26. What's the story?

Castle’s normally sharp mind finally kicks into gear and he begins to chew on the information which he now has. Beckett – or whoever is currently sitting next to him – has passed into a half-asleep, comatose state; not exactly – not at all – curling towards him.  She is, in fact, leaning away from him, and, oddly, her consumption of alcohol may have elicited a few answers but it’s raised the barriers between them higher than before.  They’d been mile high earlier: now they’re stratospheric.  He won’t, yet, try to change that.  Whether it worked or not, she’s in no state to agree, or indeed remember.

So, what does he know? Not assume, which has so far been a total failure, but know.

He knows that she pours herself out for her father and to strangers. He knows that she’s deliberately tried to push him away.  He knows that she’s had a disagreement with Lanie, but he doesn’t actually know what it was about.  He knows that she thinks that he should stay away because she thinks that he’d run for the hills anyway if he knew what was inside her head. No questions, she keeps saying. Stay away: from her father and his story; stay away from her past.

Stay away from her.

Not exactly, though. Stay away from her history, her personality, her heart, her soul.  He could have her body, as long as he didn’t have her.  So he only got to see Kat by accident, when she was already stressed and wrung out; he’s only had answers tonight, when she’s drunk.

Oh. He’d seen Kat by accident, and then more by his design when they’d played Sorry.  But then he’d made it clear he disapproved of her choices around Christmas, and then (worse in her eyes) asked questions, and tried to push her into his life which – oh fuck, he knew this a week ago – triggered memories.

He’s still missing something, but when he flicks a brief glance at his watch it’s after midnight. He discovers that Beckett is asleep, curled tightly in a corner of the couch.  He needs to go home because of Alexis, but if he goes home, will Beckett simply wake, retrieve her vodka, and carry on?  He could prevent that, but should he?  That thought is parked as he looks at her.  She seems to be out cold.  One thing he can do is ensure that she’s on her bed, not on the couch: she’s going to suffer enough tomorrow. 

He sighs, stands, and picks her up. There is no reaction at all: she’s dead weight in his arms.  The thin trickle of illumination from the sidelight and creeping from the bedroom is only just sufficient for him to arrive there unscathed and lay her on her bed.  He gazes down for a moment, wishing he could see into her mind; wishing he had extracted more information; wishing he knew how to move her needle back to normality; wishing that she’d believe that he could and would support her.

Wishing he understood. But that’s one thing which he can, perhaps, achieve: understanding.  Tomorrow, when he’s slept on it: when the story’s roamed his dreams and knit up its ravellment into orderly links.

Beckett wakes to her screeching alarm with a foul taste in her mouth, a foul pain in her head, and a foul feeling of disgust with herself.   She takes two Advil, drinks a pint of water to chase the Advil, scrubs her teeth and tongue till her gums ache and steps into a scalding shower.  Once she’s washed and sufficiently steam-cleaned that the stink of stale alcohol is no longer in her nostrils, she has another pint of water and a double strength black coffee.  Then she is capable of dressing, applying her make-up, adjusted to try to hide how tired, miserable and hung-over she really is, and leaving to get the subway to the precinct.  She doesn’t remember much about last night, and in particular she doesn’t remember how many she’d had to achieve that desirable amnesia.  She certainly won’t risk driving when she may well still be over the limit.  She makes it to her desk comfortably before shift starts and any of the team are in.  Temporally comfortably, that is.  Physically she is not comfortable at all.  She concocts another extra-strong coffee, returns to her desk, winces at the brightness of the screen and strip-lights and, by the time Espo has arrived twenty minutes later, is deep in the pile of cold case files.

“Yo, Beckett.”

“Hey, Espo.” She’s not conversational.  Espo doesn’t care.  He and Beckett have been tight for years and she obviously isn’t right, now or last night.  He’s got a sure-fire cure for that, though.

“C’mon, Beckett. Ain’t seen you in the gym for weeks.  You need to spar, or you’ll lose your edge.  I’ll hold the bag for you, or give you a workout.”

Beckett looks up, slowly. Espo clocks the lack of expression on her face and the lack of brightness in her eyes.  “Nah.  Maybe later.”

“Now,” he says firmly.

“No,” she says equally firmly, and drinks her coffee. “Leave it, Espo.”

