69. Love is like a butterfly

“Butterfly,” O’Leary says, grinning as widely as the Rio Grande delta and simultaneously defending himself from Beckett’s outraged screech and attempts to silence him.

“O’Leary, I will kill you!”

“Nah, you love me really. Besides which, that’s what we called you.  When we weren’t calling you hard-ass, or ball-breaker, or” –

“Shut up, O’Leary. This is not fair.”

“You told Castle about the weightlifting,” he says. Castle watches happily as they fall into the cop-flavoured banter of old friends.

“You told him how we met.”

“I’m bigger than you.”

“You’re bigger than a Bigfoot. Still not fair.”

“Might makes right, Beckett,” O’Leary says provocatively. She squawks crossly, but under it all there’s a smile quirking at the corners of her eyes and lips.

“You wouldn’t. You can’t tell Castle that.  It’s not fair,” she pouts, looking around five.

“You’re so cute when you’re cross,” O’Leary smirks – and then grabs her hands to prevent mayhem and possibly murder.

“Butterfly?” Castle says. “How did Beckett get to be called butterfly?  Aren’t butterflies beautiful and fragile?  I’ll give you the beautiful – oof! Don’t do that, Beckett!  It hurts – but I really don’t get the fragile piece.  Even compared to Mount Rushmore here.”

“Not like pretty delicate fragile flying things,” O’Leary says. “Like Muhammad Ali.  Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee – and then wham!  Knockout.  Seemed appropriate, seeing how she deals with suspects.”

“I hate you,” Beckett grumbles into her beer bottle. “That’s entirely unfair.”

Castle chortles happily into his own beer, and makes sure he’s guarding himself against Beckett’s likely revenge on both of them. He toasts O’Leary when Beckett can’t see, and they trade a whole world of understanding in that single exchanged glance.

Which is undoubtedly why, after they’ve ordered some dinner, O’Leary takes point again.

“You look a lot better today, Beckett. Things clearing up?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. You call me if you need a pal and Castle’s not around, ‘kay?”

“Okay.”

O’Leary drops a quick hug round Beckett’s shoulders, lasting no more than half an instant, and that, it seems, is that. No more apparently needs to be said, but Castle feels that a lot more was said than was vocalised.

Dinner arrives, and Castle watches with interest the familiar ability of cops of all shapes and sizes to dispose of their dinners in double-quick time. Since conversation is not possible – these two cops having evidently absorbed table manners at their parents’ knees in the form of never speaking with their mouths full – he returns to tugging on the mental thread that he’d caught earlier: to wit, Beckett’s penchant for being surrounded by big, tough men.  In fact, with the sole exception of Lanie, currently cast into the outer darkness, he’s never noticed or heard about a female friend.  It’s not Castle’s previous experience of women.  He’s generally found that women have lots of women friends and very few true male friends.  Whether, of course, that’s because sex gets in the way is an open question but not the present point.  Beckett is unusually devoid of female friends, and unusually well supplied with male ones.

He finds that very odd. Women, again in his fairly wide experience, (he doesn’t just mean as an adult, nor yet his playboy encounters, but everything he had seen while trailing round the country to a hundred repertory theatres) have women friends with whom they socialise, shop and – oh. Oh.  With whom they talk.  Beckett does not talk.  She is quite famous – or more accurately notorious – for not talking.  And if she’s not comfortable talking, then it’s perfectly logical that all her friends are male.  It’s her circle of protection, from so many things, but first of all it’s her protection from ever being forced to talk.  Men, in general, are not big on talking about feelings or emotions, and Beckett’s boys still less so – Ryan’s clumsy attempts notwithstanding.  So she needn’t ever talk, and needn’t ever deal – and he’s just watched O’Leary play along with that, again.  Gave her the nod that he’s there for her if she needs it, but didn’t push.  Same for Esposito: made her go sparring and bounced her all over the mats – but didn’t push, and she looked far better for it.

