Thank God Sofia had kept the hook on the ceiling, for the punching bag. And that she hadn't thrown away the bag itself, but kept it neatly tucked in the back of the supply closet, in case she needed to vent out.

After the first couple of days of self-inflicted exile from her home, from Castle and his family, she had felt the physical need to punch something, but her new role as Captain wouldn't allow enough free time to benefit from the precinct gym and related punching sack.

So, the old black one was taken out of its protective bag and hung on its hook and the sound of brutal and relentless punches and kicks filled her old apartment.

She hit until her knuckles burned despite the thick gloves and her shins ached beneath the padded protections. Each night when she came home from the precinct after having juggled paperwork, hostile phone calls from 1PP and the detectives, she donned some comfortable workout clothes, shin pads and gloves and then just vented it out.

She beat until she couldn't stand up straight anymore. More than once she collapsed against it, totally worn out, sweat dripping from her brow and tears streaming on her cheeks. Out of breath and taken over by grief and fear, she cried until she calmed down, just enough to be functional and drag herself to the shower.

Sofia usually let her go through her evening coping mechanism without a word, providing a glass of red wine and some sympathy, along with a delicious home cooked meal every night, but that night, six weeks after taking her in, Kate noticed Sofia was late. She was usually home by six, her job had stable work hours, but it was nearly nine and there was still no trace of her.

Strange.

It was distracting. If her cousin's presence had distracted her the first couple of days, Kate got used to her silent vigil of her daily break down and stopped caring about that, but she hadn't realized how quickly she had got accustomed to it.

She kind of missed her.

She grounded her, even if they had never spoken about what had prompted her sudden appearance at her door that night, more than a month before. It was the proverbial elephant in the room, but Sofia, unlike Castle, was a reserved person and never forced anyone to talk if they didn't want to. Just what she needed; a sympathetic smile and compassion.

Kate had just gotten out of the shower, her hair still dripping on the NYPD sweatshirt she was wearing, when Sofia burst into the apartment, eyes flaming with rage to the point that if looks could kill, she'd need a license for her face.

She closed the door with her shoulder and kicked her shoes off, then launched her handbag on the couch and placed the plastic takeaway bag on the countertop of the kitchen. "Sorry," she said, a little snappy, as she took off her jacket. "Boss was a bitch all day and made me stay after hours. Got Thai, tequila and lime, since we both don't work tomorrow."

Kate squinted her eyes. "Not that I mind, but… Thai and tequila?"

Sofia shrugged. "Thai booze sucks. I wanted Mexican, but the usual place was closed for some reason. Hungry?"

"And tired," replied Kate, sitting in front of her cousin.

"Worthy adversary?"

She rubbed the skin of her knuckles, still reddened and a little chafed, before answering. "Same old." Sofia handed her a styrofoam container and a pair of chopsticks. "What happened with your boss?"

"She's a bitch, plain and simple. According to her, not warning your employees about long meetings until one hour before said meeting starts is the norm. Apparently, the laws regarding safety on the workplace have been updated, again, thus we needed to be aware of such updates. That are simply common sense made rules!"

"You work in a chem lab, I guess you need to know how to deal with that stuff."

That remark only earned her a scornful look. Her cousin Sofia was a highly specialized laboratory technician for an important bio-medical industry, working the R&D department, she took her job very seriously and, clearly, didn't like to be considered an idiot.

"Yeah, as if I haven't spent half of my life wearing a lab coat, right? I know how to handle concentrated sulfuric acid and how to properly dispose of organic solvents, I don't need an eight hours long lecture to know that I have to wear gloves while doing that!" she burst, anger spilling from every word she said. "It's embarrassing!"

Kate perfectly understood the feeling. It wasn't different from all the courses and lectures cops were forced to attend each year, since they were often a waste of time. Every cop learns how to clean a gun, a Colt 1911 .45 doesn't change cleaning method from one year to another and cleaning it isn't much different from cleaning a Glock or a Beretta. Yet they were forced to attend a seminar on maintenance of the service piece every two years.

