A creeping sensation of being observed makes Richard turn at the waist to look back at the farmhouse. Closer now, the white wooden shingling is apparent for its cracked and peeling signs of wear. Each window is flanked by dark, almost black shutters. The glass is so dusty as to be opaque, like eyes staring out with pale cataracts over them. The abode can only look inward to its own quiet corridors with any clarity. It feels obscenely hungry for the sights and sounds long denied it. More famished still is the entropy nipping at its edges, ever greedy for more.

Go ahead, guess which one I'm rooting for.

"Castle," Beckett murmurs quietly. She glances backwards at the house as well when he faces her, and then to him again with some concern. "Are you ready?" Richard nods once slimly in reply, but she frowns as if unconvinced and smooths the t-shirt he wears against his chest. "You don't have to." The press of her palm is more revealing than words; she's pushing lightly, perhaps in a subconscious expression of the desire for him to be anywhere else. "You have nothing to prove here."

A difficult breath finds its way into him, and pauses as presses a kiss to her temple. The things the woman says. "I'm with you."

The assurance elicits an odd expression, a purse of her lips and crinkle at her brow. Something about it reminds him of last night in the den... But the detective reels him firmly back to the present when her fingers close over his with a light, brief squeeze. Then she faces forward and follows John into the barn.

Sunlight filters in through several second-story windows and in narrow lines between some of the flat-board walls. Particles of dust trickle down and vanish between slivers of light. The scents associated to such structures is prominent here too: hay, aged wood, and after all this time there is still a faint odor of manure from the horse stalls. A miasma of oil and diesel fuel arises from the large John Deere tractor parked centrally and covered by a canvas tarp. The brush and field mower is still hitched to its rear from the last time Rick tended to the property's expansive grounds.

Not a rustle or creak disturbs the thick drape of silence lain over the place.

As he crosses the threshold, however, the place suddenly emits a low, chorused groan. The planks of the walls bow slowly outward as he watches. The roof lifts away in similar fashion with strained creaks from its timbers. No. The outlying pillars become clear for the ribs of this beast that they actually are. Dust shakes loose in showers that fall in trembling waves. This place has been waiting. Now it draws the shuddering breath its been holding in anticipation since last he dared to come.

Stop, the writer snaps to himself, closing his eyes tightly. Focus. He does, with his hands clenched into fists so tight the struggle of his pulse is detectable within them like a frightened animal writhing in a live trap. When the man's blue eyes open again the barn is normal. He lets out a slow, controlled breath. Another. He's fine.

Beckett is staring at him. And he feels as transparent as glass beneath her hazel orbs.

Richard advances to the right to flip the light switches on. A triplet of bulbs come to life, each fixed along the same central beam running the length of the structure. Metal, conical shades direct their radiance into generous pools that seem weakened and ineffective with the brightness of daylight also pouring in.

"Matthews' threw a lot of social gatherings," John comments. "People would be making nice in the house or outside, laughing, drinking. Their kids would be running around playing together, even out here in the barn. All the while there would often be a woman under their feet, probably screaming her lungs out."

Beckett glances at her partner again, but communicates precious little by her expression. A moment later he realizes she isn't trying to say anything. She's simply watching. Waiting. For what, he doesn't rightly know.

After last night, perhaps the anticipation is for another outpouring of emotion. But that occurrence was the first time in God only knows how long he's allowed himself to grieve those women openly. There aren't enough tears within him to express the injustice of what happened, of what continues to happen every single time he wakes up in the morning and they do not. The only thing that feels worthy of doing to honor them is trying to live well, and to remember them. Every book is their story, each strong female character their avatars, and every murderer thrust to conclusion, either by the justice system or the molten intrusion of a bullet is each woman's striking epitaph. They are far from forgotten.

A deep, thrumming growl fills the air.

