A/N: This tale is intended as a sequel to Coming Home - if you haven't read that story, I strongly recommend you read it first. Not sure how many chapters, but it will wrap up the few loose ends and questions left open by Coming Home. The action picks up right where Coming Home left off.
Chapter 1 – Baby Steps
It's late by the time they leave the airport in DC and hop a cab to take them to Kate's corporate rental apartment in Market Square. Castle looks exhausted. He follows along behind her as if on autopilot, trailing his wheeled carryon, her leather duffel bag slung casually over his shoulder.
When they exit the elevator on her floor, Kate can feel Castle hanging back, his footsteps slowing as they walk the carpeted hallway towards the door to her apartment. She thinks she understands – the life she led here for three solitary months is still a mystery to him. So she gives him latitude to catch-up, to ease into the small space she made for herself, inspect its boundaries: the sharply delineated edges that her DC life was defined and constrained by. She resolves to show him that he missed nothing, while all she missed was him.
Kate unlocks the door and Castle hovers out in the hallway, his gaze trained on the far end of the corridor where a couple has just emerged from another apartment. They kiss, cuddle and grope one another as they bounce off the walls laughing at something that will most likely make sense only to them. Kate's seen this kind of thing a lot here in this city full of ambitious, transient strangers: interns, fundraisers, PR's and politicos. Casual hookups happen all the time. A way to relieve the pressure after long hours spent toiling in and around Capitol Hill and its environs: feeding the demanding, unrelenting powerful beast at the heart of government.
"Hey, coming inside?" she finally asks him, holding the door open with a gentle, welcoming smile.
"Uh…yeah. Yeah. Sure," he says, distractedly, his attention drawn back to the frolicking couple for another worrying moment when a burst of giggling echoes down the sterile, featureless corridor.
The second he enters the apartment she watches as he does a sweep of the place that he has neither the energy nor the guile to hide. His eyes alight on her unpacked boxes – the things she brought from home to make a home here, however temporary or permanent she initially intended that to be. She can't imagine anymore what she was thinking when she walked out on him to take this job. Her decision seems stupid, ill thought out, selfish and frankly embarrassing when she looks back on it now. She feels as if she no longer knows the person she was when she made those choices. The unpacked boxes are a bonus then – an ally that go a little way to proving both her reluctance and her inability to settle here. They point to a level of self-knowledge, no matter how nascent when she took Javi's phone call, that all was not right in her new life without him even before Jerry Tyson intervened and turned their world upside down.
She goes straight to the kitchen and fetches two bottles of water from the refrigerator, turning back round to find Castle standing in front of the unit that houses the large flat screen television she has yet to turn on. He's staring, a picture of herself and Alexis cradled in his hands. The photograph was taken on a rare family outing the three of them made to Central Park early in the summer to watch a couple of Martha's students take part in an amateur production of The Crucible.
"That was a great day," remarks Kate, startling him when he realizes she's standing right beside him, handing him a bottle of water and looking over his shoulder at the photograph.
"Mm," is all he says in reply, quickly replacing the photograph on the shelf and walking over to the floor-to-ceiling window to look out at the night-lit city below.
Kate swallows down the troubled feeling in her gut and goes to the bedroom to change for bed and unpack a little. She's giving him space to get used to this sudden change of scene after all he's been through these last couple of weeks. But it's hard holding back. She wants to ask him what's on his mind, she wants to touch him, she wants him to hold her, to notice her, to open up and talk to her. In some ways it really does feel as if she has now kidnapped him too – she packed for him, she gave him something close to an ultimatum to follow her here since she had to come regardless and couldn't imagine leaving him behind again. And it is undeniably hard watching him drift - so compliant and quiet, internalizing all that he's seeing and feeling: the complex mess that must be going on inside his head.
The first night in DC they sleep like children in her bed: side-by-side, soundly, but un-touching. She had hoped their kiss on the airplane was the start of something – a trusting route back, an opening up. But Castle mechanically takes his clothes off, lies down in his undershirt and boxer shorts, curls up in a ball facing the wall and falls fast asleep without so much as a kiss goodnight.
Kate knows he's not mad at her. When he's mad he doesn't even want to be around her. No, the facts are more troubling than that – he's so distant and uncharacteristically quiet that she feels as if it will take a shocking catharsis to reach him. She worries that some kind of breakdown might even be imminent.
The next morning she wakes early, makes coffee and drinks it black out at her small kitchen table since her refrigerator is empty and she has paperwork to attend to before she can go out.
She writes the letter longhand – one take, no mistakes and no do-overs. Some things are perfect, flawless first time around when you know exactly why you're doing them and exactly what needs to be said.
Castle stirs briefly when she passes through the bedroom to turn on the shower. But then he rolls away from the noise and smashes his face into the pillow, his eyes screwed tightly closed. Kate watches him tenderly for a second or two, almost overwhelmed to finally have him here for all the times she was alone and lonely and wished him back in her life. Then she swallows down those memories and pushes on with the start of her day.
