Uvivi

The darkness before the dawn (Zulu)

There's not a chance in hell she's about to admit it, not even to herself, but Kate Beckett is moping. Oh sure, to anyone that doesn't know her Beckett seems her usual self - brisk, no nonsense, a book firmly closed. The sting of her own words is still a rough edge inside, a place that makes Kate want to curl up and tend to her wounds in private.

I'm not the easiest person to get to know.

And then, how easily she proved herself right. The only man who has ever truly made the effort, ever stuck around, and even he failed to see that there was a tremulous bloom of hope in Kate's chest. Preparedness. For those five minutes, she had been ready to throw herself into whatever this is with Castle. See where the tide took them.

The harpy showing up in her precinct scuppered that before Kate even got the chance to draw a fortifying breath. Well, that's unkind. And untrue. Gina has always been perfectly pleasant to Kate whenever they've spoken together. A laughing undercurrent to the publisher's words as she asked Beckett to please tell Richard to return her calls. As if to say you know what he's like.

Something of a companionship, really; each of them has to grapple with the childish, petulant side of Rick Castle. And, too, each of them is swayed by his charms, willing to put their heart at risk for him. It's probably the worst part, in all honesty.

Beckett can't hate Gina. Can't hate Castle either. Not really. All of that sick, pungent loathing is directed at her own sorry self. How foolish she was to tell him no so many times. Even her shadow, even her boy who never grew up, gave up on her.

"Kate." Lanie says; the tone of her voice suggests it isn't the first time she's tried to get Beckett's attention.

Too easily these days, she spirals down into misery and distraction. Even the boys are noticing. It would be hard for them not to, with the amount of her slack they're having to pick up. "Sorry. Daydreaming. What did you say?"

"I asked if you wanted more wine. But I feel like you're miserable enough without the alcohol."

Two glasses into their evening, Kate has to agree. It's only bringing down the barriers against her own self, letting the truth of her bruised heart rush in and suck her down to drowning.

"Maybe best not."

"Uh-huh. So. What are you gonna do?"

"Do?" Kate glances up at her best friend, a hand coming up to scrub at the furrow between her brows. There's a semi-permanent headache lodging there now, has been for days. Almost from the moment Castle turned his back on her that sharp flare of pain has pulsed in her forehead and temples. "What do you mean?"

Lanie huffs, takes a generous sip of her own wine. "What, are you just gonna mope forever? You gotta go get your man back, Kate."

"He was never mine, you know that." Beckett grits out. Legs folded underneath herself on Lanie's couch and her wrists poking thin and awkward out from the ends of her sweatshirt, Kate feels spidery and ill with it.

Without Castle around to remind her, cast those long and furtive glances at the clock high up on the wall of the bullpen, she has been. . .not the best at remembering to eat enough to actually constitute a meal. And that's ridiculous, because she managed just fine before him and it's just utterly unfair that he strode in to her life and forced her to rearrange everything around him and then he walked back out with just as much ease.

"Girl, please. That man was yours the moment he laid eyes on you. Everyone saw it except you." Lanie is saying now, twirling the stem of her empty glass between two fingers.

Tonight, she showed up uninvited at Kate's door and came inside, brushing past Kate as if she weren't half-blocking the threshold with her body. Although, right now Kate feels fragile as reed grass, and so she really never stood a chance against the hurricane of her best friend.

Grief has a taste. Kate learned this at nineteen, curled up on top of her sheets and biting at the skin of her own hand so her father didn't hear her. There are ways to mask it, ways to smother it with alcohol that she very quickly gave up after she saw what it did to her dad.

The sight of his bloated body sinking down into the bottle will never leave her, is the reason why she is always careful to know her limits, to never stray far from the sharp flint of sobriety.

Now, she swallows hard and wishes she had said yes to more wine. "No, Lanie. I never. . .staked my claim. How was he supposed to know?"

"Honey, I hate seeing you like this." Lanie soothes, a gentle hand curling around Kate's shoulder. "You and Castle have no closure. You have to talk to him, either to tell him that you're crazy about him or to cut your losses. And then you can move forward."

There's no easy way to explain that she's fortified her heart against him already; even if he showed up at her door right now and said he wanted her she isn't sure that she could give in to how dreadfully much she wants him back.

"I can't do that, Lane. It's not fair of me to tell him how I feel if he and Gina are giving it another shot. And maybe he will come back in the fall." She feels like a child. Naïve and silly and hoping that the boy she has a crush on will like her back.

Well, more than a boy. And - more than a crush.

"He's not coming back, Kate." Her best friend says quietly, staring into the belly of her wine glass now. "To watch you and Demming play house? No. He's done."

"But Tom and I aren't-"

"You know that, and I know that, but Castle? He thinks you two are falling for each other."

Oh, Castle. Her heart cries out in sympathy for his. How much Kate has hurt him, parading Demming around the precinct like a shiny new toy. Even Esposito called her out on it, for God's sake. How badly must she have messed up that Javier feels he needs to steer her right again?

Her poor, abused bottom lip is red raw by now, but Kate doesn't even feel it as she sinks her teeth in and lifts her chin to meet Lanie's eyes. "I don't know what to do."

It's with some trepidation that Beckett allows herself to be tugged into an embrace. She's never been big on physical affection, on snuggling, and Lanie knows that. But Lanie often knows what Kate needs way ahead of when Beckett herself realises, so for now she trusts her friend and lays her head against Dr Parish's shoulder.

