He wants to go back.
He wants to go back to their one night in his loft, to the loose, free shift of her muscles under his palms, to the vibration of her throaty laugh against his lips, to the damp warmth of her skin beneath his body. He wants to go to a place, any place, where he won't have to watch, helpless and desperate, as Maddox takes the knife and -
He cuts the thought off, shuts it down.
Her eyes lock on his, purpose fizzing through her gaze, holding him in the present, trying to tell him something.
And then he sees it. His words have dragged Maddox from his relatively safe position, have slowly drawn him towards Castle, two feet away from Beckett (still too close, far too close), have made him gradually pivot away from her so that his back is now entirely exposed. To Beckett. To whatever plan is crackling now in the back of her eyes, intense and fierce and on the raw edge of agony, as she warns him.
When Maddox starts to turn back to her, Beckett's knees snap up. Her feet connect violently with his upper back, more power to the kick than Castle would have thought she could muster. He catches the brief flash of surprise in Maddox's eyes as the man stumbles forward, catches himself on one knee, more caught off guard than taken down, but then Beckett's hooking her legs over his shoulders, squeezing her calves around his neck, trying to choke him from behind.
Maddox's jaw clenches. His hands come up to wrap around her ankles, and he starts pushing himself up to his feet like her legs aren't even there, his face registering nothing but a blank determination. His hands pull out at her calves, start to drag them inch by torturous inch off his neck as he raises himself upwards. He's almost working for it - Castle can see the flex of the muscles of his forearms – but Beckett's legs are shaking violently from the effort of struggling against him and her eyes are full of fight, but now more and more full of a desperate kind of pain.
She cannot win this. She couldn't win against him on the roof when she was whole, when she wasn't bound to a rafter.
But, maybe – together.
Together they can do this, together in death or in a frantic fight for their lives.
Castle lunges forward, again and again, every muscle straining, shaking. The metal of the cuffs scrapes along the rafter, gaining him two, maybe three inches. Enough. It has to be enough. He wraps his hands around the rough wooden beam, his fingers slippery with blood and sweat, and contracts his abdomen, drawing his feet up and back, his eyes fixed on the struggle in front of him.
He lashes up and out with both legs, a frenetic, desperate kick at Maddox's chin.
The balls of both his feet snap up against Maddox's jawbone, hard enough that the pain of impact spikes violently through Castle's shins, up to his knees, hard enough that Maddox's head twists suddenly, sharply, and then he's falling, crumpling out of Beckett's grip, his dead weight slumping to the ground.
Castle's gaze locks on the body as he scrapes his feet over the floor and back beneath him, staggering into a standing position. He's not at a good angle to tell if Maddox's eyes are open or closed. The man's hand is still wrapped loosely around the knife. He might be twitching, might be preparing to get an arm underneath himself, to lift back up and drive the blade into Beckett's stomach -
Castle is still and silent for one second, five seconds, ten. There's only the harsh rasp of his and Beckett's breathing inside the thick and suffocating tension.
"You think he's out?" he finally asks, daring for a brief second to tear his eyes away from Maddox and glance over at Beckett. She's watching his body intently, but her own body is spasming, shaking violently against the cuffs, her lips pressed tightly together in a thin, pained lined.
"Don't - know."
Castle yanks again at his restraints. The adrenaline's pumping through him, making his muscles tremble, but he has enough awareness back to feel the brutal sting in his wrists, the deep wounds from where he's repeatedly jerked against the metal.
"We've gotta get out of here," he murmurs, his eyes lurching around the space, as though some solution will magically appear now that Maddox is lying in a heap on the ground.
"Any ideas?" Beckett asks, her words wavering and clipped, short with pain. And any second, any second Maddox could stand up.
They have to get out of here now.
"Working on it," he murmurs. He won't say no when her eyes are so clouded with agony.
"Right, then," she says, and then she's twisting, pulling against the cuffs, jerking sideways with her left elbow, her eyes squeezed shut and her jaw clenched tight and Christ he cannot watch this; he's going to pass out if she keeps wrenching her broken hand against the cuffs, just, come on, Beckett, stop -
"Stop, stop it, shit, Beckett, stop!" He lunges against his cuffs again, because he can't, he can't stay still and watch her fight against her body like this, but then her hand is slipping out, her wrecked fingers folding, collapsing into one another, and she's dropping onto her knees with a hard crack that reverberates through the quiet air.
