A Season in Hell

"My heart has known the coup de grace. Ah! I did not foresee it."
-'A Season in Hell,' Arthur Rimbaud

prompt from Panda09: where Castle takes the bullet for Kate at the end of season three

X

Castle slammed into her.

Her head bounced.

When Kate felt herself hit the grass, whiplash wrenched her skull even as his body collapsed over her.

She groaned. Breath was gone. Brain rattled. He was heavy, and her dress uniform constricting in the heat, and she was instantly suffocated. She smelled burnt ozone; she felt him pressing on her ribs and pelvis, achingly weighted down.

Without breath, a stillness came over the scene, a horror movie on mute, the sky wheeling, no clouds, no soundtrack, two birds working wings across the blue.

And then gasped in her breath, wheezing. A woman had screamed, was screaming. Finally the percussive came - a gunshot, delayed by the contortion of time that was Rick Castle's collision with her, and now his body was a staggering weight as the whole scene came into focus.

Gun.

Beckett struggled under him; he groaned. Some long-held breath it was, a groan of release. Release. Letting go. Giving up.

"Castle?" she shouted, trying to find something of him. Her voice echoed in her own ears, tinny, as if there'd been an explosion. "Castle. Castle, get up."

Ka-ate. The collapse of her name in his breath had her gripping him on top of her. His head lifted, crashed down again. His mouth at her ear. Kate, love you.

"Rick," she croaked.

Her arm was caught between them. She clutched his suit jacket with her other hand and worked herself free, brought her hand up to grip the back of his head. Sweat-damp neck, short hair, the strange give of his skin. She pulled him up to see his face. His eyes were open for only an instant, open but sinking shut. His lips slack, Kate.

"Castle." She skimmed her hand down from his neck and immediately the blood soaked her palm, slick and hot at his upper back. "Cas-Castle." Blood pumping out of him, out of him.

Horror poured through her.

And then people's hands were gripping Castle's shoulders; it was her father and one of the pall bearers - someone - trying to move Castle off of her. She scrambled out from under him, but she kept her hands at that fleshy, wet place, horror a taste in the back of her throat that threatened to rise.

She saw his daughter struggling through the ring of funeral-goers, Martha just behind.

"Get them away," she croaked. Skimming her hands over his back, his head and torso pressed against her thighs. "Keep them. Away. Castle? No, don't turn him-"

She had a grip on his shoulder, kept them from moving him. Bullet in the back, the spine, his neck, blood soaking through his shirt now and she felt the heat of it soaking her pants. She pressed her hands harder into the entrance wound.

"Lanie?" she yelled. "Lanie, I need you-"

"I'm here, I'm here, oh, God, Kate; he's-"

"He's been shot," Kate fought. "Help me. Help me."

"Put him flat, on the ground. Roll him over."

"But his back-" More hands , prying at him, ignoring her. The heave and shift - the heft of him, the sheer size as he came away from her thighs.

"Chest compressions," Lanie clipped. "Right now."

CPR; last ditch effort. But she had training. She could do this. Count.

She pressed the heel of her hand to his sternum, the other hand on top, laced her fingers together, waiting. Lanie had his head tilted back, mouth open, sweeping with her finger before lowering for that first breath.

Kate's hands were blood-soaked.

She stained everything.

X

Alexis screamed at her, lunging forward. Martha violently held her back, a brittleness to her voice that wounded Beckett more than the girl's indignation. This is not a worthwhile use of time, Alexis.

She wasn't worth it. Kate clutched her elbows and kept her arms close to her body. Half in dress blues, half out. Hair falling down over her ears and neck, hat lost in the grass, pins in the race across the cemetery with Ryan and Espo, chasing a man who'd long since gone.

She shouldn't have come like this. Straight from the chase, still blood-stained.

She'd had an update for his family about the sniper. Why had she thought they would care at all about the sniper? She wasn't bringing news that said he's fine, this never happened. She was superfluous.

Beckett turned back to Ryan, sharply shook her head. He nodded. She meant then to go, to push past the ED waiting room and back to the police investigation, but Ryan stopped her, standing forcibly in her way.

"Ryan-"

"No," he said very quietly. "We're at a standstill. We're waiting on fingerprints. You should - you could stay."

She actually paused. "No, his-" daughter doesn't want me here. "I can't."

"You could," Ryan said again, eyes so wide with innocence. He wasn't. He was just very good at playing a certain role. Why he'd been undercover in Narcotics for so long; he was the baby everyone believed. Didn't mean that it didn't work on her. Ryan gave her another eager look. "He's our partner. Someone should-"

"Yes," she got out, throat closing up again. She'd passed off-duty officers in the front lobby, and she realized now why they'd been here. Wall of blue for one of their own. He was. "He saved my life."

Ryan only studied her, as if urging her to make the right decision.

She clenched her hand around her phone. "But when the fingerprints come in-"

"You know it will be a dead end."

"What about traffic cams-?"

"Still nothing. This was a pro, boss. You heard Javi."

She nodded, swallowing past the tightness in her throat. "Text me. I'll - be here until we have something."

Ryan looked pleased with her; she wasn't doing it to please him. She wanted - craved - being out there, forward movement, doing something. But this wasn't about her. This was Castle. He was one of them, he was her partner; he had saved her life.

He had jumped in front of a bullet for her, one she hadn't even seen coming. He'd had her back; she was supposed to have his.

If anything happens, you'd take care of her, right?

Ryan patted her shoulder and turned to leave, back to the precinct where all they'd be doing was wait. She clutched her elbows and realized blood still crusted the fine cracks in her skin, blood swiped at ineffectually by crime scene wipes so that it smeared pink along her inside wrist. Under her nails.

