The Trouble with Never

"It's about your mother," Rick told her, and then he fell silent and waited.

Those were the very last words Kate ever expected to hear in that moment, especially from him, given her explicit instructions just four days earlier that he stay the hell away from her mother's murder case, that he leave it in the past where it belonged, just as she had.

A wave of unmitigated anger rolled into her like a ferocious tide, the equal force of its push and pull the only thing that managed to keep her body upright in the middle of the near-empty corridor, and though she remained silent, a thousand vicious words raced instantly through her mind. She knew if she actually spoke them aloud, she'd likely later regret it, but she was absolutely certain he'd damn well earned each and every one.

"Beckett?" Rick pushed on through the piercing daggers of her cold stare. "Are you…did you hear what I said?"

The calm behind his words infuriated her. Her brain screamed in silence. Of course she heard what he said. It was the one thing she asked him never to talk to her about. And of course he'd ignored her. Richard Does-Whatever-the-Hell-He-Wants Castle disregarded her feelings, injected himself into a part of her life he had no business being in. Again. She should've known better than to have shared anything with him - about herself or about her mother. There he stood, making her hate herself for it, for opening up to him, like a fool.

"Did I hear you?" The words finally sprang from Kate's mouth with an emphatic roar, and the two nurses engaged in conversation nearby snapped their heads in her direction with marked disapproval, a clear reaction to the surroundings-inappropriate volume of her voice.

"I need to tell you about what-"

"No. You don't need to tell me anything. You need to stop talking right now, Castle. Don't say another goddamn word."

Kate grabbed onto his forearm and pulled him towards the glowing Exit sign at the end of the corridor, away from the eyes and ears of those who'd already been forced to witness the ugly beginning of an inevitable end. The stairwell door's push bar vibrated from the intensity of her violent thrust, as its solid metal form slammed shut behind them with a resonating echo.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" She paced back and forth over the same small line in the floor, her body brimming with energy it couldn't find a way to contain. "Was I not clear enough when I told you to leave it alone, Castle?" she hissed, her hands balled up into fists at her sides, held tight to the edges of her sleeves.

Rick took a step towards her and she backed away like he was a flame. He still oozed that same calm, even in the face of her exasperation, and she could feel it like it was radiating from his body, reaching out, trying to draw her in. "This is too important, Kate."

It made her shudder, her breath catch. She'd never heard him say it before, her actual name – Kate – and she loathed that the first time felt like a manipulation, like some patronizing mollification.

"You need to hear this. It could change everything." He kept coming despite her look of warning.

"You know what? You don't know me at all, Castle, and you damn sure don't have any idea what it is I need. If you did, we wouldn't be having this conversation." She looked away, off into the distance, and shook her head, wishing she was actually surprised by what he'd done. "It's already changed everything," she snapped crossly. "You need to listen to me this time, Castle. Really hear me, okay? I don't want to see you again. I don't want to hear from you again. Nothing. Not at the precinct. Not about any books. Not about this. Not for any reason." She looked him squarely in the eye. "Tell me, now, you understand." Kate waited as her words passed through their divide and struck him like a verbal slap across the face. "Say it. Say the words, Castle. Tell me you understand."

She could see them there, the laundry list of excuses and rationalizations all but inked across his lips, yet he offered none of them. Instead, after mere seconds of silence that felt more to her like a hundred years, he did as she asked - no, demanded - and choked out with a reluctant rasp the only response she wanted to hear.

"Yes, Kate, I understand."

Without another word, she turned and flung open the door, left him to watch through its narrow pane of glass as she walked away without looking back. "I'm sorry." His voice dissolved into the hush of the empty stairwell, unheard.

It hit her only then, as she walked back along the hospital's corridor alone, as it all played out again like some theatrical play in her mind - he'd said her name twice.

And now she'd never have the chance to hear him say it again.

xxxx

Kate's knees buckled beneath her as she reached Will's hospital room, the well-worn chair outside his door her savior from certain collapse. She waved off the concerned nurse who stood in watch behind the desk across the hall and tried to assure her all was fine - a blatant but necessary fib. She didn't need this. Not right now. Not with everything that had just happened to Will. Everything that was entirely her fault, no matter who'd tried foolishly to convince her otherwise.

Forget about. He's gone. Just forget about it. She repeated the words to herself silently, firmly, let them loop in an endless circle without beginning, middle or end - anything she could do to try to drown out the commotion Castle's left in their wake. She hated him for doing this now, when her friend was in a hospital bed, when her defenses were down, when she was just beginning to see him as…

Forget about it.

Lost in the chorus of her monotonous and ineffectual mantra, Kate failed to see the same concerned nurse approach, and it startled her to a jump when a hand came to rest upon her shoulder.

"Oh-I'm, I'm sorry," Kate apologized as her heart began its slow return to normal rhythm. "I didn't mean to…I just didn't see you coming."

"That's okay, dear," the older woman assured her delicately. "It's my fault. I didn't mean to startle you. It just looked like maybe you could use this," she said, a paper cup filled with water in her outstretched hand. "Of course, I'm a nurse and a worrier by nature, so I may have misread."