“No. You look like shit.  So you can come punch it out or you can tell me what went down last night that you didn’t need us for.  Lanie wants to talk to you, too.”

Beckett’s face betrays nothing. “Or option three: none of the above.  I’m not wasting time sparring when I’m on shift with work to do.  Go do your own work, and leave me to get on with mine before we’re both in trouble.”

Espo would argue, but Beckett’s turned her eyes and attention to her papers and is radiating do not disturb at laser intensity.  That in itself still wouldn’t stop him, but Montgomery coming in certainly does. 

“Morning, detectives,” Montgomery says cheerily.

“Sir,” comes in tandem from Beckett and Espo. Montgomery wanders into his office.  Espo makes himself a coffee and starts on his work.  Beckett remains firmly focused on her file.  After a while Espo watches her go into the break room and make herself more coffee, and then observes the pitch of her shoulders and tension in her spine as she returns.  She’s just seated herself again when Montgomery peers out of his office, surveys his domain, and spots his prey.

“Detective Beckett? A word, please.”

“Sir.”

The door shuts behind her. Fifteen minutes later it reopens.  Beckett, two spots of high colour gracing her cheekbones, returns to her desk.  Ryan, who has appeared in the interim, glances at Espo, who shrugs.  He has no idea.  Both of them glance at Beckett, who doesn’t even notice, let alone react.  The pages of her file continue to turn in a measured manner.  Some several many moments later, she departs in the direction of the restrooms.  When she re-emerges, she looks no different at all.  Ryan and Esposito shrug at each other again.  Beckett continues her work, and doesn’t talk.

Montgomery’s summons is not unexpected, merely unwelcome. She’d hoped, clearly in vain, that Sergeant Hardon would have kept quiet.  No such luck.

“Beckett, you were up at Central Park precinct last night.”

“Yessir.”

“Picking up one Mr Berowitz.”

“Yessir.”

“Who was piss-drunk and in no state to be any help to anyone in any investigations.” Beckett says nothing.  There isn’t really anything to say.  “Wasn’t he?”

“Yessir.”

“And Castle went with you.”

“Yessir.”

Montgomery puts his elbows on the desk and rests his chin on his hands, dark eyes focused on Beckett, who hasn’t shifted from parade attention since she shut the door. “At ease, Beckett.  I didn’t get you in here to rip you a new one.”

“Sir.” So why am I in here?

“Ten days ago, you were having lunch with Mrs Berowitz. Then your father was off on a conference for a week.  And last night for no apparent reason you quit the precinct like your tail was on fire and then the next thing that happens is you picked up Mr Berowitz.”  He pauses, clearly expecting commentary.  Beckett declines the trap.

“Have you had any time off since Christmas except January 9th?”

“I wasn’t on shift at the weekend, sir.”

“I have here your overtime reports. According to these” – he taps the sheet – “you’re due some days.”  He looks at her expressionless face.  “I could make you take them.”  A flush of colour creeps along her face.  She says nothing.  “I won’t.  Yet.  But I’m paying attention, Beckett, and I’m not liking what I’m seeing.  You need to ease off.  You’re trying to save people, one drunk at a time.  You can’t do it.  Stick to the victims and your dad and let AA take the rest.” 

“Sir.” It’s not agreement, nor disagreement.  Montgomery doesn’t press the point.  He doesn’t think that he needs to.  He changes the subject.

“How are you getting on with Castle?”

“Fine, sir. He’ll be done soon, I think.”  Montgomery looks sharply at her.

“He’ll stay as long as he needs to, Detective.”

“Of course, sir.” Montgomery raises an eyebrow.  Disbelief is obvious.  Again, though, he doesn’t think that he needs to press the point.

“If I think you need time off, because you’re not taking proper breaks, I will enforce it, Detective. I suggest you start planning how best to take your days.  I expect your leave request to be filed by the end of the week.”

“Sir.”

“Dismissed, Beckett.”

“Sir.”