"Here's what you do. You have this weekend off, right?"

"Yes." Memorial day has come and gone, but Beckett worked the holiday weekend and so Captain Montgomery is forcing her to take this one instead.

"So, you call him. You tell him that you were an idiot to say yes to Demming, that you broke things off, and that you really want to see where things could go with you and him."

Bristling at the thought, Kate shakes her head. "I can't do that to him, Lanie. That's not fair. I won't be the other woman. I won't make him choose."

"Okay, then you call as a friend. Say that you missed him, ask how the book is going. Scope him out. You're a detective. Detect."

That has a reluctant bubble of laughter escaping her, wetter than she would have liked. As if some horrifying clog of moisture and emotion is waiting at the bottom of her throat to come spilling out. "We don't do that. Call just to talk. He'll know something's up."

"I don't know what to suggest then, Beckett." Lanie sighs, exasperation adding an acerbic edge to her words that Beckett knows her friend doesn't really mean.

Kate isn't trying to be awkward. It's just an impossible situation. There's no right answer here, no one path that will make all of her hurt go away and still leave her dignity intact. She will not beg for Castle's affection. "I just have to leave it. Let him decide. If he's happy with Gina then that's good, I'm glad. I want him to be happy."

"Oh Kate." Lanie murmurs, holding her tighter. "You want him to be happy, even if that means walking away from you? You really do have it bad."

Maybe, a couple months down the line when Kate has had time to heal, she might be angry at him for giving up so easily. But right now? She doesn't have the strength, can't force herself to rally past the hurt. "I just have to carry on. Things will go back to how they were before him."

Only, she isn't sure that they can.

Since Castle left, Kate has taken to stopping for coffee on her way in to the precinct in the morning. It's an extra twenty minutes onto her journey each day, but so worth it. The coffee at the precinct is intolerable. Monkey pee in battery acid is not even a little bit hyperbolic.

And that damn espresso machine he bought for the break room. She refused to learn how to use the thing, largely because she liked receiving her coffee from Castle, liked the way he used to puff up with pride and delight at doing this one thing to be useful to her. And now she's stranded, unable to even fix herself a damn cup of coffee without aching around his absence.

So, her first cup of the day comes from the cozy place a couple blocks away from her apartment. And then the rest of the day she can subsist on awful precinct coffee. Not that she's been drinking anywhere near as much as she used to; sleep has been an elusive, hard to capture thing recently, so Kate has cut back her caffeine intake in the desperate and most likely fruitless hope that it will let her get just a few hours rest.

Kate takes the to-go cup from the girl at the counter and offers her a smile, backing up out of the way of a gaggle of tourists eager to claim their own drinks. She's distracted this morning - two weeks since Castle walked out of her life - and so she doesn't check that her path is clear.

She takes a step backwards and bumps up against a body behind her. There's a curse, a female voice, and Kate whirls around with a heartfelt apology thickening her tongue. Only for it to splinter apart as her jaw tightens in surprise. "Gina?"

"Detective." Castle's publisher says tightly, grabbing a handful of napkins to blot at the spill of coffee over her wrist and the counter. It must hurt, that freshly brewed espresso tumbling a scalding path over her skin, but Gina barely flinches.

"I'm so sorry." Kate says, reaching out to take Gina's cup so the woman has both her hands free to deal with the mess Beckett has inadvertently made.

"It's fine."

"What are you doing here? Back in town, I mean." Beckett manages to ask, proud of how clear and strong her voice is.

Whoa.

Kate takes a stumbling step away from the counter and from Gina both, withering a little under the scowl Castle's ex-wife levels on her. She knows the two of them aren't exactly friends, but she really wasn't prepared for the hard edge of irritation meeting her now.

"I left. I can keep track of Rick via calls and email. I don't need to be there for that."

Forcing her forehead to smooth out, her face a careful mask of mild interest, Kate takes a sip of her coffee. It's hot enough to burn her tongue, but that's the way she likes her first mouthful to be. "I thought you guys were. . ."

Reconciling. Sleeping together. Giving it another shot.

All viable options for the end of Kate's sentence, but it looks as if anything she may have said would have left the same sour expression puckering Gina's face. "We were. But he was lovesick, and not for me. I thought, give him a little time. I know he's always fawned over you."

She cuts herself off there, and Kate wonders what else remains unsaid. And, awful as it may be, a little shiver of relief clatters through her. She's not the only one grieving the end of their working relationship. And maybe too, the premature death of a more personal one.

"I'm sorry to hear that. I know he cares about you." Kate manages to say, even if it isn't entirely true. Castle does care, yes, but he also bemoans his ex wife at every available opportunity. She really never expected him to give things with Gina another shot.

Castle's ex turns her nose up at that and snatches her own coffee up from the counter, pushing her way past Kate. It seems as if she's going to leave without a backwards glance, but then she spins on her heel to face Beckett again.

"If he cares about me, he really should try not saying another woman's name when we're in bed together."

Her jaw drops - so do several others in the little coffee shop - and Kate is helpless but to watch Gina cut her way through the queue that snakes lazily around the counter and storm out of the door.

Dumbstruck, she lifts a hand to her cheek, feeling the sting as sharply as if Gina had actually slapped her. And still, her words aren't quite sinking in.

Castle did what?

A/N: At least one more part to this. Probably two. Hopefully soon.