Crossfire

November 10, 2014


She careens behind the ambulance in her cruiser, gumball flashing, sirens blaring, and thoughts racing.

Richard Castle took two bullets for her.

Just jumped in front of her. No pause. No hesitation.

He saved her life and said he loves her.

Loves her.

He doesn't even know her. How could he love her? How could he risk his life for hers?

She can't wrap her head around it.

She parks illegally near the ER entrance, not caring if she gets towed and slams her car door shut, hurrying to watch them unload the writer. Worry eats at her when she catches a glimpse of him.

He's hooked up to a million different things and looks as white as a ghost, like the life's drained from him.

Oh, God. Please let him be okay.

The EMTs rush him through the automatic doors.

"Double GSWs, no exits. Tension pneumo in the field. We did a needle decomp and he flatlined in the bus. But we got him back into sinus rhythm. Started him on an IV with fluids. Pulse is weak and thready," one of the first responders barks out.

Doctors take him and ferry him toward a waiting elevator bay, presumably heading toward the surgical floor.

He flatlined.

But they're taking him to surgery. That's a good sign. Means he's still alive. Means he still has a chance.

She stands rooted to the spot, everything around her blurring.

"Ma'am, are you okay?" a nurse in blue scrubs asks.

"What?"

"Are you hurt?" they ask pointedly, nodding down.

Beckett drops her gaze, finding blood-stained hands. Her blood-stained hands.

"No, uh, this isn't mine," she says, "The man they just brought in. The GSWs. I—"

There'd been so much blood. She tried to stop it. Press down on the wound. Staunch the flow. But there had just been so much.

"Why don't you come sit down," the nurse says, gently guiding her to a small row of chairs right off the hallway. "Are you family?"

The Captain sinks into a seat, staring straight ahead, her brain glitching.

"No, uh…"

Moments with Castle play like a flashreel in her mind. The way he smiled at her when they built theory, the way he said her name with familiarity, the way he seemed to read right through her…

"He said he loved me," she says to the nurse in a daze.

"Oh, sweetheart. I'll make sure they give you an update with his family," the nurse replies before leaving to attend to another incoming patient.

"His family," Beckett gasps, some of her shock wearing off. Fumbling for her cell, she quickly dials the precinct. "Ryan? I forgot—someone needs to call…oh, you're on it?" She exhales in relief as her colleague assures her he contacted Castle's mother and daughter when she radioed in earlier. They were en route.

Her head hits the wall as the spike of adrenaline in her veins wears off and exhaustion settles into her bones.

He had to be okay.

He had to.


She moves her cruiser into a designated parking spot and retrieves a backup shirt from her trunk.

She tears off her bloodied camisole in the bathroom, trashing it along with her ruined blazer, and spends twenty minutes scrubbing the heavy smear of the writer's blood off her hands, trembling slightly, before donning her fresh white button-up.

She stares at herself in the mirror, wondering how she got there. Wondering how the hell a man on the back of a book jacket is fighting for his life because of her.

Because I love you, Kate.

How is she supposed to face his family?

He fucking flatlined.

She clutches the edge of the sink and inhales, long and deep. Exhales slowly.

All she can do is treat them like any other next of kin. This is just another case. Just another senseless tragedy.

She snaps a hair tie off her wrist and scrapes her hair into a smooth and tight ponytail, putting her armor back on and transforming into Captain Beckett—the woman who honors the victim.

The woman who has a job to do.


At the waiting room front desk, a raven-haired girl is pestering a nurse for information about Richard Castle, her porcelain face pinched in anger.

"I'm his daughter!" she yells.

"Alexis?" Beckett ventures, remembering her name from an old article about the writer.

She whips toward the Captain, her fury vanishing.

"Yes?"

Beckett sticks her hand out.

"Captain Kate Beckett."

Alexis blanches. "Beckett? You—you're real."

She isn't sure how to interpret that statement, so she offers a somewhat awkward but polite smile.

"Um, yes. Miss Castle, listen. I was with your father—"

"You were with him?" The girl's sky blue eyes flood with hope. "So you know what happened to him? The guy on the phone. He said my dad was shot. Is that true?"

Beckett falters, suddenly unable to speak, choked by the weight of what she's about to do—rob this girl of her innocence; shatter her entire world.

But she can't let her personal emotions cloud this. She owes his family the truth. She steels herself and replies, "Yes. It's true."

Horror claims the young girl's face and Beckett's chest aches.