Her miserable irritation touches her face with renewed hot colour as she returns to her desk. She won’t let on to the boys that there’s anything wrong.  She doesn’t need time off.  She doesn’t need Montgomery telling her not to help Julia Berowitz.  She just needs a nice complicated case to take her mind off everything.  Especially, to take her mind off the nagging feeling that she’s forgotten something important, which is not improving her hang-over.  She goes back to her file.  Ten minutes later, a hazy memory coalesces into unpleasantly solid reality.  Castle was there last night.  In her apartment.  She feels sick, and it has nothing to do with her lingering hang-over.  She makes for the restrooms with her purse, desperately controlling her desire to run out of the bullpen.

The cool ceramic tiles of the restroom wall soothe her hot skin. She can’t remember what happened last night.  She doesn’t know what she might have said, or done.  She tries to pull her stampeding thoughts into order.  She’d woken up in the same clothes she’d been wearing when she started throwing back shots.  Therefore she had done nothing… really stupid.  What she might have said, though – oh God.  What might she have said?  She bolts for a cubicle, locking herself in until she’s sure she has control of her stomach.  When she’s certain she’s not going to turn inside out, she exits the cubicle, and then washes her face and hands in cold water, re-applies her make-up, picture-perfect, breathes deeply and slowly several times, and goes back to her desk, praying frantically for Castle not to come to the precinct today.

For a good long time, prayer seems to have worked. At eleven a.m., her prayers are definitively rejected.  Castle arrives with an expression that would suit a cat stalking a broken-winged bird, deposits coffee and a bear-claw in front of her, and sits down in an unpleasantly permanent fashion.

Castle had slept through uncomfortable dreams, largely figuring Beckett walking around in a high-tech exoskeletal covering: transparent but utterly impermeable to sound or emotion. It’s not difficult to work out where that one came from.  Knowing, however, doesn’t improve his view of it, and he’d really hoped for a bit more insight from his subconscious. Could do better, he tells himself.  A shower, a shave, and good coffee don’t really help him.

He knows as much as he’s going to know without some serious assistance, which he isn’t going to get from Beckett. He won’t get it from the boys, who’ve made it pretty clear that they won’t talk about their colleague unless he already knows everything, and he’s unlikely to get anything from Lanie, who barely knows him except as Beckett’s shadow.  A few beers and some chit-chat over corpses is hardly a foundation for a conversation that would have been difficult even if he and Lanie had been BFFs since high school.  He wonders if the appropriate course is, as he had thought earlier last night, to have a detailed conversation with Roy.  It seems rather… nuclear, as options go.

He makes more coffee, and wonders idly how much Beckett must have needed to get going this morning. He’s been in that state (though not for a long time) and he didn’t have to turn up at work the next day.  She doesn’t have that option: the demands on her are unceasing…

That’s what he was missing. She’d said it, and he’d missed it because he’d been focused on the drinking, the disappeared and the assumption that she’d ducked supporting her dad.  She’d said several variations on Beckett helps everyone, everyone needs Beckett, I’ll have to support you just like always. That’s hardly flattering, he thinks, displeased.  She’d also said no-one wants Kat.  And finally, and possibly most importantly couldn’t do it before. I couldn’t.

Couldn’t what, Beckett?  Couldn’t save your father?  And then, slowly, it becomes clear, monster rising from the swamp: she had to walk away to save herself.  What has that cost her?

The story falls into place. She’s… over-compensating.  Saving everyone now because she couldn’t save him then: had to walk away. If you saw inside my head you’d run away.  Yeah.  No wonder she said that.  He’d made it perfectly obvious what he thought of her actions – only the ones he’d seen, such as the Christmas Day shift – based on his own happy family life and his own smug, self-satisfied assumptions about what he’d do – based on no knowledge at all.  It’s very easy to think you could do it, when you’ve never had to.  Very easy to judge and condemn.  He thinks about the revolting, degraded sight of Mr Berowitz.  Beckett had dealt with that same revolting object in her own father, for – he guesses – some considerable time.  And then she had to walk away… and no matter how much her father says she saved him, she either doesn’t believe it or is still drowning under the weight of that decision.

Not the boys. Not Lanie.  Not Roy.  Jim Beckett.  That’s where he’ll find his answers.  That, and some very specific research.  Okay.  Research first.  Jim Beckett later, because he knows where to find him.  He turns to his laptop and starts to hunt down alcoholism, and then, a little after nine, takes himself off to talk to some of the support groups available.  In return for a nice donation, he’s pretty certain they’ll be happy to answer everything he asks.

