Learn to Have Been
February 2015
He's dreaming. Castle knows he's dreaming because the face before him is twisted and rubbed out like a reflection in a carnival mirror. The voice that goes along with it is disturbingly distorted, synthesized until it's not even human, and each word touches Castle's mind like a touch, a finger scraping the chalkboard of his senses.
Tell me about her.
It's not right. This isn't right. He needs to get out of here.
Tell me.
No. He has to keep it closed, like doors. Keep the doors shut on all of it, keep it locked away, even from himself so the distorted thing won't get in.
He's useless. He's no good like this.
He has to keep it closed. If he can just keep it closed. It's vital. It's life or death. He has to keep it locked down, like Kate does, like she's so good at, just keep it so tight and hard and compact in him so that no one can ever reach it.
Tell me. Tell me why it's so important.
Kate would know why. Kate understands why. He can't let it in, can't let it know, it would kill everything he loves, destroy it all. Kate knows. If she was here-
Castle yells, jerking awake at a touch. He brings up both fists, yanked from a nightmare into darkness, unfamiliarity, his body rigid and his heart racing.
"Hey, it's okay, it's okay, babe, it's just me. Castle, hush-"
"Kate," he groans, sinking back into the couch. His heart is thrashing in his chest; sweat clings to his palms, the back of his neck. The distorted thing is close, is near; he can't let it in.
He has to close his eyes.
Kate sinks down beside him, one hand on his thigh and one on his back, rubbing. "You okay? It's late, babe. What are you doing out here?" Soothing, slow circles, around and around. The distorted thing fades.
He opens his eyes, so relieved to see that it's only Kate that he nearly cries.
Instead he clears his throat. "Yeah, fell asleep. Waiting for you." He tries to pull himself together, entirely too aware of the seething terror that lies in wait for him below the surface of dreams. He takes a swift look at the clock on the oven and grimaces. "Kate. It's four in the morning. What the hell?"
She actually smiles; relief pours across her face and he gets that bitter taste in his mouth at knowing he's done something he used to do, said something 'right' for once. Not been nice.
He used to be a real asshole. Funny, because he doesn't remember himself as an asshole; he just remembers being happy-go-lucky, easy-going, life of the party. But every time Kate tries to explain the missing pieces, asshole is what comes to mind.
She's even chuckling a little at his confusion.
Castle rubs a hand down his face, discombobulated - and defensive enough that he hears himself lashing out at her again. "That's funny to you? I don't think it's so great that a 'battery' took nearly eight hours to-"
"No," she breathes, shaking her head. She's smiling so wide at him, her eyes bright. "No, I thought it was a bomb, but it's not."
"A bomb? Kate-"
"It wasn't, it wasn't," she says, smiling and radiant. She wraps her arms around him and slides a thigh over his knees, settles into his lap still in her work clothes and heeled boots. She cups his face in her hands and kisses him softly, touches of her mouth to his, her knees tightening at his waist.
Castle groans, that darkness in him still somewhere under the surface, like her assault has shades of memory he doesn't want to reach for, but he lifts his hands to her hips and grips her thighs hard enough to bruise.
She moans, a throaty sound that echoes in his chest. Her body rocks against his and he grips her tighter, thumbs torquing into her inside thighs. She gasps. "Yes, Castle - like that."
Bruises? She wants him to bruise her? Is that what she wants from him - the angry retorts at four in the morning and accusations of lying and holding her so tightly he mars her flesh because he can't bear to be dragged back down into nightmares?
"Castle," she groans. "Please. Please, I thought he'd caught up to me but it was just a dead battery; he didn't. You're alive, I'm alive, and it was a hell of a lot of paperwork and a big damn embarrassment and I just want to forget it was - I want you, I just want-"
He growls and bands an arm around her back, drags her down against him, attacking her throat with his teeth and sucking hard on her skin to mark her. She wants rough, she wants him to be someone he's not - someone he used to be - then fine. Fine.
He just wants her.
He wants it to be normal again.
There's a mock-up of a cartoon bomb sitting on her desk chair when she gets in to work the next morning. Like something Wile E. Coyote would buy from the Acme company to thwart the Road Runner but end up having it explode in his own face instead.
Kate gives a little half-bow, picks up the cardboard cut-out, chucks it in the trash to the sound of the bullpen's light laughter.
So she called the bomb squad for a dead battery.
Better safe than sorry.
In that moment, standing in the parking garage and knowing the complicated and involved schemes that Jerry Tyson has pulled before, she had no trouble believing a bomb was in her car.
