Used to Be

Kate Beckett doesn't often allow herself to think about what might have been. She's not a woman who dwells on the past or bemoans her fate in life. She's had her tragedies and her love affairs; she's made the hard decisions and been given the leg up. Kate Beckett has had her dark days, and she used to be done with them.

The dark days didn't use to keep her up at night. Instead, Kate Beckett used to be able to allow the past to stay nicely, neatly buried. She wants it back that way again.

But Richard Castle went digging things up.

Her mother is dead; Kate wants only to not think about it. But Castle likes to mess with things, and Castle likes to put his hand in, and so now she's thinking about her mother again. She's tacking up a murder board and ignoring her Captain's advice.

She's involved again. So it's Rick Castle's fault that she can't let go; it's his own damn fault.

He's got no right telling her to back off. He's got no right.

Rick calls even though it's so late, and he's never really called her like this before.

He can't not think about everything: the fight, the terrible cold in Kate's eyes when she told him they were over.

That cold has fisted around his heart and frozen it through; shards of ice splinter off and work their way through his veins, sharp and terrible.

She answers on the third ring.

"Castle?"

He takes in a long breath. "Yeah. Lanie. I need your help."

When he explains it all, when it's all out there, the good and bad and ugly, Lanie is quiet for a long time (for Lanie anyway). And then she tells him a story.

She wasn't top of her class in Atlanta, but she was close. She'd done all the rotations in med school, perfected her bedside manner, worked her way around the sleeplessness, got caught up in the rush of saving a life, but it was the anatomy classes she liked the best, it was the cutting that got her.

The quiet cold, the scalpel in her gloved hand, the mask and goggles, all the little details that came to light. The striations of muscle, the unhealthy look of a diseased liver, the satisfying crack of the breastbone as it pops open under the bone saw. Her mother was appalled at her chosen field and tried everything to get her to change her mind. It pushed her away from home, from Atlanta, and she went where the forensic pathology residency took her: New York City.

Lanie Parish arrived in the city morgue like honey drizzled in a Yankee's unsweet tea, her presence initially unwanted but eventually enthusiastically welcomed. It helped that her Southern accent was all but unnoticeable, and that she was eager to take the worst shifts, and willing to learn.

Perlmutter was her first training pathologist, but his flat affect and acerbic sense of humor left her cold. She took on the task of teaching herself, asking questions of the other MEs and residents, subtly studying their methods, watching them work.

She also had a penchant for browsing through cold cases during the slow hours of the early morning. Lanie spread out files and medical examiner reports over the cramped space of a morgue table (she had no desk), pouring over the ME's notes and looking for patterns, learning time tables, researching indicators.

Dr. Parish wasn't a licensed pathologist yet, but she did all the work of one.

What fascinated Lanie back then were stab wounds. Knives held all kinds of mysteries: the length of the blade, grooves of the blade, bruising from the hilt. She inhaled the data from all kinds of murders, carefully creating a flow chart of stab wounds.

And this was how she met Kate Beckett.

Her head filled with a rainbow of knife wounds, Lanie Parish went looking for the police reports on a couple of cold cases she'd pulled off the morgue's network. It was nearly eleven at night, the desk sergeant made her sign away her life just to get on the elevator, and then the Archivist wouldn't let her in the stacks.

Frustrated by the police department's stonewall, Lanie stalked back to the elevator, colliding with a uniformed officer just getting off.

The woman looked bruised and brittle, the kind of brittle that was so strong she would break. She held on to Lanie as if the doctor needed help catching her balance, but Lanie was fine.

"You okay, honey?" Lanie couldn't help it; the euphemisms of her southern roots broke free when she was unsettled.

This woman needed some southern comfort; she seemed a ghost haunting the Archives.

"Fine. Just fine," the uniformed woman said, moving her shoulders as if to shrug off Lanie's concern. And then the piercing eyes came up to study her, curious but not cold. "Who are you?"

Lanie had her data with her in folders in her arms and she relaxed a little, sensing an opportunity. "Dr. Lanie Parish. I work in the ME's office."

"You new?" the woman said, still not offering much in the way of friendliness.

"About six months. And you are?"

