Jane Doe
While Kate is asleep, Castle phones her father and his mother and Lanie and Captain Gates and Ryan (Javier too, by proxy). A whole ream of people that care about her so deeply, want to be updated on how she's doing. And to each of them he has to say that no, she still doesn't remember anything.
His mother is melodramatic about it, of course, declares that she'll be on the next flight home, and it takes him a considerable amount of time and effort to persuade her that that really wouldn't be a wise idea. Kate is overwhelmed enough by everything that's going on without adding his mother into the mix. He loves her, he does, but she can be. . .a lot to handle.
Once all of the conversations are over, he sinks into the couch with his head in his hands and takes a moment to fall apart. His sobs are hulking, wreaking havoc through his whole body, but he manages to keep them mostly silent, manages not to wake her. She needs the sleep, needs to let her body heal. And maybe when her body heals, her mind will too.
Eventually, he's able to get himself together. He stands up, washes his face in the guest bathroom, drinks down another bottle of water in a few short gulps. And it does help, has him feeling a little bit more human. Like he has a firmer grip on things. Yes, the woman he loves doesn't remember any of their life together. But she's alive, she's here and she's completely in love with their son. He has to count his blessings.
After an hour or so, Mal comes toddling through from their bedroom and climbs right up into his father's lap on the couch, curling up small and rubbing his little nose against Castle's cheek. Rick palms the back of his son's head to give him that feeling of closeness and safety he craves so much, his thumb stroking back and forth over the shell of Marlow's ear. "Hey there, my man. Have a good nap?"
"Hi Daddy. Mommy still sleeping." Mal says in answer, his eyelids fluttering closed even as he fights to look at his father. Castle knows that feeling all too well, the treacherous climb up out of sleep, scrabbling to find a foothold to consciousness. It takes them a while, he and Mal both; Kate is awake and ready to go the moment her eyes open.
Well, usually. Right now she's concussed, so he imagines it might be a little more of a challenge for her. "Yeah, I know. Mommy's head hurts and she needs to sleep so she can feel better."
"Why Mommy's head hurt?" Mal frowns, a line of tension zipping through his little body as he twists and torques to glance at their bedroom. He's such a loving child, so generous with his heart, and the brunt of his adoration is usually offered up to Kate.
Castle manages to soothe his son with the drift of his hand up and down the boy's spine, pressing just hard enough that it makes Marlow relax back against his chest. "Mommy got into an accident, buddy. But she'll get better soon. You just need to be a little bit careful with her for a while."
"I be so gentle, Daddy." Mal nods sombrely, his eyes wide. There's a moment of quiet and then Marlow looks up at Rick, a spark of mischief in his eyes and his mouth quirked up at the corner. "We can watch cartoons while Mommy sleeping."
It's not a question, and Rick huffs a breath of laughter as he reaches for the iPad on the coffee table and hands it over to his son. The television is in his office, too close to the bedroom to be watching while Kate's asleep, but the iPad is a good compromise.
Their son is two, only two, but he knows how to unlock the iPad and bring up Netflix, find the show he wants to watch. Castle folds the cover into a triangle shape to use as a stand and sets the tablet on the couch cushion next to him, shifting Mal off of his lap to lay down in front of the cartoons instead.
Marlow's feet drum against his father's thigh as the characters on screen do battle and Rick tugs his phone out of his pocket and brings up the app with his emails, deletes a couple of random marketing ones. There's one from Paula about an interview on one of the late night talk shows; the book comes out next week and he knows he's frustrating her with his complete lack of willingness to market the thing.
He has a little boy, a family, and they are his main priority. If he does a talk show and Kate is all tangled up in a case, who's going to look after their son? He replies something noncommittal, tells her he'll have to discuss it with Kate. For a moment, he debates telling his agent that his wife has, in fact, forgotten the entirety of their life together. And then he locks his phone and shoves it back inside his pocket, sets a hand at the curve of his son's back and drops his head to the couch cushion, closing his eyes.
Last night he didn't get any sleep and now he is totally wiped out, but Kate needs the sleep more than he does. He'll just have to struggle through. After Castle hears the end credits for the cartoon Marlow is watching run for the second time, he struggles out of his doze and heads for the bedroom to wake his wife. She's been napping for almost two hours and if she doesn't wake up now she'll find it much harder to sleep tonight.
Castle nudges the bedroom door open with his hip and slips quietly inside, his whole body orienting towards the slender line of the woman he loves underneath their sheets. The blinds are slatted closed but the sun outside manages to wriggle its way through the gaps regardless, the window streaked with lines of luminescence.
