Disclaimer: I could never have been so mean to Castle and Beckett.

Author's Note: Adding to what I'm sure will be 500 post-eps for 7x15, "Reckoning," because I had to write something and I couldn't get Castle's face at a certain pivotal scene in the episode (that should become clear in the fic) out of my head. Spoilers ahead!

Through the Night

The first time, Castle startled awake with tears in his eyes and a scream clogging his throat. "Kate!"

"Castle. Castle, I'm here."

His breath was coming too fast, his chest aching as if his ribs had been cracked, but he turned his head sharply and saw her—Kate—the pale shadow of her so familiar, so dear face as she looked at him. And he felt some semblance of sanity, of calm, beginning to seep back into him.

She was here. She was safe. Her hand was reassuringly solid as it rested on his chest, her body warming his side.

It was too dim in their room for him to really see her face, let alone her expression, but his mind easily filled in her concerned expression as she asked, quietly, "A nightmare?"

"I—you were shot," he blurted out unthinkingly, his brain still too foggy with remembered terror and heartbreak to even try to filter his words. He heard her intake of breath and then he was crying, ragged sobs tearing their way from his chest. He'd thought he'd lost her. He'd thought he'd lost her—and yet again, it hit him with all the force of a blow to his gut that he couldn't bear to imagine life without her.

"Oh, Castle…" He felt her arm go around him and he abruptly turned, burying his face in the curve where her neck met her shoulder, as he cried.

A small corner of him retained enough coherence to think that he shouldn't be doing this, that she was the one who had suffered the worst ordeal, that he should be comforting her, not crying like a baby into her shoulder. But for the moment, he couldn't stop the tears, the heart-stopping seconds when he'd seen the fake Kate being riddled with bullets in the trap Tyson had set playing through his mind again and again, only this time in his dream, it wasn't the fake Kate at all but Kate herself being shot over and over. A shudder racked his body at the mental image and he clutched her tighter.

It was a few minutes before the tears stopped, before he became conscious of the sound of her soft, comforting murmurs, but he didn't move, didn't release her just yet. He stayed where he was, breathing in the familiar scent of her—of cherries and the indefinable scent that was just her—the feel of her hair pressed against his cheek, the warmth of her against him. Let himself soak in the reality of the life of her against him.

But eventually, finally, he stirred, lifting his head.

"I'm—I'm sorry," he managed to say, suddenly belatedly conscious of how he'd just broken down. "Did I wake you?"

She shook her head just once, a sharply negative jerk of her head. "No, I… I can't sleep." She paused and then added in what he could tell was a valiant attempt to sound more like herself, more Beckett and less Kate, "I was watching you sleep instead."

At that moment, he thought he would willingly give up everything he had to be able to make some sort of quip about creepy staring, but he couldn't. The past couple days had excoriated his emotions too much, his heart still bleeding and raw, his ability to be humorous burned to ashes in the searing flames of his terror and his heartbreak. He knew himself too well to think it would last permanently or even for very long; he even prided himself on it, on still being able to be optimistic and silly and humorous even in the face of all the darkness that was the reality of dealing with murder on a daily basis. But for now, he didn't have it in him to make light of anything.

"Kate…" He drew her back down to rest against him, almost cradling her against him, both his arms around her.

He was never going to let her go, he thought, without the slightest sense of hyperbole. He was never going to leave her alone again. Never letting her out of his sight again.

She settled against him with a sigh, her head finding its habitual spot on his shoulder, one of her legs tucked between his.

They lay there in silence for a while—he wasn't sure how long—as he stared up at the ceiling and just enjoyed the fact that he could feel the steady cadence of her heart beating, could hear the soft sound of her breathing. For a moment, his brain processed the sounds so he heard it as the steady beeping of a heart monitor, from when she'd been shot before, from endless hours spent in the hospital, but then he mentally shook himself, returned to the present. Kate was fine; she hadn't been shot again. She was fine—and only hoped that at some point, the repeated reassurance would sink in to his mind and heart.

"I keep seeing her face, Castle," Kate finally said, her voice soft enough that even in the quiet of the night, he could barely hear it.

"I know," he told her quietly, turning his head so he could press a kiss to her hair.

