84. Cry me a river

“No. I can’t deal with this.  I can’t deal with any of it.  I’m going home.  I don’t want to talk about this any more.  I only came because I was ordered to.”

“You are free to leave whenever you wish. I suggest that you take the time you need and return when you are able.  I will keep the sessions on Tuesday and Friday open, whether you attend or not.  Treatment must always be your choice, Detective Beckett.”

“First you tell me I’ve been abused and then you tell me all the therapy I put myself through was not just pointless but completely wrong? Why should I believe you?  Why should I come back?  Every other choice I’ve made has been wrong, so it’s just as likely that you are too.  Therapy is completely pointless and you’re no better than the last guy.”

“And there is the reaction to which I have just referred. By questioning my professional competence, you are endeavouring to remove a source of pressure permanently.  No doubt you expect that I will remove you from my list of patients.  I shall not do so.”

Detective Beckett looks at him, utterly horrified, and collapses back into the chair from which she had risen, which then results in her stifling a cry of pain and cradling her maltreated wrist. She is quite clearly swearing sulphurously under her breath and in some considerable discomfort.

“Have you hurt yourself further?” Dr Burke inquires anxiously. He is really most concerned about Detective Beckett.  For a moment she doesn’t answer him.  She looks surprisingly small and piteous, pain scratched across her face, holding her wrist tightly through its sling.  She breathes out, very slowly, a long exhale of suffering.

“I can’t do this,” she says, exhaustion leaching the words from her mouth. “Ten years of disappointment.  Ten years of it being wrong.  I should just cut my losses.  Accept I’ve got no family.  Accept I can’t deal with other people’s families.  And get on with my life.”

“That would be cowardice, Detective Beckett, and I do not believe you to be a coward. You have come this far.  You have said, repeatedly, that you wish to be able to deal with Mr Castle’s family.  You have not said, but I have surmised, that you care very deeply for Mr Castle.  And yet, having taken all the right steps, you are now scared to follow through?”

“The only thing in my life that I haven’t screwed up is my job. Everyone around me gets hurt.  Mom died.  Dad got drunk.  Royce shoved me away because I needed too much.  Will left because I couldn’t give him anything.  I can’t do people.  I can only catch killers.  So why should I screw up Castle’s life too?  He’d be better off out of it.  I told him so.”

“How very arrogant of you, Detective Beckett.” Dr Burke has resolved on brutal honesty.  Subtext will not work with Detective Beckett.  “You are the reason why others around you are destroyed?  That is a ridiculous assumption.  You are not to blame for others’ actions.  You are only responsible for your own.  I recall to you the second C.  You cannot control it.  Nor can you control others.  You can only control yourself.”  He stops, and regards her closely.  “For ten years you have failed utterly to deal with your own grief, because you have wrongly considered that you should deal with that of others before your own.  You have put your father before yourself” –

“I walked away,” Detective Beckett cries.  “How is that putting him before me?  I walked away to save myself.”

“For two years you altered your behaviour and suppressed your grief to try to appease your father.   In the following three years, when you maintain that you had walked away, you let his behaviour, for example in calling you, affect your emotions.  Had you truly walked away, you would have blocked his number or changed your own.  You did neither.  You did not save yourself, and you could not and did not fully walk away.”

He pauses again. Detective Beckett is now completely white. 

“Nothing you did could save your father. He had to save himself, and decide what he cared most about.  It is time for you to save yourself.”  He looks at Detective Beckett again.  “Your feelings are as valid as those of any other person.  You had, and have, the right to be unhappy.  You have, and had, the right to grieve.  It is time for you to grieve for your mother as you should have done ten years ago, and it is time for you to release your unjustified guilt that your father descended into alcoholism.  You did not cause any of this pain, you cannot control the pain of others, and you can only cure yourself.  You will only be able to do that once you talk openly with your father and tell him about his actions.”

“I can’t. He’ll go back to the bottle.”

