A/N: Yes this prompt is 5 years old, yes I haven’t written a word in over year or posted on here in over 3... oops. Dipping my toes back into the writing waters, so I hope you enjoy! Also posted on ffnet, here.
The realization comes to him slowly as he's talking through the case, and his accompanying unease, with his mother. If the man in the window had been Ben Conrad, he would've shot himself with his left hand. When they got to the apartment, saw the body on the floor, the gun was in his right hand.
Ben's not their killer and Beckett doesn't know, has no idea she's currently living with a false sense of security thinking the case is closed and their killer is dead.
He's stumbling into his shoes, throwing on his jacket, and bolting through his front door in a flash, desperate to make it to her apartment, to let her know. There's a part of him that wonders briefly if he's overreacting, if this new piece of information isn't as damning as he's making it out to be in his head, but the sinking feeling in his gut every time he runs through the facts just doesn't go away.
Feet slamming into the pavement as he runs down her street, he unceremoniously pushes people out of the way as he raises his cell phone to his ear. It rings a few times and he runs a bit faster, ignoring the ache in his legs and the tightness in his chest as he starts to run out of breath.
He's not all that out of shape, but he's not exactly fit for marathon running either.
Come on, Beckett, pick up.
After what feels like an eternity, he releases a relieved exhale when he hears the click of the call connecting.
"What do you want, Castle?"
"Ben Conrad's not our killer," he rushes out, picking up his pace. He can see Beckett's building, the brick towering over him. "He's not the killer, the killer's still alive! The killer's still alive!"
There's silence for a split second on the other end. When he finally hears something come through the receiver it stops him in his tracks. It's not Beckett at all, but a robot-sounding voice repeating one sentence that sends a deadly chill down his spine.
Goodbye, Nikki. Goodbye, Nikki.
Not ten seconds later there's a deafening boom, the sound of windows shattering and brick exploding. He's thrown back a bit by the severity of the blow, forced to hover over a building's front fencing until the initial blast ceases.
He's righting himself immediately, everything in slow motion as he turns toward what used to be Beckett's apartment, what is now a horrifying glow of flames and smoke.
Frozen in place, he can do nothing for a few moments but stand rooted to the concrete, eyes glued to the chaos. Windows are blown out, flames escaping through holes in the building's exterior.
And then he's running again, faster this time, moving toward the scene. People run past him in the opposite direction, trying their best to get away from the fire; he registers a few of them calling out to him, telling him not to go inside, it's too dangerous. Someone mentions possible structural damage but he barely hears it at all. Nothing cuts through the blood rushing through his ears, the mantra going through his head that's just Kate Kate Kate.
Her floor is engulfed in flames, though this is unsurprising given her apartment is the source of the blast. The fact makes him sick.
"Kate, are you in there?" he yells as he approaches her apartment. "Kate!"
Kicking at the door, he doesn't relent until it bursts open. It's compromised, though, and as soon as it gives way it collapses from the hinges and he falls with it onto her living room floor. The wood is scorching and he scrambles to his feet as quickly as he can, skin burning from where it's kissed by the heat through his clothing. That's gonna leave a mark.
Her place is in complete shambles; furniture torched, doorframes destroyed and beams hanging from her ceiling as they're lit up, flames licking at their structure. Bile churns low in his gut and rises so quickly he can taste it in his throat as he looks around.
Each passing second he's left without a response his heart drops a little further into his stomach. Slowly, he makes his way through her apartment, clearing it like they'd clear a crime scene. Eyes peeled for any sign of her, he takes stock of each space: living room, clear; kitchen (or what's left of what used to be her kitchen), clear. He has to squint through the smoke burning his eyes, relegating his vision to something blurry and distorted.
Down the hall he hears movement, a noise of some sort, and his heart lifts. He can't hear it clearly over the crackle of the flames and he thinks for a moment it's just the fire, the pieces of her apartment disintegrating and collapsing onto the floor.
