72. Afraid of losing my way

Beckett, some way refreshed by Castle’s patent blend of comfort, care and excellent sex, wakes up in a better mood and certainly better rested than she had expected; even if Castle isn’t there beside her. (Where he ought to be, nags a little voice in her head.  She knows that, but she can’t have it till she’s fixed.  Or closer to fixed.  So maybe she should put some serious effort into fixing herself just now, while she’s on her own and no-one’s there to see if she cries.  Or when she does.)

She makes herself a pot of coffee, grimaces at the thought of the necessity for any thinking on a Saturday morning if she doesn’t have a new body to deal with, and settles down to apply her ferocious intelligence to herself. Dr Burke had made two points: one, has she remembered that she can’t control it, apropos of her father; and two, how did that play into her reactions to Julia Berowitz.

Okay. What had she thought yesterday.  Start there, and then, with a distancing night (and a comforting Castle) to take the edge off, detect, Detective.  Follow the evidence and investigate.  Sure, it’s going to hurt like hell.  But it’s time to rip the scabs off the wounds, lance the poison and clean it all out.  The alternative is letting this gangrene fester and spread, until the only option left would be amputation.

She sits alone, lost in her thoughts, as the hands of her watch move round, unnoticed. Unfortunately, the more she thinks, the less effective is the distance that her night’s sleep and her Castle had provided.  It doesn’t take long before both are entirely ineffective.  Still, she forces herself to remember all the things she had done, after he (she very consciously doesn’t think her father, or Dad) got dry.  All the ways she’d acted; all the things she’d lost, or given up.  Time sweeps on, and her thinking continues, centring around, and starting from, her view that her father had never needed her to do it anyway.  So why had she ever thought he did? 

Point one. She can’t control it.  She never could control it.  She’d realised that when he was drunk.  But then he’d got sober, and…and.  Oh fuck.  She suddenly sees something she’d never noticed before.  When he got sober, he’d looked at her as if she was the only thing that mattered in the world.  Every time he’d seen her, he’d seemed to be delighted.  And… and she’d needed it, because it almost made up for the way he’d written her off because she wasn’t her mother, whenever he was drunk.  And… and when he was happy, he wasn’t crying, and when he wasn’t crying, he wasn’t reaching for a bottle; wasn’t tempted to be reaching for a bottle.  And seeing her seemed to make him happy.

Oh God. And so she’d been there for him.  And then… and then he’d been quite explicit that he’d only got dry because she walked away.  But she’d thought that if she didn’t walk away again, he’d stay dry.  Mistake number one.  It should have been the other way round.  He would stay dry, and therefore she wouldn’t walk away. 

Then he’d said he needed her. Hit her squarely with the blade of her guilt that she’d left him to drown.  He’d said that he needed her before he drowned himself in whiskey; don’t leave me.  But then he’d told her to go: he couldn’t stand to see her, for two years before she went.  Then he’d called her and cried for her to come home, not to leave him – and she had left him to it.  Left him.  It had almost destroyed her.  Then he’d got sober and said he needed her – and she’d believed it because she had to believe it because otherwise everything would have fallen in on her: everything she’d done would have been for no reason.  She’d walked away to save him – but she walked back because he said he needed her, needed a family, and she had to believe that he wanted to be a family again.  Mistake number two.  It was she who needed a family.  She’d thought that it would fill the void.

Mistake number three. Nothing had really filled the abyss of her guilt.  So, just like she’d worked herself into the ground to be the best in the business at work, she’d worked herself into the ground to be there for her father, jumped when he called, always, always been there for him, no matter what; put her whole life on hold so that she never, ever had to see him drunk again.  It hadn’t helped, ultimately.  But she’d never wanted to be that devastated nineteen-year old again, the one whose own father had looked at her and simply said you’re not her.

She doesn’t realise she’s crying: slow, heavy tears.

And finally, mistake number four. She’d believed that he loved her enough to save himself.  It had been the only thing that had covered her bitter resentment that he’d abandoned her in the first place.  For five years she’s believed it.

But now she knows it isn’t true.

