91. Lies you made me say

Castle finds a space relatively close to Remy’s and parks tidily. Beckett hasn’t said a word since she asked about the Hamptons, and remains cramped into her corner, about as far away from relaxed as she could get.  Castle, being well brought up, politely opens her door for her and extends a hand.  Admittedly, this has almost as much to do with Beckett’s lack of any impetus to move as politeness.  Beckett’s fingers are cold in his.

“We can get it to go,” he says.

“No. The shakes never taste the same from a go-cup.” 

Way to minimise, Beckett. Her hand is still in his as they walk in, and Castle is pretty sure she hasn’t noticed.  It makes it easy to steer her into a booth which tucks her between Castle and the wall.  Beckett’s responses to Castle have been about as useful as her non-reaction to being tucked beside the wall, which she normally doesn’t like.  Still, at this stage, her hand is still contained within his.

The provision of a menu and the necessity to order brings Beckett back to some attentiveness. Castle despatches the server with the orders and then turns to the more important issue.

“What do you want me to do on Friday, Beckett?”

“Be there.”

This is not particularly helpful or informative, but it is totally achievable.

“I can do that. Anything else?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”  She sounds tired, or maybe defeated.

“You need fed,” Castle distracts. “Not eating causes low blood sugar and destroys thinking.”

“And do you have any scientific evidence for this?”

“No,” he admits. “But it woke you up.”  He rubs his thumb softly over her hand.  “It’ll be okay.  I’ll be there.”

“I just want it all to be over. Done.  You told me that therapy takes time, but why is it so hard?”

Castle takes a chokingly large bite of his burger to avoid answering that immediately and truthfully. Because your first therapist fucked up is not exactly going to help anyone’s cause here, and it’s right at the front of his mouth.  He splutters on the crumbs, and is promptly patted on the back.  Even that is oddly indefinite, and her touch is swiftly withdrawn.

“All I wanted was to be able to deal with your family and work.” Nothing else arrives to expand on that statement.  She pushes her burger around her plate, crumbles the edge of the bun, picks it up, puts it down unbitten; nibbles a fry without any apparent desire or enthusiasm.  Castle steals one, his own being almost finished, and succeeds in carrying it off without Beckett raising the slightest protest.

He summons a server, speaks briefly to him, and fairly shortly Beckett’s burger and shake are residing in a doggy bag – again, without any comment, protest or objection.

“I’m taking you home,” he says. “If we’re there, then you can simply stand down.”

“Okay.”

Beckett obediently follows Castle out, sits in his car without the slightest move to try to take the driver’s seat, and remains wrapped in her cloud of gloomy non-communication all the way to her building, all the way up in the elevator, all the way into her apartment, and all the way, apparently on autopilot, to her kettle and the cupboard with the coffee mugs. At that point she appears to realise that there is life outside her skull.

“Coffee?”

“Please,” Castle assents, and shifts up to her to put an undemandingly warm hand on her waist. She stiffens, and for an instant he thinks, appalled and almost frightened, that she’s going to move away, until she leans into him.

“What’ll I do when he says flat out he doesn’t care?” she says hopelessly.

What’ll you do if he says he does care? Castle wonders.  At this point both outcomes are equally traumatic.

“You don’t need to think about it now. Let it all settle for tonight, then think about how you want to handle the whole situation tomorrow.  You never go into Interrogation without having a plan, and all your thoughts in order with a list of questions, so why change now?  Treat it like a witness interview.”

“You think that’ll help?” she says quietly.

“Letting it settle always works when I’m not sure where my plot is going.”

“This isn’t a book, Castle,” she says bitterly. “This is my life.”

He hugs, carefully, as she spoons coffee into the French press. “All the more reason to take time and think.”

“If it’s wrong – if Dr Burke is wrong, and since he’s wrong about everything else he’ll be wrong about this too” – she’s back to combative: Dr Burke clearly pushes all her confrontational buttons – “then whatever I do Dad’ll be back in the bottle. Not that it’ll matter to me: since he doesn’t care, why should I?”  She stops.  “Why can’t I just not care?”

