✯ what i saw on this journey ✯

She couldn't say how it happened, but that’s true for most things. When it happened is far easier; in the dark, under the glow of the bar lights, after closing. Her fingers wrapped around one drink too much and yet one less than enough, at least less than enough to justify the way her breasts brushed over the sticky bar top, the way his hands fisted in her hair, the way their teeth clashed against each other as flesh sought flesh.

By then, it had been a year and eight months. A year and eight months, six days, and 15 hours since she had woken up in her empty bed. They both knew it could happen, and that was probably why they never talked about it. Instead, they danced around the reality of their situation, getting married and buying furniture and eating lunch and making love like this life was normal. Like it was the life they were meant to live. It was a life they enjoyed living, at least, until Kate woke up in an empty bed and a cold pillow where her husband had slept for five years of blissful marriage.

She looked for him, of course. She’d searched the apartment, the Residences, the city. She’s put out a BOLO and spent nine months calling every precinct in New York to see if there was any heads or tails of Castle. But in her heart of hearts, she knew. She knew the moment she had woken up. Castle was gone, by whatever power had brought them there in the first place. And she was so, completely alone.

It took six months for the other precincts to give up. For Kate, it wasn’t long enough, but for them, it was too long to keep a case on the warming plate as it continued to go cold. Even for one of their own, it just wasn’t feasible. So, Kate knew she had to learn to move on, although she wasn’t sure she could, not with a gaping hole where her heart used to be.

Her evenings that had once been filled with laughter on the couch, arms wrapped around her and sweet breath in her ear as she read a book or watched TV were replaced with the bitter bite of booze in a sweating glass. She began to find solace in Mack’s crude humor, and Jessica and Alex’s company. Kate never pushed it too hard; she had seen how the bottle had dismantled her father piece by piece after her mother died. Part of her didn’t care, but part of her knew that wouldn’t be what Castle wanted.

Unfortunately, what Castle wanted didn’t matter anymore.

What happened with Red came organically, in the same way one’s youth slips away. Obliviously, day by day in a seemingly unending progression until one day, you look in the mirror and wonder why you don’t recognize the person staring back anymore. First, he asked her out to dinner. A nice restaurant, a way to keep her mind off things. Eventually, his apartment, where he cooked a meal and watched her eat it, a soft smile pulling at his lips. After a while, he made her laugh. The strange animosity between them hadn’t faded, but it had become something more. If their previous relationship could be described as a gnarled, dark tree, what happened between them might be explained as green leaves somehow sprouting from its crumbling branches.

Mack had gone home early. Kate hadn’t. The bar had emptied out, its regulars stumbling to their apartments. Red was wiping down the bar, and Kate was staring down at her glass, watching the ice cubes melt into translucent shards.

“Do you ever wonder why them? Not us, but them?”

His eyes flashed up to her. “I don’t understand what you mean,” he said, although his eyes said differently.

“Nevermind.”

He stared at her longer than was necessary before he continued to wipe down the bar. Her drink was ruined; it tasted more like water than whatever had been in it before. Which was probably for the best, since the concoction was something Mack created called “Morning Consequences.” Kate’s brain was floating in her head, and she suspected those consequences would have something to do with hugging a toilet in about three hours.

"Drink some water." The glass appeared out of nowhere, and when she looked up, Red was leaning over the bar. She could feel his breath on her mouth. "Give me a few minutes to finish cleaning and I'll walk you back to your apartment."

She didn't let him finish cleaning.

A small part of Kate Beckett's brain knew there was a problem with her letting a man whose face had graced a Most Wanted poster in her old world fuck her against the door of her apartment. It was a part of her brain that she ignored as her hands grasped his shoulders, her legs like a vice around his hips. It was feral and dirty and wrong, and she needed it. Kate hadn't been touched since Castle left, and she wasn't sure if it was Red she wanted or just another warm body in the bed next to her. Something, anything, to warm the cold pillow that she still didn't have the heart to take off of the bed.

She knew what he was. She had investigated him for murder just a few years before, for fuck's sake. He couldn't touch Castle's fresh-faced, arrogant air that somehow grasped for the same justice she did. She and Red were from two completely different worlds, even if they both stood on the same one. He might as well have been an alien, but it didn't matter anymore. When she woke up, he was cooking eggs and bacon in her filthy kitchen, pushing a cup of coffee across the bar top and under her nose when she sat down at the bar stool.

Consequences her ass.