"No, this is perfect, thank you," Kate told her, swallowing down a first sip and turning her attention back to the woman. "You were right. It's just what I needed." She smiled and thanked the unexpected attendant for her kind gesture and, though wordlessly, the brief distraction.

"You can go back in if you like, dear," the nurse said with her eyes on Will's door. "He sure had a smile on his face when you were in there with him earlier. After what he's been through, he's a very lucky man to have you here for that." She winked and patted Kate on the shoulder in almost motherly fashion.

Kate nodded, but she didn't believe it for a second. Lucky? Right. If you only knew, she thought.

xxxx

When Kate pushed open his door and stepped through, Will's eyes were closed and his face remarkably peaceful, not at all as one would expect in the wake of the ordeal he'd just been through. He was a beautiful man - always had been - even in his current state, not long out of surgery to remove the bullet that'd torn him open. And while that bullet hadn't come from her gun, the chain of events that'd led it to his body began solely with her, and that was like a twisting knife in her gut.

She slid the uncomfortable metal chair she'd left earlier up to the edge of his bed and sat with the utmost care not to wake him. He'd managed to doze off after she'd stepped out with Castle to talk, and she was glad for it. She was still struggling with exactly what to say to Will, how to make it better, if that were even possible. She could hear the words in her head, but they all sounded so frustratingly inadequate. Vulnerability wasn't something Kate welcomed or wore well.

Sitting there, watching Will sleep, the soft whir of his hospital machines behind her, she remembered vividly the moment she first saw him, how butterflies fluttered in her stomach like she was still some young schoolgirl, not a tough-as-nails cop who'd been brought in on his homicide case. He was so unshakably confident, so calm in the face of all the chaos swirling around him, he drew her in instantly. And without it, without his stoicism, that case might've buried her then. As it was, it still floated around in her mind more often than she invited it to.

She'd held Will's decision to move to Boston for the promotion against him, when, in point of fact, she could've gone with him as he'd asked. She lived the job, and on most days, it's what kept her in one piece. It would've been a transition, of course - a new city, a new force - but she could've done it if she'd really wanted to and, in the end, done it better than most. But it was less painful to say goodbye to him than it would've been to have left New York without answers to the most agonizing unsolved case in her life, though she'd sworn to herself she'd closed that chapter for good. The city kept her connected to her mother.

Kate watched Will's eyelids dance with the movement of a dream until the time came when, out of necessity, she felt compelled to close her own. She bent her upper body forward and rested her head against the edge of his thin mattress, the knuckles of one hand pressed lightly against the edge of his blanket-covered thigh. She thought of him as she drifted off, about how she'd reacted back then, about the end of what had started to become so familiar. She was there now with Will, and tomorrow would exist without Castle, and in that moment, she wasn't sure which of those two unexpected turns of event felt more confounding.

xxxx

From somewhere inside the haze of her own dream, Kate felt a tickle in her hair and popped open her eyes. It took her a few breaths to come back to present, to remember where she was and with whom, and when she finally did, she found Will looking down at her from his pillow with a smile.

"Morning, sleepyhead," he said, as she dragged her knuckles across the weight of her eyelids.

"Wh…it's morning?" She couldn't believe she'd let herself sleep for that long, though the stiffness in her neck definitely suggested it could be true.

He attempted a chuckle in defiance of his aching body. "Easy, Kate, or you might end up in one of these beds. And I know how you feel about green Jell-O. It's only been a couple of hours, don't worry."

"Have you been awake this whole time? Watching me with that goofy drug-induced smile?" She leaned back in the metal chair and flexed her muscles in a delicious stretch. He really was a beautiful man. Neither the blur of sleep nor a bullet wound could ever change that.

"You want a hit?" He raised his wrist and presented his IV-burdened hand. "I think the nurse has a little crush on me, so she might go for it if I bat my eyelashes just right."

His suspicion didn't surprise Kate at all, teasing or not. "Thanks but I think I'll pass," she laughed. "I need to head over to the precinct to take care of a few things, and I'm pretty sure Captain Montgomery prefers his detectives a bit little less…out of it." She stood with a smile and pushed the chair back against the wall. "Will you be all right for a while?"

"You know, as I recall, you used to enjoy my smile," he said, his reaction time slowed by the medication drifting through his system.

"Still do," she said playfully. "I was just teasing."

"Kate," he began before a pause, "I'm gonna be fine, you know. You don't need to worry about me." He reached for her hand and she stepped toward him, the buzz of their past gently humming in the simple touch of their fingers. "This isn't your fault, Kate. I told you. Please don't think that. Okay?" He squeezed at her fingers with the little strength his own could muster.

"Okay." She reciprocated his gesture, though she didn't look him in the eye when the word finally came for fear he might see right through her. "I'll come by again in the morning. Get some real sleep, if your nurse girlfriend will let you."

"Funny girl," he said, as she rounded the bed and headed for the door. "Hey, Kate," he called out, her fingers already wrapped around the door's handle, "that smile wasn't drug-induced."

She knew what he meant. Something in his voice told her.

Kate pulled the door open and stepped from the room. She needed air.