She lands at Maddox's feet, but instead of scrambling away, she curls forward, her mangled hand pressed against her abdomen, the other, with the cuffs dangling from her wrist, clenched tightly at the top of her sternum. Trails of blood stream down both her forearms. Castle watches, dangling from a damn rafter, while she dry heaves into the dust, choking out long, sobbing gasps of air.
She's practically on top of Maddox's body. One more inch, one sideways spasm of her torso -
"Beckett, hey," he murmurs, the words welling up and tripping out of him in a useless litany. "Beckett, please, it's okay, Kate. Kate."
Her body keeps heaving, a horrible retching that shakes through her without ceasing. Her right hand hits the ground half an inch from Maddox's foot as she curls in ever further, her forehead nearly pressed against her sniper's knee.
"Please, come on, Kate, love, you've got to move." He twists ineffectually at his cuffs, vibrating with the need to be near her, to be able to reach out and lay a hand on her back, to be able to put his body between her and Maddox if the man suddenly awakens.
She's so close, too close, and Maddox is going to wake up and she'll be hunched there, vomiting into the dust, and oh God, oh God he cannot just watch this.
"Kate," he growls, agonized, desperate.
Her retching finally quiets to shuddering, gasping breaths. She glances up at him, her eyes red-rimmed, dark with pain, before tearing her gaze to Maddox.
"Need the keys," she rasps, moving even closer to the body, curling over his still form. She reaches across him, gently lifts the knife from his limp hand and throws it several feet away before her fingers stutter over his neck, hover over his carotid artery. The cuffs still dangle from her wrist. The metal bumps over Maddox's skin, jostles against the tendons of his shoulder. Her teeth dig sharply into her lip, her jaw clenches, but her hand keeps shaking, spasming with harsh, violent shudders.
She shakes her head, once, a small, frustrated growl vibrating at the back of her throat.
"Can't tell." Her hand stumbles down Maddox's chest, to his breast pocket, her fingers roaming, searching for a key that might not even be on his body. The metal of the cuffs trails behind, bumping along, sure to jolt Maddox into wakefulness at any moment.
"Stop," Castle whispers, the terror a visceral thing, clawing at his throat.
She rises awkwardly to her knees, her movement stiff and trembling, her left arm still cradled to her abdomen, her right hand fumbling into one of the pockets at the front of his jeans. It's awkward; she has to tilt forward and angle her wrist back and the cuffs catch on his belt so that she has to jerk on them.
"Stop," he whispers again, the word so strangled that she probably can't even hear it. He wants her out of here, he wants her gone, but he knows she won't leave without him, knows she wouldn't leave anyone chained to the rafter while she saved herself, just as he knows that he can't ask her to take the knife from barn floor and drive it into the unconscious man's chest.
Her small, relieved sigh vibrates through the air as she pulls her hand out of Maddox's pocket and holds a small key aloft. He chokes back everything he wants to say.
She stumbles to her feet, pitching slightly, jerking her right leg out to catch herself. The toe of her shoe nudges into Maddox's elbow. His body jolts – or maybe it's just his arm from Beckett's foot, or maybe the movement is just Castle himself, making the room sway from how sharply he reflexively jolts against the cuffs.
"Please hurry," he murmurs, unable to help it, unable to stop the words.
Her face bloodless, hands shaking, she hums in the back of her throat in response as she walks over to him, and that worries him more than almost anything, the lack of any kind of retort when he's making desperate demands for her to move faster as she's in the middle of rescuing them both.
He exhales harshly, a short sob of relief, when she reaches him. She steps into him, stretching up, onto her toes, the length of her shaking body pressing against him, her forehead at his jaw, her exhalations fast and hot against his neck. He can feel the sharp scrape of the teeth of the key against the heel of his hand, just inches from where it needs to be. Those inches might as well be miles.
The blood on their forearms slicks together and it makes him feel it for a moment, the sharp pulse where the skin on his wrists has been ruined, the hot slide of both their pain.
