Learn to Have Been
February 2015
Rick hasn't pushed her, even though I thought it was a bomb is a pretty big deal and maybe something they should talk about. But he's sensed that she's not entirely okay with him poking into her ongoing cases, and this is more than that, obviously.
Not just that this case is about him. But she won't talk about any of her cases. She won't bring the murders home any more, and he's not sure what that means. He keeps trying to be good, focus on the mysteries of his own existence rather than the body drops and the furrowed line in her head when Esposito calls to give her an update.
He tries not to wonder, not to doubt himself, his place in her life because they got married - she proved herself to him and she proved him to himself at the same time. She said, so what? to his subtle differences when she married him, and maybe the differences really are enough to keep the work at work.
Although really, he thinks he might be better off if he stopped thinking about his different brain (stop saying you're brain damaged, Castle; you're not). He's filling up the spaces with all the ways he's not quite right, and yet one thing that hasn't changed - he's definitely kept his overactive imagination.
He maybe shouldn't have watched Terminator Salvation last week.
Kate is in their bathroom washing the make-up off her face when he finally screws up the courage to ask.
"Kate, do you ever wonder if... maybe I'm a cyborg?"
She lifts her head from her soapy hands and stares at him in the bathroom mirror.
He rushes to explain, defending just how stupid it sounds. "Like an android of a man. Like a Blade Runner replicant and I just don't know it?"
Kate blinks, and then she ducks her head and rinses the soap off her face. When she's done, using the hand towel to dry her face, she looks at him in the mirror. "Should I administer the Voight-Kampff test to find out?" she says finally.
He stands up straighter, her look sizzling in his guts. "It's hot that you know that."
She smiles, a little too much relief in it, and she turns around and hooks her arms at his neck, presses against him. "I think we're good. That sounds just like you," she says, pushing up on her toes just to tease him - has to be - because the friction of her body against his is incredible.
He dips his head forward, intending to press his lips against that hot mouth, but he has a moment of strange deja vu.
An image of Harrison Ford in Blade Runner asking questions with what was - basically - an advanced lie detector test is now overlaid with a distorted face, a man twisted like a carnival mirror, a thing in the darkness asking him questions.
Tell me about her.
"Castle?"
His hands are shaking. He bows his forehead to hers and closes his eyes to keep it in, keep it closed, keep it out, don't let it know-
"Rick?" she whispers.
"What if I'm a replicant? All the memories are planted there but the personality isn't quite right because no one can really become anyone else. The soul isn't there-"
"No, babe. Stop. That's not you."
He tightens his hold on her and lets out a breath. "Or a clone? Or what if I'm really some guy whose face has been altered to make me look like your Castle, but I'm just a cheap stand-in who-"
"You're not a stand-in," she hisses. Her arm is so tight around his neck that he has trouble breathing, but she's not letting go. She's pushing him back against the shower door and her hip bones are hard against him with the force of her conviction. "No matter if you think your middle name is Alexander or Edgar, you are still you."
"But just the other day, you said sometimes it was so different-"
"No," she says, horror in her voice. "Don't do that. I meant the - wait. Give me a second to say this right, let me say this so you hear me." She closes her eyes as if to think, and yet the hard jolt of his heart under her hand makes her open them again. "I married you, Castle, because I love all the incarnations of you."
"That doesn't sound right," he grumbles.
"That's what a marriage is. Don't you see? That's why you have to stand up and make a vow, make promises, because people change. People become different than maybe you expected or hoped. The idea is to do those things together, as one, so that we don't grow apart, but into each other. With each other."
Castle lets out a breath, his arms drawing around her despite himself. "But I changed - overnight, Kate. We didn't do that together."
"That's why you were smart to wait," she whispers. Her noses nudges in against his jaw, a soft kiss there. "So you'd know I meant it, so you wouldn't have to worry. We had a few months to grow together, for me to catch up. Okay? That's what it was. So whatever differences you have now from then, I don't care. I don't care. And I'm so sorry I made you think it mattered."
Castle buries his head into her hair, capturing her in the cage of his arms.
She loves him and she's stuck with him, even though he thinks those differences are beginning to matter quite a lot.
She's stopped building theory with him.
The next morning, he comes right out and says it finally - what he's been turning over in his mind since that night. "You thought it was a bomb because of Jerry Tyson."
Kate flushes and closes her eyes.
"And you believe me now?" he rasps.
"I don't know, Castle," she says. And then her eyes open and she reaches for the French press. He sits at the bar and watches her work, memorizing every step.
He's going to do it. Some day. He's going to make her coffee again the way she likes it - loves it - and he's going to get it right.
He's been practicing ever since she asked him to re-marry her, or is that re-asked him to marry her?, when he knew that by saying yes he was also saying yes to the ghost of Rick Castle who used to be here.
It's a strange, three-person marriage at times, but he's learning to live with it.
"Castle?"
He shifts back to attention, realizing he's gotten lost in the deft movement of her hands on the French press. He's been studying at the espresso machine under a certain tutelage, but he sees now he's got to master the art in all of its forms, not just the perfect foam.
"Sorry, what were you saying?" he asks.
She flashes him a look, measuring, but he's learning to live with that too, and he just waits for her to be reassured.
"There was no bomb," she says again. He assumes it's again. "So I don't know what I believe. The complexity of this whole thing makes me wonder."
