Author's Notes: I'm sorry it took so long to update. My betas pointed out that Chapter Seven needed reworking, so I cut it into little pieces and shoved it into Chapter Six, but then this one needed reworking around that. Good news is the next chapter is mostly done, bad news is Chapter Seven has been gutted so severely that it needs a word transplant. Le sigh. All of this would be fine if I wasn't cramming like crazy going into the end of my first year of medical school. So, sincere apologies. I hope it's worth the wait.

And thank you so much for all your amazing feedback! I've really loved hearing some of the things people have had to say about this little story. I will reply to all of it, I'm just swamped right now, but don't mistake me, it's all appreciated. (I'd print it out and frame it, if that wasn't weird and a little narcissistic.)

Chapter Five: We're out in a country that has no language, no laws.

The first day post-op was a circus of doctors and friends and her small, mostly non-genetic family coming and going. She was hazy and didn't really have the patience for some of them, but at least the ones who knew her best didn't linger too long and if they did, they demanded nothing of her.

Her father was her first visitor and he didn't stay long. Jim Beckett nearly cried with relief when he saw she was awake, and collapsed into the side unoccupied by Castle with a few shaky sighs. She felt his lips press into her knuckles.

"Katie," he whispered.

"I'm okay dad." She squeezed his hand and gave him a small, reassuring smile.

They had somehow managed to repair their relationship into something like what it had been before her mother's death, but they still sometimes struggled with things beyond the ordinary. She had parented him for nearly half as long as he had parented her and part of her couldn't forget that. And while he'd asked and been granted absolution by a higher power, as a father he was yet to truly forgive himself. He was clutching his chip from AA in the pocket of his other hand. She didn't have to look to know.

"I love you," she told him.

"I love you too." There were tears in his eyes when he looked up at her. "But you have to let this go."

"Not you too." Beckett tried not to scowl, but the hint of it was there. "Dad, we're so close."

"I can't lose you." He sat upright and patted her hand, fingers coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. His eyes were closed. When he opened them again, she'd managed to school her expression.

"I won't be leaving this bed for some time," she told him, "We can talk about it later."

"You're right." He let go of her hand and stood to press a kiss to the top of her head. "But you have to learn to accept the things you can't change."

"Are you going to a meeting?" She followed his train of thought.

"I need to. They run one downstairs. I'll be back as soon as it's done."

She nodded. "Thank you."

"What for?"

"For coming yesterday. It… it meant a lot to have you there."

"You're not a child anymore." His hand was resting on her shoulder. "That doesn't mean you're not my daughter Kate. I know it hasn't always been true, but I'll always be there when you need me. You don't stop being my little girl just because you're not a girl anymore, not to me."

"Oh dad." She felt herself want to cry all over again. It was going to be a long day of that, she could tell.

"You try and get some rest sweetheart. I'll be back soon."

She nodded, mutely. He hadn't called her that since she was seven years old. It felt strange.

Beside her, Castle snorted in his sleep and she remembered he was there with a start. One of her chest tubes caught against her hospital gown as she moved and she shuffled uncomfortably until it fell back into a less painful position. Then, worn from feeling and warmed by the small smile on Castle's face in response to whatever he was dreaming, she let herself doze.

About an hour later, on their way to work, Ryan and Esposito announced their presence loudly until they took in the scene in front of them. Beckett stirred immediately and gave them a pointed look. They slunk into the room feeling a little sheepish. Castle was still asleep, face curled into her hand. Her colleagues looked back and forth between them once and shared a glance, but didn't comment and she had never been so grateful.

On the investigative front, the news wasn't good. They'd been ordered off both cases; the nature of the crimes was beginning to make a federal investigation look necessary and the FBI would be taking over. Ryan and Esposito had been packing up all the information for a few days, and surreptitiously omitting anything alluding to Montgomery's involvement. Their new boss sent her best wishes, but also a strict warning to all of them that unofficial investigations wouldn't be tolerated. She wasn't the kind of woman you argued with without probable cause. They told Beckett all of it in a rush and then tried to distract her with anecdotes from the precinct, but it didn't work. She was processing all of it more slowly than usual, but finally told them to cooperate with Gates and the feds for the time being.