It should have been lunchtime, hours ago. Time has slipped past her, and now the light is fading.  Despite that, she can see clearly now.  She’d thought, wrongly, that her presence held her dad to sobriety.  Thought that what she was doing could keep things right.  Thought that she could control his behaviour.  All wrong.

She’d thought that he loved her. That was wrong too.

Drained dry, and completely incapable of moving her thoughts on to where they need to go: to wit sorting out why Castle’s family disturbs her so, she goes to curl up in her bed, taking her phone with her: the warmest place she can manage, clad in heavy pyjamas and buried in extra blankets. She reads, for a while, thinks vaguely that she should have eaten and rejects the idea when her stomach tries to invert at the thought, looks at her phone again.  She’s done that every five minutes or two pages, for the last hour.  She’s managed not to dial, every five minutes or two pages, for the last hour.  Every time it’s taken longer to stop herself.

This time, she’s wondering why she’s bothering. Pathetically, she’s been hugging a pillow that smells of his cologne and him for the last hour, when all she’d have to do is call.  And paradoxically, that’s what’s been stopping her.  It’s feeling all too close to how she used to jump whenever her father called, and she can’t stand the feeling that she might be doing to Castle what her father did to her.

Only you can save yourself.

It’s not Castle’s job to save her. That’s unhealthy.  But she could ask for support, which isn’t.  Her problem is that she has no idea where healthy stops and dependency begins. 

And then there’s the next problem. She’d thought her father loved her.  Except he doesn’t.  She’d been more than beginning to think that Castle might – but what if she’s misinterpreting that too?  What if it’s just the incredible physical connection, covering up everything that won’t work?  How long’s he going to wait for someone who’s this broken; why should he wait for someone who’s so unlovable that her own father would prefer the company of strangers? 

She dissolves into tears again, and doesn’t dial. Her thoughts cycle round and round inside her head.  Call, don’t call; ask, don’t ask.  Where does help transmute into dependency?

Eventually, she stops sniffling and tries to think. She has to think.  Thinking’s the only way out.  What has she asked for?  He’s always seemed to be there, but how often has she actually asked, and how often has he simply chosen to show up uninvited?  Not that she has any objection to him showing up, invited or not.  Invited once, with merely a look, which he could have ignored.  Twice, because she’d left her wallet behind.  Three times, after a Friday therapy session, although even then he’d offered before she’d asked.  But she’d meant to ask, so that counts.  And four, being asking him to come round after last Friday’s session.

Four times, in a month. Maybe this is not excessive, if Castle’s inviting himself around pretty close to every two days.  But still she doesn’t dial, because Castle’s not asking her to prop him up: he’s not this close to clinging to her like some parasitic plant, bleeding her strength and feeding from her vitality.  She’s been there before, and it didn’t end well.  Then again, she’s been on the other side too, and that didn’t end well either.  Problem is, she doesn’t know where right is, because everything’s always been wrong, and it’s wrong now.  She doesn’t know what right looks like, because in the previous ten years she’s never had it.

She looks at her phone again, stares at the contacts list. He can always say no.  He keeps saying that he knows what he’s doing.  He can always say no.  And if it’s all going to crash and burn, she might as well know now.

She dials, and as soon as it starts to ring wishes she hadn’t. Castle picks up far too quickly, too, before she can ring off.

“Hey, Beckett.”

“Castle, hey.” She manages a reasonable facsimile of her everyday voice.

“What can I do for you, Detective?” Castle says suavely. She hits the buffers.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to call. This was a stupid mistake.  Night, Castle.  I’ll see you Monday.”

“Don’t hang up!”

But she’s already cut the call.   She just couldn’t go through with it.  Asking in plain words without having been given some sort of half-invitation first is too far.  She can’t bear to hear no.  She’d heard no so often before.  Whenever she’d asked – begged – her father to stop.  So many nos.  After Royce, she’d stopped asking anyone else.  Even O’Leary, even Lanie.  Asking didn’t get her anywhere, saying she needed help didn’t get her anywhere.  Only being strong kept her afloat.  If people came of their own volition, that was fine.  Their choice, then, to help.  But she couldn’t ask, because every time she asked the answer was, inevitably, no.

