Chapter VIII

Castle Residence, NYC

"Can I come in?"

Her face was pale and drawn, cheekbones pronounced and eyes lined with an unhealthy greyish tint. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, hands inside the pockets of her wool blazer. Uncertain and hesitant. So unlike the commanding force of nature that he knew so well.

Castle opened the door a little wider and spotted the two uniforms standing guard outside in the hallway.

"Can I come in?"

Her words echoed in his head. He never imagined she'd ever feel the need to ask.

"Castle?"

"This is your home too."

"I lost the keys two nights ago when-"

"I figured."

She took a couple of tentative steps inside and made no move to take off her shoes or her jacket and for a moment he wondered if maybe she only came by to say goodbye. Not to come home.

Beckett didn't say anything either. Just stood there.

It scared him a little. To see her like this.

"You okay?" She didn't look okay.

"Tired," she admitted, finally. "Really tired."

"Come on," he put an arm around her shoulders and led her to the sofa where he'd been staring into space for the last hour or so. Helped her slide off her jacket as soon as she removed her hands from its pockets. She was so unresponsive to his gestures that it made him wonder whether she even noticed.

One of his hands brushed against hers and he noticed they were ice cold. Grabbing them instinctively, he cupped them in between his own and started rubbing. Heating them up with his warmth.

"You're frozen."

"It's getting cold out. Left a bit of the window open in the cruiser," she explained, sitting down on the sofa. He followed suit because her hands were still cushioned between his own.

"Why?"

She didn't answer and he didn't press. Kept rubbing her hands together until they didn't feel like icicles anymore.

Rick's natural inclination was to pull them up to his lips. Kiss them warm.

But he didn't.

That was something he'd have done two months ago. Before she left. Before his natural inclinations no longer felt natural.

"Thanks," she murmured after he let go. One exhausted glance in his direction let him know she meant it.

"Want something warm to drink?"

"Please."

Castle got up and stepped into the kitchen, poured some water into the kettle and plugged it in. Searched the cabinet for some tea bags. Neither him nor Beckett were tea drinkers but Martha often bought back some herbal concoctions from her spa retreats. He figured that was a safer bet than the strong, brewed coffee she usually preferred when it came to hot beverages.

Then again, maybe he shouldn't assume. As if he had any clue what was going on in her mind these days.

"Kate?" He called out to the living room. Tilted his head to get a view of the sofa and noticed that she'd leaned into one of the armrests, draped an arm over it and rested her head on top of both. Eyes closed.

He walked towards her, bent down and squeezed her shoulder. "Kate?"

No response. She was out cold. Fast asleep, even though she was still half sitting up, her upper body hunched over the armrest and her face squished into her arm. She wasn't kidding when she said she was tired.

He debated trying harder to rouse her and then considered just scooping her up and taking her to the bedroom that way. Like he'd done last night when she'd literally fallen asleep against him on the bathroom floor.

But then his anger resurfaced and he wasn't sure he wanted her sleeping there tonight. It was a battle raging inside him, between wanting her so bad it hurt and wanting to inflict some of the same torment she'd thrown his way. To push her away, just as she'd done to him.

The thought of her spending the last two weeks at another man's apartment gnawed at him and clawed at his insides. He wasn't ready for forgiveness. Wasn't feeling it.

But he was awful at hurting her. The rare times he did it, it never felt like much of a victory and barely gave him any satisfaction. Castle didn't have it in him to hurt her and deep down, he was okay with that. It wasn't something he ever wanted to be good at.

Castle turned away from her, walked to the bedroom and came back with a blanket and pillow.

Beckett didn't flinch when he grabbed her legs and lifted them up onto the sofa. Moved her from the armrest and deftly pushed the pillow underneath her head, so she was fully lying down. The sofa was just big enough to accommodate the entire length of her. He took off her boots as well as her holster, sliding an arm underneath her to unfasten it. Placed them both next to the sofa, the gun inside its holster on the table and the boots by the armrest, in case she woke up at night and felt the compulsion to flee again.

Castle wouldn't stop her.

If she was staying he needed it to be of her own volition.