"Wait and see who's running the case at the FBI," she said. "Maybe it will be someone we know. Otherwise, wait to get on Gates' good side before you piss her off."

"She already hates us," Esposito groaned. "We're tied up in what she sees as all her messes."

"Does she have a detail on the two of you?" Beckett frowned, concentration elsewhere.

"No, why?"

She raised her hand to her chest and let a finger lightly trace the dressing covering her surgical wound. "This doesn't feel right."

"I don't think it's meant to," Ryan quipped, but gently.

"No, I mean... why just me? I didn't know anything. I mean, not for sure. And if it was just because I was asking questions." Her brow crinkled. "Then you were allhelping me; they must know that. And until someone gets to the bottom of this, I'd say you were all potential targets. This was a bold move. It was the middle of the day in a public place. Why not wait? You and I both know they could've found a better way. It was brash and it attracted a lot of attention, which has never been their MO before. I'd say whoever's at the top is running scared, and scared criminals tend to get stupid."

"You think he's going to slip up?" Esposito tapped the sheets next to her foot but pulled his hand back suddenly when he realised what he was doing. She smirked a little.

"I think," she spoke as she pulled her hand out from beneath Castle's face as gently as she could manage and made and released a fist, trying to restore the blood flow. By some miracle, he slept through it. She lay her hands in her lap. "That there's a possibility he's got a contingency plan. Castle said to me, before Montgomery died, that everyone associated with this case was dead... well," her gaze flicked over them both, "We're all associated with this case. Talk to Gates. If she doesn't see sense, I'll call her. You both need to be careful. And," she let her palm rest against Castle's hair and she looked down at him while she finished the thought. "Don't tell any of them. I don't want to scare them. But he needs someone on him too. And try to stop him from doing anything stupid."

"That's more your area Beckett." Esposito gave her a much too meaningful look.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Shouldn't the two of you be leaving soon if you don't want to further endear yourselves to our new boss?"

Ryan checked his watch. "She's right."

"Glad you're still kicking Beckett." Esposito lay a hand on her shoulder gently.

Ryan nodded behind him. "I think your dad's waiting outside. We'll tag him in."

"Thanks," she yawned out the vowel.

When they were gone, she nudged Castle awake. He started upright and blinked around, looking slightly more alert than before, but still, far too troubled. She gave him a contrite smile. "Sorry to wake you, but I think it might be about to get a little busy in here. You missed Ryan and Esposito and the nurses, but there are still the doctors and your family and my father ... and Josh said he'd stop by if he could."

His eyebrows flirted with the idea of shooting up at that last, but he fought to keep his expression neutral. "I'm not exactly presentable am I?" He was gesturing to his clothes.

"You could use a shower," she agreed. "And maybe some sleep in a real bed."

"Then who would annoy the crap out of you all day?" he asked.

"I don't know if I'll be particularly good company," she said sadly.

"You need space," he inferred.

"I think you do too." She let her hand start towards him then fall lamely on the sheets beside her leg. It was true. She didn't know how to help him find the perspective he needed. It was the kind of thing she'd always thought you had to do alone. "And on a more practical note, I think I'm going to sleep for most of it."

He opened his mouth to argue, but Martha and Alexis saved her from any more protests. Castle's mother owned the room in the quiet way people often forgot she was capable of. She could be larger and louder than life, almost certainly where Castle got it from, but she also had a depth to her, something that she tapped into in her more legitimate dramatic roles. Beckett had always felt slightly connected to that and even though the actress remained an acquaintance, the few times they had talked, seriously, she had seen someone worthy of her respect.

Alexis, on the other hand, was quieter than Beckett remembered her. She murmured her greeting and hung back behind her father, one hand curling around his shoulder protectively.

The conversation was short and polite, full of the usual well wishes, until they ran out of small talk. The silence invited the earlier tension back into the room. Castle met her eyes, silently asking a question. Beckett gave him the smallest shake of her head, so small that it didn't even look like a gesture to his family. He sighed in response.

"Richard, why don't you walk Alexis to school?" Martha made the suggestion amiably, but the persuasion in her tone was hard to argue with. "I'll wait until you get back. You should at least stop by the loft and change darling." She adopted the seat opposite her son.

He nodded once and Alexis just sighed. "I'm glad you're okay Detective Beckett," she said civilly but her smile was the first genuine one since they'd arrived.

