Capítulo 21: 21. Chapter 21
This is a dream. This isn't happening again.
Kate tries to curl up, to move, but she can't. She's frozen, stuck inside the body of her memory. She wants to shut her ears, not listen, not be here, but just as in real life six months ago, she stays prone on the floor of the makeshift cell, unable to rise.
The room is black, hard concrete under her cheek. The crackle of an old-fashioned PA system hisses in her ear; the speaker right above her head. The room feels alive, breathing with that hiss. She's bruised all over, stiff with cold. Makes it hard to move.
She can't move; this is the dream; this isn't happening.
Darkness messes with her internal clock, throws off her rhythm, keeps her guessing. Darkness and the hiss of the speaker in the room make it seem ages, lifetimes, an eternity passing, swelling in the black, time like an infected wound that seeps.
But it's a dream; she will wake at the end of this; she will wake up and time will start again.
It doesn't end, relentless night. The PA system clicks on again - how many times tonight? - squeals, and it plays the same recording it did before, it has always played, will always play: the sounds of her nightmare.
Because it is a nightmare; it isn't real any more; you will wake up again.
The voice, like an introduction to the screening of a horror film. Lightly accented Ukranian. So polite, cultured, terrible: "I warned you. You threaten our family. So we take yours."
The startled voice on the recording, Rick's voice sharp and clear in the darkness:
"Hey! No-"
The shot. Echoing in the room. She flinches, struggles to get up, a cold and icy terror dragging at her.
And then the screaming. The high-pitched, little-girl screaming that goes on and on, a loop, a cycle endlessly scratching the edges of the room, around and around, her daughter screaming-
No.
That is not her daughter's voice. Not her daughter.
But she can't be sure. So rarely, so rarely has she heard her baby girl talk, that she can't possibly be certain of her voice. Her voice sharpening into a scream, tailing up in horror. She can't be certain.
That could. . .could be Rick's shout, could be her daughter-
No. This is not real. It's psychological torture-
and it's working.
She trembles in the darkness, hands and knees, her stomach disgorging acid. The scream echoes, bounces around the concrete. She pushes back, stands, searches for a way out, something, pacing the cramped corners of her black, evil cell. Pacing to escape the terrified child, the little girl's unforgiving, brutal terror, wrenching at the door every time she paces past it. Out, out. She needs gone, out, her baby
The Ukranian gang is just messing with her mind. She puts her hands over her ears; she will not break. This is not real. That is not her daughter-
She's been here before. This isn't real.
But the Kate Beckett of memory isn't sure. Doesn't know. Can't bear to think it's real, but-
It could be.
Oh God, the screaming, sobbing girl. They shot Rick in front of her daughter and then-
The screaming ends abruptly on a choke.
The hissing speaker, the deadly silence. Silence worse, somehow, than the sounds of terrorized sobbing.
The recording replays, the hissing gives way to the warning, the shout from her husband, the panicked, sobbing terror of her daughter-
The recording replays.
The recording replays.
The recording replays-
Kate is wrenched upwards and stumbling out of bed before her brain catches up to her body, apart and away, trying to separate herself from the darkness, on her hands and knees in the floor.
She stumbles up, runs to the bathroom and vomits twice in the toilet, stomach acid, gags on the smell and the associated memories before slumping to the cold tile floor.
Why now? Why does it roar back at her now?
Because Ella ran off today, because the voice she hears in her memory is so very very close to the screaming little girl on that recording.
Because Rick said she was killing him.
You threaten our family. So we take yours.
She closes her eyes and the darkness swamps in; she startles and jerks upright, letting moonlight filter back into her brain. She blinks it in, swipes at her mouth, flushes the toilet.
She brushes her teeth in the sink and spits a few times, then gulps down water.
So we take yours.
