Detective Katherine Beckett's thoughts can't seem to find the straight and ordered paths into which they are normally herded. Like an airport terminal with all of the crowd control stanchions knocked over heedlessly, the swelling tide of her reception has become one confused congregation of emotions and thoughts tangled together, each clamoring raucously for position as the first to be processed.

She's changed into a plain white camisole and a pair of khaki shorts. Her hair is pinned into a bun. The full ritual of personal grooming typically has a more sedating effect on her. Presently, however, the reflection of her freshly showered, soap-scented skin has a betraying, healthy luster. Her face is slightly flushed and her breathing is labored to the precise point that she's gulping oxygen through the part of swollen, darkened lips. Within her eyes the pupils are dilated so far each iris is barely discernible.

It is by no means unusual for the subject of death to be followed by a sudden urgency to celebrate life via one of its most quintessential aspects. Sexual arousal can be ill-timed without also being morbid or gross. The woman isn't embarrassed by the auto-response occurring. It's just a sharp contrast to the last time she stood in this room under similar assault.

The difference there makes an impact.

You cannot go downstairs like this. He'll see. Gooseflesh rises upon her arms and thighs in almost perverse pleasure at the thought of him assessing her with the seriousness those blue eyes have gleaned lately. There's been a shadow of danger in them in several different circumstances throughout this trip. It hasn't been aimed at her, but they could repurpose that latent ferocity to far better ends. The fabric smoothed across the curves of her chest acquire matching dimples of eager rigidity. Jeez. She can't hide from him in either case. It's already been an hour and the sense she got before they drifted apart downstairs was that tonight's macabre festivities aren't done, not quite yet.

But what if he sees and wants to—

Then tonight will be their night. It may not be what she's imagined on their behalf, but there are far worse ways for this to happen than in an attempt of mutual comfort combined with a powerful desire to show the man she cares about that good does win sometimes. Even on the worst days there's a possibility for joy. He knows the truth of that, of course, but together they could provide one another with a much-needed reminder.

Nonetheless, the detective tightens the grip of her willpower before snapping the lights off on her way out of the bath and bedroom. The upstairs hallway is partially lit by the pool of radiance from the foyer she descends into. Kate pauses there a moment uncertainly in the completeness of the quiet which dominates the home. She ventures around the staircase and through the area into the east hallway. There's no light visible from the master suite at the far end, nor from the double set of doors leading down into the terrace level. She explores southward instead, through the single lamp-lit kitchen and dining room and the gloomier living room beyond. The doors to the deck stand closed.

Beckett finds him a minute later tucked away in the combined den and home office in the southwest section. A lamp upon the handsome oak desk casts limited influence over the area. He fell asleep sitting up on one of the pale leather couches there, which makes her glad she hadn't called out for him beforehand. A frown arises to note rapid eye movement apparent beneath each sealed lid. He wears a strained grimace. Seeing him arranged thus has the curious effect of shifting her carnal desires into a different form of affection, the depths of which...aren't up for inspection. There are more pertinent matters. She closely aligns their elevations by lowering onto her knees in the opened junction of his legs.

What demons chase you tonight? Specters of the past, or less distinct ones from the stress of our present? It would be naive to think him unconcerned about her and what all of this newfound knowledge means for their fledgling steps together. She certainly is.

That's something that will keep for now though. He needs to rest in his bed, not on a couch that'll have him aching tomorrow morning. God knows how much proper sleep he's been getting lately as it is. Even before this weekend they'd both had cause to be kept up at night. A couple glasses of wine might be enough to overcome her current restlessness and broker a truce with the sandman. After she gets him settled in first.

"Rick?" Beckett murmurs, but he doesn't stir. "Castle?" Nothing.

She's debating just coaxing him into at least lying down where he is when the author solves her dilemma by not only awakening, but exploding from slumber and jerking himself upright on the seat with a gasp and a wordless cry that nearly startles her out of her skin. A lather of sweat comes swiftly to life on the heels of the man's abrupt consciousness, but a deep inner chill sets his teeth to chattering uncontrollably.

With their faces mere inches apart Kate can see all too clearly the overwhelming horror in his eyes. Worse is the sheer chasm of vacancy there, the same she'd seen in that picture of him as a boy. It rules those midnight blue orbs like a concealing haze, rendering them dull with lifelessness.