“That will be his choice. However, prior to you deciding whether such a discussion is to take place, I will be happy to interview your father and provide my professional opinion on his state of mind, if he will permit me so to do.  I may need to advise him of some of your feelings.” 

Detective Beckett nods. “Whatever.  It won’t make any difference.”

Dr Burke is relieved. That consent removes his last concern over seeing Mr Beckett.

He continues. “Detective Beckett, if you do not tell your father the whole truth, your relationship with him will never be healthy.”  He realises his error almost instantly.

“Since he doesn’t want a relationship with me, that’s not a problem.”

“Has your father contacted you since your quarrel?”

“Oh, yes. More lies.  He didn’t mean it.  I misunderstood him.  He needs me.  I’m his only family.  I heard it all the last time, and it was all lies then too.  There’s nothing to salvage here.”

“And yet you will not accept that his treatment of you produced the same results as emotional abuse. Can you not see the discontinuity here?  If there were nothing to salvage, you would have no reason to try to deny that.  If there were nothing to salvage, why are you concerned that telling your father the truth will send him back to alcoholism?  You may lie to yourself that you no longer care, but that is patently not the truth.”

Detective Beckett bursts into tears. Dr Burke waits for her to re-establish her so-far terrifying control, and is completely astonished when she fails to do so.  When she is still crying some moments later, seemingly without any sign of stopping, he speaks once more.

“Detective Beckett, do you wish to continue?” She shakes her head.  “Do you wish for someone to collect you?  I will have them contacted.  You cannot go home alone like this.”

“Castle,” she sobs, and fumbles to unlock her phone. She holds it out to Dr Burke.

Dr Burke takes the phone and leaves his treatment room. Detective Beckett will not notice his momentary absence.

“Beckett?”

“Dr Burke, Mr Castle.”

“What are you doing with Beckett’s phone? What’s wrong with her?”

“I think you should come to my office, Mr Castle. Detective Beckett is in need of assistance.”

“What have you done?”

“I would prefer that you were here, Mr Castle, rather than pursuing an argument. Can I expect you to arrive shortly?”

“Yes.”

Mr Castle sounds somewhat irritated with Dr Burke. This is not unexpected.  Dr Burke confidently expects that Mr Castle will be considerably more irritated, not to say angered, when he finds Detective Beckett to be so upset.  Dr Burke returns to his room, taking the precaution of collecting a further box of Kleenex as he goes.  He considers that the extra may be required, and finds himself, as ever, to be quite correct in his conclusions.

Mr Castle arrives extremely swiftly. Dr Burke’s excellent receptionist escorts him in directly, but as instructed has indicated his arrival.   Dr Burke is extremely interested to observe his behaviour, and wishes for a few seconds’ warning before Mr Castle enters, so that he may take full cognisance from the beginning.  He is not disappointed in events.

Mr Castle enters, absently thanks the receptionist as he shuts the door, and then observes Detective Beckett’s condition. She is still crying quietly but unstoppably, and has not noticed Mr Castle’s arrival.  Mr Castle takes precisely two long strides to reach her, positively plucks her out the chair, and collects Detective Beckett against him, murmuring inaudibly to her.  Having attained his immediate goal, in a wholly protective manner which confirms every deduction Dr Burke had made about Mr Castle’s depth of feeling for Detective Beckett, he turns around to face Dr Burke, Detective Beckett still cradled in his grasp.

“What the hell did you do to her?” he inquires, ice-cold rage in every syllable. Dr Burke raises his eyebrows.

“I have done nothing except show Detective Beckett the truth.” Really, Mr Castle would be quite frightening when he is in full protective mode, if it were not for the fact that he, Dr Burke, is perfectly certain that he has taken the correct course of action.  “Would you prefer that I mismanaged her therapy in the way that the previous practitioner had done?”