For a moment he thinks his imagination has escaped its reigns again to provide his anger a form of sympathetic release, but then the sound pauses and resumes again. He glances right to see John pulling at the chains. Twin wheels holding coiled lengths of them are fixed above. The natural presumption upon seeing them is that the mechanism enables loads from below to be raised to the barn's loft. Indeed, that is the case, but there are two wheels and pulleys. The second set, accessed by a hidden switch for the track system, serves to slide away a thick slab of steel set into the floor in one of the empty horse stalls. Once upon a time it was concealed under pallets upon which stacks of innocuous supplies were stored.

The detective shakes her head, unimpressed and frowning where she stands.

The three-foot wide opening elongates steadily under John's efforts, until soon enough the plate is moved back fully and that growling grating ceases. They file past the tractor one by one and converge abreast each other again at the gloomy opening in the floor. A medium-length cement staircase leads down.

"Oh shit," Beckett gasps, flinching away a moment. She points without looking. "Are those—is that...?"

Richard stares impassively at the bloody footprints of his flight from the underground, still visible after all this time. A few hand prints decorate either wall. By the time he'd made that trip he hadn't been walking steady. Safe from the weather, each small imprint has retained a reddish-brown hue. The evidence was never a detail he attempted scrubbing away. Why would he? "I-it's part of the story," he stammers aloud, irrationally needing to explain it in the face of Kate's reaction.

He blinks in surprise as she attacks the bloody footprint on the uppermost step, scraping her right foot across it again and again with the flat portion of her heeled sandal. An unsettling conflict of grief and fury wars upon her features. The imprint smears some and pales under the assault, but it doesn't vanish so easily.

"Detective," John grits, stepping forward and reaching for her.

Beckett shakes his grip on her bicep off with a whirl at the waist, eyes wide and absolutely livid. "Don't touch me!" she snarls viciously, and Rick backs away from her half a pace just as surely as the Sergeant does. The sensation of being scorched by her fury is just as tangible as the sense of having narrowly avoided stepping off the sheerest of ledges and into a terminal plunge. The woman can be so giving and gentle, but step between her and that intensely ingrained sense of justice and...well...she's more than merely capable of freezing a man's blood in his veins.

The sound of her own savage outcry echoing in the barn seems to ring the death knell on her attempt to erase Rick's decades old retreat though. Still scowling tautly down at it, she exhales angrily and descends the steps with clear reluctance for leaving the grisly task unfinished.

John shares a look with him, sighs mutely, and gestures for the novelist to go first.

He hesitates to do so, regarding the other. "Have you ever made this descent before?"

"Me? Once. Genie came. We, uh, went down together."

"When was that?"

The bearded man frowns somewhat, seeming perplexed. "That first summer you came back. '83, I think."

Too early. Damn. There's nothing for it now, the other man muses. He nods in understanding and follows the stairs into the darkness of the earth. Beckett stopped just past the limitations of the light from the barn. She has her cellphone out and is shining the glow from the camera flash in a slow arc. The earthy walls and ceiling are a rough texture. Steel support beams flank the corridor, while wooden ones criss-cross the ceiling. Such was the care of its construction, it remains safe to navigate almost four decades later. That being said for it, there's a definite change of tone occurring. They've descended from rustic civilization into something closer to the roots of their species, when caves were optimal forms of sanctuary.

"We're in this nightmare now," Beckett issues with an odd ring of finality. It's unlike anything he would expect her to say.

It chills him all over again.

"There's an antechamber ahead, where..." he trails to silence. Any further words stick in his throat as he watches the very edges of the whitish glow from the cell phone glances across a pair of pale, femininely slim legs walking away from them, deeper into the substructure. There's no sound, and shadow consumes all other details. Another ghost sprung from his imagination, but...he's never conjured the women before. It hits like a punch in the gut.

"Richard," John's tenor calls mildly. His heavy hand clamps gently onto the author's right shoulder.

"S-sorry," Rick rasps. "Ahead. There's a kind of room ahead. There's light."

Kate is staring back at him, concern etched in deeply by the shadows. "What did you see?"

"You know," he returns in an uncomfortable whisper. She must, because she bites her lower lip and shakes her head.

