Epilogue: Part 1
It was two months of torture.
Two months of grueling physical therapy under a butch therapist with a heavy Russian accent. Her name was Lisa, but he thought she would be more fitting as a Helga. It seemed to suit the stout, solid woman more than the light and airy name she had actually been given. It also fit the way she worked him like a drill sergeant.
Two months of fighting with his lawyer and the city to get back to work at the 12th. Two months of Internal Affairs. Two months of paperwork to state he wasn't going to sue, more than he probably would have needed if he actually did file suit. Two months of negotiations and meetings in cramped conference rooms downtown.
Two months of weekly visits to be poked and prodded by his doctor after the initial recheck up and a minor surgery. The surgery that was not to repair the muscle, thankfully that had been healing nicely, no, this was purely cosmetic. As cool as he thought the wound was when he was under the influence of heavy narcotics, his daughter's reaction on seeing the ugly gash as she changed the bandage had been enough to convince him otherwise. He had gone in, as soon as he knew a surgery for his muscle wouldn't be needed, and gotten the wide wound trimmed and sew back together in a more presentable way by one the best cosmetic surgeons in the country in order to minimize the scarring. After the initial healing he was left with only a thin pink line and plenty of residual teasing from Ryan and Esposito about his vanity.
The teasing had been another form of torture. It didn't help that he had to fight to get back in the precinct, but hearing the guys joke about it had made him doubt his place on some level. Everything had fallen together yesterday, however, and he was all set to go back to his life. Not exactly as it had been before, as he'd be going back with a new title on his partnership/friendship, now including relationship, with Kate.
The agony of that particular change was probably the most consistently troubling of all the torture he had experienced in the past two months.
Mentally, they were more in sync than ever. She seemed to anticipate his needs before he knew he'd have them. They still finished each other's sentences; they still had entire conversations without a single word. She still sought his opinion on her cases and gave as good as she got in their banter.
Every day, however, he found her pulling away from him. Then every night, after the rest of his house had gone to bed (or out on the town, in his mother's case), they found themselves together in his bed, regardless of whether she'd be staying or heading home. Usually they engaged in mundane conversation, but it was unguarded, even on the rare occasion that they strayed into territory that was far from mundane. Even with the newfound openness that they had wordlessly instituted after what was probably the biggest misunderstanding in recent human existence, he found that she was holding back. He wasn't any better as he didn't push on issues he really wanted to, but could extrapolate for hours on topics that were less than noteworthy.
Physically, well, physically he was in hell. Two months of being with Kate without actually being able to be with her had been a test of human endurance. It wasn't for lack of will or lack of effort. He had offered in more ways than he could have thought possible, but she shot him down every time. He needed to heal. He wasn't well enough. The stitches weren't out yet. He was still in physical therapy. After a while her excuses started to sound like a broken record.
If it weren't for how their nights had blossomed, he might have taken her step back during the day or from his physical advances as meaning much more. However, they had developed a pattern that surprised him in its natural ease. Spending so much time together after everything they'd been through should have been more uncomfortable or awkward, but they developed a natural routine that felt like they had been doing it forever.
She went back to work, and her own apartment, but that didn't change things as much as he would have expected. She swung by on lunch if things weren't too hectic, came for dinner if the same held true. She stayed most nights for a movie or board game with him and Alexis that his mom even occasionally joined them for. It was a strange sense of family that settled over him and yet he felt that something was missing.
He knew their relationship was going somewhere, but the more she pushed him away in that regard, the more he began to worry that it might be something of an issue for them. He was left to wonder why. Despite their newfound straight talk and unguarded conversations in the night, he couldn't bring himself to ask her for the actual problem. He was certain his cowardice on that front was more closely related to the fact that he didn't want to hear an answer that had the potential to tear him to shreds.
Instead, he found himself pondering it as he lay alone during the day while she was at work. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that giving in to their baser instincts had been the start of the downward spiral. Maybe she just wasn't interested in that any more. Perhaps she really did just want him to heal or maybe she was doing her best to help him as a friend, but he'd done too much damage for her to reconsider him as more.
She seemed intent on distancing herself. It was a strange experience to live in and he found the contrast increasingly disconcerting. He didn't understand how she could be so open with him and so reserved at the same time.
He had felt confident after their initial confessions that things would only improve from there, but they hadn't really discussed what any of it meant. They hadn't defined 'them' or what those changes might be, what any of this all meant or how things might change once he was back to work. And there had been no repeat of their declarations.
He was starting to feel a little nervous because she'd brush him off whenever he brought up the subject of how things would be different once they headed back to the precinct. He was concerned that she thought he would be unprofessional. He stopped thinking about work, their problems, and everything that had weighed against him when she had agreed to finally going out to dinner with him.