So very many nos.

Her phone rings, but she doesn’t answer it. She doesn’t even hear it, buried face down in her pillows and not crying.  She’s been here before, and crying has never been the answer.

Nor, of course, has cowardice. She needs to ask.  She needs to know if this has all been one more huge mistake, before she can’t get herself out. 

She takes a very deep breath, calms herself, and redials.

“Beckett. Beckett!  Kate, are you okay?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “Can you come over?” and as if that’s the switch, starts to cry again, desperately keeping the tears out of her voice.

“Sure. There in a few minutes.”

Castle’s afternoon had been more peaceful than his morning, though he’d spent quite a lot of it deliberately allowing Beckett the space he thought she might need and fretting about the need not to call her.  He can’t suffocate her, and she has to do her thinking, and she’s perfectly capable of not thinking as soon as something nicer (such as him) appears instead.  Funny that: it’s he who is a champion procrastinator and yet it’s Beckett who is putting off the unpleasant necessity of serious thinking.  So although his fingers frequently wander in the direction of his phone, he forcibly redirects them to his keyboard.

He has some dinner and goes back to his laptop, sketching out a plan for the casework which Nikki will solve. He’s just getting into it when his phone rings, and he growls with irritation that it’s disturbed him.  Irritation dissolves in microseconds when he sees that it’s Beckett.   Just what – who – he wanted.

She sounds a little stressed when she greets him, but then it turns into all sorts of wrong when she starts to apologise for calling and says it was a mistake – calling him is never going to be a mistake – and hangs up.  And then she doesn’t pick up when he rings her straight back.  Something’s spooked her and he has no idea what.  He’s already halfway out the door when his phone rings again and – thank God – it’s Beckett, but he’s sure that she’s crying and that’s not right and then she admits she’s not okay and he’s frantically bribing the cab driver to get him to her address in no time flat, chewing his nails to the elbows at every stop light and only just not hammering on her door.

He doesn’t pause for thought when the door opens, simply sweeps her up off her feet and into his arms, kicking the door shut behind him, hoping that he can talk her down off the ledge.

“Kate, what’s wrong?” he says, dropping them both on the couch and never letting go of her. “I’m here now.  Come here.”

“You came,” she almost whimpers. Of course he came.  What part of I’ll be there for you hasn’t she understood?

“Partners, remember? You said it.”  He really didn’t expect her to burst into hopeless, devastated tears.  If there are any words in her flooding misery, they’re completely unintelligible.  He holds on while the storm pours down, and waits.

“Asking too much,” emerges relatively clearly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Castle says, shocked into exasperation. “How’s asking me to come over because you’re upset asking too much?  That’s insane.”

“Was before.”

“What? Who said that?”

“Doesn’t matter. What’s the point in asking?  Doesn’t get you anything.”

Castle gapes at the top of her bent head. “You can ask me.  Anything, Kate.  Partners.  Means you get to ask.  In fact, it means you have to ask.  That’s the rules.  You want me to come over, you just need to say so.  No hiding because you’re scared to ask.”  He hugs her in tightly.  “Now, do you want to tell me what’s got you upset, or do you just want to cuddle?”  He expects no answer, or at least not one in words.  He expects her to cuddle in more tightly: where she can take comfort, where he’ll keep her safe.

He does not expect the sudden stream of sobbed-out words. All her past, spilling out in full spate.  The bare, bitter facts of her father’s disease; the disaster of her training officer, skipped over but he can read the story; the equal but opposite disaster of her Fed, again, skipped over.  It’s hard for him to hear, but it’s clearly much harder for her to remember.  The dam has broken, though, and however she might want to stop, it doesn’t seem like she can.

By the time she finally runs down, Castle is ready to weep too. First she was let down by her father, then by her first therapist (though he doesn’t think she’s worked that one out), then by her training officer, who should have directed her to someone who could help.  By the time she had met O’Leary, it was already too late for her to be able to open up.  He remembers O’Leary saying she didn’t ask me to, I just went.

