Wintersong

an Advent-style story

for the soundtrack, check out my channel on utube: chezchuckles

(current to season eight)

December 1

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December never felt so wrong

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When the bell rings over the door at Remy's, Kate Beckett lifts her head from her booth in the back and feels her world shift on its axis and turn, orienting as if to the sun.

No one can know what we're doing.

Except now Castle knows. He knows what they're doing. Everything is out there.

And he's here.

Her breath catches at the slope of his shoulders, the turn of his head. He doesn't see her, and she's alone in the shadows trying to finish up notes for a meeting in the morning.

It's a coincidence, it really is happenstance. After a lonely Thanksgiving, they've made eyes at each other in a crowded room and he's touched her hand at the precinct when he brought in a 'citizen's arrest', but so far he's played it straight.

So straight that sometimes it takes her aback, catches her off-guard, the civility of his eyes, the polite smile.

(Is it really that easy? Fake separation and real reconciliation, all in one twenty-second confession. I was wrong, you were right. And now they're copacetic and everything is fine even if the city thinks they're on the rocks, even if her own father is calling her to 'talk sense' into her.

It's not easy.)

From where she sits, she's encased in a back booth with its dark wood and she can study him as he sits down. Remy's is always still and quiet this late at night, and she has plans to close them up, work until her fingers cramp, knocking back cups of coffee for the warmth.

Castle puts his elbows on the table, his back to her, rests his chin in his fists. His face is in profile, but she sees the way his eyes close as if releasing it all at the end of the day.

Her heart hurts.

In a rather joyless Monday, she missed a CompStats meeting in favor of what she thought would be a lead, and then spent all day today answering to her superiors and trying to catch up. It's happening more and more the closer they get to LockSat, these threads that unravel to nothing. It leaves her scrambling to get a foothold in the work of the Twelfth. She's spent the last few hours poring over the meeting's recorded minutes, taking notes in a cramped hand in the very back of the diner.

But in the midst of a workload that won't quit, Castle is a relief.

Her husband. Hunched in a booth near the front. Here with her but not with her.

This is somehow harder, having him and not having him.

Like it's too good to be true, like she might ruin it anyway, like her worst nightmares are waiting around the corner. Observing him in his natural state, she can see how much it's taking a toll on him as well.

His head lifts and his fingers shift to touch the window at his shoulder, a line in the frost as if he might make designs, might draw a heart, and then write their names inside.

But he doesn't; his hand drops back to the table. The waitress approaches, and once he's ordered, stillness falls on his shoulders like a mantle.

He's not usually the man for quiet. Or sober reflection. But it seems like he's doing both.

The winter outside seeps in through the window, leaching the warmth from her blood. Kate can't keep her eyes away from him, tugging the lapels of her coat tighter around her to ward off the chill. Her coffee has gone cold, lost its magic. Castle is better than coffee, if only she could reach out and touch...

His elbows on the table, he rubs his hands down his face. His head tilts forward. Shoulders hunch. His aloneness is a blanket of snow, sifting out the sharper edges, dulling his features.

She takes a stinging breath and makes her decision, foolish, dangerous as it might be. She gathers her laptop, the notes, all of her paperwork, sliding it into the satchel he bought for her in celebration that night. All those nights, the warmth of them held like a candle, bright and strong.

How precarious their time together, how fragile her happiness.

How fragile his.

She misses him more now, together but not together. Their time apart might be mutually agreed upon, but it doesn't change the fact of the missing.

She grips the briefcase and pockets her phone, rises from the booth. Kate threads through the tables and chairs, the empty places, the scarred wooden tops. They're the last two people in the place, and her movements don't go unnoticed.

His head comes up, his hands come down. Surprise colors his face, makes his eyes hesitant. He glances surreptitiously around and then grabs for her, fingers hooking in the pocket of her coat. "Kate."

She can't be doing this. In public, so many eyes, so many witnesses. They agreed on the ground rules before Thanksgiving, how dangerous it is this time.

"Sit?" he whispers.

She sinks down across from him despite her best intentions, settles the leather satchel on the seat next to her. She lays her hands on the table, studying him, trying to gather any kind of self-control she can possibly muster. He seems to be doing the same. Waiting on her to start. "Rick."

His shoulders come down and he eases back in the booth, released, his eyes trailing to the view from the window, the lonely dark and the winter that braces. She doesn't know how to take that, his eagerness to have her and yet his resignation now that she's here.