He wasn't shot; she didn't kill him. It was a trick of technology; a recording of Castle grabbing a paparazzi's video camera spliced together with gunshots and a horror film. None of it was real. She was in the Ukranian gang's hands for only an hour. An hour of hearing a 45 second recording. Again. And again.
And again.
She didn't cry then. She won't cry now. They won't win.
Kate presses her lips together and eyes herself in the mirror. Her family is fine. Perfectly safe. They are all alive. She arrested the bastard's son for murder; he was beaten to death in prison. The bastard blamed her and went after her. But he did not get her family.
Her family is safe.
"Kate."
She jumps, catches his reflection in the mirror as he stumbles forward.
"'S Late, babe."
She twists around and he's already there. She grabs him tight, breathing in the smell of his tshirt and sleep. He puts his arms around her rather automatically, loose, his cheek falling to the top of her head. He grumbles and sways a little, obviously not quite awake, but he doesn't ask her anything more.
"I need. . .you," she says, realizing how it sounds and giving a choked laugh. Desperate and awkward at the same time. If they're not having sex, she has no idea how to ask for what she needs. "Cuddle with me."
"Mm, 'k," he murmurs, tugging her back towards the bed. She stumbles after him, unwilling to let go of him, and Rick grunts, huffing out a breath, amused or sluggish or surprised.
She follows him down to the bed, slides between the still-clammy sheets, feels him spoon loosely around her, too far away.
"No," she whispers, wriggling to her back. "Like this." She pulls his body across hers, chest to chest, his weight heavy and pushing the air out of her lungs. She winces as his hipbones dig into hers, but when he lifts up a little to give her space, she pulls him back down, knocks his elbows out with her arms so that he falls back on top of her.
He ends up spread over her, an arm curled up beside her head, her nose at his neck, their legs tangled. She breathes shallowly, her pelvis is already starting to ache with the force of his weight, her breasts pressed flat, but it's right, it's good, it's what will hold her down, keep her here, not there, not back there.
Pressure. The full force of his body. It pushes out all the darkness.
"Kate," he murmurs, and cranes his neck to feather a kiss at her temple. "I'm crushing you."
"Yes," she nods but wraps her arms tighter around him.
"Kate, love." He tries to lift his hips, but she presses her palm to his lower back, sweeps his knee out, giving him no leverage.
"Just. . .just a bit longer. Don't g-go."
His fingers stroke the side of her face, but now he stays. He doesn't try to make her talk about the nightmare, even though he knows that's what it is, knows by the break in her voice. He doesn't pry, doesn't question her, doesn't attempt to analyze or apologize.
She's so grateful for the silence, so grateful he understands. She needs him, his force, and silence.
"Kate," he sighs, and curls his fingers against her cheekbone.
"Just until I fall asleep."
"You're wide awake," he observes, raising his head, his thumb under her eye, sweeping the skin above her cheekbone. No tears to catch; she won't break over this.
"So - so tell me a story, Rick. Please."
"Kate," he whispers, his voice sounding more broken than hers, but she can't do anything about him right now, not when she can do nothing for herself. "Katie."
She shivers at the sound of her childhood name, but can't yet close her eyes. She presses her closed mouth to his neck to keep the terror inside, to not let it get out, not here, not with the beautiful moonlight and her husband and the sound of the ocean.
"What story," he says, his mouth in her ear, his fingers running up and down her sides, over and over. "Tell me which story will help you."
He smells strong and of home. Her cheek and ear and lips and nose are cold, as if she's been running in the rain, no sense to wait out the squall. Her brain isn't making the right connections; she can feel her pounding heart pushing against him. And the memory, waiting just under the surface of sleep, steadily tugging her down.
It'll be there when she does find sleep again; it'll be there all night-
"Tell me a story, Castle," she pleads; it sounds wrong on her lips but her hands are shaking at his chest. She can't dream that again; she can't take it.
