A/N: If I didn't get to thanking you individually for your kind review last chapter – thank you. Your kind words as ever mean the world to me.
Chapter Thirteen: Can't dream, no dream.
Castle is totally faking being asleep.
He's not proud of it. Actually he hates himself just a little bit for both the subterfuge and the weakness of character he feels is behind it, but he's still doing it anyway. Hiding from Kate for the duration of the trip to the Hamptons in an effort to reinforce the emotional walls he's back to using against her. Because the inconvenient truth of the matter is that he hasn't completely got a handle on himself right now, and being around Kate yet apart from her is getting harder and harder to manage.
He'd thought perhaps he could accept her friendship, could get to a place where that might be possible for them. And at the very least; her steadfast partnership has certainly gotten him through this ordeal with his mother this far, and he's so thankful for it.
Her being around has helped alleviate some of the strain from him, from Alexis, and it's clearly cheered his mother.
But there is no way that he and Kate can be friends.
Because it's become very obvious to Castle in the last few days that they're walking on a tightrope that's begun to sway and a spectacular fall for both of them might be only moments away. And so while he's outwardly been still, distant and somewhat silent with her, inside he's felt everything, all of his protective armor beginning to give way.
So this is clearly the dumbest thing he could have done right now isn't it?
What moment of rash madness possessed him to get into this car with her?
His defenses are weakening, his emotional reserves are beyond poor, and it would have been a far smarter decision to just let Kate head to the Hamptons alone. It's not as if he can't trust her with his mother's case, he doesn't have doubts she will make sure Chief Brady hasn't and doesn't put a foot wrong. He should be letting her handle it – shouldn't he?
Isn't he just tempting fate like an idiot this way?
Allowing time alone with his wife when he's so very unsteady can't possibly be a good thing right now because Castle's sure, completely certain actually that she's merely a couple of days away from abandoning him once again. Not that Kate's said anything, or done anything that he could fairly or objectively call an indicator – the every opposite in fact because she's been staunch and steady. She's been his rock.
Yet he feels it regardless.
There is an inexplicable, innate sense of her that birthed in him through the years of their partnership and it tells him somehow, tells him that there is a tension rising in her, a black and evil panic that's making its claws known. So while her actions have remained solid and supportive and pleading with him for some small forgiveness, all he's truly able to hear are the insidious whispers of her old habits that are tugging her away. Urging her to flee and barricade both her heart and her physical self. To wallow in denials against all that time's march forward is about to bring.
He knows those whispers are there inside her.
Just as he knows she'll eventually listen to them.
So he needs every shred of indifference and aloofness he can conjure, needs every brick in his walls strong because it's coming. The loss of her is coming as the 'date', the awful, dreadful, hated 'date' creeps ever closer and all his precious memories of that life they once lived and their tiny son become a sharp pierce of grief he just can't cast off again.
It had been better. Finally a little bit better but then with his mother, and then with Kate and then . . . oh it's been a year.
A whole, entire, year.
And that's eight months longer than Jackson was even . . . here.
The pain that shoots throughout Castle with that thought shouldn't startle him. It should be an accustomed agony and it was, for so long it was but now Kate is next to him and it isn't again. Starting in his heart and radiating out its like shards of ice are ripping him to pieces from the inside out.
He shifts in the car seat and hopes it looks like he's unconsciously seeking a more comfortable position. His insides are suddenly knots, and the time that he has left until . . .
Just two days more.
Oh, God.
Forty eight hours until what feels like an Armageddon approaching, and in the end he realizes that's exactly why he is here, in this car. Putting this fragile control to the test because if he had let her come out here alone, then that would mean he'd relied on her to take care of something for him.
That he'd treated her as his wife and not the woman who broke him – and that's unacceptable. So even if each moment he spends in Kate's company has become like he's waging a three way war between his head, his heart and his body he's just got to see it through.
Castle shifts again, turns his head to the window and only when his face is hidden does he let it contort into a grimace that writes his exhausted determination in every line.
His facts are these - his head is certain. It knows that she's bad for him, knows that the evidence is all in, and has been in for a year. Kate will vanish again in two days and there is nothing he could do to prevent it even if he wanted to. And if his heart wavers, calls him on that belief, and wants him to think otherwise – so what. All that proves is that his heart doesn't know any other way to function. That it beats for her even as it cowers away from her, terrified of the power she wields over it still. Terrified its fragile peace will be torn away. His heart is weak for Kate, but his mind can win that war.
It's his body he's got to watch out for here.
It's his body he's fighting this very minute as he feigns this ridiculous need for sleep in the middle of the day as her scent is subtly wreathing all around him. The essence of her, the energy of her is alive in the air.
His own body has become his enemy here.
It's been shaken from a year long deprivation and now every soft breath she takes and he doesn't touch her is just torture.
The constancy of her presence in his life again has woken him up. Stirred to life a side of himself that he'd totally believed was dead and buried until he noticed that every moment she's in close proximity to him his pulse is elevated and his arms ache with emptiness. Fighting the magnetic pull of her is driving him steadily insane.
The fall of her hair, the angles of her cheekbones, the endless ocean he tries not to see in her eyes. Everything about her so familiar and so intoxicating, conjuring an avalanche of memories so vivid that he sees them play before him all the time. Sleeping, waking, even when she's talking to him – he sees her beneath him, above him. He can almost feel her against his skin and under his fingertips, his palms itching to touch her so badly that he doesn't dare to let himself touch her at all.
But he wants to.
And that want is a hungry beast now that's barely chained and constantly tormenting him. He isn't used to needing to restrain it, can scarcely remember back to the years when he was. From the moment they came together on the stormy night that she came for him he's never again had to leash this incessant desire, this fiery passion that Kate ignites in him.