But then it comes again and no, no, he's sure it's not just the apartment. It sounds like... a cough—it's a cough and that means—
He shuffles as quickly as he can into the bathroom, dodging a cluster of dangling electrical wires on his way in. She's in her bathtub, soot-dusted fingertips gripped around the ceramic rim, her head resting (though with her eyes squeezed shut, lips pursed and face twisted in pain, she's looking anything but rested) against the back.
"You're alive," he breathes, then half a beat later, "oh, and you're naked."
He doesn't have a chance to survey her injuries before she's muttering something. "Castle," she says, and oh how sweet it is to hear her voice. It's rough, like she's speaking through gritted teeth. "Turn around."
"You know," he begins, doing as he's told and taking in the still-burning walls surrounding them. "Your apartment is on fire. I'm not sure now is the best time for modesty."
He can hear her heavy breathing behind him, the cough that sounds terribly painful.
"Castle, hand me—" Her request is cut off by the most terrifying cry, the strangled noise escaping her throat something he's never heard before. He forgets her modesty and spins back around, eyes darting first to her face.
Eyes pinched shut, he can see a single tear falling onto her left cheek, traveling through a dusting of dirt. She moans again, a broken little sob.
"Kate." Her name is a panicked squeak on his tongue. "What is it? What's wrong? What hurts?"
When he doesn't get a response, the pain too severe and hindering her ability to speak at all, fear weaves its way around his ribs like a spindle. Beckett's jaw is tense, as if she's grinding her teeth down as hard as she can to grit through the intensity of it all. After a moment he finally decides it's worth the risk of bodily injury to simply take stock of her body himself and figure out where the problem lies.
It takes mere seconds, the source of her suffering blatantly obvious.
The bathtub might've saved her from being blown to pieces, but it did little to stop debris from the explosion from flying in with her, effectively covering Beckett’s small frame. What appears to be a considerable piece of her bathroom door and a few large blocks of debris from somewhere else—her ceiling maybe?—have lodged themselves into the lower part of the tub. They're resting heavily on her lower body, pinning her legs in place.
He has no idea what the extent of the damage is, doesn't know if any of the metal shards or glass from the window have embedded themselves in her skin, doesn't know if any of the wood has impaled her legs beneath where he can see.
"Castle," she manages, her voice thin. "Can't... can't move."
"It's okay." He says it as evenly as he can and he's almost impressed with himself for keeping the sheer, blinding panic that's swallowing him whole out of his voice. He has to keep her calm; freaking her out isn't going to help either of them. "It's okay. You're pinned by some of the debris, but we'll... we're gonna get you out of there, okay?"
"Stop… looking at… me naked," she says, pausing for a shallow breath between nearly every word.
Castle actually laughs, a flitty little noise but a laugh nonetheless. Buried under the wreckage of her bathroom, she's still Beckett.
"I forgot you were even naked for a second."
She coughs and he thinks she was going for a laugh. "Kind of… offended," she grinds out, and he'd be amused if he couldn't tell each attempt at speaking was an extreme effort for her.
He doesn't have a chance to respond before she's crying out in pain again, a loud god, ahh, and he's reminded where they are and what's going on and he shifts into high gear.
"Okay, hey, Kate, listen to me," he says, falling to his knees beside the tub. The floor is on fire and burns at his knees but he pushes the pain to the back of his mind. "Hey, can you hear me?"
Beckett's groaning, her entire face contorted in agony, but she nods. "Mhm."
"Good, good." His eyes travel back down the length of her body, zeroing in on where the injury is. "Okay, you're—your legs are stuck under some wood and glass and... it's a pile of debris, Beckett."
She takes a long, deliberate breath. "Yeah. Pinned, Castle. Not... not blind."
"Do you know if there's anything stuck in your legs? Are you... are you impaled by anything?" God it sounds horrible coming out of his mouth, hates to even think about the possibility of her being in that kind of position, but he has to know. He can't go fumbling around with the debris and trying to move stuff off of her if it's going to make it worse.
A pause and then, "No," she says, a tiny shake of the head. Her eyes peel open slightly, hooded but aware. "Don't... think so."
