Close Encounters 6
Castle stared at the summary and couldn't fathom what it meant.
He called up the individual status updates and scanned the lines of text, searching for meaning in the words. Beckett had gone home with Carrie for a few hours and then she'd come back to the city in a cab, alone.
He didn't understand, but maybe it was what she needed. Beckett was - she had always been such a singular, reserved person; her passion was deep once it'd been tapped, but that made the abandonment all the worse.
He'd abandoned her - through death or through this damn plan of his father's. Either way, Castle wasn't being the partner she needed.
He had to get to the bottom of this. His father had some ulterior motive for all of this and the more he looked, the more he recognized that there were things in Washington that Castle knew nothing about. Deals being made and broken. For what, he didn't know.
So Castle put away the reports on his wife and started calling in favors from people he knew, people in positions of power.
"Yes sir, this is Richard," he began. The man on the other end of the line seemed to stumble over his words so Castle went on. "This has to be between you and me, sir. I'm working on an operation that required my - death."
He just hoped he could find the answers before the elimination assignment started.
He only had twelve hours to finalize it and present the plan to his father, and he'd better have come up with something tangible before then.
Kate stared blindly at the upended wine bottle but nothing more came out.
She huffed a breath and put it in the sink, took the almost full glass with her as she made her way for the bathroom. She sipped it slowly, focusing on the job at hand, and opened his linen closet.
She snagged a ratty washcloth and brought it up to her nose, cautiously sniffed. Slightly soured, but not too bad. It would do. Kate took a deeper draught of her wine and pressed the back of her fingers to her mouth, swayed on her feet.
She was fine. She wasn't going to think about it.
She set the glass on the counter of the bathroom sink and kneeled down beside the jacuzzi tub. Beckett wanted a bath and oblivion, but this thing was coated in a layer of dust and grime. He'd not been back here in at least a year, not that she remembered anyway, and the last time she'd seen this tub was after the fun they'd had with maple syrup.
She was trying really hard not to think about that.
She ran the washcloth around the lip of the tub and yeah - yeah, it was sticky too.
Don't think about it.
Kate opened the hot water tap, let it run while she turned back to the cabinets under the sink and searched for cleaning products. She took another sip of wine, blinked into the dim interior of the cabinet, trying to focus. She found a surface cleaner in bright purple and pulled it out; this would have to work.
She needed a damn bath.
She finished the wine and set the empty glass down on the counter and then she moved purposefully to the tub, armed only with a threadbare washcloth and a purple spray bottle.
She needed more wine.
Scrubbing the bathtub had been good. She'd needed that. And while the vodka burned as it went down, it seemed to work much better than the bottle of wine she'd emptied. So she put the vodka and her glass nearby and prepared herself for it.
Beckett stepped into the full bath and let the water close over her ankles and inch up her calves. She sank down slowly until she was seated, and then she eased back to lean against the sloped sides of the jacuzzi.
With the heat pressing down on her chest and wrapping around her body, Kate finally closed her eyes.
She had realized, sitting on Carrie's back porch, that she was waiting.
Waiting for him.
She had been waiting this whole time for Castle to walk back in the door.
He'd gone away, and he just wasn't back yet. She'd been telling herself that ever since she'd shown up at her apartment to find it teeming with firefighters and cops, telling herself that to keep the desolation from opening a mouth inside her and swallowing her up.
When all those questions had come up, it was just - affirmation that she'd been right. They'd lived together for over a year and he'd spent half that time away from her - on a mission or an assignment, working around the clock, overseas and out of reach - and then appearing like magic at her front door, or already on her couch, or sleeping in her bed.
She was used to the alone part of things; she enjoyed having the space. And for the last couple days, she'd switched off her reality and functioned as the rooted half of their partnership.
But Castle wasn't coming home.
His father - Black's kindness had convinced her. He had never lied to her, and though his truth had often cut, he had never been anything other than honest.
There was no conspiracy; Bracken had not kidnapped her partner.
Castle was dead.
And tonight - she was giving herself permission to feel it.
He was dead; he was dead. He had come home for the last time.
Kate floated in and out of her own consciousness. She was aware - at some moments - of the feel of the glass in her fingers as she swallowed a mouthful of vodka, of the creeping chill in the water, of the ache in her neck as she laid there.
