Misconception

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Words are worse. Putting pictures in her head she can't get out. The tears slip out of control, past the reach of her swiping unsubtle thumbs, one after another.

And then he moves, starts moving for the door. "Wait-" she chokes out. If she has to do this alone, she might never recover.

He stops and turns his head. Just that. He looks defeated and she feels it, feels it everywhere, how defeated they are.

"Don't leave - me," she says, and the crying starts again and it's beyond her to stop it.

But "Kate," he breathes, and he's striding forward and enveloping her. She flinches at the sudden rush of him, the surge of movement, but his shirt soaks up the tracks on her cheeks. He smells like him, alone, like nothing has changed. "Kate, Kate."

She smacks the flat of her hand into his shoulder, harder even as she grips his shirt with the other fist, but he doesn't let go. He just - he's not clinging, she's not being manhandled, it's more like he's holding her together.

"If you can at all forgive me," he starts, his voice vibrating around her. "I didn't-"

"Stop," she cries. "Just - give me - a second." Every time he goes on, she has more images, more scenes in her head and they get laid over their one night, erasing whatever heat and love she found with him and redrawing it into blonde hair and perfect proportions and his voice calling her name and now she's crying harder.

"Okay," he whispers. "Whatever you need. Long as you want." His palms are wide against her back, so wide, as if bracing her, keeping her ribs together so her heart can't fall out. But his hands were on that woman, and he took her-

God, it's mortifying and terrible, all this grief for no good reason, for no good reason - she did this. She did it to herself, put them in this position because she is abysmal at relationships; they all go wrong; she has one foot out the door from the start because she believes that love will leave her first - abandonment is her default setting. She thought nothing was better than something maimed, something broken with him, but she was selfish even in that. Even in nothing, she kept taking and taking from him, drawing strength and encouragement from every cup of coffee he presented her with and every wonderful smile and all those theories they talked through like foreplay.

But she never said a word; she never gave him anything at all, and it hurts so badly and it's just her own fault. She abandoned him.

Kate has this insane urge to go find Castle and hang out at Remy's until it doesn't ache with every breath. Like she just wants her partner - while her - what? - her baby's father tears her heart out.

"Beckett," he mutters, his voice as tight as a fist. It helps somehow, or maybe it just re-draws old lines, slaps new mortar onto the old bricks, gives her a wall to prop herself up against. Beckett is a way to retreat.

But if Kate retreats now, she's not sure she'll ever come out again. That's what she did the summer she didn't go to the Hamptons. And it was precisely the same situation as now, saying too little too late. Saying nothing.

She has to stop giving him nothing.

"I'm sorry," she blurts out.

Castle stiffens, like a block of wood carved around the imperfection of her.

"I messed this all up," she croaks. Her throat is thick with tears yet to be shed and she tries to swallow them down. "And I hurt - hurt you. And it hurts and I'm sor-sorry that I'm wrecking everything-"

"God. No, Kate, no." His hand cups the back of her head and she crashes back into his shoulder, pressing her swollen eyes into his shirt. "Never, never. It's not wrecked; we haven't even got this thing out on the road."

And suddenly she's laughing. It's so absurd, and it makes her think of that woman driving his Ferrari and it's like a punch to the gut so that she knows she sounds hysterical, and maybe she is - she's pregnant, and even though she's felt fine, this is not fine.

"I don't want to hurt you," he whispers. "In my better moments, when I'm not being an immature ass, I promise you, Kate, I never want to hurt you."

She chokes on her laughter and tries to corral the rest of it, the messy impossibilities of them being here, and the ache, and how she wishes she could leave this un-driven wreck and go find Castle because this is Castle; it's him.

It's just - him. Castle.

"I just want you," she says fiercely, lifting her head from his shirt. "Nothing else is - I love you so much it hurts."

His hands tighten, squeezing her ribs together, his face blank. "You - do? After... oh, God, I love you. I love you, Kate, and I want you so badly, want this baby, I want anything you can give me, anything you want-"

"Just don't - don't leave to myself." She clutches fists in his shirt. "I don't like what happens when I'm left to-"

"No, I won't leave. Not if you want me here. I'll - whatever you want, I can do whatever you want, Kate."

"Stay." She sucks in a ragged breath to feel lungs that seem weighed down inside a body too heavy. "Just stay like this until I - can breathe again."

It's only when his his head bows over her that she feels his cheek against hers and the wetness of his skin, the grooves from his own grief.

He's been crying too.

She's so tired of the hurt. When does it get easier?

Maybe it never does.

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