Chapter Four: And the past echoing through our bloodstreams is freighted with different language, different meanings.

They woke her up in recovery to make sure the anaesthesia wasn't going to depress her vitals below acceptable limits. They had already brought her out of unconsciousness once, but she only vaguely remembered that. It was like being weightless, like nothing from the head down and dizzy from the head up. She remembered giggling, or trying to, flirting with the anaesthesiologist maybe? She'd be mortified later. This time, it was like waking up still drunk. Her senses blunted, the ache wasn't immediate, but it grew steadfast until she felt split open and vulnerable. Her head was swimming too pleasantly for true panic, but the impulse faded slowly.

Someone was telling her not to move. The voice was familiar so she complied.

"I'm going to give you more morphine," said the voice, "Since you've been breathing fine on your own. Everything looks good, and it's harder to get once you're on the ward."

She realised the voice belonged to Josh. That made sense. He was a doctor. She didn't know why she thought it was Castle, or her father maybe? She let the morphine slow her panicking heart.

Recovery was loud but the drugs were white noise and a pleasant, warm sensation flooding through her lower half. She fell asleep again, dimly aware of the pulse ox monitor pinching at her finger.

The next time she was dreaming. The pain was there, biting from within in a way she had never experienced before, but she wasn't limited by it like she thought she should be. It was far too bright, but even when she raised her arm to shield herself from the light, it made her squint. She was alone and breathing was like fire, creeping from her mouth down through her lungs. Her mother was standing in front of her, repeating words and phrases said by other people.

It's about you needing a place to hide, because you've been chasing this thing so long you don't know who you are without it.

She tried to look away, but she couldn't. The jumble of words that she couldn't understand echoed in her skull. "Mom?" she tried to ask, but she raised her hands to her lips when no sound came out. Confused, she looked around and saw nothing.

When you walked into the 12th, I felt the hand of God. You've got it ass backwards. You can't hide from him. The devil just blinked. Are you ok? The special today is serial arsonist. Don't leave me, please.

None of it was right. She furrowed her brow, concentrating, trying to make sense of it.

Kate. Kate. Kate.

Her name, over and over. Since words were useless, she tried touch, but when she reached out, her mother's image faded beneath her touch. No. Everything in her screamed it. Stay.

But the disappearing ghost in front of her continued to evanesce. Johanna did say one last thing, and that was right, or at least it could have been; Kate, I love you.

Then she was gone and everything was dark again.

She finally shook the anaesthesia and sedation early the next morning. She tried to move, experimentally, her limbs feeling like dead weight and her chest aching, and immediately regretted it. Stubbornness had always been a character trait though, and Kate Beckett persisted. Eventually, she managed to half-sit and her rustling had alerted at least someone by her bedside that she was conscious.

"Hey," Josh whispered, nodding towards Castle. "Everyone else is asleep."

"Hey." She furrowed her brow, taking in her surrounds.

It was a hospital, that much was evident, but she thought she'd left the days of waking up in strange places far behind her in college. Kate Beckett made no exceptions for medical care - she liked to be awake and in full possession of her senses when doctored. This was why she hated mind-altering medications, even the therapeutic ones like anaesthesia for surgery. They made you so slow.

Everything before the shooting came back to her as her lethargic mind began to turn. "Everyone else?"

"Your dad's outside sleeping because the nurses took pity on him and set him up in a dark corner somewhere but Castle refused to leave. The others went home, but they'll be back as soon as they know you're awake."

"Don't jump the gun." She winced a little at the unfortunate choice of words. "Pun not intended, but whatever this shit is, I make no promises about my state of consciousness being prolonged."

"How are you feeling?" Josh was already in doctor mode.

She could see him reaching for a stethoscope and that was about the last thing she felt up to. She fixed him with a glare. "How do you think?"

"Point taken. But fair warning, they're going to force it on you in about an hour anyway."

"Perhaps in an hour, the entire front half of my body will stop feeling like I'm being stabbed by teeny tiny broadswords every time I move."

"Do you remember what happened?" Josh asked her.

She nodded. "I think so."

"You were shot. Luckily for you it missed the important stuff, mostly. And someone wasn't up on their first aid."