Jolted by it all, Beckett's voice emerges weakened and thready, "Castle?"

He doesn't register a glimmer of recognition. "Don't let go," he spills out on an urgent whisper, surprising her again. "Don't let go!"

"Castle, hey, it's okay."

Rick's features work themselves into pure misery, "Don't do that. Oh god, please. Please don't."

"Look at me," Beckett ventures firmly, reaching with trembling fingers to cradle his face. "Castle!"

"Don't let go." Fear and grief spills from him in equal volume. He's caught somewhere between terror and tears. There's such hopelessness in his tortured voice and countenance. It's so piercing that it crosses the gap between them like a dagger of ice being slammed to the hilt within her own booming heart. What paltry words does one offer up to soothe someone who appears to be gazing over the edge of the hellish abyss?

"We're bound," Castle expels in the same rushed whisper, eyes wide and wet. He shakes bodily, involuntarily, rattling her too by their physical connection, and his hands rise to squeezing grips on her arms as he continues brokenly, "The s-s-same steel wires in you run through me. Through my eyes, my mind, and heart. Through my guts. I can't get away, can't break free. We'll always be bound. You're never alone. Never alone. Don't let go."

Katherine Beckett is not a woman who rattles easily, but he's frightening her. She attempts to soothe him again with strokes of her fingers at his cheeks and brow. "Rick, easy. Come on, babe, look at me."

He shudders again with a brief close of his eyes through which fat tears roll out in escape. "I'm with you."

"No," Beckett croaks, "you're there. Wake up. Please," she issues tightly, squeezing his shoulders.

"Do you see?" Castle asks and trembles in her grip again, but the tremors don't stop this time. His looks to her right at something only he can discern and keens softly, briefly. "Do you see them?"

"I know, honey. But you're with me now. Don't look. You come home!"

A wracking sob bends his form where he sits. "There's so many. Look at them all, Katie." Hearing that version of her name on his lips at such a very precarious time absolutely destroys what composure remains for her. "They're so...so little and precious. So scared," he expels with another tormented wrench of his upper half. "See? See how scared they are down here in the dark? Oh god." He attempts to curl inward upon himself, but she struggles deeper into him, clenching the man against her as both of them cry. "I'm s-s-so sorry. So sorry. Oh Jesus. I'm sorry."

"Rick, please," she forces through her tears, and it becomes a near panicked litany on her lips, going on and on as she clings to his weak embrace with those hands of his reaching past her in the seeking of something that is decades beyond his grasp. "Please, please, please," she murmurs heedlessly, stroking his hair and the nape of his neck. At some point—she doesn't even know how long it takes—his crushing arms return the hug and his sobs begin to emerge in stronger, wakeful earnestness.

It seems like hours pass before he forces his voice to life again. "Do you—" It fails him and he sucks in a shaky breath as she drifts back only enough to put them eye-to-eye again. "D-do you...hate me?"

A wretched sound of grief escapes her. Then she drums his shoulders with her fists angrily. "No! No." She grips enough to shake him once in ire. "Why would you say that? Why would you think that?"

"B-because I—

Beckett lifts her fingers to his mouth. "Don't." One thick tear drips from him onto the back of her hand. "You don't know. But I do. I do, and you have to trust me on this one, sweetheart." Her fingers lower and she replaces them with her mouth in a brief kiss she barely even feels past a numbness in her lips. "Trust me. You didn't hurt her."

The hopelessness is still in his gaze when it lifts from between them to match hers. "But I couldn't save her either. I couldn't do anything. For any of them." A lighter quiver of his body sends renewed tracks of agony down the masculine planes of his face.

"Oh god," she issues quietly, and snarls him back into her arms, tight and unyielding. "That's just not true. You did so much. You saved every woman who would've come after them. That's a lot, Castle. That's so fucking much."

He hears her this time and maybe, just maybe, there's some iota of a willingness to believe awakened along with the rest. The grief seems to lose some of its bitterness, its ferocity. His body relents a fraction of its tension and the grief flows from there in quieter bursts from both of them.


A/N: Just a little addition this time. Try as I might, I simply couldn't make anything else fit. There's one more chapter to go. Hopefully the weekend will usher that right along.