[ a missing scene ]

[fanofthegenre]

Coonan dies on the floor of the precinct, his blood pooling out around him.

Beckett doesn't stay long after the body's taken away - just long enough to answer the necessary questions, fill in the details for the official report herself, give the information that proves a discharging of her weapon was necessary. She doesn't look at Castle for the rest of the night, and somewhere in the cluster of policemen and EMTs, he disappears, leaving the chaos behind him.

She heads back to her apartment - late, much later than she'd even anticipated, but she's far from tired and her hands are still stinging from the amount of time she'd spent rinsing them in the women's restroom hours before. She pours herself a drink and starts running the water in the bathtub, ready to soak and hopefully drink enough to pass out eventually.

Because otherwise, she's going to have an impossible time sleeping tonight.

Comments

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

There's sterility in luxury. A couple dozen best-selling novels in the bag and you don't have to worry about coming home to a three-by-five foot apartment, the walls peeling with a thousand-and-one memories of sob stories left before. Castle's apartment is professionally furnished, expertly tailored, and, right now, the last place he wants to be.

He's been wandering the West Side for a good part of the evening, trudging through remnant snow slush, his silhouette cut against great clouds of bunker steam. At around ten he starts to feel the cold and actually hails a cab, giving the driver the address as easily as if it were his own. Detective Beckett's apartment is an impressive edifice wedged between two brownstones, its tan marble like an exclamation point between two dull expressions of punctuation. He pays the driver and gets out, his breath puffing in front of him, filling the wide blue collar of his coat. Her lights are on. This late, that's either a very good -- or a very bad -- sign.

His pull with her doorman gets him through to the lobby and from there it's just a short (jolty) elevator ride to Beckett's floor. A light is out at the far end of the hall, close to Beckett's door. If Castle believed in portents (he had occasion to, every once in a while), he would see this as a sign.

He raps gently on her door.