Castle turns her into his clasp and gathers her close. There’s no sound, but he’s pretty sure she’s weeping: silently, so that nobody knows.  He’s momentarily exasperated that she still won’t show him her feelings until he actually pressures her into it, but that’s a discussion for later.  Or possibly Dr Burke.  He makes a little mental note to contact Dr Burke, considerably prior to Friday’s session.  (His brain insists on inserting the word torture into that sentence, right before session.  Certainly for Beckett.  Now if only he wasn’t certain that it will be torture for him too…)  He thinks that he and Dr Burke need to have a very frank discussion about what is going to happen, and how they intend it to play out – and what Castle will do to Dr Burke if Beckett is as upset as she was last Friday.  He will start with the Viking blood eagle.  Then he’ll move on to drawing and quartering.  Hanging would, he feels, be otiose.  And unsatisfyingly quick.

He smooths up and down her back, consoling. “Stop hiding, Kate.  C’mere.”  He holds her closer, but tips her chin up, rather against her will, so that he can see her face.  Tears are glimmering unshed in her eyes.  “Stop hiding.  You don’t need to hide from me.”

She doesn’t answer that, and Castle’s heart sinks a little. Instead she prepares the coffee tray, an almost indiscernible tremor in her tense fingers.  Castle forestalls her by picking it up and transporting it to the table before she tries.  He feels that if she tries, and drops it, a lot more than just two mugs and a French press will break.  Beckett is suddenly, terrifyingly, fragile.  The image of a decorated blown egg flits through his mind, and he shivers.  More is resting on Friday than even he had thought.  Their weekend in the Hamptons suddenly seems like a very good idea, but not necessarily for the reasons he, or Beckett, might first have believed.

Beckett, apparently impervious to normal human concerns such as being scalded, or pain, takes a mouthful of extremely hot coffee, completely undiluted by creamer and spices despite them being right there in front of her, and then leans forward to put her mug back down and doesn’t rise from her hunched, concealing position, elbows on knees, hair obscuring part of her face.

“It didn’t help,” she says. A moment’s thought reveals that this is a belated answer to his last sentence. 

“Mm?”

“Crying didn’t work.”

Castle is abruptly recalled to Beckett’s comment on getting angry. It never worked, she had said. He just drank more till he couldn’t hear me.

“Nothing worked. Why bother getting mad or upset?  It didn’t stop him getting drunk.  It didn’t make him care.”

He says nothing, merely projecting an air of comforting there-ness should she look to him for anything. It seems unlikely.  Beckett’s back inside her own head and if she’s remembered he’s there, it’s not obvious.

“I just need to treat him like any witness. He’s not my concern.” But you lay yourself bare for the victims, and all of it is your concern. “All I need to do is plan it out.  Then it’ll all be done.” It won’t. It really won’t, Beckett. “Nothing left to worry about.”  Her voice drops almost to inaudibility.  “Nothing in our way.” But there will be, because you’re never going to get out of the guilt you’re drowning in if you don’t talk to your father properly.

Castle decides in that instant that he will be seeking a meeting with Dr Burke first thing tomorrow morning. He is quite seriously worried about Beckett’s so-called ‘plan’ for this Friday. 

He slides an arm around her, and is not much reassured when she doesn’t actively move away, since she also doesn’t lean into it. He couldn’t say that she’s exactly relaxed, there in the crook of his arm; but she is there.  For an instant, again, he’d thought that she would resist, or worse remove herself.  It seems not.

“How are you going to do it?” he asks. His motives for asking are certainly mixed.  He intends to ensure that Dr Burke is briefed.  He doesn’t want to be blindsided on Friday himself.  He hopes that he can help Beckett to develop her plan in a way that will cause least trauma to everyone – though that’s up to her.

The one thing he is not going to do is to mention any of her plan to Jim.

