Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

She doesn't answer. She's frozen. Her eyes remain unblinking for so long that he worries. She must be apprehensive, mustn't she? About what he's going to say next? But she's mute and still, her response to his remark neither fight not flight. She'd had plenty of fight in her a moment ago. He'll have to press her a little, then, but maybe he should come at the problem obliquely. He's never done anything like this before and he's terrified of screwing it up, of having her shut him out completely but worse, of doing herself greater harm. Irreparable damage, possibly, unless someone comes and talks sense to her. And that's not likely unless he talks to someone about her. Lanie? Even then, who knows? Will she listen to anyone?

"If I were on better terms with Josh–any terms with Josh–I might ask him what to do," he says, breaking the painful silence.

That appears to confuse her, but at least she doesn't look spooked. "Why would you talk to Josh? I haven't seen him in more than a year. I don't even know where he is."

"He's a doctor."

"So?"

"He's not a psychiatrist, but he knows you and he knows your family history. I'd ask him what I could do to help you. I'm so afraid of your drinking, Kate. How you can be drinking the way you are when you went through so much with your Dad?"

If he'd reached over and slapped her with an open palm it wouldn't have had the effect that his question had. She's on her feet, a modern-day Lyssa, the Greek goddess of wrath. Her face is redder than he'd have thought possible. "My Dad, Castle? You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what I went through with my Dad. I am nothing like him. Nothing." She strikes her fist so hard against her chest it's certain to leave a bruise. "I dragged him out of bars, picked him up from sidewalks, hauled him into cabs. I wiped blood and snot off him. He threw up on my shoes. He cried. He was incoherent except when he was talking about my mother, and I don't know which was worse. I am nothing like my Dad. Nothing. He was a drunk. Is. Recovering alcoholics are still drunks. They're one drink away from an endless fucking disaster."

She pivots and runs. He hears her feet on the floor until he hears the slam of her bedroom door, and then he hears nothing at all.

It's hot on the porch, but he's not going to leave. He's waited for a lot of things, but none of them was anything like as important as this. He picks at the Brie-topped toast, and when it's almost 3:00 he returns to the kitchen for some water, the rest of the grapes, and the half-bag of chips. Eventually the coffee and water work their way through him, and he has to go to the bathroom. While washing his hands he sees a glass on the sink. He picks it up and sniffs, and can just detect the smell of bourbon. She must have left it here last night. Maybe she was going to bring it back to the kitchen after her shower, but he'd interrupted her.

She can't stay in her room forever, or even all day.

He cocks his head. He's the father of a teenager, and even one as close to angelic as Alexis has lapses in judgment, or thinks she can pull something over on him. That's when it comes to him: Beckett's window. It's on the side of the house, not the front. If she thinks, knows, that he's inside, she could climb out, get on her motorcycle, and have a good jump on him. The flight-or-fight response may be here, after all, except that's it both: fight and flight.

As stealthily as possible he moves through the cabin, and at the bottom of the porch steps turns right. Her room is on the left, so if he circles around the back she won't see him coming. He reaches the corner only a few seconds before her foot appears over the sill, and then her entire leg. He takes one large stride and wraps his hand around her knee.

"God, Castle, you scared me to death."

"You look very much alive to me, Beckett. Looks like you're trying to get away from me, too."

"Let go."

"No."

"Let go of me or I swear I'll call the cops."

"Really? Which cops? Your pal Sergeant Masden? I think my stock is a little higher with him than yours is."

She tries, without success, to wrest her knee from his hand. "Go away, Castle. Just go the hell away and leave me alone."

"No." He looks up at her. "What are you afraid of?"

"Nothing. You're the one who's afraid. You said so." This time she kicks her leg forward, hard, and clips his shoulder with her shoe. When he stumbles she manages to pull her leg back in, shut the window, and lock it.

She throws herself on the rickety bed, and tries to calm her breathing. In, out, in, out, in, out. She stares at the ceiling. There's a rust-colored patch in the far corner that she hadn't noticed before. Is it a water stain? Maybe from a leaky roof? It hasn't leaked while she's been here, but there haven't been any serious storms, either. She could do with one, one that would wash everything away. Everything in her stupid wreck of a life.

Why does Castle care what she's doing? He told her he loved her. She can still remember his face when he said it. He was afraid then, for sure. It's the only time she's seen him fearful. He said, "Kate, I love you." She used to lie in bed like this in her father's cabin last summer, wondering why he'd looked so afraid. Wondering if he'd meant it. "I love you, Kate."

He can't bring himself to say it now. If he really did love her, he doesn't any longer.

Would he still love her if she hadn't said what she'd said to Bobby Lopez? If she'd hung on to Cole Maddox instead of letting him throw her off the roof of some seedy hotel, would he still love her? Would he still love her if she were a kick-ass detective and not a failure of an ex-cop who let her mother down? If she were more like Nikki Heat, the perfect, impossible-to-live-up-to version of Kate Beckett, would he still love her? Would he still love her if her feet weren't made of clay?

She's had a lot of time to think up here, even if she hasn't spent as much of it thinking as she should. Like, what to do with the rest of her life. There's no rush, is there? There's plenty of time. She can stay here for at least two more months, probably three, until it's too cold to stay in the cabin. Until the mice move in for the winter. She's 32 years old, and has no idea what to do next. She's not equipped to do anything but be a cop, and that's behind her.