Good, that's good, he thinks. Small blessings.
"Okay. Hang on, I'm going to try to lift some of this off of you."
She nods but says nothing and he stands, moves to the end of the bathtub. He's able to pick a few of the smaller pieces off easily and toss them to the side. Brushing some glass shards away, he doesn't even feel the pinch as tiny pieces embed themselves in the skin of his palm.
It's when he gets to the heavier pieces of wood, the blocks of metal or steel or something from somewhere that have dislodged themselves and landed on top of Beckett's legs, that he runs into a problem. Pushing at the one on top, it budges a little bit but doesn't move far enough, and when he tries to shove at it again Beckett lets out a wail. He stops immediately, hands flying away from the object; he stays completely still and whips his head back to her.
"Kate," he calls out. Her chest is rising and falling at an alarming rate and the panic slicks up his spine again.
But she's shaking her head. "I'm fine," she says, breathing through it. Stubborn through and through. "Do it."
"Castle." Her voice is firmer, relaying a strength he knows she doesn't feel right now. "I said—do it." They make eye contact and he watches in real time as her face softens, watches as she reads him like an open book. "S'okay. You have... have to."
He knows he has to but that doesn't change the fact that he doesn't want to; the last thing he wants to do is add to her mounting pain.
But he does, of course, because it's the only way they're getting out of here in, hopefully, one piece. He grits his teeth and forges through the ache of hearing her cry out with every wiggle of the debris. He heaves a sigh when one of them finally moves far enough that he can shove at it; it clatters to the side of the tub with a clunk, off of her body.
"One down," he tells her, checking to make sure she's okay. Her eyes are closed again but she's still with him. "One more big one, Kate."
But the next one is too heavy for him and he's painfully aware that he's running out of time; he doesn't trust the support of the rest of the apartment now that it's been actively burning and collapsing bit by bit for about ten minutes. She must sense his frustration, his silent panic, or simply feel the thing barely moving at all despite his best efforts, because when he looks again she's sitting herself up—a move that looks far too excruciating for her—and pressing her palms against the block.
"Beckett, I—this one is heavy and... I think it might hurt a lot when it's lifted and the pressure isn't pressed against your shin anymore." That's true, he thinks, though he can't remember if he read it during actual research for a Derrick Storm or if he saw it on television. He watches her swallow. "Are you ready?"
Looking him in the eyes now, she gives a decisive nod. "Go."
Together, they push and pull and wiggle the piece of thick, heavy wood until it rolls over just enough for Castle to free one of her legs. The feeling of victory is short-lived, however, because the second the pressure is lifted and she's no longer pinned down, Beckett lets out a small, strangled cry, a gasp of a breath, and then she's collapsing back against the bathtub with a gruesome thud.
"Beckett!" He's at her side in a second, fingers pressed to neck. There's a pulse but it's weak and she's slumped back against the ceramic, face slack. "Kate, come on!"
She doesn't rouse and he's hit with a fresh wave of absolute terror. He lets himself feel it for a moment and then shakes it off, realizes with a pang of urgency that her apartment is still burning, the structure of her doorframes and walls are giving way and getting less stable by the minute, and he has to get them both out of there. Now.
Or, actually, five minutes ago would've been ideal but now seems like the second best option.
He scrambles back to the end of the tub and brushes the rest of the debris from her legs. With the two main pieces pinning her down now discarded, all that's left is more shattered pieces of glass from the window, lots of soot, and smaller shards of wood that must've broken away from her doorframe and wood paneling in the initial blast.
Completely free now, Castle takes note of the cuts and bruises lining her legs, the blood seeping from one particularly deep, worrying wound where the metal was digging into her skin. There's nothing he can do about that right now; it'll have to wait until he gets her to the hospital. He shuffles his weight from one foot to the next while his brain maps out each of his options.
There's not many—only one, really, now that Beckett's passed out. He has to carry her out of here.