Now she wonders if she's a little crazy. There is absolutely no evidence for Jerry Tyson - nothing. And Tyson liked them to know; he wanted to gloat about it. Even Nieman was the same during that case, wanting to smirk in their faces.
Kate has no evidence and maybe this is all a big mistake. Maybe she's running hard in the wrong direction.
She sits down at her desk chair and doesn't let the bullpen see it though. Never let them see you sweat. Royce used to say that when they went out on 911 calls.
She has a black Mercedes, no plates, no witness ID, no forensics in her husband's car, nothing.
Ryan and Esposito come rolling over, Ryan having to catch the edge of her desk to keep from rolling past. He grins widely at her and she knows he's not the one who put the cartoon in her chair; he looks eager as a puppy and ready to do whatever she says.
Esposito is even giving her a great big smile. But in the back of their gazes is the swamping pity they had all May and June when Castle was missing.
She sets her teeth against it, gestures to her computer screen instead. "Did you guys start looking at the traffic cams?"
"Yeah, but you said during the time that Castle was found - not during his accident? Did we hear you wrong - what can you possibly hope to find?"
She folds her hands in her lap and tries to keep the crazy from showing. This feels insane. She needs to present her evidence, the timeline, lay it out neatly. "I think someone came after Castle that day - maybe he escaped somehow, maybe they dropped him off? But his kidnapper was on the road that day and cut off Campbell as he was driving."
She gets two blank stares.
Kate breathes out. "Okay, first. The blood splatter on the bottom of his scrubs was never identified. But we know it's not Castle's."
"You don't know that. Lanie said it was too degraded to match with any certainty. We only know that's it male," Esposito says. He's never tried to sugarcoat things. He's her reality check and it's not sounding good so far.
She tries again. "Right. Male but not necessarily Castle's blood. Castle wasn't even bleeding when he was found. In fact, nothing was wrong with him - no scratches, no broken bones, just some - the marks on his neck."
Ligature marks, Kate thought then - still thinks? - but Lanie couldn't say that either. None of Tyson's rope fibers were left in the contusions, and the doc in the emergency department suggested the seatbelt might have done it.
Ryan shifts his gaze to Esposito. He doesn't look eager about this theory. "Yeah, okay, but..."
"Hear me out," she says, holding up a hand. "The blood wasn't Castle's so it stands to reason that it's someone else's who was there with him - his kidnapper's."
Ryan's face has gone from hopeful to hesitant, just like that.
But Kate can't stop now. It's nearly February and she just got the first lead they've had - even if it's not solid, even if it feels like grasping at straws. "Castle was - never supposed to be found," she says. "They weren't going to let him go."
"They?" Esposito says cautiously.
"I know I said it was Kelly Nieman, fulfilling some kind of vengeance against us for killing Tyson, but now-"
"No," Espo cuts in. "No. Beckett. Don't jump off that bridge."
"It makes sense. The blood is male, so it can't be Nieman's. And Castle has always thought Tyson didn't die that night-"
"No," Espo growls, hulking in close as if to block her crazy from the rest of the bullpen. She knows it's showing, but she can't help it. "Beckett, listen to yourself."
"Something happened - a struggle maybe, a fight, something. Castle escaped-"
"Escaped? In that condition?"
"Castle escaped and they came looking for him. I've talked to Campbell a hundred times. But when I took him out to the road, it jogged his memory. He said a black Mercedes cut him off-"
"It's the Hamptons, Beckett. There are a lot of black Mercedes."
She stares up at Esposito, then addresses her appeal to Ryan. "It's all I got, guys. If we can find that Mercedes..."
"And what? Arrest the twenty year old hotel heiress who drives it like the idiot she is?" Esposito snorts.
"Fine. Say it is some Paris Hilton. Okay. Then at least that's one thing I can mark off my list. I've got nothing else up there, Javi. Nothing."
Esposito leans back in the chair, his jaw working, but it's Ryan who leans in and nods. "You got it, boss. If the black Mercedes is there, we'll find it. We'll run it down."
"Thank you," she sighs. "Ryan, I-"
He holds up a hand. "But when it is Paris Hilton, I'm getting an autograph."
"For Paris Hilton?" Esposito growls, but her boys are already rolling their chairs back to their desks, bickering between each other over which celebrities are cool to idolize and which aren't.
Kate faces her caseload and gets to work, but she can feel the crazy in her wanting out.
This is all crazy. None of this makes sense.