A/N: So, last night's episode was pretty intense, wasn't it (4x19)? I know a few people aren't happy with Castle's reaction, but I understand why he did what he did and think it plays out realistically. Anyway, after last night I decided I wanted to write a story of how I wish things would go. Now, you know me, it won't be all happy and fluffy, but I'll bring it to a quicker conclusion. Consider this my episode 20 and on. The plan is to make this story short and sweet, to be finished by Monday. That being said, I won't be posting a chapter every day like with my other stories.

So, Enjoy!

Chapter 1

She felt like she'd been ditched. Ryan and Esposito were out within seconds, which honestly she couldn't blame them for. They'd both put everything out there the past couple of days, but she didn't think Castle would leave her too.

She adjusted her jacket and bent to pick up her bag. When she stood her eyes instantly locked on the elevator doors as they opened. For a moment she thought he was coming back, that he'd changed his mind. No such luck, a uniform got off and headed for the break room with the single-mindedness that only the need of caffeine could bring. She watched him go, shifted the bag to her other hand and bit her tongue.

What was Castle's deal? Ever since the morning he'd been acting strange. Well, stranger than normal. His entire demeanor had changed like someone had flipped a switch. Maybe something happened at home?

She made her way toward the elevator and hit the button, waited a moment and then got in. She rode it down to the lobby, worry beginning to bubble up inside. He did go somewhere today and when he came back he seemed to change. She hoped it wasn't anything bad, maybe she should call him and talk to him over the phone? She rolled her eyes as she headed out into a chilled spring night. Interrogating him would go over wonderfully if he was in a bad mood.

She wasn't sure she wanted to deal with Bad-Mood Castle. At least not tonight. While she had been wired, being ditched short-circuited any energy that had once buzzed. She couldn't keep her thoughts from trailing back over the past few days. She'd seen death for years, but the bodies she saw on this case were going to haunt her nightmares. She could already feel her mind feeding them to her subconscious. She couldn't think of a time that someone dead didn't show up in her dreams, but theses would be bad.

The remote for her car had decided to stop working she found as she pulled on the door handle. She gave a grumbled curse and unlocked the door as an image from the night before strolled to the forefront of her brain: the image of Castle in amongst the dead from the bomb. She forced her eyes closed as she got in, willed it away because it was the one thing she didn't want to think about right now. Castle was fine.

He was home.

Safe.

Pissed.

She canted her head enough that she found herself staring back in the rearview mirror. Behind her the lights of New York danced in gold and blue and white; a tapestry of living. She could almost imagine the people behind the glass living their lives: joking, crying, and sleeping. They'd wake up tomorrow and think nothing of it. They'd put off until tomorrow what they could do today.

Wasn't that what she was doing? She shook her head as she made her way into traffic and pointed towards home and wine. Some things needed to be put off, some things couldn't be done, or faced, until you were ready.

She wasn't ready. Well, at least not ready to be the initiator. Something like that seemed so far beyond her capabilities that she didn't even like to think about it. She knew the face of her fear in regard to Castle.

That he didn't love her anymore. That what he said was in the heat of the moment, that when looked at in the light of day was nothing more than a plea not to lose her. Or, that his love would be fleeting, that they'd fizzle out in a month or two and lose everything they had now.

Why was he being so goddam cold?

She slammed her hands on the steering wheel, honked at a cab that started to get frisky with her Crown Vic and made a hard right turn on a yellow light. She just wanted to go home and cloud her worries with a drink. Something maybe stronger than wine now that she thought about it.

She felt foolish. Yesterday, with the memories of the bomb strong and savage, she wanted to say something more to him. But, as if some god thought it too soon, she was saved by Esposito's interruption.

Why did she think she was saved?

She gnawed on her bottom lip as she parked her car and got out. She paused under a cloudless night and stared up at the eternal twilight sky that was devoid of stars. A Spring wind kissed at her cheeks, sent a chill down her spine that made her shiver. She still breathed, could still feel the soft, rhythmic thump of her heart under her breast. She still moved and thought, and my, wasn't that miracle? By all rights she should have died a year ago.

Yet that didn't push her. Her own mortality did the exact opposite of what this week's events lit inside her. Her time in the dark made her draw away from all that she held dear and loved. It was the wrong reaction, she could see that now, but it was the one she absolutely needed, time to collect herself. Time: an intangible thing that she had already squandered. Another year, more brushes with death and yet she couldn't tell some guy how she felt, how he made her feel alive and real.

He brought out her heart like no one else could, and that scared the living hell out of her. Her heart still lay broken inside her chest, though the doctors did what they could, they couldn't fix the cracks and dents.

She wouldn't want them too. They were apart of her, that part that gave her strength and gave her the walls to keep from being ripped apart in her turbulent life. But Castle had begun to take the place of those painful memories. He'd become a support, not of the walls or the worry, but of her. Was she willing to risk that?

The apartment stood as a testament of darkness when she walked in and she sighed. For some reason she found the darkness a comfort, a safety blanket that hid the terrors and worries. But them being hidden didn't remove them. They always came back, just lingering outside of her perception and ready to jump up and bite her in the ass.

Her keys landed in a small bowl on a table. Her jacket found its way onto a hook in the closet and her fingers found the light switch, which she flicked on.

First order of business was alcohol.

