls away like that? Didn't they have some sort of checklist and inspections to follow? How the heck could they allow this to happen?
Rick Castle dismissed himself away from the FBI and retreated to his man cave. This used to be his place of sanctuary from his family, though he lived it when Alexis visited from time to time. Both his mother and his daughter knew not to disturb him in a writing haze when his manuscript deadlines were apparent and his wanted to avoid Gina's fire ants on his eyeballs. But now, alone, it felt as hollow as a tomb and just as cold, like the air had been sucked out of it. It burned his lungs to breathe. He wanted her back. He ached to have her back. He choked his sobs and put on as straight a face as he could to keep it together because he had to be strong for her. But seeing her face on that screen had been the last shot to his already breaking heart. Tears made the world melt into a distorted shadow, and he wiped them away with the back of his hand. "Alexis…" he cried, and slammed a fist into the desk. Pained, raging, depressed, hopeful and hopeless, he did it again, and then again, until he knew one more slam would crack his fingers and break his knuckles. He wanted to do it, he craved to do it, something to keep his mind and his heart off of the pain inside, but he knew he couldn't. He had to stay strong, right? "Keep it together," he murmured through his sobs. "Come on, you can do it. This won't help her."
And it wouldn't. It wouldn't help her at all. A broken hand with his broken heart would make a useless matched pair.
So, what would?
Instantly, he realized what he had to do. He grabbed the key to the left-hand desk drawer and turned it clockwise. It took a bit to rummage around, but he found what he was looking for and closed the drawer as silently as he could. "I'm need some fresh air," he absently told the FBI teach guys as he walked past them. The moment he was out the door, he heard, rather than experienced himself, call his mother and say, "Something's come up at the precinct. Beckett and I are going to work on the case a little more, and I'll call if I hear anything." She said something back, but by then, he'd blacked out on anything but his tunnel vision of the one most important thing he cherished in other than his mother, his girlfriend, and his own life.
His baby girl.
If she couldn't escape and come to him… he would go to her. And he'd put a bullet in every person that would come against him if he had to.
He slipped his passport into his pocket. He hadn't realized he'd had it in his hand until just then. "Bonjour, Paris," he said. "I want my daughter back."