Beckett made a note to ask Castle how his daughter was coping. It was one thing to witness a shooting at twenty after several months of training, having already imagined it a hundred times. It was entirely another to be sixteen and sheltered to the full extent of the horror and violence the world was capable of. She knew firsthand that the experience could shatter your illusions.

When they were gone, Martha crossed her legs and began rummaging in her purse. "I bought you this." She pulled out a modest collection of books and made room for them on the table beside the bed. "I picked a wide selection, including some of the older ones. Richard mentioned you liked to re-read them."

"Oh Martha." Beckett reached out and let her fingers brush over the worn dust jacket of the first Derek Storm novel. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it. We would've bought flowers but not only the hospital gift shop was open at this hour and they were all starting to droop. There's nothing more intolerably depressing than wilted flowers, especially in a hospital room. Now, tell me, how are you reallyfeeling?"

"I've been better," she admitted. "But it's not too bad. Josh says it'll get worse before it gets better, when the anaesthesia wears off completely. But it's better than the alternative."

"In the long run, definitely. But don't let that stop you from complaining as much as you'd like in the meantime. Speaking of which, is Richard making a nuisance of himself?"

She shook her head. "No. But I think he'd live here if I let him. And I'm just not sure..."

"Of where you stand." Martha reached out and patted her hand. "Understandable. My son… he lives too much of his life in his own head to really have a sense of timing. I won't say any more about it, but I do hope you can forgive him for that. Now, I know people must be hovering in and out and about all day in this place. I can leave you for some time alone if you'd like."

"No, no, it's fine." Beckett still felt a little bit panicked at the idea of being left alone. It was irrational, and she certainly didn't intend to tell anyone about it, but she wasn't quite ready to confront that post-traumatic fear. She swiped her fringe from her face and made a face at how dirty it felt. "I keep forgetting there's blood in my hair."

"That we can fix." Martha was up and out of the room before Beckett even had a chance to process any of it. She returned brandishing a bowl of warm soapy water and two hospital-monogramed towels slung over both shoulders. "It's not shampoo I'm afraid, and we're not to get any on your dressings, but we'll make do."

She moved to sit forward but Martha tutted her. "You stay still. Lord knows it must be killing you to move and it'll go everywhere if we're not careful. Here." She tapped the bed flat slowly with the toe of a brightly coloured heel and lay the tub beside her head. It was one of those surreal hospital moments, where you have to accept help that you might otherwise resist, and she let Castle's mother scoop up the ends of her hair and rinse them in the soapy water. She chatted idly as she worked, telling her some story or another about dyeing an actress' hair the night of a dress rehearsal in an off-Broadway play in the seventies. It was a true comedy of errors, and Martha told a story almost as well as her son. And it set Beckett at ease as best as could be managed.

"Hang on, I'll just change this, it's a little… rusty."

There was a sink in the corner of the room. Beckett shifted enough to see the bloodstained water slip down the drain. She turned away again when Martha approached, unsure of what either of them could say if the situation demanded comment. She realised that's what it was, the hesitation that seemed like awkwardness between everyone who had come and gone – it wasn't what it seemed like at all, it wasn't that they didn't know how to say what they felt, it was that there was nothing to say at all. No words could be adequate. Castle's mother, at least, seemed to prefer actions. That jarred with what she knew about the actress, but she found it pleasantly surprising.

When her hair was rinsed and wrapped in a towel and several pillows were propped between her and the wet patch on the sheets, Martha sat down beside her. "I always feel quite useless in times like this," she confided quietly. "I'm much more at home when the going's good. So you'll have to forgive me if I do things. I find I don't have a lot to say otherwise."

Beckett felt her lips curve into a smile. "You've been very helpful. Thank you. Sometimes it's nice, not to say anything or at least, nothing important."

"Well if it's trivial conversation you want, I can help you there. Here, help me pick out colours for my office at the acting school. The only rule is no beige, it's dull and common and I won't have any of it. I was thinking apple green…"

She pulled a pile of fabric swatches from her purse and they rifled through them together until Jim Beckett returned from his meeting. And then the younger looked on in amusement as the older Beckett was roped into making decisions about shades of paint. Martha and her father bickered good-naturedly about the merits of perfect pistachioover sassy grass green until she felt her eyelids begin to fall closed. She had the urge to tell them she could tell they were doing it for her benefit, but instead she smiled at the strange theatre and let it lull her into sleep.

