Author's Note: Some more necessary conversations. Enjoy.

Nothing Lost

Chapter 25

Kate awoke suddenly, why she wasn't sure, aware of an odd sense of disorientation, confusion. Why—what—and realized only belatedly that the reason for the confusion, the vague sense that something was different, was because she'd slept, peacefully, felt… rested in a way she hadn't in days.

Oh, and Castle was still in bed with her, holding her, although his hand was slack as it rested against her arm and she could hear the steady sound of his breathing by her ear, telling her he was asleep.

She blinked her eyes open, guessing that it was still early. The night shift hadn't ended yet.

She turned her head slowly until she could see his face, his head tilted a little away from her so she was presented with a view of his profile.

She had only seen Castle asleep a couple times now and never at such close range. It made his familiar face look oddly different, her eyes slowly wandering over his features with a thoroughness she'd never allowed herself before.

His features were slack, smoothed out peacefully, making him look younger. Well, younger except for the stubble darkening his cheeks. His mobile, expressive mouth was slightly parted and she felt a sudden impulse to kiss him because she could do that now but refrained because she didn't want to wake him just yet. She was enjoying this opportunity to study him at her leisure, something she couldn't do when he was awake. There was a tiny, very faint scar by one eyebrow and she wondered what long-ago incident had caused it. He had long lashes, she noted with a little flicker of amusement at the single feminine-sounding attribute, an amusement that faded immediately as she noticed something else, something she hadn't really been able to see until now when he was so close. There were bags under his eyes, little lines of tiredness fanning out by his eyes. He wasn't just tired, she realized, he was exhausted.

She knew, of course, that he'd spent every night for the last week in the hospital with her, catching what brief catnaps he could while sitting in the uncomfortable visitor chair, but she'd assumed that he'd slept during the day when he was at home. Certainly in the few times she'd looked at him over the last week, he'd seemed alert and energetic enough, but now she wondered how much of his demeanor had been an act to reassure her dad as well as herself.

She felt a stab of guilt. She was a detective, trained to be observant to even the smallest tells. She should have noticed how tired Castle was but she hadn't.

Not that she'd really looked at him that closely over the last week, she thought with a pang of guilt. She'd been so determined, so sure, that she needed to resist the pull of his presence, needed to train herself to send him away, that she'd been avoiding looking at him. Had told herself that if she didn't give in to her own wish to lean on him, he would be better off too. Would worry less if she never let on how pitifully weak she felt, how much she still hurt every day. Had she been wrong about that too?

And then tonight, she'd woken him up in the middle of the night, kept him awake to talk to her, comfort her until she fell asleep again. Disturbing the sleep he so clearly needed. How long had he stayed awake tonight, calming her down and then because he was worried about her?

Why oh why could she not get things right where he was concerned? Whatever she did, it seemed to be the wrong thing, could not be good for him.

There was a clatter outside, as if someone had knocked some small object down, and Castle startled a little, a soft grunt escaping him, before he blinked his eyes open.

He turned to look at her and she realized she'd been holding her breath—ridiculously—as a faint, somewhat sleepy smile curved his lips. "Mm, Kate, hi," he murmured, his voice low and husky in a way she'd never heard before. It was… sexy.

This was not the time, a voice in her mind spoke up tartly, but the thought was out there. It was intimate, watching him wake up, hearing his voice scratchy from sleep.

She liked it, liked all of it. She liked falling asleep nestled against his warmth and his strength, liked waking up to see him, liked seeing him wake up. Liked the sleep-roughened tones of his voice saying her name. And she could only imagine she would like it even more if she were well enough for them to engage in more energetic activities in bed.

Oh damn, she needed to stop thinking like this.

"Hi," she belatedly responded, lamely.

His smile deepened slightly but he didn't respond in words, only studied her. She felt his gaze moving over her face with almost as much attention with which she had just been studying him.

His smile faded, his expression becoming sober, thoughtful, and she didn't know what he was thinking.

"You look tired," she blurted out unthinkingly. "Sorry."

He blinked. "What for? You weren't the one who woke me up."

Yes, she had been. "Yes, I did. Before, in the middle of the night, when I… was upset," she finished lamely and then forced herself to go on. Who was she kidding, it wasn't as if Castle hadn't known perfectly well what had happened. "When I had a nightmare."

