Kate doesn't move. His eyes are wide, staring at her as his mouth tips open in shock. He exhales, his breath fanning over her face. A glazed film starts to lower slowly over his eyeballs. She can almost see her reflection in it. She doesn't move, just watches for what seems like hours, days maybe.
There's blood on her hands. It pumps out of him and drenches her fingers, warm and sticky. It's stained her shirt. The knife handle grows slippery in her hand, achingly warm from the life she's taking from him, or maybe taking back. She twists the knife, grits her teeth as it turns in his stomach, rips jaggedly through the muscle. He grunts quietly, desperately.
"How's that for a reckoning?" she whispers.
—Four days earlier—
He loves her in moments like this.
He loves her always, of course. But it's moments like this, when she looks at him like that, when she moves just like this—he loves her in moments like this. Her naked, sweating body against his is the promise of the past four years finally come to life, and he's still stunned by it all. Stunned and maybe a little annoyed that they hadn't figured it out earlier because God, the sex is good.
"Castle," she breathes, clawing at his back. Her legs, wrapped around him loosely, suddenly squeeze him close. He sometimes wonders if she uses his surname strategically. He likes when she calls him Rick—it's a signal of how far they've come and how much they've changed—but sometimes she reverts to Castle in moments like this and he wonders.
She darts her tongue out, traces the shell of his ear. "Castle."
He decides he doesn't care. She could be calling him macaroni, and as long as she said it like that, he'd be okay with it. He ghosts one of his hands along the curve of her back, thrusts up and meets the movement of her hips. She arches, sobs out a breath.
"Please," she says.
Maybe he loves moments like this more. The eye of the storm, the way she loses control in a way that the ordered, straight-laced detective he first met never would've dreamed of showing him. She shows him all her sides now and he loves every single one so much that it sets him on fire, an undeniable, all-consuming inferno of a thing that starts in the center of his chest and engulfs the rest of him quickly and without remorse.
When he comes back to himself she's draped over him, one arm hanging loosely at her side, the other lifted so that her slender fingers can weave through the hair at the nape of his neck.
"I think that gets better every time," she says into his neck, her lips moving against his skin.
He chuckles. "Practice makes perfect."
She huffs a laugh, shifts against him. He groans at the movement. She buries her head in his shoulder and giggles. Giggles. "Think of how we would've been as teenagers."
He plants a kiss on the crown of her head. "I would've tired you out."
"You tire me out now," she says, rolling off of him and flopping onto the bed. He unceremoniously shoves an arm beneath her back, pulls her toward him and half onto his chest.
"Old woman."
She kisses his chest, runs her nails over his stomach. "I could go again. You want to go again?"
"I, uh…"
She laughs. "Mhmm."
He nuzzles into her hair. "Evil woman."
She doesn't answer. He thinks she's fallen asleep, so he jolts in surprise when she whispers a few moments later.
"Love you."
He loves her in moments like this.
X-X-X-X-X
It's been an interesting summer.
When the back-to-school supplies hit the shelves in August, Kate realized that it had, in fact, been an entire summer since that night in May. An entire summer since she dangled from a rooftop and wheezed around severely bruised ribs; since she told Gates to keep the badge and threw in a go-to-hell look for good measure; since she showed up drenched outside Castle's door and told him what she'd known with complete certainty since that bullet drilled into her heart in the cemetery.
She's died a few times in the past four years, and it's always the same. When she dies, she thinks of him. Except that night in May, the thought alone wasn't enough anymore. That night the rain melted into her skin and left its mark—millions of them—tiny imprints that whispered of moments and words and coffees and stares until the whisper was deafening. If it hadn't been so far, she would've run the whole way to his loft to tell him, show him that he wasn't alone in this. He never had been.
Montgomery told her once that there weren't any victories; only battles, lines drawn in the sand that forced people to choose which side they were on. Castle had picked his side and she picked hers, too. No more death. No more endless circles. Her mother would want her to live, Castle wanted her to live, and she wanted to live, too.
Seemed to be a unanimous. No need to put it off.
Now, as she wanders the decrepit and dusty bookshelves that have become her home away from home this summer, she smiles as she remembers. His tongue and his hands and him, all of him, are certainly emblazoned in her memory. That memory has been reinforced over the past few months by nights that proved to be far superior to the heat wave that took over the city in June and July. He, of course, made all the appropriate puns. She, of course, showed him that Nikki Heat had nothing on her.
They've had fun.
The first time she wandered into Bailey's Books, it was an afternoon where he was immersed in Nikki and Rook. Those first few weeks she'd barely given him time to sleep, let alone write, so when she found him typing furiously when she got out of his shower, she left him a note and slipped out of the loft. Bailey's Books was the first thing she saw, an inconspicuous tiny storefront on the corner of Castle's block, and she immediately wondered if he lived on that block because it was also inhabited by a bookstore.
She wandered in, smiled at the old man cataloging a massive pile of books, and then meandered to the back. A copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses caught her attention, and she read in an overstuffed armchair surrounded by towering bookshelves until her phone chimed to signal that Castle was out of his writing coma.