When Castle showed up at the precinct, Ryan and Esposito weren't quick enough to hide their surprise. The question passed across their faces fleetingly, but he answered it regardless.

"She's sleeping." It was a half-truth, and the detectives could probably tell. They all clung to the lie. "And I wanted to feel useful."

Esposito shrugged. "Not much to do around here. We packed up the case files and sent them over to the fibbies this morning."

"Seems a bit sick sitting around for the phone to ring in homicide," Ryan observed, tapping his pen against the paper hugged by a manila folder. They were working on paperwork. "But here we are."

"No leads on the shooter?" Castle asked, realizing what he'd missed. The shell-shock at the hospital, that temporary break from reality, had been longer than he'd thought. And he'd slept through their earlier brief with Beckett.

He could hear the pause, the pull of air and the hesitation.

"What is it?" He'd detected a hint of a secret.

"Well we're not really meant to be on this," Esposito begins. "And Gates gets her panties in a twist about just about anything… but."

Castle flopped down in Beckett's chair. It squeaked in protest and the wheels rolled back slightly. He caught himself against the desk to steady himself then slid over towards Ryan and Esposito.

He leaned closer.

Ryan crowded beside Esposito's computer.

"We didn't have a lot to work with," Esposito admitted. "Crime scene management was a bit of a mess … we're not used to the vics leaving in ambulances in the thick of it."

"Plus it was Beckett," Ryan interjected, quietly.

They all shared a look.

"Yeah," Esposito continued, lost in the middle of the thought for a moment. He found it post-haste. "We were out in the open, so no security footage, and aside from the people at the funeral, there were no witnesses. No one saw anyone leaving the cemetery, but the grounds are extensive, so that's not strange."

"What about..." Castle lowered his voice. "Montgomery? He knew it was coming. Any chance he spoke to someone involved before he died?"

"Nothing." Ryan sighed. "We went through everything we could find without raising suspicion, now and twelve years ago."

"We did get a lead though, from ballistics," Esposito said. "It's not much, the bullet they recovered wasn't standard, so only a few places you can buy them legally and a few more who sell them on the black market. It could be nothing," he paused, "We haven't had time to chase it up properly, now that we're off the case."

Esposito looked at the sudden horror on his previously captive audience's faces with some confusion. "What?"

Ryan nodded his head towards their boss, who had chosen that moment to appear at Esposito's back. Her hand was curled around her hip against the fabric of her grey dress suit and her mouth was set in a stern line, matched by the furrow between her brows. Iron Gates lived up to the name and reputation that preceded her.

"If you're done gossiping Detective." She sounded more terrifying than she looked, which Castle had seriously doubted was possible before she spoke.

Esposito whirled around in his chair to face his judgement. "Uh. Ma'am."

All three of them searched for a clue in the new Captain's expression, trying to determine exactly how much Gates had heard. She was looking at them expectantly. "Well?"

Ryan's head tilted the barest fraction in his confusion.

Esposito repeated his earlier honorific with an inflected question. "Ma'am?"

"How is she? I assume you're all talking about Detective Beckett."

There was a collective release of tension - intercostal muscles relaxing, lungs expanding - all silent, but the relief was palpable just the same.

Castle jumped in to perpetuate the fortunate misunderstanding. "She was awake when I left," he said. "She's doing well, all things considered. The doctors say it looks good."

"Good to hear Mister Castle." Ryan and Esposito looked shocked at their Captain's brief display of something like compassion. Gates shattered the illusion with her next words though. "But with Detective Beckett out of action, I'm approaching short staffed which means you two-" she pointed to Ryan and Esposito in turn as she spoke. "Should be busy, if Mister Castle is done wasting your time. I doubt Detective Beckett's condition could fill a novel." Gates, it seemed, was not his biggest fan. "I just got a call about a probable homicide uptown, MEs office has already sent someone up there. Get to work."

They scrambled to comply leaving Castle blinking in the face of Gates' appraising stare. It wasn't quite his first run in with Montgomery's successor, but he had the continuing impression she'd seen him as a liability long before their paths had crossed.