He cradles her head against the long expanse of his forearm, kisses her cheek, her temple, the paper-thin skin of her eyelids. He has to clear his throat to begin. "Christmas Eve. Your dad was going to sleep in the guest room upstairs; my mother was coming in the next morning. Alexis was out at a party with friends. I spent all day trying to wear Dash out: ice skating, the park, the swings; sword fights. He was into playing knights back then. We made cookies with you and he got red and green food coloring on the only pair of pants you liked anymore, little red and green fingerprints."
A vibration runs through her, forces her eyes shut, but it's not darkness she sees; it's Dash's running, leaping hug, his arms around her as best he can, leaving smears of frosting, food coloring, flour all over her. She had to change her clothes to avoid getting it on the furniture.
"I must have overtired him, because your Dad and I were pulling out every trick in the book trying to get him to go to bed, fall asleep. He was too awake, too excited. He kept asking if Santa Clause brought gifts to baby Jesus just like the Wise Men did, and if the reindeer minded landing on the roof and taking the service elevator down-"
Kate sighs, long and hard, begins to feel the weight of him against her ribs, bruising. Her arms loosen.
"And you were downstairs. You were supposed to come up and tag me out so I could get started on the stockings, Dash and Alexis's, but you never came upstairs."
The Christmas lights from the tree swallowing up her vision, sitting on the bottom step of the stairs that night, breathing, hypnotized by the lights and the colors and the deep internal call that she listened to instead.
She can take a deeper breath now, can smooth her hand down his shirt, leave it on his hip.
Castle slowly eases onto his side, keeping her close. He lets his thighs stay tangled with hers, but now she can release her death grip on consciousness, can lay her head against his chest.
"I wasn't worried. I thought you'd started without me or you were on the phone with Alexis, or just. . .I didn't worry. And then your dad looked at me and I thought, 'It's been an hour already.' I stood up to go check and that's when you bellowed my name."
She can't even bring her scattered control back long enough to take offense at his verb choice; she just stays curled against him, focusing on breathing.
"It was your Detective voice," he whispers, runs his lips across her ear, makes her shudder. "I ran to the stairs and saw you sitting on the bottom step. You turned around to look at me and I could see it in your eyes."
His hand cradles the side of her face; he kisses her cheek once, twice, again.
"Your dad and Dash were right behind me, and when I turned to tell your dad, he just said to go, and I ran down the stairs and kinda jumped over you, grabbed the keys from the entry table, and when I turned around to get you, you'd already managed to stand up."
She breathes through the feel of his mouth against hers, soft and whispering, reverent and gentle.
"You looked at me and said, 'A little too close together.' Then suddenly, you grabbed my wrist, hard, and your knees buckled and then I was trying to hold you up, hold both of us up through the contraction."
She remembers the Christmas lights; squinting through the violent tension in her belly to the Christmas lights, multi-colored and flashing on the tree.
"So we went to the hospital and I thought we wouldn't make it in time. Two minutes apart, and with every one you squeezed my hand so I could time them. It was too early. That's all I kept thinking. It's too early and we were supposed to get three more weeks. But when we got there, they slowed down, eased up a little, and we all thought, okay, we'll get those three weeks and you'll be on bed rest and then-"
She sighs and curls her fingers around the back of his neck, feels her throat close up.
"-and then, you had Ella. Christmas Day. Easy and quick, all of the sudden, no epidural, you didn't even yell at me, just stoic and strong. God, you're so strong. I remember you said, 'She's too small,' but everyone said she was fine and she didn't screech like Dash did, she just cried a little in surprise maybe and I got to hold her and bring her to you and you were so beautiful and looking at me like you couldn't believe she was a girl, she was here, but I told you it would be a girl, I could feel it; I wanted to name her after you, but there was no way you'd let me, so I said 'Hey, Mommy, here's Ellery Kate-"
"I love you," she chokes out and pulls him tight, tight against her, tears now streaking down her cheeks. Not broken, not broken, just filled with joy again. Too much joy.
"That's the best Christmas. Ever."
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