He covered her with the blanket, dimmed the lights in the living room and let her sleep.


Later

"Aren't you gonna wake her?" Alexis asked, after poking into his study in her pyjamas, stifling a yawn. It was nearly midnight and he thought she'd already gone to bed. Earlier the two of them had a quiet dinner in the kitchen together after Martha called to tell them she wouldn't be coming home.

Kate hadn't so much as stirred while he cooked up a massive pot of pasta, chopping a half dozen tomatoes, banging the occasional pot and running the dishwasher when they finished.

Castle shrugged in response to Alexis's question.

He was sitting at his desk, lap top in front of him trying to put together an article that Black Pawn had roped him into writing for a crime fiction magazine.

After an hour at his desk, he was exactly one paragraph in.

"Is she okay?"

Castle shrugged a second time.

"Fine, Dad. I get it. You don't want to talk about it." Alexis bent down to kiss his cheek. "Goodnight."

He smiled. "It's not that. I don't have answers to your questions. That's all. 'Night, sweetheart."

He stayed at his desk for another hour, which resulted in him eking out one more paragraph that was just as awkward and stilted as the first. If this was the usual pace of his writing, Derrick Storm would still be an unpublished first draft and Nikki Heat wouldn't exist.

But he had to close his computer because his eyes stung with fatigue. He stretched as he got up and padded back into the living room where his wife was still fast asleep on the sofa.

Castle tried to wake her once more, but aside from eliciting an unintelligible groan that at least let him know she was alive, he didn't succeed.

It worried him. Because she never slept this hard.

She also never OD'd on heroin before, he reminded himself.

Castle walked to the bedroom, shed his clothes and collapsed into bed, knowing he wouldn't be able to sleep. Knowing he'd spend the entire night listening for any noise coming from the living room. For any indication that she was on her way out again.


Later

The room was dark and quiet when her eyes opened.

Beckett turned around, so that she was lying on her back and it took her a second to remember where she was.

The loft. Living room. Sofa.

Home.

Her heart skipped a beat and the started to pound furiously. Part of her suddenly wanted to flee.

What if she made the wrong decision?

She let the feeling of panic wash over her until her heart stopped racing and then raised an arm above her to check the time. Pressed a button on the side of her over-sized men's Omega that lit up the watch-face: 04:07

It was four in the morning.

Kate stretched and groaned when she noticed how sore her back was. Comfortable as the sofa was, it wasn't Castle's expensive mattress. Or even the basic Ikea model she'd slept on at Vikram's place the last two weeks.

She threw off the blanket and swung her legs off the sofa, socked feet touching the rug below. She didn't remember taking off her boots or falling asleep.

Even in the darkness, she spotted the familiar outline of her gun and holster on the coffee table.

Castle.

Her lips rose into a smile.

Kate blinked away the last vestiges of sleep and calculated how long she'd been out for. She arrived the at loft around 5pm, if memory served her right. More than ten hours then.

Something else struck her then. She felt better. The nausea and cramps were gone and though she still had a slight headache, it wasn't nearly as fierce as it had been on the ride back into the city last night.

Her hangover from hell was finally over.

She was starving too. Felt like she could eat an entire fridge full of food.

Kate stood up and the sudden movement made the room spin around her. Not having had a meal in nearly three days really was catching up to her.

She slowly made her way into the kitchen, not bothering to turn on the lights to open the fridge.

A bowl of pasta was the first thing she saw. It looked like spaghetti with Bolognese sauce; one of her husband's specialities. Leftovers probably, because Martha didn't eat more than a few handfuls of anything and Castle always made too much of everything.

Kate grabbed the bowl and stuck it into the microwave, salivating when it was done and its enticing aroma filled the kitchen.

Kate set down the bowl and lit a couple of candles, not ready for bright lights yet, but not wanting to eat in complete darkness either.

She pulled a fork from a drawer and dug in, as she grabbed the bowl and made her way to a bar stool by the pantry. The spices and herbs mixed with the tartness of the tomatoes, and the rich flavour of the meat, hit her tongue with the first bite and it was quite possibly the best thing she ever ate. She twirled her fork around the pasta and scooped the next bite up greedily, before she'd swallowed the first, determined never to take spaghetti for granted again.

