Learn to Have Been
February 2015
Rick Castle tilts his head back and closes his eyes, the winter air like ice in his lungs. The slats of the park bench resist him, pushing back, a constant discomfort.
"Here you are," he hears. And then fingers comb through his hair and a body presses warm against his. He lifts his head and sees Kate bundled up in her coat, scarf around her neck, her hair wind-wild.
He forgot his coat. No wonder it's so cold.
"Hey," he says back, sighing. The winter trees are bleak out here, bare.
"Thought I'd lost you," she murmurs, her shoulder against his.
"No, never," he says automatically.
She smiles a little, but it fades too fast. "Been looking at every playground and swingset in Central Park," she says. "Just happened to see you sitting here."
"Swingset? Oh. It's not about you, Kate."
She flinches and only then does he hear how that sounded.
He takes her hand in his, but she shivers at the cold of his skin. Still he tries. "I meant - it's not a relationship thing. I'm not rethinking my marriage." He tries for a goofy smile but it falls flat. "This is something I had to do. Something for myself."
"Something you had to turn off your phone for?"
"Yeah," he scrapes out. "So they can't track it."
She stiffens.
"Not that I didn't want you to... I didn't think you were-" He shrugs, shakes his head. He can't feel his nose. Frozen solid. He didn't think she would be coming home so soon. Honestly, he's lost track of the time.
"I went home because the case is... dead in the water," she murmurs. "No body, no evidence."
Dead in the water. The phrase stirs a current in his darkness, nudging other things to the surface. He's been sitting here hoping, but instead he's only confirmed his worst fears. Dead in the water.
Still it churns up, unable to be forgotten.
"He's dead," he tells her, dropping her hand. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, head bowed. "He's dead, Kate."
"He is dead," she confirms. "He can't get you, no more looking over your shoulder, Castle. At least there's that."
"Not Volkov," Castle scrapes out. He presses his palm to the green wood of the park bench between his knees. "Not Volkov - but my father."
The silence echoes in the cold, and he can't seem to draw a deep enough breath. Like knives, all of it, and the words he wrote today at his desk make it worse. The interrogation, the darkness, the sick lurch of his head.
Kate's fingers slide over his thigh and around his elbow, hooking. "Why do you say that? You think Jackson Hunt is dead."
"He was there, and then he wasn't," Castle tries. "I don't - I don't know exactly. Pieces are slipping through, won't come up." He can feel winter in his blood.
"Castle," she whispers. "Why are you here?" Her fingers are stroking his elbow; he's so cold that he can't feel it. He thinks she's been talking, asking other questions, but this is the first one to really register.
So he tries to answer. "This is where we would meet. Where we met once," he corrects, shaking his head. When Jackson Hunt played him. "The benches here in Central Park." He takes a deep breath but the ice in his lungs is sharp. "I was hoping he'd come. He didn't. He won't. He's dead."
"You can't be sure of that," she murmurs. Her chin comes down to his shoulder and she leans against him. Warm comfort. He wraps his hand around her arm and draws her a little closer.
"I can be sure. Gregory Volkov is dead, isn't he? That was Jackson Hunt."
"There's no body - no evidence of that."
He sighs. "I don't need a body to know."
"Castle, that's supposition," she starts.
"It's not. It's memory."
Her fingers tighten on his elbow, her body suddenly hard where it meets his, and he turns his head to look at her. Just past her shoulder, he can see the leaden sky and the branches of trees cutting through the landscape.
"Memory?"
"I think," he sighs, shoulders drooping. "I started writing and it - spilled out. It was there in my fingers, I guess." He swallows, closes his eyes to keep it back. The air rubs his face raw with its chill. Muscle memory, that's what Beth the therapist called it, though he's pretty sure this isn't what she meant.
"I read what you wrote," Kate murmurs.
"Good." Then he doesn't have to repeat it.
"Is that why you wouldn't marry me?"
His jaw drops, the truth of it hitting him in a rush.
She pushes in closer, arm winding around his. "Because Volkov's wife was killed, and he was going after yours. He was going to make you watch. So in your head - if you weren't married, then he couldn't. It - it makes sense. If you were only remembering a few things, and that was - what stuck."
"I - I didn't think of that," he says. He stares at her, the narrow, sculpted lines of her cheeks and jaw, the golden brown of her eyes, warm even in the cold. Serious for him. Hurting for him. "That never occurred to me."
