Seven minutes. Within that modest span of time Martha heads back towards the city and the obligations of everyday life. Tiny snowflakes resume descending, but in a fit of seeming petulance from the pair's lack of awe, or even notice, stop again just as abruptly. John's truck warms to a mildly uncomfortable temperature, banishing the chill from their bodies, but not their hearts. They make two full trips around the block. The first time neither utters so much as a clearing of their throats into the dreadful silence. The second time around Beckett's mind is so deeply intent on imagining Castle inside that she unconsciously begins to hum Moonlight Sonata. It alternates at times with wordless vocalization, her lips unable to keep such a melody neatly contained behind them.
It truly is one of the most beautiful musical pieces. It will never be quite the same after this evening. Unlike John Denver's hit, Annie's Song, the sonata delivers a more profound impact for her personally. If asked to assign a number to the matter, she would reply that she listens to it two or three times a year. The period between each partaking assists in keeping the song from becoming just another well-known collection of sounds. Delayed gratification applies to other things she enjoys; such deep affection for an experience elicits her willfully keeping it at a distance where it will never lose its special luster.
"Kate," John issues. The man's voice is raw, more a croak, and as close as he can probably get to a whisper. Those dark eyes are fashioned into pleading orbs of darkness with the faintest gleam of moisture along the lower eyelids. They are not tears—in the same manner that leaves turning over upon the trees prior to a downpour is not rain. "Stop," he requests tightly. "Please."
The detective stares at him, feels her heart beginning to thud harder and heavier in her chest. The melody of her voice lapses into quiet. Her eyes dart away, retreating urgently back to the view out the passenger window. They are sailing too close to the ragged edge of an emotional whirlpool tonight. If her companion's stalwart façade cracks, hers will be all too eager to follow suit. A blubbering mess is help to no one.
Rick emerges moments after they've passed by the front of the house on their second lap. The detective doesn't have to say anything. John grinds to a somewhat jarring halt upon the snow-swept lane. With a soft clacking of the gear shifter he reverses to put the cab in line with Anton Richter's driveway.
They witness.
Castle pauses upon the open front yard, unaware of them. The more literal moonlight has been in scarce supply, with Diana's favor largely reserved for gracing the passing cloud cover. Yet a few rebellious shafts peek through. They pour like liquid quicksilver through the branches of the oak to pool in the palms of his large hands as Castle holds them out somewhat away from himself. He stares down at them for a long, terribly long span of seconds.
Kate's self-control wavers in her breast like restless shelves of the planet's crust jostling for position.
Suddenly the author turns his upper half, glancing back towards the house. Anton Richter must have spoken to him, for the man emerges from the opened front door that's garbed in warmer interior lighting. He advances brutally through the snow in his front yard, heedlessly jostling fine sprinkles of powder into the air.
Beckett's hand jerks for the passenger door handle, but John's hand clamps down on her shoulder.
Richter collides hard into her fiancé, jostling him back half a pace. But…oh god. It's not an assault. It's a hug, and that's immeasurably worse.
Castle stands rigid beneath the onslaught at first. His hands hover at half-mast, as if their owner is uncertain himself what action to propel them towards. But when Richter's back and shoulders spasm in what is clearly a hard outpouring of grief they slowly, slowly rise and settle against the older man's back. The author's face is impassive in the starkness of the heaven-sent radiance—his eyes look as cold and desolate as the surrounding winter. It's too much. The painful depths of contradiction visible there are too sacred to invade with her staring.
Kate faces forward in her seat.
"Richter used us," the driver murmurs deeply in her peripheral. "Don't—don't forget his cunning."
The words are clearly aimless. Beckett makes no reply. John's telling himself as much as her. She gets it though: the old man is a spider, something dark and horrible. Yet he's also a killer who found out too late that he was never meant to be one, not equipped to live a normal, happy life while shouldering the consequences. It is the most terrible thing—taking a life. She knows all too well. And coming to Montauk, where he existed solely for the morbid curiosity and amusement of some of its upper class citizens, well… Perhaps even monsters need some mercy. That has less to do with being deserving than it does with the survivors' capacity for compassion, one of the principle distinctions between good and evil.
