He jolts awake, Beckett's name falling from his lips as his hands reach out, grasping for her but finding only air.
He opens his eyes to the too-bright florescent light, his gaze snapping instinctively to the right. She's still there, her face drawn and pale, her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm three feet from him.
A shadow falls over the bed. Esposito's hovering over him, a small grin quirking his lips upwards. He leans forward, squeezes Castle's shoulder sharply. "Took you long enough to wake up, Sleeping Beauty."
Castle swallows, trying to leach some water into his dry mouth. "Just waiting for you to kiss me, Esposito."
The cop reaches over, passes him a small plastic cup full of water. "Sip it," he warns. "They told me you already vomited a couple times, and that's one milestone in our relationship I'd prefer not to reach."
Castle grimaces, drinking the water carefully. "When'd you get here?"
"About an hour ago."
His eyes flick around the room for a clock, but the walls are utterly bare – suitable for a small, functional military hospital in the middle of the prairie.
"You've been here about twelve hours," Esposito tells him.
Stark, vivid memories stand out against the indistinct haze. The too-fast speed and too-loud noise of the helicopter, how he had to clench his hand on Beckett's knee instead of around her fingers because they'd buckled him in on the left side of her. The doctors, trying to pull them into separate exam rooms, the heart-stopping panic that choked him, blurred his vision as he hoarsely screamed her name. A sharp stab in his arm, the sudden wash of air and light through his blood. Drifting up to consciousness to find his wrists and bicep freshly bandaged, Beckett lying in the bed next to his, her arm and hand enveloped in a soft cast, her other wrist wrapped in gauze, an IV threaded into a too-visible vein.
He blinks, trying to clear his head, trying to prioritize his questions. "Is she okay?" He'd asked the doctors earlier, but they'd been brusque, refusing to give him the details he'd wanted.
"She'll be fine. Wrists abraded, severely strained shoulders, exhausted and dehydrated – all that goes for you, too, by the way, except your shoulders are in better shape." Esposito pauses, jaw clenching as he swallows. "Her hand'll be fine with time. They had to do minor surgery on her thumb and ring finger."
Castle lets his eyes slide shut for one heartbeat, two, three.
"Lucky Maddox's dead so I didn't have to do anything unethical. The feds picked up his body from the barn." There's no mistaking the combination of anger and dark satisfaction in Esposito's tone. It's oddly comforting, after so many days of feeling as though it's just him and Beckett against the world, to hear an echo of his concern in someone else's voice.
"How'd they find it?"
Esposito shrugs, quirks an eyebrow. "They were surprisingly motivated."
And that's the crux of it. Esposito's words to him over the phone echo through his mind yet again – We got him.
He won't ask yet. Not with Beckett still asleep.
"Alexis," he says.
"She knows you're here and that you're mostly fine."
"Maddox," Castle swallows. "Maddox knew where she was."
Esposito grimaces, shrugs. "She and your mother and Meredith have enough security on them to stop anyone. Even Maddox, if he were still alive."
"You're sure?"
He gets a glare in response. "You think I'm gonna play games with your family's lives?"
Castle sucks in a deep breath, releases it. It's not okay, not really, but it will have to be for now. "How are we here?"
The cop pauses, flicking his eyes over to Beckett. "I'll explain when she wakes up," he says.
"But it's –"
Esposito cuts him off with a sharp shake of his head. "You can wait for her," he says.
Right.
Castle sighs, dips his chin in acknowledgement, because of course Esposito's right. Her mom. Her case. Her demons. He turns in the bed to watch her, her pallid cheeks, bandaged arm, too-prominent clavicles. He wills her to wake up, but the steady ease of her breathing has him soon exhaling in the same rhythm, and then his eyes are drifting shut, his limbs weighting down, down, and then there's only the quiet drift of darkness.
When he wakes again it's darker, a small lamp in the corner of the room radiating the only light - just enough to glance off her face, her dark and serious eyes that watch him intently, her shadowed, slightly-bruised jawbone. Her body is curled in on itself, her knees folded up toward her stomach, her arms tucked underneath her chin, the bulk of the soft cast up against her chest. Her IV is out, its only echo the folded piece of gauze taped at her inner elbow.