The clack of heels as the new boss retreated to her office reminded him of Beckett.

Ryan turned back as he and Esposito made for the elevator. "You coming?"

Castle wavered, momentarily. There were choices. Beckett was pushing him away, and in the face of everything that had happened of late, of everything he was sure she'd felt and what she'd done and how she'd neededhim, for a brief wonderful moment (and he was sick for thinking that, he knew), it was his own chest wound. It hurt, and in the face of that pain his first instinct was childish, petulant, vengeful, but he couldn't say if his presence or absence would hurt her more. And besides, when she pushed and he pushed back, in the tug of war of wills, he usually lost. Too much had already been lost. Let her re-group and re-build, pull away. Some part of him did believe it was fate, that she'd come round eventually. He could wait.

"It's something to do bro," Esposito interrupted his thoughts. "We could use your help."

(He was being unnecessarily generous; Castle knew they'd get along fine without him.)

"Sure," Castle nodded once, the physical gesture displacing some of the heavier thoughts.

He followed Esposito into the elevator and watched the numbers light up. Behind him, Ryan reached out and let a hand glance his shoulder briefly. He didn't speak, though Castle thought he might, but it was an appreciated gesture.

Castle rode in the back. The journey was silent, apart from Esposito's customary cursing at the traffic.

Despite wanting or needing (he'd been losing track of the difference lately) to feel useful, the crime scene proved lacking as a distraction. It was the kind of murder that would usually have him spinning wild theories, but somehow he'd lost his usual literary bent without his muse. It felt strange without her, without Beckett, Kate. He couldn't stop himself from expecting her to be there, expecting it to be like any other day, his eyes following the curves of her body as she bent to examine details, her coffee order in his hand, her voice issuing commands. Esposito probably filled her metaphorical shoes better than he would have filled her literal ones (and certainly well enough to close the case), but he wasn't as easy on the eyes. And without her, Castle found his mind didn't scramble to fantastic conclusions like it usually did. He didn't have her thoughts on his tongue in their strange synergy.

It felt wrong.

The victim didn't look like Beckett at all. She was younger, blonde, fuller in the lips and hips and (it was minutia, but he noticed) she wore acrylic nails. He couldn't imagine Kate Beckett submitting herself to the chemical air and lethargic pace of a nail salon. They couldn't have been more different, up until the moment that Lanie looked up and declared that the cause of death had been a bullet wound to the heart. She was looking past Ryan and Esposito when she said it, right at Castle. He'd had to swallow down the visceral reaction to her diagnosis.

The obvious Bon Jovi joke stuck on his tongue. It was too morbid, even for his tastes, at least that day, when it could have been Beckett's body Lanie was examining, could have been an entirely different murder scene. Not when it so nearly had been.

Castle waited until it wasn't obvious or awkward to leave the crime scene physically, but from that moment his mind was elsewhere. He neededto see her. There was some part of his brain that was constantly whirring with words, subconsciously organizing them into sentences and storylines that only became conscious much later, but at that moment, his mind was as quiet as it ever was. It was his chest that rebelled. It was tight with what he recognized as fear, what remained of the panic of yesterday. Beckett was alive and he wanted to see it, to truly believe it.

There were still too many things that could go wrong. (He'd been playing doctor on Google to pass the time when she was still unconscious after surgery.) And as much as he could trust her word that they would talk when she was ready, he couldn't trust her ailing body not to fail on them both. Not yet.

He wandered six blocks across town with his hands in his pockets fighting the urge. It faded, eventually, to a throb behind his temples, his heart still hammering in his chest.

She wanted space.

He scowled at the thought.

Space was the last thing he wanted, the last thing he was convinced they needed. He wanted to crowd her, to feel her pulse, to fill the space between her fingers, to trace the unfurling slope of her chin, the curve of her back and her healing chest, all of it, to reassure himself that she was real and breathing. He needed to knowshe was alive. He needed to know lots of things - what she remembered, if she was avoiding him because of his words at the cemetery, when he was begging her not to die, what all of it meant.

