With thanks to the reviewers, followers and favouriters.
With humungous thanks to Prim-Rue94 and theriseofthestorm (Tumblr) for sort-of-betaing and telling me to change stuff or generally squealing or threatening to kill me etc. etc.
For Seb; my Googlemouth, my brother, and who shows that grades don't measure intelligence.
I don't own anything you recognise.
The creak of the door disturbs Castle's vigil and he hears a figure stagger into the room.
"Katie?" Jim Beckett almost shouts, falling forward to lean heavily on the bed, eyes travelling up and down her body to check for damage, face haggard and full of panic. "Katie." It is a sigh of resigned relief that leaves him as he collapses to the floor, kneeling next to her head and staring yearningly at her as though sheer willpower will make her wake up. He runs a finger down her cheek, haltingly shifting it when it hits the ventilator. She is still.
Castle tears his gaze from her for the first time since the doctor left and watches the father in front of him cradle his daughter's hand in his own. The pain in his stance is too much to bear – the pure pain of seeing his child like this, and Castle immediately feels guilty for intruding on such a precious moment.
He can only imagine how it feels.
With shaking legs he stands and quietly leaves the room with a silent
promise to Kate to return.
As Jim lifts himself slowly into the chair, his grip on her hand never breaks. His thumb rubs over the small scar by her wrist, where a cooking experiment with her mother had gone wrong, and the memories flood back in a tidal wave of despair.
Her mother.
That was when everything had gone downhill for their family.
Suddenly, their perfect, loving, funny bubble had been burst by the real world: the world of hate and violence.
Suddenly, their cornerstone had been gone, demolishing the foundations of their lives.
Suddenly, he and Katie had had to grow up far too quickly, too unexpectedly. The responsibilities he had been able to shirk (or at least shoulder onto Johanna) had become solely his, pressing onto him like a relentless burden of provision, care and duty. Alone.
And Katie: she had had to become a self-sufficient woman by herself. He hadn't been any help to her, instead finding solace in a bottle, shattering and stoppering the pain her death had brought him. His daughter, the gem of his life, had been left to the demons of the real world with no one by her side.
Until Castle.
God, how she had needed Castle. How they had both needed him. The light that had shone in Katie's eyes at the mere mention of the writer had been enough for Jim to be singing his praises without even having met the man. Instantly, there was a pillar for her to lean on. Someone for her to (eventually) split her problems with. And Jim could live in the knowledge that whatever happened, she would be cared for.
Damn the Beckett Stubborn Streak.
If only she hadn't gone fishing for information. If only she hadn't been her mother's child.
Jim laughs, the sound devoid of humour, before it turns into the splutter of a man who has been too overcome with worry to eat or drink.
He wonders what Katie would think if she were to wake up and find him here. Would she tell him, in that manner that is all Johanna's, that she was fine? Or would she react like the last time she was shot (oh, he hates how that statement is valid for her) and cling on to him desperately, just as he is clinging on to her now?
With a sigh, Jim settles back for the night, drawing his coat over his legs, shifting his elbows to the arms of the seat, finally letting her hand flop back to rest beside her, as he will in a few short moments.
"Dad?" Alexis turns the corner to find her father pacing back and forth in front of the room that is obviously Kate's. He pauses at the sound of his name and she reaches out to him, clasping his elbow to guide him to the side of the corridor. "How is she?"
The inquiry, murmured as it is, is too much for Castle. He shakes his head, mutterings reaching her in the form of pleas to a God they're not sure exists, fingers drumming an erratic pattern on his thighs as he bends, bracing himself as his body heaves with whimpers.
She wraps him in an embrace that is so familiar it is all he needs just to collapse into her and weep. She soothes him with gentle crooning, as though he is a child who has lost a balloon – the item of pleasure for a length of time that has vanished suddenly, leaving him inconsolable and friendless. It's what he needs. The child-like need for comfort, for a demonstration of love, for someone to hold him dominates his instinct to be in the opposite role of the comforting parent.
Martha and Alexis finally get him home, leading him through the door and to the couch where he folds in on himself and stares, unseeing, at the ceiling.
They watch him. He is a pale shell of the joyful man they are used to seeing, and it scares them.
For Martha, her son has never been this distant, this unwilling to talk to her.
For Alexis, it is a side to him that she can only link to Beckett. Last time he had been this way it was the detective's blatant disregard for her dad's existence, creating a bigger void between the two of them because of a refusal to call - but this time, she can't find anyone to blame.
"What did the doctor say?" Martha asks gently. Castle starts.
"Paralysed. Emotionally unstable - so, normal Beckett." He snorts. It sounds childish, and he can see Alexis recoil at the sneer in his voice as he spits her name, and his bitterness is so much of a surprise to him that he half wonders if he meant to say that.
"It's not her fault, Dad," Alexis can't help but point out quietly.
Castle's jaw clenches. It is her fault, he irrationally argues. If she hadn't been so driven to hunt her mother's killer then she wouldn't have been shot - again. And if she hadn't been so bloody determined to talk then they wouldn't have been on the swings.
He idly rubs the back of his hand.
His common sense is telling him that actually, it wasn't Kate who reopened her mother's case. It wasn't Kate who dredged up the past. Ultimately, it wasn't Kate who had failed to protect herself.
It was him.
It was his fault.
The boys' drive back to the precinct is silent, bar the tap-tap of Ryan's fingers on the window. They get to their desks to find Lanie hovering anxiously, cell clutched in her hand and relieved scowl on her face as they approach.