She's come back often since then. She enjoys the way a thin film of dust has settled on some of the lesser used shelves. She likes the way the carpet is worn and faded blue, and how there are chairs and couches scattered throughout the store, as though someone wants her to forget that she's in the middle of Manhattan and not a separate world that changes depending on what book she picks up. There are classics and modern poetry and autobiographies and duplicate copies of everything Mamet has ever written. The spines are old, and the pages smell of history and potential. She smiles every time she takes a whiff, because she is every inch Johanna Beckett's daughter. Usually she can bask in the stillness and silence, as well.
"We can't have sex in the biography section. Look at this. A biography on Mike Tyson? How am I supposed to get you off if Mike Tyson is staring at me?"
Usually.
"Castle," she says. She doesn't even turn to look at him. She couldn't if she wanted to, he's pressed so close to her back. "We didn't come here to have sex. We came here to look at books."
"Maybe you did. I came to look at you."
"Can't you look in silence?"
"I'm sorry, have we met?"'
A laugh bubbles out of her, unbidden, and she rolls her eyes. They cross the aisle into the thriller section. "I thought I'd get used to you," she muses, running her index finger along the blistered spine of a James Patterson paperback.
"Don't stroke Patterson like that," he growls in response. "And you are used to me."
"How do you know?"
"You didn't even glare at me when I grabbed your ass in the elevator."
He's saved from her response by the shrill ring of her cell phone. She casts a look at him over her shoulder as she pulls her phone out of her pocket. "Grab it again and see what happens."
He grins crookedly, wiggles his eyebrows. "I love it when we play truth or dare."
"Hello?" she says into her phone, biting her lip as she holds his eyes. She wants him to see exactly what she's thinking, and she wonders if she should be worried that he does.
"Is this Detective Beckett?"
She feels the smile drain out of her. She turns away from Castle, wanders blindly down the aisle. "This is Kate Beckett," she answers. "Who is this?"
"You don't know me."
Castle follows her, brushes his hand along her hip. "Kate?"
She should hang up the phone. This is a prank. Some stupid kid trying to have some fun. "Okay," she says into her phone instead. "So then why are you calling me?"
"We should meet. It's about your mother."
Kate feels bottomed out, suddenly hollow. She inhales slowly, feels the breath stutter through her trachea, rush into her body. It's not enough. She can't breathe.
"My mother is dead."
"Kate," Castle says, more forceful this time, and she turns to look at him because she can hear the panic threading through his voice. Once she turns around, she sees it in his eyes, too.
"I know," the voice on the other end of the line says. "And you will be too unless you hear what I have to say."
It could be nothing. It could be everything. She isn't ready for this; she walked away from this in May and she meant it. She doesn't want to do this. It's pulling at her though, hooking into her core and yanking, and even as her lips form the word no her throat constricts and won't let it out.
She has to do this.
Castle reaches for her, his eyebrows knit, all concern and love and the goodness that she's always been attracted to. It settles her. Not completely, but enough.
"Where can I meet you?"
X-X-X-X-X
The cab pulls up in front of a diner that looks like hundreds of other diners all over Manhattan. It looks like the diner where she met Raglan. The exploding coffee mug, the screams, the blood on her sweater, the haunted look in Castle's eyes—suddenly it's all real and happening and she reaches out, grabs ahold of the closest thing she can. Castle's hand.
He's halfway out of the cab. He looks at her, lowers himself back onto the seat. "We don't have to do this."
She swallows. Tries to remember how to breathe. "I can do this."
Castle gives her a crooked smile. "I never said you couldn't. I said you didn't have to."
She squeezes his hand. "I want to."
He nods. "Okay. Let's go."
Once they're out of the cab, she reaches for his hand again. She laces their fingers, pretends she doesn't see the look he shoots her way. It's been a while since she's seen him look at her like that. Not since the morning after, when she told him she'd quit and then showed him why.
He didn't press her during the cab ride. That's why she almost said it.
I don't want to go back.
She doesn't want to live from moment to moment, chasing a shadow she'll never catch. She doesn't want to lose Castle, and she doesn't want to lose herself. But she's here. She's walking into a grubby diner with her hand in his, looking around for a guy in a blue plaid shirt who claimed he needed to talk to her if she wanted to live.
She wants to live.
She sees him in the back booth, nursing a coffee. Cliché, she thinks, but she doesn't point it out to Castle. She leads her partner back toward the booth, stops next to the table.
The man is older. Her dad's age, maybe. He's balding, gray hair crowning his head around a bald spot shining in the dim light of the diner. It looks like he hasn't shaved in a while, his chin grizzled over a deep dimple. He smiles at her, revealing a row of crooked teeth, stained from coffee, maybe cigarettes. He's wearing a wedding ring.
"Detective," he greets, inclining his head toward her. "Mr. Castle."
"What do you want?" Kate asks.
He nods at the open seat across from him. "Why don't you have a seat?"
She stares at him for a moment, and he stares back. Finally, she slides into the booth. Castle follows.
