Title: The Deal

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own Castle.

Spoilers: Everything through Always. I started it before season 5 spoilers started coming out, so none that I know of for S5.

A/N: This is an angsty divorce kid fic AU. Okay, now that I've scared just about everyone away, for those of you still interested, I will be posting this story here and on the Extraordinary Lines archive. The story here will be T-rated whereas the version at EL will be M rated, so you may pick your poison. I sort of got the idea for it while watching a certain scene in season 4 and it kind of devolved from there as the angst took over. Been playing with it for weeks but want to post before the new season starts.

"Castle, you were supposed to be here over an hour ago. It's called shared custody, not show-up-when-you-want custody."

The words were chiding, but he could tell from her tone of voice that she was not really angry. Kate rarely got angry with him anymore, not since their divorce almost a year earlier.

Just thinking about it still hurt, but Castle pushed past the pain like he did every single morning and instead focused on what was really important – their daughter.

Johanna Alexandra Castle was barely two years old, and yet, she acted with the confidence of a much older child. As he set her down on the floor, she immediately toddled over and gave her mother's leg a fierce, happy hug before she headed into the apartment and plopped herself on the floor among a pile of toys.

"Well, she needed to take a nap after we went to the zoo," he explained. "Then she was hungry, so we stopped and got something on our way over here."

Kate nodded wordlessly, and he could read the sad expression in her eyes. The three of them used to have dinners as a family, one or both of them attempting to feed the little girl baby food or mashed bananas even as Johanna steadfastly refused their efforts. Now, they shared no meals together, especially not ones in public.

"Thanks for taking her today," Kate said soberly.

"Any time."

He meant the words sincerely. While they enjoyed an amicable split custody arrangement, he never had any problems coming and picking his daughter up on a day scheduled as Kate's when she was called in on a case. On the flip side, he also had no qualms when she called, sometimes late in the evening, and requested a few hours with the girl. Usually she only intruded on his time during a bad investigation, when after hours of dealing with the worst of humanity, all Kate really needed was a few minutes with their little girl. Most of the time, she would just sit on the bed next to Johanna and watch her sleeping peacefully.

"Well, I guess I'll leave you to it," he said, just as she began to speak.

"Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

Both of them froze as their own doubts and desires warred within them. When Kate said nothing but left her invitation out there, he nodded. "Coffee would be great. Thanks."

She seemed relieved at his acceptance, and Castle had to force himself to push away the elation he felt at getting to spend a few more minutes in her company.

Despite everything – the accidental pregnancy, the sudden elopement and even more sudden divorce, and all the things which had come between them – despite all of that, he was still so very much in love with Kate Beckett.

And he suspected from the look in her eyes every time she saw him that she felt the same way about him.

"Did she have fun at the zoo?" Kate asked as she poured them both a cup of coffee. The question was pure small talk. They both knew that Johanna adored animals, especially exotic ones, and she begged to go to the zoo every weekend.

But instead of pointing that out, he answered casually, "She loved it. I could barely get her away from the mountain goat exhibits."

Kate laughed – oh, how he missed hearing her laugh every day. "Mountain goats?"

"I don't know what to tell you. Most kids think the monkeys are cool, or the lions, or even the elephants. This child is just fascinated by the goats. Maybe it was the horns?"

They sat down on the couch in the living room and watched the subject of their conversation play. She had an array of toys to choose from but at that moment was most diverted by a random Star Wars action figure and a pink-winged My Little Pony.

"So no… problems or anything?" Kate asked a moment later. He marveled at how she could keep her voice so steady and devoid of the fear he knew she felt every moment of every day. He remembered worrying about Alexis when she was young, but this was so much different.

Johanna actually was in danger, every single moment. She was in almost as much danger as Kate herself was in.

Of course, it all led back to the murder of Kate's mother, the original Johanna for whom their daughter was named. The man behind that heinous crime, the man who targeted Beckett and almost had her murdered by an assassin, was still out there. And whatever fragile, blackmail-purchased deal Castle had brokered with that shadowy figure after Montgomery was killed had been unsteady ever since.

Kate almost died when Cole Maddox threw her off the side of a roof. The experience was frightening enough to give her some perspective and quit her job. But nothing was ever that easy. When Montgomery's friend Smith was found dead, Castle had feared that they would target Kate again. But another figure appeared out of the woodwork, one who received copies of Smith's information but refused to identify himself. Another deal was brokered to spare Kate's life.

But in the mean time, the unexpected occurred. After one night together – one amazing, incredible, passionate night that Castle hoped he would never forget – Kate got pregnant. Between the shock of almost dying and quitting her job and discovering that they were going to be parents, Castle managed to convince her to marry him. They eloped quickly and quietly, not because of the pregnancy but because they had waited so long to be together that it just seemed… right.

