Beckett had spent another hour with Lanie, most of it at a cafe a block away from the ME building, talking in circles about how to get through to Castle.
By 2PM she'd returned to the precinct, and busied herself with paperwork. Ryan and Esposito had periodically dropped by her desk, checking up on her, and she knew they were aware that something was wrong. Castle hadn't been in for days, and had been absent most of the previous week, and Beckett had been withdrawn and short-tempered.
She was still looking up whenever the elevator pinged, and she snapped at a uniformed officer who laid an evidence bag on the chair that Castle always sat in.
It was now evening, and she was sitting on the couch in her apartment, staring into space. She was holding a keyring in her hands – the kind that's a solid piece of flexible, brightly-coloured plastic, cut into the shape of a name. It was a hideous neon orange colour, and it said Nikki.
Castle had picked it out of a rack of dozens of other similar ones, each showing a different name, when they were walking back to her Crown Vic after talking to a suspect last year. He insisted on buying it for her, a gleeful grin on his face, and she had pretended to think it was silly.
She never attached it to her keys, either for the car or her apartment, because then there was a chance that Ryan or Esposito would see it and tease her mercilessly. She had kept it, though, in her bedside drawer. She took it out every once in a while and turned it over repeatedly in her hands.
He probably thinks I threw this away the same day he gave it to me, she thought. She'd never given him any reason to think otherwise.
And wasn't that really the whole problem, after all?
He demonstrated his feelings for her in a hundred different ways, all the time. Coffee, notes on her desk, invading her personal space. The flirting, the glances, and the occasional touches. The looks he gave her, more than anything else. The words that were carefully crafted to not push her too far, but which were also promises. Until tomorrow. That's what partners do. Always.
And then there were those three little words that he'd said – twice – at the funeral. She knew that his feelings hadn't changed over the Summer, or over the months afterwards once they were reunited.
But they're changing now, she thought, feeling icy panic chill her to the core.
She now realised that it didn't even matter what the final straw had been, because this was inevitable. If their situations had been reversed, would she have stuck around? Waiting patiently, turning up every day, lending support with every unasked question, and speaking volumes with every look?
"Probably not," she whispered, and she suddenly felt disgusted with herself. Of course he was tired of waiting, because she had given him almost nothing to wait for. He was a man who loved fiercely, but she also knew that when he was betrayed, he became a ghost for months on end as he put himself back together. She had heard enough oblique references from Martha to the aftermaths of his two divorces, and she had seen it first hand with reaction to his childhood friend being arrested for murder. Then there was his father's absence from his life.
He bounced back from seeing the worst aspects of humanity every week, but when someone that he truly cared about – or loved – disappointed him, he withdrew into himself, and it took a long time for him to come back out.
That's what he's doing now, she thought, and she wasn't surprised to feel the damp trace of a tear rolling down her cheek.
These last two weeks had been deeply unsettling, because she felt the absence of him in so many different ways – not just physically. She didn't smell his cologne as he arrived at the precinct, because most days he hadn't arrived at all. She didn't find a post-it note with a silly message or sketch when she got back from interviewing a suspect. She didn't return to her desk to see a cup of perfectly-made coffee waiting for her.
She sat all evening at home without getting a single text message from him. When she saw or heard something that he would normally remark on, even his voice in her mind was absent – frozen and silent because she knew that, now, he wouldn't speak even if he was with her.
Whenever she entered the elevator, she did so alone, with no warm hand brushing against the small of her back. Whenever she was frustrated with a case and sighed deeply, she didn't look up to see sympathetic blue eyes sparkling at her, silently saying You'll figure it out and I'm sorry and I love you.
Those thousand little affections, every day, were what had reassured her of how he felt about her. They had surrounded her, permanently, becoming part of the fabric of her life. She had come to depend on them. Now, those were all the things she missed terribly.
But, of course, those were also the things that he'd been missing – because she hadn't offered them to him.
I deserve this, she thought. The only surprise is that it took him this long to get tired of… me.
She swiped furiously at another pair of tears trickling down her cheeks, and took several deep breaths.
"OK, calm down," she muttered to herself, and then suddenly Castle's voice was in her head again, but it was his new voice: cold, and guarded.
No use crying over spilt milk, Detective.
"He deserves a lot more than I've given him," she said to the empty room.
