Takes place anywhere in the middle of season 4, after 'Cops and Robbers'.
A/N:
Had this idea for awhile, Castle have nightmares about the shooting and it being a catalyst for them moving forward. It is driving me crazy that other than his being mad at the beginning of the season there has been nothing to show how the shooting affected him, and you know it did! I love Kate as a character, but they need to start showing Castle's side of this as well and I think having her realize what he went through is imperative.
He had held off as long as he could. Trying to keep up with her, not show weakness, prove he could match her step for step, but the night before the case broke had been one of his marathon writing nights and his head had barely been on the pillow before the call had come. Now he was operating on too much caffeine and not enough sleep and 27 hours into a case that looked like it wasn't going to be ending anytime soon.
He knew they crashed on the couch in the break room, he'd caught Esposito in there only a few hours ago during a lull, but as long as she was out working the board he was determined to be out there with her. He was now observing from his chair, head propped on a hand and fighting a losing battle with his eyelids.
She knew he had been up late the night before, she could tell when he arrived at the crime scene in jeans and a button down and an extra large cup of coffee for himself. And then the more they uncovered the more she knew it would be one of those cases. She was exhausted herself but hadn't reached the point he had and as she watched his eyes slip shut once again she had to clench her fingers at her side to keep from reaching out and stroking his hair.
She settled for a brush along his arm and when that didn't get a response she tugged the fabric gently. "Castle." she said softly and then one more tug before he startled.
"Kate." he said gruffly, wiping a hand across his eyes "Sorry, guess I dozed off there for a second."
"Come on." she said softly, hand slipping around his bicep and pulling upwards, not giving him a choice in the matter. When he was on his feet she let her hand fall down into his and led him to the break room, not daring to turn around and look at him. She pointedly ignored the raised eyebrow Ryan gave her as they walked by his desk.
When they arrived at the couch she risked turning around and raised her eyes to his, hands still intertwined. He opened his mouth but she stopped him with a look and pushed him down until he had no choice but to lay on the couch.
"You're no good to me comatose." she said lightly. "Get a couple of hours. The financials should be in when the banks open."
He watched her, cautiously, this was a side of Kate he hadn't seen much and he didn't want to say the wrong thing. "Ok Kate, for you." smile quirking at the corner of his mouth.
She opened her mouth to protest and then decided to let it slide, letting a hand ghost over his head before slipping out the door. He was asleep before she made it back to her desk.
Forty-five minutes later she found herself starting to nod off and she shook her head quickly and scrubbed her hands over her face before turning to face the board. Her thoughts drifted though and she felt a slight flush fill her cheeks as she remembered taking Castle by the hand. This was her trying. She had never been so demonstrative at the precinct before. The blush was quickly trampled by guilt however, as she remembered what she had been keeping from him.
She knew where he was, knew how he felt and how far he was willing to go. If she was honest with herself she was right there with him, but admitting that and acting on it were nearly impossible. What had happened earlier was a step towards that end and she intended to only take more steps forward, even if they were tiny.
She had been so wrapped up in her thoughts she didn't hear it at first and then the muffled yelling finally broke through and she was out of her chair in an instant. She burst through the door to the break room and saw Castle thrashing on the couch, one foot catching the battered coffee table, his hair plastered to his forehead.
"Kate! No! No!" he yelled, eyes still shut tight.
She was kneeling at his side before she even knew she had moved. Her hand hovered over his chest for only a second before she made her decision. She let her hand fall to cover his frantically beating heart while the other came up to cup his jaw, thumb slipping over the rough stubble.
His dreams had been disrupted ever since the shooting. The three months he hadn't heard from her had been the worse, not knowing how she was doing, his last image of her being pale and weak and not his Kate. But since she had come back things had eased up, seeing her mostly whole helped, only when he was overly stressed or tired did his subconscious bring out the worst. He should have known better before agreeing to lay down, but he'd been too exhausted to think ahead.
It was the same as it always was. The flash off the scope, him hitting her a millisecond too late and the hot blood slipping through his fingers as he watches her die. Every time she dies and he can't save her. He pulls her to him, not noticing the smears of red he puts on her cheek and screams her name until his voice is hoarse, but there is no one there to hear him.
Every other time he's had the dream he's been grateful his bedroom is so far from Alexis', but even then he's wondered sometimes if she hasn't heard him and chosen to not say anything.
