MAJOR SPOILERS FOR "KILL SHOT"

Revised.

More than Who I am

She stood at the edge of a precipice bits of herself wanting to chip off the now sturdy ledge beneath her feet, and plummet into the abyss. But she holds back...Looking over the edge she sees it all. All that she has lost, all that has defined her up until this moment. Down there it looks pretty bleak, hopeless, dark. But up here, where the air is thinner and less deprecating...She thinks she could get used to a life here. A life she didn't realize she was craving until she fell off the edge and into the rabbit hole of self sabotage. She wants to feel her life breath itself back into her body. She wants to breath again, feel whole again...

Yet she's still lost... but wants to be found. Everything else..everything? She doesn't want it to matter anymore. Consume her and bring her down in it's tight grasp. She wants to break away from it's hold, put it all behind her and live on with no regrets.

But now? She's trying to feel everything as it should be, in all it's lighter, more beautiful, worth. Her eyes are finally opening to brighter and better things...only, she still feels that darkness. Hanging above her head like a halo forged with lament and a deep sorrow she's been lost in for years.

How does she get out? How does she let go?

"Kate?"

Kate looks up slowly with tear stained eyes, face void of anything concrete. And yet her mind is reeling.

"You didn't listen to me did you?" Dr. Burke asks, his voice both stern and soothing, kind eyes regarding her with a carefulness he's come to ease her with.

She doesn't even shake her head, or move, but her eyes veer off someplace out the window, at the now calm streets of New York City. Her mind is everywhere, and in one place, all at once.

"How did you handle it?" He asks. Knowing full well that she could not. Despite the fact that she declared herself fine before leaving his office the last time she was here.

She purses her lips blinking out a tear. That feeling of being ashamed at her failure to deal creeping up on her. But she remembers what Javier said. Remembers how Castle gave her space. "I couldn't even stand alone in the elevator after leaving your office." She says voice still haunted. "My hands were shaking...I panicked at just the sound of the elevator... and when I got off? The bull pen was a mess. Everyone running around, bumping into me. Phones ringing off the hooks, everything was loud. I couldn't stay focused on anything else except keeping my self in check... It all seemed like a blur." She blinks a few extra times, as if trying to clear her vision. Just talking about it her body wants to react in the same sense, but now she has better control over it.

Dr. Burke just lets her get through this.

"Javier wanted me to go with him to the shooting range we thought the sniper may have practiced...but I didn't want to go...I ..I didn't want to be around it..." She was terrified. She couldn't even bring herself to say no at the time either. The last thing she wanted to do was walk into a range with a dozen guns going off.

"That's understandable." He says clasping his hands in front of him.

"So...Castle..he must have sensed my hesitation... I could see the look in his eyes...the entire case even...but I tried to ignore it...well, he told Javi we would prep our current suspect." Kate stares out the window. Thinking how badly she wanted this guy, how she didn't even think before going right into the interrogation and rounding on that guy as if he pulled the trigger on her himself.

"I have never been more afraid of an interrogation." she says forcing herself to look at him. "I think it was because at the time I thought he was the sniper..."

"Like you were standing in the same room as your own sniper?" He asks.

She nods pursing her lips, feeling the ache in her scars." I made it personal...I couldn't help it. It's been built up inside me and I needed someone to blame so I ...I went at him...I accused him of destroying peoples lives. He was in the military...he was out there to keep this country safe and I told him maybe he should be on the other side of the barrel...and I said I think he liked it...that he enjoyed killing...Never mind that every life he took was to save one of ours..I .. I just couldn't see past it, only my own shooter..."

She looks down at her hands. And then wipes at her large sad green eyes. She can't believe she said things like that, how she almost believed everything she was saying, words spilling out of her mouth without a filter, she wished Castle had stopped her. But she also wanted to know why. Why he killed, and how it felt.

