âHow about we skip the macho fantasy?â
âLaura, Headhunters (4 x 21)
A/N: This was an alternate for the Headhunters installment of Dialogic that I had hanging around.
For a man who is barely speaking to her, there are signs of Richard Castle everywhere. His handwriting shows up in documentary snapshots of various iterations of the murder board for the case theyâre going to trial with. Itâs on post-its and scrap-paper notes stapled to forms and tucked into folders.
His name is on crime scene sign-in sheets and interview write-ups and reports in her own voice, in Ryanâs, in Espositoâs. Itâs on everyoneâs lips in whispers as she leaves the break room, in a shout across the bullpen from the more clueless among them: Hey, whereâs Castle? Whatâs Castle up to? Did I see Castle with . . .? Hey, Beckett, what the hellâs Castle thinking?
Heâs everywhere, and she swings miserably between angry about it and unbearably sad. She goes quiet in the face of Espositoâs abuse of the man, and quieter still at his ham-fisted attempts to get her to spill her guts about their sudden estrangement or whatever it is. Sheâs far sharper than she needs to beâthan she should beâwith Ryan when he . . . wants to report Castle to the principal for being mean or something.
Sheâs had enough. Sheâs tried to talk it out in therapy. Sheâs tried to redirect her thoughts toward what she can, will, should do, not what he does, has done, keeps on doing, but none of it really helps. Sheâs had enough of his handwriting, his name, and the way heâs omnipresent in his absence. Sheâs had beyond enough of traversing her own emotional terrain over thisâover him. She knows every inch of it.
At least she thinks so until Martha shows up.
She sees her from a distance. His mother. She stops to chat with Ryan, giving him a warm smile and sharing some brief, intense bit of chat that ends in laughter for both of them. The extended moment gives Kate ample time to make a study of Martha from the vantage point of the work room.
Sheâs in royal blue with a blouse of shimmering forest green fabric beneath a slim-fitting jacket. The color combination shouldnât work with the styling and fit, especially with the scarf, wildly patterned in different colors entirely, that she has knotted jauntily around her neck. But it does work. For Martha, of course it works.
What catches Kateâs attention, thoughâwhat strikes something like fear into her heartâis how relatively subdued the ensemble is. With the blank expanses of solid color it almost looks like sheâs in mourning. Kate watches as her fingers tug at the knot of the scarf and her small talk with Ryan clearly draws to a close. She unwinds the silk expanse of it and pulls it free, intensifying the severe effect of skirt suitâs tailored lines.
âDetective.â Martha turns, every trace of a smile vacating her face, before Kate announces herselfâbefore she even realizes that sheâs somehow crept closer. âI was hoping I might have a word.â
âMartha.â Kateâs tone sounds sullen to her own ears. It sounds stupid and childish, but the chilly demeanor hurts coming from this woman who has been warm and effusive and welcoming for years. She makes a formal gesture toward the work room, trying to course correct, trying to win back some measure of control. âYes, of course.â
âI wonât take too much of your time,â Martha says as she sets her purse aside and peels off her gloves, finger-by-finger. She regards the table crowded with boxes and the stacks of paper, piled high as though sheâs glad of the looming excuse to keep things brief. âObviously youâre busy.â
âWell, you know,â Kate says, feeling reduced to something limp and uncertain all over again. âWhat can I do for you, Martha?â
âYou can keep Richard from getting himself killed,â Martha replies as she slaps her gloves down beside her bag.
âKilled?â Kate tries to find some middle ground between laughing it off and laughing at the woman herself. âDetective Slaughter isââ
âA lunatic,â Martha interrupts. âWe both understand that.â
âYes,â Kate shoots back, her hackles rising at last. âAnd we all have tried to make Castleâ
âRichard âunderstandsâ this awful man as well as either of us does.â She makes air quotes. âI am not asking you to make him understand the fact that heâs in danger, Iâm asking you to get him out of it.â
âI donât think I can.â Her eyes drop to the floor. They land on a yellow post-it on the top of the stack of paper at her feet. On his handwriting, of course. âHe wonât listen.â
âHe wonât listen,â Martha repeats, her voice flat and damning. âYes. I imagine thatâs what Richard told your father. And your Captain. That you wouldnât listen to a word he said.â She takes up her gloves. She takes up her bag and the wildly patterned, fluttering length of her scarf. âAnd yet, he tried.â The corners of her mouth twitch. Her eyes glint in the harsh fluorescent light of the work room. Kate isnât sure which of them the moment is worse for. âHe tried to save you from yourself, and if you have everâeverâhad a shred of feeling for my son, Detective Beckett, youâll find it somewhere in yourself to do as much for him.â
Sheâs gone then. Before Kate can so much as form a coherent thought, let alone ask any one of the flood of questions welling up in her, the woman is gone as absolutely as if she had never been there.
Your father. Your Captain.
The words turn cartwheels in her head. She is mystified, mortified, stupefied and simultaneously sure exactly what, when, where Martha is talking about, at least as far as that part is concerned. Your father. Your Captain. She wants to lay her head down and not lift it again until . . . she doesnât know when. Until she can make sense of itâthe then.
But she has to deal with the now. Martha is right about that. She has to deal with what she should, can, will do.
âRyan,â she calls out. Her voice is sharp enough to snap the young detective to her like heâs on a string. âWhatever you were doing for Castle just nowââ
âIâm notââ He blushes six shades of red and his eyes skitter along the wall just above her shoulder.
âSave it,â she snaps. âI want to see whatever it is. I want to know exactly what Slaughterâs gotten him into and how weâre going to get him out of it.â