"Beckett. Kate Beckett."

The name struck something in Lanie, but she didn't know why, couldn't place it. She looked at knife wounds, not life details. They were data, not mothers.

"Well, Officer Beckett. I need to get into the Archives, but I've got to have a police escort. Else I'm S.O.L., you know what I mean?"

Beckett gave her a long, untrusting look but Lanie only smiled.

"Why are you trying to get into the Archives?"

"I'm in my residency with the OCME. I've still got loads of research to do on my thesis publication, and I need some of the police reports for these ME reports. Can't get to 'em like this. Can you help a girl out?"

Beckett's shoulders eased down, and Lanie knew she had her. The woman nodded and headed for the Archivist desk just outside the caged room storing all the precinct's old files.

"Follow me then."

Lanie and Kate spent the next six months digging through the Archives together, slowly sharing bits and pieces of themselves. Lanie detailed her research to Kate, but Kate said nothing about her real reasons for hanging out with the cold cases.

And then they were meeting for dinner beforehand, spending more time out of the Archives than in them. Kate was a different person when not in her uniform, more relaxed and less reserved. She laughed. They became friends.

It was easy to do. They were both starting out in their careers, struggling against a male-dominated profession. Lanie still had another four years of residency to work through before she could be licensed as a pathologist, and Kate was focused on making detective as soon as she possibly could. They both had a plan.

They didn't have a lot of downtime, but when they did, they were together. The more Lanie got to know Kate, the more she realized that she'd heard of Kate Beckett before. But it took her a good year before she found her name again, buried in one of the cold cases in her data stream, a pattern of stab wounds both familiar and unhelpfully vague at the same time.

Johanna Beckett. Murdered lawyer. Left in an alley.

And Lanie didn't know what to do. Their friendship had so far survived a couple of quick boyfriends and a few missed dinner dates, but nothing like this. Nothing like, I know your terrible secret.

Castle leans his head back against the couch, his phone hot against his ear. "How *did* your friendship survive?"

Lanie sighs. "I don't know what I said or how I said it, Castle. But I told her the truth because I knew she respected it. And then I kept being her friend."

"What am I supposed to do? I told her to quit, Lanie. I told her to give up, walk away, when I'm the one who started this whole thing. I'm the one who put her in this position."

"Just keep showing up, Castle."

He presses a hand against his eyes, tries to ignore the pounding in his head. "What does that mean? I need something concrete here."

"And I'm telling you: Keep showing up. What happens tomorrow? You gonna sit at home and mope about this, or are you gonna show up at her door?"

"You mean, completely ignore the fact that she wants nothing to do with me?"

"Yes."

"I don't see how that's going to help much." Castle squeezes the bridge of his nose and leans forward. His daughter is over at Ashley's place, scheming new ways to finish her senior year ahead of schedule. He's had a couple of fingers of scotch (after his mother left and he threw that first glass), but the alcohol doesn't give him any insights.

This is why he's called Lanie.

"Castle, I'm gonna tell you something, because I love my girl, and she needs help, and honestly, this stuff about her mom's case has always scared me."

He sits up, pressing the phone closer to his ear. "Lanie."

"I'm gonna do a bad thing, Castle. You hear me? I'm gonna tell you something you have no right to know, because I think you need to know it."

"Lanie?" He stands up, his breath catching.

"Give me a sec. I gotta get Javi outta here."

Castle hears her arguing on the other end of the line, but all he can focus on is the idea that Lanie knows something about Kate that he doesn't, something important. Something about the forensics? Something about the case? He's at a loss. What more could there possibly be?

"Okay," she breathes on the line. She sounds like she's settling in. "First of all, Writer-Boy, you promise me you're gonna show up when she needs you? You're not backing down, you're not running away, even if she does keep going on this case?"

Can he watch her kill herself?

Somehow, not watching her would be worse.

"Of course. If she'll have me. Always." His throat is dry, but he's not interested in pouring another drink.

"All right."

The silence is so long now that he starts pacing the living room floor. "Lanie. Any day now."

"She used to be in love with you, Castle."

"What! When?"

"Last year. Before the summer. She was in love with you."