"I don't understand. How'd this happen?"

He's not dead yet. At least there's that. At least she can give her something to hold onto.

"He's in surgery now. They're working on him."

"Surgery? Oh my god."

Alexis stumbles back in shock and Beckett instinctively reaches for her, steadying the young girl with reassuring hands on her shoulders.

"Where's your grandmother?"

Alexis pins her gaze on Beckett, as if trying to find focus and organize her thoughts.

"It's opening night, so her phone's off. Part of her ritual. But uh, the detective, um—"

"Ryan?" Beckett fills in.

Alexis nods. "He said he sent a patrol car. Someone's picking her up."

"Okay. Good. Why don't we sit over here while we wait?"

She directs the overwhelmed young girl toward the waiting room area, gently maneuvering her into a chair and taking a seat beside her.

Alexis looks at the Captain, tears pooling, her voice small and scared.

"How the hell did my dad get shot?"


Alexis is silent once Beckett finishes telling her.

About the case. About him jumping in front of her.

"He saved my life."

"Why would he do that?" Alexis asks reflexively before she quickly covers her mouth, shocked at the boldness of her own question. "I just meant—"

"It's okay. I know what you meant," Beckett says with a calming hand on the younger woman's thigh. She feels so useless. So helpless. "I just wish I did a better job at protecting him. I shouldn't have let him work the case at all. I should've known better. I'm so sorry."

Legal is going to kill her for technically admitting fault, but she doesn't give a damn. This was her fault. She's the reason this girl might suffer the same fate as her. The reason the girl's heart might harden into stone and freeze into ice, traumatized by the loss of a parent in the spring of her youth.

But instead of lashing out in rage, instead of blaming the Captain for her father's potential demise, Alexis launches her arms around Beckett and clings to her like a lifeline.

"Please tell me he's going to be okay," she begs in a whisper and something melts in Beckett, her heart thawing and even if she doesn't have the answer, she can do this. Even if she has a hard time finding the bright side in anything, she can give his daughter a silver lining.

"He's in very capable hands. I've had officers shot in the line of duty and they pull through all the time. The best thing we can do right now is hope for the best possible outcome, okay?"

She hugs Alexis close, giving her a tight squeeze, and it heals an old wound in her, being able to provide this girl some of the comfort she was never given when she lost her mother.

The young woman eventually pulls away from her, wiping the tears from her face.

"I just…I can't lose him. Not when I just got him back."

Beckett stays quiet as Alexis continues to unspool.

"Last night, for the first time in years…he actually gave a damn about what was going on in my life. He showed interest. He cared. And it was like he was his old self again."

She stares at the Captain, a haunted look in her eye. An all too familiar look. Dread swamps her gut when Alexis opens her mouth and asks, "What if he doesn't make it?"

Beckett's saved from reply when a loud voice cries,

"Where is he? Where's my son?"


Beckett walks back into the waiting room with a tray of coffees. Alexis is curled up across several chairs, her head resting in Martha's lap, eyes closed in sleep as her grandmother strokes her hair.

The actress is still in her Mame costume, a sequined outfit with a bright orange housecoat. She's long since unpinned her hair and brushed her wild curls into gentle waves and wiped the deep red lipstick from her mouth, but she still looks all too cheery for the somber circumstances.

And yet, something about the contradiction has a small smile tugging at Beckett's mouth. She barely knows the writer, but she has a hunch he would find it funny that even in his darkest hour, his own mother would manage to upstage him and steal the spotlight simply with her attire.

"Did you still want—" Beckett asks quietly, motioning at the coffee as she returns to her seat across from the pair.

"Oh, yes. Thank you, dear," the older woman replies, accepting a cup.

"It's pretty hot. Might want to blow on it," Beckett suggests.

The actress sets her cup on an empty chair to her left, retrieves a flask from the inside of her coat, and pours some of the contents into her coffee.

She motions with her flask. "Would you like some?"

"Oh, I'm alright. Thanks."

Martha regards her.

"Is this something you usually do?"

"Sorry?"

"You know, stick around this long? Don't you have other commitments?"

It's been hours. Four, five? Eight? She's lost count. When Martha arrived, she gave the actress a rundown of what happened and then checked in with her team to make sure Marcus Lark, their perp, was squared away in custody.

After that, she settled in and joined his family in their silent vigil, sometimes leaving to retrieve drinks and snacks and updates from the nurse's station. She took a fitful nap at one point, which was responsible for the crick in her neck.

