Silver and Gold

A/N: This will *not* be in the Advent universe; instead it will be in the current show timeline. Please expect spoilers for current season seven of Castle (but not for tonight's episode in this specific chapter). Each day of the Advent calendar (December 1-25), please expect a chapter to be posted as my gift to you this holiday season. (Also, check my youtube account - chezchuckles - or tumblr - writingwell - for the song of the day and the Christmas playlist).

Thank you, so very much, for the wonderful generosity of spirit and the wealth of encouragement you all have been to me.

O, to have my life from now on be a poem of new joys.
-Walt Whitman

December 1, 2014 - Here on Earth

Oh, I see the end
Everyone's waiting for death
How do you measure its worth?
Justice delivers its gift here on earth

-Justice Delivers Its Death, Sufjan Stevens

The temperature has fallen all day, raining and miserable, the sun obscured by clouds. Experience has taught Kate Beckett that the first Monday back from Thanksgiving holiday is always like this - too many people made desperate by family and festivity, the worst coming out in them.

December is never kind.

It's so cold out here in the dark. It makes her tired.

Kate pinches the bridge of her nose in a habit she's aware that she's picked up from him, but she unlocks the car and slides behind the wheel, closing her eyes for just a heartbeat. She doesn't want to be here. But where does she want to be?

No answer. So she starts the car, puts it into gear, and just - drives.

As if she could drive away from it.

Her neck aches down into her shoulders, the sharp knots under her scapulae. She pushes them into wings against the back of the driver's seat, rolls her head on her neck, but the car is still bitterly cold and her body stays braced against it.

The rain starts again, spitting against the windshield, and she flips on the wiper blades, the stutter of rubber against the glass crashing into the adjusts the vent towards her but cool air washes over her face. Flinching, she snaps the heat off, waiting for the engine to warm before she'll try it again.

Her thighs ache at their insertion points, transmitting that dull pain into her pelvis and flaring as high as her ribs. Her body is a bruise, the day is a finger that insistently presses against it.

Her phone vibrates in the cupholder and she glances down, registers the text alert from Castle. She doesn't retrieve it, keeps her gloved hands on the wheel, drags her eyes back to the road ahead until she has a moment.

Until she feels like it.

Until the world stops.

And then she's at a standstill. Literally, traffic has stopped moving, creaking brakes and the fog of exhaust. The rain spits and the plastic parts of her dashboard groan, but the light is green ahead. No one moves. She sees the flash of blue lights but no siren.

She tilts her head against the driver's side window and closes her eyes a moment, flares them open again to check the traffic. Cars gridlocked, not much different than any other rush hour heading home. She should have left the car in the precinct's garage, walked to the subway, toughed out the cold even this late at night.

But she wasn't thinking, and a lonesome walk seemed the worst idea. Mentally.

Finally, the car has begun to lose its sharp edges, the air breathable again. She pulls off the glove on one hand, picks up her phone from the console - an automatic gesture, needing something to do. She finds it in her hand and goes ahead, unlocks the screen and calls him.

"Hey there," he answers. Voice warm, a little tired maybe. Thanksgiving was wonderful, and full, in so many ways, and they are both tired.

"Hey, you messaged? I'm in traffic."

"I did. I'm out of tarragon and I'm halfway through dinner prep. Can you stop by and get some? Since you're on your way."

"Tarragon," she says faintly, falls into silence, staring ahead.

"Kate?"

"Right. Yes. You're making dinner?" Not more food. She wants to eat sandwiches for a week. Subsist on coffee.

"Turkey stew; we have leftovers. Needs tarragon. And celery seed, but I'm doing something else for that-"

"Okay," she says quickly, just to cut it off. "Okay, I'll be - however long. Traffic is a mess."

"Thanks. And it's not a huge rush."

He hangs up and she drops her hand to her lap, heavy, stares ahead, the phone a shape against her skin and nothing more.

She blinks, puts on her turn signal to change lanes. If the traffic will open up for her. Might not.

Would be the kind of day she's had.

Kate has to park somewhere.

This is the worst. Sometimes her love affair with this city feels like an abusive relationship: she's battered and bruised and making excuses for it.

She would hope that after all this time, it would recognize what December does to her, what January nastily promises, and it would give way, turn tender towards her, a free pass just this once.

But, no. She's not going to find a spot. It's impossible. Nothing is convenient, the evening is already dark and cold and raining, and she wants - most of all - to go home.