"I can't sleep because every time I close my eyes, I see her face."

He forcibly suppressed a shudder—he didn't want her to feel his instinctive reaction at the thought.

"Castle…"

"Mm?"

"How did you—how did you manage to fall asleep? You said—you said you see his face when you close your eyes too. How did you fall asleep?"

"I thought about you," he answered simply. "I pictured you instead, visualized some of my favorite memories of you."

She tightened her arms around him a little. "What memories, Castle? Talk to me, tell me about them."

Oh, Kate… He turned to press his lips against her hair, buying himself an extra moment. Love and tenderness and poignant happiness filled his chest and clogged his throat. He knew his Kate, knew what she wanted, what she was asking. She had admitted to him a couple times that she loved the sound of his voice, with that soft smile that was a mix of shyness and a little self-consciousness that usually appeared whenever Kate made an uncharacteristically sentimental admission. (He adored that smile; Kate was so rarely shy and it made the brief glimpses of shyness, her well-hidden, well-protected tender heart, all the more precious to him.) She had asked him before to read to her or tell her a story to help her relax and fall asleep and he knew it was what she wanted now.

It was Kate's way, he knew. He didn't kid himself that Kate would have escaped her ordeal, what she'd had to do, with no lasting effects. The look on her face when they'd finally found her—more than that, the way she had stayed willingly tucked inside the circle of his arm from the moment they'd found her all through the long hour in which she'd been checked over by the EMT's to when they had finally made it back to the precinct and after they'd left the precinct told him everything. Normally, Kate—Beckett—would never have done such a thing when surrounded by other cops as they had been for every moment. Beckett almost never showed weakness in public; he knew that even Espo and Ryan could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times they'd seen Beckett appear anything less than stoic. Tonight, though, she had stayed next to him. When they had left the building where she'd been held, come into sight of the rest of the cops swarming the place, he had—very reluctantly—been on the verge of dropping his arm, well aware of Beckett's ways, but she had grabbed his hand, pressed herself more closely against his side. A small gesture but from Beckett, it had been the equivalent of sky-writing a declaration that she needed him, that she wasn't okay.

And now this. He knew she was exhausted, drained, but more than that, he knew she wanted to sleep, forget about it for a little while, get through one night and then face the next day. Putting one foot in front of the other and getting through each day, putting in the time, as she'd once told him. But now, this time, she was letting him help, asking him for help.

He swallowed back his emotions and began speaking, quietly. Even to his own ears, his voice was a little husky, unsteady, with emotion at first, but he ignored that and went on, closing his eyes to better visualize the memories, forcing everything else out of his mind but the thought of her, of them, in some of their happiest moments.

"I thought about our first walk on the beach in the Hamptons. I was a little surprised that you immediately slipped off your shoes because somehow I hadn't imagined you to be a feel-the-sand-between-your-toes kind of person. But then you took off your shoes and wiggled your toes a little as your feet sank into the sand. I remember thinking it was a little unfair because even your toes were pretty."

He sensed her eyes closing, felt the way some of the tension began to leave her body.

"So there we were, both of us barefoot, walking or strolling really on the sand, holding hands, and I remember thinking that I wasn't sure if I'd ever felt happier than I was right then. To be with you there at the Hamptons, to be holding your hand, to see you smiling at me so openly, to feel so certain that you loved me. It was one of those perfect moments that come along every so often in life and I thought I wanted it to last forever."

His voice softened as he found himself falling into the memory, the story, as he always did, his mind automatically seeking out the way to put this story of theirs into words, focusing on the story and nothing else.

"The sunset was so beautiful that night. Aside from not wanting to face the open ocean, I always wanted the private beach to face west to get the best view of the sunsets and that night, it seemed like the sunset was putting on a special show just for you. It was a blaze of colors, of pink and orange and red and purple, and I looked over at you and I forgot all about admiring the sunset. You were so beautiful that day, Kate, the way the sun's glow added color to your skin, lit up your face, brought out every spark of green and gold and amber in your eyes. I must have been staring at you like an idiot because you looked over at me and laughed and then you stepped in close, so close that you started to look a little blurry before I closed my eyes, and then you kissed me and I thought that it was already the best weekend of my life."