Someone has pushed their beds so that they're directly next to each other, the metal railings bumped up against one another, so that, if he reached out, he could touch her. He's lying cramped on his side, facing her, the arc of his body mirroring hers. He takes a moment, stretches his legs down, slowly lengthens his torso, breathes through the throbbing ache in all his muscles, the harsh pound of blood through the veins of his wrists and arms.
Her eyes, hollow and haunted, stay fixed on him.
"Hey," he murmurs, trying for a smile, reaching a hand over the railings, his fingers jolting inelegantly into the cracked skin of her elbow.
"Hey," she breathes, barely an exhale.
"Who moved the beds?" he asks to fill the empty space left by her whispered word.
"Esposito." She pauses, licks her lips. "He's just outside, now. Wanted to read in the light." He waits, knowing there's more, waits until she continues in her cracked, hushed monotone. "I wasn't sleeping so well."
Esposito had moved the beds closer because she'd had a nightmare.
She must see the realization scrawled across his face; she reaches for a smile that only goes as far as her slightly upturned lips. "Just used to you hogging the covers," she says, but, damn, the empty echo of her voice lodges in his chest, overwhelming him. He shifts, pressing his body up against the metal railing, trying to capture a little more of the cool skin of her arm beneath his fingertips.
"Kate," he murmurs, reproachful.
She's silent for a long, long moment as he feathers his hand over her arm, reveling in the quiet life of her skin, the dormant energy and heat of her body. "I just feel so empty," she finally whispers, so softly he thinks he might not have even heard it. She rubs her bandaged hand over the scar on her sternum, her eyes glistening in the dark.
He won't cry. "I know," he says, running his fingers over her arm, ever higher, until they're stopped by the bulky bandage that covers her wrist and hand. It's not enough. He suddenly, viscerally needs more of her.
He shoves his body up to an elbow and a knee, feels the deep, aching protest in his wrist, bicep, shoulder, doesn't let it stop him as he presses himself upward, starts to roll over both the railings. She realizes what he's doing just in time, releases a small, alarmed squeak and scoots over, giving him barely enough space to launch awkwardly into in her hospital bed.
He's not quite sure how he does it without seriously injuring either of them, but he winds up lying on her narrow bed, half hovering over her, staring down into her eyes, dark and bleak and trusting and wanting.
She reaches up, tangles her fingers in the hair at the back of his head, drags his lips down to hers and then just rests there, breathing him steadily in.
"Esposito," he murmurs against her mouth.
He can feel her smile as she nudges her nose up softly into his. "Hell of a wrong name to call, Castle."
The laugh ricochets in his throat, dies abruptly. "Kate..."
"This first," she hums in response, brushing her lips slowly over his.
He has to swallow it back, the swell of gratefulness so profound it chokes him – Esposito is right there, right outside with the name of her mother's killer, with the answer to what has been the driving force of her life for thirteen years, and here she is, underneath him, saying this first.
She blinks at him slowly, her eyes still too full of desolation.
"He's right outside," Castle murmurs, deliberately skirting it. Nothing he can say will match those two words from her. This first.
"Be quiet, then," she says, wrapping her uninjured hand around his forearm, pulling it down, pressing his palm flat against the outside of her thigh.
His breath stutters and dies in his chest as she pushes her palm up underneath his hospital gown, rakes her fingers lightly over his abdomen.
He doesn't move, just hovers tensely, half above her, his lips a whisper away from hers, his fingers curved into the too-cool skin of her thigh, his abdomen rippling from the feather-light trail of her hand.
Her face is still so pale.
"Beckett," he murmurs, a warning, as her fingers trip down, tracing a circling path around his navel.
"I thought," she whispers, her hand moving ever downwards, "I thought I was going to have to watch. As he…" she trails off, shakes her head. "And then, when he came over to me, when he broke my finger – God, Castle, I was just so relieved."
His fingers tighten on her thigh. His stomach is clenched in grief, in arousal. Her hand won't stop tracing delicate patterns over his skin.
