Blame & Gravity, Ch. 4-A Castle four-shot set shortly after After the Storm (5 x 01). COMPLETE
Title: Blame & Gravity, Ch. 4
WC: ~1700 this chapter, ~6900 total
Summary: "It's not much. No explanation. A promise she'll be back and between the lines the fact that she didn't want him to wonder." A four-shot, set very shortly after the events of After the Storm.
A/N: Thank you for the reviews and for your patience with Brain once again. FINISHED now, I promise!
There's nowhere she wants to be after that. She doesn't leave. He holds on to the fact of it as she drifts from room to room. He stays put.
Tries to stay put. He dumps the coffee down the sink. Throws the whole plate away. A dramatic gesture, but he can't stand to look at it. He keeps it to himself at least. Shoves it deep into the bag and gets rid of it all while she's . . . somewhere.
He picks up the pillows. Tosses them in the general direction of where they belong and holds his tongue when she passes by in the distance. Keeping to the walls. He wants to offer her the guest room. Privacy. His bedroom. The office. The whole damned place, if she wants. He'll go out. He can go out.
He wants to offer her something she needs.
But she doesn't want anything.
He stands in the living room at loose ends. There's nothing else to do. No straightening or fixing or getting rid of that can busy his hands and help him stay put.
He wants his laptop. Wants to write, though it's such an unlikely thing.
He turns for the office and she's there. She doesn't face him but she's there. Anchored now, like she's determined to fix herself in this space with him. He watches, useless and silent, as she travels down the bookshelves. Touching spines and upending small things. Feeling the weight of them in her palm and placing them back, just so.
He's stranded. Nothing to do, and it feels wrong to busy himself. But wrong, too, to wait. To watch like she's a curiosity, but it seems to be the right thing. Waiting.
"I wasn't a cop." She turns to him then. "I wasn't there because I'm a cop."
He's about to say something. To fill the silence with some reassurance, but she's this contradiction before him. Stiff back and determined shoulders. Pliant fingers moving sadly over things. Regretfully. She's vibrating with unchanneled anger and bent with grief. Nothing he might say will do. So he waits.
"I wasn't a cop," she repeats. She looks at him then. She raises her head and sets the thing in her hands down. Some tiny ceramic piece she replaces with infinite care. "She shouldn't have thanked me."
He lifts his hands. Helpless and wordless because she's not talking about the funeral. Not just about that. He lifts his hands and catches her. She rushes into him. She buries her face in his chest and knots her fingers at his spine. She mumbles apologies against him and he holds her. Gives her one word at a time because it's not him. They're mostly not for him, but she needs someone to hear them. Whether she wants anything or not, she needs someone.
He holds her until she works herself still again. Until she tips her head back and looks at him. Dry eyed and a little more like herself. She looks at him, confused.
"What?" he asks softly. He'd wait. He'd let her lead, but she looks so . . . perplexed.
"I'm hungry," she says. Surprised by it. Annoyed when a laugh breaks off and finds its way out of him. "I'm really hungry."
She says no to pancakes. No to M & Ms and her favorite takeout.
"Toast," she says finally. "Just butter."
He shakes his head. Wants to tease her, but it's penance of a kind. Denying herself the things she likes. That might bring her comfort she thinks she doesn't deserve.
She puts away slice after slice, though, and nods when he asks if coffee is ok. He steals a bite from one piece and hides the evidence at the bottom of the pile. Plays innocent and smiles at the wall when she pegs him in the back of the head with her wadded up napkin.
He turns back to her, coffee in hand. He means to apologize. It's just sugar and cream, not really the way she likes it and he means to promise he'll get vanilla in. But she takes the cup from him with a real smile-weary but real-and something else comes out.
"Did you go alone?"
They both freeze, the coffee cup still between them. His finger hooked over the rim, hers on the handle.
"Alone?"
"I thought . . ." He lets go the cup and wishes he hadn't immediately. He wants something to do with his hands.
Something to do, and he wants to tell her never mind. He wants to back out of this, but he doesn't. He plants his palms on the counter. He makes himself stay.