Why is Castle still here? He'd gotten her out of jail; she'd thanked him. Shouldn't that be it? It has to be it. He has to leave. He should have told her in March what he told her today: that he left the precinct, left her, because she'd lied. If he had answered just one of her emails, picked up the phone just once when she'd called, she'd have told him. But he hadn't. She can't look in his eyes any longer. The blue she used to think of as promise and expectation and (she hoped) love is now the blue of disappointment. She can deal with the rage, more or less, but not the disappointment. She'd seen it for the first time on the Sunday morning when he visited her in jail, but it hadn't lasted long. He'd believed in her. He'd stood up for her. Helped her.

But it's in his eyes again, and it hasn't dissolved, hasn't given way to something better. Contempt would be better. Boredom would be better. Anything, absolutely anything, is better than disappointment from someone you love. There. She's said it. She loves him. Sometimes it feels like a bone-deep ache, sometimes like a scalpel slicing her open. Never does it feel the way it should: effervescent, thrilling.

He has to go back to New York or the Hamptons. There's no reason for him to be in Berryville. None.

She rolls over and gets out of bed. Taking a covered elastic from a little dish on her bureau, she pulls her hair into a ponytail and looks into the splotchy little mirror on the wall. Some of the splotchiness might be on her own skin. She doesn't know. She's not wearing make-up, has hardly even used mascara or lip gloss since she arrived. What the hell. Time to cut the cord. She opens the door and walks dispiritedly through the small interior and out on to the porch, where Castle is sitting on a chair.

"Listen, you should go," she says stiltedly, her hands shoved into her back pockets.

"I'm not going. Not yet."

Let him hear her sigh. She won't try to cover it up. "What do you want from me, Castle? I have nothing to give."

"I want you to tell me why you're drinking."

"I'm not drinking. You've been here for hours. Have you seen me drink? No. The only thing I've imbibed today is coffee."

"You would be, though, wouldn't you," he says acidly as he gets to his feet, "if I weren't here?"

"That's none of your business."

"If I get a call in the middle of the night from a sergeant that you're in jail it is."

"That was once, Castle. Once. And only because that bastard Todd Fredericks came after me." Her hands aren't trembling but her voice is, and she hates it.

"What if he hadn't been there at all? What if you'd just walked down the street to your motorcycle and driven home? But what it you hadn't made it home? What if you'd been killed because you were too drunk to negotiate these roads? What if you'd killed someone else?"

"I wasn't too drunk."

"You were. Your blood alcohol level was–"

"How the hell do you know what my blood alcohol level was?"

"I saw the police report, remember?"

She wants to cry. She wants a drink. She can't do or have either, not as long as he's standing there. She turns her head away from him and looks at the trees, though she doesn't really see them. She's vaguely aware of mourning doves in the distance. Perfect. It's a prefect soundtrack for this horrible scene, the sad cooing, the sound of mourning.

"Kate?" He's shifting in place, and his voice has turned tender. "Kate? Have you talked to any of your friends since you left the city? Seen them?"

"Who?" That's the limit of what she can say without breaking down.

"Your friends. Lanie, especially. Espo and Ryan."

"Why?"

"Because I think it would be good for you."

"How do you know what's good for me, Castle?" She bites the inside of her cheek. "Have you? Have you seen them?"

"No, but–"

"Because you walked away from them, too. Your friends. Not just me."

That's the metaphorical bucket of cold water in his face. She's right. He'd left them, too. It doesn't excuse what she did to him, but it's true. He'd left the closest friends he's ever had because Beckett had hurt him, and he was furious at her. No wonder Lanie had been so ticked off when he'd asked for her address. He tries to play back their conversation of a few days ago, though it feels like months. What had she said? Oh. "You left without any explanation." It's true: he'd left not only Beckett, but the rest of them, without a word.

"You know what? You're right. I wanted to lash out at you, and I took it out on them. I shouldn't have."

"Damn right you shouldn't."

Despair tastes like dust in his mouth. "My question's the same, though," he says after a long pause. "Have you talked to them? Seen them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Nothing to say, Castle."

"There's always something to say."

"That's the difference between you and me." She moves to the door and stops with her back to him. "It's getting late. You should go. The city's a couple of hours away and these back roads aren't great in the dark. Goodbye."

There are no lights on in the cabin, and she vanishes. It's as if she had never been here. "Goodbye," she'd said. Not "good night" or even "night." He's suddenly back in the precinct after one of their earliest cases, sitting at her desk, and she gets up to leave.

"Until tomorrow, Detective," he says

"You can't just say, 'Night'?"

"I'm a writer," he counters. " 'Night' is boring. 'Until tomorrow' is more hopeful."

"Yeah, well, I'm a cop. Night."

Even though she'd said "night" then, he'd already been hopeful. And that was also the night–though she doesn't know it–that Esposito had taken him into the records room and let him read the cold-case file on Johanna Beckett. "If you tell her I did this, I'll make you bleed," Espo had told him. It had been the beginning of the beginning and the beginning of the end. That's what it feels like now. He'd read the file and four years later a man had thrown Beckett off a roof because of what he'd set in motion. And it had been Ryan, not him, who'd pulled her to safety while she called his name.

He sits on the bottom porch step until the last smear of red has faded from the sky. This is her home now, and his is the Holiday Inn, and that's where he's going. She can't put him off forever.

"Until tomorrow," he whispers before getting into his car. He'll be back tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next until he pulls her out of the black hole that's about to swallow her alive.

"Until tomorrow," he says again, looking at her window and hoping that she can hear him.

A/N Many, many thanks again to all of you who are standing with this story.