Learn to Have Been
February 2015
Kate Beckett takes in the narrow strip of grey on the computer screen, but it gives up no clues. She's watched this spool of traffic cam footage for months now, but only today does she actually know what she might be looking for.
Black Mercedes.
She's been at this for hours, the precinct is dark, she doesn't want to go home.
There has to be something here.
When she first combed the county for video footage - any at all, any tract of that road - she'd gotten pretty much nothing. Maybe she was a ballbuster like they said, but she needed eyes on the scene and there was just nothing.
Castle flinched at a black Mercedes. So Kate is taking that like the remnants of a memory and she's running with it. What else does she have?
She's got eyes now, and she hopes she knows what she's looking for. She wants to find a black Mercedes on the road, pin it down, see if she can get the driver buying gas or stopping at a red light or paying a toll. There has to be something. Has to. She refuses to think that her partner could be snatched from her, that her almost-wedding could be transformed into one of the worst days of her life, and all without a trace.
Kate presses two fingers to her mouth, stares at the video on the computer screen, the lonely stretch of crossroads where the camera flashes every time the red light changes.
Even when no one has run the light, the video remains. It didn't get cleared from the state's history because Kate pounced on it that very day of the accident. She's gone through approximately five hundred and eighty hours worth of traffic footage - bridges, overpasses, red light runners, and convenience stores up and down that road.
And now five more hours to add to her grand total, and she has nothing.
The last frame of the video runs out and there hasn't been a single black Mercedes. All it means is that the driver hit it cleanly, didn't get stopped at this light, that's all it means. Next, she'll check the uninterrupted footage at the toll post for a black Mercedes.
Campbell said Castle flinched at a black Mercedes, cut them off on the road.
Wait. Is it the same Mercedes? Is it the same? Not just a memory of the accident, but recognition?
Her phone rings and she startles, realizes the third shift has been tiptoeing around her since they came on. It's Castle calling, and she hesitates only a second before answering.
"Yeah?" she winces.
"Kate?"
"I got caught up at work," she explains. "It'll take me a little-"
"Oh, I thought - I must have it wrong."
She swallows, buries her fingers in her hair, tugs at her scalp. "Have it wrong? What, Rick?"
"No, I thought we were doing dinner?"
"Oh, no," she sighs. "We - we said that. You remembered right."
He remembered right, and yet here she is hunched over her computer screen, staring at video footage from nine months ago, when she should be having dinner with her husband who is alive.
Except what she really wants to do right now is cull traffic cams from June instead of May, look for the black Mercedes that cut off Campbell in his truck after picking up that all-important hitchhiker. (What if it's the same Mercedes? What if it's the same Mercedes?) What she wants to do is run down the idea she's suddenly had that their lead isn't so much on that accident in May on the day she was supposed to have gotten married, but the lead is actually the day she was given him back.
"Kate? I remembered right?"
"I'll - be right there. I'm on my way," she promises. Because she was given him back; she was given him back, and that is what is most important. "Rick?"
"Oh-okay," he stutters. "I think I burned the chicken. I'm sorry."
He's sorry. "Castle-"
"I mean. Sorry in a really specific way - and not because I'm brain damaged - but because it reeks in here now, and I think I fell asleep on the couch for a couple hours and now the chicken is burned."
She sits stunned at her computer, not sure she heard any of that right, but it's just par for the course lately.
"Kate? I was trying to make a joke. It is burned, it does stink. But-"
"No, I got it," she croaks.
"Oh," he sighs. "Just not funny. Okay. Um. It's late, and I'll probably be asleep when you get home, Kate, so if there's work you need do, you should stay."
"No, I'm coming home," she rasps, swallowing down the thick urge to cry. "I'm coming home, and - please don't go to bed yet?"
"Oh."
"Rick?" She lifts her head, blinks hard as she logs out of her computer, listening intently on the line to hear him, hear the things he won't say as well as the things he will. Who is she kidding? He says everything now, and it's always sweet and kind. "Unless you're too tired-"
"I'll stay up. I can stay up. I'll see you - soon?"
"Yes," she says, already getting to her feet, thumbing off her monitor. "I'm leaving right now. I love you."
"I love you too," he answers back, sounding really pleased, and that's good.
Kate ends the call and jerks her coat from the back of her chair, hustling to get it on as she heads through the bullpen for the elevator. Her heart is skipping funny in her chest and she has to remind herself that they've worked and worked, she can't ruin it now, not like this, for this, for him, when it's for him she's doing it.
Her thoughts are going round and round, and she taps her foot in the elevator, anxious not to mess things up. Dinner.
She forgot because it was an offhand remark from him this morning, but chicken? He was trying to make something, and his short-term memory has been so scattered that she's often come home to find food prepared in stages, abandoned when he forgot.
A whole dinner, burned only because he fell asleep waiting on her. The first time he gets it right and she ruins it.
She's going to fix it. She will fix this.