"And I felt horrible about that. I felt so – selfish. Being so relieved that you were the one who had to watch, and not me."
He lowers himself a centimeter, slants his lips over her and presses his tongue into her mouth, slides his hand over her quad to the inside of her thigh and skims up, up, anything to get her to stop talking. Anything to banish the too-vivid recollection of those sickening heartbeats in the golden light when Maddox realized that the best way to get to him was through her.
She moans into his mouth, a needy, broken sound that washes away his reservations, even though they're in a hospital where Esposito or a nurse or a doctor or anyone could just come walking through the door, even though her hand is still shaky and the wrist encased in the bulky cast still lies inert on her chest.
None of it matters. She is here, beneath him, alive, wanting him, and none of the rest of it matters.
He skims his hand further up the inside of her thigh, his fingers gentle, teasing; she wraps a firm palm around him in retaliation, smiling as his hips jerk down toward her. His wrists and shoulders ache with a fire that's almost cleansing, but he can't help but worry about her, if she's well enough, if she has the balance to walk this razor's edge of pain with him. Then his index finger trails lightly over the crease of her thigh and her hips thrust sharply towards him and that's enough, the echo of his own coiled want so obvious in her, that's enough to spur him forward.
He flattens his palm against her, eases into slow circles as her hand moves over him in a gentle and steady rhythm. A needy, relieved whine escapes him, and she tilts her head up, swallows the sound with her mouth.
"Shhh," she whispers.
He retaliates by dipping a finger up into her. She cuts off her moan into a sharp gasp, tightening her hand around him.
"You shhh," he whispers, surprised by how destroyed his voice sounds, wrecked with desire and grief and relief.
"I'm not," she starts, but then he's dipping a second finger into her and quickening his rhythm and she arches, her mouth opening, soundless, her teeth scraping over his jaw as her hand quickens in return.
It's fast and intense and almost painful when he breaks a moment ahead of her, biting her name out quietly into the soft skin of her temple. When she silently rocks and clenches around his fingers, her chest is heaving and her eyes are shining with tears that he knows she won't let fall.
It's too much and not enough; he presses his forehead forward against hers, breathing through the ache in his chest. When he draws back, glancing down at her, her eyes are no longer empty, instead full of pain and a raw, kinetic kind of love.
"Beckett," he murmurs to her, lifting a hand to brush away a lock of sweaty hair at her temple. "I don't want to alarm you," – he sees the way her breath hitches, the sudden wary tension in her jaw – "but I think there are unicorns on your hospital gown."
She flashes him a small, grateful smile. "The nurse apologized when she was taking out my IV. Screw up with the last shipment meant they were running low, so patients who'll fit are getting the kid's gowns."
He drops his hand back down her body, trails his fingertips over the muscles of her quad. "I approve of the length."
She reaches up, shoves him lightly in the shoulder. "Get back into your bed. If Esposito sees this we'll never hear the end of it."
He tries not to be hurt by it – he knows it's true, they can't lie comfortably next to each other in the narrow bed anyway, and he'd be almost as horrified as she'd be if Esposito walked in on them like this, but still, he doesn't want that extra foot of space between them.
"Just – just for now," she whispers, brushing her lips lightly over his, her kiss full of love and absolution.
He drags his eyes back open to a soft, lilting noise reverberating through the room. For a moment he's disoriented – the harsh lights, blank walls, sterile smell, and then it all at once comes rushing back.
He hadn't meant to fall asleep after climbing back into his own bed. He'd only wanted to close his eyes, just breathe and rest for an instant before calling Esposito back into the room, but his body had been sated, heavy, and he'd responded almost instantly to Beckett's whispered command to rest.
Esposito's leaning over Beckett's bed, now, talking to her in a quiet murmur. Both his hands rest on the railing, but there's something about the attentive arc to his back, the gravelly worry in his voice, that sends a ridiculous starburst of jealousy through Castle's chest.
He's not used to sharing her anymore.
He coughs, clearing his throat far too obviously as he reaches for a cup of water.
"You guys start without me?" He winces – it sounds worse than he intended.
Beckett turns her head to him, blinks reproachfully. "We were waiting for you to wake up."