He nodded to Castle in the corner as he trailed off. Beckett made an effort to observe. He was asleep and looked like he'd survived a particularly violent slasher film. Her eyes widened a little in horror when she realised it was her blood.

"Don't worry," Josh hurried on when he noticed the her expression, "They replaced most of it in surgery. You were well on your way to hypovolemic shock, and it would've been a lot worse if your shadow over there hadn't completely ignored proper procedure and stuck his hand in an open body cavity."

"You kind of admire it though," she accused, seeing through his words easily.

The surgeon shrugged, "From a technical standpoint, I'm kind of impressed either by his luck or instinct. The bullet punctured your right lung and caused some damage to the pericardium, which is the protective lining around your heart. It's lucky they got you here so quickly."

By the look on his face she didn't doubt it.

Josh continued after a pause. "You had a pretty convincing tension pneumothorax coming in, as well as cardiac tamponade, which means you were bleeding into your pericardium causing a build-up of pressure against the pumping action of the heart. When that pressure gets high enough, it causes cardiac arrest. Before they even got you into theatre they'd stuck the chest tubes and a twenty-five gauge needle into you."

He trailed off, feeling haunted by it. It had taken them twelve minutes to get her from the ambulance into surgery; twelve very long, very chaotic minutes in which his girlfriend had bled out, chest exposed in a kind of sick parody of other, more intimate moments, in front of him and he'd been powerless to do a thing.

The attending cardiothoracic surgeon had spared him a single glance after he'd finished the paramedic's sentence with her name and told him, in no uncertain terms, to find something else to do with his time. Ethically and practically, he knew it was good protocol so he hung back and let the trauma team do their work but his surgeon's fingers had itched. He was not a man accustomed to inaction.

"They cracked your chest to repair the damage to the pericardium and stop the bleeding so you've got a chest drain in as well as the thoracostomy tubes. They'll take them out in a few days. The bullet nicked one of your ribs and CPR cracked a few more for good measure, so breathing will be painful for a while. If you're up to it tomorrow, we'll want to get you up and walking around. For now though, try not to move too much."

"I don't think that will be a problem." Beckett winced, trying to sit up a little more. "And I'm guessing this is fully dosed on painkillers too?"

He moved his foot to elevate the back of the bed with the electronic controls to help her in her efforts to sit upright. "They've still got you on a comparatively low dose of morphine. It's a balancing act. The less you need the better, because you'll have reduced lung function while you heal and we want to reduce respiratory depression as much as possible, but you do need adequate pain relief or you could go into shock," he cautioned her, "So don't go being too tough. Which it seems you have a tendency to do," he said as he studied her face carefully. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Josh."

"You never told me you had re-opened your mother's case. You certainly never told me people were getting shot over it."

"Josh."

"You could have died Kate," he argued, refusing to drop it. "And Castle's family and your dad were there. Why didn't you ask me to come?"

"I," she paused, shaking her head. Her hair was caked with dried blood; she felt it matted against her cheek. "You didn't know Montgomery. And it all happened so fast."

"Tell me the real reason," he requested quietly, eyes boring into hers.

She winced again, but not from physical pain. It was from what she saw in his gaze, that he already knew anything and everything she could tell him. The pain of each hard-fought pull of air stopped suddenly as she held her breath, her eyes stinging with tears.

"I'm sorry," she managed to whisper, reaching out until her fingers curled around his hand. It wasn't really adequate. She didn't know how or what could be. They'd settle for not enough though; it was a habit.

He looked away. "Me too."

She spent an uncomfortable pause studying the side of his face, trying to read more into the feeling behind his words.

At length, he tipped his head backwards to stare at the regular pattern of the hospital ceiling. He let out a breath then faced her with less tumult in his expression, even managing a half-smile. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up now. You're here, you're alive. That's all that matters."

She tilted her head to one side and picked up on the change in his tone. Her response was teasing. "You didn't seem very happy to see me."

"Kate," he said, the gravity back in his tone. "You have no idea."

"Were you working? Did you …" She was looking at him with a strange mix of horror and sympathy. "The surgery. Did you operate?"

"I was in the middle of a shift." He shrugged. "My boss ordered me off the floor when they brought you in though. Had to watch from the gallery," his free hand curled into a fist against the woven blanket. He punched it, lightly, but she saw the frustration behind the gesture. "Hospital policy."