Kate finished half the bowl before noticing a familiar silhouette in the candle-lit room.

Her husband sat down across from her. "Hey."

"Hungry?"

"Yeah-" An understatement. "I hope you don't mind. I ate your leftovers."

"No. Knock yourself out. We made extra in case Mother came home. She didn't."

Kate wolfed down the rest, pausing between twirling up forkfuls of pasta to see her husband observing her. Mild amusement occasionally played on his features and when it did, it overshadowed his obvious fatigue.

"Do you want something else?" he asked after watching her scrape out the last drops of Bolognese sauce.

"I, uh...yes?" She really did. Could eat the same amount again if she was being honest. "But...maybe I better not push it."

"You're right. Probably a good idea."

"Yeah."

Beckett was the one who observed him now, her weary husband sitting in the candlelight with her, clad in a t-shirt and chequered pyjama pants. His messy bed-hair was evidence of how much he'd tossed and turned. Unruly tufts sticking out all over the place and it made her want to run her fingers through it. When her gaze lingered on his face she saw anger there too. Knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't contain it for long.

Rick wasn't a brooder. If something bothered him, he'd let her know.

"Why'd you come home, Kate?"

There it was.

But knowing it was coming and being ready for it were two different things.

"I never wanted to leave."

Castle tightened his lips and slid off the bar stool. His muscles were tense and tight, exaggerating his anger. "But you did. You left and you moved into another's man's apartment."

"Rick- wait."

He'd already stepped away from the counter. Maybe he wasn't ready for this conversation either.

But he'd started it and she hadn't come home to avoid him.

"Please. Let me explain."

He stopped in his tracks and gave her the slightest of nods.

"Vikram and I were working on a case together."

"LockSat and the murder of the AG Team? You mentioned this before you left this morning."

"Yes. But it was completely off the books. We needed it to be until we had enough evidence. I'd often go to his place after work, because it was set up with a secure computer network. Or so we thought. Sometimes I'd stay there and until two or three in the morning. He'd track computer trails and I'd try and link them to drug busts."

Castle flinched but Kate didn't stop.

"Three weeks ago Vikram's roommate moved out and one night after I fell asleep on the couch, he asked me why didn't just stay there, in the spare bedroom. It was closer to the precinct than the furnished apartment I was staying at. At first I said no...but then I realized he was right. Me being there gave us more time to work on this thing and I so badly wanted it over as soon as possible."

Castle's expression was unreadable. The perfect poker face. "Never once did it occur to you to let me in on this?"

Kate bit her lip. "No, it didn't," she answered truthfully. No more lies. After making the decision to come home, she'd sworn she was done with them. She'd already done so much more damage to what was left of their marriage than she ever intended.

She came home because she knew that after Castle rushed to the hospital to be with her two nights ago, he'd automatically made himself a target, no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise.

Kate knew that whoever had planned the attack on her would have found some means to check on her in the hospital and in the process they would have seen her doting husband not leaving her bedside. They would have realized how much they still meant to each other.

All her feeble, misguided efforts to protect him and keep him out of this mess had failed.

Everything had failed. Vikram was dead. She still had a target on her head, and now Castle and his family did too. All the minor crumbs of evidence they'd painstakingly gathered over the last two months were gone.

Kate put her elbows on the counter and ran her hands through her hair. The weight of it all suddenly felt unbearably heavy on her shoulders.

"Why?" Castle's shaky voice pulled her from her thoughts. "After everything we've been through, why not trust me to have your back and keep your secrets?"

"I met with someone before I decided to pursue this case. She said that if I was going to go after these guys, I had to do it alone. That if I didn't- any blood shed over this would be on my hands. She- her words made me panic, Rick. First thing I thought of when she said that was you and that I could never live with the thought of you paying the price of any of my crusades."

"So some stranger tells you that you can't risk letting anyone in on this and you swallow it, hook, line and sinker? My logical, methodical wife, who always insists on hard evidence above everything else?"

