WHO Kate Beckett and Richard Castle WHEN: Backdated Saturday, June 28 WHERE: Kate's office at The Hub RATING: Low. SUMMARY: The zombie apocalypse is over, which means Beckett gets to finally see Castle.
From the moment the last zombie had been killed, Kate hadn’t stopped. She’d thrown three of her guns in the general direction of Quill and Groot, and taken off at a dead run. Tomorrow she’d be sure to thank everyone who helped fight, tomorrow she’d do research into what exactly allowed this to happen, figure out what could be done to prevent a similar attack. But she’d somehow held her emotions at bay, focused on doing her job, not on the alert she’d quietly set to her communicator that would notify of anyone from home who happened to land on Knowhere.
She’d never been expecting it, still truly hadn’t allowed herself to believe it, but that hadn’t done anything to stop her tearful reaction during a brief break from fighting. She’d played it off (badly, she knew) to those in the group, blaming stress and being tired, but her tears had been real, just like the weak knees and shaking fingers.
Somehow Castle was here and try as she might, Kate couldn’t make sense of it. Not that she cared too. He was here and it was, blessedly, enough.
The route through the park back to the Hub was familiar now, one she jogged frequently, not to mention walked just about every morning. But she pulled double duty, calling up a private channel to delegate all orders and to spread notifications to all aboard the ship that the zombie attack had ended and it was now safe to resume life as normal. Though, obviously, there would be a need for repairs and clean-up.
And then she signed off, turned everything over to Cosmo just before she swiped her badge over the panel that admitted her into the building, and her hand to another panel beyond that accessed the elevator.
Adrenaline could do wonders for a tired body and mind, burning away the lack of sleep and sore muscles, leaving Kate oblivious to the dirt, sweat and dried variation of fluid on her clothes. She’d managed to pull her hair off her face, finding a ponytail holder in the depths of her pockets during the overnight hours but even it was stringy and matted as she stepped from the metal box and moved towards the door that marked her office with a etched glass nameplate that also bore her title.
Not that she cared. Kate spent most of her days confused as to why she even had the job in the first place, though she was certainly grateful for the opportunity and the vote of confidence.
Two deep breaths, a moment to steel herself for the sight of a man she thought had died and then she opened the door.
Castle was bored. And he'd been drumming his fingers over the table for a while. He also paced for a while. And knocked on random doors and windows. He also spent a lot of time reacting to everything that was apparently going on outside of this whatever it was. Zombies and superheroes and even more and he was missing it? Sacrilege, he thought.
Really though, he'd been about to get married and then he was here and Kate was here too -- never mind that she's been here a month already because that was just going to make his head blow up -- so what could be more perfect? Well, missing everyone else in his life but he wasn't worried; they'd turn up.
The door opened, and Castle turned. "Beckett! I can't believe you left me all alone in here while you got to go fight zombies. You can't even deny they exist now, can you?"
She wasn’t prepared for this. Any hold Kate managed on her emotions flew out the window at the sight of Castle in a tuxedo, primed and ready for a wedding. The tears were filling her eyes before she’d even managed to draw a breath, head spinning with the same fuzzy kind of white noise that had started as her car had pulled up to the scene of the accident. He was talking, something about zombies and being left alone and she didn’t understand a word of it. Couldn’t have managed it even if she’d wanted too.
And the shaking. Her whole body had started that up again, every inch of her trembling as she drank in the picture of him in front of her, perfect and absolutely radiating excitement at being here. It was sort of like watching herself from outside her own body, because Kate could feel her feet moving, but there was no memory of giving herself the command to do so, but the sob - well, that she hadn’t really meant to do, but given the situation she thought she deserved a free pass.
But wrapping her arms around him - grimey clothes and sweaty skin included - closing the distance to kiss him like her life depended on it? Like she might never get to do it again in her life? That was absolutely planned.
Now that was a welcome. That was a fantastic welcome and Castle wasn't about to deny himself the pleasure or her for that matter. Of course there was the little confusion where Beckett was shaking and nearly sobbing, which he didn't understand. Unless she really missed him that much in the month she was here. If that were the case, they were going to have a really great life together.
He pulled back first. "Can we make that the kind of hello I get every time I see you?"
The small laugh she gave was reluctant and held a definite measure of relief in it, Kate’s head dipping in a little nod of agreement even as her eyes welled up with tears, “Sure, Castle, whatever you want,” she told him with a sniff, brushing at the tears as they finally spilled over onto her cheeks.
“I’m so glad you are here,” Kate added, brushing her hand over his cheek and biting down on the rest of words that wanted to fly out of her mouth.
