She knew.
He'd suspected it. But suspecting was merely theoretical, and knowing was...certain. Certain, and demanding resolution.
She knew.
Since when? Monday? Or maybe earlier - perhaps a separate flashback, or a sudden recovery of her memory in a therapy session. Because how else...?
No. She wouldn't lie, to him, about that.
Would she?
Her question echoed, she wanted to know: had he meant it?
Yes. His heart answered. I did. And still do-
And if she had?
-Love you.
His lips moved to speak his heart, but he stumbled on a thought -
Do you?
It was a brief detour; a small speed bump that he passed over; but it was enough to slow the train wreck of his emotions, enough to stall his tongue - enough to remember that this was new; that hours ago she was canceling a date, that she'd kissed him one night and been distant the next...
Beckett misinterpreted his prolonged silence as confusion, murmuring clarification. "When I was shot...what you said."
She wasn't breathing, and she'd hooked another finger in his collar as if to ground herself. She needed his affirmation.
"Why do you think I'm still here, Kate?" he finally rumbled, "If not for that?" His left arm was beneath her, holding her against his side; he flexed and drew her closer, rolled her a little further over his chest. Her head pushed beneath his chin as she gripped his collar in a fist. "Because I mean it," he whispered.
She took a ragged inhale, as if she'd been too long without air. It took her a minute to catch her breath, to process his words -
"You mean it," she articulated cautiously. "You would...say it again."
He shifted to put enough distance between them so he could lift her chin with his fingers, capture her eyes with his stare. "At the right time, I will say it again."
She didn't even blink, her eyes holding his with the uncertainty of a lost child: wanting to trust but gauging how much.
He leaned in, caressed her lips with his own.
Trust me.
She responded meekly, and he let the moment wash gently over them before he relaxed back into the pillow and cradled her against his breast, fingers woven beneath her hair.
As they rested against each other, breathing in soft rhythms, he struggled to find his place within the shifting sands of their relationship, amongst the cracking and reversing of their roles as he became her lover and she became the loved, as he offered to protect and she learned to trust. She felt it too - he could tell by her quiet stillness in his arms, by the butterfly kisses sweeping the rise of his collarbone.
They had passed the point of no return.
The sand settled, his mind cleared, and he experienced a moment of sheer euphoria.
She hadn't run. She was here. In his arms.
And she knew.
He closed his eyes; drank in the depth of her scent; allowed himself to drift on a high sea of emotion as he untangled his fingers and caressed her curves, rested his hand in the valley of her waist...
A small detour; a submerged thought:
Since when?
Grounded his boat.
He exhaled slowly; tried to recover his previous state and ignore the straggling nag in his brain...but he couldn't float, couldn't repair the damage.
Ignorance was bliss. If he didn't ask, it would remain a theoretical lie. Equally possible and equally not.
A theory that would metastasize until it poisoned an argument or exploded against a defensive wall.
Castle opened his eyes.
"Kate?"
"Hmm?" Her lashes flicked up across his skin, attentive.
"When you experience flashbacks, do they..." he searched for phrasing, "...do you re-live blocked memories?"
Her fingers loosed themselves from his collar, palm flattening as she smoothed the wrinkles in his shirt. Her lashes stroked him once, twice. "That's a random question," she remarked, reluctant.
A grimace shot through him. Wrong tactic.
But she continued. "It's more…emotional, like…" she dragged her palm down, rested it over his abdomen. Suddenly she tensed and angled away. "I don't know. They're stupid and irrational."
It was fortunate he had his arm wrapped around her; she stopped as he tensed his forearm against her back. "Kate - I'm sorry." Caressing his fingertips over the knuckles of the hand sliding off his stomach, he fingered beneath the edge of her pinky. "The only stupidity was in the question."
She curved her palm in response to his pressure; let him wrap his fingers beneath hers and draw her hand across his body, tugging lightly on her arm. She turned back into his side; spread her fingers to interlace with his as they made a fist on his chest.
The black fear ebbed. It was like scouting a minefield.
Ignorance was bliss.
Curling over her, he kissed the skin beside her eye. "I'm sorry," he trailed over her cheekbone. "Forget about it."
"I wish I could," she replied bitterly. "That's the whole problem."
He wanted to ask what her therapist thought about it; but her body wasn't relaxed, not like before, and she was only lying against his side instead of draped half across his chest. He should probably move; let her sleep - he realized he didn't even know what time it was, except for the sense of deep night.
She shook her fingers free, scratched at her nose and curled her hand near her chin as she distanced herself, retracted into her shell.
He started to tell her goodnight, but hesitated as he noticed the deep groove between her brows; the way her thumb had slipped over her bottom lip. She looked as if she was solving a case, as if she was staring at the murder board and weighing her strategy.
He smiled, took a finger and pressed it against that groove, dragged it down to lay lengthwise upon her nose. "I need to let you get some sleep."
She blinked rapidly in surprise, the line disappearing as she smoothed her brow and shot her eyes up to his. "No; I - it's ok. You don't have to sleep on the couch."
Tempting. But she seemed troubled; and he wouldn't mind a little processing time of his own. "The couch and I are good friends; it's very comfy." He grinned sideways and tapped her nose. "Rest up. Best healer, hmm? No more midnight tumbling." He withdrew his hand along her jaw, jiggled the shoulder she was resting on.
She twitched the corners of her mouth up in agreement. But she didn't move, didn't roll away.
"Hey-" he looked at her questioningly, "-can I have my arm back?"
She parted her lips on a frown, and there it was again, that tell-tale groove. "Castle; my flashbacks - I only experience what I remember."
"Oh," he said reflexively. And then it hit him.
She'd lied to him, that day.
