Close Encounters 14

Kate jerked to a halt just inside the door, throat closing up. "Oh, God, is that Reynolds?"

At her voice, Castle's head jerked up and he twisted in the chair, his eyes hollow and echoing the same horror that sat on her chest. Beckett came into the room slowly, feeling every ache in her body, and she touched Reynolds's hand.

"He's asleep. Pain meds," Castle said shortly.

"Where'd they find him?" she whispered.

"West side of the sultan's apartments, this section," he said.

"God, he looks awful."

"No worse than you," Castle gritted out.

She turned back to him, horrified, but she'd seen the fury on his face when he'd looked at her, and she saw it again now. Fury for what she'd done, what his father had done, all of it mingling together.

She let go of Reynolds's hand and stood awkwardly in front of Castle, tried to find her husband inside the stranger staring back at her.

He broke first. "No worse than me, I guess," he sighed. "Was it like this?"

"Was what like this?" she said quietly.

"When I had pneumonia."

She glanced over her shoulder at the battered face of Michael Reynolds, the bruises and discoloration, the broken fingers splinted and swollen, the dragging slur of his breath as his chest rose.

It wasn't like this. It'd been worse.

"Yes," she sighed. "Close enough."

Castle didn't answer and she thought maybe that was as close as they were going to get to a reconciliation on this one. At least today anyway.

"How's your shoulder?" he said.

"Hurts," she admitted. She watched that hit him, the satisfaction on his face - either because she'd told the truth or because she deserved it, she didn't know. "Hurts to move my arm. Bruised pretty badly. But my neck has stitches - they'll come out on their own in a couple weeks. Medic said it won't even scar."

"Huh."

"And my cheekbone is just bruised," she finished. "Though I was afraid it'd been cracked."

He glanced up at her, darkness in his eyes but she thought maybe he was trying. "Someone hit you?"

"Not that time," she said softly. "Shoulder got the blows. Cheek is from the... bullet."

"Deleware."

"I don't think he meant-"

"If you're about to tell me that he didn't mean to shoot you, I don't want to hear it."

She closed her mouth and worked the words around in her head for a moment, tried to make it come out right. "He said some things. About us. And I lost it and kicked him in the nuts."

Castle grunted. It looked like a laugh. Maybe.

So she kept going. "And in retaliation, he pulled his gun and shot at me. He said I... moved. It was supposed to be a warning shot. I guess. I don't know, Castle. He was a creep and he made me nervous even when we didn't know he was damn traitor."

"I just thought he was some damn computer genius. Icky about blood."

"Icky?" she said faintly, surprised by the way it amused her.

"Whatever. Shut up, Beckett."

She didn't want to smile but it happened anyway, and something in her that had been so wary of him just disappeared, sank back down under. "I'm not sorry you killed him."

"Well, I am," he growled. "And that's your fault too."

She flinched back.

"You gave me a damn conscience," he said, lifting his head and giving her these baleful, accusing eyes. "A conscience. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? It makes me hesitate. It makes me feel fucking guilty over things I didn't even do."

He raked his hand through the air in front of them, indicating the unconscious Reynolds, and Kate came back towards him, reached out to take that trembling hand.

"I'm sorry," she said, but she wasn't. Not for giving him a conscience, because it had also opened up his life.

"I wish I had killed Deleware more slowly than that," he growled. "I wish he'd said to my face whatever he said to yours. I wish my father's plane would catch on fire and burn him alive. I hope he screams and writhes in pain before he crashes."

"Castle," she sighed.

He shook her off, shoulders shrugging and body tense, and then he stood up and backed away from the bed. "Reynolds said something about the weapons room. I gotta go check it out."

And then he left her there.

Beckett followed him.

He felt the snag of her hand at his elbow and he turned on her, felt the snap of his control just like that. She didn't flinch, didn't hesitate, didn't even resist him; he shoved her back against the wall and pressed his body to hers to keep her there.

And no words came.

The rage strangled him until he thought maybe he was strangling her too, but when he jerked away, she came with him, her arm wrapped around his neck and her body shaking. Or maybe that was his.

"Yell at me," she scraped out. "Just yell at me and curse me and - it would make us both feel better."

"I love you," he choked. "Damn it, Beckett."