"Afterward. I was sitting at my desk staring at the murder board...I started hearing people screaming...from the funeral, and I was getting flashes from my shooting, Castle yelling to me to get out of the way... the gun shot... I went somewhere else for a while until Rick was really standing there, snapping me out of it. He handed me a coffee... I didn't even want it." She says surprised at how lost she was she didn't even take a coffee from him...she always wanted it.

"From the look on his face, in his eyes..." Kate pauses, thinking back to how lost he looked, how worried and desperate he was..."I thought... I thought he was going to ask me if I was okay. I didn't even let him speak. I told him I was fine...which I wasn't...far from it...but I tried to push it aside at the time, act like I was fine and focus on what he was telling me. About these paper dolls we found at the crime scenes. He said they were cut from some coffee table book, of paintings." She sighs. "Javier shows up, telling us the shooting range is a bust, but then Ryan calls, he found the place the second victim was shot."

"Did you go there?" Dr. Burke asks. Kate going to the place where a sniper took out his target is a big deal. Something she probably shouldn't have done. If she goes to any scene at all, it should have been her own.

Kate nods, flicking her eyes to him briefly before focusing back out the window. Her eyes catch a glint off a building, and surprisingly she's not scared by it as much as she has been lately. "Seeing the actual place where he set up? Where he took another persons life?...I...I was so consumed..it felt personal to me...I kept thinking of the victims...how I could have been one of them..."

She trails off. Remembering the look on Castle's face as he watched her scope out the room, to that night when she drowned herself in a bottle. Her hand unconsciously goes to her injured arm.

In the darkness of her apartment, Kate sat on her couch. She's a mess... has been since she got home. She held it in all day, well she thought she was...for the most part. Her green eyes are wide, and moist, alert to every sound and movement. Everything rises a panic in her, and all she can do is sit and wait...She feels likes she's always waiting, waiting for the moment where the ground drops out beneath her feet. Waiting to fall into nothingness because that is certainly where she's headed...and she can't help it...this might be the day she finally loses every will power she has ever possessed.

Her body shakes as she reaches to pour herself another glass of scotch from the small table she set there for this purpose only. Drown herself. She knows she shouldn't, but aside from wanting Castle here with her in the darkness, this bottle now almost empty, is all she allows herself. She now understands why her own father turned to it years ago...

There is another sniper on the loose...Just like the guy who shot her. All she can think about is catching them, but the more she thinks back on it...the less she sees of the current case, instead seeing her own that still goes unsolved. The deeper she gets, the harder it is for her to decipher what's happening now, and what isn't. She's treating this shooter like her own personal vendetta.

It's happening again...the fear, the panic... She's gone, lost within herself, down the rabbit hole and she can't feel anything else except for the overwhelming need to run and hide. But she has no where to go in this vast city..he'll find her...he'll finish her off one day...only that day feels like it's now. Closing in on her with every ticking second...the tick tick tick of her life coming ever so close to expiring...and she can't escape this feeling, it's become so real. She's both aware and unaware of how deep she is, but she can't stop it, she's not sure she can and that failure only seems to make it that much worse.

She's spinning out of control. If the now empty bottle of scotch, her body enveloped in a cold sweat and heart palpitations are any indication, she's just on the brink of a full blown anxiety attack. Her body shakes with fear. Images from her own shooting flicker menacingly across her mind in a montage of nightmares, coupled with the utter terror she felt when she found out about this case. She barely held herself together in front of everyone. She could see how closely Castle watched her, it both annoyed and warmed her at the same time. But that look of love was not enough...Now, this raw emotion, this terror she has never felt in her entire life is swallowing her whole. She hasn't felt anything quite like this before. It's been lying dormant since the day her mother had stopped living on this earth with her. Only this time it's different. Somehow this is all together new and horrifying because Kate is not herself at all. She's this broken version of the woman she's tried so hard not to be, and now that Kate is loose and roaming about her apartment like a caged animal, an animal who knows no other way than to lie down in defeat. To succumb to the numbness and fright all at once.

She has no fight left in her...