He rounds the bed to reach her side and kneels down next to her, heart catching in his throat at the way her cheek scrunches up against the pillow. Her hair is fanned out around her head, starting to grow out again after she cut it short last year. Mal used to grab for handfuls of it whenever his mother was near, and one day she came home with it just brushing her shoulders.
She's gorgeous, truly. And yes okay, so he's a little biased. He did marry her after all. But he's not oblivious to the way people in the street watch them, the diffusion of jealousy across the faces of strangers when Rick slips his hand into hers and leans in close to kiss the cheek of their little boy.
Reaching out, Rick tugs the sheets down a little to expose the smooth, bare skin of her shoulder. She's wearing a tank top now and he imagines her rummaging through her drawers in their dresser, rifling through clothes that must be largely foreign to her. Obviously, he has no idea what she wore to sleep in that first year they were together, but all those boat necks and the pinstriped button downs and the sharp-cut black pantsuits? He doesn't see those any more. Stands to reason that her sleepwear is all different now too.
If this was any normal day and she remembered that she loves him, Rick would lean in slow, knowing that just his proximity would wake her. He would brush his mouth to her eyelid, her cheek, and when his lips met hers she would sigh and roll onto her back and lace her arms at his neck to drag him half up into the bed with her.
Instead, he squeezes her shoulder and calls her name quietly, his thumb circling over the scattering of freckles just next to the rise of her collar bone. She gets them every summer, when she manages to get out of the precinct long enough for the sun to kiss her bare skin and leave its mark.
Kate rouses slowly, her eyelids coming open and her mouth parting, tongue slipping out to wet her lips. She stares at him with that same sheen of nonrecognition he's quickly getting used to, and he knows without even having to ask that none of her memories are back. "Hey. I didn't want to let you sleep any longer, in case you don't sleep tonight."
"Thanks." She murmurs, sitting up in bed and letting the sheets pool around her waist. The tank top she's wearing is really very tiny and there's just so much skin on show that he doesn't know what to do with himself. Kate rakes both hands through her hair to push it away from her face and tucks it back behind her ears, blinking hard and gazing around the room as though she's surprised to find herself here.
Which, yeah. . .she most likely is. "You feeling any better?"
"Headache's gone." She nods, pushing the sheets back and swinging out of bed. And oh, shit, his mouth goes totally dry because she's wearing those teeny tiny little camouflage sleep shorts and he doesn't even know where to look and honestly. How can she not know what this is doing to him?
Over by the dresser, he watches as she secures her father's watch around her wrist and checks the time, raising an eyebrow when she sees just how long she slept for. "I noticed in the hospital, they gave me this back. I was wearing it when I had the accident. But not my mother's ring?"
"Ah, yeah. You don't really wear it anymore." He says, getting up from the floor and coming to join her at the dresser.
Clearly she hasn't missed the huff of his breath, the wince when he stood. "You alright?"
"Yeah. Just my knee. I broke it once and it gives me grief sometimes, that's all." He explains, keeping a careful distance between them. Things are tentative, more awkward than they have been even since she woke up in the hospital. Because he knows she must be thinking only about the things he knows that he hasn't told her yet, the thirst for knowledge about her mother's case gnawing away at her.
To her credit, she really does seem to have accepted that he'll tell her later, because she doesn't bring it up. "How'd you break your knee?"
"Skiing. I was showing off for you and I fell. You uh. . .weren't very impressed." An understatement, if he's honest. He never will forget the way her face went almost as pale as the snow, her lips thin and white as she stroked her hands through his hair and tried to comfort him through the agony shooting in spirals all the way up into his hip and down to his toes. Yeah. That's one memory he's glad she's lost.
Kate lifts an eyebrow at him, looking both surprised and amused at once. Turning away from the mirror above the dresser, she leans back against it instead and wraps her hand around her opposite elbow. Closing herself off from him, but she's still here so he tells himself to be grateful anyway. "We went skiing?"
"We did. Well. You skied, I fell."
That earns him a laugh that bubbles up out of her and she shakes her head. When she goes quiet again he finds himself staring at her with naked tenderness and he catches a glimpse of his own face in the mirror, hastily schools it into something a little easier for Kate to handle. Neither of them says anything for a long moment, both so acutely aware of how much he loves her and how little he's able to hide it.
Eventually, Kate clears her throat and manages to look at him again. "Where's Marlow?"