"Their hands gently beckon. They whisper your name. But those who go with them are never the same."

The author and detective both turn to stare backwards at the last in line, their eyes involuntarily wide. John blanches and rubs at the back of his neck. "Sorry. It's—kids, y'know? Even with the history here well buried, they speculate about this old farm, how it's haunted and all. It's the usual small town folklore, though in this case it's the kind that's always been a little too close to the truth to coax them into actually exploring. Instead they process it with their stories and a, uh, infamously dark rhyme. Part of it got stuck in my head, I guess."

"Jeez," Beckett hisses softly, shivering with a quiver of the flashlight beam, but marching forward nonetheless.

"How does the rest of it go?" the author asks despite himself.

"No! No fucking thank you," their fore growls back at them.

Seconds later comes a metallic clacking sound. Light blooms from a single ceiling fixture similar to the ones in the barn. It reveals a smallish, square-shaped area with two central pillars, one of which Kate stands at. A red-handled flip-switch is affixed to the pole. Beyond that the room is completely bare. There's a single wooden door in the far wall, once white, but tinged by its time underground into a grimy chartreuse.

Castle gravitates slowly towards it without being fully aware of his legs in motion.

"What was this room used for?" Beckett asks.

"Storage," John answers. "There used to be shelving on the left side. Matthews' kept a stockpile of illegally obtained drugs in a refrigerator...there. And here was a barrel filled with rebar filed to a point at one end. And over here, spools and spools of steel wire. On that side of the room were better quality shelves. That's where he kept his journals, black, leather-bound books filled with his psychotic blather. There were over three hundred of them dating back to his early teens when he first began to have thoughts about, uh, what he eventually put into motion."

"The pages were all unlined," Castle muses aloud. "But every word was precisely straight across each page." He stops before the door and crouches. One hand rises slowly to stroke along the inner jamb. Both edges are scored by fingernail scratches. There are too many to provide an easy count.

"Ah, fuck," Beckett grunts, and hisses out a noisy breath at his left.

John grunts in similar, wordless distress before turning and pacing away from it.

"He drugged them to get them from New London to here," Rick recalls. "But it seems like all of them were awake before he led them out of this room and into the next. This is where he stripped them, cleaned them up. No," he adds swiftly, frowning. "He wouldn't have cleaned them. The dirtier they were, the more proof he had of their lack of importance to the rest of the world. To himself, rather. Discards, all. At least, the original twenty-four were seen to be." He pauses briefly, aware of the detective staring hard at him. "Were the final five the same?"

By the strain in her tone, it's clear his partner is curious too, but also reluctant to indulge him. "Why wouldn't they be?"

"Matthews' said himself that they were different," John reminds them.

"That's not precisely right," Beckett says, not unkindly. "He doesn't use that word. He doesn't specifically separate them from the others in the terms we're trying to apply. In fact, he only describes them as 'unexpected necessities' from what I read." She grunts, scowls, "As if the piece of shit had run out of paint and had to make a run to the hardware store."

"They went into the Offering alive," Castle observes. "That alone says something important."

"It says he was a sick fuck who was out of his mind," John growls. "Can we keep moving?"

Beckett's mouth dips shallowly into displeasure, but she rises from her crouch at Rick's side in evident agreement on continuing.

Castle does as well at length and opens the door before him. The passage beyond that point is raw stone, a transition itself that lends the whole underground sprawl a surreal component. It demands walking at a crouch in a couple places where the ceiling dips low. No man-made supports were placed here. The bones of the world need no such assistance.

"It's cold," the detective whispers, and accepts his grasp in hers when he reaches back for her.

The cavern is an abrupt and surprisingly spacious bulge at the end of the natural corridor. The walls are mostly smooth, oddly curved surfaces, obviously carved out by some ancient subterranean estuary. It's roughly forty feet in diameter along the floor, and twenty tall at the highest point of its dome-shaped ceiling. Sunlight pours through the apex of it where a ten-foot-wide hole lays the sky bare overhead.