She pours the last drop into her glass, barely filling the bottom and swallows it without a second thought. The sound of a gun firing in her own mind sends her into a blind panic, She yells out, tumbling to the floor and knocking the table over in the process. Her glass shatters, skittering across the floor dangerously. Sounds of people screaming and running away from the scene she was shot filter in and out. She gets up from the floor, shutting all the shades thinking it will keep all the menacing thoughts out, but they keep coming. She dives for her gun, scraping her arm across the glass and presses herself against the far wall on high alert. But no one is there. The danger is only in her mind and she can't distance herself from it.

She didn't sleep at all that night. She got up from the floor the next morning before the sun got a chance to peek through her closed shades. Her body was shaking so bad she had a hard time taking a shower and bandaging up her cuts before heading back into work. Kate recounts this breakdown in a nutshell to Dr. Burke, who nods his head in a way that tells her, he knew something like this would happen, and he reads between the vague lines she feeds him. But it's not all a lie. She gives into the fact that she had a breakdown, and now she is no longer ashamed of it.

"Castle found the link to the paper dolls." Kate then says. Completely stepping away from the topic of her breakdown. She can't help it, it's a reflex.

"He did?" Dr. Burke goes with it. He knows that at some point Kate will veer back to her PTSD. This is just her process.

"Yes. He figured out that the paper dolls were cut from paintings, and each painting pointed out a location. While he was explaining this...all the phones started ringing. All of them." She says the last part haunted.

"Another shooting?" He asks.

She nods. "The scene was a disaster...people running everywhere, sirens. I could only think about looking for the sniper. And then Castle calls to me. The victim is alive..." She starts, voice quivering, she closes her eyes thinking back to the look of terror in the woman's eyes. "Why me..What did I do? She asked...I...I couldn't take it...and then she grabbed onto my arm...I could feel all her pain and I had to get out of there..."

"Where did you go?"

"I ran..I ignored Castle calling to me and I ran up the stairwell and into a deserted hallway...I couldn't hold it in anymore..I just couldn't." She remembers everything bubbling up inside of her and just pouring out as she ripped everything off of her that had to do with her job, her life. She didn't want to be it anymore at the moment, she just wanted to get away. With her jacket and badge lying on the ground at her feet, Kate sobbed. She couldn't hold it in anymore. "I thought I was okay after that..." She then says just above a whisper, she finally looks at Dr. Burke.

"But you weren't"

"No." She says looking down again. "I was...numb after that...but far from fine..." She admits. "I don't even know how I got back to the precinct. I guess I drove back in a blur...found myself staring out the open elevator...Javi came to me when I got back from the scene...wanted to show me something..." She then says.

"What was it?"

"The rifle...that shot me." Kate finds her hands starting to shake a little, so she clasps them tightly together in her lap. She may be dealing with what happened to her a bit better than before, but the wounds are still fresh.

"How did that make you feel?"

"I thought he was out of line..." She says a little stronger. "He wanted me to look at it...I backed away asking him what the hell he was doing..."She was angry at him at the time, but know she understands why he had to force her to stare down her demons.

"What was he doing, Kate?" Dr. Burke asks, knowing full well what her friend was up too. A good call...the right call.

"He was tryign to help me... He said he's been where I am...That he knows what I am going through...I said.. I said I was fine. But he didn't believe me..He said I wasn't fine, that I was just acting like I was...He holds the gun up..and said it was just a tool...it's a hunk of steel. It has no magical powers and the person that fired it is not some all-powerful God. He's just a guy… with a gun. Just like the guy we were hunting and that he was like every other bad guy – that he's damaged goods..." She's staring at her hands. "Just like me." She says through a painful lump in her throat.

"That's okay Kate." Dr. Burke says. "Its how you choose to carry it that matters."

"That's what Javi told me...he said I think it's a weakness." She closes her eyes. She doesn't want to feel weak anymore, consumed by everything that has happened to her. "But I need to make it a strength." Another tear slips from her eye. "He said it's apart of me... and then offered me the gun and said 'so use it."