"That's why, that's why," she keened, her face against his neck. Her other arm dangled at her side and it was that - the inability to use her own arm to hold him there - that broke the fury, broke him too.

He wrapped his arm at her waist and cradled the back of her head, careful of the bandage at her neck and shoulder where the stitches hid. "Kate," he cried out, had to grind his teeth to keep from saying something else, something stupid or mean or hurtful.

"I'm sorry that I'm not sorry," she whispered.

The laugh punched out of him before he knew it, and her arm around his neck tightened like a python, her body trying to curl around his, her knee at his hip. Her mouth turned as if seeking his.

"Little indecent for the hallway," he muttered. He was afraid of what he'd do if he kissed her now, if he gave it away for a moment, how it might spill out onto her, the furious and deep and black grief.

"I don't care - why do you care?" she moaned.

"Because I care," he gruffed, putting her away. "Because there's work. I - there are things that have to be done."

"Mitchell is tracking him," she said, her back against the wall and her arm unloosing from his neck. She looked ragged and exhausted, but she also looked fierce. She always looked fierce - she never backed down.

"The moment we know-"

"The moment we know, we do our homework," she interrupted. "We get satellite surveillance; we go carefully. We-"

"Right, because all of the sudden, you're the one preaching caution and a cool head?"

She glared at him, and he shook his head, backed off, tried to resume his walk down the hallway.

"Don't walk away from me."

"I'm walking towards the weapons room. You can either come or you can watch me walk."

She snorted something and he felt her hand grip his elbow, yanking. Her eyes were dark and hard, but he caught the movement of liquid grief below, and it tore at his anger again, shredding it.

"Why won't you just be angry with me?" she said. Her fingers were digging into his forearm. "Let it out. You've never been one to hold it-"

"If I get angry right now - if I let it go - I won't survive it," he hissed. "I want to mangle things. I want to blow shit up. I want attack that weapons room and find out what the hell my father beat a kid for, and maybe while I do that, I can forget how that might have been you - could have been you - that could have been you."

"But it wasn't. He needed me for you," she said back. "He wanted you. Even at the end, he couldn't shoot you even though..."

"At the end, he damn well would have," Castle growled. "You think he wouldn't? He'd do whatever he thought necessary, Beckett, and if he decides on a whim that it's too much trouble to keep you alive-"

He realized he was shouting. He realized he was yelling at her in the middle of a damn hallway when all he wanted was to bury himself inside her and never come out, wrap his arms around her and crush her against him. He wanted to rage at her, but he wanted to love her more, and the need and the fear and the pain twisted in him until he was afraid of what might come out.

He couldn't be sure it wasn't something ugly. So he moved away from her again, stepped back, took a breath.

But she chased him. She always did. She pressed the flat of her palm to his dirty shirt and he knew she could feel the wild and unmeasured insistence of his heart for her. She rubbed her thumb at his waist and rucked up his shirt until it was skin to skin, heat to the cool relief of her fingers.

He sucked in a breath and found he couldn't let it out again; she shifted closer.

"My only thought - through all of this - was how much I loved you," she murmured. "How much I need you. And I know it's mutual, I know that it's not fair of me to take risks with my life when I wouldn't take risks with yours. But I've felt that despair, and I can't go back there. It's selfish of me, it's so selfish, I know."

"I couldn't live with myself if my father killed you," he whispered.

"I couldn't live if you died," she sighed.

"But somehow, I'm the one who's supposed to take it. Be brave."

"I can't be that brave," she admitted, her head tilting to one side in that way she had when she was trying to gauge his mood. "I had to, once. And I know you deserve better-"

"I deserve you," he growled, felt it building in him again. His vent for this anger didn't seem to work very well, didn't seem to disperse it fast enough. Every time she started to explain, he wanted to dig his hands into fists and beat the shit out of something.

"I want to be deserved," she said finally. "I'm sorry I'm-"

"Stop fucking apologizing," he rasped. "I'm so tired of apologies. I'm so tired of all of this. I just want you. Just you, Kate, and I don't understand why we can't have that."

She didn't speak and he didn't try to make her. They stood apart and together at the same time, connected by her hesitant fingers at the skin of his abs. And no more.