“Don’t know yet. I need to think about it.”  Castle ignores any ghost of a hint in that statement that might mean he should leave.  He has no desire to leave, and no intention of suggesting it.  In preference, he tugs a little to indicate that Beckett should be a good deal closer than she currently is.  She doesn’t react, seemingly lost in her head once more. 

Castle doesn’t like that non-reaction. He doesn’t like this – or any – unhappy Beckett; he doesn’t like her fluctuating emotional states (and they worry him, because he can’t help feeling that the zigzagging high-to-lows are simply the warning signals for a major earthquake or eruption).  He hasn’t forgotten that Beckett’s temper has been on a hair-trigger ever since her past began to be uncovered and her therapy began; ever since her locked-down control started to fail. 

He wonders, suddenly, how exactly she had wound up with a damaged wrist.  He’d – albeit through his monstrous hangover – had the distinct impression, on watching that first sparring session, that Beckett and Espo had been quite careful not to damage each other: punches and kicks had been pulled.  On Sunday, though, she’d been bruised up and down her back.  It doesn’t seem that they’d been pulling any blows.  He makes a mental note to call Espo in the near future, or maybe to go to the Twelfth tomorrow.

He also doesn’t like how, every time Beckett’s upset, he seems to end up using sex, or at the very least sensuality, to calm and soothe her; because she doesn’t seem to be able to express emotions early enough to avoid a storm.  He knows it works, and he knows she appreciates it, oh yes, but… it’s not entirely healthy.  Dr Burke’s words swim into his mind: do you see the pattern here, and his, Castle’s, own response: she lets it all build up till it’s too much and then it explodes.  There has to be a less physical way: a more emotional, more intelligent route than the physical explosion of orgasm.  Maybe when they’re in the Hamptons, where previously they had, so very briefly, found it: found talk and laughter and happiness as well as spectacular sex; maybe there they can find that again.

Thinking paused, he notices that Beckett has still not nestled into him. He tugs once more, and when that fails to produce voluntary movement or attention, and regardless of his thoughts a moment ago, he hoists her up and simply plops her down where he wants her: in his lap and enclosing arms.

“You’re thinking too loud,” he says. “Stop thinking so loudly.  I can’t hear what you’re thinking with all that noise going on in your head.”

“You’re not supposed to hear what’s going on in my head.”

Castle pouts at that same head. “Yes, I am.  How’m I going to help you plan if I don’t know what’s in your head?”

There is a short, unhappy silence. “I don’t know what’s in my head any more.”

“Treat it like a case, then. Like I said a minute ago.  Just like one of your Beckett-flavoured cases.  They’re all a mess until you start pulling them apart.”

“A case?”

Beckett considers. She had got through brunch by pretending they were witnesses… maybe she should do that again.  Witness – or suspect.  But not now. 

“Not now. Tomorrow.”

She has a sudden burst of Castle-like insanity which surely causes her mouth to speak before her brain has operated.

“Tomorrow night. O’Leary can help.  He knows the history of what he said in the tank.  I need to know what he was saying when I wasn’t there to hear it.  Independent evidence.  You know what my father is thinking.  I know he’s lying.  So all three of us can do it.”

“What?” Castle emits. “O’Leary too?”

“Why not? Practically the whole world knows, but I’m not bringing Ryan and Espo into this.  Or Lanie.”

Ah-oh. Lanie is not entirely fixed.  That doesn’t indicate perfect trust, perfectly restored.  Castle is still choking on the extraordinary inclusion of O’Leary when Beckett stands up before he can stop her and starts to pace.

“Right. Evidence.  What he did when he was drunk.  What he said.  How he behaved when I pulled him out the tank.  What O’Leary heard, or saw, or thought.  What I remember from his rehab – and all the lies he’s told since.  What he’s told you.”  She takes a breath.  “What I remember from before rehab.”

“How you feel?” Castle tentatively mentions.

“No. Feelings aren’t evidence.”

