AN: Sorry for the long wait! Wanted to get a head-start on the next one, so I can have it up in a couple of days. You'll know why pretty soon!
When the Bough Breaks
"I hope this doesn't destroy her."
"Will for a little while. And then one day she'll wake up and it'll just be a part of her life."
-Rick Castle and Kate Beckett, "Vampire Weekend", Castle S2.
"When was your last contact with Michael Nolan?" Beckett asks their suspect, leaning forward in her chair in Interrogation.
He rubs his hands over his face. "I- I don't know a couple of months ago? Did he say anything about me?" he says, starting to get defensive. "Look, I was mad, okay? But I haven't gotten near him in months."
"And what about what you said to him?" Beckett pulls out an MP3 player and presses 'play'.
"I gave you six years of my life. Six years! And now you want to get rid of me? You want to cut me out? Well, karma's a bitch, Michael. You burn down my house. I'm gonna burn yours down," they hear Willis' voice before the brunette clicks off the recording.
"You left that message two months ago, just after your wife left," Esposito continues.
"Yeah? So? Every word of it is true," the suspect shrugs, oblivious to the charges they plan to bring up against him.
"It's harassment," Beckett leans over the table, carefully studying his face for a tell. The cop in her lives every waking moment on alert for one. Something to let her know more than is being said. An indication that this is a lie, or, if it isn't, how the guy feels about the information he's giving.
Kate works in a world where people constantly bullshit her. She only needs to look for a tell and to be able to read it to figure out how much of what they're telling her is a lie.
Hers is a beautiful world.
"Well, we already sorted all that out," Willis leans back in his chair, crossing his arms.
"But that wasn't enough for you, was it?" the brunette presses further. "Staying back as your wife and kid left you and Nolan lives his life happily… That must've made you pretty angry."
"So you snapped and took away what he took away from you," Esposito finishes.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Willis is back to acting defensive, leaning forward again.
"Nolan's wife and kid were murdered," Beckett says, as the smugness disappears from their suspect's face.
"What? Murdered?"
Kate stands up and leans over the table, facing Willis more closely, suddenly annoyed. "Hurting someone else's child isn't-" the rest dies in the detective's throat as she feels the color drain from her face and the all too familiar turning of her stomach. She also vaguely realizes that she just lost the upper hand in this interrogation all while trying to will her breakfast to stay in place.
Esposito throws a worried sideways glance to his partner, and before he can say anything, the suspect beats him to it.
"Man… She okay?"
"Excuse me," she turns and bolts for the door.
Once in the bullpen she makes a beeline for her desk, followed by Ryan, who has watching from Observation.
"Beckett, you okay?" he asks when he reaches her. He's also aware of the fact that Espo got out of Interrogation and is going towards them. "You look a little green…"
As a matter of fact that's exactly how Kate's feeling. A nice shade of bile, actually. She just sits down and puts her head on her hands, taking deep breaths through her mouth.
At that moment, Lanie walks out of the elevator. She decided to stop by to check on her friend, not really having an excuse this time other than she's in her lunch break.
When the ME looks in the direction of Beckett's desk, she finds the brunette with her head on her hands and the boys standing worriedly over her.
She quickly makes her way to them, her concern levels sky rocketing.
"Kate, what's wrong?"
For a fraction of a second, Beckett is a little annoyed that Lanie's there, but her mind quickly goes back to trying to keep hold of her stomach.
Kate takes a couple of deep breaths and straightens in her seat, trying to face them reassuringly. But the paleness of her skin and dark circles under her eyes coupled with the weakness of her voice does exactly the opposite. "I'm fine."
"You know..." Ryan starts quietly, the reality of the situation heavy on his shoulders. "Jenny looked like that for three months."
"Jenny had the flu for three months?" Javier looks at his partner confused.
Kate, on the other hand, knows exactly where this is going. That's when one last wave of nausea has her bolting to the bathroom.
They all stare after her and Ryan runs his hand over his face. "Jenny had morning sickness for three months."
"Shit," Espo says under his breath.
Gates, who watched the brunette disappear into the bathroom in a hurry, approaches the trio and asks, "Is Beckett okay?"
"We're not sure..." Ryan looks after her, not sure of what to do.
"Well... Go find out," she urges them, breaking them out of their trance.
"Right," they scurry off after the detective.
When they reach the bathroom, they all look at each other, unsure of what their next move will be.
Lanie simply takes the lead, going in, leaving the guys outside.
"Kate?" she asks softly, before she hears her retching in one of the stalls. She walks in the direction of the stall and finds the door open, showing the detective on her knees, her body convulsing, getting rid of whatever she had in her stomach.
Unable to just stand outside and watch, the ME drops to her knees by the other woman's side in the tiny enclosed space, helping her keep her hair out of her face and rubbing soothing circles on her back.
After she's done and she's stable enough to get up, Lanie helps Kate to the sinks, where the detective splashes some cold water on her face with trembling hands.
The other woman simply watches as Beckett pulls herself together.
After a while, Kate sighs, turning around, her back still leaning against the counter. She drops her head back and runs her hands over her face and hair in exasperation.