"I'm still trying to wrap my head around it," he said with a laugh. "Zombies, superheroes, fictional characters who I've read about my entire life and they are all here right now? Not to mention, did you know that we are in space? Actually, in outer space right now."
"Actually the zombies are all dead," she told him, the words followed by a long, deep sigh. Kate knew they were dead because three days of her life had been spent shooting them, running from them, pushing the panic and the fear somewhere deep so that it couldn't rise to the surface. But she had been worried, so worried that Castle wouldn't listen, that he would figure out a way to leave The Hub in an effort to find her, to become part of the action, and manage to disappear on her again. Or, worse, that in the middle of a would-be zombie invasion that she wouldn't manage to make it out and unwillingly leave him as, at least at home, Castle had left her.
"Eh," she gave him a shrug, that familiar teasing glint burning away the exhaustion and easing the tight burning ache of her throat from desperately keeping herself in check. Whatever breakdown that was imminent, Kate didn't want it happening in a place where she was in charge and people were expected to respect her and follow orders. "Looks like New York to me."
"Yeah, a more awesome New York that was in outer SPACE," he said in the tone of an excited child. He had an excited glint in his eyes too.
But he knew they had other things to talk about, namely what they were doing here now. "So what have you been spending your time on, Detective Beckett?"
Oh, she had missed him. For a long moment Kate simply stood there, fingers gently twisting in the soft hair at the nape of his neck, another fresh round of tears pricking at her eyes. For a month she had been coping as best as she could by burying herself in work. Establishing the security systems and protocols for the city, training measures and drills. But it hadn't eased the of being without him and the rest of her friends, hadn't stopped a round of sleepless nights or horrific nightmares of all the ways Castle could have been ripped from her. But going back home, to a life without him was one that she hadn't wanted.
But even with that realization, Kate had never expected Castle to arrive here. "Working." She answered, her voice thin and shaky, "I needed the distraction."
"I'm touched," he said. "You needed to distract yourself from the very possibility that I wasn't going to show up here and you would have to live without me?" Castle, of course, had no idea what happened in the minutes after he hung up with Kate on the way to their wedding.
He kissed her again and hug her. "Who's the most awesome fictional character here?" He asked,preparing himself to be super excited.
It’s like flipping a switch, how quickly her body goes rigid, tears breaking the barrier of her eyelids to slide down her cheeks, her face completely crumbling, “Castle….” Kate choked on his name, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt, “Don’t say that.”
She hadn’t been sure, till now, how much he would know, but that small joke, the casual delivery is her confirmation. Castle might be a little silly, but he is rarely callous, would never make light of something as serious as the car accident she saw before ended up here. And though she has to tell him, she can’t force the words out yet, distracting herself with the kiss, burying her face against his chest as he tugged her in for a hug.
“To you? Probably Cosmo,” she said, aware of Castle’s love for the name, probably because of the talking Russian dog.
He didn't know how to interpret her reaction but he knew it wasn't good. Castle pulled back, his hands on her shoulders, to look at her. "Kate, stop. What's wrong? What aren't you saying?" If Castle was anything, he was definitely perceptive.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked softly, swallowing with some difficulty against the knot of emotions lodged in her throat, “I mean I know you came from our wedding, you mentioned that, but what were you doing before you came here?”
He wasn't sure what she was getting at, but he nodded, and answered. "I was driving. I'd just filed all the paperwork, finally, and called you. We'd just hung up the phone. I was about 10 minutes away actually."
Ten minutes away. Kate had known that, could recall their playful conversation word for word without much prompting at all. For so long they’d been the last words that she thought she’d ever get from him, and knowing that he loved her, that he couldn’t wait for the wedding, it had helped in some way. Gave her a measure of comfort that Castle at least had been happy when it happened.
But the prospect of having to tell him the rest of it was painful. Kate knew that she had to do it, that Rick deserved to know, and to learn it from her instead of a stranger, but it didn’t make it any easier. “You didn’t…..” she started, her voice breaking long before she ever truly got started, “You didn’t make it, Rick,” Kate said, eyes heavy and sad, “After I talked to you, we went downstairs, picked up our flowers, and just waited. Ten minutes turned into twenty, and then half an hour, and then an hour….I was about to call you when the Chief Brady called me. There’d been an accident….”
She has to sit down before she can finish, ignoring the dirt and grime on her clothes to sink against the soft plush couch in her office, hands covering her face as she releases a long, heavy sigh, “Your car went off the bridge near your house, and caught on fire…..” she whispered, voice laced with pain as she closed her eyes, skin pale and tears steadily streaming down her face.
