For Nic (ColieMacKenzie) whose tumblr post inspired this story.
He slams the door behind him when he leaves, and her knees go weak.
The sting behind her eyes grows unbearable, the burn from blinking tears away impossible to ignore. It throbs behind her eyes, through her head, pounds in her temples as she sucks in a breath, lets it out just as quickly.
The tears fall as she stumbles back, shaky knees bringing her nowhere, trembling hand wiping at her eyes, spreading sticky tears over the bridge of her nose, across the swell of her cheek.
The burn travels, from her eyes to her heel, as it pounds against the wooden floor. Up her spine, her neck flinging to the right, to the open curtains, to the left and the unlocked door. It curls around her ribcage, through each and every bone and filling the space between. Licks at her insides like a flame, blazing and destructive.
Scorches inside her chest, turning her lungs to ash and driving her heart into overdrive.
Another breath, another pang, like a knife between her ribs. Useless air, oxygen that doesn't seem to reach her brain or her numbing legs. Only seems to make her heart beat faster. Harder.
The pounding is unsettling. In her chest, her neck, her head, her fingertips. Violent within her skull, against the paper thin skin over her pulsepoint. Like it wants to break free, to leave this traitorous body of painful scars and useless lungs. Of burning and stinging and stumbling across the room.
Her fingers find her couch, curl into the cushion. It's a lifeline. It's soft. It's warm. It's safe.
She drops onto it, her knees giving out. Her back hits the cushion, her legs spring up against her chest. She buries her face beneath them, hides from the inevitability of her falling apart.
All this time, she was safe.
He knew.
She cries.
New York is busy, bustling as always. The streets filled with cars, a sea of yellow and otherwise. The sidewalks covered in people, uninterested, emotionless.
He wipes the tears from his cheeks as he climbs from the cab, buries his hands in his pockets and slides into the endless line of living statues. Fearless. Painless. Careless.
The doorman greets him as he tugs the door open, that ever-present smile on his face. He ignores him, brushes past him and heads for the elevator, slams his fist against the button to call it.
Her eyes haunt him. Too wide. Too real. Hanging onto every word he said like a promise. But it was a curse. Everything. The sniper. The file. The deal. Her mother's murder. Her. Him. This.
Everything.
He shoves his way into the loft, kicks the door shut behind him, snaps the deadbolt into place.
It's bright in here. White countertops and beige walls, light artificial and natural all at once. The curtains are open, a gateway to the sky, to the city. One he usually loves.
His building is tall. The one across the street towers just above it, red bricks and metal window frames, the street below still busy and bustling.
He stares at the corner of it, where window switches to brick and the wall juts into a sharp turn.
The sunlight hits a window frame, the glass pane separating home from city at just the right angle. A gleam, a shine, too familiar and real. A memory that's haunted him for a year. That's haunted her just as much.
He slams the curtain closed, rings jingling on their rod.
She got shot. Then she was safe.
He just wanted to keep her safe.
She's going to be okay. She's going to be okay.
The scar between her breasts pulls, aches where the bullet pierced her skin last year. Skin tugging to expand around every painful, burning breath that she sucks in. Quiet, as she turns the corner where Maddox disappeared. Elbows locked, gun steady in her hands.
The white city sky, above her. An abandoned building beneath her feet.
Under her arm, her side. Her hip throbs, her shoulder, too. Her waist with an unfamiliar arm draped over it, holding her down. Her chest tightens around a breath she can't release. Trapped under his arm, trapped within herself. Searing pain where doctors cut into her, where skin pulls and aches and haunts her.
And nothing.
The thud of hands and knees, of him getting away. Again. After all this time. Putting her in danger.
Her arms wrap around his neck, legs around his hips. Chest pressed against his back. The back of his head, butting against the side of hers as he gasps. Fingernails dig into her leather jacket, tug. Struggling. He's struggling and trying to get away. From pain, from death. From her.
He should have thought about that before he shot her.
He lurches forward, head tilting under hers. A jerk of his body, the sharp shove of his hips. It has her unraveling, tumbling forward and falling flat onto her back. It knocks the air from her, forces a gasping breath from her already aching chest. Her head throbs as she forces herself to roll onto her knees.
He can't win. Maddox can't win.
Every punch hurts her knuckles, the buckles of his jacket threatening to cut through her skin. A kick to his jaw that misses, and the tugging behind her thigh. And a shove against her shoulder that has her tumbling back again, landing flat on her back with a thud that knocks the wind from her.
Everything hurts. Her back. Her hips. Her shoulders. Every single breath that she forces through her mouth, forces her sore ribs to expand. It makes the pain worse, sharp at her scar at the base of her ribcage. The back of her neck as his fingers wrap around it and he tugs her to her feet.