If she'd said it earlier, when he was expecting it, he could have parried the blow. But as it was, he had already moved on and decided it was harmless theory for the time being - and the sword of truth came flying through his armor, slicing through his breath on the way to impaling his heart.
He tried to be brave; forced some humor onto his face. "I was kinda hoping you had just figured it out...on Monday or something."
She pulled in her bottom lip, barely twitched her head with wide eyes.
"You-" he lost the words, tried again. "You knew the whole time."
"Yes." Her voice cracked softly. "I'm sorry."
The blackness of the summer was spiraling within him - he struggled against it, but there were no theories now: only certainty. Once again, he was in free-fall, and his emotions were shredding the parachute of his heart. She hadn't just needed space from the case. His words were the reason she had intentionally - and knowingly - left him crashing in despair.
He suddenly understood her need for space.
"What time is it?" he managed.
Her brows dropped together in confusion. "I...does it matter?"
He twisted his head and found her clock. "It's been over twenty minutes," he mumbled. "The ice needs to come off." He couldn't think straight - he kept hearing her words, about how it all went black, about how she would call; kept feeling the impact of how she didn't, of how she'd heard his love and left him unrequited for months, until -
Until when? She hadn't said much about loving him back.
Beckett pushed up on one elbow so she could see his face. "Rick."
"Stay here," he grunted, freeing his tingling left arm as he rolled away and swung his legs off the bed; stood and reached for her ankle. As if she could go anywhere.
She tensed and twitched it away. "We should talk about this. Screw my ankle - I can't feel it anyway."
Avoiding her eyes, he swept a hand farther and caught her below the calf. "Which is exactly why it needs to come off, Beckett."
Her silence reprimanded his formality as he swiftly removed the damp cuff.
"I'm not leaving," he murmured, hoping to ease the sting. Stepping across her bedroom, he collected the water glass and ACE wrap on the way out - knowing that if he turned back, he'd break: either yelling or crying, he wasn't sure. Exiting through the door, he didn't even make it to the kitchen; just sagged onto the couch and hunched his face into his hands.
There was never any doubt in his mind he was going back to her. It was more a matter of when.
Twenty minutes later, Castle stood from the couch; carried the ice cuff and water glass into the kitchen. Standing with his arms braced against the sink he watched the water fill the glass and then flow over, and over, and over. Forgiveness.
Love keeps no record of wrongs.
He stayed there until the last traces of bitterness and resentment were locked away, until he felt he could let it go and look her in the eye and say he had made his peace with it. And then he stayed there a moment longer while he decided to forgive if it happened again - that he wouldn't store it as future ammunition, that when he forgave her she could know he wouldn't pull it from behind his back to knife her in a heated moment.
Because forgiveness was a decision, not a feeling.
Shutting off the tap, he dried the outside of the full glass and gathered up the compression wrap in his fist, crossing her apartment with sudden courage and hope. Irrational, perhaps - but with the past forgiven he felt free to move into the future.
Which was exactly what he was planning to do.
The door was only partially closed; he hadn't really tried to shut it on his way out. Bumping it open with his shoulder as he passed beneath the frame, he stepped to the nightstand and set down the water glass before circling back to the foot of the bed. Beckett was curled on her right side facing the door, looking small and thin with the sheets still mussed and piled against her back in the center of the bed. Her foot-pillow was awkwardly tucked beneath her swollen left ankle with her right foot shoved under the same. Another bed pillow was wrapped in her arms, partially obscuring her face as she curled around it. She looked like she might be sleeping - but he didn't think so.
Castle leaned over the foot of the bed and stroked a hand over her bare ankle, slipping it under the hem of her cotton pants and running his palm up her calf. "Hey...wanna roll over so I can wrap you up?"
She squeezed the pillow down so she could rest her cheek on top of it, blinking at him in the low light before she slowly twisted her hips and flattened her back against the mattress, the pillow falling half over her chest with one arm still hooked around it. He tediously began wrapping from toe to heel as he had seen the nurse do - as the care papers had instructed him - as WebMD had diagrammed for him. Maybe too loosely; but that would be okay. Better safe than sorry.
Finishing, he strapped on the air splint. "Too tight?"
He couldn't see her face over the pillow; and if she spoke, it was too soft to hear.
Oh, Kate.
Climbing carefully over her extended limbs, he crawled up the bed, slinking a hand around her waist and beneath her lower back as he tugged her weight towards him. "Katie," he murmured tenderly. "Come here, beautiful."
He felt her stuttered exhale vibrate through his hand on her ribs, and then he was looking over the top of the pillow, staring at her bright eyes and the edge of her lip tugging against her teeth; and oh, how her expression broke his heart. Drawing the pillow away, he wedged his other arm under her, between her shoulders and the bed, using his leverage to draw her towards his chest as he settled beside her.
Tentatively, she touched a hand to his chest as she turned towards him. "I'm sorry," she whispered, eyes downcast.
He breathed his lips along her jawline, dipped to kiss the thin skin behind her ear. "I love you."
Her chest expanded in staccato against his, air sucking through her parted lips.
"Kate..." He traced his lips along the circular ridge of her ear, touched another kiss to her temple. "I love you."
And she dropped her face away, burying it in the crook of his neck as she hooked one arm up over his shoulder and the other around his ribs, holding herself against him. Released tension trembled through her muscles and shook out her breath in rags...and he thought his skin might be slicker where her lashes touched.
Crushing her to him with equal force, he whispered forgiveness into her hair – over and over and over again.
A/N: A shorter one, but I felt bad for the evil way I ended the last chapter and wanted to post this one earlier than later. Thanks for all your awesome reviews by the way - wow, I was floored. I wrote this in half the time because of all that motivation! What did you think? Was I in Castle's head too much? Or was it a good vantage point?
Sadly, I am planning on ending this story in a few more chapters...the 2-3am writing sessions have got to stop, ha ha!