Tea For Two

Disclaimer: I still don't own it, and I am back to being a poor student with bills, so I'm eve less worth suing.

AN: This was started over two years ago, and I figured I would dust if off for posting. This hasn't been betaed, so errors are mine.

For Tricia. Sorry I made you wait so long!

She knocks when she gets to the loft, and even that feels wrong; a strange foreign thing now, after all these months. After feeling so very much at home here for so long. But given where they are right now, it feels like the only option, really. So she's back at the beginning: knocking on his door, seeking some sign of hope.

When the door opens to Martha's smiling face, it hits her like ice water. Cold dread. She wonders if he isn't here, or if he just doesn't want to see her at all.

"Katherine, dear. I was hoping that you'd stop by. Come in, come in."

Martha doesn't ask if she's forgotten her key, and she can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad sign. She hesitates in the doorway for a moment but steps through, clearing her throat.

"I was, uh - I was just looking for Castle. He hasn't been in yet, and he isn't answering his phone, so I thought I'd stop by."

Martha nods, then turns and heads for the kitchen. "He's running an errand, darling. Probably engrossed in the task, doesn't realize what he's missing. You know how he can be."

She does. It hurts.

"Make yourself at home, now. I have tea here, just ready to drink, so your timing is excellent."

She stands awkwardly at the kitchen island as Martha begins to fuss over the tea. "No, really, that's sweet, Martha. But, I really should just -" Go, she thinks. Go, before she makes the mess of her life worse than it already is today.

But Martha sighs, heavy and long suffering, but without the actress's usual dramatic flair. "Katherine, I know that it has been a very long time, dear. But, there are times in every young person's life when the only thing that will do is a good cup of tea, and a mother's ear. Now, Richard may be out, but I am here, so we're going to sit down and have ourselves a little tea, and you can tell me what has you standing there like you've lost your best friend."

The tears rise instantly in her throat. For her mother, yes, because it has been so, so long. But more than the fact that she has so desperately wanted her mother these last few days, stronger even then that, is her emotion at Martha's offer. Well, not offer. No matter how long it's been, she knows that tone well enough to realize she isn't really being offered a choice.

So she sits, lets his mother make her a cup of tea. She likes it when the older woman uses her full name, she thinks, even to issue a couched command like this. In and of itself, that seems strange. She never really has; even her father still calls her Katie.

"There we are," Martha says brightly, setting a teacup before her with a bit more of her usual flourish and flare. "Now, lets see if we can't get a smile back on your face, before my wayward son returns, hm?"

Tea for a smile, she thinks. It raises the specter of Castle and coffee, and tears threaten again. She pushes them down.

His mother's hand closes over hers, forces her to the present. "What is it, darling?" The woman's voice comes softly, but drowns out her own internal squabbles anyway. She's good at this, Kate thinks. A good mother. She doesn't know why that surprises her, but it does, just a little. She takes a breath, dives in.

"I, I have a choice to make. I don't think I really want to make it, but I have to anyway."

The other woman clicks her tongue in sympathy. "No good options, then?"

Kate lets out a dry laugh. "No, no. Too many. I want both, I want to have it all, and I'm not really sure that I can."

"Mm, I see. That is worse, then, isn't it? To face the notion that claiming one thing you want might well cost you another? No real way to win like that, is there? Not until you know what it is you want most."

It churns up in her and she speaks without really thinking. "I just wish I knew what he wanted."

Martha is silent for a long moment, and it occurs to Kate that she's put his mother on the spot, just a little. Maybe this was a bad idea. She starts to pull back. But the hand still on hers tightens it's grip. She looks up.

"Katherine, my son loves you. I am sure of that much. I have been for longer, I think, then either of you have been willing to admit it to yourselves, never mind to each other. He'd lay down his life for yours, I know that too."

Her throat goes dry at the thought. It's the very last thing she wants, ever. Surely he knows that, they know that? His family. They have to know that. "Martha I -" but the clouded look in the other woman's eyes stops her.

"He would lay down his life for yours, and I know this. I know this every day, because I am his mother - and because I have seen him try."

Oh, God. It hits her like a solid, sudden thing. Like his body making sudden, violent contact with hers that day. Like a wall. A living wall, trying to force it's way between her and a bullet. He'd thrown his body between her and a bullet. In front of his family. In front of his mother, and his teenage daughter.

She jumps up from her seat with such sudden, violent force that it shakes the table, causes the tea to slosh over the edge of the cup. "I never wanted that! I never wanted him to do that. Not to himself, not to you or Alexis," not another young woman with a parent suddenly gone, a family in irrecoverable taters. "Not - not for me."

She hadn't even noticed that Martha had stood as well until she felt they woman's arms close around her. "I know. I know, darling. But it's what he wanted. It is. He wanted you here. Wanted it badly enough to take that risk. So, please. Whatever the decisions, however the details fall, don't doubt that much. Please."

She shook her head. She wouldn't, couldn't. But - "Why?"

Martha pulls back to look at her. "He loves you."

No, no. That's not it. She knows that, really she does. It's just - "Why?"

It surprises her when his mother laughs at that. She studies the other woman, even as Martha raises her hands to either side of her face. Cradling, she realizes, in a way that Castle might.

"Oh, Kate. Kate. Why on earth not?"

Tears swamp her again. Too strong not to at least make their way to the corners of her eyes. "Is it supposed to be this hard? Shouldn't this be easier?"

She feels herself being guided back down into a chair, watches as her tea is freshened, spills cleared. Then Martha sits beside her again. "Love is the easiest, most complicated thing I can think of, I think."

Kate narrows her eyes a her, and Martha laughs. "Well, it's true isn't it? Falling in love, wasn't that the easy part? Recognizing it, acknowledging it, that was the hard part, no?"