Castle spins around briefly to grab a towel but all of the towels are on fire, and the bathrobe is on fire, so he goes to Plan C, tears his jacket off, and drapes it across her front. Now really isn't the time for modesty but he's acutely aware of how mortified she'd be if he walked her out of the building completely naked in front of her neighbors and the crowd of half of the block that's no doubt gathered by now.
He takes one second to look at her, to brush the strands of hair from her face. He feathers his fingers across her forehead, gently caressing her clammy skin.
"I'm gonna get you out of here," he whispers the promise into the air between them.
Wrapping one arm around her back, he pushes her into a sitting position first so he can get a better grip and more easily reach down to slide his left arm under her knees. He counts to three in his head and then lifts, grunting a little under the strain of her dead weight, and then stands. He doesn't move immediately, instead straightens and re-settles her position in his arms to make sure he's steady and isn't going to drop her, and then curls her as close to his chest as he can. He's sweating profusely from his short time in the apartment, his clothing and exposed skin all covered in dirt and ash, but it doesn't even register. The only thing on his mind is her; tunnel vision hits and all he sees is the way out.
As he's maneuvering the both of them through her apartment, back the same way he came, he murmurs softly into her ear. He doesn't stop until they're onto the street and he's watching as the ambulances finally begin to roll in.
"You're going to be okay." You have to be okay. He bounces her in his grip, presses a kiss to the crown of her head before he even realizes what he's doing. "I've got you, Kate. You're okay."
He doesn't know if she can hear him, but he's not even certain if he's speaking for her benefit or his own.
Castle sits in the hospital waiting room, knees bouncing anxiously. Time blurs and he's not sure how long she's been back there, doctors looking over her or rushing her into surgery or dressing the cuts on her face—he doesn't know, has no idea what's going on because nobody's been back out to tell him how she is or the depth of her injuries.
He's already called Ryan and Esposito, brought them up to speed on what's happened and how Ben Conrad isn't their killer. They're ready to come to the hospital but he holds them off, assures them he's got her covered. He'll make sure she's okay, he tells them, even though he has no control over her well-being right now and it kills him; they should be out there searching for the real killer, for the man who did this to her. Begrudgingly, they agree. They know it's the right move; it's not like he can be the one out there on his civilian authority anyway.
He goes to call Jim Beckett but realizes he doesn't have the man's phone number and despite the knowledge that he deserves to know what state his daughter's in, he thinks maybe it'd be better to let Kate call him once she's awake.
Because she will wake up.
He jumps from his seat, practically leaps the few feet to where the doctor is standing. He searches the man's face for something, anything to tell him where this conversation is about to go. He looks for signs of distress, for a man about to tell him I'm sorry, we've done all we could, or a man about to tell him that she's fine and recovering and she'll be good to go in no time.
The doctor hesitates for a moment. He doesn't know if it's because the news is dire or because he's about to refuse to tell him any information because he's not family. He hopes it's the latter and Castle prepares to rattle off some half-baked spiel about how he's her fiancé and the rings were lost in the fire.
He doesn't actually have to bother with that, thankfully, because the look of trepidation dissipates a long moment after the doctor gets a good look at the distressed man standing before him.
"She's going to be okay." Castle breathes easily for the first time in who knows how many hours. "A few superficial cuts and bruises to the face and torso. I'm not sure how she got out of there without significant burns, but there's nothing more serious than small patches of first degree burns along her legs where the torched debris fell. She sustained a fractured tibia in her right leg, but that seems to be the worst of it."
"What about smoke inhalation? And the cut on her leg, it looked deep."
"She's been given oxygen but her lungs don't sound like they've been terribly compromised, just a slight wheezing we believe will go away soon," the doctor says. He almost looks amused by Castle's concern. It makes him bristle but he bites his tongue. "Her leg was stitched up. It was deep but not dangerously so; she shouldn't even have much a scar."
"So she's okay," Castle rasps, both a statement and a question.
"Miss Beckett will be in some pain for a while, and she'll have to stay off that leg for a few weeks, but I'm confident she'll be just fine. She got lucky."
Nodding, he offers a small, grateful upturn of his lips before blowing out a relieved breath.