He awakens this time with a jolt, gasping for breath, disoriented and blinking rapidly. The stained ceiling tiles of the break room stare back at him. There is a weight on his chest, gripping the flannel and he turns his head quickly to the left not expecting to see the very alive face of his partner.
"Kate." he gasps out and before she can speak he's pulled her towards him in a fierce grip, his hands wrapped around her shoulders, one sliding through her hair to cup the back of her head. He needs this tangible proof that she's actually alive, his dream were so close to reality that it sometimes took him a while to remember that she hadn't died.
She lets out a surprised 'oof' but doesn't pull back and after a moments hesitation she hugs him back, hands moving up and down steadily working on instinct. She feels him take a shuddering deep breath and then moves back so he can sit up. His hands leave her and scrub tiredly over his face. She backs up a step and rights the coffee table before sitting down on it directly across from him.
She doesn't know what has caused him to have this reaction, but she's concerned. Before she can stop herself she goes for light and sarcastic, hoping to bring him back to the Castle she knows, pretending she didn't walk in on him calling her name in terror. "Did you dream your latest book slipped off the top ten list?"
The look he shoots her makes her feel small and her cheeks flare in shame.
"I'm sorry." she says immediately hand coming out to cover his, her thumb stroking over his knuckles, trying to sooth the hurt she's just caused. She waits a beat and licks her lips nervously "What was it about? You were...you were calling out my name."
He covers his face up again and her hand falls uselessly away. His neck bows for a moment before he answers her. "The cemetery Kate, it's always the cemetery."
"The cemetery?" she parroted stupidly, thoughts tumbling in her head as she tried to process what he was saying. "Why would you..." she stumbled, heartbeat accelerating "Why would you have nightmares about that?"
He just stares at her for a long moment, as if he's looking at a stranger and she doesn't understand what she's done.
"You didn't think I'd feel like this? Like it wouldn't still haunt me?" his words are hard and incredulous. "Just because we don't talk about it doesn't mean it didn't happen." and she jerks back at the verbal slap. But she hadn't meant that. She just had never considered that anyone other than herself had nightmares about that day.
"Do you have any idea what that did to me? How I still live with it? How I watch you put yourself in harm's way day after day and just sit there doing nothing, knowing that it could happen again in an instant!"
She can't answer, just shakes her head numbly, no one has ever admitted something like this to her before. She knows her dad worries but that is a more general thing, nothing like it would be if he really knew what happened to her on a daily basis. But Castle knows, he lives it with her.
"How did you feel?" he asks sharply "How did you feel when I was in that bank and it exploded?" his eyes are relentless and there is an edge to his voice she has never heard before. He doesn't give her a chance to answer even though she was thoroughly incapable of speech at the moment as it was. "Because if it was a fraction of how I felt when you were bleeding out beneath my hands then you should understand." the end of his sentence was sharp and he got to his feet quickly, desperate to move and not be static.
He was pacing now, stalking. He headed towards the door twice and she could see him shake with the effort to stay in the same room with her. All she could think was how she had done this to him. Taken this funny, kind, goofy man and turn him into someone who was haunted and troubled. He should go, should leave her and run and not look back. But she knew he wouldn't, knew that wasn't who he was, knew that he loved her.
So she did as he asked. She put herself in his shoes, thought about how hopeless she had felt when the bomb went off and those terribly long minutes when she called out to him in a broken voice. What if he hadn't answered back? What if she had found him in pieces instead of whole and unharmed?
She thought back to three months of hiding in her father's cabin and what he had been going through. She had thought of him then, really she had thought of nothing else, but it had never crossed her mind to consider how he was feeling as well.
She remembered how pale his face was that day, the bright points of fear in his eyes and the sharpness that it brought to his voice as he had pleaded with her not to leave him. Then how relieved he had looked when he came to visit her, relieved and happy and grateful. When she had told him she needed some time she knew he had no idea it was going to be three months. She knew if he had known that he wouldn't have left.
But if he had been injured and then disappeared she would have been hurt and destroyed and she's not sure she could have forgiven him. He forgave her. He took whatever she threw at him as if he thought he deserved it. His penance for a previous life, one not worthy of her as if he had to continually prove himself. Could she have done it? Could she have waited three months for him to come back from the dead and then gone on like nothing had happened?