"Oh." She drops back against the bench, chewing her bottom lip, looking out across the trees. There are no chess players this time, no hopscotch, no children on the playground. The swings were abandoned hours ago. The cold has gotten unbearable, the clouds one uniform density across the sky, featureless.
He touches her arm, takes her hand. "But you're probably right. I have these dreams..."
"Of the crash, falling."
"Of fire," he corrects. "Flames. I used to think it was in the car - the car on fire."
"You didn't have any burns, Castle. When they found you."
"I guess because my dreams were about the accident, I assumed... but you're right. It wasn't the accident. It was that night in Paris. There were explosions. That's what I was dreaming about. Running through that place, the charges going off."
"Paris. Volkov." She turns into him, her knees pressing against his thigh, her eyes trying to connect with his. "You were dreaming about Paris."
"Trying to give me clues," he mutters. "My own damaged brain."
"Not so damaged," she smiles. Her lips glance across his cheek, cold as the air in Central Park.
"I just wanted to know if it was true. I texted the old number I had for him, but of course I didn't get a response. I came here, hoping he'd see it anyway and come. But he can't come if he's dead."
"Your father," she murmurs. She leans in and her hair is cold where it brushes his neck. "You think he rescued you from Volkov?"
"I know he did," he gets out. He rubs two fingers at his forehead, trying to stave off a headache from the cold. "He was there, Kate. I've got pieces of it, but I don't know the whole picture."
"He did that to Volkov then. Tried to dump him out here-"
"Do you know where Volkov's body was found?" he says, frowning now. Something more is trying to rise to the surface, like the triangle in a magic eight ball, trying to give him an answer. This whole conversation is dredging the darkest parts of him. Building theory on wisps.
"Not far from here, actually, off through the trees-" Kate gasps, sits up straight. "Jackson Hunt did that on purpose, didn't he? So that you'd know it was him."
"Maybe," he mutters. "I don't know. He was supposed to... he let me know, after Paris, that he was okay. But he hasn't now. Maybe because I'm jumbled up and I wouldn't know it anyway."
"So you came here," she says softly. "You came here and hoped he'd still be around. After all these months, Castle?"
He shakes his head. "I was hoping he wasn't dead. But I think he is. I think he's dead and I think some part of me knew it. I knew he was dead and that's why it's been like this."
"That's why the amnesia," she sighs. "Protecting yourself, protecting all of us. Oh, Rick. I-"
"Stupid," he mutters, pressing his thumb into his temple. "It only made it worse."
"How did he die?" she says. It's not total acceptance, but it's better than oh, you're probably mixing things up again.
"I don't know," he admits.
He can't bring it to memory. It's floating in the darkness, deep down, and he can't get it to float up. Dead in the water.
"There was a boat," he croaks.
"A boat?" She sounds as confused as he is. The sky has begun to sift, grey to white. As if the clouds are disintegrating. And then he realizes that snowflakes are coming down, appearing as if in thin air to drop silently over the world.
"It's snowing," he says inanely.
"Yeah," she frowns, glances behind her.
"It's cold." He wishes his father had shown up here. He really does. But there's nothing for it; Jackson Hunt is more than just an absent parent this time.
He's gone. He knows it in his cold-cracked bones. Just gone.
Castle leans back and closes his eyes again, letting the snow touch his cheeks, little wet spots, colder and colder.
"A boat," she whispers, jerking beside him and clutching his arm. "Castle, a boat?"
He lifts his head again. "Yeah, somewhere in the murk of my memories. Felt seasick. My head-"
"Chief Brady said they found a derelict. This was the same month that body showed up. I think. The same month. There was a boat, Castle."
Kate is suddenly scrambling off the bench and grabbing his hands, tugging so hard that he lurches towards her. She gives a sharp noise of triumph, her excitement ringing in the winter air, the snow dusting her hair and melting as she moves.
"Castle, this is a lead. A lead. You had engine grease on those scrubs, and there was salt - sea salt - and there were - there were bar fights and missing dogs-"
"Oh my?" he interrupts.
Kate laughs, staring at him, her whole face breaking open with joy. Her lips curl into a smile that stops the world and then she leans in and kisses him, her tongue a vivid heat inside his mouth.
When she leans back, he blinks at her, at that incongruous smile of hers, but sparks of warmth are being set off in his chest, lighting up.
"Come on. We're going to the Hamptons," she says, dragging him forward. "Before the snow gets any worse."