Alexis shouldn't see this.

She stepped out of the waiting room and scuttled down the hall, trying not to tremble as she looked at her phone. It was hot from being overused, in the sun, in her car - the battery was red. She texted Lanie, asking for a change of clothes, asking for an update - Lanie had gone ahead in the ambulance. And then she put her phone away. She'd have to find a sympathetic nurse with a cord, charge her phone before too long.

Castle had been shot.

Kate leaned back against the wall, tilting her head up to gulp down breath.

Castle had been shot. She'd felt the impact, she still felt the impact. Her skin was stained red just as the inside of her lids - where she saw it happen again and again.

She hadn't even seen the sniper, hadn't seen it coming. Just felt herself thrust backward by force, the slam of her head-

Beckett lifted a hand and touched the swollen place at her forehead where the skin was hot - impact with his own forehead. His own body a shield.

She shivered hard and hunched in, pressing her phone to her chest as if it might help her breathe easier.

Nothing would help.

There were red fingerprints smeared on the white case.

"Detective Beckett."

She straightened up sharply and turned. Alexis was there, just down the hall with her arms crossed over her chest, blue eyes swimming. "Gram said to tell you."

Her heart dropped. "Tell me."

"He's out of surgery."

"Alive?" she gasped.

Alexis blinked tears and smeared them with her fingers. "A-alive."

Kate shook once, all she would allow herself, and then she nodded. "Thank you. For telling me."

Alexis retreated to the waiting room, still pushing her thumbs under her eyes to catch her tears. The moment she cleared the threshold, Kate sank back against the wall, sank, sank, sank, all the way down, dropping hard to the floor with her knees pressed against her chest. She put her bruised forehead to her thighs and closed her eyes.

It was supposed to have been her. Her bullet.

But he was alive.

X

Beckett followed them upstairs, not sure why she was, only that her feet moved after them. The nurse's directions were competent and useful, and when Martha turned the corner into the ICU waiting room, the overstuffed, industrial-fabric chairs and the scattering of well-thumbed magazines over wood-laminate tables was both heartening and depressing all in one.

Beckett stood. Out of place. Then she sat in a chair in one corner. Martha and Alexis flocked like wounded and abandoned geese during spring migration, long-necked and flapping, in tandem but getting nowhere.

He would be rolled up to ICU now. The elevators couldn't be seen from here, but there was a patient express lift that went from the Emergency Department to ICU five floors up. They wouldn't be able to see him anyway.

There was some time. Waiting, appropriately, inside the waiting room. The moments blurred. Beckett directed traffic from her phone, having to step out any time it vibrated in her numb fingers. She leaned against the wall and messaged Esposito to have another look at the cemetery grounds, and she swallowed back the urge to walk out of here.

Run. Run away. But she was tethered. Every time she paced the hall down to the visitors' elevator, so close, everything within reach, she turned without around and headed back.

She answered Ryan's call. Gave clipped instructions he had already surmised himself and instituted. He was updating her, he said; he was only letting her know where they stood.

Basically, they had nothing. Basically. Beckett still held the belief that if she was only there - at her precinct - they would have something. Something at all.

It was unfair. And delusional.

Controlling.

So she stalked back to the waiting room and hesitated on the threshold a moment too long - a nurse approached her first.

No, them, Beckett gestured. Martha and Alexis rose, brushing right by her. She sank back into that lone seat and listened, part but not a part.

His daughter and his mother would be allowed back for fifteen minutes at a time. Alexis went first, and whatever Beckett had thought might happen with Martha alone, none of that occurred. Neither of them spoke. She had never seen Martha so washed out, so blank.

Beckett sat stiffly in the chair until Alexis appeared around the corner and Martha switched off, and if she had thought Alexis would share good news with her, he's okay, he's awake, he's breathing, she was sorely mistaken.

Beckett stood and hesitated when Alexis sat down, perhaps still hoping for that word, but it didn't - and it wouldn't - come. She watched the girl for one moment longer, delaying the inevitable, and then she escaped out of the lobby and headed for the elevators again.

She saw Lanie had texted her back, offering to peek at Castle's chart and look in on him, so Beckett availed herself of that favor instead. Which meant she was still in her bloodied uniform, though thankfully the dark, thick material kept the worst of it from showing. But she needed a shower, and a fresh change of clothes, and she needed to be back at the Twelfth, going after the sniper.

The man had shot her partner.

She needed to know if he was okay, but she wasn't going to be allowed in on that loop. She was a detective with the NYPD, not family, and she knew her job, and she knew exactly how to do it. That she could do. That she had never been found wanting, never lacked. That was her skill set, and this - whatever this was - wasn't it.

She would do her job.

Beckett hit the call button for the elevator, gathering the strands of her control with a shaky force of will.

She pulled out her phone and her thumb hovered over her list of recent messages, waiting for that old decisiveness, the moment her thoughts became clear and converted into definitive action.

Is he okay?

The elevator doors opened and she didn't step on.

Is he breathing on his own?

The elevator waited, timed to the considerable endeavor of a patient's laborious boarding, and she stood there, not moving.

Can he open his eyes?

Beckett swallowed and let her phone go dark.

She turned and glanced down the long, wide, overly-bright hallway towards the ICU waiting room.

If she left now, if she went back to the precinct and the job she knew and knew she could excel at, if she left him now-

They would all know exactly why; they would want her to. Go catch the bastard that did this, Detective Beckett. Alexis might actually look her in the eye when she did.

And yet.

Beckett remained in the hall, and she did not press the call button again.

But she didn't walk back to the waiting room either.

X