The reality of her selfishness slammed into her and she gasped as it tightened in her chest, ironically right over her scar. Her hand raised automatically to press tight to the stretched skin and then she dropped it, time for her to start serving her own penance.
She stood on shaky legs and crossed to where he stood, his arms braced on the counter, not facing her. Reaching out a trembling hand she let it rest on his back, shocked at how tight the muscles felt. "I'm sorry..." she began tentatively, throat constricting "I didn't know." she felt him flinch and she hurried "I should have. I should have known, I should have seen. I'm so sorry." she doesn't know what else she can say. Part of her wants to confess all. Tell him she had heard him, that she had known all this time and had lied when he had asked if she remembered. She's not sure he could survive that right now. She's not sure they could survive that.
She doesn't know how long they stand there. Her hand stays where it had been but she feels none of the warmth from him that she has come to expect. Everything in her is screaming for her to run, to avoid, to pretend like this hasn't happened and that she still has control. But she doesn't leave. This is where she has to stand and move forward or they are done, somehow she knows this to be an absolute.
The muscles under her hand move finally and then he's turning, her hand coming to rest on his forearm and they are so very close her fingers dig in to ground her and keep her from stepping back.
She's scared. The realization slams into her as she knows that she could lose this, lose him and their future if she doesn't do this right. But she also knows now that what she's been creeping towards all this time is finally here and she's ready even if she doesn't fully believe it. All her thoughts earlier about baby steps and taking her time and trying...it meant nothing, it was just another way to delay and hide and put off what she frightened her the most. Because if she was going to do this it was more about being able to be the person he needed her to be instead of the other way around.
For the first time she can't read him, or maybe it's more that she has never seen this look in his eyes, he looks almost broken and she wants to do nothing more than fix him.
"I didn't want you to know." he finally says "You didn't need to burden yourself with my issues." and she feels dizzy as she realizes this is exactly how she feels about him and her problems. "I just thought if you were better they'd stop. And they have, for the most part." he assured her, no doubt noticing the spike of pain in her eyes at his admission.
"I feel like if I had done more, been more you could have been there with me." he admits regretfully, jumping forward in the conversation they'd been silently having for the past eight months. And her breath is taken away by the love she feels for him.
She blinks rapidly to keep her tears from spilling over. "No. You can't think that. That's not how this works. You did exactly what you needed to do. I'm the one who needs to be more for you."
He opens his mouth to protest and she lays a single finger over his lips to quiet him, not ignoring the small charge that runs through her at the contact.
"Don't. You have to stop taking all the responsibility. Partners means equal sharing and it's time I stepped up." she made herself look in his eyes before she took a deep breath and continued "I'm ready."
It took him a minute, not expecting those two words to come from her and she enjoyed watching the play of emotions run unchecked across his face as he processed what she had said.
She had never considered this moment, because to consider it meant to acknowledge that it was possible, but if she had thought about it she would have never imagined it would have come at four thirty in the morning in the precinct break room in the middle of a murder investigation.
Their only contact had been her hand on his arm, he had been restraining himself from touching her, but now her face was framed in his hands and he looked as if she had gifted him with water in a desert.
Her breath caught in her chest but she didn't dare look away. "Are you sure Kate?" he asked, voice filled with hope but with a trace of insecurity. She inwardly winced that he couldn't completely trust in her. She understood, but it still burned and she vowed to make it so that he never felt that way again.
Her hand came up to rest lightly on his writs and she could feel his pulse beating wildly under her thumbs. "I'm sure." she whispered and dared a small smile.
He exhaled in a great woosh and dropped his head forward until it rested against hers, noses brushing, breaths mingling and she let her eyes fall shut as the tension began to ease out of her.
"I can't promise this will be easy. That I will be easy." she warned, but took one step closer to him.
"Good thing I don't like easy." he retorted, voice brighter and lighter as he began to press small kisses on her hairline, her cheek, her nose, her forehead. "If something isn't complicated it isn't worth the effort put into it."
She smiled again, bigger, wider, and tilted her head slightly so his next kiss landed on her jaw line, letting out a little gasp as he made his way up to her ear. She felt the grin as it spread across his face at his small triumph.
"Good thing we're worth it." her hands now finding his chest.
"Oh, you have no idea, Detective." he practically growled and whatever she had been going to say was cut off as his mouth found hers.