At least she knows now, doesn't she? Where she wants to be.

So she turns around, starts for home.

The terrible thing - the thing she doesn't want to admit - is that home is a little amorphous right now. When Thanksgiving has gone and faded, home cants towards her apartment with its brick and metal and that painting that's as troubled as her soul. Fortunately, eleven months out of the year home is Castle's loft and that gorgeous, wide-open kitchen and his Boba Fet scaring her in the master bathroom and their sinfully soft, exorbitant-thread count sheets.

Tonight, unfortunately, what calls to her is brick and metal and troubled art.

But she drives to Castle's loft because that is their home, and she swipes her card for the underground garage. She parks in the reserved spot that they rent just for the times when she drives the precinct car, and then she gets out, locks it with the key fob, and heads for the outside door rather than the elevator that will lead to the lobby.

Once more into the breach.

The wind rips the heavy door out of her hands and slams it back again. She manages to escape injury only with her deft maneuvering, rocking on her heeled boots as she sidesteps. She shoves her hands down into her pockets, shoulders drawing in against the misting rain.

She'll walk to the corner store a few blocks down, get his stew spice, and then walk back. She wants to give herself the chance to stew herself, brood in the darkness and the cold wet until she's sick of it, until her own exasperation sloughs it off.

She doesn't like to bring it home with her, this... lack.

She's lacking. Missing pieces. Maybe it was Castle's abduction and two-month disappearance, but she thinks that's only shined a spotlight on what was already disjointed in her.

Her mother's murder is solved; justice rests in the hands of the grand jury who will indict Senator Bracken, and after that, a jury trial of his peers. The evidence is solid and unassailable. She has no concerns. It feels over.

She feels over.

She just got married, for goodness sake, but she feels done. No new doors to open, no great unknowns, no mystery. The winter lays too heavily on her shoulders, cuts into her bones, reminds her that her mom is still dead and Kate has rested so much of her life in the hands of blind justice that she's never actually lived.

She's been measuring her worth by this one thing - justice - and it's out of her hands completely. It's even been the thing that defined her with Castle and it's done; it's gone. This summer, she traded one consuming passion for another, the woman left behind, repurposed the search for her mother's killer into the search for her fiance, and now that he's back and they're not searching, it's made it so obvious.

She doesn't know what she is any longer. She's not twenty-five and making detective and filled with all this potential; she's thirty-five and staring hard at forty - her husband is ten years older than that - and she's seeing the end of things.

She feels like she's read the end of the book.

Hard to see any future when the novel comes to a close. Castle has rewritten her ending, but after the final period-

Kate flinches.

Will their future even happen? If they ever manage it, she's looking at a high risk pregnancy, a greater chance of gestational diabetes and complications, lower quantity and quality of eggs, and what has she been doing with her life but wasting time?

Her hands are shaking in her coat pockets.

She had this plan. She had this plan last year that - that they'd marry in the spring and it would be beautiful and perfect and then she would just stop actively trying to prevent things, let nature take its course, and what with her age and all those other things, just - see what happened. See if it was even possible, really, after everything, to have back what she gave up.

She had this wonderful, hopeful plan, and even though she never said - she has never told him, hey, let's get pregnant, it was always in the back of her mind that they would.

She had these dreams for Christmas this year. And then he disappeared.

Well, too bad. That dream is not what winter holds for them.

Really, this might be it. This might just be the rest of their life, and she's going to have to come to terms with it. She has Rick; he's here, he loves her, they're finally married.

That's a pretty beautiful gift this winter. That's more than she could imagine back in the summer, when hope felt impossible to keep.

Don't get greedy, Kate.

When she finally walks through the door of the loft, a wave of warm air falls over her, tightens the skin of her chapped lips. She parts her mouth and inhales the scent of stew simmering on the stove, closing her eyes.

"Oh, finally," Castle says.

Her eyes snap open in time to see him come for her at the door - come for the spice in the bag dangling from her fingers. But he ducks in and pecks her cheek, turns away again for the kitchen before she can touch him.

He tosses off his gratitude as he goes. "You're golden, Kate. Thanks."

She's left empty-handed at the front door, and she gazes after him for a long moment before she can find it in herself to move.

She slowly unwinds the scarf from her neck and watches the end trail across the wooden floor. Holidays and spices. She thumbs the wooden toggle of her wool coat and works it free, hands drifting up to unbutton the rest. A quick trip to the grocery store.

