Chapter Twenty Three: If it can be dreamed . . .
Castle tosses the small duffel containing their laundry from the last few days into the trunk of Kate's cruiser. As he closes the lid, leaning on it a small amount until it latches he eyes his wife locking up the front door of the Hampton's house behind them. He can't contain the small smile that adorns his face as he witnesses her linger there, her fingers sort of reverently trailing down the door jam for a moment, before she turns around to descend the steps and join him by her car.
He can barely contain how amazed he is by how much his feelings, his life have once again changed. Two days ago they came to this house broken – he'd thought irreparably, and now they're leaving it . . . mending. He doesn't kid himself they won't still have speed bumps ahead – hell it's never been an easy road for them. But he also doesn't think that they've ever really been stronger. In the end.
In all honestly he's anticipating that he'll still be cagey with her once in a while until enough time passes to naturally mute it. Just as he suspects she'll be overly apologetic, overly cautious, still over-compensating until time works the same magic for her.
But they won't break again.
Castle knows it in his soul. Knows it like nothing he's ever known, or believed in, or wanted ever before. And if this is Jackson's final gift to them, if he's forged them, fused them, made them impenetrable by living through his life and then his loss – then Castle likes to think that's a beautiful legacy for their son to leave behind him.
A way for them to hold onto him, love him, honor him as they live for him – everyday.
The gravel crunches under her feet as she approaches him, and he swears he sees the same gorgeous revelation ghosting across his wife's face.
She tosses him his house keys and he tosses her the car keys and their eyes hold for a long moment of silent communication between them. He sees in hers love, sorrow, a little fear but anticipation as well, and he pushes away the inevitable sadness he's feeling because of the date – and concentrates instead on the fact that he's leaving here feeling like a whole man again.
And she's leaving here with him - with him.
"I love you," he tells her gently, his eyes remaining firmly fixed on her lovely face as he closes the small distance between them, catching up her slight hands within his.
She smiles up at him. Pushing up onto her toes, Kate brushes her lips softly over his mouth, a gentle, softly heated caress, and he feels rather than hears her mouthing the words back to him. As she steps back he keeps his grip tight on her fingers until she looks back at his face.
"Are you sure that you want to do this?" he asks her. "Just because I need to do these things today, Kate – doesn't mean that I expect you too. There's honestly no pressure, no need for you to do all of this with me if it's too hard on you." He hopes his gentle tone rings with the truth of this, because he's had these plans for Jack's anniversary for months; plans that he's compelled to stick with even now. Plus he needs to check up on his mother, but he won't hold anything against her if she can't bring herself to accompany him. And he really needs her to believe that. To be able to have that faith in how different everything is now between them.
Kate twists her fingers inside of his, grasps onto him instead, and then she squeezes his large hands tightly.
"I'm coming with you," she assures him.
He opens his mouth to protest again that if it's too much, but she cuts him off quickly.
"I'm sure, Castle," she says adamantly. "I've never been back there," she adds. "Not since his funeral and think perhaps I need to go today as much as you do; and now that we're finally together again . . . "Her voice breaks off and he's about to haul her into his arms, when he realizes that though she's a little overcome she's actually beaming. Her eyes full of grateful tears.
"I want to share it with him," she continues. "I want to let him know that we're going to be okay – even though we'll always miss him." She frowns a little, her forehead crinkling up in a way he's long adored and missed with a vengeance.
"What?' he asks.
Kate shakes her head, "I feel like I should feel guilty for feeling happy, and yet I don't. I mean I hate that this day exists – I hate it. Part of me is dying inside, wants to crawl inside your arms and just stay there and deal with nothing other than you. But it's a smaller part of me than I thought it would be."
Her husband looks thoughtful, as if he's assessing his own conflicted emotions, and when Kate voices her thoughts they match so perfectly with his it's amazing.
"If I was facing this day alone, I think I'd be drowning," she confesses, her eyes now riveted on his chest.
Castle thumbs her face up to look at him.
"Tell me you see the irony in that?" he asks gently.
Kate nods, her eyes steady on his. "Oh so very clearly," she says.
He smiles then.
"Okay. So let's get out of here then, Kate. I have a feeling it's going to take a lot out of us this day, but we're facing it together now, and that's a starting point."
The sun is shining, the sky is blue and by the time they reach their first destination of the day, it's obvious to both of them that summer is finally beginning in the city of New York. Its late morning or early lunchtime, depending on how you look at it, and the cemetery where Jackson James Castle was laid to rest is actually pretty as a picture.