He took her out to dinner again that night. They didn't have to talk about it; Kate knew the ephemeral nature of what happened between them was clear to both of them, but she was willing to ride it out. It would take a little while for the reality of the situation to bear down on her like an anvil on her chest, and until then, she just wanted to not be alone for a little while.

She wore a red dress with a back that dropped down nearly to her hips. His fingertips were soft against her skin when he slid it off her body.

It took Mack all of 2 seconds to figure out what was up. It was a week before she asked, though, while Red was in the back of the bar dealing with a delivery and Mack was wiping out a lipstick stained glass. "So," she had said, elbows pressing against the bar as she stared into Kate's eyes. "What's your intentions with my dad?"

It was a good question that Kate didn't have a good answer for.

"We're just seeing where things go," Kate lied, her voice low under the rumble of voices filling the bar.

Mack had raised her eyebrows. "I get it," she said with a nod, picking up another glass to wipe it out. "I'm lonely, too."

Kate wasn't, though; at least, not right now. Not in the dead of night when she woke up and heard the gentle lull of his breathing next to her. Not in the morning when stirred, pushing her hair out of her eyes as she pressed herself against the curves of his body, leeching all the warmth she could before she had to get up for work. Not when she curved into his body, the light of television reflecting in her eyes, or the way his fingers tangled in her hair as they whispered and laughed like they didn't hurt anymore. Not even when she walked through the door one evening, the apartment empty but for a flower in a glass on the dining room table with a note that said Working late. Don't wait up.

She wondered what he wanted, too, when their bodies were entangled in sheets and each other, his mouth against her ear. Maybe he just wanted to bang the hot cop, sure; a lot of men she met did. Or maybe he was exercising some kind of control over her, like this was some kind of competition and her affection was the prize. Maybe it was just good old-fashioned manipulation, keeping her close enough to him to learn her blind spots and use them to his advantage.

Or maybe he just liked hearing her breathe at night, too.

The bubble popped after two weeks of intimate bliss. Gene Hunt slammed through her office door at 9am on a Tuesday morning. The New York sky was covered in a thick blanket of clouds, swollen with the promise of an impending rainstorm. She had stared outside at it for too long, thinking about rain, and swing sets, and how Castle's body felt, hot and strong, against her wet skin.

"Two nonces done in. Found 'em this morning in one of the warehouses near the river. Shipping crates were empty." Kate stared down at the crime scene photos; two criminals drowning in pools of their own blood. She kept thinking about the red petals in the flower on her dining room table. "Bloody twats all of them, just scum killin' scum in these parts."

"Don't say twat," Kate replied, staring back into the clouds.

Red was in his apartment when she got there, brushing off his suit as she slipped through his front door. He smiled at her like he knew.

"Did you kill those men?" she demanded, no greeting, no warmth to her voice. His smile dropped. "Tell me the truth, Red. Tell me what the hell is going on."

"Going on with your murders or going on with us?" His voice was cool, collected as he straightened his cuffs. She stared at his hands, wondering how the same hands that were so gentle against her trembling body could be the hands that ended someone's life.

She'd killed before too. But it wasn't the same. Was it?

"You know how I'm going to answer that question," she said, her voice raising, and he seemed unfettered by her passion. He just looked at her again, his eyes expressionless.

"And you know how I'm going to answer yours."

Silence fell on them like the rain outside. He straightened his suit once again and walked past her to the door, pausing at it for a moment. Then he came back to her, reaching out to cup her face with his hand. She knew she should pull away in anger, scream and storm off, but it wouldn't change anything. The bridge they had forged between them was tenuous at best, and no amount of yelling or pleading was going to change who they were. They were a fish and a bird that brushed the air together, but neither of them could follow the other one home.

Red sighed and leaned in, and Kate's eyes stayed open as his lips brushed hers. She didn't move, hands frozen at her sides and she could feel him breathe against her. It wasn't a comfort anymore. It wasn't eager bodies pulling at clothes and heated panting against skin. It was just her, and him, and his lips a dead weight against her anger. It was a kiss as cold as Castle's pillow on her empty bed.

When she made her way up to her apartment, she flipped on the light and stood in the doorway. The flower Red had given her had wilted, the beautiful petals, once a vibrant red, now a revolting maroon with black, singed edges. Kate sighed and shut the door, pulling the dead flower out of the vase and rolling it between her fingers, the stem sopping wet, rotted away by the very thing that had once given it life.

Kate put it, along with Castle's pillow, into the garbage.