She looks at Dr. Burke. "I didn't want to look at it... but I took it from him anyway...and then nodded for him to leave. I was left standing with the weapon that nearly took my life..." She remembers how it felt to hold it.

Cold steel against her quivering skin. How she sobbed when he left. She gave in completely then, sinking to the floor with this evil weapon in her lap, clutching onto it as if the very thing that took her life from her, could put it all back. She stared down at it in hatred, tears streaming down her face, dripping onto the cold steel as it shook in her hands, as deep mournful cries came from deep inside her. She felt the power it held over her, making her scars seer in a phantom pain. The memories of that day assaulting her mind all at once. But she sat there and took it. Sat there until the gun in her hand was just another weapon. Just "a hunk of steel" She looked down at it for what it was: just a tool with no magical powers.

Dr. Burke just nods when she finishes telling him this. "And after?" He then asks after a respectable silence.

"I brought it to one of the places our current sniper shot from...I..I wanted to understand him. I wanted to know how it felt to look through that scope, see what he sees when he looks through it and take another person's life...I.I just wanted to understand how someone could do something so horrible. What goes through their mind when they end someone's life? Destroy them, like I am destroyed...Do you think they know about the pain that they cause? About the families they leave behind?" She asks him, her face raw and her eyes wide.

Dr. Burke thinks about his answer for a long moment. Actually not sure what he can tell her, if she'll even accept it. "I can't really give you a straight answer for that, Kate..." He says truthfully.

She nods gravely, biting down on her lip. She moves on with the knowledge that she might never know why. "As I looked through the scope at one of the crime scenes..." She stops...because at that moment in that building, holding that gun with a new found eye, she saw herself on the other end of that scope. Just for a moment...She shakes this off and continues. "I found I wanted to know why the sniper in the case shot from there and not from the roof...it would have given him a better shot. So I went to the roof, and tried to climb the latter, but I couldn't..."

"Your scar?"

"Mm Hmm. And then it came to me. The sniper was injured. He couldn't climb the latter to get a better vantage point, so he went for the next best thing. While I was doing that, The rest of them were at a coffee shop where they thought the sniper chose his victims. They found out how he chose them."

"How did he choose them?"

"By their successes. The sniper was profiled as a paranoid loner. He felt alienated and victimized by the world. He couldn't stand to hear how well everyone else was doing, how their dreams were coming true. While his were not. It made him angry. So he would pick one of them out. And make them pay. Of course that information didn't bring us closer to finding him, until I found them at the coffee shop and filled them in on my findings. Castle asks the manger of the coffee shop if any of his customers had a limp or a leg injury. The manger tells us there was a homeless guy who goes in there who has a prosthetic leg. He gives us a description and we went back to the precinct to run it through our database."

"You found him."

"Yes. Lee Travis. He was in the marines for a year until he lost his right leg in a hit and run motorcycle accident. He went into a deep depression where he turned his anger against the world." Kate explains where he took a job in a museum of art, explaining the paper dolls and where the idea came for them. "We tracked his sister down..she didn't seem surprised at what her brother has been up too...She said she wanted to help him. But it was hard because he wouldn't accept her help..." Kate looks away, realizing again that he's a lot like her.

She let herself carry everything on her shoulders, not letting anyone else help her. She's always been like this, She used to think counting on others was a weakness... and she never thought she could trust anyone else...except maybe Castle, but even with this case, her PTSD? She was blind to all he could have done for her..and for that she's guilty.

Dr. Burke gives her a nod, understanding where her thoughts had just gone.

"While Castle and I were talking to her..I get a call from uniforms. They found the third building. On the way out the door his sister says she knows that her brother has done terrible things...but to not hurt him..." She shakes her head, trying to shake the feeling of failing her and continues on. "Castle and I go the the scene."

"Did you find another doll?"