Their story—his and Kate's story—in spite of all they'd suffered, it was still, would always be, his favorite story. It was an oddly comforting thought, even that night after some of the worst days of his life, some of the worst moments of his life. He still had their story to tell and as long as he had Kate, he knew he'd never run out of stories to tell.

"Mm. Tell me another story, Castle," she murmured. He could hear in her voice, for the first time that night, that she was relaxed, had managed to find some measure of peace. One of his hands stroked her hair slowly, in the way he knew she found soothing.

This was helping. Comforting her, calming her—and, at the same time, comforting him.

And so he went on.

He talked about the way they'd danced at Ryan's wedding reception, the time they had gone to see Forbidden Planet together at the Angelika, the way they had essentially crashed the Faircroft Winter Formal, the re-do of their first Valentine's Day together with his second gift. Some of his favorite memories of her, although he found himself avoiding any stories from the precinct without even consciously deciding to do so. He talked for longer than he could ever remember talking for such an extended length of time without any interruption or response. He talked until his throat was dry, his voice getting a little hoarse and he shifted into whispering, partly to save his voice but also because he sensed in the added weight of her body against him, the way her hand was lax against his chest, that she was, slowly, falling asleep.

His Kate. Always his, just as he was hers.

And she was safe now. They were both safe now.

Safe and together—and he knew that they would be fine.

Beside him, Kate stirred a little in her sleep before stilling again as he smoothed his hand down her hair.

He felt warm and relaxed and at peace and he thought he would probably fall asleep in fairly short order himself.

But before he did, he thought there was a little more he would say and hope that the words, the sound of his voice, would accompany her into her sleep, keep her from having any nightmares. He could only hope.

In a whisper, not wanting to disturb her, he recited from memory the beautiful poem by Neruda, that Kate had told him once was one of her favorites. (He had learned the poem by heart after Kate's confession.)

"I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

Or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

In secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

But carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

Thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

Risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

So I love you because I know no other way than this:

Where I does not exist, nor you,

So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

So close that your eyes close as I fall asleep."

And he fell asleep.

The second time, Castle jerked awake with a strangled gasp of horror, the image of Dr. Nieman standing over Kate's bloodied body lying on that pseudo-operating table bludgeoning his mind.

He turned to Kate's side of the bed to find that it was empty.

Panic flared fast and sharp, twisting his gut, as he bolted upright. "Kate!"

The door to the en suite bathroom opened immediately and Kate appeared. "I'm here, Castle."

Oh thank God.

He stared at her, his eyes practically devouring the sight of her, whole, unbloodied, alive. Let the sight of her calm his breathing and his heart rate, assuring his brain that she was fine. She was safe.

"Castle?"

"I—I woke up and you were gone," was all he could blurt out.

"I woke up too," she offered quietly.

He belatedly woke up to the realization that there was something off about her tone. "Are you okay?"

He saw her shudder and then as if his question had somehow breached the dam, she flicked off the light in the bathroom and crossed the room in two quick steps and almost flung herself across the bed towards him. He caught her, closing his arms around her as she buried her face in his chest, realizing with a spike of dismay that she was actually trembling a little.

Oh god. Oh Kate.

Whatever had woken her up had to be terrible. Kate had nightmares—they both did—but it took a lot to affect her so strongly. This was Kate, his indomitable Kate whose strength still amazed him every single day.

"Kate?" he asked carefully.

"Just… hold me, Castle."

As if he was ever going to let her go. He tightened his arms around her, curling his body around hers as much as possible, as he murmured soothing nothings into her ear. Assuring her that he was there with her, that she was fine, that they were both safe, that he wasn't going anywhere, that she wasn't alone.

It was a long, terrible, heart-wrenching few minutes before her trembling subsided. She didn't stir, only clutched him a little tighter.

He waited, worried, mentally debated if he should ask. Even now, in spite of everything, Kate didn't always want to talk about her nightmares and he didn't know if she would want to talk about it tonight of all nights, after what she'd been through. He didn't want to push her but at the same time, he knew that sometimes she needed him to ask, as if somehow his asking was all she needed to get past her automatic, instinctive reticence.

