Disclaimer: They aren't mine, though if they were...anyway.
A/N: I am not a writer, I just do it for fun. Also, because sometimes I get these ideas in my head, much like this one, that just will not leave me alone. So I hope you like this, I hope you like where I am going to take you! Please forgive any and all mistakes because this hasn't been Beta'd
They find him a month to the day.
A lot of things happen in a month, he's never thought otherwise. Things that change you, break you, make you a new person.
He is different. Will most likely never be the same. He's known dark before, he's been dark before. He is a wordsmith, he knows...he knows words. But there isn't one for what he has experienced in the past thirty days.
He knows he wasn't just stumbled upon by the NYPD, knows that he has been nothing but a pawn in this little game between them and the man who he will forever credit with changing him. Turning the man he was into the man he is now; empty, broken.
For a while it was the image of her face he held on to. He could close his eyes and a million versions of it would play across his mind. Beckett standing in front of him and flashing her badge for the first time, Beckett smiling at him over a take-out cup of coffee, Kate moaning and gasping beneath him, her hair fanning out over blue sheets.
She was the closest and all he will ever know of heaven.
She was his.
He didn't own her no because as much as she was his, he was hers as well.
He never thought that he didn't deserve her, never thought that she was too good for him. No.
They were equals.
Thirty days.
Thirty days to change everything that was going to be into everything that will never be.
"Castle!" He hears one of the many voices yelling his name and knowing exactly who it belongs to.
He won't answer her. Not even the gun digging into his side will persuade him to do so. The footsteps he can hear getting closer tells him he doesn't need to.
"Kate, if you want your boy you keep them all out! Just you and only you, I may not prefer the color red but I will gladly paint the walls in this room with his blood if someone else tries to come in." Tyson screams into the dark of the room.
There's a heavy silence that fills the air for seconds only before she answers.
"Fine. Just me, but I need to know he's here and alive, Tyson."
"Answer her," Tyson breathes into his ear.
He won't do it. But the gun in his side digs deeper and he can feel his ribs practically cracking under the pressure.
"Oh, god…Beckett, no. No, stay out there."
It's not what Tyson wants so Castle ends up with the butt of the gun meeting the side of his head.
"Now, come on Kate. You heard him. Shall we get this over with, uh?"
She comes through the door, gun drawn because he never said anything about leaving her weapon behind.
It's fast after that.
It's over and the only thing Castle is clear on is the sound of Kate yelling at him to stand down and the look on her face. Fear or terror he can't tell the difference.
Because she watched him.
She watched him kill a man.
Castle isn't surprised by the look. He just killed Jerry Tyson with his bare hands.
She watches Castle back away from the lifeless body of Jerry Tyson. Watches as he falls to his knees in the corner of the room. Kate goes to him and kneels down to be on the same level, reaches out slowly doing her best not to startle him, wants to touch any part of him. Just get his skin under her hands. Just as her palm finds his cheek Castle grabs her wrist using that grasp to pull her away, looking right into her eyes, shaking his head 'no' without uttering a word.
They load him into the back of an ambulance. Castle is aware there has been blood loss, he is malnourished and he has no idea what he has been injected with on numerous occasions. He requests to go alone.
He sees the tears in her eyes as the EMT closes the rear ambulance doors.
He cares, he cares and that's why he can't let her near him again.
She can watch him kill a serial killer, a man who has done more damage than either of them will ever know. Eventually, Kate will see him as the same man he always was. But how will she look at him, see him, after she discovers that Jerry Tyson isn't his only victim.