"Because it sounds like his kind of complicated revenge," Castle offers.
"But you don't remember who took you, where you were, what happened-"
"No," he growls.
Kate stops. He doesn't apologize; he's been reamed for apologizing anyway.
"Then let's approach this like we always have," he says, feeling a little desperate to move past the black hole in his memory. "We do best when we build theory together."
Kate nods then, though her eyes are on the coffee as she makes it for them both. Doing his job, he thinks. Well, no more of that. There are some things he can do. He wants to build theory. He wants to make her damn coffee.
"Kate," he insists. "The case. The evidence. The forensics. Tell me."
"Blood stain on the scrubs they found you in," she rattles off. "Male. No DNA match because it was too degraded."
"Okay," he says calmly, already feeling easier about it. "That's one thing. What else?"
"Salt," she says distractedly, fixing their coffee.
"No, thanks," he answers. "But I like when you put cinnamon in it. That was a good surprise."
Her face goes completely blank for a second and he panics inside - what has he done wrong, what has he said - but she laughs then. "Oh, no. Castle. That wasn't me asking if you wanted salt. That was what Lanie found on those scrubs. Forensics."
He laughs as well, relief trickling slowly back through his body, between his lungs. "Oh, okay."
Her lips quirk. "Sodium chloride - unrefined. Engine grease. And some kind of insect remains - probably from where you were held. But those have been sent to a national testing center and we haven't heard anything yet."
"Still?" he mutters.
She gives him a look, pouring creamer into his coffee. "As much as I want to jump the line, nothing can be done. It takes time. There are hundreds of cases ahead of ours."
He slumps on the stool, rubs his hand through his hair. "What, really, would some insects tell us about what happened?"
She meets his eyes then, shakes her head. "I don't know. Maybe nothing. You were outside, walking on the side of the road in the Hamptons, so of course there's going to be trace elements. We'd have to know where and how first, I think, and then use those forensics to get a match and build a case for the prosecution."
"Then those things don't point to that where and how, do they?" He sighs and takes the mug from her outstretched hand, feels their fingers connect in a way that sends licks of desire to his guts.
He really loves her, and what she does for him, how she stands up under all of this. He used to think it was asking too much, but she made him believe in it again, made him understand.
He just wants to get back to the good place, the place of give and take, where he feels like he can actually stand up with her, where he feels like he's not always the one in need. He wants to be depended upon. "So forensics doesn't help. They've searched the area where I was found and nothing."
"Nothing," she agrees. "There's just - that black Mercedes. And it's a long shot."
"Does... Tyson have the resources to have a black Mercedes?" he finally asks. He doesn't want to harp on Tyson, but that man makes him cold in a dark and deep place, touches a part of Castle he doesn't like to look at too closely. "Does Tyson have the resources for all of this so soon after his last plot?"
Kate's face washes clean of everything. "I hadn't thought of that," she admits. "No? I don't know, Rick. Again, I'm not sure he actually is alive. It could be the plastic surgeon alone - Nieman."
He growls and rubs a hand over his eyes. "Who said you had a fabulous face."
Kate huffs, dismissing it. "Listen, it could be - it could be something NYPD coming back on us. There are plenty of people you and I have put away for murder who would do it again."
"But Espo and Ryan said they've gone through nearly a hundred old cases and nothing."
She looks down at her coffee.
"Kate, whoever this was - it was so well planned. Don't you see? There was intelligence behind this, and most everyone we encounter on the job just isn't that smart. Tyson though. He is."
"So is Bracken," she says roughly.
He narrow his eyes. "Yes, but that's through."
"Is it?" she croaks.
"Yes," he insists. He almost says, I'd remember that. But the problem is that he has no memories. Still. "It's done, Kate. And that was - bad - bad enough. No reason now for Bracken to go after me for that. Or you through me, either way."
She looks like she wants to believe him. "But you don't know."
"I don't... no, I don't remember any of it, Kate." Too defensive; he sounds too defensive about it. He stares down at his coffee, tries to recall anything at all. Anything. There's simply nothing. "It's not even black or hazy; it's just gone."
"Castle that makes me... hesitant to say that it was Jerry Tyson. I just don't think you could forget that," she whispers.
His eyes startle up to hers. She's not ever said that before. But it looks like she's definitely been thinking it for a long time. She thinks that she's going to catch his kidnapper and he'll take one look at the guy and know it was him.
"You think that catching the guy who did this will miraculously put me back together," he accuses.
Her face crashes. All the hesitating hope, all the pinned expectations, the ridiculousness of her thoughts fall in on her.
"I guess I do," she says, her eyes averted.
"It's not going to fix me," he chokes out. "Having the guy who do it... only means I stop having to watch my back all the time." He tries to get control of himself. Tries to be better for her, find some stability. "Catching the kidnapper means I can go outside without wondering who's going to run me off the sidewalk."
"That's not funny," she whispers.
Was he joking? Oh, maybe he was. He was joking. That's more like himself.
Castle's lips twitch, staring down at the counter. Someone running him off the sidewalk. That one just slipped right out of his mouth without him thinking about it, but it was a joke.
She makes a noise and he glances up, sees her mouth twisting and realizes she's trying not to laugh.
He's made her laugh.
Finally.