"Watching cartoons on the couch. You seem. . .comfortable around him." Rick says tentatively, not wanting to make her feel self-conscious in her love for their son. Not when watching Kate and Marlow together makes him happier than he's ever been.
Kate rests her free hand at her hipbone, guarding herself further against him, and all of a sudden she looks so uncomfortable that he thinks he would remove his own skin if it made her feel any better. "I am, I guess. Maybe because he's so comfortable around me? Do you think it's too fast?"
"No, not at all." Rick says quickly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans to be sure he won't touch her. "He needs you, Kate. And you're doing a wonderful job so far. I know it must be hard."
That makes her shake her head, a smile just flirting at the corners of her mouth. "It's not hard at all. He's the person who expects the least from me. I'm not a disappointment to him every time I don't remember something."
"Oh, Kate." He murmurs, his eyes closing to hold the tears back. "You're not a disappointment to anyone. We all just care about you, that's all. I'm so glad you're here."
She nods, but he sees the shutters slam down and he knows he won't get anything more out of her for the time being. Instead, he squeezes her shoulder and leaves the room, gives her some time to regroup.
Bathing her son is quite possibly the most fun Kate Beckett has ever had. He's a giggly, squirmy little thing but Castle leaves the two of them alone, gives her the space to figure it out for herself and she gets sucked in. Thoroughly soaked, but she's laughing right along with her son as she massages the shampoo into his hair and then rinses it off for him, scrubs at his round little belly and chubby limbs with a sponge shaped into the Batman insignia.
Once he's clean and dry and in his pajamas Kate sits cross legged on his bed and watches him dance around in front of the bookcase, hardly able to keep still. That must be a trait he's gotten from his father, because Kate is too well practiced at yoga and at shooting to be so fidgety.
And isn't that a weird thought? Having a child, she's finding quite easy to get used to. But the knowledge that she made a whole other person, a beautiful mixture of them both, with Richard Castle? It takes her by surprise every time.
Marlow comes back and climbs into bed, struggling around until he's underneath the covers with his stuffed giraffe toy in his arms. He looks expectantly at her and Kate manoeuvres to lean back against the headboard with the book he chose, a hand to turn the pages and the other to smooth through her son's hair over and over.
She reads, with her little boy's breath fanning out hot against her hip, a snuffling sigh every couple of minutes. The story is new to her, of course, but the book is so well-thumbed that she can tell it has been dearly loved, either by Mal or by Alexis before him. When she finishes the story Kate sits for a couple of minutes just carding her fingers through Marlow's thick curls, coming down to brush her thumb over the curve of his cheek, the bow of his lips before she moves back up to start the cycle again.
There have been a lot of difficult things to get used to since she woke up in this life. The marriage to a man she doesn't know, the death of her captain, the loss of her apartment and ten whole years of her life. But out of it all she's gotten this wonderful little boy who adores her and who, already, she adores right back.
She takes the time to let Marlow's presence and his sleepy warmth fortify her and then she climbs carefully out of his bed and slots the book back into its place on the shelf, stooping by her son's side to kiss his forehead and murmur to him. "Goodnight, sweet boy. Mommy loves you."
And then she heads downstairs to find out how Captain Montgomery's death is connected to her mother's case, with the knowledge that no matter what she has to stay calm and rational. She can't shout, can't wake her sleeping child, and she can't walk out either. If he woke in the night needing her and she had walked away because she's still, ten years later, making the same stupid mistake of letting her mother's case be everything to her? She'd never forgive herself.
Castle is sitting at the dining room table with a manila folder in front of him that bursts at the seams, Johanna Beckett Case printed across the front of it in her own neat hand. She doesn't remember writing it though, so this evidence file must have been compiled more recently than her memories cover.
There are also two mugs on the table, steam curling up out of them, and a box of tissues. Castle sits at the head of the table and Beckett takes the seat to his left, facing the staircase so if Mal comes out of bed looking for her she'll be able to see him coming.
"The evidence is all in here." Castle says, tapping two fingers against the folder in front of him. "But I think it'll be easier if I just tell it like a story. Easier for me to make sure I don't miss anything, and for you to follow. I'll try to be quick, though. You've waited long enough."
"Thank you." She nods, taking the mug he nudges towards her and wrapping both palms around it. Lifting it to her mouth, she takes a slow sip, surprised to find that it's tea. It's a good call though; they could both do without the extra stimulant of caffeine. Why does it surprise her, though, that he knows just how she fixes her tea if she drinks in the evening, and that it's different to how she does at other times of the day?