Kate's throat felt dry. "I didn't say it was rational."

He was the one who ran a hand through his hair now, tousling it even further as he eyed her in disbelief. "I'm having a hard time buying this, Kate."

"It's the truth and she wasn't a stranger...this woman is the reason Vikram and I didn't get killed two months ago. She saved us from half a dozen militia-style killers. She says she's your Dad's wife."

"What?" Castle narrowed his brows. "You been in touch with my father's wife? Didn't think to mention that me either? Damn it, Kate, you are unbelievable."

"I couldn't tell you about her without telling you about the rest. I haven't seen her since that day. I tried to contact her once using the number she gave me, after Vikram thought someone might be on to us, but I couldn't. Makes me wonder whether she's okay."

"You have no way of knowing? No way of finding her?"

"Aside from the number she gave me, no."

Castle exhaled and Kate observed him trying to digest everything. Felt the guilt rise in her gut with every revelation, every subtle reaction from him. The longing she saw on his face for some sort of connection with his father.

And it was only the start.

"Why?" Castle questioned. "Why pursue this? I understood your need to find your mother's killer, but this? This was never your battle to fight."

"The AG team was killed because of a search I conducted while I worked with them, a search that tried to find criminality links that were tied to Bracken."

"So you felt responsible?"

"Yes."

"Knowing you, you also thought no one else was equally capable."

That one stung. But it was true. "Yes."

"I see."

Kate pushed back her bar stool and got up. "I'm going to make some coffee. If you're up for it, I'll tell you everything else you want to know."

"If I'm up for it?" he snickered. "It's not as though I haven't been waiting two months for you to tell me what the hell was going on."

Kate winced and let it slide off her shoulders. There'd be more of that coming her way and she wouldn't begrudge him his anger and frustration. Reminded herself that she'd react the same way. Probably worse, if she was being honest.

He didn't say a word while she brewed a pot of coffee and it jarred her. She wasn't used to this quiet, brooding Rick Castle. She'd only caught glimpses of this version of him in the past. When Alexis was kidnapped. Whenever Tyson entered their lives.

This version of him surfaced only in dark times and this time she'd been the one who brought him out.

The thought made her shiver in the candle-lit kitchen, realizing then that she still wore the same jeans and turtle-neck she'd gone to work in yesterday. Days and hours had blurred together this week.

When it was ready, she poured the coffee into two of the largest mugs she found in the cabinet. A bit of milk for hers and a generous amount as well as a tea-spoon of sugar for his. Its aroma drifted into her nostrils and it smelled like home.

She carried the mugs across the kitchen, moved over to Rick's side of the counter and set his down first, wanting to sit herself down there too, next to him, close enough that their knees could touch. But she didn't. Instead she m oved back to the other side of the counter where she'd wolfed down her early morning dinner, so she was across from him, facing him.

"You look tired," she said softly.

"Haven't slept much the last few days."

"I'm sorry."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Wasn't your fault what happened."

Except it was, Kate wanted to correct him. None of this would have happened if only she'd walked away from LockSat instead of pursuing it. "Get some sleep," she told him. "We can have this conversation in the morning."

"After you made us both coffee?"

"You don't have to drink it," she tried for a smile and failed miserably. "I'll have yours. Even if it is too sweet."

"Tell me everything," he said, sombre and unmoved by her attempt at lightening the mood. "Before you change your mind in the morning."

Kate cupped her mug in her hands, feeling the heat of the coffee radiate through the ceramic hull, right into her bones. "Okay."

So she did.

Told him everything. Answered his questions when he asked. Didn't flinch when he couldn't help the occasional outburst of anger. Poured them both a second cup of coffee after they finished the first.

"The links that Vikram found to a group of men in the upper echelons of power...what group exactly?"

This was more than she'd confessed to Gates. Was still something that sent a chill through her veins. "The Supreme Court of Justice."

Castle choked on a sip of coffee. "The Supreme Court of Justice?"

"We think LockSat might be connected to or even spearheaded by one of the Supreme Court judges."

"Jesus Christ, Kate." Castle rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"I know."

"How?"