"Kate?" he finally ventured, gently, not quite asking outright but not quite not asking either.

"I needed to wash my hands," she stated after another few minutes.

Castle frowned a little, confused. It wasn't really like Kate to talk about irrelevancies. Subtext was one thing but pointless talking was not really Kate's style. He was the one more likely to avoid difficult subjects by talking nonsense about anything and everything. Which meant… the hand-washing wasn't irrelevant.

"I dreamed…" she began again quietly, her voice disturbingly emotionless. "I was back in that room with her and it all happened again. Dr. Nieman lifted the scalpel and came closer and I grabbed her hand and we struggled and I… I stabbed her."

Castle flinched. All the emotion, all the pain, that had been absent from her voice before was back, was poured into the last three words.

"I stabbed her. I had to. And she fell." She spoke in an oddly staccato fashion, short bursts of words and then too-long pauses in between the sentences.

She let out a shuddering breath that ended on something like a sob. "And then… I looked down and it wasn't Dr. Nieman at all. It was… it was my mother and… and there was so much blood and my mom's blank eyes were just staring up at me and it was my mom's blood on my hands and…"

Her breath and her words were beginning to come too fast and he cut off the flood of increasingly panicked words by gently turning her face back into his chest, cupping her cheek and tangling his fingers in her hair. "Sssh, Kate," he murmured soothingly, helplessly. "Ssh, it's okay. It was a nightmare."

He tightened his arms around her, pressing his cheek against her hair, and closed his eyes against the sting of more tears, but this time they were tears for Kate's suffering. He should have known this would be the problem. He had known that having to kill Nieman would haunt Kate; Kate was always haunted by the deaths she saw, let alone the ones she was forced to cause. But a stabbing. Stabbing deaths were the hardest for Kate, because of what had happened to her mother. He should have known that, more than having to kill Nieman, the way she'd had to kill Nieman would haunt Kate.

No wonder she had needed to wash her hands.

A tiny corner of his mind spoke up, quoting Mac—the Scottish play: "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hands?"

He pushed the thought aside. He didn't know how to help her, didn't know how to comfort her in this. (He made a mental note to ask Kate if she wanted to call Dr. Burke—but that would be for later.)

She stirred and sniffed a little. "I've had to shoot people before on the job," she said quietly.

He bit back the automatic "I know" rising to his lips. She wasn't telling him something she didn't think he knew.

"But I've never… never stabbed anyone before."

He suddenly remembered what Kate had said to him when he'd rejoined her after Raglan had been shot. It's different when it happens right in front of you, close enough to watch the lights go out.

That was the difference between a shooting and a stabbing. Shooting was generally killing from a distance. Stabbing was killing from up close—close enough to feel the reaction of the body, to feel the flesh give way to the force of the blow, to see the shock in the person's eyes. Close enough to see the lights go out.

Oh Kate…

His heart broke all over again at what she'd been through, what she'd been forced to do to save her own life.

She was so strong and he loved her strength. He had once called her his woman of steel and she'd given him one of her looks, quirking her eyebrow at him, and he'd edited himself, joked that she was the woman of adamantium and she'd laughed at that. But sometimes he had to wonder how much more she would be forced to endure, how many more times she would need to draw on her reservoir of strength—and what would happen if she ever hit the bottom of the reservoir and ran out.

He caught one of her hands in his and lifted it to his lips, pressed a kiss into her palm, her hand automatically curving so her fingers caressed his cheek. Her deceptively slender, capable hands. Hands that had killed, yes, when forced to do so but also hands that could be amazingly tender.

He swallowed hard before he managed to croak, "I'm sorry, Kate. I'm so sorry."

"For what?"

"For not finding you sooner, for not figuring out what Tyson and Nieman had planned earlier. For not…"

She stirred, her hand coming up to cup his cheek again, her thumb lightly pressing against his lips, silencing him. "No, Rick. It's not your fault, you know that, right? And I knew you'd come and that… helped. It kept me going, made me stronger, because I knew I had to come back to you."

"I don't know how to help you with this, Kate. I don't know what to say or do to make you feel better."

She lifted her head to kiss him lightly and then settled her head against his shoulder, nestling against him again. "Keep holding me, Castle. That helps."