"How am I supposed to do this, Lanie?" she looks at the other woman for an answer, but all she's met with is a look of compassion and a squeeze to her hand.
The ultrasound picture of their baby that Kate carries around everywhere she goes should be enough to bring her more happiness than she's ever felt. But the thought of becoming a mother without having her own around or her husband to share it with sometimes is just too much.
Sometimes it takes everything she's got just to get through the day. But she does. For her family, for her friends, for her baby… She does it for them until she finds the way to do it for herself.
"It's not gonna be easy, I can tell you that much… But we'll be here for you every step of the way."
"How about we run everyone we've interviewed so far again. Let's dig deeper," Kate tells them as she divides the files. She wants this case solved today.
She's now back at her desk, leading the investigation again. Her partners still throw her worried glances every once in a while, but she's ignoring them for now. She'll be home soon enough and she'll be able to take that hot bath her aching body's been longing for the entire day.
Finally, after Javi gets a lucky break, they might actually close it before sundown.
"Got something on Joe Torres," he walks smugly to Beckett's desk, and his demeanor makes her hope he's got something good. "AKA Luis Gomez. Digging deeper in his life turned out to be a hell of a game changer. Turns out our handyman has a history with Nolan and CyberSense."
Kate grabs the file he hands her and finds out that Gomez tried to sue CyberSense several times because one of their trucks had an accident that resulted in the death of his wife and kid.
"His lawsuits never came through, on the grounds that all the responsibility was the driver's, but Gomez wanted blood. Nolan's blood."
"And guess what?" Ryan arrives behind his partner. "It turns out the handyman was in fact the last one to leave the apartment that day… At 6:20 PM. Right in the middle of our kill zone."
Beckett nods, feeling the rush that she always gets when they finally figure out that final piece of the puzzle. "Let's pick up that son of a bitch."
The man in front of her is about to break. So many people have sat there in front of her and confessed their sins to her… This time is no different. This guy is just like all of them, giving her the same tells. She can see it in the way he plays nervously with his hands and how he tries to control his breathing.
"That alibi you gave us? About being at your cousin's party? It just fell apart. So you better start being straight with me," she tells him harshly, but he doesn't budge. He just stares at her, trying not to let her get under his skin.
"Tell us about what happened when your family was killed by one of CyberSense's trucks," Esposito asks, and he gets the same answer from their suspect. Nothing.
"You were mad. In fact, you were so mad, that you changed your name in order to get that job. And then you got it. And you knew exactly what had to be done," Beckett relates, slowly building up the tension.
"But what could've been a day's work," Esposito continues. "Turned into days."
Beckett, now retreating from the suspect leaning back in her chair, makes her tone softer. Understanding. "You kept dragging it out and you realized that you really couldn't put another man through the misery he put you through. Even if you thought he deserved it."
"But then," Espo leans forward. "They started talking about a party, and how happy they were that their daughter was alive yet for another year."
"And then you just snapped," Kate leans forward ever so slightly over the table, pushing just hard enough for him to confess but not to the point to where he feels threatened. "You couldn't just let them be happy. Not after reminding you that your own family was not alive for yet another year because of that man."
And he knows it's over.
"Do you have any idea how it feels like to lose the people around you?" all she can see in those dark eyes is pure hatred and pain. That horrible pain that takes hold of your being every time you wake up in the morning and doesn't let go until the exhaustion drags you into a restless sleep permeated with nightmares.
Yes, she does have an idea of what it feels like. But she doesn't flinch, letting him continue.
His gaze softens before he puts his head in his hands. "My wife is gone. My daughter is gone," he looks up at her again, and this time she can only see the agony that he has let consume his soul. All she can see is the tired face of a heartbroken man. A man who doesn't know how to live without hurting. A man who has only used his grief to cause even more suffering.
And she can't help seeing herself in his worn-out eyes.
"So you took the job with Nolan to get close to his family," Esposito keeps nudging him forward, needing to hear it from him.
He just nods, already knowing he's screwed, and not really caring about it. He just wants all of this to be over. "It was supposed to be a quick thing. In and out. But…"
"But you ended up liking them more than you wanted to," Kate, seeing the look in his eyes, finishes the sentence for him. "But then all the happiness around them…"
In a heartbeat, his attitude does a 180-degree turn. He gets up, to look over the detectives, as if he was now the one on the higher moral ground. "He took my family. I took his."
This new-found pride of his causes something primal to light inside of Kate, and it spreads through her body like wildfire.
Suddenly, she's not the cold, calculating cop who always keeps her distance. Suddenly, she's the woman to whom life has been anything but kind.
In a jolt, she rises to her feet and pins the suspect to the back wall, keeping him in place holding two fistfuls of his t-shirt. "You do not get to use that excuse!" she looks at him with a fierceness that makes him actually fear for what that woman is capable of doing.
He looks back at that deadly beauty with a cold stare. Whatever she can do to him can't be worse than the hell he's lived for the past 2 years.
Behind her, Beckett can feel Esposito get up and Ryan burst into the room. The first one gets her away from the suspect grabbing her by the shoulder, and the second makes sure the guy doesn't go after her.