"I've missed you," he sighs, as if speaking to no one, as if telling a secret to the night.

"I miss you, too." Still misses him. Even together, they're not together.

His hands are folded in his lap, and even though she can't see them, she knows the set of his wide fingers and the thickness of his knuckles, knows how they look clasped around hers.

She knows so much, every line radiating from his eyes when they're happy, every furrow in his brow when he's frustrated. She has seen his heart breaking in his eyes, and she never meant for that to happen, never meant to make it so hard.

She knows so much, and as he proved to her, she knows so little.

But what she knows so fully, so intimately, is that she can't live with the loss of him.

And sometimes, it feels like she's lost him.

"What did you order?" she asks, seeking him, hoping to find. Ask and seek and knock. She's looking for an open door. "Enough for me?"

The corner of his mouth crooks in something sheepish, and he declines to comment. But the waitress returns at just that moment with a plate of french fries and a milkshake.

Kate presses a fist over her mouth as he refuses to meet her eyes.

That's her order.

Not his.

"I miss you," he grumbles, and his mouth twists, frustration through amusement. But not.

It's not funny.

He shakes his head and shrugs.

She slides a french fry from the precarious stack. Castle tips the ketchup towards her and she dips the end, bends the fry in the middle to push it into her mouth.

He nudges the milkshake her way and she hesitates, but he's already sitting back, a deep satisfaction on his face, as he always has when he can somehow provide for her basic needs. How he wants her to need him, how she's never going to be that person.

She licks salt from her thumb and then touches the straw, fiddling with it before she gives in and samples the milkshake.

Strawberry.

Oh, Castle. It's her side of things, and him doing it alone.

She stretches a hand across the table at the same instant he's reaching for her and their fingers collide, tangle, mesh. Already she can take a deeper breath, just clutching his hand, and he looks relieved.

"I'm not sure what I'm allowed to do here," he says. His voice is rough and he takes a breath to clear it. "But I'm done with asking for permission. I'm more of an 'ask for forgiveness' kind of guy anyway." His fingers curl around hers, tightening, lips curling in that same way. Something desperate to it that makes her heart nudge up to her throat.

She sighs. "I'm still your wife."

"Just not my partner."

She has no response for that. Because it's true in some ways, but not in others. For right now, they can't be partners. He can't be investigating this case on his own, he doesn't have those resources, he will only get himself killed. A knife to his guts at his own Christmas party; she's had that nightmare more than once. Or just - vanished. Another car accident but this time no trace, not a whisper.

Just lost.

"We talked about this," she says, hesitating.

"Yeah." He nods, his jaw working. "I'd still like to help, regardless of the risk. If you're in trouble, I'll do whatever it takes-"

"And that's why I am taking this so seriously, Castle. I am responsible for what I ask of you, what you do for me because you love me. I won't put you - us - in jeopardy just so I can be broken."

"That's not how I meant that," he slumps.

She tries to shrug, but she feels wounded. It hurt, that truth. "I thought about what you said. When everything fell apart with our best lead, I couldn't get it out of my head. I realized that I don't even think of the things I could have. I only think in terms of what - what I can't."

"Kate," he sighs.

She stares at his hands on top of the table, at her fingers over his. "I don't know why I'm like this."

"This? This is who you are. Who I love. Even when you frustrate the hell out of me." His fingers nudge up against her own. "And I want to have your back, Kate."

"You do have my back." She rubs her thumb along his knuckles, willing him to see it in her, feeling like she needs to prove it. "I love you, and you know that won't change just because you're not in the thick of it. We're still side by side. It's just - Vikram has the computer savvy to keep us off LockSat's radar. I promise I'll let you know when I need you."

She's not surprised when his eyes won't meet hers, not surprised by the bleak wash over his face. For a man of words, he has trouble believing them. Maybe it comes from being able to manipulate them so easily.

She squeezes his hand where it hooks with hers. His eyes finally lift.

"I have a lot of paperwork before I can call it a night. Come - out with me. We'll find a random coffee shop that's open all night. A place where no one knows us. We can talk."

A ghost of his usual smile comes over him. "You know I don't do paperwork." His hand withdraws.

"I know," she whispers. "Still?"

He gives a slow breath out and a closing of his eyes, like his resolve is crumbling, or maybe being shored up once more.

He stands first, gesturing after you as he waits. She slides out of the booth and moves towards the register to pay, wondering if he'll follow.

He does.

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