A/N - I suppose this story became AU after the broadcast of The Limey last night. I am inclined to keep this strand of the multiverse running because Rick and Kate (whom I do not own, we're just seeing each other) keep surprising me. Again, I want to thank the people who read this, particularly the ones who comment, and the whole community at .com/, particularly McManda and Fialka62 (whose stories you should look up on this site). Reading a conversation people had there two years ago made me realize that cybercommunities run in time as well as space; thanks to them and the other writers here for making me think.

Previously:"...Hell, all the unforgiveable things have been said, now, right?"

"Oh, never say that." He was a shade too sure of this not to set off Kate's WTF sensor. She waited to let him speak again, but his next words were no help and she wondered if she'd been imagining something. "You have your car?"

"Yeah. It makes me less of a New Yorker but they like me to have it." Kate felt odd. For a minute she wondered if something had been wrong with the chicken, but she realized it was weirder than nausea.

"You're an Emergency Vehicle," Castle said absently. "Can you take me home and park illegally outside?"

"I always do." I think I'm light-hearted. I think I feel better. Maybe there's something to this 'clear conscience' idea. She watched him tidy the chicken and leftovers fries into the bag and roll down the top. The bottle of Vichy water he recapped and put in the tiny fridge with a twist of his mouth.

"What?" Kate asked.

"I'm compromising, not throwing it away." He quirked an absolutely dead smile toward her. "I'm still hurt, and I'm still angry and I don't altogether understand what you said tonight. It was… really a lot."

"I owe you a lot, explanations, apologies -" Please come back, Rick, I … Even Kate's inner chatter was beginning to quail at what she seemed to have done to him.

Rick continued. "And I think it's been an awful couple of days and I, personally, am flashing back way too much to September Eleventh, if that makes any sense. But I have to give you credit for chasing me down and I am pretty sure what you said wasn't any easier for you to say than it was for me to hear, and I don't think it was psychobabble. And you said some other things that I may pretend I didn't hear for the next nine or ten months, just because I … Damn it, Beckett. I can't even be properly spiteful at you."

They turned off the lights in his office and went back down the narrow stairs. "Hey Kent. Thanks for bringing the food up," he said to the bartender.

"No problem."

"Do I owe you anything for it?"

"I took it out of petty cash, wrote it up. Including the tip."

"Was I generous?"

"You always are."

"Are you a film student?"

"Minor."

"Major?"

"English and economics."

Rick nodded. "I'm lucky to have you. But let me know if you need a reference."

"I like it here for now. Good night, Detective Beckett."

Kate nodded at him and they went into the cool damp dark to the bar's miniscule parking area.

Rick slid into the passenger seat. It was familiar; the hours he had spent with Kate doing surveillance, mostly earlier in their partnership, came back. He felt better, and he resented and distrusted feeling better. "When were you going to tell me? That you remembered what I said, I mean."

Kate turned the engine back off — she hadn't pulled out of the parking place. "I hadn't really decided. You knew I was seeing my therapist again, the one who certified me ready to come back to duty? I'm still going once or twice a week. I told him I remembered the day I was shot pretty early on. It took me awhile to .. To tell him the details,. I saw you run toward me just at the same time I felt something hit me. I do remember seeing you, hearing you — saying — you —"

Rick was just fine with Kate being in pain over lying to him, but he found he wasn't happy with her having to revisit that day. He took the burden of saying the words just then. "That I loved you, yeah, go on—" He was pretty sure she gave him a quick grateful look. It was easier to talk sitting side by side, in the streetlight, than it had been staring at one another.

"And I remember hearing Esposito and Ryan shouting, flashes of the ambulance and Lanie yelling at me, but by then I must have lost a lot of blood and I don't remember getting to the hospital."

"They were ready at the emergency room door when we got there," Rick said. "We were lucky it wasn't far."

" I remember I wanted to talk to you before the burial but there just wasn't time. We had that awful fight and the next time I saw you—" she broke off. "I couldn't talk to you. We had to figure out what to say."

"You did a good job. No one's ever questioned it." Technically, he supposed, she had lied, in much the same way he was accusing her of having lied to him. To protect Mongtomery's family, and his memory, instead of herself. To keep the whole conspiracy/coverup/kidnapping history out of the news, though; hard to know if it was bad or good.

As Kate was wondering herself, now. "Should we have let it go? Let the whole thing go into the public, the press, let someone else ask the questions?"

"He died," Rick said, "trying to bring them down, and to protect you. That was his call, his take on the situation. And since then I haven't learned anything to say he was wrong., except that there was still someone else ready to take you out for looking too hard. And Kate, there still is —"

"They never found the shooter."

"They never found who was behind him, either. Whoever was setting up bank accounts in Dubai was not out there with a gun at the cemetery."

"Roy shouldn't have died for me."

"It wasn't just for you. He told me Lockwood said it was you or his family." Kate's head was down. " I'm sorry, Kate, Montgomery asked me to be there and get you away. He didn't tell me it was a no-win scenario but he was so damn direct on the phone. Get there, take you away from the action. He made me promise. And once I was there, I couldn't let you die, I couldn't let him die knowing you were lost—he was unlucky there were as many as there were, he didn't run out of bullets, Kate, he might have made it—"

"You should have let me stay—"

"They'd have have killed you first, to hurt him, to keep themselves safe. I don't really understand why Lockwood didn't shoot Montgomery the night before."