When Beckett looks again she sees Castle extricating himself from the embrace. He has to forcibly dislodge—such is the others desperate hold. They wrestle at one another like that, and this time John doesn't try to stop her from pushing roughly out of the truck. As she emerges Kate hears the author's upraised and hard-edged voice declare, "It's done, Anton!" before he finally has to push the pianist away. Richter falls at the base of the tree. The snow makes for a harmless landing, but the spider lingers there in the shadow as though stunned. Castle's chest swells from the brief exertion of liberating himself. "Goodbye," he says, more rasps, and turns away. His features walk a gut-wrenching line between sympathy and deeply-seated anger when he turns towards Kate and the awaiting truck.
Castle stops in his tracks to behold her. The emotions in his expression slowly ease. She actually sees it happen this time, what he claims to occur every time: he moves from the difficult present to an inner oasis of comparative calm. That makes her feel so...useless. Because it's not something she does intentionally. It's something he sees, maybe even imagines, because she sure as hell doesn't feel special in a way that justifies his reaction to her presence. With a sigh of relief more evident for the resulting vapor than sound he closes the distance between them. Despite herself, warm anticipation bubbles in her blood and rises to the surface of her skin just in time to greet his hands settling at either side of her waist.
"We're done here," he says, and there's a trace of forlornness in the words.
Beckett knows her partner doesn't want to hear her tell him that Richter doesn't deserve his pity; the same way she knows he went in there and played for reasons beyond fulfilling the terms of blackmail. He won't stay long enough for her to finish assuring him that he's done far more to try and alleviate the other man's guilt and terrible loneliness than should have ever been required of him. Instead, the woman lifts a hand to her lover's cheek and tells him, "I'm so proud of you today. I know Laura would be too."
And though he seems prepared to hear that, it still almost undoes him.
One horribly shaky breath comes and goes. Castle blinks rapidly, sniffs, and presses the heels of his palms against tightly closed eyes as if to contain the tide which threatens behind them. "One more," he husks. The appendages lower to her waist again. His thumbs trace the curved ridges of her pelvic bones the way a troubled priest might caress a strand of prayer beads. "One more stop. Are you still okay to go? Would you rather head home?"
Even to Kate's ears the words sound fragile, as if a stranger were using her lips: "I wanna go home." She sniffs wetly, dabs at her nose with her sleeve, and clears her throat roughly. "Ah. God. But I'm so close now. I have to finish it. I don't know if I could make myself come back for a second attempt after…all this."
"Please." A sibilant utterance slips out of the darkness where Richter lay crumpled with only his legs visible. It descends the ladder of her spine with an icy grip. The appeal drifts without seeming direction, like a man who's lost and casting about blindly for aid within a far greater darkness than is literal at the time. "Please, please, please." A small part of Kate's heart clenches to imagine herself at the lighthouse earlier when the same incomprehensible plea had thundered through her mind. The word continues on and on at present, a litany of susurration without end, only pauses for breath.
"I'm, uh, not exactly welcome in the Matthews' home," Castle says, his expression hardening while attempting to ignore the voice nearby. It is a thin veneer over the powerful empathy they both know exists underneath. "But I'll follow along behind you and wait outside."
"I'll ride with you then."
"No," he grunts immediately. He sighs, favors her with a hesitant, wan smile. "Please."
"Okay. It's okay." They linger there briefly despite his claim for want of a little privacy. Beckett considers kissing him. Her gaze lingers at his mouth, the inviting curve and fullness there. But the author backs away a pace, moistening his lips like he knows what she's intending. Somehow she gets that too—his not wanting to start for fear of being incapable of stopping. There is a time for comfort and a time where all one can do is grit ones teeth and endure. "Almost done," she echoes his previous sentiment. "Let's go."