Keep holding her—that, he could do. He didn't know what else he could say or do—or if there was anything he could say or do that would mitigate the horror of what Kate had been forced to do. He didn't really think there was. There was a cost to taking a life, no matter the circumstances—as there should be—so he knew, with an aching understanding, that Nieman's death would haunt Kate, just as Dick Coonan's death did, in spite of everything. All he could do was hold her and promise, yet again, in the silence of his heart, that he would be there for her, no matter what she needed.

He doubted either of them was at all inclined to even try to go back to sleep—he knew he wasn't, not after the dreams that had come. So after a few minutes, he shifted back to lean against the headboard and then tugged her back against him, wrapping his arms around her again as he rested his cheek against her hair. Kept holding her, as she'd asked, and thought, not for the first time, that he would never get over being the person Kate turned to when she was vulnerable.

A measure of calm crept over him and he felt the tension that had been his constant companion since this whole thing had started begin to dissipate. As always, Kate's presence brought him peace. It was paradoxical. Kate had, from the first, made stories crowd into his mind, words clamoring to be written, and Kate herself had proven to be the most challenging, fascinating person he'd ever met and certainly being with her was never boring. But at the same time, somehow, Kate calmed him, steadied him, brought him peace. He'd always had a tendency to restlessness, his mind constantly churning, leaping around, building stories in his head, observing everything around him. Alexis and Kate were the only people he'd ever known who made his mind still, who focused his mind to the exclusion of all else.

Now, with Kate in his arms, he found peace again.

He glanced across to the window to see the faint gray beginnings of the dawn just beginning to lighten the darkness.

"When will Martha and Alexis be home?" Kate asked softly.

"Probably tomorrow night—I mean, tonight," he corrected himself since it was the morning after he'd spoken with Alexis. "Alexis said she'd text me their flight schedule."

"It'll be good to have them home. I want to see them."

"They want to see you too." Alexis's first words when he'd called her had been demanding to know if Kate was okay. It had sounded as if she'd been crying, he had heard soft murmurs in the background that he could guess were his mother comforting Alexis, and his heart had hurt all over again for his daughter and his mother.

"After they get home, maybe we could go somewhere, Kate," he suggested. "Get out of the city for a couple days." Gates had made it clear that she didn't want to see Kate anywhere near the precinct until the following week, which gave them five days. He wanted—and knew Alexis would want—to spend some time with him and Kate after the scare they'd just had but they could take a couple days.

"Mm, okay," she agreed quietly. "The Hamptons. It'll be quiet this time of year. It'll be peaceful there."

The Hamptons—where he'd disappeared from. He pushed the reminder aside. The thought of his disappearance stung more than usual after the past couple days but this was about Kate and of course, they had been back to the Hamptons since.

"The Hamptons it is."

"We can add another chapter of our story there, Castle."

He pressed a kiss to her hair. "I love our story."

"Me too, Castle."

She moved one of her hands to hold his and he turned it over to lace their fingers together.

He could hear in her voice that she was still not quite herself again, a thread of vulnerability lingering in her tone. But she was here with him, had turned to him, and somehow, he knew they would both be fine. They were safe, they were together, they would be happy. Still were happy, in spite of everything.

Another comfortable silence settled over them, broken only by the soft sound of their breathing, the noise of the city becoming slowly, gradually, louder as the city fully woke up outside.

Kate let out a soft, sighing breath. "It's morning."

He turned his head to look at her face in the soft, diffuse light of the very early morning sun slipping in through the blinds. She still looked pale, tired, shadows under her eyes from the mostly-sleepless night and all the trauma she had been through. But she turned her head up to meet his eyes and managed a faint smile.

His brave, beautiful Kate.

He bent and kissed her softly. "Good morning, love," he whispered.

They had made it through the night.

~The End~

A/N 2: The poem is Poem XVII (I do not love you…) by Pablo Neruda. I wasn't planning on including the entire thing but in rereading it, it seemed too fitting not to include.

The quote Castle thinks of is from Act 2, Scene 2 of Macbeth.

On a more light-hearted note, I also just have to add that I am so glad that Castle's stint as a P.I. is finally over.

Thank you for reading and please let me know what you think!