"Because he though he had Roy sewn up. Because he had kept the secret for so long—" at this Kate's voice broke entirely and she wept. Rick stood it for a minute or two.

"CRAP," he said softly to the world, undoing his seat belt. "Dammit, Beckett. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He was worth crying about." He moved across the front seat, and grabbed his partner's slender shoulders and held her while she shook, close against him.

"Nobody will talk about him," she said, between hard sobs. "I missed all that. I missed all that because I was too stupid, I should have come in, Evelyn's moved back to Chicago—" and she cried again, and then the sound changed. She thumped Castle on the chest. "And he knew all the time. He knew all the time, he knew when Coonan nearly killed you, he knew when Raglan was killed—" her next few breaths were keening sobs that Castle somehow recognized as fury. "How could he do that? How, could, he, do that?" and then she just cried again. "I miss him so much. I miss him so much, Castle."

"I miss him too, Kate, I miss him, and Ryan and Espo miss him, and they're hurting too."

"They loved him too." She just cried now, less violently, and Rick wondered if the Crown Vic possessed a box of Kleenex. His handkerchief was on the wrong side but he gave it to her anyway, aware of her soft hair, and her terribly thin body, and if he put his lips in her hair it might have been him leaving a kiss on Alexis. How hard the women he knew cried. The ones he loved did, anyway. Meredith mostly pouted and he had never seen Gina out of her own control. In any situation. "He was a really good captain," Kate said, as she began to be able to breathe again. Tears trickled down her face. She put it back against his cheek. His neck was wet, sticky, slightly cold. If anyone asks, the tears are all hers.

He pulled out his phone, speed-dial. "Kent. Water. Kleenex. In the parking lot."

"On my way." With the engine off, the windows didn't work so Rick opened his door, his other arm still holding Beckett. The bartender passed him three bottles of water— local— and an opened box of tissues. "You didn't need a whole box?"

"No, thanks. Thank you. It's not always like this."

"You'd be surprised. Would you like some tea?"

"I would kill for some, yes. One bag, extra milk. For both of us. One sugar for her."

"No problem."

Well, it's nice someone isn't having any problem. The woman-he-loved-who-had-betrayed-him (Didn't she just tell you she wasn't an archetype, Rick?) was a soggy, sexy mess in his arms. She'd be sexy dipped in the Hudson. She was, I can remember it distinctly. Crying over another man. In Montgomery's case, that's okay. Rick considered. This was certainly one of the worst days of his life. Certainly one of the most important, as far as solving the crime was concerned. Certainly one of the hardest. It was, by this time, difficult to recall the morning. He had had a lowering headache for most of his life, it seemed. His lack of immediate desire to tear Kate's clothes off was strange (After this day you find that strange? Yeah, I do, all right?) but convenient. Usually if a woman cried that hard she needed to go to bed, alone. Usually if they cried that hard, he also needed to go to bed, alone, but certain things still needed to be said. Only not right this second.

Rick sat and hated, carefully, in proportion, Coonan (a lot), Raglan (some, but he'd tried to come clean), McCallister, Lockwood (a hundred, a thousand deaths were not enough for Lockwood), whoever had shot Kate (he had a special place for him in hell), whoever had framed the mayor, and whoever was behind them all. If that didn't include whoever had his 50K from the deal with Coonan, Castle hated him too.

He couldn't deal with hating Montgomery; he'd admired the man more the longer he knew him, he was grateful to him. He'd played poker with him, had good times. Rick was inclined to think the captain had paid his debt with his life, regardless of what Beckett pointed out, how much Roy had kept secret… but the 'good police captain' he had played so long, so well, was also true. Another person like Kate had said she was: not a tragic hero with a flaw, not an evil man, not even a good man with a monkey on his back, unless the monkey was his past. A person with contradictions history had made him keep, after some casual deed, some moment of failing.

Kent knocked on the window with a small tray. Castle opened the door again.

"The muffins are stale this time of night. One apricot-almond, one pecan-pie. Tea, regular Red Rose. Milk, 2%. Can you think of anything else I can get you? It's quiet in there."

"Can I adopt you?"

"I'll ask my mom."

The bartender left. Kate sat up and used some Kleenex. He drank half a bottle of water and passed it to her. "There's tea. And day-old muffins."

"Dibs on the apricot," she answered, congested.

"We can split them." He handed her the tray and broke the muffins fairly into mostly halves. "I blame everything on low blood sugar. Insufficiently empty carbs."

Kate coughed on a crumb. He gave her the tea marked carefully "1T S" on the lid, which she could damn well take off herself. Rick considered that his severity was pretty soggy too. "Sorry," Kate said, when she could talk.

"Maybe enough apology for tonight. I…I want to hold you again, damn, I'm sorry about Montgomery, Kate. Really sorry for your loss."

"And yours." She leaned a shoulder against him, somehow, not interfering with either of their cup-holding arms.