"Electronic trails, of course they were re-routed through all sorts of supposedly untraceable ISPs, but Vikram had a way of tracing some of them back to the main server in that building. I'm not sure how, to be honest. All the tech stuff he did was way over my head. I did the hands-on investigating, found ways of linking samples of heroin..."

"It's why they injected you with heroin, isn't it?" Castle was aghast at the realization. "That and Bracken's connection to it all, it's why they dumped you in an alley close to where your mother died."

"Yeah." Kate shuddered at the thought. Didn't want to think too hard about it. Not yet. "It was supposed to be the ultimate message."

"Why not do the same to Vikram?" Castle questioned.

It was a good question, now that she thought about it. A stabbing was always a messy, complicated affair. Why not grab him on the way home and dump them together? Especially if they wanted to send a message.

She'd missed this too, during the whole sordid LockSat mess. Castle's input. His ability to see the story behind the evidence.

"I don't know."

"You should find out why," he suggested. "There has to be a reason."

Kate agreed. "You're right."

"Where do you go from here?" he wanted to know.

"I don't know," she told him. Where could she go without a shred of evidence? "Try and stay alive?"

Castle was pale. Didn't say anything.

"I'm scared," she admitted. It was hard to say out loud. Because her every fibre was wired to protect him. And she knew that no matter how angry he was, the thought that he couldn't protect her gutted him.

"Stay here. They can't blow up the whole building. If the NYPD stops protecting you, we can hire private security."

"You want me to lock myself up in the loft for the rest of my life?"

"If that's what it takes."

She managed a smile this time. "It would defeat the purpose because we'd kill each other."

For the first time since he sat down across from her, the corner of his lips rose into a smirk too. "Not funny."

Kate slid off the bar stool. She was tired again. Two coffees and over ten hours of sleep later, she wondered how that was possible. The pasta, she told herself. Solid food for the first time in almost three days was making her lethargic.

She suddenly wanted to slip back into bed. Preferably next to her husband. "I'm going to try and find who killed Vikram," she told him. "That's my only chance of finding out who LockSat is and taking him down. Going into a man's apartment and stabbing him to death leaves evidence behind, no matter how good these guys are. And I'm going to find it."

"I see."

"Running and hiding won't keep these guys away, babe."

"Going at them has turned out really well so far."

She closed her eyes. "I'm going to shower. Gates ordered me to stay home tomorrow." She eyed the illuminated dials of the clock on the wall near the entrance of the kitchen. It was just after 5am. "I mean...today."

Castle nodded, the exhaustion dragging him down too now. "You do that."

God, she craved his touch. Wanted his arms around her so badly because that was the only thing that was going to make all this bearable. Coming home. Risking everything.

But he made no move to follow her. Remained on his seat by the counter as she made her way out of the kitchen.

"Castle- " she turned around before she was in the living room, towards his candle-lit silhouette.

"Yeah?"

"If you'd rather- I can sleep in the guest bedroom. I understand if you're not-"

"Do what you want, Kate." His voice cut her off, sounding harsher in the darkness than it might have in the light of day. "You always do."

That hurt too. Made her move an involuntary hand to scar above her heart and press on it, massage its edge with her thumb, as if somehow that futile gesture would ease the pain underneath. The one that had nothing at all to do with a sniper's bullet.

He didn't say yes.

Kate tried to find some consolation in that. In the knowledge that he knew exactly what her choice would be and, deep down, he was fine with it.


Later

He was lying on his side, turned away from her side of the bed when she slipped underneath the sheets, wearing only a loose t-shirt and a pair of her favourite pyjama shorts.

Kate buried her face in her pillow and turned to her husband's backside. Inched both herself and her pillow closer and closer until she was nearly spooning him. Noticing then how controlled his breathing was.

He wasn't asleep. He was only pretending so that she'd leave him alone.

Beckett placed a hand on his side and rested it there, along the familiar contours of his body. She drew lazy circles until she felt his breathing even out into a steady, uncontrolled rhythm. Until he finally fell asleep.

Maybe he wasn't ready to forgive her.

But her being here, it calmed him. Gave him the rest he needed so badly.

It was a start.