She holds it together on the ride back to the office. Barely.
It's been awhile since her last attack. Since she last felt the breathless fear wash over her, the tight band of panic wrapping around her lungs and squeezing too tightly.
But she also hasn't been shot in the line since that bright May afternoon.
Sitting in the passenger seat of the sedan, she focuses on her hands, tries not to clench them until her nails dig into her own palms. They tremble against the dark fabric of her pants, smearing some of the theatrical blood along the sharp creases. She hopes McCord doesn't notice; she doesn't need the seasoned agent thinking her new partner isn't up to scratch, unable to handle even a training exercise.
What she wants is to get out of the car, find the nearest Metro station, and go to her new house. (A real house because Castle insisted she get out of an apartment for once. He hadn't let her see the lease information, angling the papers away from her with a happy "What's mine is yours" tossed over his shoulder.) She wants to let herself fall apart a bit then find her phone and call him.
But she can't. She has a job to do.
As McCord pulls into her parking spot, switches the ignition off, and gets out, Kate pauses. She pulls in a deep breath, letting the exhale out just as slowly.
Then she climbs out, ducking back in for her blazer, and tries to ignore the way the sunlight glints off the glass and chrome of their building. Shoves the startle-reaction down and keeps walking.
"So," McCord starts as she hits the button for their floor in the elevator, "what'd you do wrong?"
Last thing she wants to think of. The glance over to the other agent makes her nervous, like she's back in her uniform on her first day with Royce drilling her about what to do if… "I was too focused on the hostage taker."
"You didn't find it odd that the hostage wasn't struggling?" asks McCord, pushing open the glass doors to the division.
Kate steps through right at her heels. Determined to be equal with her in some way. "She had a gun held to her head," Kate says.
"She didn't cry out for help?" McCord keeps striding through the arrangement of desks and Kate has to jog a few steps to keep up.
Shit. "Because she didn't want to give away her accent. Fine." Around a corner, still moving too fast. Someone drops a cup of pens and it takes all of her energy to just focus on the training situation gone so terribly wrong. "But the intel said that the operative worked alone."
"And that's the point of the exercise," McCord says, halting suddenly and turning to face her. "Intel is sometimes wrong."
Kate pushes back the urge to rebel, to remind the woman that this isn't her first job in law enforcement. She's not a rookie. (Except she is.)
"You have to use your judgment, your instinct, because the analyst that's gathering that intel? He's not the one that's going to be catching a bullet," she says. "That's gonna be you."
An uncomfortable shock wave passes down her spine to settle in her stomach. Been there, done that.
"Or worse, me. Now step up your game."
She's thankful, so very grateful, that the chief calls McCord over. Her breath shudders on its way in as she looks down at her sticky red palms holding the collar of her blazer. Everything's going to the dry cleaners as soon as she gets home.
Kate steels herself to study whether her shirt is even salvageable.
Just stage blood, she reminds herself as she drags her thumb through the stains. It'll probably wash right out.
Not like her real blood. Not like the blood that she knows coated Castle's hands for days after she was shot.
Hendricks whistles, breaking the near spell that the splattering of red has her under.
"Hostage Alley?" he asks with a grin.
Her mouth tastes bitter with defeat, with failure when she whispers "Yeah."
"Don't feel bad," he says, taking the few steps from his desk over to her side. "Everyone screws that up."
"I should have seen it." She of all people should have seen it.
"Look," Hendricks continues, "it's better to die in training than in the field, right?"
Kate feels the full weight of her words before she even speaks them. "It's better not to die at all."
The man laughs, shrugging one shoulder just a little. "Listen. A few of us are grabbing a beer tonight. You want to join?"
No. Not tonight. Not after that mess.
"Thank you, Hendricks. I would love to but with the caseload and the training," she says, hoping the words come off grateful for the invitation in the first place. "I haven't had a weekend off in ages and I've actually got plans."
Plans that, now more than ever, she needs to keep.
McCord ruins that with two words.
After the chief runs down the basics of the case, Kate escapes to the bathroom with the clean shirt stashed in her desk drawer to change.
She doesn't get a chance to call until they're at the site of the blackout, rushed and apologetic.
She doesn't get a chance to tell him about the alley until they're in her bed late that evening.
It's not a conversation she wants to have naked but his hand is heavy on her lower back, the other combing through her hair as if he doesn't even notice he's doing it. With her head resting on his upper arm, she's too comfortable to move.
"I had a panic attack," she murmurs into his still-warm skin, no energy to make it anything but blunt.
She can feel him stiffen under her, pushing up so they end up sitting against her headboard. Needing some kind of coverage, she snags the sheet and pulls it up to her chest.
"When?"
"This afternoon," she says, closing her eyes and seeing it all play out again. There are bits, though, that don't belong. Parts that take place on soft green grass and not the hard blacktop of the alleyway. "Training exercise."
He stays quiet, his fingers brushing down her arm to her elbow then back up to her shoulder.
"Suspect took a hostage in this alley," she continues, plowing through it. "I trusted our intel that the man was working alone."
"He wasn't."
She shakes her head slowly. "The hostage was working with him. After I disarmed the man, the woman he had at gunpoint pulled her own gun on me. And they don't use capguns here." Kate shivers, pushing her nose into his chest. "Theatrical blood pellets. Three quick shots, center of mass. Ruined my shirt."
It takes him a minute to process but then she feels his hand, the one that rested on her thigh, drift up to her chest. "Shit. Kate."
"Haven't frozen up like that in a long time," she says quietly, letting his fingertips move over the jumble of her rings and the subtly raised edges of her scar. "Just…" She sighs, shifting so she rests on her side, a leg hooked over his to keep her from falling backwards. "The sky was the same blue."
His kiss is graceless but soft, nothing of the frenzied movements of earlier against her bathroom sink.
She wiggles them back down under all of her blankets, arranging the duvet over their bodies. "I'm calling Burke in the morning before work. He needs to know."
"Whatever you need," he says into her hair. "Whatever helps."
"You help." Kate slides herself closer, her chest pressed to the warmth of his side. "More than you know. Thank you for moving our weekend down here. I needed to see you."
"This mean I'm on the team?"
She laughs, a quick puff of air against his shoulder. "Not even close."