Castle had been more patient in the pursuit of Kate Beckett than he ever had been in his life, but now he felt every second like a countdown. It was like the day they thought a nuclear bomb was going to explode in the city. Though the scale of the tragedies differed by orders of magnitude, the feeling was the same. He had the suffocating sense of dwindling time. There were words he couldn't say building behind his tongue and the desperate thought that they couldn't waste any more of it, that the timer was getting closer and closer to the end of something. All our lives are countdown, he thought to himself absently. Must remember to write that down.

He fought with himself all the way back to his study, but in the end he gave her what she'd asked for. Somewhere along the line it had become impossible to deny her, even when he wanted to.

Instead he busied himself furiously typing and deleting sentence after sentence, writing and discarding page after page of introspection. It was too dark for Nikki Heat, Gina would probably take to it with her nastiest red ink, but it begged to be written.

In the midst of it, Jim Beckett texted an update that soothed some of the tension in his chest.

He wrote until he was distracted from the rest.

After his shift, Josh returned in time to watch Beckett spoon the hospital food from one side of the tray to the other without eating any of it. He went for her chart, partly out of habit, but halfway through the motion he became conscious of it and did it anyway. She was looking at him, her eyebrow twitching to arc, whether in true irritation or simple exasperation, he didn't know. He hesitated, but her expression held neutral; she indulged him, for a moment.

"It looks good," he told her, when the inspection was done.

"It doesn't really feel as good as the doctors keep telling me it looks," she admitted, wryly. "Then again, I didn't really expect it to."

"It was major surgery Kate, to repair major trauma. It's going to take time to heal."

"This morning, you mentioned something about six weeks?" she said, hopeful.

"Six to eight, and probably a lot more than that before you really don't notice it day-to-day."

She let her hand trail over her torso, from between her collarbones to her stomach, in a masochistic move. It didn't really hurt, but it didn't help. She sighed. "Patience has never really been one of my virtues when it comes to injuries."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me." Josh twinkled at her, far too amused. If it were Castle, it would've irritated her, but on him it wasn't provocative. He had this way of making her feel whatever he was feeling, like his emotions were infectious.

Maybe that was why they'd survived as long as they had, she thought darkly. Certainly, it had begun as a kind of friendship, really. They'd both been disillusioned and misery loved company; it had been somewhat accidentally that they'd fallen into a relationship. And, if she was honest, she'd never really expected it to last, partly because she was always wary of placing too much faith in men but mostly because he'd always been going to Africa or Haiti or some Third World backwater next week or next month. There was always a deadline. But the deadlines had stretched. And she'd found she didn't really mind him coming and going for a long time, until she did.

Then he'd surprised her.

He was looking at her, curious but trying to hide it. "What is it?"

She shook her head. "Nothing important."

He briefly looked like he didn't believe her, but it passed. She was thankful.

"Tell me," she said, setting down the fork after pushing the peas on the tray to the other side of the plate one by one. "How do they call this food?"

"It doesn't seem right, does it?" He helped her push the tray away. "I see you've lost your shadow."

The amused smile she'd been wearing failed her. "I sent him home."

Josh looked the tiniest bit pleased at that. She felt uncomfortable, but he didn't comment further, so apparently that conversation could wait for another day.

"And your father?"

"Well he couldn't livehere," she pointed out. "I sent him home too. He hadn't slept and I'm fine and it's not good for his back to sleep in a chair night after night. I told him I'd still be here in the morning. And the next morning. And the morning after that."

"And there's that patience again."

"It's just… the walls are very white and nothing happens here. I'm bored already."

He nodded towards the books Martha had left her. "I see someone is trying to amuse you."

"Martha," she offered by way of explanation. But she hadn't been able to make anyway headway reading any of them. As much as the books of Richard Castle had been a salvation in the past, now the stories just reminded her of him, and she was distracted from the words on the page wondering what he was doing, thinking, feeling at that moment. She had sensed his dissatisfaction when she'd asked him to leave, and what worried her most was that it wasn't anger, it was just resigned hurt. She hated that, hated her capacity to cause him pain, hated him a little bit for demanding so much of her when she had nothing to give, and most of all, hated her wounded body.

Beckett sighed.

Naked Heat was on the top of the pile, her literary counterpart taunting her as a silhouette on the cover. That she couldn't bear to read. The mere thought of his fictionalised version of their lives, where things between writer and muse were far simpler, was too much. Knowing the author as she did, she couldn't quite crawl into the story and hide there like she once might have.