A nightmare—but even that sounded like a euphemism, too prosaic, to really describe how she'd fallen apart, how shattered the dream had left her so that he'd needed to talk to her for hours in the middle of the night.

Her lips twisted into a rueful grimace. "Now you know. It's not just all this you'd be dealing with," she gestured to the hospital bed, the machines beside the bed. "It's… everything, me, all my issues. You saw, when Agent Shaw was here, the way I… panicked… and then last night. I'm… such a mess," she forced herself to admit. It was not smooth but it was honest. No point in hiding anymore. But even so, she found she couldn't hold his gaze, her eyes falling from his to focus on her hands resting on the blanket.

He was silent for a moment and it almost seemed as if she could feel herself deflating. She had expected that he would leap to immediately contradict her, assure her that he didn't care about her issues.

"A mess," he repeated. "Is that what you think?" he asked, his tone bizarrely conversational, as if they were merely discussing the weather.

What was going on now? She felt almost as nonplussed as she'd been yesterday when he'd flipped things around and coolly told her she sucked at taking advantage of him. Was that what he was doing, turning things around again? "Yes." The word came out sounding more uncertain than she meant it to, betraying her confusion. "I am a mess," she said again, more firmly. "I have nightmares and I can't—I don't know how to deal with… everything that's happened. I can't even think about it without—" She broke off abruptly. She hadn't meant to admit to all that but better he know now. So he would know what a bad bargain he was getting.

"You want to know something?" he asked, still sounding blandly conversational.

"Okay," she agreed, confused but willing to listen.

"Last night was the first time I've managed to sleep without nightmares in a week. And this morning was the first time I've woken up and not panicked in a week." This confession had her jerking her eyes up to stare at him. Wait, what? He had nightmares too—she hadn't known.

He met her eyes, his expression sober and belying the studied nonchalance of his tone as he finished, "I'm a mess too."

Oh damn, he had done it again, turning what had been her admission of weakness into an admission of his own. But he wasn't a mess, she could not think of him like that. He was… the strong one, the one who comforted her. "You're not. You're the one who helps," she contradicted him, not eloquently.

"For someone so smart, you're being very dense, Beckett. The reason I was able to sleep tonight and wake up without panicking was because of you, because I could open my eyes and look at you." His tone softened and he raised a hand to cup her cheek. "That's the point. We can help each other."

Had she really helped him so much, just by allowing him to be there for her? Could her presence, even in her current state, be as much a source of comfort for him as he was for her? Maybe… she could. She remembered how frantic with fear he'd looked when he'd first seen her after she'd awoken from surgery and then the tentative smiles he'd managed when she'd spoken to him. The relief that had dawned in his eyes.

She'd been so focused on herself, her own pain, on trying not to burden him with her weakness that she'd convinced herself if he didn't see her, didn't know how much she was hurting, he wouldn't worry.

Except that wasn't the way it worked when you cared about someone. She found herself thinking about her dad during the bad years, the years he'd been drowning—a time she avoided thinking about as much as possible and would have preferred to forget—the time when she had stopped trying to save him, left him alone because she'd accepted that she could not save him if he didn't want to be saved. She'd forced herself not to do anything but she'd worried all the more. She'd been terrified, haunted with the fear that she would lose her dad the way she'd lost her mom.

She hadn't kept Castle from worrying at all, had she? If anything, trying to hide from him the way she had might only have worried him more because he was too smart not to guess at how much pain she was still in.

He gave her a faint, wistful smile that seemed to pinch her heart. "All I want, all I've ever really wanted, is to help you, Kate."

She didn't think she'd ever heard him sound so vulnerable. He had insecurities too.

"You have. You do help," she blurted out. "I just… I don't want you to see how weak, how broken, I am," she admitted, her eyes and her voice falling.

"You aren't broken, Kate, you're healing. There's a difference. After everything that's happened, everything you've been through, if you were completely fine with no issues, I'd have to start wondering if you were a cyborg of some kind."

She choked on something that might have been a laugh. Such a typically Castle thing to say. "I'm not a cyborg."

He heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief, pretending to wipe his brow. "That's a relief."

"Silly, Castle."