"I'm sorry. I can go."

"No, no. Stay. I didn't mean to scare you off."

"I just figured it was the least I can do," Beckett says after a weighted beat. "He saved my life."

The enormity of what he's done for her cracks something in her and hot tears press her eyes.

"Hey," the actress soothes, "He's going to make it through. I know it in my heart. He has to."

Beckett desperately wants to have the same faith. Needs it so badly to be true.

"He shouldn't have been there, I—"

"Captain," the redhead says firmly. "My son does what he wants and from what I understand, you kicked him off the case, didn't you?"

Beckett nods half-heartedly.

"He's the one who couldn't let it go. And if there's anyone to blame, it's the person who shot him," Martha says, "You got the bastard, right?"

Beckett nods again, thinking of the two rounds she sent into his shooter's chest without pause; without hesitation.

Lark's lawyer didn't make it.

She killed a man.

And yeah, it was in self-defense. But she took a life. And she might be responsible for taking another. For not being fast enough.

"Good," says the actress curtly. "You did good, kiddo."

Good? How the hell can Martha be so nice to her when she's the one who put her son in harm's way?

The redhead sips from her cup, peering at her pensively, and then she's tilting her head to the side, a move Beckett herself has executed in more than one interrogation—the kind to invite your prey in before striking.

"Forgive me, but is there something going on between you and my son?"

"What?" Beckett says. "No, not at all," she stammers, her palms sweating and her cheeks reddening. Well, there was the abbreviated date that wasn't even really a date. And her silly, little fangirl crush she's harbored for over a decade. But that would be too complicated to explain. (Too embarrassing, really).

An almost amused smile ghosts over Martha's lips, as if she can read her thoughts, and she takes another sip of her drink, eyeing Beckett with curiosity.

"You're all he's been talking about recently. Well, you and some nonsense about alternate universes."

Beckett maintains a neutral expression, but her heart thumps erratically.

"This morning he mentioned something about you two being better off together. Even in this world. He thought…if he could prove to you how extraordinary you are, you could help him find some artifact and he could get back home. Do you know what that's about?" the redhead asks as if she's inquiring about the weather.

Extraordinary? But...

She supposes it's no stranger than his confession of love. Just another puzzle piece.

She latches onto Martha's mention of the artifact, thinking of the whispers of its magical properties and his insistence that he knew her; his claims that they were in a relationship. How he burrowed himself under her skin and re-awakened something in her. His words, playing on a loop inside her head.

The Kate Beckett in my world would never call this a win. The Kate Beckett where I come from? She would be unrelenting in the face of anything that is thrown in her path. She would find the truth and she would never compromise.

He'd spoken with such heart and conviction, and it had rattled her. It still rattles her. Could it be he really came from somewhere else?

"I—I don't know. How long has he been acting like this?"

"Couple days," Martha offers.

Beckett absorbs this. About the same time he crash-landed into her life. She thinks of his strange behavior. The inexplicable spark between them. The gut feeling that maybe there was a version of herself out there who opened herself to someone like him.

It fits.

But it can't.

It's ridiculous.

Was she really entertaining the possibility he came from an alternate universe? Another world? No…no. He said he based a character on her because of what he'd read about her. And that he'd fallen in love with her—the character. Not her. It made more sense that he just confused fiction for fact. Concocted some Twilight Zone fantasyland for himself.

It was the logical conclusion.

The only rational reasoning.

But it doesn't explain why, against all odds, she's starting to believe in the impossible.

"Captain?" Martha prods, wrenching her from the whirlwind in her brain.

"I'm sorry. I wish I knew more, but I've only known your son for two days. We've never met before. Except for a book signing years ago. That's about it."

"You're a fan?"

"I—"

She's interrupted by a doctor in a scrub cap.

"Family of Richard Castle?"


xxx


A/N: To any of my Crossroads readers—that story is still my main priority!

I've been working on Beckett on-and-off for a year or so and it's gone through many, many redrafts, but I've finally landed on a version I'm happy with and people were showing some interest in the premise on Twitter, so I decided it was a good time as any to start posting.

It's going to be anywhere from 15 to 20 chapters, and ideally, around 30K to 50K words. The first five chapters are mostly written and the rest, heavily outlined. Will post once a week to start (usually Thursday or Friday). Then likely, once or twice a month. Really depends on reader response and my bandwidth and availability since I'll now be juggling two high-concept and lengthy AUs.

Would love to hear your thoughts!