"What's your name?" she asks.
He smirks into his ceramic mug. "Does it matter?"
Kate sizes him up. He's wearing a pin on the lapel of his coat. She recognizes the look of it. Surprise takes over, then suspicion. She looks him right in the eye. "You're a cop."
"I was," he acknowledges after a brief pause. Castle looks between them, obviously suppressing a million questions. She grips his knee under the table. He puts his hand over hers.
The nameless man who used to work at the 4th precinct stares out the window. Kate watches him. "People used to look at me like I was some kind of hero," he murmurs. "They don't look at me like that anymore."
"Maybe it's because you reek of whiskey."
He barks out a laugh. He finally looks at Castle. "Lady knows her alcohol."
Kate moves her hand from Castle's knee, brings it up to the table as she leans back in the seat. "My father drank whiskey. I'd know the smell anywhere."
The man holds her eyes. "We did that to him."
Shock squeezes her lungs, makes her lean forward. "Did what?" He doesn't answer. "Did what?" she demands.
He sips his coffee. "I heard you quit the force."
"The bottom of the bottle tell you that?"
"I have sources. You shouldn't have done that, Katie. You shouldn't have quit."
She wants to jump across the table, wrap her fingers around his neck and squeeze until he takes it back, all of it, the nickname her mother gave her, and the pin on his lapel that he doesn't deserve if he knows what he's pretending to know, and the way Castle's shoulders are tense because he's terrified she's slipping away again.
"Why not?" she asks instead.
"You quit because you thought they'd leave you alone. Both of you."
He glances at Castle. Kate shifts closer to her boyfriend, wanting to shield him. "He doesn't have anything to do with this."
"Oh, he's just as much in this as you are. You made sure of that."
"Is that a threat?" she growls.
"Oh, no. Just a warning."
"A warning about what?"
"They haven't forgotten you. And they won't let you walk away."
The waitress appears, asks if they'd like to place an order. "No," Kate says, not taking her eyes off the man across the table. The waitress lingers awkwardly for a moment, and then shuffles away. Kate folds her hands on the table.
"You said we. You're one of them."
"Like I said. I was a cop."
The nightmares that haunt her at night, less often now than last summer when they happened every night, make a sudden appearance in the middle of the afternoon. Montgomery's flask, cold beneath her fingertips as she takes a swig; his voice when he tells her that this is where he's going to make his stand. The way his office looked without him in it: an empty chair, no lights, Evelyn and the kids still smiling from a picture frame on the desk.
Castle can't seem to suppress the questions anymore. "Are you saying that the Dragon…" he starts, stops. He starts again. "The people behind…" He stops again.
The man stares. "Johanna Beckett's murder," he supplies blandly.
Castle glances at Kate, but she doesn't say anything. "You're saying they're cops?" Castle asks.
"Some of them. But you knew that. Roy told you that, didn't he?"
Castle doesn't have an answer for that. It wouldn't matter anyway; the man has changed his focus from Castle back to Kate. His curious, calculating stare rivals even the most serious appraisals she's gotten from Castle over the years.
"What do you want from me?" she asks him.
"I want you to rejoin the force."
"No."
"You think you're protecting yourself. You think you're protecting him. You're not."
Castle shifts in his seat. Kate shakes her head. "I'm not a cop anymore."
"You think because you don't have a badge and a gun that it isn't a part of you? That it isn't who you are? You can't run from who you are."
"She's more than a cop," Castle protests, his voice lifting angrily.
"Tell him he doesn't understand," the man counters, leaning across the table toward Kate. His voice is low, urgent, and a wave of goosebumps rushes over her skin. "Tell him that this isn't a job, it's a calling, and you can only deafen it with beach vacations and new boyfriends for so long. You think you became a cop because your mother was murdered. You didn't. You became a cop because you were supposed to be one. Because you're one of the only people who's good enough to bring this city back up from its knees."
The intensity of his sincerity bowls her over, makes her remember all the nights this summer when she woke up feeling like she didn't know who she was anymore.
"This is starting to sound like a comic book," she deadpans. "You come up with a good superhero name for me yet?"
He shakes his head. "You can evade me all you want, but I promise you one thing. Either you find them, or they'll find you. And trust me, when they find you, they're going to find the people you love, too."
He sets his coffee mug on the table with a clink, scoots across the seat and then rises out of the booth. As he leaves, Kate calls out after him.
"Even if I did what you're asking, there are no leads." He stops, turns. She meets his eyes. "Whoever your friends are, they're in high places. Too high for me to bring down."
The man stares at her for a while before reaching up and running his thumb over his 4th precinct pin. He slides his hands into his pockets. "'This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.'"
"What the hell?" Castle whispers.
The man nods at her. "Lord be with you, Detective Beckett."
He leaves then, and Castle spins in the booth to watch him go. Kate stares down at her hands. She hears the bells above the door jangle. Castle looks at her. "Kate. What's he talking about? He wants to…he wants to cut off your head?"
"No. It's from the Old Testament."
She meets his eyes.
"The story of David and Goliath."