It wasn't like they hadn't eaten together countless times, probably hundreds if he really thought about it, but he found himself nervous as the night started. On his last night before heading back to the precinct, they were having their first solo night out on the town and he'd been a wreck for the first hour into their 'date'. He was even hesitant to call it that, because of how casually they had agreed to the evening.
Picking her up at her place was a check in the 'date' column, so was the emerald green dress and her apparent lack of a firearm. Still, her recent withdrawal from him and the determined look in her eyes that said she was finally going to let go of what she had avoided talking about was a deterrent of him fully embracing this as such.
Oh, he hid it well enough, but he could feel his mind racing with the implications of what this could mean or what decisions could be made based on how the night turned out. She cracked a joke when his overactive hands knocked against his water glass and barely managed to right the teetering goblet before it toppled completely. He couldn't even remember what she'd said, but it was how the words came out that seemed to snap his focus back.
This was them.
It didn't matter if they were Castle and Beckett or Kate and Rick, because that easy give and take, the comfortable flow of conversation, the teasing and ease they had shared was still there.
His comfort with the evening lasted until he found himself standing outside her door with her. He had managed to vanquish those nerves during dinner but they were back with a vengeance and left him feeling like a teenager on his first date.
As every advance he'd made in two months was rejected, he settled on trying to stay casual instead of just leaning into her space and tasting her again. "So, I'm coming back tomorrow, have your tastes in coffee changed?"
Her expression shifted again, something flitted across her features, too quickly for him to really absorb and analyze before she turned and unlocked her door. "I don't think that's a good idea."
He followed behind her, not sure what that forced even tone meant, "Did you give up coffee when I wasn't looking?" he teased.
Her glare was enough to tell him that he was off the mark.
He was left in her doorway, confused, as she turned away and threw her jacket in a chair before dropping onto her couch with a heavy sigh. He almost laughed at the way she casually propped her feet on the table and the little slouch in her shoulders. It was an extremely casual pose that didn't seem to go at all with the almost formal sapphire green dress she had worn to dinner. He wondered when she had slipped out of her heels, but almost tripping over them on the way to join her confirmed they were casually kicked off as she walked.
He had noticed the subtle shifting in her emotions over their days and nights. Sometimes everything seemed to be great, and others she would get pensive or withdrawn. He didn't know how he was supposed to act around her anymore and it was more than a little frustrating.
He approached her position on the couch, but she stood before he reached her and seemed to avoid him as she passed along the other side of her coffee table from him. She didn't start pacing, exactly, but she seemed unable to keep still as something built beneath the surface.
He was certain he wouldn't like whatever she was about to say, but he simply waited her out. He had stopped dead in his tracks when she moved and he probably had a less than attractive look on his face as confusion and worry warred within him.
"I don't think I can do this." She finally spoke, her feet stopping their incessant motion as her eyes raised to meet his briefly.
He didn't have a response to that. He had been biding his time, waiting for her to be ready so they could have a conversation about the future and here was their chance but she was ending it before they even got anywhere. He didn't understand how she could tell him the things she had said and then just walk away. "Kate," he started, feeling the constriction in his chest play out through the breathy exhalation of her name.
"Please, don't." she implored and since he hadn't a clue as to what he would say, her cutting him off wasn't unwelcome. "I know what you want and I know what I want, but wanting something and living with the consequences of it are two very different things."
"What are you saying?" He finally found his voice, though it didn't sound much like his own. Still, along with it, he found the will to straighten his shoulders and take a small step in her direction. He didn't know if he was bracing himself or preparing for a fight.
"I didn't think we'd ever have this talk, you know?" she asked with a small chuckle, though there was no humor in it. "There was so much in the way, so many obstacles; I guess I just figured that I could wait it out, let everyone else do it for me. That probably makes me a coward, huh?" she looked to him with a self-deprecating smile to match her tone.
He didn't understand where any of this was coming from. His mind was spinning as his heart raced and he tried to grasp for a rebuttal. He realized he couldn't refute the reasons behind her words when he didn't understand them. "Why, Kate?"
He almost flinched at the way her eyes shown with compassion and understanding as she raised her gaze back to meet his again. He didn't understand how she could look at him like that, like she cared as much as he did, but still force those words out of her mouth. "It's for the best." she responded, her voice a little thicker than normal as if her throat was having trouble letting words form on strained vocal cords.
"Damn it, Kate, you can't just make that decision. You don't call all the shots on this." He watched the anger flash through her eyes, so he pushed on before she thought he was telling her she wasn't allowed to make her own decisions. He wanted to explain that they should make decisions together if they were decisions about them. "I just," he couldn't think of how to phrase it. "Don't you think this is something we should at least talk about, you know, together?"
Kate was shaking her head at him before he even had a chance to finish, but she didn't interrupt. Once his question floated between them for a moment she took a breath as if steadying herself and gathering her resolve. "It's not up for debate." she informed him, her tone the same no nonsense, flat and hard tone he'd heard her use on suspects countless times.