Conversely, when Ryan did try to ask her anything he got precisely nowhere, and she’s been just a little reserved with him since; nothing unpleasant, nothing to shut him out, but there’s a tiny touch of coolness there, as if she’s expecting something and preparing to close it off.

Still, he can’t imagine that being totally female-friendless is a good thing.  Surely there are matters about which she wants to talk to another woman?  A small niggle starts to form in his mind: that really Beckett does need to patch things up with Lanie.  Somehow.  She’d been upset that Lanie hadn’t behaved the way she, Beckett, needed – though he’ll bet the farm that she never asked Lanie to back off, simply shut her out, so Lanie kept shouting till it all blew up – and she was really miserable that night.  She hasn’t mentioned Lanie since, except in a work context as Dr Parrish, and she hasn’t seen her either.

Castle acquires the extremely uncomfortable feeling that he ought to talk to Lanie. Not about Beckett, though.  That’s a short, excruciating route to death: his own.  He’s no martyr.  No, about her own behaviour.  Why does he suddenly feel like the only adult in a world of squabbling children?  Fortunately, before he verbalises that thought, which will certainly lead to a whole universe of commentary about his own maturity and general disposition, he realises that conversation is restarting, and that Beckett and O’Leary are bitching companionably about 1PP’s latest insanity and ass-backwards idiocy, which is a conversation to which he has nothing to contribute but more drinks – he checks, and to his surprise Beckett accepts a second beer – and the dessert menu.

Shortly, three lots of churros appear, and the level of bitching drops to nil. It’s supposed to be one portion each.  Castle clocks the predatory look in Beckett’s eye and mentally resigns himself to losing out.  He remembers, a little too late, how she’d dealt with the doughnuts and her possessive grip on them – and her grip on her Glock.  O’Leary has no such scruples.

“Beckett, you remember what happened the last time you stole my dessert?”

She blushes. Actually, positively blushes, and cringes, and pouts.  “Yes,” she sulks.  “But you should’ve shared.”

“You eat your dessert and I’ll eat mine and don’t you dare lay a finger on my churros.  Or I’ll do the same again.”

“What did you do?” asks Castle, fascinated by the big-brotherly tone that – amazing! – seems to work on Beckett. Beckett growls threateningly.

“Nuthin’ much,” O’Leary mumbles, cowed by Beckett’s weapons-grade glare. Castle looks hopefully at him.  “Naw.  I’ll keep it in reserve.  In case Beckett” – he fixes her with a beady eye – “tries to steal my dessert.”

“What about my dessert?” Castle says plaintively.

“Your dessert, your problem.” He rumbles, which would be a laugh if it weren’t wobbling the table.  “I’d hold her hands, if I was you.”  Beckett grumps her way through her churros and then spends the next few minutes glaring impartially at both of them.  Castle takes O’Leary’s advice and hangs on to her hands while he finishes.  Her fingers are twitching in a very ready-to-be-thieving fashion.

“I’m not bringing you next time,” she grumbles. “Teaming up like that.  You’re supposed to be my pal, O’Leary.”

“I am. I just like my desserts in my belly, not yours.” 

Beckett hrrumphs, and subsides.

The dinner concludes with everybody happy and nobody dead. This is good, and reassuring.  As earlier, O’Leary gives Beckett a brief, enveloping hug, then clasps hands with Castle in a not-quite-threateningly muscular way.  Farewells are said, and then Castle steers Beckett off in one direction with an arm round her, pursued by O’Leary’s amused grin.  “Night, Butterfly,” follows them down the street.

“Still can’t see you as a butterfly,” Castle says incautiously. “Ow!  Stop that.”

“Don’t call me a butterfly, then.”

“I didn’t. It’s totally incongruous.  I mean” – he makes sure he has hold of her hands – “falcon, or leopard, or some other sort of sleekly gorgeous deadly predator.  Not a butterfly.”  He muses for a moment.  “Maybe a steel butterfly.  With razor-edged wings and laser eyes.  A prettier version of the spy insects in Transformers.”

Beckett emits a strangled squeal at a pitch Castle would have thought only a castrato could achieve. He belatedly shuts his mouth before he can commit suicide-by-speech.