After two meetings and an hour and a half, Castle wishes he’d never, ever asked. He’s learned far more than he ever wanted to know, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to scrub the caustic knowledge from his head and imagination.  For all the disgusting physical manifestations of the alcoholic, worse by far were the stories of their families.  The one continuous narrative is that the family takes far too long to recognise that they can’t save their black sheep until it wants to be saved.  And usually, that means that the alcoholic has to hit rock bottom first, and stay there till the family stops trying to fix it for them.   By that time, he learns, all too often the family has fallen apart, individually or together.

He leaves a good deal more sobered (not an accidental word choice) and disillusioned. He is also a good deal ashamed of his judgemental assumptions.  And finally, he is a good deal more understanding of why Beckett didn’t want to come near his apartment or watch him with Alexis.  It’s more important than ever that he talks to Jim Beckett: that small, half-broken man who’s braver and more determined than Castle could ever have imagined or believed until this morning; in contrast to his daughter, who had originally appeared wholly strong and unbreakably hard, but who now seems to have been more broken and damaged by her father’s previous actions than Castle had ever realised.

He makes his way to the precinct, collecting coffees and a bear claw on the way, which he places neatly in front of Beckett, who appears as ravaged, under some truly artistically deceptive make up, as he might have expected from her state last night. She doesn’t look at all happy to see him.  This is not news.  Every time he shows up it proves to her that her efforts to get rid of him have failed. 

“Morning, Beckett,” he says neutrally.

“Hey,” she mutters. She flicks a half-glance his way, and then goes back to her file.

“More cold cases?”

“Yes.” She chops the word short.

“Good. We can go out to lunch, since you wouldn’t come out yesterday.”

“No. I’m busy.”

Castle looks at her. Beckett does not look at him in return.  “You’re not lunching with Lanie.  Surely you’re not going to work through lunch on cold cases?”

“Yes.”

“You’d rather work on cold cases than have a nice lunch?”

“Yes. I’m not hungry and I don’t want lunch.”  Castle notes the line between her brows and the slight redness of her eyes.  She hasn’t touched the bear claw.  The coffee, however, is gripped between her hands.  His voice is quiet.

“You don’t have to eat. Just come out of the bullpen with me.  I wanna talk to you about last night.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We can talk about it here or we can talk about it somewhere else.”

“Or not talk about it at all. I choose the last.”

“We’re going to talk about it.”

She doesn’t answer. She simply turns back to her file.  She’s too tired to have this fight and he can’t drag her out the bullpen at lunchtime.  Her stomach will invert if she tries to eat: as much from tension as the remnants of the hang-over.  She just wants to finish the day and take her emptied self home to rest.

“Not now, but later, Beckett, we are going to talk about this.” His voice drops further.  “You need to know what you said.”  He looks her straight in the eye.  “You were wrong about me.  I was wrong about you.  Let’s talk, and make it right.”  He reverts to his normal tone and normal volume.  “If you won’t come to lunch, I’m not watching you review cold cases all day.  That’s boring.  Maybe there’ll be a new murder tomorrow.  Call me if a body drops?”

“Yes,” she says, dispiritedly. She doesn’t have a choice about that, Montgomery’s made it clear that she has to. 

Castle stands up, not coincidentally blocking Beckett from the view of Espo and Ryan. He rapidly slides both hands over hers where they are still locked round the coffee cup, and squeezes gently.  “It’ll be okay.  Trust me.”  He lets go of her cold hands, and wanders off.  Beckett watches him leave, tries not to think about the potential for disaster that he represents, and tries harder not to think about the warmth in his enclosing palms.

Castle hadn’t really expected Beckett to come out for lunch with him, and therefore is not disappointed. The conversation he intends to have with her will be much better held in her apartment, with no audience, in any event.  He intends that this particular discussion will include a substantial amount of holding her close and keeping her warm and showing her that he’s a support, not a millstone.  He hopes that she’ll let him in.  In the door, that is.  Into her heart and mind… well, that’s a big ask right now.  They’ve both screwed this up finely, and right now he’s the only one who seems to think it’s fixable.

He pulls out his phone and looks at the new contact he’d put there this morning. He doesn’t want to do this.  But he has to.  How hard can it be, to deal with Beckett’s father?  He takes a deep breath, and dials Jim Beckett.