His breathing his heavy, hands still locked around her neck. Like some kind of freak staring contest.
And then his elbow hits the back of her neck and she lands on her stomach, arms curled under her.
A ball. Curling into a ball would be safe. She could bury her face between her knees and wrap her arms around herself and pretend she's not here. On this roof. With her shooter towering over her, staring down at her.
But that would be giving up. And though it hurts everywhere and she can barely breathe, she pushes herself up, stares him down even though she's the one on the ground.
She can do this.
"Just tell me who's behind this," she grits out, though it hurts.
"You're wasting your time, Detective," he answers. Voice steady. Words careful. "You have no idea what you're up against."
It's not an answer. Never an answer to the question that's haunted her for years. That's had her cowering in corners of her apartment, manic with her gun in her hands. Sobbing in a public place. Panicking at the gleam off a building.
"Neither do you."
She launches herself, ignores the sharp pain in her muscles that protests against it. He catches her, arms wrapping around her, throwing her aside like trash.
She rolls.
She falls.
Her fingers just barely catch the edge of the roof.
He leaves his baby girl behind with just a kiss to her head and a hug far too short and goes home.
Home to an empty apartment filled with memories so very bittersweet. Images of a daughter, growing up and moving on and graduating. Of the woman he loves, desperate to throw her life away.
His fingers comb through the tassel as he drapes it over the lamp, the yellow strings parting over his fingers. Sliding past their tips and into nothingness, leaving him behind, alone. Like Alexis. His baby bird, growing up and spreading her wings.
A smile of pride tugs at his cheeks, even as his heart sinks with nostalgia, plummets with loneliness.
The chirping of his phone fills the room, cuts through images of a tiny little girl with long orange hair, replaces them with the smiling face of his partner. Gone. Lost. Risking death despite everything he did for her.
Everything he did against her.
This finger hits the button, and the screen goes black. The phone goes silent.
He grabs the remote instead, presses the button he's used too many times and watches the screen light up with that same image. Her smile, candid and beautiful. Adrift in a sea of lies, of truths and questions unanswered.
Her name, the rounds and sharp edges of all too familiar letters on a file. He presses his finger to it, drags it across the screen, eyes locked on her name the entire time.
He was just trying to keep her safe. This was all to keep her safe.
She's in danger now, anyway.
The dial tone rings loud in her ear, the almost unfamiliar leave a message speech echoing in her mind.
She shoves the phone into her pocket, looks up at the building next to her. Tall, familiar. His home, where he doesn't want her. And yet she shoves the glass door open anyway.
He loves her. He told her as much. He did this all because he loves her.
She can forgive him.
She can.
His lips caress it first, the puckered skin. It's rough under his mouth, uneven, and he knows the second he finds it. Lets his lips press against it, offering a kiss to the damage he couldn't protect her from.
His eyes land on it next, the darkened circle between her breasts. The evidence of the bullet he couldn't stop.
He tried to save her from it, remembers the dive and the grass beneath his knees. The color draining from her face, staining his hands instead as he cradled her in his arms and watched her bleed out beneath him. Watched her die in that ambulance. Watched her get wheeled into room without knowing if he'd ever see her again.
All this time, all he wanted was to keep that from happening again.
Her shaking fingers find his, as her kiss drags his attention from the pain.
She presses his palm against her scar, catches the other one in her unsteady grasp.
Maddox dies.
She's right outside the room, pressed between a wall and Castle when the explosion goes off and takes her only leads with the blow. Paper flutters around the room, and her shooter is dead and she stares at the ruins until Gates show up.
And then Ryan appears at her door with a bag of paper scraps and there's hope again, a flicker in her heart. A burn so different from the one of her bruises.
It's put out the minute she finds out he's a huge political figure. Out of reach.
You have no idea what you're up against.
Her heart thuds against her ribs as she watches him, Senator William Bracken. He killed her mom. He hired Maddox to shoot her. And he's the one standing on a podium with a smile on his face while she hides out in her apartment, her arm draped over her stomach to protect her from something that isn't there.
He appears at her side, a tall, dark figure, just a glimpse in her peripheral. Strong and supportive as she pauses the video and is left staring at the frozen image of Bracken's smile.
"I finally figured out who he is, the guy that killed my mom," she says, "and there's nothing I can do about it."
Because she has no evidence. Nothing concrete. The file is falling apart, just a pile of paper pieces. Like a cruel jigsaw puzzle, taunting her with clues. And the cameras were disabled. She has nothing, and yet she knows too much.
"They're coming for me," she whispers, looking up into his eyes now. The panic that has her heart beating hard and fast mirrored in the blue orbs looking down at her.