“Shut up. No more animal comparisons.  None.  And if anyone ever calls me butterfly in anyone’s hearing ever I will remove their balls with a rusty razor blade.”  Castle reflexively winces and covers his groin, hoping that she only means O’Leary.  As a consequence he barely hears her next words.  “I’m not fragile.”

Oh. Ah.  Okay, then.  He gets it.  “No, you surely aren’t.  Not the way Espo threw you round the mat.”  He smiles very slightly downward at his Beckett-butterfly. (ha!  She can’t read his mind – can she?) “Shall I come and massage your bruises?”

Beckett considers for a minute. She would very much like Castle to massage her bruises.  And then her not-bruised areas.  She might even massage his.  It would be a delightful way to distract herself from the homework she hasn’t managed to do for Dr Burke.

And wrong.

She has to do the work. She has to sort this out.  If she wants Castle… if she cares about him (and she does)… then she has to be able to cope with the loft, and his family.  So she needs to do the homework.  Maybe he’ll be her reward after.

“Not tonight.” But she can’t quite say why; can’t force the explanation out.  Even if he knows about the therapy, she can’t say why.  “Maybe tomorrow?  Come round about eight.  I’ll be done with the session” – she can say that, even if she winces – “by then.”

Castle listens very carefully to the intonations and hitches in her voice, closes his arm around her and hugs tightly. “Okay.  But I’ll walk you to the subway first.”

“I’d like that,” she says, almost shyly, and glances up through her lashes and away.

Beckett really does not want to try and excavate her feelings about her original grief. She went through it for real, and she went through it in counselling, and it hurt just as much every time.  It never stopped hurting, and it’s going to hurt again now.  She forces herself to think back.  No.  That’s wrong.  She simply allows herself finally, eight years after she first started trying to shut it out, to open the floodgates to the memories and let them take her away.  No force required.  The force has only ever been required to keep the floodgates shut.

The funeral. That’s where this all began. 

The memory is pinpoint sharp, the snow lying white on the ground around the grave, the black she wore, the black her father wore: the raven shades around them of friends and family – little enough of that – the polished oak and the brown earth, the grey clouds lowering overhead, heavy with more snow. Every detail is etched into the mirror-glass of her memory.  Her father, tears icy on his white, drawn face; the minister in his cassock. O death, where is thy sting, O grave, where is thy victory? And then, a little further on, the ghastly sound of the first clods of earth falling on the lowered coffin: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  She supposes she must have wept, but all she remembers is her father’s cold white deathly face, and the tears rolling down his cheeks, falling from his chin.  He’d stood straight, until it was all over.  He’d reached out to her as she blindly sought to take his hand.  It might have been the last time he’d done so, for five long years.

His misery had ripped into her. Her father, her parent, the person who should be strong so that she could lean on him, was devastated: incapable of taking any decisions, incapable of listening to her.  So she tried to make it better for him: dealt with practicalities, and told herself that she was working out her grief by dealing with the administrative matters.  She couldn’t bear to see her father so upset, and it didn’t take a genius to work out that mentioning her mother upset him more, so she didn’t mention it.  Not after the first time, when his face crumpled like a child’s and the tears fell and he got up from the table and walked away: and then the sound of the bottle clinking on the glass.

She’d gone to the counsellor, once she was back at college: the sun bright on the campus, flowers blooming. She’d talked about it.  But the counsellor couldn’t provide the shared memories and connections, the remembrance of family trips or in-jokes, do-you-remember-when?  No-one could, except her father: there wasn’t much else in the way of family and she disliked Aunt Theresa with a passion.  And her father couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk. 

She remembers the growing queasiness before each call home: the discomfort as she realised that she had to censor each sentence to avoid upsetting her father, the growing panic that each time she called he sounded a little more disconnected, a little less sober. So she talked about neutral subjects and generalities and tried to quash her terror.  She’d felt that if she could go home and see him, then she’d prove to herself that her fears were groundless.  Everything would be fine, if she went home.