She showers and carefully applies her make-up and then she goes to the closet, dressing in a dark navy pantsuit and crisp white shirt, both of which have to be removed from the drycleaner's plastic. She puts on her father's watch, leaving her mother's ring on the nightstand, and then she sits down on the edge of the bed, level with Castle's hip.
"Castle," she says gently, laying her hand on his back and smoothing it between his shoulder blades. "Castle, can you wake up for me a second?"
Castle grunts, sighs and then he rolls towards her.
"Hey," she says, giving him a soft smile. "How'd you sleep?"
He blinks at her owlishly, as if he's still pretty out of it and might not understand the question. His hair flops over his forehead, flattened like dark chocolate shavings, and she longs to smooth her fingers through it, but knows she has to take things one-step at a time.
"Okay, look," she says slowly, "I have to go into the office for a meeting now. But it'll only take a little while. I've programmed the address and map location into your phone. Why don't you come meet me there in an hour? It's only a ten-minute walk from here. I'll call if anything unexpected comes up."
Castle manages to sit up and he nods wordlessly at her suggestion, rubbing adorably at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Kate tips her head to one side giving him a concerned look and then she lays her hand on his forehead. Her fingers are cool and, though he's sleep-warm, she's relieved to discover that he doesn't have a temperature. His eyes slip shut at her touch and Kate feels her chest and throat tighten.
"Okay. I'm gonna go now. There's coffee in the kitchen. We can get brunch when we meet up. How's that sound? You might want to get in the shower, save you falling asleep again," she suggests, leaning in to kiss his cheek before she stands, his startled, wary eyes following her al the way to the door.
The meeting with her boss is professional, almost to the point of curt, and mercifully brief. She talks about organizational fit, about decision making, lines that cannot be crossed, about shades of grey versus black and white, and how she feels more useful at the Twelfth where her skills let her work more closely with the victims of violent crime at the point they come face-to-face with their worst nightmare. Her supervisor listens politely; though at no time does he intervene or try to dissuade her from leaving. And she finds that she is both relieved and yet slightly disappointed at the same time by his lack of interest in retaining her skills.
She stops by Human Resources to sort out tax and pay issues, hand back her I.D. and complete an exit interview. A younger member of the HR team accompanies her down to her cubicle to clear her desk and collect her things. She has mercifully little to take with her. Her elephants are stored in the top drawer of her desk, since personal trinkets and mementos were frowned upon she discovered soon after arriving. And between those, an autographed copy of Deadly Heat, and a picture of Castle and the boys she kept in her drawer, she has barely enough stuff to warrant the small box the young woman has brought down for her.
Once on the front steps of the building, back out in the bright warmth of the day, she takes a deep breath, sniffs the air and lets the sun warm her face as she slips a classic pair of Aviators over her eyes. She's free, she's happy to be starting over, and now she can properly concentrate on the fences she has to mend.
Kate scans the sidewalk, both street corners, and then she looks further off down the block. There's no sign of Castle. She shields her face from the sun and is on the point of getting out her phone to call him when a deep voice at her elbow speaks, slightly startling her.
"Here, let me carry that for you."
"You came," she blurts, covering her surprise by allowing him to relieve her of the box, making a production of the handover in the process to further mask her doubt that he would be here.
But he doesn't miss her tone and he doesn't let her get away with it either.
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
He's freshly shaven, though he still looks tired around the eyes. He's wearing a light blue linen shirt that she likes – she packed – and pale khakis. He has buttery-soft brown leather loafers on, and without a jacket and his sleeves rolled up exposing tan forearms, he looks exactly like what he is – a wealthy, attractive man in the city on vacation.
"I thought maybe you wanted to sleep longer. You seemed tired," she tells him truthfully, since they're trading honest blow-for-blows.
"How was your meeting?" he asks, perfunctorily changing the subject as they head down the steps and then turn right to walk down the street without discussing a destination.
"Well, it's done," she says, blowing out a long breath to let go of all the nerves and tension she had been holding onto now that it's finally over. She rolls her shoulders, shakes out her arms and gives the building behind her the briefest of final looks.
Kate glances over at Castle when he doesn't immediately reply, finding his puzzled stare meeting her happy, open gaze.
"What?" she asks, when he frowns, regarding her intently. "He didn't even try to persuade me to stay, so I guess I made the right decision all round," she confesses. "Would have been nice if he'd fought a little," she admits, bumping elbows with her partner, tucking her hair behind her ear and smiling sheepishly at the ground, but feeling too good right now to actually be that bothered. "We all like to be needed, right?" she shrugs, walking on.
"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" asks Castle, slowly looking down at the box he's carrying and seeming to notice its purpose and contents for the first time.
"That I resigned?" asks Kate, unsure why he wouldn't know that that's why she went into the office this morning.
"You really resigned? From your job? Your job with the Attorney General's office?" Castle asks, his steps gradually slowing to a crawl.
"Eh…yeah. That's why we're here. That's why I dragged you down to DC with me. Remember? I know I kind of sprang a lot on you last night and it was late and everything, but…"
Kate pauses in the street.
"Castle, are you okay?" she asks, stopping him with a hand to his arm.
She can feel his fully flexed biceps beneath her fingers since he's still carrying her box. He seems as strong as ever, despite Tyson's attempts to break him. But while he's physically strong, she knows his mental wellbeing will take a little longer to fix.
