A Death in the Family
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"Most people come up against a wall, they give up. Not you. You don't let go, you don't back down. It's what makes you extraordinary."
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The day he tells her, it's pouring rain.
The rain falls in sheets over the town car as he sits in the backseat and tries to muster up what he'll say. How he'll say it. What she might do-
He knows what she'll do.
She'll lose it. And he'll lose her.
The experience of her. Because it's not like he has her, just the - it's a friendship. Extraordinary friendship. She is his friend, as hard as it is to fathom, and he'll lose her friendship over this.
He didn't know, he has a hundred excuses, but the rain is pouring so hard now that it batters the roof of the car and drowns out his own thoughts.
For the first time in his life, the pretty words won't come.
He's going to do this badly.
It's going to end badly.
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The world stops.
Muted.
Someone has pressed paused on the remote and everything is arrested.
Kate Beckett stares at the man who - in so many ways - has dropped bombs in her life, and she tries to think.
Tries desperately to think. To scrabble over the bottomless hole that's opened up inside her. A hungry mouth that can't be appeased. Because no matter what she does, it's never enough. Grief can never be filled in.
Her mother's murder. He's looked into her mother's murder. Her mother was murdered and he-
She can't do this.
She absolutely can't fall down this hole again.
Kate Beckett walks away.
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Rick stands with his hands dangling from his sides, and he watches her walk away from him.
When she doesn't turn to Sorenson's hospital room door, when she passes right by it, Castle rouses and chases after her.
"Wait. Beckett." He grabs her by the elbow. "Hang on. Don't you want to know what-"
She flips out of his grip, painfully twisting his forearm. He yelps and she sidesteps, her face like death. "No. Stop. We are done. We're done. This is over."
He's struck dumb. She keeps walking, her hand shaking when she jabs the button for the elevator. It opens at her call, and she steps on, and when she turns to put her back to the wall, her eyes fix on his.
His stomach drops out.
He has never seen-
No one has ever been at once so intense and so overwhelming-
He's not prepared for that level of-
The doors close.
That's it.
Over.
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She walks through the rain.
She's drenched, soaked to the skin with a hard and cold spring shower that darkens the earth. The trees are soaked black, their leaves made vividly green. The buildings are hazed by the curtain of rain, the concrete showing its stains.
She wanders downtown and up, she walks without knowing where. There's a bad taste in her mouth from the donut she ate at the hospital, teasing Sorensen, and even though that's a lifetime away, no matter how she pushes her tongue against her teeth she can't get rid of the aftertaste.
She comes to a stop at a metal bench, some obscure neighborhood park with a swing set and slide, and she sinks down, her hands between her knees and shoulders hunched in the rain.
She bows forward, gulping for air, and she cries, tears in a storm, blending seamlessly.
She can't do this.
She and her father made each other promises. He wouldn't go back to the bottle; she wouldn't go back to the case.
She can't want this.
It has to be over.
She should never have told him.
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