"This wasn't open like that before," John comments, squinting upwards.

As far as the novelist is aware, no one has set foot in the cave since his last series of visits, nearly twenty years ago. The products of those bygone sojourns, including the crude skylight, draws Kate's hand out of his in order to grasp at his left shoulder instead, so tightly she is mangling the fabric of his t-shirt while her widened eyes roam the area.

"Oh god," the Sergeant murmurs, likewise stricken.

Far from it, the author muses sadly, though His name was called here more times than I could count.

His eyes make the familiar tour as well, resting briefly upon each of the many life-sized carvings he wrought from the stone walls. And I used your tools to do it, demon. Think of that if you ever return here. A sculptor Richard Castle is not. None of the pieces are suggestive of a skill level beyond that which any dedicated apprentice might possess. Rather, the robed figures are recognizable as being feminine and their proportions are particularly are well-done, which together speak of the untold hours the project demanded to eventually produce worthwhile results.

Twenty-four female figures are depicted in myriad portions of visibility along the outer wall, as if each one were caught in the act of leaning out of the rock itself to peek upon the scene beyond, looking in fondly upon the four other figures carved and independently placed into the center of the room where sunlight pools. The four central statues there are sitting, and in the middle of their roughly circular gathering is the most exactingly detailed fixture: a granite little girl crouched playfully with her knees bent and her arms raised, as if frozen in the act of preparing to launch herself gleefully into one of the surrounding women's arms. The author—the artist—gave her cherubic wings fashioned from clear quartz; the only worked piece of stone that didn't come from the cave itself. In the spill of the late morning sun the wings shine from her shoulder-blades ethereally, filled to every facet with golden light. Before now he's only ever seen it in the moonlight.

"Richard," Kate whispers, sounding quietly awed. His full given name sounds alien, and yet somehow fitting upon her lips—no one calls him 'Rick' in Montauk, never have and probably never will. Fitting, maybe, but even at modulated volume her voice wanders around the chamber in an echo that reverberates again and again, as if a chorus of women were quietly speaking the name back and forth amongst themselves: Richard, Richard, Richard.

He shivers badly, literally from head to toe. Minutes pass and he slowly settles. "It needed to be sculptures. The final refutation of that cursed Offering had to be made in a language Llewellyn understands, even if he never actually sees it."

A soft, scraping rasp draws the detective and author into a mutual glance backwards at John. It's written there in his face, the violent shift of paradigm the view has prompted. Now you see me. It wasn't my intent, brother. Not here, like this. The Sergeant backs off another step, not even seeming aware of the pair watching him. The width of his dark eyes reflects pinpricks from the spears of light glinting off of angelic wings.

Beckett, her chin lowering, her eyes narrowing into channels of obsidian in the gloom, steps away from Castle's side. There's something quietly unsettling about it. It's a liquidity to her motion, as of a descended Eve who claimed the role of sinuous serpent for herself. With a naturally subtle and sway of her hips she advances slowly, purposefully, until standing directly before the other man. John stands taller and thicker, but his scrunched posture looks somehow smaller by comparison.

"I feel for your plight," the detective murmurs, "but it doesn't excuse such willful blindness. I invited you here to realize exactly what I can see you've finally gotten through that thick skull of yours." The officer's gaze is on her now. They gape wider still if possible, filled to overflowing with a visceral skittishness, as if he were primed to flee but tethered by the woman's seething anger. "I feel for the others in this town too," she hisses, and lifts onto her toes before the man. She kisses his cheek, soft and brief. John yelps as if branded, stumbling away. Venom laces the detective's words as they bare themselves, like fangs only visible after the kiss of death has already been administered, "Tell them what you've seen here. I hope it burns through this town like wildfire, and if there's any justice left here, you'll taste the ashes of it in every meal for the next three fucking decades!"

The Sergeant jerks himself around, slipping onto one knee in his haste, and scrambles awkwardly back through the passage. Thunderous footfalls of retreat are audible for long seconds afterwards, maybe all the way back to the barn. Now we're brothers in a new, sad way, bound by being chased from here by our terrible specters of guilt. It pains the author to witness, and yet no word of reproach surfaces towards his sole remaining company. None at all.