"Javier Esposito," she hisses, slapping him in the chest. "Where the hell have you been? And you, Ryan. And where's Beckett?"
Her name is enough. Lanie's eyes widen as they both collapse into their chairs, head in hands, trying and failing to stop the trembling.
Gates joins them and Javi feels a surge of rebellion. This is the woman that made them close the case after Montgomery's death. What was she doing in a place none of them wanted her - in their little group, as they struggled on without their leader? Her words shock him straight through and it is only the identical look of confusion on Kevin's face that assures him he heard correctly.
"I would have thought you'd be at the scene," Victoria Gates eyes them over her glasses. "Rather than feeling sorry for yourselves." At any other time Javier would bristle at the insult to his pride, but any time that is offered to hunt for the person who shot his surrogate sister is more important. Without a word he is striding towards the elevator, not waiting for Kevin to join him as he hears the captain answer his partner.
"This is different to last time. There may be evidence. As long as you find a lead, I don't care what you do, as long as you find that sniper. And yes: Mr Castle is welcome to stay."
The shrill ringing of his phone makes all three of them jump. With fumbling fingers, Castle prods the answer button and holds it up to his ear, eyes closed as if 'see no evil, hear no evil', can be true for one second.
"Castle," he rasps.
"Hey, it's Ryan. We've got something." The excitement in the Irish detective's voice is easy to hear, and Castle wonders whether it could be contagious, just for that day, so he could feel slightly more optimistic.
"The sniper left prints," Ryan continues, and Castle is out of his seat like a rocket, propelling himself out the door and down the stairs without a second thought. "We'll meet you at the Twelfth." Castle nods down the line and releases a dark grin in the direction of a passing woman.
Maybe this time they'd find him.
Castle strides through the hospital, flashes of his old self reappearing as he rushes to tell Kate about the discovery. As he gets to the door, he pauses, before opening it a smidgen and checking to see if Jim is still there - he's not sure it's appropriate to be so blatantly happy about finding a lead on who shot his daughter and killed his wife.
Mr Beckett isn't there, although the jacket on the back of the chair promises his inevitable return. Castle slows his pace as he nears her bedside and for a moment, he just watches her, the smooth rise and fall of her chest feeling like the only continuum in his life.
Minutes pass, and he forgets why he came to see her, so intent is he on detailing every aspect of her form. He jumps when a voice invades his concentration, only to see the sympathetic glance of a nurse as she extends a clear plastic bag towards him.
"Detective Beckett's belongings, sir. We found them on her when she was brought in." He accepts the bag and clenches it in his fist, feeling tears prick the back of his eyes. The cold outline of her mother's ring beams out at him and he carefully slits the plastic to pull it out. He holds it, dangling, from one hand and inspects the piece of jewellery he has seen on her so many times - for the life she lost.
"We've got a lead, Kate." His voice is rough and gravelly, grating on his throat like sandpaper. "He left fingerprints behind. We'll get him. I promise you, Kate, we'll get the bastard who did this. I promise. Just - don't you die on me, you hear? I'm not turning that engagement ring into a mourning ring. You're going to be awake to arrest him, and you're going to be there when's he's sentenced to life. You have no choice. You're going to be there. I've got to go now, beautiful. I'll let you know what we find. Stay strong, Kate." Castle closes his eyes briefly to get his quivering breathing under control, then takes the spinning ring and lays it on the table by the bed, watching it as the chain settles in a wave of gold - a never-ending circle of love and hope.
He stands and bends to kiss her forehead. It's cold. As he turns away he subconsciously wets his lips against the dryness of her skin, and catches sight of the man watching him. His head bobs in a gesture of respect as he leaves her side, forlorn expression tinged with determination, inwardly wondering how much the other man heard of his monologue.
"Be careful, Rick," he hears as the door clicks shut.
Be careful.
They had never been particularly careful.
It was much easier to plunge head first into the situation.
Maybe it was time to start caring about the consequences.
It is the first time in a long while that he has travelled in the elevator alone. The metal walls encase him in a cruel cage of emotion as he arrives with a dull 'ding'.
His journey across the barren bullpen is met with sympathetic stares that barely penetrate the thick barricades he has put up.
Her chair is empty.
The murder board holds none of her adrenaline-fuelled scrawls - only a police-issue photograph of the detective - his detective - under 'VICTIM'.
Her name glares out at him in stodgy white letters. He can feel the brand pulsing on his heart as his breath hitches.
Victim.
It's his fault.
It's her fault.
It's his fault.
Esposito's hand on his shoulder makes him turn, and he is led to Ryan's computer, the Hispanic detective strategically placing himself between Beckett's desk and Castle.
"Prints belong to a Jordan Rodgers," Ryan announces, selecting the file attached to the name and bringing up the photo. "Previous convictions for breaking and entering, two accounts of felony theft, and is known to be in association with more than one street gang."
"Sounds like our guy," Esposito nods. "Got a place of residence there?"
"She's a she, actually." The detective turns the screen round to show a picture of a young, twenty-something woman glaring at the camera. "And yeah-" he reads out the address as his partner scribbles it down on a piece of paper.
"You coming, Castle?" Ryan calls over his shoulder as he grabs his coat from the back of his chair. Castle doesn't reply. He stares at the screen, jaw dropped, eyes wide and full of wonder.
2,281 words :O worth a review, surely?
Chapter 4 is ready - and as soon as I've done chapter 5, I'll post it :)
Also - please don't hate me. Cliffhangers are addictive.
Toodles.