They ate in a complicated silence, each stealing glances at the other as if to check that this night was really happening. They were on the couch with their plates on their laps, sides lightly touching. The food was almost entirely gone when Kate spoke.

"I resigned today."

Castle inhaled food, eyes wide and watering as he coughed for several moments. "You did what?"

Kate stared at her plate as she aimlessly pushed bits of food around. Castle waited impatiently for her to find her voice again, finally reaching over to steal her fork.

"Kate, stop. Tell me what happened." The abject despair in her eyes when she finally looked up at him felt like a fist in the gut.

"I quit, Castle. I'm not a cop anymore."

"But why?"

"I was angry." Her eyes misted as she looked back on it. "I didn't really think about it, I just reacted. And I keep hearing Dr. Burke's voice asking me why I think I reacted that way."

"Why did you? What happened?" Castle reached for a glass of water when what he really wanted to do was grab Kate by the shoulders and try to shake the story out of her. He throttled his impatience and tried to keep his emotions off his face as he recognized a breakthrough as profound as the fact that Kate came here tonight.

"Ryan told Gates where Esposito and I were and what we were doing. Gates showed up with a tactical team just as I was about to fall off the roof."

Castle shoved food in his mouth to keep from speaking, desperate to hear the whole story and squelching the urge to hug her or yell at her. She had told him that she'd almost died and he'd seen the bruises on her body, but it felt like every new detail she shared revealed an even more disturbing facet of the situation.

"Gates didn't say anything on the roof, just sent us to be checked out by medical and had us escorted back to the precinct. We'd barely made it into her office when she started yelling. I guess I was still pretty amped up from the adrenaline. All I could think about was that she was arrogant, she didn't know anything about the situation, and here she was throwing the book at us and suspending us. I wanted to hit back, take back the power she has over my life. So I said I quit and I walked out. I don't even know if she'll let the resignation stand. She's probably filing the paperwork to have me fired right now. It's not like I went to HR to fill out the resignation forms. She could probably call it job abandonment. And she would be right to fire me."

Castle stared at her as she finally looked up at him. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears and he felt his heart crack in sympathy.

"Castle, what am I going to do?" Kate dropped her face into her palm, startling him as she blindly reached out for his hand. He took hers in both of his, trying to offer comfort through the touch.

"I don't know. We'll think of something. But right now it's really late and I'm wiped out. You should be, too. You've had a long and difficult day."

Kate let her head fall back onto the couch, slumping slightly in exhausted misery.

"I don't want to move. I just want the couch to swallow me up and suffocate me so I don't have to face tomorrow."

"Stay put." Castle stacked her plate on top of his as he stood. He dropped the dishes in the sink before snagging a spare blanket and pillow from the linen closet. When he got back to the living room, Kate had flopped over sideways, burying her face in the cushions. He dropped the pillow onto the couch, shaking out the folded blanket before draping it over her.

Kate glanced up at the touch of the blanket to meet his eyes. His heart clenched painfully when he saw the tears streaking her face. She turned quickly back to the couch, instinctively trying to hide what he had already seen.

"Oh, Kate. You really are a mess tonight, aren't you." Castle regretted the observation when he saw her shrink further against the couch, shoulders trembling with silent sobs. He dropped to the floor next to her and gathered her awkwardly against him. She clutched his sweatshirt with both hands as she cried against his chest.

Castle felt his own eyes water, throat closing with the force of his own complicated, unspoken emotions as he looked at the woman in his arms. He bent down to press a light kiss to the top of her head, breathing in her scent to reassure himself that she was really safe in his apartment and not hanging off the edge of a building, getting shot at, or being bruised by the fist of someone skilled enough to have killed her. Castle hadn't missed the fact that Kate and Esposito would have died if not for the intervention of Captain Gates. He shied away from the rest of that line of reasoning, flinching from the guilt he knew he was going to feel when the truth really started to settle in. Kate would have died today if things had gone according to her plans and Castle had given up on trying to stop her.

He wasn't sure he was entirely comfortable with the amount of gratitude he felt towards the captain who didn't even like him.

Castle came out of his introspection to realize that Kate's sobs had quieted and her breathing evened out. Her hands had loosened their death grip on his shirt and her whole body had relaxed. He snuck a look down at her face and realized she'd finally succumbed to the exhaustion of the day. He slid her carefully back onto the couch, tucking the pillow under her head and covering her with the blanket. He turned on one of the lamps so she would be able to find her way around if she woke up in the middle of the night.

He leaned against his bookcase for a long moment, staring at her sleeping face as he tried to keep from imagining what tonight would have been like if the tactical team had arrived five minutes later. Castle firmly shoved the rest of the horrifying images from his mind as he turned out the rest of the lights and went to bed.