"Sorry…" she apologized.

Sofia waved her off as she chewed on her stir-fried chicken. "Don't worry… Gave me enough time to write the report for that day and send it away before my deadline came. It wasn't that bad in the end, the chair was comfortable. How was your day?"

"Not too bad, three cases from the backlog closed, two open and closed, three new cases and one ruled as suicide. Lots of paperwork to sign, people at 1PP that don't like how I work… I've been Captain for six weeks and I already hate it."

Sofia chuckled. "You hate being Captain, or you hate being here?"

There it was. After six weeks, there was the question Kate had been dreading. Time to be somewhat sincere, to a certain degree.

"I made a mess, in DC. I uncovered something, or someone thinks I did, very big, without knowing it. Big enough that if I dig in I could endanger everyone around me."

"Oh wow thank you Kate, very nice of you!"

"Do you intend to help me wade into unknown, deadly waters or you prefer to keep up doing your thing at the lab?"

Sofia smiled. "I'm quite happy with my lab coat and protective eyewear, thank you."

"Then if I don't tell you anything and you don't help me except for giving me a place to stay, you're safe. Problem is, Castle would never let go, he'd push and prod along with me, even harder than me, probably. If…" she paused for a moment, to think about what and how tell her so she could understand her predicament without being threatened by what she knew, "I left not only because I wanted to protect him, Martha, and Alexis from whoever is behind this whole thing, but also because I feared that he'd push me to dig. It took me year to drag myself out of that dark wood of my mother's murder… I don't want to walk that path again but…"

"But you're just like your mom, always seeking justice," said Sofia, seemingly lost in her thoughts. "It's like a drug, you can't help but dig, like you did with your mom's murder."

Kate nodded. "Yes," she replied with a sigh. "Yes, it's like a drug. It's an obsession I've lived with for so many years, until it nearly killed me a second time. The guy that shot me was ordered to kill me again a year later, around the time Castle and I found out about Bracken's involvement."

"So you knew it was him way before you arrested him?"

Again, she nodded. "Yes… but at the time we found out, we didn't have enough hard evidence to apprehend him, so I made a bargain. I'd leave him alone if he stopped sending people trying to kill me or Castle or any of our friends and family. I even saved his life from an assassination attempt some month later, in order to show him my good will to keep honoring my part of the bargain."

"That was very honorable of you," commented Sofia.

"I was tempted… to let him die. Leave him the line of explosion, he might have survived or not, I don't know… It was him that tried to kill me again, about a year ago. He was weeding out all the loose ends that could stop him on his way to presidency. That's when we moved, found the last piece of evidence and arrested him on live TV."

"Oh, I remember all too well… it was all over the news, I saw it on the CNN at lunch with some colleagues and I couldn't help but scream that's my cousin, that's the son of a bitch that killed my aunt! And my boss nearly fired me."

The scene tore a smile from Kate, though brief and tired. "I think Dad mentioned it, some time ago."

"Speaking of your dad, do you think your fear of yielding to your obsession comes from the fact that he's an addict?"

"We're both addicts, to different things though. I'm also prone to self-destruction, though not in the canonical way," she explained. "The first time I pulled away, that I stopped looking… it was because I realized I got nothing and I was hurting myself. So I solved other people's homicide, and it worked until Castle found something, and you know what happened. But now… I don't have a lead but I know there's something, that I saw something that killed my old squad back in DC, that killed Bracken and nearly got me killed again. But what?" She paused, ate the last bite of her Pad Thai and discarded the container and the chopsticks. "I don't know what I would be facing and it's… it's like booze for an alcoholic, and no matter how hard I try to stay away from it, Castle will make me want to investigate and he will want to help me, and I can't allow him. It's too dangerous."