None of what she was saying made any sense at all. He had been told that people were pulled in from all over, that it wasn't just some weird parallel universe rip but also a time one. But the very idea that he had driven his car off a bridge on the way to their wedding? Even as an accident that was pretty damn overdramatic, wasn't it? After everything else they'd been through in the last few months, that happened too?
Castle shook his head. "No, I refuse to believe you," he said. "Not that I don't think you're telling me what happened," he added hastily, "but that I refuse to believe that that's what happened. Which is why," he continued on, "clearly why, I'm here and not in a burning car right now."
Always the optimist, so while it wasn’t surprising that Castle would go that route, Kate still couldn’t believe how calm he was about the whole thing. She was the one who was a crying, shaky mess, but of course he hadn’t seen the wreck, didn’t know how horrible it all had been.
“It is what happened,” she replied, “But, God, I’m so happy you aren’t in that car. I didn’t…..I’ve spent a long time thinking I was never going to see you again.”
"Well," Castle said slowly, not trying to disregard her feelings or what happened, "it didn't happen to me, and here I am, and there you are, and we're in outer space. What could possibly be better?" Why yes, he was going to keep on returning to that, absolutely.
There was a moment of nothing, long enough for Kate to draw in a breath before her face morphed into one of disbelief, “You aren’t serious,” she said, the question implied in her tone, “Castle, I saw the damn car. I’ve had to live through the idea that you died and all you are going to say is it didn’t happen? It DID happen.”
And it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she didn’t care one bit about space, but Kate was at least smart enough to hold that in. For now anyway.
"I'm not saying it didn't happen to you, but that it didn't happen to me so that means for whatever reason, it's a good thing we both ended up here. Would you rather I be here or back there right now?" Castle asked. He was too excited to get out of this room and do things instead of having this argument. What did it matter what did or didn't happen in the Hamptons when they weren't in the Hamptons but were instead here?
“No, but you sure as hell aren’t stopping to think about what it was like. You being here now doesn’t erase the rest of it, Castle. It doesn’t help me forget that at home you might very well be dead and, for all we know, one day I’m gonna be right back there and you won’t be,” Kate snapped, “How would you feel if this were my shooting and you didn’t know if I lived or died? If I just completely dismissed your emotions with the idea that it doesn’t matter?” she asked, pulling in a long, slow breath before she rose to her feet, scrubbed both hands through her hair in a move that left her grimacing at the feel of it.
“Sorry if I’m not giddy over being on a spaceship. I’ve been here for a while, and haven’t slept in two days so the novelty really has lost its shine.”
"I didn't say they didn't matter, Kate, I'm saying that right now why can't you focus on the fact that I'm not dead. I do know what it's like to not know if you're alive or dead. I lived through that, too, and every day when you go off and I'm not with you I have to face the fact that you might not come home. But you have to acknowledge that what I'm coming from is ten minutes away from getting married to the woman of my dreams, so that's what I'm thinking about right now."
This really wasn’t how it was supposed to go, Kate thought with a sigh, her left hand rising to press at the knot of tension between her eyebrows, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” she answered him quietly, ignoring the slight throbbing of her head in favor of taking a step towards Castle. “I’m picking a fight because I’m tired and relieved and stunned…..” she gave a shrug, lifting her hands again to lightly cup his jaw, “And I’m absolutely disgusting and need a shower and to burn these clothes and to sleep for maybe the next decade but I am glad you are here, okay? And I love you, so so much.”
Castle paused for a moment but then slid an arm around her waist. "Let's go home then … wherever home is, at least?" he asked. He kissed her temple. "I love you, too. And I absolutely can't believe that you were off fighting zombies. How cool!"
The first laugh that Kate had let out in a long time slipped out of her mouth easily, the smile that accompanied it a little hidden when her head fell forward so that her forehead rested against his shoulder, “I knew it was just killing you, knowing your badass girlfriend was living your favorite fantasy,” she teased, lifting up on her toes to kiss his cheek, “But, babe, it wasn’t as fun as you think,” Kate added, ignoring the small shiver that raced up her spine at memories of walking corpses and rotting flesh, “Pretty sure I’m gonna have nightmares for weeks.”
But home sounded like a good idea, even if the short walk to get there seemed like something impossible to manage. Though, really, Castle would probably carry her the whole way if she asked him. “Come on, I know you’ve got to be sick of my office, we’ll talk on the way,” she said, sliding her fingers through his before taking a few steps towards the door. This was going to make quite a picture, sweaty and kind of gross Kate Beckett, Head of Security, holding hands with a guy in a pristine tux (bar the stains she had managed to get on it) that almost dwarfed her in size both in frame and height in Kate’s flat boots.
He dropped a kiss onto her head and squeezed her hand, letting her lead the way.