Early December, Castle's Loft
Kate gasps as her eyes shoot open.
"Oh, my god! Oh my, god!" She exclaims frantically. She jumps out of bed and quickly pulls an outfit from her overnight bag.
"What, Kate, what is it?" Castle asks as he comes into consciousness.
"We overslept, my alarm didn't-I don't know what happened! My exam starts in 20 minutes," Kate gasps, panicking as she searches for her phone. "Where the hell is my phone!?"
"I'll call a car right now," Castle says, shuffling around his night stand.
"No time!" Kate exclaims. "I'm gonna run for it!"
"Kate! The snow!" Rick calls after her, but she's already out the door. He sighs and scans the room, and when he sees it, he quickly realizes what he'd done.
"Oh, no. Oh no, no, no," he mumbles as he rolls out of bed and stumbles over to the dresser where Kate's phone had been set up to charge next to the baby monitor. Except, it wasn't. In his fatigued irritation last night, after getting out of bed for the third time, he'd knocked the monitor to the floor, and as it fell, it knocked the cord from Kate's phone charger loose as well. The phone battery must've died, which is why Beckett's alarm didn't go off two hours ago.
Fuck, he repeats over and over in his head.
I fucked up.
Now, all he can do is wait for Kate to get back to find out how badly.
He waited for hours. But that's a good thing, he reminded himself.
Once Alexis was awake, he was able to focus on something else, anything else. He gave his daughter her breakfast of bananas and oatmeal, cleaned her up after she rubbed the bananas all over her face and in her hair, and sat with her on the floor as she played with her favorite music toy. Though her sleep schedule had been rocked by the last few nights of restlessness, the toddler rubbed her eyes with fatigue around the same time that she'd normally take her first nap. Rick carries her to her crib and she falls asleep almost instantly. As he shuffles back downstairs, there's a firm knock on the front door.
Kate walks in wordlessly when he opens it, sliding past him and into his bedroom, forcefully shutting the door behind her to keep him from following.
"Kate, please...talk to me," Rick calls through the closed door. He hears her moving around, but she still doesn't speak. He thinks for a moment to just open the door or go through his office, but he decides it's best to...not do that. A minute or so later, the shower in his bathroom roars to life. He sighs and slumps down on the couch while he waits.
The shower faucet turns off about fifteen minutes later. While Kate dries her hair and gets dressed, Rick fixes her an extra foamy latte and sets it on the counter. When she emerges from the bedroom, though, Kate has her winter coat on, her bag thrown over her shoulder, and her car keys in her hand. She heads straight for the front door, but Rick cuts to her before she can leave.
"Kate, please don't ignore me," he pleads. "Please talk to me." She has obviously been putting a lot of effort into remaining straight-faced, because once he begs her to stay, tears immediately start rolling down her cheeks. She drops her bag and buries her face in his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, but I should go," she whispers.
"Please, Kate, I'm sorry," Rick says. "Please at least tell me what happened."
"I just really can't be here," she gulps. "Don't worry, though, Castle. She wasn't going to let me take it at first, but I convinced her."
"Well, that's good...at least? But somehow I feel like there's more to it," Rick sighs.
"I'm just, I'm really mad at you right now," Kate tells him. "And I don't think it's fair for me to be mad at you, so I'm gonna..."
"It was my fault, Kate," Rick tells her. "You have every right to be mad."
"That's not exa-"
"I hit your phone charger when I knocked over the baby monitor last night," Rick says. "That's why your alarm didn't go off. It was dead. It was dead because of me."
"Damn it," Kate sighs. "It's not about the stupid alarm!" She practically yells and then practically whispers, "at least, not really."
"Kate? What do you mean? What's going on?"
"I'm mad at you for, for making me love you so much!" Kate yells. "It's infuriating!"
"Oh," Rick sighs while trying to conceal a smile. "I-I see."
"No, you don't get it," Kate sighs. "I should have never even been in that position, I would have never even thought of staying over night somewhere else the night before an exam, much less a final before I met you. It was so irresponsible."
"Kate, there was a snow emergency," Rick reminds her.
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, Rick."
"It all worked in the end, didn't it?"
"Sure, it did," Kate says. "But I lied to get there."
"You lied? How?"
"I lied to my professor," Kate clarifies. "I was explaining how we had gotten in late because of the snow storm, and then how the baby wasn't sleeping, and when I said "the baby", my professor asked if she was my baby, and I, I told her yes...I don't know why. But I didn't even hesitate. And once I said that, she let me take the exam. She told me she'd have to dock me a few points for being late, but still. I lied."
"Well, it was true that the baby kept you up all night, whether it's yours or not is sort of irrelevant," Rick justifies.
"But it's not, Castle, she's not," Kate sighs. "Alexis is not my daughter. I am not her mom, and, and I...can't be her mom."
"No one is asking you to be," Rick tells her. "Please don't freak out."
"I'm not freaking out. I am being practical. I can't be with you, be a part of your life, without being part of Alexis' as well," Kate points out. "And I love Alexis, but I am not at a place in my life where I can deal with that."
"So, what, you're breaking up with me?" Rick scoffs. "Because you love me too much? Love my kid too much? That's bullshit, Kate."
"Most days I'm just barely hanging on, Castle," Kate sighs.
"What? I-I thought we were good. I thought we were happy, Kate."
"Rick, that's not what I meant, not at all. I am so incredibly happy with you. This is not you at all," Kate tells him.
"Well, clearly things aren't as good as I'd thought. It sounds like you're about to leave me."
"I'm...not. Well, I don't want to, but I just, I don't know if can stay," Kate cries. "Everything with my dad is still so volatile, especially now that he's home, so that's another reason why it would be best to just..."
"Kate, I know I'll never fully understand what you're dealing with with your dad, but I told you, you're not alone anymore," Rick assures. "You don't have to do this by yourself. I am here. You just have to let me."
"I appreciate that, babe," Kate says. "But it's so unpredictable that I can't depend on someone else. It's not fair to you."
"This is what is not fair to me, Kate. This right here, right now. Just fucking let me be there for you."
"I don't...I don't know that I can. It's also that I...I can't be someone's mom while I'm grieving the loss of my own."
"No one is asking you to be Alexis's mom," Rick reiterates again.
"But it's what she deserves, Rick," Kate sighs. "She deserves a mom that is even half as amazing as her dad. And that's not me. Not right now, at least. If that makes me the asshole, I'm sorry. I just...can't."
"Are you fucking kidding, Kate?" Rick exclaims. "What are you going to do? Run? You always run when you feel too much, instead of just opening your damn eyes! You're thirty times more amazing than I am in your sleep. Don't you see that? Don't you realize how extraordinary you are? How great we are together?"
"Castle, please just..."
"I was drowning before I met you. A washed up writer with no inspiration and no motivation. But you changed everything for me before you even knew it. You are acting like you are some sort of burden when that could not be further from the truth. I love you, Kate. I see the future so clearly with you. I don't want to lose you because you feel like you're not good enough, because you are. You always are. And you always will be."
"I just, I don't want to lose myself trying to be something I'm not..." Kate cries.
"Then just be you. Just be you, Kate."
Rick wraps his arms around Kate's slender frame and she buries her head into his shoulder again.
"I freaked out," she whispers as they sway softly in their embrace.
"I know," he whispers back. "It's okay. It will all be okay."