She’s still sobbing, exhausted tears crawling down her face, all her control washed away: just like the night three weeks ago when she’d first admitted out loud that her father had ruined her life and agreed to go to therapy. Looks like therapy’s uncovering a whole bunch of memories that are tearing her apart.

“All I ever did was just to make myself feel better. None of it had any effect on him.  I never realised.  I thought I mattered to him.  Nothing mattered to him but the whiskey when he was drinking, and nothing mattered to him but staying dry when he got dry.”

Castle winces, unseen. Clearly Beckett isn’t in a mood to forgive her father right now.  In fact, it sounds like she’s talking – has talked? – herself into believing that her father has lied to her right down the line.

“I should’ve known. They always lie.  It’s nothing to do with family.  It’s because he’s an alcoholic.  I thought I was helping him.  All I was doing was trying to stop feeling guilty and make myself feel better.  I needn’t have felt guilty at all.  Needn’t have protected him.  He only ever wanted Mom.  She was his family.  I was just… an adjunct.”

She runs out of words, and is still. Castle simply holds her close; disturbingly limp at his side.  He wants to say you could be part of my family, but that’s not going to help right now. 

“Why don’t you talk that through with the therapist? If that’s the issue, then there’ll be ways of getting past it so it doesn’t affect you so much.  If you didn’t feel guilty about your dad any more, then you couldn’t be guilted by people like Julia.”

No point, Castle thinks, in talking about her dad. She won’t listen when she’s this overwrought.  Better to tie it to something he knows she really cares about: doing her job.  He suspects, very strongly, that Beckett is, once again, one very short step away from quitting therapy altogether.

“That’s a good idea,” she says, unexpectedly. Oh.  Maybe she’s not?

Beckett doesn’t exactly feel happy about it, but she’s not giving up on fixing herself. She’s got this far, and she will not be held hostage by her own past.  Her work means too much to her. Castle means too much to her.

“Thanks for coming,” she murmurs, and nestles in further. “ ‘M sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“Dragging you out. Dripping all over you.”

“Partners, Beckett. I’m sure you’ll return the favour.”  Oddly, she shifts away from him, retreating into herself again.  “What’s up?”

“I don’t think you’ll be begging me to come over and mop your eyes,” she says bitterly. “You’re not the one with the fucked-up head here.  Everyone loves you.  Sure, you don’t have a dad and that’s really got to hurt, but you’ve got the rest of your family and it works.  They love you.  I’ve got a dried-out drunk who couldn’t care less and a corpse rotting in Cypress Hills; and I still can’t even look at your family without hurting.”

Everyone loves you?  Does that mean Beckett too?  But then the rest of what she’s just said hits his brain and romantic thoughts fly out of the window.

“I thought you said that you were going to therapy to sort out both the job and being able to see my family?” Castle says neutrally.

“Yes, but…”

“But what? You’ve been going for what?  Three weeks?  Not even that long.  You’ve barely begun and you’re beating yourself up because it hasn’t worked yet?  The whole reason it didn’t work the first time round is because you thought you had to do it faster than anyone.”  He hauls his rising voice back under some sort of control.  “It takes time.  I said you didn’t have to come until you were ready and anyway I’m not going to invite you till I think you’re ready because I’m not watching you pretend that everything’s okay when it isn’t.  You can’t do this in three weeks, Beckett.  You can’t do it without being able to ask for help either.”

“That’s why I’m going to therapy. He’s paid to listen and help.” If you ever manage to talk to him like you just have to me, Castle thinks.  “Who else is going to?” Me, but you should know that. “Everyone else didn’t. He didn’t.  I wanted to talk about Mom and all he did was cry and get drunk again.  So I couldn’t.  No-one else would’ve been interested.”  I’m interested, but if I say that you’ll think it’s all about the books again. It’s not.  “I hate it,” she says, again, familiar cascara-bitter mantra.

“It’s up to you,” Castle soothes. “You can give it up any time you like.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”