Speaking of booze, Sofia had finished her dinner and was cutting the lime. Salt was already on the table and the bottle of Cuervo sat beside it.

"So you ran away from temptation?" Sofia's voice dripped with disbelief and incredulity. "You ran away from your husband because you don't know? You really thought that would deter him from trying to get you back, or even find out why you left? Damn, if half of what you told me about him is true, he's already working on finding out why you're here and not home!"

Kate poured herself a shot of tequila and downed it. "Why do you think I ran away? I'm the only one that knows something is going on, unless someone I can't speak about has told him him, which I highly doubt it happened." It wasn't true, she was sure someone, be it Hunt or his wife, had actually explained him at least a minimum of what was going on and why she had left. No other way he'd change his demeanor towards her in such a short time. After the dead guy at Hudson University, the way he acted around her had completely flipped. "If I'm not there, it's better for both of us."

"That's bullshit and you know it." Sofia took the tequila and poured her own shot. "Kate… you're wasting your time. You call him every night, and don't tell me you don't because I can hear you crying, you still see him almost every day at work, it's crazy!"

"It's not crazy!" she retorted. "At least this way I know he's fine, that everyone's fine!" Except for herself. Vikram kept asking her if she wanted him to stop, if she was having second thoughts and wanted to call the whole thing off. Truth was, she wanted to. She desperately wanted everything to be over, to say goodbye to Sofia and go back to her husband, to the life she had fought so hard to have. However, each day that passed, he uncovered something more. The bigger picture was slowly, agonizingly so, becoming visible. They weren't that far, they just needed some more time.

Meanwhile, she could pretend everything looked good, that she was doing fine and that she wasn't in mortal danger every time Vikram uncovered something more. How long would it take them to find who was behind LocSat and how long before they uncovered what they had been doing?

Kate jumped a little on her stool, startled when Sofia spoke again, even more vehemently this time.

"How about you? You're not fine! One day or another you're going to break your hand against the sack, you cry every night, you barely sleep and you have panic attacks too. And don't even try to convince me you're just peachy because I can hear you. All of this…" she weaved her hands around them. "...is just destroying you. Look, last year when we met after you got married so you could give me the keys of the apartment, it was the first time I saw you in years and you were so different from before I left. Back then, after your mom was murdered, you were a chock of wood, the proverbial broomstick up your ass type of per person."

Kate laughed, a grim-filled laugh, knowing all too well what she meant. Sofia had left New York ten years before for a long time research project in France that had lasted until last fall, and the last time they had seen each other, Kate had just been appointed detective and, well, that hadn't been her highest point in life. Grief still clutched her heart and guided her, she wasn't the funniest person to be around.

"But last year, you were another person. You were yourself, happy and carefree. Your eyes shined when you spoke of Castle, when you introduced him to me. That was the first time I saw my cousin, and not some freaky walking piece of ice! And now?" Sofia took a pause to take another shot. That short moment of silence was more than enough for Kate to feel like someone had dropped a bucket of tar over her, with sorrow engulfing her like a second, thick skin. "Now you're back to that place where I left you before I went to France. You try to look all stoic and shit, but deep down, you're a wreck."

She paused again, probably to allow Kate the chance to reply, a reply that never came. "Do you really think this is the right thing to do? Running away from the man that, allow me, saved you from yourself? Kate, you two have been through so much… you can get through this too. I know this is your way to cope, you run away, you've always done that ever since we were children. But when you said that I do in front of the judge and signed that paper, you vowed to be Castle's wife through and through, for better or for worse. This is the worse. By running away, even if it is to protect you both, not only you're hurting him and yourself, but the longer you stay away, the longer you keep up with this stupid sham, the longer you hurt relationship. Your marriage is at stake, because he might be the most patient man in the world, but the more you stay away, once you come home and tell him that this big, dangerous thing is gone, the harder it will be for him to completely trust you again."

"He trusts me Sofia, he tells me pretty much every day."