And then she'd rouse, pour another glass, open up the faucet and the drain at the same time, let the cold slip out and the hot fill up. Once she was set again, she'd close the bottle, close the faucet, and sink back down into it.
Each breath was long and loud in the dull quiet of water in her ears, and she slipped back even farther, let the water lick along her chin and cheeks, touch the corners of her eyes to mingle with the tears that still leaked out.
She thought about nothing; she thought about her mother.
The way she smelled. The darkness behind Kate's eyes reminded her of the night she'd cuddled in close, too old to cuddle - already a teenager, and how her mother had drawn her in with a laugh, allowed her the closeness despite the fact that no one in her family really touched like that. It had been a movie her mother had warned her not to see, the images hadn't left; she'd wanted that moment on the couch curled together to banish them.
Kate breathed.
The way the edges of her grief had smoothed with time, with the last decade and more of carrying it around like a stone. Repeated handling had worn away the sharp and jagged pieces of her mother's absence.
But Castle. Rick.
She choked and pressed her hand over her eyes.
He was - going to be different, she could already tell.
Not having him, not - the lack of him had made her jagged again, all those pieces. All the edges were scraping her raw once more. And now it wasn't just the hole, the absence, but the progression of time stretching out ahead of her.
After her mother's death, Kate had never disbelieved that she'd continue on. The way she'd continued might have altered drastically - the path had been reworked completely, but it had still existed. Time was brutal and relentless but it didn't stop. It existed.
That, in itself, had forced Kate's perseverance.
This?
There was nothing past this. There was Rick and then there was - there was nothing.
And she couldn't see how she was still alive. Or why. It didn't make any sense. There was Rick, there was everything, and then -
Fire.
And everything was made nothing.
She lifted the glass to her mouth. It was empty. So Beckett hung her arm over the lip of the bathtub, and she released it from her fingers, and she let it drop.
She heard it bounce against the side of the tub and then shatter on the floor as it hit.
She closed her eyes and sank deeper into the bath.
Kate had slipped under the water before she even knew she was losing consciousness, opened her eyes in surprise and instead of pushing back up, she stayed.
She stayed there a moment, in the echoing and muted tremble of water around her. The tears were pressed back into her eyes and she felt the soft touch of her hair floating around her face, the sound of her heart beating slowly in her ears and the leak of the faucet into the tub.
She opened her mouth and felt the water pushing in, eager for space it hadn't yet filled. Her nostrils flared and she paused, a heartbeat stilled somewhere, and how good it felt to be nothing, to join that blank and black chasm of nothing, to have no movement and no need and no feelings swirling around.
And then her lungs began to burn.
The flame of agony licked fire in her chest and the wild panic of his eyes as he'd stared across the fire from her in a house in Copenhagen, and she reflexively sucked in a breath.
Beckett jolted up out of the water, choking and sputtering, gagging on water that seemed to rake its nails through her lungs. She clutched the side of the tub and drew her knees up only to vomit water and stomach acid and vodka onto the tile.
Tears streaked down her face and she stumbled out, tripping onto her hands and knees, grunting in pain and sucking down air, and crunching on glass as she tried to stand, and failed.
She was wet and shivering and bleeding and on her knees in vomit and glass, and holy fuck, how damn pathetic, just kill her. Just fucking get it over with.
But she still lived.
Beckett sobbed through the last of the convulsions, the water coming out her nose and mouth now, a horrid rasp in her chest and throat as it burned. She crawled across the threshold to the bedroom and got a foot under her, stood up slowly, using the wall for support.
Still she lived.
She closed her eyes and counted until she reached fifty, counted again until she'd reached one hundred, her breath labored and her throat closing reflexively, but she could still breathe. Her lungs worked.
And since she still lived, she took stock of the damage.
Her hands shook as she pulled the tshirt over her head, leaving her hair in a wet, tangled rope down her back. She found a towel and moved back into the bathroom, kneeled down to sweep everything into a pile. After too-long a moment, she realized she was bleeding from a hundred cuts and she was still crying.
Fuck, she couldn't even do grieving well.
She left the towel in a clump of glass and blood and vomit on the floor and she got back to her feet and stepped carefully to the sink.
Don't look in the mirror. Just don't.
She ran water over her hands and forearms, wincing as the blood trickled down into the sink, pink and incongruent. Beckett stared into the bowl and then shut off the water, tried to figure out what next.