Her tone didn't stop him, though somewhere inside he knew that it should. Instead, his frustration with this sudden ambush bubbled to the surface. He was angry with her accepting his invitation to dinner and then laughing over their food, just to shoot him down completely afterwards. He was pissed that she thought it was somehow going to let him down easier when it just made the whole thing an even bigger slap to the face. He let his anger take him the last few paces to close the gap between them.
She didn't shy away as he reached out, the gentle touch as he cradled her face between his palms in direct contrast to the anger boiling through him. He forced her to look into his eyes and noted her understanding of the anger in his features. "I love you, Kate." he tells her, more than a little gruff and harsher then he had intended.
Her eyes soften and a sad smile lifts her lips, "That just proves my point." She informs him, the sad smile seeping somehow into her tone.
"No." he informs her briskly. "You love me, too and I'm not letting you push me away."
He felt her hands against his chest a moment before her arms extend to carefully pull herself away from his touch. She glared at him, but there was an undercurrent of something behind the anger, "Do you think this is easy for me?"
"I don't know, Beckett," he watches her flinch slightly at the bitter way he addresses her by the name he hadn't called her very often over the past couple of months. "You're the one pushing me away, if it's so hard you wouldn't be doing it."
"You can hate me all you want, Rick," she intentionally used the name she still rarely pulled out when they were alone. "But it's not going to change the fact that I can't take the risk."
"What risk?" he shocked himself with the level of disbelief in his voice, "Do you honestly think that there's a chance in Hell that I'm going to let anything happen to us?" He made an attempt to close the distance between them again, but she stepped back, shaking her head at him.
"Do you honestly think that you have any control over it?" she countered, sounding more than a little bitter.
"I think that if you give it a chance," he started, but the impact of her finger with his chest stopped him short.
"Give it a chance?" she asked, angrily punctuating the words with another jab of her finger. "What do you think we've been doing for the past three years?"
He tried to capture her hand, not just to stop the poking, but also so he could pull her close to him again. She withdrew her finger on her own and took another step away as if just realizing that the effort had put her in close proximity to him again.
"Dancing around each other and being selectively blind." He informed her simply, trying to keep his cool in an effort to sooth her or at least earn some kind of reprieve from the emotional onslaught he was suffering under. "It's not the same as before."
"You've got that right." She shot back quickly, her frustration with him clearly boiling over to mask the kinder expression her eyes had been giving him throughout this argument. He watched a moment later as the fight drained out of her. "I can't do it again." She informed him as he shoulders slumped and she ducked her head.
"Whatever it is," he told her as he used the side of a finger to gently lift her chin until she was looking him in the eyes. "Whatever you're fighting or pushing, whatever you're scared of, we can get through it."
Everything had stilled in those moments, his voice low and steady, a soft blanket wrapping them in the soothing tones. The sudden jerk of her head to free her of his touch as she took a small step back shattered the calm. Crossing her arms, she set a glare on him. "You don't get it, do you?"
"Obviously not." He informed her, heavy sarcasm lacing his words.
He watched as the tension seemed to leave her body at his words, though he could never had explained why. Her hands unwound from in front of herself to dangle loosely beside her and for the first time he noted the slight tremor in her fingers. She whispered something into the space between them, but a combination of his racing mind and pounding heart muffled his recognition of her statement. "What?" he asked softly, not wanting to interrupt the sense of calm she had obviously found.
The anger in her eyes as her head lifted to face him again was startling at first. It wasn't until she spoke that it all fell into place, "I almost shot you." Her tone was low and tight with emotion restrained just beneath the surface. He suddenly realized that the anger she's been battling was not directed at him but at herself and that while he was thinking she was talking about their relationship, she had been talking about work instead. He gave a gentle tilt of his head in question, not risking speech in order to ask for elaboration when he knew his voice would be the happiness of his new realization; he was certain a huge smile and relieved excitement in his voice would not go over well just then.
"When you went for his knife, Castle, I saw the opening, too. I had the trigger pulled almost all the way back when you took his arm down."
His heart began to pound wildly as he restrained himself from reaching out to her. It was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do to give her space in that moment with her voice thick with emotion.
"If I hadn't been able to stop myself I would have," she cleared her throat, but when she spoke again it didn't seem to have helped the huskiness, "I would have shot you. In the throat." she elaborated and the weight of that statement settled between them shedding light on the dark mood that had been hiding behind her eyes since he'd regained coherent thought.
He didn't stop himself this time as he reached out and pulled her against his chest. She didn't pull away, but simply stood in the circle of his arms radiating her tension in her ramrod straight spine as he felt the coiled muscles of her back beneath his hands. He couldn't even imagine what that moment must have felt like and then to have stood over him bleeding out on the floor had probably hammered home the implications. "I'm so sorry, Kate. I had no idea. I didn't think about it."