Mr Castle closes his lips tightly on a riposte that would undoubtedly contain distressingly vulgar language. “No,” he eventually grits out, still with Detective Beckett cradled against him. “But this session is over.  I’m taking Beckett home.”  He fixes Dr Burke with a vicious glare.  “We’ll be discussing this.”

As the door closes behind Mr Castle and Detective Beckett, Dr Burke smiles gently to himself. He expects that Mr Castle and Detective Beckett will indeed be discussing this, precisely as they should do.  Detective Beckett will need Mr Castle’s support, and Mr Castle needs to understand the full extent of the commitment which he, and indeed she, is making.  None of this is likely to be easy, for either of them.  He will make that clear, when Mr Castle opens the discussion with him which Dr Burke is sure that he also wishes to have.

Castle walks Beckett out of the door and out of the building and into his own car without at any stage letting go of her. She’s stopped crying, but there’s nothing there; and he is severely tempted to go back into the building and take Dr Burke apart.  The only thing stopping him is the way in which Beckett is leaning on him.  Right now, she needs him – and she must have asked Dr Burke to call him – more than he needs to hit something.  Or, more accurately, someone.

And why is her arm in a sling?  He’ll have answers to that, too. 

He drives her home, parks tidily, and walks her into the elevator, out of the elevator, and then removes her keys from her purse, unlocks her door, and walks her into her apartment, closes the door without looking and walks her straight over to the couch, where he can finally, finally put her on his lap and cosset her into his warmth and simply make it all better for her.

Except he can’t.

He can’t make it all better for her. She has to do that.  Only she can save herself, he thinks bitterly.  He just wishes that it didn’t have to hurt her so much.  Salvation always comes at a high price.  Jim’s salvation has come at the price of Beckett’s whole adult life, it seems.  He wonders, chilled, whether the price of Beckett’s salvation might be Jim’s sobriety, and, shivering, whether that’s a price that Beckett would accept might have to be paid.

He starts with the easy question. “What happened here, Beckett?” he asks, running his hand cautiously across the sling.  She lifts from off his shoulder, and meets his eyes for the first time since he’d taken hold of her in the therapist’s office. 

“Sparring got a little rough. I fell on it.”

“So I don’t have to risk life and limb trying to beat up Espo for breaking you?”

“Not today. Lanie took a look at it yesterday, and I got it properly seen to today.”  She achieves a very watery smile.  “Montgomery is not happy with the three of us.”

“Yesterday? You didn’t say.”

“No. I did what Lanie told me, had a drink with her after, and took the painkillers.  It didn’t hurt that much till this morning.”

“You could have said.”

“I… yeah. Um… yeah.”  Which is a concession Castle wouldn’t have expected.  

“I would have come by and put your hair in its night time braids,” he says, in lieu of anything sympathetic.

“No braids, Castle.” She tucks her head back on to his shoulder.  Something registers.

“You had a drink with Lanie?” Voluntarily?

“Yeah. It was nice.”  Looks like that’s back to normal, then. Or as normal as it’s going to get in the near future.  “We had a chat.”  Good grief. It worked.  “Thanks.” 

Castle is returned to reality from the comfortable knowledge that he’s fixed at least one problem when Beckett shifts unwarily and emits a noise indicating some pain.

“Seeing as you’re temporarily one-armed, and if I can’t kill Espo for you, can I slay Dr Burke instead?” There’s rather more annoyance in that than Castle had intended.  Beckett hides more deeply in the crook of his neck, and doesn’t say anything.  He becomes aware that she is shuddering.  “Beckett?”

“Why can’t I just walk away from him? He’s ruined everything and I still keep hoping it’ll all be better again.  I still keep hoping that he’ll be there no matter how often he proves he isn’t.”

Ah. Dr Burke has pointed out that Beckett is still hoping for her father to be a family again, whatever she says and does.  Castle lets her cry into his wide, now damp, shoulder for a while.  The few words that do emerge largely consist of why can’t I give him up?