But there was no next. There was just - this.
She turned and headed back for the kitchen, jerking when she stepped on a stray piece of glass, twisting the arch of her foot towards her to see. A gash, and the blood seemed to ooze out like string.
Kate shook her head and limped the rest of the way, trying to figure out what she needed.
Her body throbbed and she just - she just wanted to sleep, and forget, and not have the image of him in that house fire, not have any of those images in her head ever again.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen and turned slowly, seeking. . .
what?
She felt the pulse of heat in her arms and legs and glanced down, saw the blood dripping from her fingers.
Oh.
That couldn't be good.
She needed. . .a dish towel. Was there - here. Here, a dish towel.
Becket wrapped it around her arm and clutched it against her chest, opened another drawer and found an unopened bottle of scotch, the amber liquid so golden and soothing to her eyes.
If she could sleep - she just needed sleep. Whenever she'd had a chest cold as a child, her mother had given her a finger of whiskey to ease the congestion, break it up so she could breathe easier and finally get to sleep. It had always worked.
Beckett reached for it, unscrewed the top to the beat of the dull pain in her fingers. She felt her back hit the counter and she took a healthy chug, its malt flavor burning clear through. Her knees trembled and she let the weight of her body pull her down to the floor, cradling the bottle against her chest.
She laid her arm out across her thigh and peered at the towel covering her wrist; the blood seemed to have stopped, at least for now.
She let her head rest in the corner where the counter met the wall and closed her eyes again. In moments, she was stuck at the surface edge of sleep, dreaming of fire, the images like flashes of lightning, illuminating the broken glass of her grief and how it cut.
The house and the bright, sharp stench of linseed oil and the way the fire roared across the walls and collapsed the hall - only now it was her apartment, it was their home, it was him. The body in the flames like a moth, like a wick, catching and consumed.
He was burning and she couldn't wake up.
Castle hung up the phone and leaned back in his hair, hands clasped behind his head as he slowly blew out his breath.
Not good. It was all beginning to add up.
Rumors were coming to him now, people were telling him things like they were eager to let out all the dark secrets. Since he was technically dead, he was safe, it seemed. And now he knew. Now he saw the whole thing clearly.
What Black was doing. Why he'd never been surprised that day Castle had told him who he and Beckett believed to be behind her mother's murder. Why Black hadn't even batted an eye, hadn't researched and investigated it on his own-
His father was next in line to run the CIA.
And Bracken was blocking the appointment.
Castle sucked in another deep breath and stared at his computer screen. He felt the phone burn in his hand and he realized he hadn't checked the summaries or status updates in hours, let alone looked in on Beckett.
Fuck, what was his father playing at? Was he just grabbing the perfect opportunity as it came to him? Was Castle just some poor pawn in a final gambit for the ultimate power?
He unlocked his phone and opened the summaries: Beckett was reported to still be in the apartment. Bland, just the facts. He skipped the agent status updates - they'd be more of the same, and he went directly to the apartment feed.
He sat back in his chair as the cameras loaded, rubbed at his jaw with a tired hand. He closed his eyes for a moment, his thoughts churning, and when he opened them again, he could see the blank and empty bed.
He cycled through the camera angles slowly, searching for her, and frowned when he saw the full bath, but no Beckett, a pile of towels on the floor and something. Hard to make out. He didn't see the dog by the front door either, and the living room was empty.
Castle switched applications for a moment, searched back through the summaries to see if he'd missed something. No, it was all here. She'd come back to the city in a cab, alone.
His heart thudded hard in his chest in warning and he even though he knew it was stupid and pointless and would only serve to torture himself, Castle went back to the beginning of the video. The cameras had motion sensors and switched on automatically to record the moment she entered the building, so it was easy to go back to his queue and start the feed from the beginning.
Her hair was falling down as she pushed open the lobby door with her key still in the knob. She struggled with the lock for a moment and then yanked it out, and he saw her hand tremble as she lifted it to push back her hair. He skimmed his finger over the image and scrubbed through the scenes of her entering the stairwell, climbing the steps, reaching the apartment door.
Wait. Wait, Agent Deleware had said it twice in his report - alone - as in, no Sasha. The dog was gone. Left at Carrie's. Beckett was alone.
Unease trickled through his veins like ice water, but he zipped through the video again, watching her wander the hallway, watching her look lost and small as she stepped out of her shoes and just stood there.
