Frozen Love (A Castle Fanfiction)

The Truth Comes Out

Cold chills ran through my every limb as I desperately clung to the hope of a rescue. With every inch of my own body pressed against Richard's in the freezer that would become our final resting places, there was nothing else to do but hope. But even the man of many theories couldn't think of a way to get us out of here. The chilling scene before us, frosted metal and sealed door, became the terrifying image of my own foolishness. I had closed that door. I had backed us into this space. I was to blame for this. And now, I was going to finally be the cause of Richard Castle's death.

As he clung to me in a mirroring need for human warmth, I gave nothing in return. Frost weighed heavily on my lashed and the ends of my hair, forming crystals on my skin where sweat had once been its décor. Even my gun gave me no hope of survival. My usual motivation, the thing that had held me together, made me strong, and formed who I was: doing my job didn't even give me comfort as I began to feel death's boney fingers run along my face, caressing me sweetly before it would sourly pull my life from my body. I had to be sure he was still awake, feeling some movement in my arm as if it flexed, but unsure as to if or why it had. Speaking in a tone that whispered death to both our ears, broken apart by the frozen hands of my own weakness, I questioned, "Castle, you there?"

As his head laid heavily against my hood, the comfort of his few words was enough for me, and all I needed to know that I wasn't alone in this cruel end. "Yes- no I'm ri- I'm right here." Even these words, the words that had brought me the slightest glimpse of relief, were laced with the fraying edges of a worn, damaged cloth as his airy voice lost all strength and stability. That was the story of us. Each inch forward in our relationship was lined with a tragic misfortune that seemed only plausible for a writer and a cop.

Needing the escape his presence had given me, and running out of options other than words as feeling had faded and sight was a terrifying thought, I informed him of my own condition, hoping to hear he wasn't doing quite as poorly as I was, "I can't feel anything." With the words voiced before I could truly think of the implications, I didn't even consider what he would say to this. My answer quickly rang through the space, bouncing off the metal walls and screaming murder in my ears before a moment's notice could be given. He was silenced. I, myself had taken away the one thing that had warmed me as I remained unable to move and barely able to breath in the dry air.

Even words of his condition being worse than my own would be words enough to know that he was still conscious. But now, as a wordless tirade spilled over the space and a graveyard's darkened implication hung in the air, my thoughts wandered quickly to the offal fates that could have befallen him. Unaware of my words being words, my mind believing they were internal thoughts and knowing they were phrases unnecessary to the atmosphere, I spoke, "I always thought, being a cop I'd take a bullet." As I sucked in air, my heart grew cold, and the finale to the statement spilled out, "I never thought I'd freeze to death."

These words gave me the answer I didn't think I'd find, but as they would have pained me if he'd delivered them, his discomfort was not unnoticed. Adjusting his head on my should, making sure to be as close to me as he possibly could, his ever optimistic outlook immediately kicked in, dulling the situation into the present and keeping our minds from directing toward the future. "Kate," he said, the use of my first name soothing me, bringing me down from the cliff I'd mounted as I was ready for the reaper to claim me as his own. "We're not dead yet." A hint of self-deprecating laughter molded these words into a calming statement, holding us both together as he knew the probable future, but certainty never being our strong suite. Even now, as my life began to fade into the hint of not knowing what was to come in the next life, he kept me from seeing only the storm.

This man, firmly set in his ways of uplifting the human soul, was the only man who'd managed to spare me the terrors that engulfed my every day. And now, to repay him for being the knight in shining armor he'd always been for me, I was ripping him from his daughter, his mother and his life, shredding all hopes of a future for him, and bringing him to the worst possible end to any life I could even slightly imagine. His books had mapped out the roadways that lead me to being a cop. That action, my job, was the only thing that blocked the Siren's call of alcohol, which had been my father's antidote for a long period of time. Then, the writer shows up at the precinct, reforming his old ways of womanizing, and charming his way into my heat while somehow helping me repair my own vices that I'd so longed to be rid of. My own guardian angel had allowed me to lead him into a hellish end, not being of fire, but being a damning emptiness and torment.