"Ryan's got two teams stationed outside," he reminds her. As though she could forget.
"And what about tomorrow, and the day after that?" It escapes without permission, and his eyes darken. Her heart sinks. A reminder of this never ending game of cat and mouse she's trapped in. Of why she sleeps with a gun and burrows in corners and forgets how to breathe.
But then he smiles, an upturn of his lips that makes his eyes crinkle, but never sparkle. "Let me take you someplace, Kate," he whispers. "Someplace you'll be safe."
Her head dips, finds the hollow under his chin. Her ear catches his heartbeat, the steady thud almost as fast as her own. His arm wraps around her back, crushes her against him. Clings to her.
"I'll never be safe."
His heart keeps beating in her ear.
"You were," it seems to say.
He wakes up to an empty bed, a cold pillow and misplaced sheets and no Kate.
She's gone.
His heart goes erratic, his hands quivering, and he reaches for his phone on the nightstand. His face dampens with sweat, panic welling within his chest as he manages to dial her number, second on his speed dial.
Her voice flitters through the speaker, soft and melodious with an undertone of pain and an air of professionalism that never seems to go away. Her voicemail message, familiar and foreign at once and he ends the call before it can finish.
She's gone and she didn't answer and his fingers fumble over the touch screen for the next number to call.
"Ryan," comes the answer.
He glances around the room one more time, takes in the silence. Shoves himself out of bed just to make sure he didn't miss anything only to find the entire apartment empty.
His lower back presses against the counter, hand curling around the edge of the sink.
This is fear. This is panic.
"Ryan! Ryan, she's gone."
She wakes up in the middle of the night with tears streaming down her face, sticky and wet and gasping for breath between coughs.
It's automatic when her fingers curl around the handle of her nightstand drawer and tug it open violently, its contents clattering within. Her hand finds her gun, fingers sliding over the trigger as she draws it to her chest.
Her heels dig into the mattress, push her back over the pillows until her back hits the headboard.
The loud thud that sounds through the apartment makes her jump, practiced hand flicking off the safety.
Someone is coming. She knows too much. Someone is coming for her. To kill her.
She has to kill them first.
She sucks in another breath, curls into a ball because it's safe and warm. Presses the gun against her thigh.
Don't move. They won't know you're ready for them if you stay still.
There's movement. Sound. Rustling. She shoves the gun forward, points it at the darkness of the doorframe. She's ready. She can't breath. She can barely move. But she'll win this.
"Beckett?"
It's quiet. Sleepy. Familiar.
Castle.
"Kate, are you okay?"
She presses the gun against her leg again, barrel aimed squarely at the ceiling. Her head dips, knees pressing hard against her eyes as a few stray tears slip out.
"I'm okay."
It's a lie.
Per her request, he goes home. Makes sure Alexis is okay. Promises Mother that he's okay. That Kate's okay, even though she's not and he may very well not be either.
He's shoving clothes into a bag for tonight, for tomorrow when the phone rings and her smiling face lights up the screen. The smile he hasn't seen since the episode last night. The one they're pretending didn't happen.
He slides his thumb across the screen, brings the phone to his face. "Miss me already?"
There's no answer, just an eerie silence that has his eyes darting around the room and tracing the gaps in the bookshelves for any sign of lurking enemies.
There's none, of course. Just a shaky exhale that comes through the phone, barely audible.
"Kate?"
It's an inhale this time, just as uneven as the last. And then she speaks.
"You knew." A whisper, too quiet and broken and he sits down on the edge of his bed as his knees go weak, forgetting the bag he was packing and his family outside the door.
"What did I know?" he asks.
She's silent again, breaths slow and unsteady. She sniffles. She's crying.
"I have PTSD," she answers, putting the words out there in the open. Unavoidable. Unforgettable.
He takes a breath. "Yeah, Kate, I know about your PTS–"
"I've spent the last year thinking someone was trying to kill me," she says. Not interrupting, really, but like she didn't even realize he spoke. "Every night, I was scared I wouldn't wake up. Every time I went outside…" She takes a breath, this one loud and met with another sniffle. "And you knew."
His fingers twist around the duvet, eyes staring at the brick building across the street.
No words. There's nothing for him to say.
"I thought I was going to die," she murmurs. "All the time. Always. But you knew I was safe."
His eyes sting, head falling forward against his chest as a tear falls to darken the fabric of his pant leg. She's still crying on the other end, short, shaky breaths betraying her. Or supporting her. He's not sure which.
"I was safe. I thought he was going to kill me and I was safe. You knew I was safe," she repeats, like an accusation. A tearful, painful accusation. "And you didn't tell me."