She had ignored the twisting in her gut, the ever-present nervousness; bought a cheap flight on a budget airline for speed and not told her father she was coming. She’d told herself that it would be a lovely surprise for him, and almost been convinced, until she stepped on the plane and fastened her seatbelt and realised that one way or another, this was it.

It had been now, in fact. Exactly today, ten years past.

With every mile on the train and every stop on the subway, as she neared her father’s Upper East Side apartment, her fear had writhed and grown; expanding until she could barely breathe with terror. But when she opened the door and he turned round and his face lit up with dazzling joy, all her fears and worries vanished.  She didn’t even notice the bottle and glass as she stepped towards him.  Everything was fine.  Everything was just fine.

And then he cried joyfully “Johanna!” and she realised that it wasn’t her, would never be her, who put joy on his face.  She could have sworn that she felt her heart snap when he realised that it was his daughter, not his wife.  I thought you were her. I wanted her, he had said, and the utter disappointment in his voice and face had broken her again.  He’d downed the half full glass in one gulp and started to cry; the glass had fallen from his hand, rolling through the spilt amber whiskey, and clinked to a halt against the bottle.  He’d turned away from her. You’re not her, he’d wept. You aren’t her.  Why aren’t you her? Go away. I don’t want you.

She’d gone to her room and unpacked, weeping all the way. She’d brought him a small, silly present; but she’d put it back in her carry-on bag.  Then she’d dried her eyes and blown her nose and done what she did best: take action.  Stalked back to the main room, wrapping herself in her own anger that he could degrade himself so, so degraded that he didn’t know his own daughter; and taken the already-refilled glass from his shaking, fumbling hands; poured that and the bottle down the sink.  He’d cursed her.  Her own father, and he had cursed her as foully as a stevedore on the docks.  She hadn’t, till then, realised the full extent of his drunkenness.

She couldn’t bear to see him at the table any more, where they had used to be a family: hauled him up, his pitiful, wasted flailings at her no match for fury and fitness. She couldn’t bear to see his slack, shocked face: everything she’d lost – she’d lost it all too, but he didn’t seem to care about that – reflected in his eyes.  He wanted her mother, and she was a poor substitute.

She shoved him along to his bedroom, not gently: (but not rough, she couldn’t do that to him. Then, or ever.  She wanted to, sometimes: wanted to lash out and hurt him as he hurt her, over and over again.  She never had.  She’d given up on bitter, tempestuous words too, after a while.  Losing her temper wouldn’t help, didn’t help.) furious with him and more so with herself for coming home unannounced when she had, did she but admit it, known all along that it would mean disaster.

She’d thought, then, that she could make it all better by removing temptation. Surely if there were no alcohol, when her father sobered up and realised what he’d said and done he’d be sorry?  Surely?  And so she’d slipped through every public room of the apartment and emptied every last bottle – and there had been many – down the sink.  She’d thought, with a sigh of relief, that she’d solved the problem.  How naïve could she get?  Still, she had only been nineteen.

Finally, she’d gone back to her own bedroom. This time, not blinded by tears, she’d looked around.  Every memento and photo that might have reminded her of her mother was gone.  She had a moment of blinding anger, and then relief that she’d taken her little stone bird to college with her.

She had cried herself dry, that night. Not for the first time, nor yet the last.  That had come later, when she’d eventually worked out that rage, or grief, or tears solved nothing.  It was the first time, but not the last, that she thought her father had broken her.

The first time, but not the last, that she’d clung to faint hope in the darkness, only to be betrayed.

In the morning he’d been pleased to see her. In the morning, it had become clear that he remembered nothing of the previous evening.   In the morning, he’d excused himself somehow, and promised it was just a one-time error: he’d not do it again.  In the morning, she’d booked an appointment and had her hair cut and coloured that same day, so that she didn’t resemble her mother. 

She had believed him, then. Wanted so much to believe him that she’d convinced herself in no time that it would all be fine.

But it wasn’t fine, and it wouldn’t be fine, and it has never been fine again.