"A dozen strung together..." She says. "They were cut from a painting called "The lions in the meadow.' From what we learned from the names of the other paintings in relation to the places he took position...we figured he'd be aiming for people in Central Park." She stops talking. Silence filling the office while she thinks back to the moment Gates told them to scope out the park. How she asked Castle if he was going. "Through all of this..." She starts, blinking a few times and looking up at Dr. Burke. "Castle didn't push me...when I asked him if he was coming with me to the park..he declined..he said "You got this." She smiles a ghost of a smile and then looks out the window again.

"Seems like he was there for you the whole time." Dr. Burke points out.

"He was..." She bites at her lip and stays quiet a moment or two before continuing her talk about the case. "Ryan and Castle find out that there is a track team celebrating a win. A championship which was to be held in Central park..There team is called "The lions".

"Your victims."

"Yes. And while they were trying to get a hold of the bus to stop it. Myself and a team searched the two buildings with the best vantage point to the park. I am the one who found him...I busted through the door, but he knew I was coming. He knocked me down and kicked my gun away, drawing his own on me."

"What happened?"

"I looked into the face of the sniper...and saw a Damaged man..." She swallows wanting to compare him to herself again, but this time she doesn't. Closing her eyes briefly she opens them again, eyes a bit more clear.. "I told him to put the gun down...he said he had a job to do... but I said he shoots people in cold blood, it wasn't his job. He said: 'those people deserved what they got, that god gave to them, and took from him, his leg, his life, and then he wanted to know how that was fair. How it was right. I..I said, that those people were no different then him. He said I was just saying that because I was one of them. I asked him if I thought my life was a picnic...And then I showed him my scar...the one where the bullet pierced my skin." Her eyes close again, voice wavering, handing going up to her scar.

"I said..I know what it feels like to be in those cross-hairs... I know what's like to feel a bullet burn through my chest. I know what it's like to feel my life leave my body." A tear rolls down her cheek. "I said, He thought he did too and that's why he kept leaving those paper dolls because he was looking for somebody to help him find another way...He said there was no other way...not anymore, I tried to convince him...I said there was always another way..." There is..she knows this now.

"I wanted to help him find a better voice for his pain...But he wasn't hearing me, he wanted me to turn around...but I told him, if he was going to shoot me, he was going to have to look me in the eyes. That I was not his enemy, that I couldn't be because him and I had too much in common...I thought I had him...but he was too far gone...He said he was sorry, he had a job to do and aimed at me again...And then he was dead..."

"What happened?"

"Javier was stationed on the roof of the building across the street...he took him out.." She says looking away again as yet another tear is shed, for reasons she is unsure of. It was terrifying seeing herself in the eyes of a man who killed people in cold blood. But she knew in her heart that she could never be like him. But she could understand why he thought he had to do it. He was lost, like her, but he had no other voice for his pain...and she does...

After a moment she remembers back to Castle's silent support. "When I got back, Castle was sitting in his chair by my desk." Closing her eyes she sees the wounded look in his stern face.

"Did he press you?" He asks, getting up from his chair and drawing the shades.

"No Actually.. I asked him what he was doing and he...He said he was waiting for his partner, wonder if I'd seen her. He said "Pretty girl, thinks she can leap tall buildings in a single bound, carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, yet still manages to laugh at some of his jokes."

He chuckles a softly. "What did you say?"

"I said she sounded like a handful. He said 'tell me about it" Kate smiles a little. "And then he says, if I did see her, would I tell her she owes him about a hundred coffees. And then he got up to leave...I felt horrible...I hurt him...because I shut him out... so I thanked him. He asked for what...I just said for not pushing me...for giving me the space to get through this...He gave me this look like maybe he wasn't going to accept my apology... But he said.."Always"

Dr. Burke smiles, giving her a nod, standing by his chair. "What does that word mean to you?" he asks. Kate has brought it up a few times.

"It...I think it means..." A pause...having a hard time saying these next few words. "I love you." She almost chokes out. "It's like this unspoken agreement between the two of us..." She says softly.