My God, Kate...

Castle is too stunned to say or do anything even if the word were available.

When the woman turns back around, her anger is already in the swift process of waning. It yields to a shocking glimpse of sorrow, perhaps even regret, though surely not for saying what she did—Kate says precisely what she means to. Before he can discern the true target she sighs aloud and weariness draws itself over her slender form like a cloak about her shoulders. Half walking, half seeming to glide closer, his companion merges against him with a slide of her arms around his waist. "Sorry," she murmurs softly. "I really didn't want you here for that."

A sympathetic fear still trickles through his veins alongside the pounding of his blood. "He's not a bad man."

"No, he's not. Maybe that makes me a bad woman. You know what? I'll live with it."

"You invited him along intending to do that." She doesn't deny it. "Since when? Last night?"

"Since you had a horrible dream," Beckett returns by way on confirmation, smoothing the surface of him with unsettling tenderness, "and in the process of it, told me what really happened out here."

The words make him arch where he stands as if a bull whip had been lashed across his back. "Y-you don't know what happened here. You can't. Don't...don't do this to me, okay? Please? It's fine to believe what you want, but don't try to convince me too. There's no way to be certain. I didn't bring you here to fix this, Beckett."

"Foolish man," she whispers, tightening her grip when he attempts to ease away from her. "I don't believe you need fixing. You know the truth. Part of you does. I heard you, Castle."

"It was just a bad dream." One he doesn't even rightly recall now.

"Everything that happened here is right there in the evidence no one looks at. This isn't some fledgling theory. I just didn't have the proper lens to see it until you helped, the same way you have so many other times."

"But you don't know," he repeats, irrationally frightened, struggling to push her away. "You can't. And that's okay. I built a life around all of this. Nothing has changed." The woman's grip on him refuses to be so easily dissuaded, and he hasn't the heart to be violent about it. She knows that too. No. Not 'too'! She doesn't know anything!

"We've changed, Castle. Otherwise, I might let you go on thinking...whatever you need to. We're past that. I 'm not leaving you behind in your guilt, not when there's such beautiful things waiting for us on the other side of it." Heaven help him, at that moment the man has no good rebuttal to offer. Only irrational fear. "Let's just do the end. Where you got lost."

"Kate, please," he says, more snarls.

"I'm so sorry. I know it hurts. Only for a little bit more, I promise."

The survivor finds his anger. The grip on her arms will surely bruise later from the force he unwittingly inflicts, but still he can't shake her. She's too close. The leverage is all wrong. "Kate, let go. Let go! Get the fuck off of me!"

Instead she lunges into him deeper, bodily. Her legs coils around him with such power he wouldn't be able to breathe if they were cinched around his chest instead. He stumbles backwards into the wall with a jarring impact against his shoulders and lower back, but the smoothness of the cavern's surfaces don't exact injury.

The detective's lips at his right ear are shockingly gentle by contrast, and a droplet of her grief on his behalf falls from her jaw to strike his neck. It stings like ice water. "Llewellyn brought the last five women here to make you play for him. And you did play, Rick, eventually. But not for him. You did it for Laura."

Oh dear god in heaven he can see it. No! He can't see shit. Can't look. It's not real. This is the townspeople all over again, only its polar opposite. It's just another version of the story someone else would prefer to be true.

"I bet when he led her inside she struck you just as you've depicted her over there, a stark beam of radiance in all this dismal dark. Like a sweet act of mercy on the eyes after what you'd been shown by Llewellyn up until that moment."

Stop, stop, stop!

"That's what you saw. And she's what you put into your song, the same way you put those other people into their own special notes in the mall. John told me about that. It's not even a choice, is it? God, Castle, I'll never understand exactly how you do it, but for some reason I can comprehend it so clearly now." An unnerving tremor of veracity accompanies the certitude which already underscores the words. "I can almost touch it, its so real. You can't help but to see us, feel us, and express us. Once with music and then with words."