"I was trying to give us that," she answered then. "I was just trying to keep you."

By losing herself. And he'd never be okay with that. Never. She could explain and rationalize for a thousand years, but in the end, he wasn't going to agree with her.

"You said find another way," she offered. Her fingers curled at the waistband of his pants. "Find another way. Can we... can we do that?"

He lifted his eyes to hers, searched out the truth of it. "I don't know. Isn't that kind of up to you? Since you're the one allowed to be foolish and take risks and jump right off the cliff into danger. But I'm not."

She closed her mouth; he saw the work and effort she put into swallowing that down. Fine, let her work on it. He wanted to smash things and he thought he was doing the best he could right here, not smashing. Not completely losing it.

"Let's find another way," she answered then. "Starting right now. I come to you, you come to me. I... try harder. I'm honest with you and you're honest with me."

"When have I not been honest with you?" he said flatly.

"You didn't tell me how bad it'd gotten. I missed it, Castle. Missed it entirely."

"What?"

"When you got sick."

He tossed that off with a gesture but she caught his hand and crushed his fingers, glaring at him. "Don't do that. Don't act like it's nothing. It's something to me."

He twisted out of her grip but instead grabbed her elbow, drew her out of the hallway and into an unoccupied room. He flipped the light on and she wandered to a couch covered in a dropcloth, sank down onto it.

He stared at her a moment and then conceded. He was always conceding, but he didn't know how else to do this. "All right. It feels like nothing to me because I got sick - I just got sick - and it's not your job to know when it's bad."

"I'm your wife."

"Yes. So?"

She snorted and rubbed her hand gingerly along her forehead. "So, it is my job. More than that, it's my right and my - my love to want to keep you, to want to - to just - I don't know, Castle. Don't you care when I get hurt?"

He gritted his teeth. "Yes. I care." He paced the room and came back to her. "Okay. I see. I get it. I want to know everything when it comes to you and you do too. I'm just not always good at knowing it's something worth mentioning."

"Me either," she admitted. "With me. It's - I'm already so... complicated."

He sank onto the couch. "Is that a bad thing? Because I think I'm right up there with complicated. I think it's my shit making this as complicated as it is. The damn regimen is just - taking over everything."

"Okay, I - don't see it like that. But." She shrugged and her knees drew up slowly into her chest, her uninjured cheek coming to rest on top. "I'm tired. I don't know if I can have this kind of conversation without crying."

His heart twisted and he reached out, gripped the knot of her hair at the back of her neck. But he didn't force her into him, didn't pull, just held on. She stayed where she was, looking at him.

"Okay, so no therapy right now," he gave in. He wasn't sure it was good for him either - not when wall-punching seemed such a likely outcome. "But I want to get started on this better way, this other way of doing things."

"Uh-oh," she sighed, but her lips quirked.

"Tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"What happened."

"I already told you-"

"Not a case report, Beckett. Debrief me," he answered. This time he did tug a little, very slight, just enough that she could easily resist him. But she didn't; she slumped over into him and straddled his thigh, her wrenched shoulder carefully placed in the cradle of his arm.

"What first?" she sighed.

"What he said to you," he demanded. "What his words were. That made you lash out when you didn't have the advantage."

"He'd watched us. He'd seen the surveillance on your old CIA safe house in the city where we - where we - he'd watched us."

"I'm glad he's dead."

She sighed and went still, but he wanted the words. He needed the words, and she must have known that because after a long time, the confession came out of her.

"He said we were twisted, fucked up. He said he knew how I liked it, and how I wanted the pain, and how dark it was in me."

He closed his eyes. He breathed. He slowly wrapped his arm around her shoulders and cradled the back of her head and pressed his mouth to her temple, and he breathed.

"I hope you didn't listen," he whispered. "I hope you know better than to believe any of it."

She was quiet, she was breathing in time with him, and he heard the unvoiced protests that came immediately to her mind, but at least she didn't say them. At least she didn't do him the dishonor of making a case for the lies.

Progress.

"I adore you," he murmured. "All that's good in me is because of you. What we do together, how we find each other, Kate, that's never wrong."

"I know," she sighed. "I've never thought it wrong."

"I'm glad he's dead. And it eases my conscience to know what he said to you."