At times in the months since he hadn't gone to Haiti, she had found herself gripped with a kind of panic at the weight of what he had given up for her, for their relationship. The fact was it had been easy to ask him to make the choice. In the heat of the argument, it had slipped out and even afterwards, she saw the logic of it. But when he had made it, when he had chosen her, she realised that had their roles been reversed, she would have chosen differently. That alone would have been enough to make her second guess herself.

The added complication of a certain writer was just an exacerbating factor. Several truths had made themselves quite glaringly known to her. She had kissed someone else, which might have been a minor discretion, but she knew, deep down, that it really wasn't, because of who that someone else had been, and that Josh would almost certainly consider it a lie of omission to hide the fact. She also knew, without a doubt, that when confronted with her mortality twice in the space of twenty-four hours, first in the freezer and then in the moments before Castle had diffused the dirty bomb, she was glad that it was him beside her. Still, there was something in her that told her to hold back when it came to her partner. It wasn't fear. It was an instinct she had always had. Sometimes she thought they felt too much, if that was possible, that if they gave into it, it would consume them. She didn't want that. Love was one thing, madness was another.

And she did love Josh. It was different, certainly less visceral. With him, everything felt lighter. He reminded her of a younger version of herself, someone she yearned to be again in lots of ways. More than that though, they were so alike. In that moment, she realised it with a clarity that was stronger than ever before. He loved his job, but it was more than that. It was a vocation. It was the need to do something, the inability to do nothing. She was the same. They were saviours of sorts. He saved lives with scalpels and sutures; she did it with a badge and a gun. But they understood that bad things happened in the world and they had to fight them, chase away shadows.

(The morphine must have been making her especially literary, she thought absently. Castle would enjoy that.)

She knew why being cut out of her surgery bothered him so much. She ran her thumb along his knuckles. "I know," she murmured quietly. "How hard that must have been."

He smiled at her, genuinely. It was a quiet moment. "I know you do."

She tugged at his hand. "I'd kiss you myself, but everything from the neck down might protest."

He gave her a sly look, but didn't comment, leaning instead to kiss her lightly. He smirked into it when she opened her mouth against his. "Nuh-uh." He pecked her lip and pulled away. "Nothing that raises your heart rate twenty beats per minute above your resting rate for at least six weeks."

She raised an eyebrow. "And what makes you think you're that interesting to me Doctor?"

"Your heart monitor betrays you Detective."

"Mmm." She gave him a mock-displeased look. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

His face turned sincere. "I do actually," he said, apologetic. "I was meant to do a round of the ward ten minutes ago."

"Then what are you still doing here?"

Beckett was momentarily distracted by the writer slumped in the plastic chair across the room. It was more than just the prickling sensation on the back of her neck, but she had the sudden sense that Castle was doing a pretty decent job of feigning slumber. She felt uncomfortable and wriggled slightly, ignoring the pain in her incision when she did.

"Making sure you weren't going to try to die on me again." Josh stood and bent to kiss her forehead. "I asked them to put me on night duty tonight, swapped with Anderson, so I can duck in and check on you if you're not sleeping."

She nodded once. "Go, I'll still be here when you get back."

He let go of her hand and hurried from the room. He didn't look back, but she waved at his retreating form with a half-hearted curl of her fingers.

"Castle," she called when the door closed behind him. It came out more sharply than she intended, and even the meagre effort it took to raise her voice caused a stab in her chest. It faded to an ache soon enough. "You can stop pretending you're asleep now."

His head jerked up. "How did you know?"

Her eyes narrowed at him but it didn't last. The animosity they feigned – mostly for the fun of it now, the sting had died years ago – faded almost instantly and they were left staring at each other, intensely.

She thought maybe he was trying to communicate without words, as they so often did, but she couldn't quite understand it. It might have been the drug-induced haze or the new words, harsh and otherwise, that now couldn't be unspoken. Maybe it was just the whirlwind of the past few days, slowly settling in between them like dust. It was time to pick up what pieces they could and jam them back together.

Or maybe not; maybe they could afford to take pause.

She tipped her head to the side and beckoned him closer with her hand, but he didn't move.