Besides, she remembered Josh's words from the morning, nothing that increases your heart rate, and there were definitely parts of the book that did. That could only be worse in light of recent knowledge.

(She knew how he felt beneath her tongue. She knew that he loved her, enough to say it. It filled her chest, much like her bleeding heart had, similarly breathtaking and painful in an exquisite way. That perplexed her. Surely she should feel joy.)

Josh interrupted her racing mind by curling a hand around her wrist. She felt the purest kind of guilt, the kind that she'd avoided before when her mind had freely supplied excuses. At first, it was okay because she hadn't made any promises. And then it was just that Castle was her partner and they barely hovered on the edge of maybe. It wasn't unfaithful, not beyond reasonable doubt, so she let herself off on a technicality. Now there were no technicalities left to hide behind, but in the depths of grief she'd forgive herself almost anything. Picking herself up off the floor of the warehouse had been indescribably difficult. She'd allowed herself whatever helped.

She saw it now for what it was, or what it would have been if these things were simple: selfish. But it wasn't simple. Was it any less reprehensible to hurt Castle for Josh's sake? The labels she had affixed to each relationship were peeling, refusing to stick. And did the term used (friendship or relationship or partnership) really change the truth of it?

Beckett was certain of one thing: she was too battered, physically and emotionally, to keep walking that philosophical high wire. She knew that whichever side she fell, someone would be hurt by it, and she would too.

Josh didn't press her for her thoughts, possibly because he sensed he wouldn't appreciate them. Instead, he sat with his hand curled around hers until she spoke.

"I'm sorry." She let her dry tongue reach out to her lips. She meant it in lots of ways and decided to let him choose which one.

He looked up and caught her gaze. "What for?"

There couldn't have been a better lead-in if it were scripted, but she ignored it. She was too tired for a real, difficult conversation.

"Not being better company," she answered. "And for getting shot, for not telling you that was a possibility."

"You knew?" He blinked at her, released her wrist and sat back in the chair.

"No." She shook her head and spoke quietly to appease him. "Well, not the full extent of it." (That was an understatement and a half.) "If I thought for a second that the threats were specific, real... well. I knew they'd come after me if I kept looking into the case, eventually. I just thought it would be in a dark alley in the middle of the night, and I thought I'd be able to fight them. I didn't expect a bullet in the middle of the day with forty witnesses. Despite what everyone I work with might tell you, I'm not reckless enough to want this."

After that there really wasn't anything to say. Josh lingered on the verge of a sentence awkwardly, so she rescued him. "Still. It's a hazard of the job that I'm used to. I didn't think that for you, this might be new."

"Not new enough." He reached out and let his fingertips rest against the sheets, just barely glancing her thigh.

She followed the motion with her eyes and let her hand fall from her lap down beside his.

"But I'd be a hypocrite if I said I didn't understand the appeal of a little danger every now and then." She was still staring down at their fingers. He waited until she looked up to continue. "Just... try not to make a habit of needing my services."

"Can't afford to," she quipped, some of her usual humour returning.

He grinned. "I'm sure we could work something out."

"I'm not sure what kind of payment plan you have in mind, but I get the feeling most of your ideas are going to be off the table for a long time." Beckett frowned and bit into her lip, thinking about the case and her job and the long, slow road ahead. Illness didn't become her. She sighed. "You'll probably hate me after a few weeks of it."

The joking moment had turned serious again.

When he spoke, it was to make a single, soft declaration. "Kate, whatever happens, I promise I could never hate you."

She hesitated for a brief second before taking his hand. "Thank you," she answered simply.

After that, the room was quiet until the nurses came around to take her vital signs again. They dimmed the lights on the way out, but Josh stayed. (Years of working long hours and taking long haul flights meant he could sleep pretty much anywhere.) She could sense him beside her while she slept, fitfully, waking intermittently from incredibly vivid nightmares. His silhouette and soft breathing were comforting in the dark.

It was better than being alone, she thought, then chided herself. That had never been a good enough reason. She struggled internally with the burden of indecision until she fell again into a dream that felt real. Castle was there, at her back but not touching her, his voice warm in her ear. If you're asking the question you already know the answer.