She curled in against him, as if to make herself smaller, as if to touch as much of him as she could, and though his anger still shook the bars of its cage, the prison held.

"I love you, too," she said back, a response to his call in the hallway. "And that's why. That's why I did this. I can't be sorry for loving you. It's not wrong."

Maybe it wasn't.

But this was just how love went.

Beckett knew that they both understood what had happened that hour in the court yard. When she had told Castle that the graze on her cheek and at her ear weren't his father, she could have left it at that. Instead, she'd told him it'd been Deleware and she'd marked the man for death.

Maybe she hadn't know that Castle was going to kill him. But she'd seen what her husband had done to Vadim. She knew. She knew and she'd spoken his name like a conviction.

They shared the weight of that death.

But at least it was shared. She knew now that it was better this way, even if it ached at first, even if admitting to him the truth about the dark things and the way they burrowed inside her was painful and seemed counterproductive.

Therapy helped, and Castle helped, even when he was still so angry.

Whatever moment they had out of time on that dusty couch was gone now as they stood outside the weapons room and stared at the combination lock.

"We could ask," Mitchell said.

"I don't want to wake him up just to ask him the same damn question my father tortured him for," Castle sighed.

Good point.

"I suppose he already tried to blast through it," Beckett mused, running her fingers along the metal door. It was scored, pitted.

"Looks like," Castle agreed, hunching closer to her and moving his fingers over the same place. She felt his nearness like a buzz saw, rattling and snarling, chomping at the bit to cut into her. Held back and tightly reined, but still he was angry. He might be angry with her for a while.

Angry with all of this - how it went down, what his father had done - and she knew instinctively that those furies were coiled inside him, twisted up. She knew because of course she felt the same. On so many levels, she felt it, though hers had the added weight of grief.

Castle glanced over at her with a sigh, the chain saw of his anger subdued suddenly with a sorrow that pulled at her. Maybe she was wrong about it, maybe their grief was exactly the same.

"What can we do?" he asked her.

"I don't know."

His shoulders dropped and Mitchell gave them both a sour look; not even Mitch wanted to go back down the hall and wake the kid up to ask him more questions. "What about invoices or transfer orders or... whatever it is in there that Black wanted - it had to have a record."

"Maybe," Castle said hesitantly. "But do we have the time to look that up?"

"I'll ask him," Kate said quickly. It was her duty. "I was the one who started all of this by calling him up and asking to speak to Black. I opened Pandora's box."

"And you're good at interrogation," Mitchell said thoughtlessly. "You could handle it so that he wouldn't feel... interrogated."

She squared her jaw to take that hit, but she felt Castle's fingers brush the outside of her hip. Support or sympathy. Either way, agreement.

"All right," she rasped. "Give me some time with him. I won't wake him for it - or at least, not if I can help it."

"I'll walk with you," Castle said, giving Mitch a look she couldn't interpret. "Message me if something changes with the plane."

"Got it," Mitch said. And then Castle was pressing the tips of his fingers to her back and guiding her away from the door of the weapons room, back towards the series of triage stations the strike team had set up.

"You don't have to do this," he said to her. His voice was that controlled, tight thing. She wondered if part of him thought maybe she did. She thought so; she couldn't imagine that he didn't also think she deserved some kind of punishment for how she'd set them all up for this. For how she'd hurt him.

"I have to," she said in reply. "I can't - you remember what King likes to remind me about?"

"That you don't always have to use sex to get your way?"

She snorted and elbowed him, saw the answering flicker of something on his face. "Not that one. Though it's a good one, and I swear I'm trying not to dive right into that as my first line of defense-"

"Offense," he muttered. "With you - always on the offense. Strike before you can be struck."

"Not with you. I don't mean to strike you," she sighed. How had this gotten so far off track so quickly? "Wait. Back to - back to the other thing. King always says that I work out my guilt like self-punishment - penance for my sins."

"I also remember him saying that you take it too far."

"I have the potential to take it too far," she admitted. "But not with this. It needs to be done and I can do it right, without making him suspicious or - or just hurt. He's going to feel used already, his good intentions twisted up by Black, and Castle, shit, I know how that feels."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Castle rubbed at his eyes. "Just don't... Can you just not punish me while you're doing your penance?" he sighed.