"I…I did hear you. Last night. I heard what you said, why you wanted to come down here…"
"But?" asks Kate, seeing in his eyes that there's more he isn't saying.
"But…I guess I didn't believe you'd actually do it. I mean, give up that job? That was your shot, Beckett. You said so yourself."
"Castle, I thought I made myself clear. The letter…and I know we haven't had much time to talk about things…about the future, since I got back. But…I thought you understood," she tells him, her need to make him believe her sincerity driving her forward until he does understand her.
"You really went in there and resigned?" he repeats, looking down at the meager selection of items in her box, including his own book, and then back up at her smiling face.
"Yes," she nods, smiling even wider when he finally grins back at her, his eyes crinkling up at the sides - soft skin she wants to touch with the tips of her fingers.
"So, you're currently unemployed?" he grins, somehow amused by this fact.
"No. I'm technically between jobs. And more accurately on vacation," she corrects, her smile broadening to match his.
"How long?"
"How long?" asks Kate, shaking her head to indicate that she doesn't understand.
"This vacation…how long do we have?"
"Oh! Right," she says, relief sweeping through her. "As long as you want. As long as you need. As long at it takes to fix the mess I made of everything," she adds candidly, her eyes shining.
"You mean that? You're not gonna be looking at your phone two days from now wishing that a body would drop?"
"Castle, I meant what I said last night. I want to earn back your trust. Nothing is more important to me," she tells him earnestly, hoping he's still open to this, given how she's been pushing him. "So? What do you say? Shall we find somewhere for brunch and plan a vacation?" she asks, holding her breath.
"You really are embracing this unemployment thing," he laughs, nudging her with his arm.
His reaction is so unexpected that Kate laughs too. It bubbles out of her, rippling from her chest, up her throat and out of her mouth as she throws her head back, face tipped up to the sun, feeling better than she has in weeks.
"Lead on," he says, tucking the small box under his arm and falling in step with her.
They're quiet for a moment as they carry on down the street, the sun bouncing off the buildings all around them throwing out a mix of cool shadows and sharp reflections.
"You're really okay with this?" he asks, giving her another sideways glance to check her face.
"With what? Brunch on a weekday morning?"
"With giving up a stellar future in DC to return to the streets of New York to be a detective?"
"Someday soon I will tell you all about my Federal experience, Castle—"
"Even the classified bits?" he interrupts, eagerly.
"No. Not those," she replies, giving him a patient, knowing smirk. "But you have no idea how much I'm looking forward to going back to the Twelfth and working with you and the boys again. Sometimes what you thought you wanted turns out not to be all it's cracked up to be."
"Regrets?" asks Castle quietly, bumping shoulders with her as they pause at a crosswalk.
Kate nods, and shields her eyes from the sun.
"So many."
"I'm sorry," says Castle, looking as if he genuinely means it.
"What do you have to be sorry for?"
He shrugs.
"I just hate to see you feeling bad."
"Castle, right now, today, I feel great. More optimistic and certain about what life is going to be than I've ever felt. The mistakes I made? They were all my own fault. My biggest regret is how badly I treated you."
"We all do stupid things, Kate. I had a part to play in the choices you made. I might have stepped up in the end, but my timing stank. Don't think I don't know that."
"That's very noble of you. But this is on me. Seriously. You offered me everything and I…I just threw it back in your face."
"And now you're trying to fix it," he acknowledges, as the lights change and they cross the street.
"So…are you saying it's not too late?" she asks, gnawing nervously on her lower lip.
"Are you being coy with me, detective?" he asks, giving her a wink.
"Is that a yes?"
"Depends on this vacation," he teases. "Better make it a good one."
"We're planning it together, Castle. How could it not be great?"
"Good point. Tell me what I can do to help."
"Well…now might be a good time to hold my hand," she tells him, tentatively, looking up into his suntanned face.
She feels his knuckles brush hers before he slides his hand backwards and then captures her palm, folding his fingers around hers like there's nowhere else they should ever be. The sensation feels electric to Kate, and they're only holding hands.
They arrive at the diner she'd been unconsciously heading them towards and easily find an open booth, since it's now midmorning – the breakfast crowd has left and the lunch brigade has yet to arrive.
They're sitting opposite one another having read their menus and ordered food. Chunky, steaming white mugs of dark coffee rest in front of each of them and a quiet, easy silence stretches across the table between them.
Kate is pleased with their progress this morning. Castle looks more alert than he has since they freed him from Tyson's clutches and less restless than he has the past few days since he shot the man dead in that Elizabeth Street basement. But she is troubled by the information Lanie shared with her last night, and she knows that as much as she doesn't want to hamper the progress they've made, now has to be the time to tell him exactly what Tyson did. Full disclosure will be the only way for him to start trusting her again.
So she bites her lip, takes a deep breath and reaches across the table to touch his hand.
"Hey," she smiles, when he looks up at her with interest. "Castle, there's something I have to tell you," she confesses, watching with deep regret as the new, hopeful light dims in his eyes and the wariness returns.
Thoughts?