It's a disconcerting sensation, one she's still finding it very difficult to get used to. Having someone know apparently everything about her, when she knows almost nothing about him.
Castle takes a deep breath, and a swallow of his own drink, before he starts. "We met in March of 2009. You caught a case where the bodies were being staged to look like the murders from my books. You contacted me to see if I knew anything about it, and I helped you solve the case. And you gave me inspiration for a new series of books, so I started shadowing you at the precinct, helping you solve cases."
"Really?" She's surprised by that, in all honesty. Of all the ways she assumed she had met Castle, him working with her never even crossed her mind.
He grins at her, shrugging. "We worked well together. Anyway. When I first met you, I could tell that something had happened to someone you care about to make you choose the path of being a cop instead of a lawyer, like most smart, beautiful women. I assumed because of the watch that it was your father, but after our fifth or sixth case together you told me it was your mother."
"That soon?" She can't help asking, lifting an eyebrow at him. Usually it takes her a lot longer to expose that particular festering wound to people.
He nods, pressing his lips together a moment. "You trusted me, I guess." The use of the past tense isn't lost on her, but she can't correct him. Not right now. "When you told me, I did something very stupid. I started investigating it behind your back, even though you'd told me specifically not to. I was arrogant enough to think that I would be able to find something you'd missed."
"And did you?" Yes, thank you, she hears herself. She is so completely desperate for any scrap of information on this case, anything that gets thrown to her. It took a year of therapy to put it behind her, and so she isn't surprised that she warned him to back off. But clearly there's more here, so she wants to know. Needs to know.
"I did. I contacted Dr Clark Murray, a forensic pathologist who'd previously helped me with research for a book. He found that, although your mom was stabbed multiple times only one of those wounds was the fatal one and all of the others were added to make it seem random."
Relief wells up in her throat and her gaze snaps up from the folder to Castle's face, her mouth dropping open in something close to delight. "I knew it wasn't random. I was right."
"You were right about so much of it, Kate. Dr Murray analysed similar assaults from the same time, those of Diane Cavanaugh, Jennifer Stewart and Scott Murray, all of whom worked with your mom. The methods were the same for all of them, so he concluded that the three of them and your mother were all killed by a contract killer."
Castle swallows another mouthful of tea and fidgets in his chair, and she knows it's probably because the next part is going to be difficult, but she's grateful for the time to process that these three others were killed along with her mother.
And for a reason. Not randomly, not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone set out to kill her mother, and that means there's a chance she can catch them. Maybe she already has. "And then what?"
"I tried to tell you what I found but you wouldn't hear it. You said you couldn't get sucked back down into that rabbit hole. And I thought I'd lost you as a friend, so I let it go and I apologised. And I was so amazed and so grateful when you forgave me." He smiles at her.
Wow. That's. . .a lot. "I don't forgive easily when it comes to my mother's case. I must have really liked you, even then."
"I certainly liked you." He grins, but he sobers quickly. "Uh. Yeah. We left it alone for about eight months. And then an enforcer for the Westies named Jack Coonan died in your jurisdiction. Lanie contacted Dr Murray because she recognised the way Coonan had been killed as being similar to your mother, and he confirmed it. We knew that whoever killed Coonan had also killed your mom and her colleagues."
"Who, Castle?" She almost growls at him. "Who killed my mother?"
He takes her hand and she lets him have it, finds it so limp she probably couldn't take it back if she tried. "Dick Coonan, Jack's brother. He took me hostage when we figured out it was him, and you had to kill him to save my life. Before he told you who hired him. I'm so sorry Kate."
"So I still don't know?" She says quietly, feels herself trembling. He holds her hand tighter in his own, but it doesn't stop the tremors from careening through the rest of her body.
He splutters to explain, his face desolate. "No, no. We do. I'm getting to it. I'm sorry because you had to kill him because of me. Because you might have known so much sooner."
She can only imagine the grief she must have felt at the time, having to shoot her only lead, her only hope of solving her mother's case. But she wouldn't have done it if she hadn't absolutely needed to. And maybe if she hadn't, Castle might have died. And she wouldn't have her son. "I'm sure I wouldn't have regretted it."
A smile flickers across his mouth at that and he nods, his fingers struggling to lace through hers. "You told me that someday you'd catch the sons of bitches that hired Coonan." She smirks, because that's clearly verbatim, sounds like exactly something she would say. "And that you'd like me around when you did. And Kate? I was. I was right there at your side."