She fisted her hand and tried to contain that, the way that had blindsided her, the way she always seemed to forget that this was a two-way street. When he did something to himself, she felt it in the core of her, so why wouldn't Castle feel the same?

"All right," she rasped. "Can you give me some parameters here?"

"You need parameters for not hurting yourself?" he asked, incredulous and... oh, angry. He was so angry.

"Don't hulk out, baby," she murmured, stupidly reaching out and laying her hand on his forearm. He growled and twisted under her touch, caught her hand in a crushing grip.

"How about the parameters are this? Don't put yourself in places where you'll receive serious injury or maiming. Don't make the mistake of thinking that physical pain doesn't equal mental anguish - because it does. For both of us."

She swallowed and nodded quickly, roughly, her bad shoulder making her hand shake. He let go of her and moved his fingers up along the outside of her arm, lightly at her shoulder. "Sorry. This hurt?"

She took a slow breath. "Yes."

His eyes went back down the hallway as they kept walking; she waited for whatever he needed to say next, now that he seemed able to say it without blowing up.

"All right, Kate. You need to work out your guilt. I need... I don't know what I need. I need to be done with this whole thing. I need to go home and wrap myself up in you and not want to throttle you so much."

She laughed, couldn't help it, couldn't even begin to stop it, and he clutched once at her shoulder in reflex before he seemed to remember and let her go.

"What?" he growled. "Why is that so funny?"

She pressed her lips together but the smile was a little more permanent. She wasn't sure he'd think it was funny.

"Beckett."

"Deleware insinuated that we might like a little choking." It wasn't a pleasant sensation, choking, and she actually thought that might be off-limits for her. She could never even begin to imagine doing it to him - not after he was dying, suffocating slowly in his own lung fluid. Never. "And he wondered if you'd - would you still want me if he'd done it to me first."

After a second of staring at her dumbstruck, Castle roared. "Holy fucking hell. He said more to you?"

"Ah, just. You know. Hazing. Harassing me. He was trying to keep me off-balanced. To be honest, Castle, at the time I didn't even - it didn't exactly register. Now I see how those things wounded me, made me tell you it was him when you asked because I wanted him to hurt for it."

"Of course you did," he rasped. "I want him to hurt all over again. Wounded you. Fuck, Beckett, it's more than just..."

"I know. I didn't see how it... I know," she sighed finally. "I know it does. It's too private. It's you and me and it's intimate and precious no matter... I don't think anyone would understand. This isn't even stuff we always tell Dr King. I don't like trying to rationalize or explain us."

"Shit," he grunted. "It doesn't matter what Deleware said. You know that, right? Whatever he said about you or me or us, that's not up to him to decide. We know. You and me - we know what happens between us, Kate."

She was struck again how passionate he was to defend her, how instantly he jumped into the breach. He always had, always would - remove any obstacle to get to her, face anything to have her, undergo the worst and most excruciating for love of her. And maybe she relied on that more than she should, maybe it was his willingness to bear all things that made her think it was permission to force him to bear it.

Instead, she should be more protective of him. Because he was so quick to bear the burden, she should be the wall around his heart, shielding him.

"Kate? Tell me you know. Tell me that you understand-"

"I know, I know," she said quickly, reaching out for him again, needing the contact. Knowing he needed it too. "Of course I know. This is - this is old ground, Castle. Not even on my radar. I just - I felt it when he violated that space. Does that make sense? I felt his intrusion into something that always has been... sacred to me. How dare he... and I wanted him gone."

His fingers laced through hers, a movement that made her heart pound a little faster. No time for that, and Castle was still carefully holding himself in check, but she couldn't help thrilling to the contact. Like a peace offering. She still needed his touch, his fingers, those physical manifestations of love to do for her what words never could.

He was holding himself back, but she could wait for it. For him. He knew what it meant for her, what it did for them, and he wasn't going to let either of them have it when it couldn't be sustained, couldn't be honest.

"I know," he said then. "You're right. It's sacred. This is sacred. And what you do to it, Kate, to something sacred, sometimes that wounds me too. "

Oh.

"But better you do the wounding than anyone else," he said then. "You're the only one I could take it from."