"Come on," Javi ushers her out of the room grabbing her by the shoulders.
As she leaves, Beckett keeps her eyes locked on the suspect and she's still flaring when her partner gets her into the break room.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Javier snaps at her. How can she put the investigation in danger like that? How can she put herself in danger like that?
"He doesn't get to use that excuse," she points in the direction of Interrogation 2. "He killed two innocent people to avenge his own loss! How does that even work?" she raises her voice in frustration.
As Esposito starts cooling down, he looks into her eyes and beyond the sheer determination obscured by anger, he sees the pain. He sees the misery of someone who's been beat down so many times… But has made it through no matter what.
He sees the never-ending self-confrontation between giving up and to remain standing.
"He does not get to use that excuse," she repeats more quietly, shaking her head.
He can't say anything. All he can do is stare into the troubled eyes of the Avenging Angel, who has brought closure and a sense of peace to so many people without ever being able to find her own. And once she could finally find it, life simply threw another loss her way. As if she hadn't had enough.
"What makes him any different than me?" her voice is merely a whisper, and her eyes are pleading, broken.
She understands the impulse. She understands the need to do something… She understands the ugly truth about being in that lonely dark place…
"No, no. You're not him. You're nothing like him," Esposito tells her in a firm tone, closing the distance between them. "The difference is that he's a killer. And he's alone," he pauses to make sure she understands what he's saying. "You're not."
"Detective Beckett?"
Both partners' head duck, recognizing the voice coming from the door.
"My office. Now."
Esposito sighs as Beckett follows their boss out of the break room.
"What happened in Interrogation?" Gates stands by her desk, looking not too pleased at the detective who's trying to appear guilty.
"I-"
"Because now our prime murder suspect could sue us and just walk away."
Beckett lowers her gaze, ashamed. Her little flare-up could cost them their killer.
"I'm putting you on mandatory leave," Gate's features soften, but she doesn't leave any room for arguing.
"Sir, I'm fine," she walks towards her boss, a hint of pleading in her voice.
"You're not, detective!" the Captain snaps, frustration showing through her usually stoic façade. "You're living on the edge of a cliff, Kate. You don't want to see it. You want to ignore it... But truth is, until you're able to find some closure or reach some acceptance about your husband's death, you won't be able to move forward. You're always going to be on the edge."
Beckett is startled by her boss' outburst.
"You need to talk to someone," Gates says before she sighs and takes her glasses off. "I shouldn't have let you come back so soon to begin with."
"No, sir. I-" Beckett's attempt to plead is cut short by a sharp pain in her lower abdomen.
Gates watches as the detective's eyes widen and her mouth slowly opens into a gasp before she grunts and grips the back of the chair with one hand and wraps the other one protectively around her stomach.
"Beckett?" The Captain is immediately concerned and reaches the brunette. "What's wrong?" she snakes her arm around the younger woman's back, keeping her up.
"I- I don't know," Kate's voice is barely a whisper, but her words are dripping with fear, which makes the Captain even more concerned. She has no idea what could be going on, but the dread oozing from every pore of the younger woman's body let's her know the seriousness of the situation.
"Esposito!" Gates yells to the door, not leaving Beckett.
Ryan is the one who rushes in, and when he sees his partner bent over in pain, being held up by their boss, he's quick to kneel before the brunette.
Her face is pale, drained of color and her knuckles are blanched white as she grips the back of the chair a little too tightly. She's closing her eyes, taking deep, ragged breaths and she looks terrified.
No.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no. This is not happening. This cannot be happening. This is the exact opposite of what should be happening.
This is all Kate Beckett is able to process as the world's sounds become muffled, and all she can focus on is the pain and the fear that radiate from her abdomen taking hold of her entire body.
"What's wrong?" he asks her softly, knowing that this can't be good news considering… When he sees she won't answer, he looks at Gates.
"Take her to the hospital. Now," she tells him and he nods frantically as he gets up.
In that moment, Esposito steps into the room, and when he sees the scene in front of him, his eyes widen. "What happened?" he directs the question to Ryan as he takes Beckett, letting her put her arm over his shoulders. Tears are starting to roll down her cheeks and she hasn't opened her eyes yet.
The air in the room is heavy with worry and apprehension when Ryan answers, trying to remain calm, for her. "We're not sure. We're taking her to the hospital."
Less than twenty minutes later Kate's in the ER, being hooked up to machines and changed into a gown. Tears are still streaming down her face, but and despite that the pain has almost completely disappeared, she can't stop crying. She can't stop worrying. She can't stop praying that her baby is still alive.
No, no, this is bad. This is very bad, is the constant panicked mantra that runs through her mind.
This has got to be a horrible nightmare. Wake up, Kate. Wake up!
AN: I knoooow I'm horrible! (Not that horrible though. Don't worry.) I hate myself too!
I can't thank all of you who have taken the time to read and review enough. You guys are awesome!
And talk about that two-parter! Man! Talk about intense!
Anyhow... I should be back with the next one pretty soon. See you then!