Then came the second scare two years later as the deal faltered yet again. Ever since that day when both of them almost lost their lives, almost left baby Johanna as an orphan, Kate worried about 'problems' and 'issues.'

"No problems," he assured her. "No one even looked at us funny."

"Good," she stated, even though they both knew that if he had even been suspicious of something, he would not have brought their daughter back to this apartment. Instead, he would have called Kate even as he took little Johanna and fled the city.

It was the fall-back plan. Even a hint of danger, and he was to take the little girl and get far away. Despite his arguments to the contrary, he knew Kate would stay and fight, if for no other reason than to prove a distraction to the man who so obviously wanted her dead.

It was not the fall-back plan he would have chosen, but Kate insisted. It was also one of the reasons for their divorce one year earlier.

"How's work?" he asked, not caring but wanting to get away from subjects that would shut her down completely. He no longer shadowed her at the precinct, of course, but sometimes she would call him and bounce ideas about a case. Sadly, those instances were rare.

"Same as usual," she said. "The guys have been asking when you're going to have another poker night."

The guys, Ryan and Esposito. Castle saw them less since the divorce, but like Johanna, he and Kate seemed to have shared custody of the two detectives as well. She encouraged them to spend time with him, even arranged 'guys nights' now and then and made sure that he invited them over to play poker or video games or just have an occasional drink.

It was just one of the things Kate did to make up for no longer being his wife.

"Soon," he told her, but followed it up with another question. "How's Lanie?"

"She's good."

Unlike the guys, Kate got sole custody of the medical examiner. While Castle felt certain that none of their friends truly understood why they had gotten divorced, he suspected that Lanie blamed him. She did not give him outright dirty looks, but the way she guarded herself the few times they had occasion to speak… she blamed him.

Not that Castle didn't blame himself. For two years, he had all he ever wanted in life. And he'd let it slip through his fingers.

He couldn't stand it anymore. Kate was sitting there next to him, her eyes on their daughter as though she might never see the girl again. It was the way she always looked at Johanna. And he could tell she was hurting, that the fear and pain she held inside was just tearing her apart.

"Kate…" he began, not sure what he was going to say. He wanted to beg her to come back, to take Johanna and just run away with him. He wanted to remove her from the danger she lived with every day, to wrap her in the kind of love and safety he could give their daughter.

But he knew she'd say no. He knew this because she had already turned him down. Not only had she turned him down, she'd divorced him. She had almost refused shared custody of Johanna, fearing for the safety of the girl if she was in Kate's life. But in the end, her maternal instinct had kept her from letting go completely. Unfortunately, instead of actually living her life, Kate lived every moment for that little girl. Nothing else mattered.

"Please don't, Castle," Kate said. She must have sensed what he was thinking and feeling. And they had already had this conversation many, many times.

Deciding on a different tactic, he swallowed back the emotions which threatened to bubble to the surface and remarked dryly, "I heard you got asked out the other day. That new detective from vice."

It had actually been a week ago, according to his information from Ryan, but this was the first time he'd had a chance to bring it up.

Kate blushed furiously at the topic and quickly mumbled, "That was nothing."

"Sounds like he was quite taken with you," Castle pushed. He knew how she felt about this subject, knew it would upset her. But for some reason, he just needed to get a response from her.

"I didn't notice."

She would not look at him, instead focusing on Johanna playing on the floor. The girl was growing sleepy, her eyes drooping shut periodically as she fought the urge to curl up and fall asleep on the floor.

"Good looking young vice detective and you didn't notice?" he asked. Ryan had described the guy as a more charismatic than Demming and more ripped than that Scotland Yard detective they'd worked with once.

Kate pulled her eyes away from Johanna long enough to pierce him with a glare. "That's right, I didn't notice. And you know that, so drop it."

He should drop it. He knew that. He could see the fierce embarrassment in her face, the way her cheeks colored involuntarily.

"And why would I know that?" he pushed.

Without a word to him, Kate picked up their tired child and walked in the direction of the bedroom. She kept the crib in the same room as her own bed, and without turning on the light, she settled little Johanna in under a blanket. Castle had already dressed the girl for bed before bringing her over.

As soon as she left the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind her, Kate rounded on him.

"What are you trying to pull here, huh?" she demanded, poking a finger into his chest.

"I wasn't-" he began, but she was already speaking again.

"What is with these insinuations that I'm ready to go off with some guy I've never spent more than twenty minutes in the same room with-"

"Kate," he tried to interrupt her, but she was already too upset, her voice growing progressively louder.

"Like I would care about any of that? Like I would ever date someone else? Like I could ever love someone else?"

tbc