The slight embarrassment is washed away by the clench of anxiety deep in his stomach. Thirteen years of her life and at least one of his have been consumed by this quest, this quest that now, finally, has an ending, has an answer.
Esposito steps back, pivoting slightly so that he's facing both of them.
"Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Long."
Beckett's eyes slam shut, stay that way for a long moment as she inhales, exhales, every push and pull of air carefully measured. He's not sure what he should feel – surprise, maybe, or curiosity, or relief, but all he has room for is an overwhelming concern over her.
Oh. Except – the otherwise unassuming surname. "Long. As in the transliteration of the Mandarin word for Dragon." There's an odd kind of guilt twisted up in that realization – wordplay's his arena, and he's never even considered it.
Beckett's fighting her way out of wherever she is in her mind, but Esposito sees it, shakes his head. "Long's a common surname, Castle. Don't be an idiot about it."
That drags Beckett's eyes over to him; she gives him a small, twisted smile, silently agreeing with Esposito, absolving him with the upturned quirk of her mouth.
"You're sure," she pushes, voice stronger than he would have expected.
Esposito nods sharply. "Smith had a failsafe set up. Every ten days, he made a call –" Beckett's face grows more pale, falls with his words. It takes Castle a moment of mental fumbling to catch up. This isn't knowledge that people have passively been holding back. This is active: a rhythm of betrayal, marked out in regular phone calls, and Castle is entangled in all of it, in hushed meetings in dark parking garages and in whispered phone calls. The worst part is he isn't even sure what he'd do differently if he were given the chance.
Esposito's still talking, and he forces his focus back on the words – his story is snarled into theirs, irretrievably, inseparably tangled into it, and he needs to hear it. "—so the files went to your man –" he jerks his chin at Castle – "Weldon."
Castle exhales sharply. If he'd known his story in the barn was so close to the truth, he never would have had the guts to tell it – except that yes, he would have, of course he would have, anything to keep her from getting hurt even for a moment longer.
"Makes sense in retrospect – the guy has a relationship with both of you and has been collateral in this whole tangled mess – but of course we didn't know it at the time. We knew there was a file, and Long's people obviously knew there was a file, and it turned into a messy race to find it."
"Messy?" Beckett asks, voice strained.
"Martinez and Haines didn't make it. Eight others wounded. Officer Haskell's the only one who's not out of the woods." Esposito's jaw clenches, chin dips. "Ryan got shot in the thigh."
"What?" Beckett breathes, her breath stuttering in short, irregular bursts.
Esposito chooses the easiest response. "Ryan's fine. They're releasing him today, and you know how Jenny is, hasn't left his side."
"What happened?" Beckett bites out. She's more pale than she was, and he can see her hands shaking, the muscles of her shoulders trembling. Maybe they should have waited. This is important, yes, this is important and they need to know it, but not when she's looking like this, like every word is causing her to shatter just a little bit more.
"We figured out the pattern of every-ten-day phone calls to a burner right around the time Long's people started becoming a more visible presence – that was the last morning I talked to you. We'd found one of their rooms in an old hotel, figured out that they had basically the same information as us and then some. They'd been trying to catch up with you – had a grainy picture of you paying for gas in a convenience store. A report of people matching your description buying a '96 Mustang in a used car lot."
"Because they thought we might lead them to the file," Beckett murmurs.
"Near as we could figure. Of course, the game changed when we thought something might happen with the file on the tenth day. Ryan wanted to pull you back in the second we found their intel on you, and Gates agreed, but, Christ, we'd already seen some tentative evidence for ties back to the CIA and we weren't sure where you were or who we trust to bring you in."
He pauses, exhales sharply. Beckett's entire being is focused on him, her lower lip pulled between her teeth, her jaw clenched.
"Weldon came to Ryan and me with the file – apparently you'd said enough about us, Castle, that he trusted we weren't dirty - but Long's people had eyes on us, or on us and him, we're still not entirely sure. We had a hell of a scuffle – that's where our casualties happened - but we got it."
His heart thuds in his chest at the images flashing through his mind, the gun battle in Manhattan that could have killed his friends, that did kill some officers.