She was breaking his heart.
He had already broken hers.
When Kate finished the wine and cleaned out the bathtub, he couldn't help a flicker of a smile, knowing she was just going through her best coping skills - industrious and goal-oriented Beckett doing a job, getting something accomplished, and then taking a bath. He laughed a little when she brought the bottle of vodka in with her.
Watching her in the dim light, the rise of her breasts in the water, the flush of her cheeks from the heat, Castle rubbed a hand down his face and wished he was there, wished he'd stood up to his father and found a different way.
And then he realized her shoulders were shaking, and she was dipping down under the water; she was crying.
She was crying. He'd done that to her.
And even if his father was engineering some power play to put himself in control of the CIA, what did it matter if Castle could actually end this once and for all? If he could come to Beckett and say, I've finished it. It's done. We're free. Bracken will never touch us again.
And then the glass shattered on the floor and his breath caught.
Castle leaned in, hunched over the small screen of his phone, and it wasn't enough. He wanted her image to fill the whole room, to fill his senses, and so he propped his phone against his keyboard and downloaded the app to his work station computer.
Grimly, he called up the block of video he wanted, started it at the same time stamp, maximized the view so that his whole display was only Kate. Only her.
She sank down deeper into the water, the ripples coming back to stroke along her face, wash over her lips, touch the corners of her eyes. He had a strange view of her, just the left hand side of his screen from the camera inset in his light fixture, and so her profile seemed to float - as large as his hand when he reached up to touch her.
Suddenly she was slipping underwater, sliding right to the bottom with her eyes open and staring straight up. His breath caught and held, trapped in his lungs, but she didn't come up; she didn't come up.
She didn't come up.
"Kate."
He didn't know what happened next. An explosion of movement and then she was vomiting over the side, her body wracked with spasms, and she tumbled to the floor and he saw the blood, all the blood, and she just seemed to crawl through it like it wasn't even - like she felt nothing.
He was so horrified that he couldn't move, not at first, and then he violently scrubbed back through the video to see, just to understand, and he saw it.
Eyes closed, fingers splayed, hair floating around her face like a mermaid, she opened her mouth.
And breathed water in.
Oh God. Oh God, Kate.
She'd done it on purpose.
Castle jerked to his feet, his knee slamming into his desk and throbbing, tripping him up. He jabbed off his computer and switched back to the video app on his phone, growing antsy when it took too long to load, already half shrugged into his jacket. He stalked to the door of his office, flung it open even as he synced up to the real time video. He navigated through the cameras until he found her.
On the floor in the kitchen in just a tshirt, blood-soaked and unconscious.
He stared at the screen, felt his stomach drop, his feet falter.
Kate.
God. No. What was she-
He jerked and stumbled backwards, hit the edge of the door frame with a harsh jolt. His brain rattled but he stared at the image, persistently stable in its terrifying clarity.
Fuck this. He was done. He was getting her; he was telling her the truth.
Black wanted to play some fucking game and Castle's wife, his partner was - he was destroying her with this charade.
He had to park the damn Range Rover three blocks from the apartment, cut through the park at a run even though it drew a whole lot of fucking attention-
And then he stopped at the treeline, panting, his better judgment falling over him in a crashing wave.
He couldn't - he'd put her in danger if he waltzed back in there like this. There were most definitely eyes on her - not just CIA and NYPD team members, but also Bracken's men. If he showed up, he made this whole thing worthless, and if he could salvage anything at all from it-
He owed her that. The chance to actually end this was still alluring, but he couldn't not go to her.
He had to be smarter though. He had to go in the back entrance and keep himself hidden. It was full dark and that helped, but he had this burning anxiety flaming in his guts; he had to get to her. He had to - she could be-
Castle hustled back to the Range Rover and hunted in the storage area, looking for help, cover, something. He found an army jacket, well used and patched, and he shrugged that on over his own coat so that it bulked him up, distorted his shape. There was an army cap as well, and it sank low over his brow; he angled it so that it pulled to one side and changed the shape of his face.
His shoes were too fancy for what he needed, but he had an idea now, so he slammed the doors shut again and headed for a dumpster at the end of the alley. Lifting the lid with a grunt, Castle peered inside and scavenged for props.