Glad we're finally agreed on that. Shame it's a bit late.
"It's not that I don't care."
What is it, then?
She stared at the surface of her coffee table without seeing it, lost in thought for a minute or two.
"I wasn't ready," she said at last, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
Bullshit. But by all means continue not being ready. It's kind of a moot point now.
"I do love you, Rick," she said, and even now the admission make her stomach twist with unease.
You've got a funny way of showing it, Beckett.
She shivered, feeling a pang of real despair. His imagined voice was so clear, and where before it had always been a source of strength, now it was cutting into her.
She opened her mouth to speak again, but then just sighed. How had things got to this point so quickly? Two weeks, after all the months and years they'd been part of each other's lives.
She looked down at the keyring in her hands, thinking about all that it symbolised. The name Nikki wasn't just a reference to the books themselves, or to her status as his muse. It also told her what she'd long known: that the novels were his love letters to her, and that his work with the 12th Precinct was about much more than his writing.
He had spent years now, immortalising her in fiction. Painting a larger-than-life image of her that she knew was how he really saw her. He had put her on a pedestal and made sure that half the world had seen it. Her heart stuttered as she thought of it all that way for the first time.
They all joked about the books from time to time, but the actual extent of the tribute he'd paid her was staggering. Almost any bookstore in the world held these stories, and if someone picked up a copy and opened it to the dedication page, there she was: the extraordinary KB.
This man, who had given her more than any other man ever had before – by a factor of thousands. Who had given her more than any other man ever would. And who had also found time to show her that he was in love with her, in a hundred ways, every single day.
I've been so awful to you, she thought, the icy feeling again moving through her chest in waves. I should have grabbed you with both hands and never let go. I must have been insane!
"I have to fix this," she said, her voice wavering, and she instinctively reached for her phone and then froze.
There was nothing she could say. She could so easily picture the indifferent responses he might make to almost anything she could say. It was too sudden. What did she expect? To just say a few words to him – words he'd no doubt been waiting for and hoping for, for so long now – and everything would magically be fixed? She could imagine the disdain on his face at the very idea of it.
This isn't a piece of fiction, Kate. Life's not that simple.
She stood up and began pacing back and forth in front of her couch, still clutching the keyring.
The first thing she needed to do was actually get to see him. He had asked her to leave when she'd gone to the Old Haunt, and she didn't think she'd get a particularly warm welcome at the loft either.
That just left the precinct.
Whatever else you are, you're an honourable man, she thought. He wouldn't turn down a direct request for help on a case, and truthfully they could use his unconventional thinking.
They had been working a case during the past two days where a Russian immigrant had been murdered at a cleaning products factory. He was a night labourer there, loading chemicals into mixing apparatus. The body had been found the next morning, with acid burns to most of the exposed skin. There were no suspects, and no clear motive. They were still checking a few possible leads, but Beckett had that feeling that they were about to stall. They needed fresh eyes, and a sharp mind.
She nodded to herself, pushing away an unfamiliar feeling of nervousness as she unlocked her phone. She carefully typed out a message and sent it.
We could really use your help with a case, if you're not too busy. Could you come into the precinct tomorrow around 10AM? We're stuck.
She put the phone down on the coffee table and licked her lips nervously. Castle almost always replied within half a minute, but this time the device sat silent and unmoving until its screen automatically dimmed and then went completely dark.
Beckett glanced at the clock on the wall periodically as she resumed pacing around her living room area. She could all too easily imagine him wrestling with whether or not to ignore her message, and she knew that he would be feeling conflicted about it.
I guess I'm manipulating him again, she thought, feeling another stab of guilt. But I'm out of options.
More than ten minutes had passed when the device simultaneously chirped and buzzed, moving slightly across the wooden surface of the low table.
She snatched it up and swiped along the screen to read the message.
OK
"It's not much, but it's a start," she said. She was tempted to reply and thank him, but she was wary of pushing her luck. She would hopefully see him in the morning, and then… well, then what?
"Then I start doing what I should have done a long time ago."
She turned the keyring over in her hands again, tracing the edge of the rubbery, flexible plastic with her thumb. She thought for a moment, then crossed quickly to the countertop where her wallet and car keys sat.
She picked up the small set of keys, carefully threaded them onto the keyring, then set them back down.