He gave her a look of affronted dignity. "I am not being silly. I know you think you should be able to leap tall buildings at a single bound—although frankly, I always thought if you had a superpower, it would be telepathy or something like Wonder Woman's lasso of truth," he digressed.

"Castle," she huffed.

"Never mind. I'm just saying, as hard as it might be for you to believe, I don't expect you to be a superhero, Kate. You don't have to apologize for being human." He paused, the beginnings of his usual teasing smirk tugging on his lips. "Now, if you wanted to apologize for falling asleep on me, I'd be more inclined to listen. If I wasn't so secure in the fact that I'm fascinating, I might feel hurt that you apparently find my company to be soporific."

"Fascinating, really," she scoffed, her lips lifting along with her spirits, as she automatically fell into their usual teasing. It was so easy to tease him, and somehow comforting too. "Says who?" She had missed this, their back and forth, the banter. It was a reminder that they were still them, still Beckett and Castle.

He gave her a look of overblown surprise. "I'm a New York Times bestselling author! Michael Connelly himself has called my books riveting and said he couldn't put them down. Of course I'm fascinating!"

"He called your books riveting, not you." She made a show of studying him. "You're a lot of things, Castle, but I wouldn't call you riveting or fascinating either," she drawled.

He huffed in mock offense. "You're mean but you're heavily medicated right now so I'll overlook it."

"Very magnanimous of you."

"Yes, I thought so. I'm generous like that."

He looked and sounded so ridiculously (adorably) smug that she couldn't hold back a bubble of laughter. He really was so good at that, making her laugh.

"Good, you're smiling." His smirk softened into a real smile before he leaned in to kiss her.

The sound of a cough from the door had them both startling apart to see her dad.

"Jim!" Castle snatched his arm back from around her as if he'd been burned and fell rather than slid off the bed in his haste.

Her dad made a show of shrugging out of his light jacket, focusing on the jacket as if it were made out of paper and would rip if he handled it with anything less than scrupulous care, before he looked back up at them, his expression studiously bland. "Good morning, you two." He focused on her. "How are you feeling, Katie?"

"Hi, Dad. I'm fine," Kate managed to meet her dad's eyes, fighting back the stupid blush. She hadn't been caught kissing anyone by her dad since high school. "Did you sleep okay, Dad?" she asked hurriedly, wanting a distraction, only to realize belatedly that maybe mentioning sleep wasn't the wisest thing either since her dad had also seen her and Castle nestled right next to each other, having clearly slept in the same bed, even if it was a hospital bed and she was in no condition to do anything more energetic than sleep.

Castle made a strange sound like a strangled cough while her dad kept his expression blank. "I slept just fine, Katie." He paused before commenting casually, "I stopped off for coffee on the way here and drank it outside since it's a lovely morning."

Her dad was, to his credit, making a show of not having seen anything noteworthy but his pretense of blindness didn't appear to have any effect on Castle. "Good morning, Jim. Well, since you're here, I'll just leave you and Kate to talk. You've reminded me that I haven't had my coffee yet this morning. I'll be back this afternoon in time for the big move," Castle announced, speaking just a shade too loudly and too quickly to sound natural. His eyes briefly flicked back to her. "See you later, Beckett," he finished, now sounding stiffly formal as if he were speaking to someone he barely knew.

"Later, Castle." But before the words were fully out of her mouth, Castle had fled.

Leaving her to face her dad, who didn't even try to hide his satisfied smile, almost a smirk. "I'm glad to see you and Rick have talked."

There was a faint change of tone on the last word that made it sound like a euphemism and Kate felt the color creeping into her cheeks. Which was ridiculous, all the more so because it wasn't as if she was in any physical condition to do anything and she and Castle had only kissed a few times and she was a grown woman who didn't need to answer to her dad for her personal life. "We did," she answered, trying to sound casual.

"Yes, so I saw."

"Dad," she drew the word out.

Her dad gave her a look of entirely spurious innocence. "What, I didn't say anything."

"You were not saying anything very loudly," she returned wryly.

Her dad only smiled, studying her for a long moment before he nodded to himself.

"Just say it, Dad. I know you want to say something."

Her dad patted her hand. "I'm glad Rick is around. He's good for you."

Was it so obvious? "How can you tell?"

"You look happy, Katie. You're smiling."