Beckett let her tongue dart out and wet her lips as the silence stretched between them. Even the writer didn't have words for the moment, for all that had happened and all that could have. She took a sharp pull of air to calm her overambitious cardiac pacemakers and was stunned when the rest of the muscle protested, the pain and the shock of it caused her to lean forward and break his gaze.

He was at her side immediately, and by the time she had recovered enough to be aware of his presence at her shoulder, she had realised it was going to be a long, long hospital stay. He was going to drive her mad with his concern. After a minute, she turned her head slowly and gave him a stern look. "You're going to have to stop that."

"What?"

"Well, I've only been conscious for fifteen minutes and you're already coddling me."

"I am not."

"You're hovering."

He sank into the chair beside the bed, resigned. "Yeah well. You see all this?" Castle gestured to his clothing. "It's yours. Tends to make a guy concerned."

"I heard you did something stupid. I mean after you stupidly tried to get between me and a bullet."

"You were bleeding out." He was stubborn. "And … I wasn't thinking of myself."

"You should have been," she said quietly. "You have a daughter. I don't want to be responsible for taking away her parent."

He ran his hand over his face. "God Kate."

The anger, which was easier to process than any of her other feelings, went out of her immediately when she saw just how much it had affected him on his face. She reached out, her hand falling short of his head, and sighed. "Castle."

He looked up. "Are you ok?"

"Josh says I will be." Her hand was still extended, hanging in between them. She motioned for him to bring the chair closer. "Have you slept at all?"

"Barely."

The rubber stops on the chair's legs squeaked against the hospital linoleum as he shuffled it closer. When she could reach him, her hand smoothed the unusual angles his hair had adopted. He reached up and took her wrist, stilling her ministrations.

Their eyes met again.

She cleared her throat. "You should… we bothshould get some rest."

"Are you going to kick me out?"

Her lips quirked upwards at their edges; she shook her head. "I'll leave that to the nurses. For now," she murmured, flexing her fingers against his scalp, "I'm sorry."

"You didn't…" he trailed off and squeezed at her wrist. "It wasn't your fault."

"I know. But you were worried."

"How could I not be? You nearly died."

"I'm still here," she murmured, fingers brushing along his hairline. "They put me back together just fine. Hush."

Neither of them commented on the tears. He buried his head in the blanket to hide them and let her stroke his hair, absently.

She knew it would have been wise to mention what he had said to her and in front of all their friends. All their lines were being redrawn, and if she wanted to have any say in that at all, now was probably the time. Once everyone else crowded in there wouldn't be a spare moment until much later, but she didn't know what to say that wouldn't dismiss it but wouldn't turn it into something too big to contain. She couldn't create another mess. She'd done more than enough of that lately, and despite all they'd said, they'd still never really addressed the heart of the disagreement at her apartment.

Besides, did it really have to be a gauntlet thrown? There was a common misconception about those three words, and that was that they didn't bear clarification. That, she knew, was fraught with dangers. There were many ways to mean them, and many more ways to use them carelessly, especially in the heat of a moment. She had the sense he didn't regret them, but Castle had always been the kind to rush in blind. She wasn't in any state to point out the flaws in his grand ideas.

So Beckett remembered - the look on his face and the way all the words seemed torn from him - how could she really forget? But in the end she was a coward.

She pretended she didn't.

Instead, she let her hand tangle through his, squeezing, until they both fell asleep.

Author's Notes: I just wanted to make a quick/hideously long note (ymmv) about POV and the shifts within the narrative. I got a lot of feedback from the betas along the lines of "why have you changed POV again?" which is completely valid, but to be honest, I was never going for third person limited here. We tend to stick with Beckett a lot more than the other characters, but because the story is essentially a series of duologues (I think there are maybe three scenes with more than two characters present), I decided not to extensively re-write around the shifts.

I gather that some people find it jarring to move between perspectives like that, but that's okay. It's not meant to be seamless. And I do want the reader to be able to see what everyone in such claustrophobic scenes is thinking and feeling. I really don't see any way around it, other than leaving out details I think the reader needs. Anyway, I've been reading a lot on POV in third person narrative and I don't think there's any real hard and fast rulesbut if it's bothering you or you have any opinion at all, feel free to weigh in. My gut feeling is that the story would actually be weaker without it (though my betas disagree).

Thank you as always to all those reading and sharing your thoughts. You're wonderful.