The line goes dead on her end, but he doesn't put down the phone.
She checks the peephole out of habit before pulling the door open.
He's standing there, big and broad with a haunted look on his face, pain traced in every line. He doesn't say a word, just drops his bag by the door and frames her face in his hands. Demanding, yet somehow soft and gentle, and she doesn't fight it when he tilts her head up towards his and presses a kiss to her lips.
The door gets kicked closed as his mouth finds her neck, runs up and down the sensitive skin there until his lips land on her pulse, thundering for reasons beyond arousal. He sucks at it, circles it with his tongue. Worships it, she realizes, as his hand delicately cradles her nape.
His shirt is the first to go, the practiced motions of her fingers undoing every button without thought. His lips finds hers again as she shoves it off his shoulders, hands tracing the lines of his shoulders and arms.
Hers gets pulled off later, his hands whipping it over her head and tossing it aside. She opens her eyes to find his screwed shut.
He doesn't look at the scar, this time. Doesn't acknowledge it.
She's not sure she could handle it if he did.
The bedroom is dark, untouched since they vacated it this morning, leaving the memory of her episode behind. The bed is still unmade, her gun still sitting on the nightstand on the wrong side of the bed. His fingers trace the line of her spine, his face buried in the crook of her neck, when she feels the first tear.
It lands on her shoulder, rolls down along her back.
She crawls onto the bed first, on her knees and one hand as the other stays locked firmly in his grasp. She lands on the side of the bed that isn't hers, avoiding the memory and the pain and image of herself curled up in a ball crying into the wee hours of the morning.
He squeezes her fingers gently, drawing her mind back to reality, before crawling in over her. Her hand falls from his when his arms frame both sides of her head, a kiss smudged against her lips, against her cheek and another to her forehead as his fingers find her hair, curl into the strands and get knotted within them.
Then his hands go searching for the clasp of her bra, eyes following the trail and she knows the exact moment his eyes land on the puckered skin between her breasts.
It hurts. It actually hurts just to have him looking at it now, the last two days too fresh, the pain not a memory but a lingering presence borrowed within her chest, waiting for her to snap.
He's the one that goes still, though, before he collapses onto her, his face finding her shoulder again. He cries, his tears sticky against her bare skin, falling into the dip of her collarbone and onto the mattress beneath her alike.
Her fingers thread through his hair, nails digging into his scalp and she holds him there, staring at the white of the ceiling as he cries.
She doesn't notice her own tears until he's wiping them off her cheeks.
He spends most of the night watching her sleep, the rise and fall of her chest and the peaceful fluttering of her eyelids. To make sure she's okay, alive and happy. Like he failed to do before.
I thought I was going to die. You knew I was safe. You didn't tell me.
She looks peaceful, now. So different from her shaking form that he opened his eyes to last night. She's quiet and curled up on her side towards him, hands twined together and pressed against her chest. Face pressed into her pillow, breaths quiet and steady and he loves it. Loves her.
He was just trying to protect her.
He might have made it all worse.
He reaches out slowly, slides his hand between hers and takes her fingers within his, squeezes gently.
They'll be better. He can do better.
She wakes up to an empty bed, the blankets neatly set next to her and with the knowledge that he's not gone yet.
She pushes herself out from under the blankets, adjusts her clothing and brushes her teeth before heading into the kitchen, where he's standing by the stove, just as she expected. There's a bowl of pancake batter on the counter, a plate of cooked ones right next to it and another one golden in the pan. Two steaming mugs of coffee sit on her dining room table.
"Good morning," he greets, voice chipper, eyes not.
She smiles at him, hand curling around one of the white mugs. "Morning."
He flips the pancake out of the pan and dumps batter for another one into it before holding an arm out to her, open and welcoming and she walks into his embrace, settles her cheek against his shoulder.
The orange glow of the morning sun fills the room, soft and beautiful and for a moment all seems right. Like it's okay. Like it's always going to be okay.
He dusts a kiss to her head, soft and sweet and careful.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, the words filling the kitchen and wrapping around her, warm and soothing and everything she's wanted to hear since he first told her about the deal. "I should have told you. I should have…realized how much it was hurting you, keeping it a secret like that. I wanted to tell you."
She curls her fingers tightly around the fabric of his t-shirt, nuzzles her head against his chest and lets her eyes fall closed. Opens them again and stares at the orange sky outside her window.
She can't forgive him just yet, can't pretend it never happened.
She presses her lips softly against his chest anyway, lets the kiss linger for a moment before pulling away and looking up into pained, desperate blue eyes.
"I know."
liberosis: the desire to care less about things
A big thanks goes to ipreferwestside for her beta work on this story.