"I've smiled before," she protested automatically. She'd made a point of smiling as much as she could when her dad was around to keep him from worrying.

"Not like you are now. Your eyes are brighter. I'm your father, I can tell." His expression softened, sobered. "I'm glad, Katie-bug. From what I've seen, I think Rick makes you happy, doesn't he?"

She hesitated for a fleeting second. Castle's ability to make her happy wasn't really in doubt. What she wondered, what she still feared deep down, was if she could make him happy.

Her dad gave her one of his shrewd looks. "What is it? I know that look. Something's bothering you." He pulled the visitor chair forward to be closer to the bed. "Tell your old man what's troubling you," he added with a cajoling half-smile.

Her dad wasn't someone she could talk to about her insecurities, her fear that she could not be good enough for Castle. Her dad was, after all, biased in her favor. But she found she did rather want to talk to her dad, who knew her better than anyone else.

"I'm just worried… this, after everything that's happened, me stuck here—" she managed a gesture to indicate the hospital bed. "It doesn't seem like a good time, the right time, to be starting something new, a new relationship."

Her dad sighed a little, a frown pinching his brows as tended to happen when he was reminded of what had happened to her. "It's not ideal, no," he agreed slowly and she deflated, realizing that she'd been hoping, expecting, her dad to tell her she was being silly, worrying over nothing. Her dad, who had not made a secret of his support for Castle and her relationship with Castle.

"But Katie," he went on, "I don't think it's as big of a concern as you seem to think. You're probably not going to like this much; I know how much you like things to go according to your plans," he added with a wry smile, "but you might have heard that life is what happens when you're making other plans. Life doesn't tend to go according to plan."

It was her turn to sigh. "I know, Dad, but it's just… It's going to be hard; it already has been hard, you and Castle spending so much time here. And I can't help remembering that just two weeks ago, I hadn't even seen Castle in almost two years. We've only been talking, become friends again, in the last two weeks and now… It's a lot to ask of someone I just started talking to again two weeks ago."

"Look, Katie, I don't know exactly what happened between you and Rick two years ago when he stopped working with you and obviously, I don't know the details of what's gone on between you and Castle lately but I think you're focusing too much on the time frame. You haven't just met Rick and from what I've heard from Rick, his feelings for you started a lot longer than two weeks ago."

Ridiculously, she felt herself flushing again at her dad's reference to Castle's feelings for her, his words returning to her. He was in love with her… Oh god, he'd told her he was in love with her, her damaged heart fluttering wildly in her chest in belated reaction.

It hadn't occurred to her at the time in her attempt to shore up her resistance to him but now, it hit her fully that no one had ever told her that he was in love with her before. She hadn't had a serious enough boyfriend in high school or college who would have made such a declaration and after her mom had died, dating had been the furthest thing from her mind. Will was the only really serious boyfriend she'd had and he wasn't given to declarations of emotion. When he'd told her about his plans to move to Boston, he'd told her he cared about her and didn't want to lose her but even then, they had both known that there was no way she could or would go to Boston with him and whatever Will's faults, he was not the kind of man to use a declaration of love to make a breakup harder.

"Maybe this isn't the perfect time but life isn't perfect. All I can tell you again is that there's no magical formula to tell you if a relationship will work. The start of any relationship is a leap of faith, as it were."

She grimaced. "I'm not good at leaps of faith."

"It's not exactly a blind leap, Katie. What it really takes is trust, trust in yourself and in the other person. The circumstances might mean you and Rick face different kinds of challenges than other relationships do starting out but no relationship is without challenges. Relationships take effort on both sides. I know you and you've never failed at anything you've set your mind to in your life. So what it comes down to is this, do you trust Rick?"

That, at least, was an easy question to answer. It might have been the only thing about any of this that was easy. "Yes."

Her dad relaxed into a smile. "Good. That's what I thought. And for what it's worth, I trust Rick too."

"I can tell," she responded rather dryly at the obviousness of the statement. "Don't think I haven't noticed that you and Castle have become very chummy over the last few days."

Her dad gave her a look of wide-eyed innocence. "Don't you want me and Rick to get along?"

"Just be sure not to tell him too many stories from my childhood, Dad."

Her dad raised his hands in surrender. "I won't, promise."