"You never think. That's the problem." She responded hotly, but she didn't push him away. Her anger was back, but he could work with that. Castle let the tense silence surround them and blanket them in their own thoughts for a long moment.
"What can I do?" he implored quietly.
She sighed in response. The draw of that breath pressed her chest against his before her heavy exhalation warmed against the fabric covering his collar bone. "Go home. Go back to your books, back to being a dad and a writer. Stay safe. Give it some more time and think, really think about everything that could go wrong every day that you're not safe at home."
.
He was shaking his head as she talked, sure she could feel it even though she couldn't see him at the moment. "I can't walk away and you know it."
"You can and you will." she informed him with the strength of her resolve clear in her voice as she pushed away from him. "You don't have a choice in this, Castle."
He didn't seem able to stop shaking his head at her. "This is my life we're talking about. You can't just make demands and tell me it's over after I spent two months fighting to come back."
She shrugged, her body language a forced casual that he easily saw through, "That's right. It's your life and I'm not going to let you throw it away."
"You're asking me to quit, Kate. I can't do that." he wanted to reach out to her, but she was putting distance between them again, using that stubbornness he found so intriguing against him and suddenly it wasn't nearly as attractive a trait.
He didn't like the idea of leaving their work behind. He knew it was dangerous, but most days it was safer than crossing the street at rush hour or riding the subway at night. He also knew that there were far too many times when he had been the only backup that Kate had and it had meant she lived. He didn't think he'd be able to be her guy who sat on the sidelines and worried all day that something was going to happen to her because he wasn't there.
He was so lost in thought that he almost missed her rebuttal. "You're not even fit to come back yet, anyway, so I don't know why you're pushing. Give it some more time and we can talk about it again."
"Are you really going to try and pull the medical card on me right now?" he asked in stunned disbelief, because he knew if she were in his shoes she would have been back to work weeks ago.
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. Defensive with a pretense of being on the offensive, he thought the contrast was interesting. "You're going to push yourself and do permanent damage. You're not ready for the physical demands."
He felt the smirk pulling at one side of his mouth as his eyes narrowed on her, watched as her intentionally stern expression lit with surprise as he took a slow and deliberate step in her direction. He became the hunter, stalking his prey and she stood, like a deer in headlights, unmoving on the spot in her living room. He saw the light of recognition in her eyes as she realized what he was up to, but he didn't stop moving.
He continued forward even when he'd reached her, pressing his body to hers and leaning towards her with a self-confident smile. He was sure his expression bordered on menacing as he revealed his intent to her with the devilish grin a moment before he brought his lips crashing down to meet hers.
If she was going to make accusations about his physical status, he was just going to have to show her exactly how well he had healed.
x.x.x
A/N: I took all of your conflicting opinions and my own confused state into account and decided to read this again from start to finish, twice. I found that this has been in a state of resolution since around chapter 25, and aside from the issue addressed here, others have been resolved between our two leads, even if only introspectively through their own understanding of the other.
I don't want this to be over any more than you guys do, but I refuse to drag it past its natural conclusion just to satisfy my desire to continue playing with them in this setting. If I thought it wouldn't detract from the story already on the page I'd keep writing this just because you've all enjoyed as much as me. That being said, the Epilogue continued getting longer and longer as I tried to work through the main issue that we hadn't resolved: Beckett almost shooting Castle and her likely hesitance with him returning to work. This will be a 2 part epilogue just because I thought you had all waited long enough for this and it's fixing to be 8000 words or more if I don't stop it here. Besides, I want to pick up from Kate's perspective to finish us off.
Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed along the way. It has been amazing. This story has broken all my records and taught me a lot.
I learned that I should invest in a "WRITER" vest if I ever get Castle and Beckett together and tear them apart again.
I learned that I like giving Alexis a little spunk, and that apparently I think Ashley is a lot like Castle in some ways.
I learned that pushing a character's tendencies and playing up the parts of them that we all scream at the TV for will upset you all the way it upsets us on the show.
I learned that it's ok not to have a single crime plot running through a fan fiction when it is a character study, but that I don't like not being able to reveal the bits and pieces of a case a little at a time so you can all guess at the killer.
I learned that it's ok to write a little angry sex against a window, though the whole time I was wondering if Castle had that security glass so that people wouldn't see Beckett's naked butt from the street or adjacent buildings (also, did they leave a body smudge on the glass or did Beckett clean that up before Castle's family got home? and how come the pizza never showed up?)
I learned you guys are all amazing. Thank you so much for letting me experiment with you on this venture into a whole other realm from what I'm used to writing. It's been a blast, though it nearly had me to the doctors for anti-depressants on more than one occasion.
I'll be back with the conclusion of the Epilogue as soon as I can get it written, sorry for the long note.
Thanks to everyone for reading.