In the garage, Kate hurries to her police-issue car, thumbs the key fob for the doors to unlock. But a little red light on her key flares up and nothing else happens. The doors are still locked.
She knows better, but her mind goes absolutely blank. She tries the key fob again, irrationally angry because the chip in the key must be dead and those are so expensive to replace and the powers-that-be have sent memos around about taking that kind of thing out of their pay. Kate sighs and pushes they key into the lock and opens it manually, the movement unpracticed. She's never unlocked her car with the key like this. Never had to; she's always used the key fob.
Kate slides behind the wheel and pushes the key into the ignition and turns it.
But there's nothing. Her car is dead.
Her car is-
Kate panics. She scrambles fast and hard out of the car, smacking her knee on the steering wheel, leaving the door hanging wide open as she gets away, far away, her hand going to her gun, braced for the blast.
It takes a moment of fear-laced adrenaline before she breathes, before she blinks and assesses the situation. It's not a bomb, it's just that her battery has died. Her battery has died.
But this is the car that the CIA souped up for her after it was dunked, this is the car that's been outfitted and detailed to even Castle's lavish standards. The battery should be good for three more years, at least. Shit. She doesn't have time for this.
Kate rubs both hands down her face and moves back to the car, but a clench in her gut makes her wait. Makes her stop and hesitate.
Last time... last time, that bastard came right into the precinct and out again. Last time no one saw him, even the security video was tampered with. Last time...
Kate shifts on her feet, steps back again.
Chicken, burned, but Rick tried. He tried and he remembered dinner, and she didn't and now her car won't start and she doesn't want to do what has to be done next. If it's a bomb, then it's bomb squad and she won't be home tonight and it's the station on lockdown and-
Proof.
It's proof and a lead. It's better than a maybe black Mercedes.
But it's just the damn battery. The battery died and now she's got to pop the hood and have someone jump the car and probably take it to the pool mechanic and sign the requisition forms and it's a huge hassle, the whole thing, and she should probably go back upstairs and get that started right now.
Kate retreats farther into the garage, watching the exits, pulls her phone out of her pocket. She's calling her husband before she realizes what she's doing and she holds her breath until he answers.
"Hey."
"Hey," she murmurs, not willing to let her voice carry in the garage. "I have a situation here, Castle." Why did she call Castle? What can Castle do to help?
"Oh."
"Not like that. It's my car. Won't start."
"Leave it in the garage; it'll be safe there. Take the - uh - the..."
"I know, but I can't do that." The subway. Did he forget the line? Probably. Best to move past it, don't comment. "I've got to do the paperwork on it."
"Is this - are you lying?"
"Rick."
"It just sounds really fake. Like an excuse."
"Castle," she growls. "My car won't start - the battery is dead. I'm going to need it tomorrow at work - for work - so I've got to requisition the mechanic, a new battery. It could be the starter, or even a blown fuse, but I can't-"
"Okay. All right. Car's broken. I get it. Do your paperwork then, Kate. It's fine."
He hangs up on her. Kate stares at the blank and empty parking garage, grits her teeth until her jaw aches. She carefully lowers the phone, slides it into her back pocket.
Her hand is shaking.
She breathes out, tilts her head back as her eyes close.
She really doesn't need this tonight. She doesn't need this - one more thing broken, one more responsibility. The traffic cams yield nothing, dinner is burned, and now-
She presses her lips together and calls Esposito. He knows what she should look for, wires or connections. Or - it's probably just a stupid battery, and this is all for nothing.
But Kate doesn't leave the car for someone else to bump into it, she baby-sits it, ear pressed to her phone until Esposito picks up.
"Yo, you got something?"
"I don't know what I got, Espo. I'm down in the garage and my car won't start. Nothing - no dashboard lights, no engine-"
"All right. Okay, the battery dead? Get Hastings - she's got jumper cables-"
"No, I - it might be something else."
"All right," he says slowly. She can tell he's somewhere loud and trying to get somewhere quiet, that he's a little put out with her for calling when this seems like a straight up problem that she can handle alone.
She always handles things; she's Detective Kate Beckett.
"Gotta check the battery first, Beckett. That's what any mechanic would do. Then if it doesn't start, or it smokes, the engine might be blocked. But you can't get to that without taking off the wheel and cranking it, and you know 1PP doesn't like us working on the cars ourselves. Gotta fill out the paperwork."
"Yeah, except this is something - might be something else," she says. "I don't think it's a good idea to touch the car, Espo."
"Not a good-"
He stops and she hears the startlingly clear silence on the other end of the line.
"Back away from the car," he says urgently. "Where-"
"Parking garage. Below the precinct."
"Stay near the stairwell, Beckett. Get in the doorway where you can still see the car, you hear me? I'm on my way. But you have to call-"
"All right," she gives in. "I know. I'll call the bomb squad. I'll call."
Kate shifts forward, already hanging up as she heads for the stairwell.
The chicken is already burned, right? Nothing for it now.