"Kate?"

She glances up. Castle stands in the middle of the kitchen with the open spice container poised above his concoction, and he's frowning at her.

"Yeah?" she asks, bewildered by her own her thoughts. They spill out before she can stop them. "You know you had Nikki Heat going for spices when her mother was murdered. Phone call in the spice aisle."

His eyebrow goes up. "I - yes. I did." Hesitation makes his face fluid, like there's not a good mask for this. "Were you just thinking about that?"

"Maybe so," she murmurs. She shakes her head. "Did you need something?"

He smiles now, back at ease, knowing this one. "You think black pepper will be too overpowering in this?"

She opens her mouth in a kind of helpless way, fingers still on the top toggle of her coat, unable to move forward or back. Black pepper and she was thinking maybe she'd find him bleeding out in the kitchen? - was that it?

"To replace the celery seed I don't have."

"I could have bought celery seed too," she says, frowning back at him.

Is this their life? Is this it? He sees only what he wants to see.

"No, it's okay. But come taste-test this when you've settled. Let me know."

She nods absently and shrugs off the coat, moves to hang it up, her mind snagged by dinner, pulled out of the cold. Finally beginning to settle.

When she comes into the kitchen, Castle reaches out a hand and tugs on her hip, bringing her up against him. His one-armed hug is loose and familiar, and she takes a breath of him.

Turkey and carrots and potatoes - that's all she smells, but it's pretty good.

His hand brings up a wooden spoon, his mouth opening as if waiting for her to follow his lead. She mimics, and the spoon touches her bottom lip, allowing her to swallow some of the stew he's made.

"Just fine," she pronounces. Turkey stew. It will work; she doesn't know what else to say. She wishes she had taken her shoes off; the boots are pinching her toes and she's as tall as he is like this. Equal.

"Too bland?"

She starts to shake her head but she stops, finally meets his eyes.

He looks sad.

She bites her bottom lip, wonders if he knows anyway, what she's been thinking, what hasn't happened, what has. What they've missed out on.

They're missing out.

"Kate?"

She nods fast, rubs her knuckle under her eye but it's dry. Her chest is tight and closing in on her lungs.

"Black pepper it is, then," he murmurs. "Spice it up."

"Yeah. Sure. That will do it."

The spoon goes back into the stew simmering on the stove and she watches his body move as he reaches for the spice rack. His shoulders are so broad, flexing under that green plaid shirt she loves the best.

She gives in and cants into his back, laying her cheek to the top of his shoulder. Castle goes still and waits there, and she closes her eyes a moment, trying to breathe past it.

Neither of them have said a word about what they don't talk about.

He takes in a breath she can feel.

"Kate? Forget the black pepper. What about jalapeños?"

She straightens up and he turns around, a hopeful crookedness to his smile. She gives a weak one back, eyebrow raising. "Jalapeños?"

He waits, but his hand comes to her hip, his thumb stroking the skin just over the waistband of her slacks, like he knows without her having to speak a word. He knows they're not getting that Christmas dream, not this year. Maybe not for a while.

Maybe not ever.

"A whole bunch of 'em. Come on, Kate. Let's live a little. Turkey leftovers are so boring. Let's see what happens."

"Okay," she says softly. "Let's do it. Burn our mouths off."

He grins, darts forward to land a swift, hard kiss to her lips. When he pulls back, he lifts his hand to her face and skims imaginary hair back behind her ear, tucking into place what's already in place.

"Go change, Kate. I'll have it ready in a few minutes."

They don't even need to talk. It'll all settle out.

It's just the darkness and a winter's rain.

After dinner, she takes a hot shower to complement the burn in her lips and across her tongue, hoping to scald out the melancholy as well. When she jumps out, the bathroom is nicely humid, keeping her warm, and she dries off, pads nude to the vanity to gather her lotion.

She rubs it into her legs with Castle in and out, haunting her nightly routine with these flickering looks. She eyes him back as he strips for his own shower, making promises without words. He winks when he steps into the stall, and she finds herself smiling.

It feels like the first smile in hours, muscles unused, and that's a little pathetic of her.

While he's in the shower, she goes into the bedroom to wait on him in a simple t-shirt, rubbing chaptstick into her lips, letting herself get a little lost in the sensation, skin both flushed and rapidly cooling in the dark room. She goes hunting for that NYPD sweatshirt he stole from the locker room for her once, searching through their closet amid the piles of clothes from her place that never got put away.