Flowers are blooming and the grass is green and well-manicured. The rows of headstones are stately, somehow serene as they're sun-dappled by the profusion of trees. It's somber, but peaceful, a reminder of death and loss and yet somehow a quiet celebration of life as well. A home of memories and stories it's a place to honor what's important in life, love, hangs permeable in the very air.
Castle pushes against the gated pedestrian entrance and holds it open for his wife, eyes searching her person for overt signs of strain. Sensing his disquiet, Kate holds out her hand for him – the left one, and the sunlight catches on the large diamond of her engagement ring, cascading a rainbow of sparkles into the air. He engulfs her hand with his gratefully, before he pulls her fingers up to his lips to kiss it. His lips resting for moment on the cool central stone as his eyes catch and hold hers. The ring no longer feels like its mocking him, instead it serves to settle his jumbled nerves. And his acknowledgment of its place on her finger serves to soothe Kate as well.
Squeezing her hand as he lowers it he tugs her closer, until she's right against his side and their elbows are touching, shoulders bumping, a united front once again.
"You ready to do this, Kate?" He asks gently, he knows her reply but his chivalrous side demands he ask just one more time anyway.
She nods - her eyes already watery but her jaw set firm. Her expression is wounded but stubbornly determined, a glint of steel in her eyes that makes him marvel at the unique blend of vulnerability and iron-will that's Kate Beckett all over again.
She swallows heavily suddenly though, a guilty expression chasing the others from her face as she quietly admits, "I don't . . . I don't remember, Castle. Where?"
Oh, Kate.
He makes sure there's not a trace of judgment in his quiet voice.
"It was a blur, I know. Come on, baby," he says softly, tenderly. "Let me show you."
Tugging her forward into the cemetery he keeps her close against him. The plot he's long owned, something he'd chosen years ago on who-knows-what-whim, a place he could locate blindfolded by memory.
In a quiet corner, un-crowded and almost ringed with trees, lies a south facing spot on a slight rise. A solitary grave, one that the writer hopes won't have any company for many years, is marked by a white marker; simple and elegant it's just the dates, the name and the simple message carved into the stone that make it - heartbreaking.
Castle stands in front of it an altered man from the one who was here a little over a week before. He's still a shattered father, a man living with a loss that darkens a large piece of him. But he's no longer disintegrating under the weight of it; he's no longer unable to find a genuine smile. And as he digs for that now, his customary smile for Jack, though tears of loss, tears borne of memories and un-fulfillable dreams are gathering in his eyes, it's a lighted smile, a smile full of love that finally cracks wide open across his handsome face.
The tears spill as his eyes crinkle up, and beside him he hears a gasp, a sniffle, and then a sudden weight against him as Kate's form collides with his. He wraps his arms around her and lets her tears spill onto his chest, cleansing somehow. They mourn and then they gather themselves, and they do it together.
At length he tugs her down to sit on the sunny grass in front of their son's headstone. He settles her in the vee of his thighs, tugs her back to rest against him, his hands entwined with hers resting in her lap. He feels her hiccup, shudder, calming from the emotional storm being here can bring, and then it's just her warmth, the comforting weight of her that registers with him.
They sit quietly then.
"It's beautiful. What you chose for him," she tells him after twenty minutes of so of silent meditation.
"I'm glad you like it."
Craning her neck around he can still only see the side of her face, but she looks troubled to him as she says, "Your strength has always amazed me, Rick. Never more so than those blurry days when I'd already checked out and you had to take over everything. But it registered, it did, and I want you to know that. Maybe not at the time, but in therapy, and often in moments when I started to see what I'd done, the gravity of what I'd left you to do alone did sink in."
Castle lowers his face into her hair and lets it wash over him, her quiet gratitude. Lets it erase any lingering bad thoughts he's had on the choices he was forced to make back then.
"The inscription - that was the toughest, the hardest choice, Kate," he quietly admits. "How to tell him, tell the world what he'd meant to us. How adored he'd been. Everything I thought of felt so damn inadequate, so generic. Even now . . ."
He goes quiet behind her.
"Even now . . . what?" she prompts gently.
"I suppose it's just that I still sometimes second-guess them."
The cop turns her head back to re-read the words on the headstone for the hundredth time since she's been here. The words her writer chose for their son are simple and perfect. Sweet, loving, fitting, and he must know that surely? That he worries his words are insufficient hurts inside her. He mustn't ever doubt them; she vows right then and there to never let him.
"Rick, listen to me," she says with both quiet and fierce insistence. "Like everything you write these words speak truthfully. They honor and commemorate, Jack. They're perfect, and I love you even more for them."
Jackson James Castle
Feb 3rd 2015 -
June 17th 2015
Remembering you is easy,
We do it everyday,
Missing you is a heartache,
That never goes away.
'Shhh…baby sleeping'