She huffs a laugh at that. It is undeniably true, in their case at least.

"But we got through it. We did, and it seemed so much easier for a while, but now -"

"Now, you have to live with it. Or not. And living with the consequences of love, that's the devilishly hard part. Staying when it hurts more than it helps, that isn't easy. It takes a kind of strength many people don't know how to draw on. I certainly haven't done a creditable job at it. We're quick to give in to the easy part, quick to flee the struggles. And for some people, for me, often enough, that isn't always a bad thing."

That isn't what she'd expected to hear. She isn't sure it is what she wants to hear. "Isn't it?"

Martha shrugs loosely. "If you can be happy floating, why swim and risk drowning?"

"Because, you get farther, deeper," she insists. "You connect with the world around you, with each other." You have a partner, she thinks.

"Yes, exactly. Greater reward, but greater risk, too. And sometimes it is easier to risk your life than your heart, isn't it?"

Yes, yes. But she's been better hasn't she? She'd spent the whole of the year before healing, guarding, protecting herself until she could stand on her own beside him in this. She's been the one initiating things, to a large degree, ever since she had been the one to come to him that night. Hell, ever since she'd come to him at that bookstore. (But, he'd followed, she recalls. Followed her to the swings when she'd walked away. He does always follow.) She has been trying.

"I know I've been more closed off than maybe I should have been in the past but I've been really trying to -"

Martha squeezes her hand, "I know darling. But there are two of you in this relationship, are there not?"

"Yes, of course. But that's just it. He's always been the open one, the one that screamed at me for hiding, and now he's the one that is hiding. He's just suddenly shut down on me, and I don't get it. I thought we were on the same page and now, now I just don't know."

Martha sips her tea, studying Kate in a way that made the detective want to squirm in her seat. "Is it so sudden, do you think?"

She wonders when it was that Martha Rodgers started sounding like some combination of her own mother and Burke in her head. It is just a little disconcerting. But - on the other hand, if there is one thing that her job has taught her, it's that different people have different knowledge to add to a puzzle, and the one thing she knows about Martha is that she is a mother who knows her son. So, she weighs the question that light.

"I don't know. I thought so, I guess. I thought I knew that. I thought I knew him. And that's what's making this so difficult."

Martha's eyes flick over again, and then she sets down her teacup. "Listen to me. If anyone knows Richard, it's you. Aside from Alexis and myself perhaps, but even then it's different I think. But lord knows knowing someone doesn't mean we can't be surprised by them. We should be. It give us something to get up for in the morning, the surprises of life. Some are good, some are bad, but they are all necessary, don't you think?"

"I – well yes okay I guess so. But still. Martha, I'm missing something here. Something important and I can't figure out what it is. Everything seemed fine, and then all of a sudden it wasn't and I don't know why and I don't know if it's something that needs to be fought for or let go of for our own good. And now - "

"You're stuck between two too good choices."

"I think I am, I hope I am. Which is crazy, right?" She asks as she stands again. "But I think that's what this is. I think he wants me to stay, but I don't know what he wants after that, and I should, shouldn't I? Before I just throw away a perfectly good chance at finding a direction for my life that isn't all twisted up in my past?"

She ran her hands reflexively through her hair as she paced the small area between the living room and the bar.

"I realize it's a novel concept, but have you considered talking about this with Richard?"

She let out a frustrated noise from the back for throat, even in the face of Martha's blatantly sarcastic, if reasonable question. "I tried! I asked him, where we were going, and I can't figure out if he didn't know what I meant, or if he was deflecting the question and Meredith said -"

Martha coughed, apparently choking on her tea from where she still sat. "Meredith? What on earth has Meredith been telling you?"

"Um - when she was here after Christmas, and we went to dinner and it was fine I guess, you know? She wasn't horrible or anything, so I asked her something before she left, about why it didn't work out, with them. I was curious. So I asked her."

"What did she say?" Martha asks slowly.

Kate shifts uncomfortably on her feet. "Um, just that, in the end, he knew everything about her, and she knew nothing about him."

Something flashes deep in Martha's eyes, angry and, Kate thinks, maybe even bitter. She wondered if it might have been a better idea no to have said anything at all about Castle's ex. But then Martha spoke.

"There is something you must always remember about actors, dear. They make their living out of creating a destitution of reality that their audience will perceive as the truth."

Kate's stomach swirls uneasily. Is that what Meredith had done? Played on her every insecurity with some distorted version of the truth that she had known would make her question her relationship with Castle? She shuts her eyes, and sways a little where she stands.

When she opens her eyes again, Martha is standing quietly in front of her, reaching for her hand. Kate gives it willingly.

"Katherine, you've got a good number of unanswered questions. Now, it's time for you to do what you do best, you go and get the answers. If life seems a mystery right now, then you better than anyone know that it will solve itself not with assumptions, but with facts. And that means -"

Kate nods, getting it now. "Going to the source." She sighs. She knows that, had known that. But she needed...she's not sure. Maybe just a mother's ear. She does her best to smile for Martha. "I need to talk to Rick," she says.

The older woman smiles back brightly. "Splendid plan. He should be back shortly, from whatever this errand of his, I'm sure."

Kate look at her watch. Damn. "Yeah, but unfortunately I have to get back. I'll call him, though. But if you see him first can you tell him that I'm looking for him?" She still feels guilty, putting Martha in the middle even that much.

The redheaded woman waves off her concern with a bight, "Yes, of course. Think nothing of it."

Kate starts for the door but turns abruptly to pull Martha into a sudden, fierce hug. "Thank you, Martha. I really needed that."

"Oh, dear girl," Martha said in a quiet whisper against her hair, "Always."