Castle starts to acquire a very bad feeling of his own as Beckett continues to pace and speak. She isn’t evincing the slightest interest in how she or her father feel or felt about anything.  She’s completely focused on the tangible evidence: actions, words, timings.  Gradually he realises that she’s assuming her father’s guilt – i.e., that his misconceived and miscommunicated statement about family was true in exactly the way she took it – and that she’s intent on proving that.   She hasn’t even noticed it. 

“I thought you were trying to prove Dr Burke wrong?”

“I will. All I need to do is show that it wasn’t deliberate.  Abuse is deliberate.  All I have to do is show that he was wasted to the point of blackout when he said it and doesn’t remember.  Then it won’t be deliberate, and Dr Burke will see he’s wrong.  And then I show that Dad doesn’t care, and we’re done.  It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t care, I just need to know that’s the truth.  When I know it, then I’ll get past it and it’ll be so unlike your family that I’ll be just fine with them.”

Beckett appears not to care that her plan will rip her father apart. Castle wonders if she’s, even for a second, considered that she may think that she can get through this without any emotion, but that it’s vanishingly unlikely that she will, and downright impossible that her father will.  He also wonders if, down in some subconscious oubliette full of poisonous wyrms and venomous phantasms, this isn’t being driven by an unsuspected, unconscious desire to ensure that her father is made as miserable as he’s made her.  He absolutely has to see Dr Burke.  Beckett is, consciously or, far more likely, not, aiming for scorched earth, mutually assured destruction of her father and herself; and, like an overtired, over-emotional child breaking a treasured possession, will regret it bitterly as soon as it can’t be undone.

“Okay,” she says, the snap of cold command and this-is-how-it-will-be underlying the word.  She takes her phone and stabs at the screen. 

“O’Leary? Yeah, it’s me.  Beckett.”

“I need you to come out for a beer. I’m buying.”

“I wanna go through what happened back when.”

“When my dad was being picked up drunk in the Park.”

“Yeah. I mean it.  I’ll explain tomorrow.”

“Okay, now, then. Shrink says all my issues” – sharks bite less hard than that emphasis – “are down to my dad abusing me.”  You’re admitting that to O’Leary? Christ, Beckett.

“No, I don’t get that. Anyway.  I don’t agree.  Dad didn’t abuse me.” I notice you’re not mentioning anything about your Dad not caring, Beckett. “I’m going to prove it.  But I need to know what you saw when you were there and I wasn’t.  Evidence.  I’m not having that shrink saying Dad abused me.  It’s not true.”

“So I’ll see you tomorrow? Molloys?”

“Yeah, Castle’ll be there too.”

“See you. Bye.”

Castle also notices that Beckett hasn’t mentioned that Jim will be there when she does prove it. Or doesn’t.  That’s a lot of evasion.  He has a nasty feeling that he should have a word with O’Leary before tomorrow night too.  Soon.  Very, very soon. Mutually assured destruction, he thinks again.  He can almost hear the ominous scraping of the missile silos opening.

Beckett is still pacing, the aggressive clack of her heels landing on the wooden floor, the hiss of her breath as she moves, the calculations running over her face and the hard look in her eyes: the one he’s seen in interrogation, most lately applied to Cal Donbass, and before that to James Cardon. Fear of Friday becomes outright terror. Scorch the earth and salt the fields.  Detective Beckett is going in for the kill, and it’s quite obvious that she doesn’t care who goes down with her any more. 

Castle has the sudden blinding realisation that Beckett has decided that since her father doesn’t care, and she thinks she wants not to care either, she’s forcibly ensuring that neither she nor her father will ever be in a position to even think about caring ever again. It’s the logical next step on from and then she does her best to make sure that whoever’s hurt her never gets the chance ever again.  And Dr Burke has just handed her that chance.

The exceedingly clever Dr Burke may just have made an exceedingly large mistake. It appears that he has underestimated Beckett’s capacity for self-destruction.  Perhaps this is not surprising. Everybody has underestimated Beckett’s capacity for self-destruction.