You in Mind: Castle One-Shot

[pollylynn]

Title: You in Mind

Length: ~2000 words

Rating: T

Spoilers: Knockdown and Rise, but just in terms of its setting. Nothing particularly substantive. Set on June 21, 2011.

Summary: He wants to ignore her, but it's like ignoring your own breath. She isn't really there. She's always there.



It doesn't break. Thirty-four days' worth of pain, frustration, grief uncoiling in an instant. Following the line of muscles from spine to shoulder to elbow to wrist. Snapping straight and releasing. It hits the wall of the house with a dull, unsatisfying thunk.

It rolls back to him. Green. Now violet. Now a cheery yellow. It wobbles in a merry little circle at his feet and comes to rest. It doesn't break.

Maybe because you throw like a girl.

He wants to ignore her, but it's like ignoring your own breath. She isn't really there. She's always there.

He gives up and looks at her. Takes in the details and shapes them into words that will never see the page.

Faded cut-offs measure out the merest fraction of her long, smooth legs. Earlier, there was a tank top, russet bleeding into orange into gold. It slid over her collar bones and the strong lines of her back. Lifted to offer a glimpse of the paler skin at her waistline. Now, the frayed hem of a cream-colored fisherman's sweater dips past the cuff of her shorts as she bends one knee and plants a bare foot on the bench in front of her.

Her hair is different, too. Loose. Falling past the sharp angle of her cheekbone as she rests her chin on her knee. Earlier she'd scraped it all up and piled it high on her head against the heat of the day.

It's cooler now. She gestures to the sweater and snags a curl between thumb and index finger.

It's a response to a question he hasn't asked.

"Why are you here?" He's asking now. Asking out loud. Because he's hallucinating a dress-up Beckett. Talking to himself doesn't seem like such a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

She snorts and presses a smile against her thigh. Your brain, Castle.

He tips his head back and she follows his gaze. It's full dark. Finally.

"You're breaking the rules." He says it to the sky.

She doesn't answer right away. You know how it works.

His chin drops and he looks at her in surprise. "This?" He makes a gesture in the space between them. "No, I don't know how this works."

She shakes her head. Slides her foot from the bench and nudges the little jar with her toe. It goes from deep red back to green.

"Oh, that." He smiles in spite of himself. "Bought it for Alexis a few summers back."

It's a cheap little thing. A squat mason jar that soaks up the sunlight by day and pulses with changing colors by night. But Alexis had liked the idea of saving up the sun. Transforming it into vibrant pieces of itself and giving it back to the night. They both had.

But now-today-he can't stand one more second of light.

His smile fades. "Just a solar cell and some colored LEDs. Nothing magical."

That's not what you told her then. She picks up the smile where he left off.

"I was stalling for time."

He'd spun a story about miniature aliens terraforming tchotchkes in summer homes all over the world as they prepared a winter invasion.

She counted the light. It sounds like encouragement. She's coaxing a tale out of him like she never does in real life.

"She did. Kept a notebook. Color sequence. How long each pulse lasted. She spent all summer cracking the alien code." The memory makes him proud. A serious, methodically constructed story all her own embellished with the fantastical little flourishes she gets from him.

What did they say? She draws both knees up now and rests her cheek against them like she's settling in for a long stay.

"Is that why you're still here?" He shoves the jar with his foot. Sends it spinning into the railing. The colors change more rapidly now, staining the weathered boards of the porch in a small, determined ellipse of light.

Is that why you're beating up on that poor thing? Because you think I'll leave with the light?

"Don't you?" It comes out harsh, angry.

She just laughs. You think I don't know about after-hours Beckett? We both live here.

"It's the house then." He knew it was a terrible idea, coming here. He never should have agreed, no matter how his mother pleaded, Ryan cajoled, and Esposito threatened to bodily remove him from the city. He should never have come.

Yes, Castle. I'm a Poltergeist, doomed to wander the halls of your summer home. She drops a foot to either side of the bench and leans toward him. Touches two fingers to his temple. To the center of his chest. Here. We live here.

He flinches back as though her touch might burn him. Files the reaction somewhere between weather-appropriate clothing for his hallucinations and extended conversations with them on a scale from one to bat-shit crazy.

"You didn't always. Not in the city."

She arches an eyebrow and folds her arms across her chest.

"Fine," he says in a huff. He jabs a finger at his forehead. "Night-time Beckett lives here, but she's just . . ."

Hope? She leans an elbow on the picnic table and slides her fingers behind her head to look up at him.

"Fantasy," he says flatly. "Foolishness."

She lets that go. She's not allowing it, but she lets it go. And I'm . . . what?

He turns his body toward the table. Rests his elbows on it and drops his head into his hands. "Brain tumor? I don't know."

Do you like her better? She's looking away now. Hiding behind a sweep of hair that falls toward the table. The other Beckett.

That gets a laugh from him. "She's certainly more manageable."

She glares. Apparently she's not amused by the fact that he feels the need to flesh out his hallucinations with insecurities.

It goes on. The look she's giving him. And it's suddenly so intense he feels compelled to answer. "I used to. Like her more."

But now?

"She's not enough?" He looks to her for an answer.

She nods. You're growing up.

He laughs at that, loud and long.