"But is it? When he brings you coffee, and says this too you, and you say it back...do you really think he knows that is what your really saying?"

Kate opens and closes her mouth. "I know it's what he's saying to me..." She looks away from him.

Dr. Burke gives her a tight lip smile and a tilt of her head, letting her know he gets it and then walks past her. Kate stares at the place he was just sitting, running her hand down the wooden manikin next to her chair. "So, how do you feel now that Lee Travis is dead?" Now touching on the subject he's been wanting to since she told him about it. Going to the source.

Kate looks at him. "I thought taking him down would resolve things but, it's still there." She finds it easy to jump from Castle to the case, because she's been thinking really hard about how the sniper's death has affected her.

"Because you haven't fully dealt with what happened to you." Maybe some, but not everything.

"No." She says. "I felt it before the shooting...I think it's always been there. Deep inside since that night." She says truthfully. Her mind flashes to the yellow tape at her mothers crime scene, the wounds still open and raw from her death.

"The night your mom was killed." He states, now back in his chair.

"Mm hmm...I've let it define me. Drive me. It's made me who I am..." She expresses as if that's all she has ever been capable of being. "But now..." She trails off.

"But now?" He presses.

Kate looks up past him. "I want to be more, than who I am..." She says, a lump starts to form in her throat, her eyes moistening under the pressure to hold them back. "But I don't know...if I know how to do that without letting my mom down." Her voice is more quite, raspy as the lump rises. She's still not looking at him.

"She's dead Kate." He says. "You can't let her down." A tear escapes her eye and she wipes it away as he continues: "The only person you can let down is yourself."

She wipes at both eyes looking down at her lap. She's come to realize this, over time, and more so with this case and her unresolved PTSD. But hearing it from someone else? Feels more like another shot to the chest, only this time the aim was accurate, straight to the heart.

"Her death is apart of you," She looks at him. Knowing that her mothers death is everything Kate is, everything she has allowed herself to become.

"And your going to have to make peace with that just like your going to have to make peace with the scars from your shooting. But it doesn't have to limit you."

She frowns. Not knowing how to live any other way. She's always been about the limits. "How am I supposed to let go?" She tilts her head to one side, ready for his answer. Ready for anything he has to say to her because she's tired of hiding. Tired of letting her life breeze by her.

"I can help you. But the question is..are you ready?"

Kate thinks about what this means to her. To be ready. Being with Castle for one thing, and letting go, being free from her inner demons: a chance at a better life, a happier life... "Yea." She finally says her face softer now. "I think I am."

Kate steps away from the edge of the precipice, turning around to find a shimmering pool before her. A reflection ripples in the slightly disturbed water. Liquid that quivers as she stands unsure near the waters edge; Showing her a damaged woman. Her eyes close briefly...uncertain about her choices, the step to a better self. But as she opens her green eyes to the new depths, the small waves settle, she sees someone she would like to be. Someone more than who she's been. Someone who is on her way to being whole again, one who is ready. And now? Looking at the scars forever marked on her body, she doesn't see their ugliness anymore. She doesn't see the shame in them, or feel as frightened by the demons they arise.

As a steady hand rests on the scar between her breasts, Kate breathes in a deep breath, breathing her life back into her body, and out the pain at what she thought she lost, in a less shaky exhale. With one hand on her heart the scar that nearly took her life, and the other long one on her side that saved her... Kate turns her body so she can see the two reminders of her existence in the reflection of the now crystal clear water. She breathes in again, feeling her heart beating normally in her chest, the air flowing in and out of her lungs past her lips that now curve into a smile. Dropping her hands to her sides. Kate squares her shoulders and looks determinedly into the depths, her smile widens and a single happy tear rolls down her cheek. She nods her head once at her own reflection. With a soft hum of readiness, Kate dives in.

I hope I made it better. REVIEW! Please...

P.S. Disclaimer: I do not own Castle or the lines I borrowed from Kill Shot"