Fate's Case (a Castle Fan Fiction)

Woman in White

Back at his home, I sat on the couch, seemingly catatonic, while Castle and Kate spoke quietly in the kitchen. They'd turned on the television to some show I'd never seen, but I wasn't really watching. I was thoroughly rethinking my life. Rethinking every memory, every thought, ever moral value, every moment that I spent doing anything over the last few years. Ever thing around me wasn't as it was just yesterday. Nothing felt right, and nothing seemed normal. As I sat, I made myself angrier and angrier, until I could barely keep in the screams that clawed to be released. My limbs felt heavy. My head felt full. It felt as though icy heat was running through my body, and radiating off me. I couldn't just sit around anymore; I couldn't just be a vegetable on the couch. I had to move, in some way, somehow I had to move.

I got up, walked to the door, opened it, and walked out. When the door slammed behind me, I picked up speed to jog down the hall and to the elevator. I ran, only because I couldn't keep my pace. I had to out run the day. I had to get away from it all. I couldn't keep driving myself mad with the thoughts I heard in my head. The seconds it took me to get to the end of the hall were just enough, and then the few seconds it took for the elevator to come to my floor were the perfect number. As I stepped in, I heard Kate call after me from the apartment, but I didn't listen. She came closer and closer to the elevator, but she was too late, and the doors closed on her.

Inside, I paced back and forth, unable to be still. The speed of a gentle walk wasn't helping much at all. Thoughts, prayers, memories, and words flashed in and out of my head, clouding my vision and rational side. I could hear my mother's voice, my brother's laughs, and my father's words. I could hear the past, see the present and dream of the future all in a single second. I could breathe in, no relief from the air. As I moved, I could be anything, could have done anything, could have seen anything, but what I did, what I saw wasn't what I wanted to be.

The ghost of a woman with my color hair and my pale skin stood to my left. I passed away, toward the voice calling me. I was pulled toward my mother, her eyes green as grass, her skin darkened and her hair a milk chocolate brown. She called to me, but I turned toward the woman in the white dress with my sea foam colored eyes. I watched as she silently opened her arms, a loving smile and a warming presence. Luckily the doors opened, and suddenly I found myself running out them, past a couple who clearly were getting a little too frisky. I ran as fast as I could out the elevator and onto the street, my locket and a pocket knife in my back pocket.

I jogged on, seeing the faces I'd known from the past on the streets. Some were happy, some were angry, but most brought another tear drop to my pooling lids. As I jogged down the darkening, streets of New York, I weaved through body after body, wishing intently that they would all disappear. As I went, I began to feel less and less of the anger build up, but every inch of lessening anger was replaced by warning sadness. What made it worse was as I ran, the endorphins seemed to stop doing their jobs, and I could no longer continue. I'd run probably close to a mile, maybe two by the time I had to stop, and it was really good timing considering I was starting to get lost.

Beside me, a cupcake shop was starting to close, and there was almost no one in there but a woman and her two kids. I knocked on the door, and she waved me off. Again I knocked just enough to get her to look at me, and she did. Being a mother herself, she must have known the look on my face wasn't a good one, and she set down the three year old she had been holding to come unlock the door. "Hello?"

"Yes, hi, my name's Kristina and I'm kind of lost. Do you have a phone I could use?" I didn't really know where to call to, so in my head I tried to remember the police department's number. Nothing.

"Sure. Just come on in. I hope you don't mind me locking the door behind you."

No, not at all. Where is the phone?"