She has to get on her knees before the big bureau at the back, his efficient closet organization system great if they actually kept track of things. She tugs the bottom drawer open where it was stuck, grunts when she realizes it's filled with a mixture of junk.

No, not junk. She pauses as she spies the box, reaches in cautiously to open the flap.

All the little things from her desk at the precinct when she moved to DC - they didn't get moved back to the 12th with her. Mostly it's handfuls of paper clip chains and sticky notes he wrote that she's saved, the paper football, the baseball signed by Torre that Castle plopped down and they played catch with while trying to puzzle out a case, a string of Mardi Gras beads, the animal eraser he taped to her computer screen.

A lot of goofy Castle. She sorts through the mementos, already forgetting why she never brought them back with her, maybe hoping for new memories to junk up her drawers.

But then she finds it.

She's struck by the incongruity first. It doesn't belong here. It's out of place in their closet, with these things touched by Castle, and it should be in the drawer of her desk inside the 12th. It's a homicide thing, or has become that, and then she's immediately sad that the funny little stick-man that her father made to make her smile that grieving day on the beach has become a homicide thing.

Kate reaches for it, closes her fingers around the smooth driftwood. Her dad did this for her back before the drinking, when neither of them really knew what living without mom would be like, when the case was simply a couple of detectives telling them, we'll do what we can.

She stands, wanders out of the closet, turning the figure over and over in her fingers as she sinks to the bed. The possibility for joy rests in her very hands.

Castle must be setting a land speed record for that shower, because the water has shut off now and she can hear him whipping the towel off the heating rack.

She waits, the strange doll loose in her hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the doorway until he comes through.

The towel is low on his hips and he brings the humid bath out with him. He sees her first, notes the discovery she's made, but he reaches for his pajama pants and drops the towel with some intention.

"I think I kinda killed the mood, babe," she apologizes. A weak smile. Her fingers fumbling with the wood-stick-man.

He nods. "For now." So hopeful, this one. "Never know."

She waits, watches him dress for bed, run his fingers through his hair, toss the towel back towards the bathroom. It hits the floor and she usually hates that but a weight has settled over her that makes it seem so trivial a thing to care about.

She's sinking in the bell jar, domed under her own circular thoughts. This was the worst day to find the stick figure, a mocking reminder of the things she promised herself back when she was nineteen and deep in grief. Promises for hope, for joy, promises to herself to be more for her mother's sake.

"All right, enough," Castle husks. He comes to stand before her and reaches out, plucks the stick-man from her fingers. She glances up in bewilderment, and he takes her hand where it's empty, draws her to her feet. "Come with me."

"Are we going somewhere?"

"Don't you want to be surprised?"

"Honestly, no."

"Just the office," he smiles, still tugging. "I just got an idea, and you know my ideas are brilliant."

She doesn't remark, just follows after him, through the open door and into his study. The video game controllers are still set up, the television down, an empty glass next to his chair. The warm leather and the spice-scents of lemon and whiskey and books envelop her.

Castle takes her by the hips and nudges her to sit on his desktop, right in the middle of the blotter. A raised eyebrow is what she gets, as if he's asking for her indulgence, and she gestures him to go ahead. Professor time.

She draws her feet up into his chair and props her elbows on her knees, facing the shelves that peer into their bedroom. He has another antique typewriter - he must have gotten that one recently. She's struck by how little she knows about him sometimes, how little he reveals even though he talks nonstop.

"When did you get that?" she nods.

"Been waiting for you to notice," he says easily. A grin that she rolls her eyes at. "Right before Thanksgiving. I won it on ebay; isn't it so cool?"

"So cool," she echoes, finding her lips beginning to curl. He's still got her stick-man in his fingers but he's pulling a book off the shelf. He hides the title from her, and she lets him have his moment, though she thinks it's one of her books.

"Seeing this little guy," he starts, waving the stick-man at her. "Reminded me of this guy." The book comes up, warm blue, dark blue binding, but he flashes it too fast for her to read the title.

"We should put him in the shadow box with our shells," she says, half-hearted. She's trying to guess what comes next, what he's looking for from her. She doesn't want to let him down.

"No, actually, I was thinking he's more a winter baby, deserves his own place of honor."

Kate freezes but Castle isn't looking at her; he's flipping through his book looking for something. Winter baby. She makes an effort to keep her shoulders straight, feigning a blase countenance she doesn't feel.