"Mr. Castle?" He looks up. "Have you been checked out?"
He's—what? Looking down his eyes widen, surprised to find his hands busted and covered in soot, small pieces of glass and splinters of wood embedded in his palm. He doesn't even register the pain until he's staring at the reddened, rough skin. How the hell hadn't he noticed?
"I'm... oh. I didn't even feel it," he says a little distractedly.
"The adrenaline, probably." The doctor calls for a nurse and gestures for Castle to follow her into a small room. "Go get that cleaned up."
Twenty minutes later his hands have been ridden of the debris pieces, dressed, and bandaged. His knees have been cleaned and wrapped where his jeans were ripped, shards of glass pressed into his kneecaps. He vaguely remembers the beginnings of pain from kneeling onto the flooring beside Beckett's bathtub, but for the most part it's just another thing he didn't feel until the nurse was poking and prodding at the puckered, irritated skin.
The only thing he was focused on was her.
Forty-five minutes after the doctor comes to talk to him and his own minor wounds are taken care of, Castle's seated at Beckett's bedside. The nurse came to grab him fifteen minutes earlier, told him she wasn't awake yet but she's in a room and he's welcome to see her.
She looks better than she did before, eyes still closed but face no longer twisted in pain. He's sure he's going to have nightmares about that, the pure torment etched into every line of her face, the tears spilling from her pinched eyes. He never wants to see her like that again and he thinks idly that he'll do everything in his power to make sure he doesn't have to.
Every few minutes his eyes travel from her face down to her chest, the need to make sure it's rising and falling as it should be too strong to resist.
He hesitates for a moment but then scoots the chair closer to her bedside, allows his hand to drape over hers. His fingers curl around her small hand, dwarfing it in his grip. Her skin is warm now, but a comfortable, normal warm, no longer burning from the flames threatening to overtake her.
Castle sits there, with her hand in his, for a while before he feels her fingers twitching beneath his. He sits up straighter, braces himself against the edge of her bed.
"Castle," she whimpers, a pained rasp from her throat. She's not awake yet, still half succumbed to her unconscious mind. "Rick."
He can't even revel in her half-asleep usage of his first name because her face scrunches a little and her voice wobbles, a sound like she's about to cry out again, and he rushes to her side, desperate to stop it.
"Beckett," he says, quietly but urgently, his thumb rubbing calming circles on the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger. His other hand moves to her face, gently brushing at her cheek. "Kate, hey. Wake up for me."
Beckett's breathing becomes a little irregular, a sign she's slowly rousing, and he waits her out. He continues to caress her skin, thinks briefly that she'll probably kick his ass if she wakes and his palm is cradling her face. He just watched her almost burn to death and then pass out before his very eyes, though, so he's fairly comfortable taking the risk if it means he doesn't have to let go. He swears he feels her lean into his touch, just a little.
"Kate," he whispers again, his voice soothing. Her eyelashes flutter a few times and a moment later she's coming to, slowly. She blinks, unfocused eyes adjusting to the light, and then she finds him.
Castle can't help the wide smile that blooms. "Hey," he murmurs, the word a breathy exhale on his lips. With one more gentle swipe of his thumb above her temple, he lets his hand drop from her face. "There you are."
She swallows, blinks a few more times and glances around the room. "Castle," she says with rising intonation.
He squeezes her hand. "Yeah, I'm right here."
"We got out." She glances down their hands and then back to his face. "Your hands. Burned."
"Just a little. Some glass shards, nothing serious," he shrugs. The discomfort in his hands is nothing compared to the premature grief he felt when he found her in that tub, when she'd passed out. "I'm okay. How do you feel? Are you in a lot of pain?"
Her eyes fall closed, the beginnings of a smirk playing on her lips. "Not nearly as much as you," she manages quietly. He's about to repeat that he's fine, there's no reason to worry about him, when she continues, "It must be killing you having to wait this long to tell me how you banged down my door."
Castle laughs then, his smile widening when he catches her grinning softly back at him.
"Want me to start from the beginning?"
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