"Esposito. I thought maybe . . ."
"No. I . . ." She blinks down at the coffee. Up at him. She's at a loss. "I never thought to ask."
"No," he says. "You wouldn't."
It's . . . dark. Not sharp exactly. Not sarcastic at all. But pained. Frustrated. An echo of the anger that moved him. The dark finality that took him through her doorway and down the hall and out into a world with a hole through the middle of it. It's more than he meant to say. More than he ever meant to say right now.
"I'm sorry," he says immediately.
He is. He's sorry because it's too soon. Neither of them is ready for it. It's only been a few days, and she's here and that's all that matters. They're here. It's all that matters, but it doesn't mean the rest is gone. On his side or hers. He's sorry, and he knows they're not ready, but the words come anyway.
"You could have, though, Kate." He closes his fingers over hers and she lets him at least. "You could have asked."
She doesn't look at him. She stares down at the still surface of the coffee. Her hair hides her face. She gives the merest shake of her head.
"No," she says. Quiet and definite. "I couldn't."
They spend the day together and apart. He writes. Disjointed things, mostly. Processing. Heaping the broken mess inside him together in ways that will make sense someday. When they're ready and he needs them, too.
She stays close, mostly. Reads in the armchair or watches the rain through the glass, a book forgotten in her lap.
Other times, she roams. Picks things up and puts them back. She sits at the piano a while and picks out melodies. A brief snatch of something with two hands that she calls up from memory, but she closes the lid soon after.
He reads, too. When the words run dry for now, he closes the laptop and settles in the armchair next to hers until she gives up. Until she hauls the comforter off the bed and climbs in the chair with him. Then he sets the book aside and they watch the rain together.
They don't talk much. A few details break off and rise up. The pastry she took because it was rude not to. The way it was dust in her mouth. That she left too soon and not soon enough. That she hadn't wanted to go to the house afterward at all. Not at all. But his wife-Brenda-had asked. Held her hand in both her own and asked her to come.
It takes more and more out of her, though. Every detail. She's quieter with each one.
The longest comes last. Not from today, but then. Just a few days ago. How she was down before she could blink. The floor slamming up into her and her gun sliding. Bouncing off something. The body. His body. Eddie.
"His eyes were open," she says, and he can tell she's done.
He wants to say so many things. That Maddox killed him. Would have killed whoever was there. Ryan. Some uniform. Him. He wants to tell her they can't know what would have happened if she hadn't gone then. If they'd taken backup. They can't know.
He wants her to let herself remember that it's Maddox who killed the man. But it's not absolution she wants and it's not his to give. He listens. He holds her.
I wasn't a cop.
They watch stupid TV. Curled up together and not really seeing. They scrounge for something like dinner. More toast, but other things, too. Sweets and things she likes. They eat on the floor of his office, a tray between them and she cleans up. She insists.
She leaves him and comes back. She walks the floors and brings him things from the shelves and tables. From high up in the loft. She asks for stories and he tells them. True things and tall tales. Memories and lies that lighten the shadows on her a little.
It's an odd day. Time stretching out and speeding up and the sun never comes back. The rain stays.
She's tired early. He is, too. The whole day has been a lot.
She tells him he doesn't have to come to bed. That she's fine and he worries that she wants to be alone. He thinks about offering the guest room again. Privacy. He lifts his face to hers and sees her waiting. Hovering. Not asking because she can't and he's not sure what she'd say. Which way she'd go.
"I'm tired, too," he says and she lets out a little breath.
Come with me.
He does. He makes the bed. Fresh sheets and tucked corners even though they're climbing right in. She trails the comforter in from the office and slides down the headboard on her side. Her side, even though it's just been a few days. She closes her eyes and sighs as the heavy fabric snaps once in the air and settles over her.
He crawls in beside her and switches off the light. She burrows against him and they're quiet.
He's almost asleep when her words come. Soft but clear in the dark.
"It would be you." She gulps a breath. It's hard for her. A lot. "If I could ask, it would be you."