She doesn't. She just watches him.

"That's . . . very unlikely," he says at last.

She shrugs. It's casual. It's careful. Tragedy ennobles.

He slams his palms on the table. "Bullshit. Tragedy breaks and maims and twists. It breaks."

That too, she says quietly. You never know which way it will go.

His head whips toward her. "There's a precedent."

Not a prophecy. She isn't giving him an inch of ground. The upright line of spine, the right angle of her wrist as she plants a palm on the table. It's so like her-so like the real her-that it takes his breath away.

"It's been thirty-four days, Kate," he says finally, when he has enough air to just barely support the syllables. "Thirty-four days and you haven't called."

I might not. It's gentle, but also matter of fact. I probably won't.

"I don't accept that." He sounds petulant. He doesn't care.

And your options are . . . ?

He opens his mouth and shuts it again. Call you, he wants to say. Find you. But the words stick somewhere around his fourth rib.

She answers anyway. And how would that go down?

"Awkwardly. Unpleasantly. Probably violently." He slumps with his back against the table. Leans on his elbows and looks out over the beach.

No probably about it. She brushes her fingers over his forearm.

He doesn't flinch this time. "You're warm."

I'm not dying any more, she says as thought it's obvious.

"I know that," he snaps. "I know that."

But you don't believe it.

He thinks about the nightmares. The panic attack that scared Alexis half to death just yesterday. "No," he admits. "I guess I don't."

What would make you believe? She tips her head back. Follows the arc of sky from the distant whitecaps up to the moon. Abruptly jerks her chin toward him and she adds, Something achievable, Castle.

"In answer to your earlier question, I definitely like night-time Beckett better than you," he grumbles.

She laughs. Her whole body ripples with it. She laughs. But you don't like either of us as well as her. The real thing.

"No. I guess I don't," he drops his head back and closes his eyes. "God, that's annoying."

She doesn't laugh this time. Just looks at him expectantly. Well?

He thinks about pretending that he isn't following her. Figures there's no poker face good enough to fool his own hallucination. "What will make me a believer . . ."

She nods. Waits.

"Getting him," he says, finally. "Not . . . not to save her. " Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her shift. One arm crossing over the other, shielding her chest. Her heart. He anticipates her objection. "Not just to save her."

She's still giving him a hard look.

"Ok, yes. Yes. To save her. To keep her in the world." He swings one leg over the bench. Turns to face her. "Is that so terrible?"

It's not your tragedy, Castle. It's a warning.

"It's not just hers either. It is mine. It's mine too. And Ryan's and Esposito's." He's practically shouting now. "Her father. My mother. Alexis."

Josh? She's quiet. Still. Watches him carefully.

"I can't . . ." He makes a desperate noise. "Don't bring him into this."

Seems relevant at this juncture, she says with a wry smile.

"Fine, then." He sets his jaw. "His too."

Maybe his. Maybe not. You're the one who brought him up that night.

"Yeah. And that sure pissed you off, didn't it? Why is that, do you think?"

Her, technically. Not me. That cryptic smile would drive him crazy if he weren't already there. Maybe she's foolish, too.

"What do you want me to say?" He's pleading with her now. Pleading with his own hallucination. It's not a high point.

I probably don't qualify, you know. As a hallucination.

"That's reassuring."

It should be. This isn't so out there. You're a writer. You work things out like this all the time, don't you?

She has a point, but he's too annoyed to concede it entirely. "Yeah. But usually there are action figures."

Would that make you feel better? She says it with a sly smile. Show me on the doll where the near-death experience hurt you, Castle.

Oh, that's just wrong. He can't help laughing.

She waits for him to settle down. It takes a while. The laughter keeps bubbling up again.

Finally he's still. Breathes a little easier.

She's quiet for the space of another heartbeat or two. The mason jar pulses from blue to green at her feet.

It's not terrible that you want to save her. But you can't count on it. And you need a better reason.

"Like what?" It sounds confrontational. He supposes it is, a little.

Like . . . you can't let people get away with shooting other people on general principle?

"That's it?" He stares. "'You can't let people get away with shooting people because it sets a bad precedent?' That's the big epiphany?"

Who said it was the big one, Castle? She pushes up from the bench. Stretches, muscles rippling from the arch of one foot to her fingertips, high, high overhead.

She takes a step past him, then another. Down the stairs and on to the beach.

For a minute, he thinks she'll walk away without a single look back. He thinks it will break him for good.

Just then she turns. Drapes her body along the steps and rests her chin on the porch at his feet. She reaches out a fingertip and touches the mason jar. Violet now. Days are getting shorter, Castle. A little less light every day from here on out.

Then she turns and goes.

A/N: Thought about living the A/N at "Weird story is weird." Uh . . . so I wrote this song called "Longest Day" for my songwriting class and it gave me a ton of trouble. I was really dissatisfied with/ambivalent about it. But I wanted to record it, given that yesterday was the longest day of the year. As I was practicing, it suddenly hit me that it's completely a Caskett song set on last summer's solstice. As I confessed when I linked to the recording on tumblr, this alone makes me the dorkiest person in the northern hemisphere.

But wait! It gets dorkier. Because I then had to write a story about Castle's headspace. Et voila!