From that night forward he learned to indulge it. Rejoice in it. Live it to the full. And unchained it not only lived it prospered. It became a wild and untamed thing that bound them both so tightly that at times it was all that either of them could see or feel – it was everything.
It created Jackson, and then it died with him.
Feels surreal and with the anniversary so close it feels so cruel that he has to fight this battle once again.
Castle closes his eyes tighter and wishes he could will his awareness of her away. It doesn't help any and by the time she shakes him, presumably to let him know that they've arrived at their destination, he's buzzing and punchy and already worn out from it.
"Castle, we're here." He feels the car come to rest and then the scalding burn of her fingers wrapping around his upper arm to rouse him. He moves with speed, so fast it must be blatantly obvious to Kate that he was never napping. His fingers circle her wrist and tug the unwanted yet longed for connection away, and then he drops her arm like she's poisoned him, exiting the car in an ungraceful flurry of awkward limbs.
If he'd looked back he would have seen the hurt bloom, followed by an utter emptiness on her face, both banished quickly as his wife forces herself to gather up her wits and simply follow him.
"Rick! I wasn't expecting to see you?" Chief Brady's face is all fierce worry and apologies as he rises from behind his desk as the writer wanders in. Kate trails on his heels and the writer wonders for a second if the gulf between them is plain enough to see. Dismissing the thought as unimportant right now, he holds out his hand and plasters a small, token smile on his face. He likes John Brady, he always has.
"I needed to be here," he offers quietly in explanation. "I know that you've built your case Chief, and that you were expecting just to run it by Detective Beckett, but I'm sure you can understand why I need to have a hand in this. I won't take up much of your time and I'll happily leave you with Beckett if you like, but only after you walk me through it."
John Brady's eyes dart from Castle to Kate, a questioning eyebrow is all that conveys his confusion. Kate gives a small, apologetic shake of her head and casts her eyes down and so the Chief of the Hampton's police forces a quick recovery. He plasters over his confusion with a smile and then indicates that perhaps both Castle and Kate should take a seat.
Coffee is offered and refused and with the pleasantries out the way the Chief does as he's been bid. He walks Castle through every detail of the case against his mother's attacker, even the ones that are emotionally brutal.
Castle remains stoic and stony throughout, but within he's increasingly seething.
Kate's already given him the basics, the motive, the culprit. He knows the why and the who but when it's laid out in detail it's all so very pointless and so damn self-serving, and the man who is responsible is such a conniving loser that by the end the writer would almost be happy to exact the death sentence on him single handed.
The only facts that ease the writer's frustration are the man's confession and his steadfast conviction that he never broke into Castle's home with the intention to hurt anyone. It doesn't change the fact that he did, that he murdered an innocent person and almost killed another just to avoid a prison term for burglary. But it does help the writer to know that his mother wasn't actually targeted for harm.
He can't help but believe that this fact will make it easier to live with everything in the long run somehow; although he definitely isn't there yet, and at least he's satisfied that the man is going to pay.
Which means he can move on to the other matter that's now asking for his attention, and it might even give him a 'Kate' reprieve.
"I want to see the house," he says suddenly.
Silence had fallen over the three of them once Chief Brady had completed his walk-through of the case, and Castle's pronouncement - though quietly made, is jarring.
"But, Castle-"Kate opens her mouth to protest but is silenced instantly by the power of the expression on her husband's face.
"You don't have to come with me, Kate," he says evenly. "The crime scene has been all cleaned up, you organized that for me, remember?"
Kate nods her head.
"I'm just saying that maybe it's too soon?' she offers tentatively. "The Chief has all his ducks in a row, maybe we should just head back to the city, Rick."
Castle shakes his head, his demeanor calm.
"Alexis is with my mother and she's stable. What I need is to see the house, to walk through it. You should go on back, Kate. I can easily take the train home from here; I'm not asking for you to accompany me there."
Kate thinks about it. She actually catches herself thinking about leaving him to it and taking a break from the strain that she's under but his expression troubles her. It isn't calm like his voice, and the darkness that she's sensing rising in him, his despondent commitment to warding off every effort she makes towards him is practically blazing in his eyes, although she doesn't think he's actually aware of it.
And then it hits it her. It's like a lightening bolt, a perfect moment of clarity. The real 'why' of his sudden burning need to go to their Hampton's home. And it has nothing to do with the case against his mother's shooter, or with seeing how things have been cleaned up in the aftermath, and everything to do with his need to say goodbye to it and make his peace with that. This is just another piece of evidence he's laid before her that he's letting their marriage go.
She panics.
"I'm coming," she says, stepping in towards him and blocking his way.
Castle's face is once more a neutral mask that betrays very little, the twitch in his fingers however is very telling. He'd really rather she didn't come with him, and suddenly that's exactly why she has to, because their Hampton's home is special.
If they were both to be honest and could lay the horror of Martha's shooting aside – then the house is full of nothing but their very happiest memories. Its full to bursting with all that was best and brightest and most untainted by their past failures with each other, Kate's even convinced that Jackson might have been conceived there. So if Castle wants to go because he thinks he can finally say goodbye to that, maybe if she goes with him it could be the one place she can begin to convince him that they've still got a chance to turn their relationship back around.
"I'm coming with you, Rick," she says again, determinedly stepping right inside his personal space. She sees his eyes widen, sees something flare in them that ignites hope low in her gut before he steps back and away.
Her husband shrugs, "Suit yourself, Kate," he says as if it's nothing, but she knows that it's something and she follows.