"Shut up," he demands, words he intended to bellow at the top of his lungs. They're hardly above a whisper though, and he isn't even sure they emerged intelligibly. He can't see clearly enough to fight her anymore. All the world's a painful, scalding blur, and his limbs feel so heavy.

"Then the impossible happened, didn't it?"

His body is wracked in silent protest, misery.

"You played for her, but Llewellyn heard you too, didn't he? Really heard you." Please, God, make her stop. As if sensing his desperation, the detective's voice begins to spill from her more quickly, the steady susurration of a deluge. "That's what I think, baby. You played for her, trying to comfort that poor little girl, and poured into the music the same thing you do into your books—every goddamn beautiful thing you have. They all heard it. But he did too. And he stopped, didn't he? Did he see you?" Yes, and...yes. "Did he look at you like you were the first other person he'd perceived since the madness took hold as a much younger man?" He did. He stared. So wide. Unblinking. Not even breathing.

"Last night in the den, you said 'Don't let go'. It was easy to imagine those poor women on the receiving end. But that's what it finally made it all click for me. You were talking to him. Llewellyn. Because he heard your song, saw you behind the keys, and you glimpsed that in turn, didn't you? Because you were so aware for a boy your age. Somehow you managed to forge a connection to the slim glint of sanity left in all that darkness, something which was utterly absent when he took you from your house, or while he'd hurt those poor women in front of you. Seeing actual awareness in his eyes must have been as clear as a full moon at midnight after all of that, unmistakable for what it was."

The author unearths a grating reply. "There was nothing. And then...something."

"And you knew it was your only chance to get out of here alive. To get her out alive."

"But I was so tired," he says, more sobs out. "My hands. My fucking hands wouldn't work. Why did he have to come right then?!" the author grits feverishly, savagely. "Why then? I couldn't make them go anymore. They were just...sticks. Useless stubs. I couldn't feel them moving, couldn't feel the blood on the keys."

Kate shudders against him, but her voice continues with clarity even under the obvious weight of sorrow, because she's strong in ways that he can hardly fathom sometimes. "I understand. You were exhausted, fucking traumatized. And as the song began to slip, he started to fade away again too, hmm? Like a sleepwalker coming back to consciousness."

"But backwards," Richard expels. "It was like someone going back to sleep. Back to his living nightmare."

"That stuff you said last night: 'you're not alone, never alone'. You tried to help him hang on to that moment, didn't you? But he couldn't. Words weren't enough. Music only worked because it played into his delusion. Without that tether he slipped away," she concludes quietly, and hovers a long moment before adding, "but the women didn't, did they?"

His eyes close as tightly as he can, but there's no denying the torrent that's racing through the jagged hole she punched in this dam. "Maybe not," he issues, but his voice breaks on the second word. "Maybe not. I don't know."

"I think you do, babe. I think that detail is behind a lot of the blame you wrongly carry. You woke the women up too, or some fashion of that. Something that at least managed to pierce the drugs in their systems and induce enough clarity to give them a chance to act. And they did. Of course they did." She strokes his back. "They wanted to protect you."

The mounting exhaustion is suddenly overwhelming, but he puts up what fight he can manage. "You don't know."

"They tore themselves free of their moorings." He shudders badly, seeing it. Hearing it. "And they brought Llewellyn down together. Just for a little bit and, sadly, not enough to keep him from killing that sweet girl. But enough for you to run. Didn't they tell you to run?" So loudly. So loudly there wasn't room in the pounding of my head for even thinking about anything else. "They did enough for you to get away and find someone to help."

"Help," Richard echoes, his voice empty, bottomless. "There was no helping. Not Laura. And not them, not after...ripping their bodies free of the wires they way they did."