"Here it is," he grins, eyes flicking up to catch hers. He hands her the man of driftwood and she closes her fingers around it, careful of her own jumbled emotions.

"Here's what?" she asks, because he wants her to.

"Poem of Joys," he husks. His eyes keep drifting to her, over her, and she has to take a mental inventory - but no, she's just in a t-shirt, ill-fitting, she only made welcoming eyes at him in the bathroom as she smoothed lotion over her legs - and yet he's caressing her with every look as if she were naked.

"Poem of Joys?"

"Walt Whitman," he says, nodding to the driftwood man, the lonely sticks cobbled together into a squat and low face. Oh. The possibility for joy; a poem of joys.

"Clever," she gives him.

His lips quirk, an incline of his head. "Well, Whitman adapted for you."

"Adapted for me," she murmurs. He had a reading a few months ago and she went with him, sat near the back while his rumble sank through the room like low tide, ebbing. He knows what she likes.

"'O my soul supreme,'" he starts softly. "That's you, Kate."

Me.

"You know such joys - Joys of the free and lonesome heart - the tender, gloomy heart."

"Ouch," she sighs.

His hand comes to her calf, wraps slowly, stroking up and down. "You know the joy of the solitary walk - the spirt bowed yet proud-" His fingers rise to catch her jaw and stroke, and her heart fumbles at the look on his face.

"Castle," she whispers. Her body is electric.

I sing the body electric.

His fingers are dancing at her neck, to that place under her jaw that makes her eyes want to fall shut. His words go on. "You know the suffering, and the struggle. The agonistic throes, the ecstasies - joys of solemn musings, day or night..."

She chews on the inside of her lip, but his thumb tugs it free. His kiss, when it comes, is soft, light, it holds more words than breath.

"Prophetic joys of better," he incants. "Loftier love's ideals - the Divine Wife - the strong, eternal, perfect-for-me Partner."

She sucks in a breath and pushes her mouth into his, a hand coming up to guide her to him, his cheeks rough where the shave is wearing off. His body is giving off heat, a wall before her, the book of Whitman a hard edge at her shoulder.

He rubs a kiss at her jaw. "Joys all thine own, undying one - joys worthy of you, my soul."

"Rick," she chokes, twining her arms around his neck and drawing into his body. Her legs wrap around his hips and he palms her thigh, his breath harsh.

"Don't be sad, Kate."

"I'm not," she promises. "I won't be."

"'O, soul, while I live, to be the ruler of life - not its slave. To meet life as a powerful conqueror.'" His hand slides up her side to her shoulder, then buries in the hair at her nape. "You are, Kate. We are. Masters of our fate."

"I know," she insists. "I just - need reminders. Like this driftwood figure, like you. Possibilities for joy."

Eager voice, wanting, rasping in her ear: "I want to give you possibilities every day."

Kate closes her eyes, her heart breaking. "I love you."

His arms are tighter, his fingers cupping her skull; he has such leashed power in his body that sometimes it sends a skitter of thrills up her spine.

"I know the holidays make it harder," he says. "But we can do this. We just live the life we want. 'Joys all our own, undying.'"

She nods against his neck, pulls back to find the book that's catching her in the shoulder. His finger is holding his place and she takes it from him, skims her eyes over the lengthy poem of joys.

"I think your adaption has strayed," she laughs. She has to laugh; she's going to break apart if he keeps quoting Whitman, if poetry is how he pushes through to meet her. His own novels are enough sly seduction, though she doesn't think she can stand to read Nikki Heat for a season. "Strayed quite a lot. But I love it."

"Only where necessary," he rumbles. Oh, her soul, that husk in his voice and how his hands grip her hips when he wants her so badly he can't speak.

Her gaze falls to the end stanza and she mouths the words to memorize it. No, to learn it. To press it into her own soul like a flower in a book, a memorial for today, the first bleak day of December, when her husband sought after her and found her, like no man has ever done.

She closes the book, settles it carefully on the desk beside her. Castle is all watchful waiting, so she leans in, bracing her arms at his chest to feel the swell of his ribs as he breathes, faintly the tenor of his heart beating below.

Kate lets her cheek skim his on the way to a kiss at his jaw. She pauses at his ear.

"'O, to have my life from now on," she promises, "be a poem of new joys.'"

(My hope for you is that each day is a poem of new joys)