He wishes Beckett would lean back. She's so rigid, her body strained and upright, a hard shake present in all of her muscles.
Esposito must see it; he keeps watching her with concern, but he probably knows he's too far in to stop now. "The file provides evidence of Long's ties to the murders of Johanna Beckett, Jennifer Stewart, Diane Cavanaugh, and Scott Murray, as well as gunrunning ops from New York to Columbia and Pakistan. Gotta hand it to Gates – she handled it just right; didn't try to go internally or through any of the chain of command at the DoD. She knew enough to pull the right strings, made a few phone calls to some old fed friends she has, and had the Inspector General for the DoD involved in less than two hours."
"Is it enough?" Beckett breathes.
"It's enough to prosecute as it stands right now. They're still building a case. But – yeah – we're pretty sure it's enough."
She exhales, slumps back against the pillows.
There's so much left to explain, so very many loose threads from this horrible mess of a case, but when Esposito glances at him, Castle can only think of one question that matters. "So she's safe?"
Esposito stills, stays silent.
Castle swallows against it, locking his eyes with the cop's, tries it again as a statement. "So she's safe. We can go home."
He can see, in the corner of his vision, Beckett curved back against the pillows, exhausted – she has her answer, but this question, this question has always been the part of the story he cares about the most. Fuck the Dragon, fuck the entire conspiracy – ultimately, this question has always been his endgame.
"Just say it," he snaps, nearly yelling, his muscles vibrating with the urge to get out of the bed, to throw something breakable across the room.
Esposito sighs, his shoulders slumping slightly. "We have Long in custody, and at this point we're pretty sure he's not getting out. But he wasn't a one-man show, Castle – this guy has a network of connections, and we're still not entirely sure how deep it goes. We know enough about it now that we can find out more."
"But until you do, she still has a target on her," Castle extrapolates. The thought of it – all this, all this they've been through and she's still not safe, still might never be safe –
He clenches his hand, forces himself to exhale steadily - he's seen some of the worst, seen it in the tortured arc of her body in that barn, but she's here now, beside him, shaken but not broken, and as long as these things are true it's okay. Together they can make it. Together they can do anything.
"We know more now," Esposito's saying, "about who we can trust. Gates is already working with some people we trust at the FBI to set up a highly secure place for you to stay."
He opens his mouth to ask more questions, but Esposito cuts his eyes sharply over to Beckett, her ashen face, her shadowed eyes that keep slipping shut. She needs to rest.
"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," she murmurs, as if she can sense their attention, but her voice is broken, exhausted.
Still – "What about –" Castle starts, but Esposito cuts him off.
"Later. Right now, rest." He regards Castle for an instant, then sighs, shakes his head. "Took into account what you said about Martha and Alexis. They and Meredith are about to get on a plane to a little island in the Marquesas, along with enough security to form a small platoon."
Castle swallows, relief and disappointment swelling in his throat. He trusts this man with his family's lives, he trusts that they'll be safe, but he couldn't help but hope that they would be reunited, that he'd see his daughter soon.
Beckett's eyes have struggled open, and she's watching him, a shadow of guilt dancing at the back of her gaze. He jerks his head, clearing his thoughts.
"Thanks," he tells Esposito. Thanks. It's ridiculous, asinine, really – if it wasn't for Esposito, for their team, fighting this war back at home, they would still be out there, driving in Maddox's car, alone, hunted, with Beckett's – he stops himself, swallows around the gratefulness that's snarled in his chest.
Esposito smiles at him as he backs out of the room, flicking his eyes over to Beckett, whose eyes have closed and whose breathing has evened into the slow drags of sleep. "You got it," he mouths as he steps out the door.
It's silent for a long moment, and Castle briefly weighs the pros of launching himself back into her hospital bed, but in the end he settles for reaching out, hooking a pinky into the collar of her hospital gown, just at the edge of the pale purple tip of a unicorn's horn, his knuckle brushing against the reassuring jut of her clavicle.
She sighs lightly, canting her body toward his, and the solid force of her presence lulls him slowly into sleep.