"It led swiftly to exsanguination. I know." Beckett strokes down his hair and the nape of his neck. The grip of her legs around him eases and lowers away one at a time. She stands on her own again, but without having given him an inch of breathing room. "That's not your fault. None of it was. I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry, Castle. I only want you to know. But if you really can't, even now, I hope you'll keep having faith in my certainty of it. I know who the killer is."

"I'm so tired," he issues numbly, listing back against the wall. He feels hollowed out, another empty seashell on the beach.

"Its okay to be."

"Some of the things you said...I saw them. Maybe more than just 'some'."

She strokes his right cheek. "That's okay too."

"How can I ever be sure it wasn't what I wanted to see though? How do you trust something like that?" She slides her arms around him again and this time he's so very glad for it. The texture and scent of her are a balm. There's no reply though. It takes a moment to realize she's already given it. "Faith," he mutters.

"The evidence is on my side. If they'd looked...if anyone had really looked, they would have seen. I'm sorry they found themselves so twisted up inside that it was somehow easier for them to blame you for Laura. I'm sorry that the whole ordeal was such a horrible experience that you found it so easy to believe them in kind, or that you felt it necessary to allow them to believe. That is not okay. You don't owe them anything. And the women who helped save you... They didn't do what they did so that you could live to inflict your own version of torture upon yourself."

"Your letter. That was a good letter." He isn't making any sense. "You're right. I know. I just mean, there's so much to think about."

She hums a brief sound of agreement in reply. In its wake they are quiet and still for so long the author think he's fallen asleep on his feet, but then her body shifts to a more comfortable stance against his.

He says, "You scared John."

"Who, me? Nah."

"Scared him shitless."

"Don't swear. That's so unattractive."

It takes the longest time before he huffs with the realization that she's picking on him, playing with him, even in such an unlikely place and time. "Scared me too," he mumbles. "You're so beautiful, so smart for someone so damned frightening."

"Look who's talking, Master of the Macabre. I much prefer that within your works of fiction."

He sighs, recalling his own reactions and mantling with shame. "Did I?"

"Yeah."

"I scared you?"

"Maybe a smidge. I mean, maybe when you described the end of the goddamn world earlier I might've peed a little bit. Big deal. Does that mean I was scared?" She scoffs through her nose and rolls those gorgeously dark eyes. "Whatever."

"Gross." And yet also hilarious. "You're the best medicine ever, I swear."

She laughs softly, and his limbs are lured into a tighter squeeze of her lithe frame.

"I'm sorry. My goodness. I'm out of it. My brain, hell, my everything is utterly annihilated right now."

"I know. You're fine. Well, you will be, I promise."

"You really do, don't you? You know."

Beckett leans back in his arms enough to allow their eyes to meet. She's so beautiful, her profile striking as she turns to look at the statues beyond them. "Look at them, Rick. Really look. That isn't what you seem to think it is. Guilt doesn't even resemble what you've created here. That's love, babe, a gorgeous celebration of it. Sure as we're standing here."

"Love doesn't necessarily imply innocence."

Kate arches an eyebrow. "I sure hope not. I still have lots to show you, and precious little of it is gonna be innocent."

It blows his mind to think of them during the ride out here. She was worried about what was coming, and he was the one with all the assurances that it was ancient history, that he had learned to live around it. Now, at the close of the matter, she's as radiant as the beacon of Montauk Point Light guiding him back to that idea like a ship mired in coastal mists and seeking safe harbor.

Castle's smile unfurls against his will. The expression is tentative at first, battered even. It isn't nearly as sure or wide as hers.

But it's there. It will survive.


A/N: Phew. Well, there you have it, folks. I hope the ending was sufficient to tie off most of the remaining loose ends. Some are meant to dangle. More than that though, I hope it finishes as satisfactorily as it could given that, technically speaking, it's no ending to their story at all. The mythology established here is something I hope to build upon.

I'm grateful for your company throughout the journey. It blows my mind how some of you managed to glimpse certain details of the wording, plot, or characterization which, frankly, I expect to go overlooked. It's fun to see them show up in a PM or review. As a writer, one can only hope the final result rewards that kind of attention. Until next time.