Misconception
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She looks struck.
He steps back from her, his shoulders moving up and down with a breath he can't seem to complete.
"I - used protection," he says. Feeble, hollow. "If that's - what you - I'd never do that-"
He stops, horrified.
Her mouth drops open. "You'd never do that to me?" she finishes, and her whole face looks raw, a fresh wound. "But you did. You did that to me."
He still can't breathe right. "I never wanted to h-" But he did want to hurt her. "I thought you'd been - stringing me along, lying," he croaks. "I wanted you to hurt as much as me."
He's an ass.
"Oh, God," she says, and she presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. Hiding herself from him.
He feels like he's going to throw up. He's ruined it before he had a chance. But she didn't love him, but she did, does she now? - can she possibly?
How can she? Why would she at all?
"Why aren't you talking?" she growls. "Where are all the words now? Why can't you-" She stops, dropping her arms to cross them over her chest and clutch her elbows. "Make it right."
"There aren't any words to make it right," he says.
Her eyes are fathomless pools in the semi-dark, fathomless and wretched. She hunches as if absorbing a blow, and what words he does think of are trite and foolish before they even start, dying at the back of his throat.
"But I - nothing changed for me," she gets out. "I still loved you and I was-"
Oh, God. She's crying.
Her jerks toward her and she stumbles back, hastily swiping under her eyes, not looking at him.
He stands very still. His chest is so tight that air can't get in. His voice is sandpaper when it comes. "Is that past tense?"
Her mouth opens and nothing - there's nothing.
Castle closes his eyes, and the grief spills out. Doesn't bother touching it. Can't even think of what - what he's done. He can't bear to look at her, this woman he aches to love, this woman he might never have.
Vegas was before her, but it wasn't before her. Before their time, but not before their time. That night of the wedding, that should have been their start, but then it wasn't, and the silence stretched on and then the truth came out and it looked like the worst. It wasn't, but he didn't have anything else to hang on to, nothing except her silence and the way she would smile at him, but she's never going to smile at him like that again, is she?
He stopped waiting. That's the bottom line. Doesn't matter that it looked like there was never anything to wait for - the truth is that there was. There was.
He doesn't know what happens now. And the baby. God, it's worse for her, she's the one pregnant, he can hear her crying, and when he gets the courage to look, she's just standing there, wiping the tears as they come as if to erase all evidence. She won't meet his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he says, ineffectually. "I'll - go. I know you need space when it's - bad." Bad? He slept with someone else. He cheated on them, on the idea of them. She spent an entire summer hiding out after he said he loved her. Space is the last, the very last thing he wants, but right now it's not about him. "I'll let you have the - room - and you can do - you can smash everything in the place, destroy it, or do whatever you have to. Just stay. I won't do anything. Only don't - please don't leave the loft until we can - even if it takes months to be able to talk to me again, Kate, and I have to sleep in the guest room every night, I will. I will." Just don't take the baby away from me. "I'll do whatever it is you want-"
"Stop," she chokes. "Stop."
He stops. She puts her back to him, her whole body drawn up - protective, isn't that what she called it? Already he's done that. Made her curl up in self-defense. Like the baby on the ultrasound.
He's hurt them both.
Castle sinks heavily to the bed, bowing his head, hands braced on his knees, trying to breathe. He slept with Jacinda because it felt exactly like this, raw and gaping and never-to-be-filled, but it was a wreck and pointless and it only felt good for that instant of release and then it felt like a life sentence: everything after Kate was going to feel faded and dull and worthless, no matter what he did.
And now it really is.
He turns and rubs his eyes into his shoulder, the material of his shirt soaking tears, and he can see her pacing tightly, and it makes him warily regard the door.
He could beat her to the door if he had to.
But maybe he shouldn't, even that. Maybe he should finally just - stop screwing up her life.
She hasn't said a word. And his are - useless. He heaves himself up off the bed, won't look at her as he moves slowly towards the door. He should - leave her alone. Just leave her alone, for God's sake, before he ruins every last good thing they might ever have been.
But he just - can't.
How will he ever - the baby is - he can't leave when the baby is - it's real. She wants a boy; there was that moment in the living room when he was given a vision of how beautiful they might be, his son in her arms - but he can't leave when he doesn't know how extensive the damage is. Did he make it - disappear?
Castle slumps into the doorframe and leans his forehead against the wood. "I'm sorry," he speaks dully. "I don't know that words will help. But. I was - dying. I thought we were - less than nothing. A con, a joke. Made everything a desert, my whole life barren. The idea that I'd been hallucinating all this time, inventing meaning where there was none - and so the reality of it was bleak, and dry, and dead. She was a mirage of water, and I drank it. But it was like drinking battery acid, and now-"
Now he's poisoned it.
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