His neck prickles, warms, a damp heat that can only be from her tears. She leans in closer, the scrape of her teeth against his tendon now, her mouth open and exhaling jaggedly as her body presses into his. "Please," he whispers, not even sure what he's asking for as he tilts his chin toward her, kisses the top of her forehead. It's not enough, it's not anything, but it's all he can give her.
"Can't reach," she rasps, finally, finally dropping back so that she's flat on her feet. She stays close, the crown of her head tucked just underneath his chin. He ducks his head, breathes in her hair, dusty from the barn and damp with sweat. It's not fair, it's so impossibly unjust that she's gone through so much and still, still she has to keep fighting. Her mother's murder and the gunshot to her chest and being hunted down and having that bastard break her fingers and now, even now, she can't rest.
She doesn't shift for a long time, doesn't move her head away from his throat, just stands against him, drawing in long, shaky breaths. When she finally pulls away, her eyes are wet but clearer, her body still trembling, but not quite as violently.
Staring up at his wrists, she huffs a short, frustrated sigh. "Might just have to saw an arm off," she offers, attempting a smile.
He swallows through the tangled mess in his throat, tries to cobble together an expression that doesn't make the horrible ache in his chest and stomach quite so obvious. "Somewhere in here there's a metaphor."
"Don't start with me, Castle," she murmurs, still trying at that smile as her eyes flick a little too desperately around the open space.
He drags his gaze off of her, sees it almost immediately about fifteen feet away, hates himself for seeing it. "There's – ah – there's a hay bale." He jerks his chin at it.
She turns. Her shoulders lift, square into a tense line. "Right. Should have noticed."
"Kate," he starts, but she's already walking away from him, stepping too close to Maddox's body (still lying motionless on the ground, but time keeps ticking, ticking away, and he's not sure how much longer they can count on their luck), then finally bends, wraps her good hand around the twine that holds the thick stalks of hay together. She shuffles it backwards, her back bunching and straining with the effort of dragging the damn thing across the ground. He splits his focus between her shaking body and Maddox's static form. He blinks, blinks again, trying to dissipate the sharp burn at the back of his eyes.
He's not sure how long it's been when she finally reaches him, pulling the bale up against his leg. A low vibration runs through his body, the strain from watching her fight so hard while he waited helplessly. She must see it when she glances into his eyes. "Next time, you can be the one with the broken fingers who escapes the cuffs and drags hay bales around a barn," she says through her heavy exhalations.
He tries not to let his face crumple at that.
She climbs carefully, shakily up, pressing the length of herself against him, and he feels something inside him release at the contact, at the slick slide of her sweaty, bloody hand past his, at the soft snick of the small key into the lock of the cuffs.
His shoulders drop, a fiery, fizzling pain immediately shooting down from them, through his aching biceps, pulsing forearms, throbbing wrists.
He wants to sit down. Wants to grab her and drag her onto the floor with him, curl his body around hers and lie there until they both stop shaking, lie there for hours and days and weeks, until they're both healed. He wants to take the key from her, unlock the cuffs that still dangle from her right wrist. But –
He makes himself step away from her. Forces his shaking legs to carry him over to Maddox's still form, lets his body slump down onto the floor, makes his fingers press hard into the pulse-point at the sniper's throat.
Castle slows his breathing, sliding his eyes shut, trying to concentrate. The prickling return of sensation to his hand and the quiet, exhausted vibration of his arm make it almost impossible, but he can wait, they have time now, he can wait to feel if there's a thump of life underneath his fingertips. If there is –
If there is, there's the knife on the floor, just feet away. He couldn't ask Beckett to do it, couldn't ask her to kill an unconscious man, but – the look in her eyes after the bullet tore through her chest. The still-lingering bruises on her neck, arms, shoulders, ribs. The desperate snap and arch of her body as Maddox broke her fingers.
Castle doesn't like to think of himself as a cold-blooded killer, doesn't like to acknowledge the darker impulses that are usually so latent in his blood, but he would relish wrapping his hand around the cold metal of the knife and pushing it through this man's skin and muscle and bone.
He waits for so long, his knees aching, his arms throbbing. He waits until he feels the warmth of her hand, pressed against his shoulder. He waits until he's sure.
"He's dead," he rasps. The rush of relief comes not from the words, not from the still and lifeless skin of the man beneath his fingertips, but from the soft and steady exhale of the woman crouched behind him.