“Beckett,” Castle says gently, and pats her back, “Beckett, let me tell you a story.”

“Uh?” she says, but she doesn’t say no.

“You know I don’t know who my dad was.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, when we were… when I was growing up, we were touring the small towns in the Mid-West. It was just Mother and I.  And the rest of the cast, obviously, but that’s not important.  I started to notice that the other little boys in the schools I went to had two parents, not one.  I kept pestering Mother about it, and she kept deflecting and distracting.  Eventually I gave up asking.  By the time I got to high school, though, I really resented it.  Not knowing, and not having a father.  It wasn’t helpful.  So I decided to try to do some investigating of my own.”  He smiles ruefully.  “Always looking for the answer to the mystery: the story behind the actions.  Of course I didn’t get anywhere.  But…”

Beckett hums expectantly, and much less damply. Her hand slips up around his neck, out of the sling.

“I didn’t exactly give up. Once I’d made some money, and made it big, I tried again.”  There’s an intake of breath against him.  “That’s how my first advance disappeared.  The PR said I spent it on wine, women and song, but actually it was PIs, false leads and false hope.  Eventually, I gave up looking.  But I’ve always wanted to know, to meet him, to ask why.”

Castle turns Beckett so that he’s looking down into her wide, beautiful eyes. All he sees in them is sympathy, and complete understanding.

“I guess what I’m saying is no matter how much they hurt you by being there or not being there, you always want to have a family. A father.”

Her eyes spill over again, but she hugs him hard. “Thanks,” she breathes.  “You telling me that… that means a lot.  You’ve never said anything much about your past before.”

“I don’t much like thinking about it,” Castle confesses. “It seems a bit dumb, when I’m a father myself.”  Beckett hugs him again, and nestles in to achieve a better angle to do so.  She is, he realises, trying to comfort him.

“You’ve been a really good father, though. The exact opposite of yours.  And it’s not dumb.  Normal.” 

She stops there, and sniffs.   “Dad was like that, you know.  Up till…” she sniffs again, and reverts to silence.  “ ‘S why it was too much.  But it could have been so much worse.  He might never have been there at all.”  She hugs Castle again, strangely lopsided as only one hand is gripping.

Castle doesn’t pursue that line of conversation. Castle intends to pursue a line of conversation with Dr Burke that involves – after some discussion of the reasons for using any form of therapy which leaves Beckett in the state she had been – Jim appearing at Dr Burke’s office in very short order.  Tomorrow, for preference, even if it is Saturday.  If not, then Monday.  They remain cuddled together, peacefully, for a little time.

“Dr Burke said I had to tell Dad the truth,” Beckett emits. “Before anything else would go right.  He said I should do that and not care about whether Dad went back to the bottle.  He said that was up to Dad.”  She stops for a beat, remembers something.  “He said he’d see Dad first.  Assess him.”

How very clever of Dr Burke, Castle thinks, with only a minor dose of acid.

“You know, Beckett,” Castle says, not at all lightly or inconsequentially, “if I’d been your Dad and you’d been Alexis, I’d have crawled back into the bottle the moment I realised I’d said something to push you away like that. Your Dad hasn’t.  I think he’s stronger than you think.  Let Dr Burke see him.  Then decide.  Up to you.  Always up to you.”

There’s another long pause, while Beckett considers that. She’s still cuddling him.  That may, of course, be because she’s unwilling to move her hand and tweak her injured wrist.    She shouldn’t be cuddling him like that with an injured wrist, either.  She should have it in the sling and be resting it… oh.  Except that when has Beckett ever let anything stop her doing what she considers important… and right now hugging him is more important than her wrist.  He very gently repatriates her arm to its sling, and replaces the hug that Beckett was providing to him with an encirclement of his own.  Her head is back on his shoulder, her chest against his.

“Okay,” she finally says. “Let Dr Burke deal with it.  I can’t.”