"Now, that you've been gone for only six weeks. But when these six weeks become six months? A year? I can keep you here, give you a place to stay, but what about him? Are you sure you can keep being around your husband every day, keep him at distance and return here, to that cold, lonely bed? Aren't you even missing sex at this point?"

Kate suddenly felt the need to call Vikram and call everything off. Sofia was right. About everything. Even not knowing squat about what was going on, except for such minor things that had been on the news for weeks after Bracken's arrest, she had found the heart of the problem with surgical precision. Castle was patient, but how long could he be? How long could he wait?

How long could she wait?

What higher power had given her the right to put both their lives on hold? Had she become such a scared little thing that at the very sight of peril she'd cower and run away?

"And don't think you're the only one to blame in this mess!" snapped Sofia. "Because if I were him, I'd haul you over my shoulder and bring you home by force. He's big enough to do it. He should fight more, but I guess it's not in his character, right? He's the kind of man that up until things don't get really nasty he's calm and composed."

"You should have studied psychology, not biochemistry."

Sofia shrugged. "I'm just a good observer. It's my job after all, to wait and observe. And I've observed you for a few days now. You're on the path of self-destruction and that punching bag won't be enough to let you vent it all out. You're an uncontrolled exothermic reaction in a sealed system. One day, sooner or later, something will crack and you'll blow up in a million of tiny pieces. Now, listen to me; you can still prevent this. I know you well enough to be certain that you are investigating. You're too much of Aunt Jo's daughter to let it go so don't try to feed me your lies about running away from temptation, and this alone is a lot of stress. Add the emotional turmoil of being away from the person you love and that for years has been your support… you're doomed. Now listen to someone that has seen more than one piece of Pyrex explode in front of her eyes because she messed up with dosages and obtained a stronger reaction than expected; go home. Even if you still want to keep him in the dark about the underground investigation, go home! You're on a quest for justice, but if you burnout before you obtain justice, than this is absolutely useless. You can't do any good if you end up dead."

She sighed. Between the case she and Vikram were investigating on the side, the actual workload of being an on-the-field type of Captain and the emotional turmoil she was going through, she barely knew what to think, let alone how to reply to Sofia. Her words had punched a very tender spot in her, she had picked all the right strings, those connected to her anguish and pain. And it hurt. For the past few weeks she had spent a great portion of her energies denying, telling herself that she was doing the right thing, that it would soon be over and that Castle would wait for her.

But could she wait until it was over?

She highly doubted it, most of all because Sofia was more than right, Castle was her pressure release valve. No matter what happened, he was there for her, even when she didn't want him to be. Even when his presence, be it literal or just metaphorical, like for their nightly phone calls or texting, hurt and made her cry in grief and frustration, being with him made her feel better.

"Listen, I know I'm not the best person in the world for relationship advice, but if there's something I learned after that on-and-off thing I had with that Italian guy back when I was in France, is that things like this… the request for time, the hiding, the secrets… they don't last. Either way, you still have time. You're not broken yet, just a little bent. But there's only so much tension even the strongest relationship can withstand. You can go on for a little longer, but I doubt you'll resist too long. Too bad it's very hard to see when too long is too long. Now, push aside this big clandestine investigation, push aside the long term and think about the immediate future. Would you risk everything you fought so hard to achieve because you don't know what could happen? Do you really want to live in a nuclear fallout shelter, alone, for the rest of your life? Or you prefer to get your ass off that stool, gather your things and sleep in your bed, knowing that, for now, things can get better and if they get worse, you'll have someone to help you fix them?"

Before she could answer, Kate's phone beeped. She expected it to be a text from Castle, but in reality, it came from Vikram.

Done. Bomb ready. Can be dropped anytime.

Maybe she would have been able to sleep in their bed that night.


You know what happened? This thing got longer than a planned and is now a two-shot + epilogue. Bear with me and my nonsense please.