She eyed him with some skepticism since his expression was too ingenuous to be entirely believed but decided not to comment. "Good. What did Castle mean when he said he'd be back for the big move?"

"You being transferred out of the ICU this afternoon, of course. What else would he mean?"

"Oh, I didn't realize he knew." But of course her dad would have mentioned it to Castle. She kept forgetting that her dad and Castle had possibly talked more in the last week than she and Castle had.

"I told Rick about it."

It was a natural enough statement but there was just a shade of something else in her dad's tone and she raised her eyebrows at him. "Oh?"

She met her dad's eyes and after a moment, he went on, "Well, I may have mentioned that you would appreciate it if he were here to see you be transferred."

"Issuing invitations on my behalf now, Dad?" Her dad really had been trying hard to push her and Castle together. Dr. Ogawa had told them about her transfer a few days ago and she guessed her dad had told Castle about it then too, angling for Castle to spend yet more time in the hospital. All when she herself had still been determined to push Castle away. These men and their conspiracy of care, setting her own wish for independence aside. She really should be irritated, she thought, and maybe at another time, she would have been but at that moment, she couldn't muster up even a twinge of annoyance.

Her dad and Castle were acting out of… love… and wondered if she would ever be able to think of Castle's feelings for her without her heart starting to clatter in her chest. (She rather doubted it. Found it hard to imagine ever feeling quite so… confident, so certain of her relationship with Castle that she could think of his feelings with any equanimity.)

Her dad lowered his eyes for a moment, reaching up to rub his hand over his chin in one of his characteristic movements when he was a little nonplussed. But then he looked back up at her. "Now, Katie, you don't mind that I invited Rick to be here for your transfer. I know you like having him around. Don't give me that look. I can tell."

Her dad really did know her well. She felt a swell of warmth in her chest; there was something nice about being known so well and she thought, not for the first time, that she was so glad to have her old dad back, the dad she remembered from growing up and had thought she'd lost for so long. But that was something she could not quite admit so she tried to set her lips primly. "That's not the point. It's the principle of it," she returned with an attempt at dignity.

Of course, she should have realized that wouldn't work. Her dad laughed out loud. "You sound just like you used to when you didn't want to admit being wrong about something."

She gave in and returned his smile. "You're incorrigible, you know."

"I take that as a compliment." Her dad's smile softened. "I just want you to be happy, Katie-bug."

She reached out her hand and her dad grasped it. "I know, Dad. Thanks."

Her dad squeezed her hand lightly. "Of course, Katie."

He gently released her hand just before the effort it took to keep her arm lifted was about to become too much, even though Kate inwardly grumbled at her own continuing weakness. "So, Katie," he began briskly, sitting back in his chair, "have you thought about which of these bouquets from your new flower shop you want to take with you when you move to your new room?"

Kate fell in with the change in subject easily, turning to consider the numerous bouquets filling her room. She knew which ones Castle had brought, one from him and another from Martha and Alexis, as her dad had mentioned to her. She lay back and let her dad pick up each of the other bouquets and remind her who they were from—one from Lanie, one from the 12th precinct as a whole, another from the homicide division specifically (which she guessed had been instigated by the boys), one from One PP, one from Evelyn Montgomery (Kate bit her lip at that, closing her eyes against the prick of tears). One that had arrived just the day before with a card signed simply 'Jordan Shaw,' no mention of the FBI, and Kate could only be thankful for Jordan's discretion since she still wasn't sure how or when she would tell her dad about Jordan and this new phase of her mom's case. As it was, Kate briefly explained, "she's a colleague and friend," and her dad didn't inquire further.

To hide her own unease at the reminder of her mom's case, Kate hurriedly started a running commentary on each bouquet, in which her dad gamely participated, as they discussed each bouquet as if they were auditioning to be judges at a flower show. It might have been one of the odder, more pointless conversations she and her dad had ever had and Kate was, for once, thankful for the arrival of the nurse for the usual morning check-up of Kate's progress which preceded Dr. Ogawa's arrival for the final battery of tests before Dr. Ogawa would officially approve Kate's transfer out of the ICU.

The tests were painful, requiring Kate to exert her limited supply of strength, but this morning, she felt, irrationally, as if it was a little easier, heartened by the thought of Castle.

~To be continued…~

A/N 2: Thank you to all readers and reviewers!