She headed into the kitchen, squatted down and began to turn though the lazy-susan in her cabinet. She wasn't a drinker; she knew better than most the dangers that lurked in the depths of alcohol. She'd seen it first hand, but tonight it could dim her mind enough to let her relax. Two drinks, that was the cut off point she decided and choose a bottle of gin and placed it on the counter before getting the tonic water and a slightly off lime from her fridge.

With the drink made she went into the living room and sat on the couch, her socked feet up on the coffee table and she picked up the remote from cushion beside her. The TV held little else but color and explosions, and she steered clear of the news channels, she knew all the details of the violent word that she needed to know. Not even M.A.S.H could entertain her attention for very long though and as she sipped her drink her mind began to wander in a large circle of thoughts.

He seemed so angry, and not just angry with everything... It was anger with a purpose. What ever had set him off was laser focused. Why didn't he tell her about it? He usually asked for her advice, sometimes she didn't have an answer, but when he was bothered about something he would ask what she thought. So why didn't he now?

She absently rubbed at the scar on her chest and frowned at the strange reflections of her mostly empty glass. It felt like the answer stood in front of her, only hidden in a fog of some sort.

"He's a mystery and you love mysteries," she said to herself, her speech slightly slurred from being tired. She downed the rest of the drink and allowed her brain to traipse around with Castle while she got up to refill her glass.

He showed up while she was in the box with the pickpocket, she tried to think of the kid's name, but that too lingered just out of reach. It didn't matter in the slightest, though. That had been tough, keeping her anger in check while he spouted off about trauma and amnesia.

She chuckled into her glass as she made her way back to the TV and settled back into the worn cushions that enveloped her. She just about broke him in half. He had no idea what trauma was. She did, because trauma was being shot. Trauma was remembering the bullet entering your chest and making adjustments to your insides and feeling each one. Trauma was feeling like someone had stuffed a mixer up under your rib cage and turned it on high.

Trauma was remembering it all like it was yesterday. Every second of it.

Her eyes shot opened, the cloud of alcohol that she'd been building up burned away like early morning fog. He couldn't have been there. He couldn't have heard her. Could he?

She swallowed hard as her throat and mouth dried so that her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She felt feverish and sat the glass down on the coffee table before she dropped it.

Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus Christ.

She closed her eyes, placed her fingers to her forehead with a groan, and tried to will away the headache that began to play between her ears. This was not happening. She didn't say that. If she did, then he couldn't have heard it.

What the hell was he doing behind the glass? Was he behind the glass?

He left. He didn't wait for her to get out, but the coffee sat on her desk like a memento of his being there. He left for hours and then came back.

Angry. Annoyed.

Oh, God. He did hear it. She let a shuddering breath hiss through her teeth as her jaw tighten. "I'm such an idiot."

Her eyes watered, not in sadness but in frustration. Why did she wait? Why did she lie to him? Yes, she wasn't ready, but this was not how she wanted it to come out. The pain she'd seen in him, the passive aggressive jabs at her... it all made sense.

She picked up her glass and finished it and got up for a third.

Why did she always ruin things? Anything good she had to break because she couldn't come to terms with it. She couldn't have returned his love before. How could she show her love for him when she couldn't get her mind around her own wall? She did love him though, she knew that now-knew it for years, but she just wasn't ready.

And if he was ready, why the hell didn't he tell her again? What the hell was he thinking dropping a bomb like that on her and then just letting it linger? If he loved her why did he keep it to himself?

Another shuddering breath escaped her, this one leaving her whole body shaking and her stomach quivering. She screwed up this time. Whether or not he should have told her again, she hurt him. The last thing she wanted to do, and she did it.

She looked up at her apartment, at the splash of color on the wall from the TV, and a terrorizing thought entered her head. It wasn't the lie that had hurt him. It wasn't that she didn't tell him the same. He must think she didn't return his feelings. That she rejected him and left him in limbo.

That explained the cold shoulder, the short exchanges. It explained his pulling away. He thought she couldn't love him and for some reason that hurt her.

She had to fix it. Though her mind felt hampered, she knew that she had to fix it, and had to do it as soon as possible. But how? How could she explain to him something she couldn't even explain to herself?

Everything that she came up with sounded insulting to him. That she wasn't ready sounded like she didn't love him the same way. That she wasn't sure what to do was just as bad. An excuse wouldn't work, because she had none.

She did it out of fear, but that wasn't an excuse either.

Damn him.

Her life had been so simple before he showed up. Her heart was hidden behind a wall and that was where it could stay. She could get her fix for relationships and other primal needs easily and without the painful aftermath.

She could glide through love and caring and come out unscathed.

Yet, here she, was drowning some of her sorrows in a drink and feeling like a complete bitch. He knocked a hole into her wall, weakened it to his advances and existence. How could she fight something that deep inside she wanted more than anything?

Why had she crushed it in a moment of lapse thinking?

She turned and dumped the rest of her drink into the sink. She walked into the living room and flipped off the TV. She pulled her coat from its hanger and picked up her keys from the bowl, and a couple of bills from the envelope holder beside the bowl. She'd take a cab. She'd go see him.

She'd try to fix what she could, and bandage what she couldn't. She couldn't-wouldn't lose him over this.

As always, a rhino on top of an elephant sized thanks to ChrisS for beta reading.