A stained piece of cardboard was mashed against the side, so he pulled it out, held it against his chest as he continued searching. One trash bag was spilled open and what looked like an artist's collage scraps had tumbled out. He grabbed a few funky-smelling rags and tied them over his shoes.
Kate had taught him that the best way to hide was to seek out attention. The more people looking at you, the less likely you were to be noticed. Especially if it was undesirable attention. A homeless guy shuffling through the back alleys would cause most people to look away or not even see him at all.
With the cardboard tucked under one arm and a half-empty trash bag in the other hand, Castle took began the long walk back to his building, ambling when he was in plain view, but hustling when he was under cover of the trees once more.
He took a breath at the edge of the park and hunched his shoulders, dropped his head, and moved forward. He hadn't spotted any stationery vehicles, any suspect loiters, but he wasn't going to take chances.
When he'd made it to his former building, Castle shrank back into a doorway across the street from the back entrance, giving himself a moment to survey his surroundings. His chest was tight and the army jacket felt like it was cutting off circulation in his hands, but he made himself take the time, made himself settle down and pay attention.
When a few minutes had gone by with nothing suspicious, nothing out of the ordinary, Castle surreptitiously checked the video feed on his phone. Beckett was still there, where he'd last seen her, and so he entered in the code to kill the cameras inside.
And then he walked across the street and into his building.
Why the fuck did he not have a key? How the hell had he been so fucking idiotic? Castle slammed against the door of his apartment once more and felt the wood splinter.
He had the key to the back entrance but this one had been on a key ring in her junk drawer in the fucking kitchen and fuck-
Nothing for it.
He pulled out his weapon and gripped it by the butt, tried to still the rage pounding in his chest.
No. One more time. Give it one more-
Castle stepped back, holstered his gun, and then ran full tilt into the door.
He cursed as his shoulder popped but the door frame splintered and gave with a crack. Castle fell inwards and caught himself, sucking in a breath as his shoulder ached, but the worst of it was Kate.
Curled on the floor of his kitchen, her back pressed into the cabinets like she'd been trying to make herself as small a target as possible.
And in all that racket, she hadn't even woken.
Castle ripped the jacket off and sank down at her side, curled his fingers around her neck and eased her upright. She had a pulse, slow and thumping, but steady. He could see her chest lift with her breaths and he felt the wild thing in him diminish. Her body twitched and he slid the jacket around her shoulders, his heart pounding so hard it filled his mouth; no words could escape.
He sat her up and laid her against his chest, cradled her forearm in his large hands, rotating her arm until he could see the gash. It was smaller than he'd thought, more shallow too, and he felt his lungs catch and ease, a breath whistling out.
"Kate," he sighed. Her knees were bloodied, and he reached out to skim his fingers over the wounds, winced as shards of glass snagged his skin. "Oh, Kate."
He felt her stir, felt her body stiffen against his, and brought his hand back to her face, tenderly cupped her cheek.
Her eyes opened.
A shadow loomed over her, resolving slowly, the flaming face coalescing into a dark husk with two eyes and she jerked, yelling, hoarse and panicked, yanking out of the clutches of her nightmares.
It came after her and she smacked hard into the cabinet, grunted at the taste of blood against her tongue, scrambling back, everything shaky and spinning until the bile rose in her throat.
"Kate. Kate, honey, please-"
Her spine connected sharply with the edge of the oven and she cursed, arched with a cry, and he was on her, burning and fierce, and she blocked him with her forearms until it all came rushing fatally in.
"Castle," she gasped, fists loosening, heart pounding.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," it said, the mouth his, the eyes his, the everything. The everything of him surrounding her and drawing her up.
She froze, breath suspended, time collapsed, and felt the press of his face against her neck. Like always.
"I'm not dead," he moaned. "I'm not - I had to fake it but I couldn't - you were - I'm so sorry, Kate, please, please forgive me."
She struggled against him to see, to just see, but he was clutching too tightly and gripping her by the back of her neck, fingers tangled with her hair and she mewled in frustration and he dropped her.
A grunt flew out of her mouth, but her body and her hands were already unfurling towards him, up on her knees to frame his face and stare into those anguished, beautiful eyes and he circled his fingers around her wrists and hung on.
"Castle," she gasped.
"I'm so sorry."
She launched herself into him, toppled him back with the force of it, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding on, her thighs bracketing his ribs.
And with her mouth sealed against his, she took, took everything.