He was exhausted. Their earlier bike tour had lasted longer, covered more ground and required more pedaling than he'd expected, and more physical exertion by extension. Back at the house they'd ordered takeout and watched a movie, and then he'd gone in favor of his bedroom. It was still on the early side, so he'd left Kate in front of the TV even though she'd looked even more exhausted than he felt, but he was confident that tonight would be the night that she would finally get a good night's sleep. If she was half as tired as he was, he didn't see how she could avoid it.

He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but at some point during the night he woke up. He was prepared to roll over and fall back into the deep sleep he'd just come out of, but he heard voices.

They weren't voices in his head, an indication of insanity or some leftover from a half-formed dream; they were very real, concrete voices coming from somewhere outside the room but inside the house. He looked at the clock beside his bed. 3:28 a.m. Not really the time for visitors. Besides himself, there should only have been one other person in the house, and as far as he knew she hadn't taken up talking to herself. His still half-asleep mind immediately started racing, one thought dominant over all the others: Kate.

That was the last thought through his mind that even vaguely resembled anything logical. Imagining masked intruders and trained assassins, he jumped out of bed and ran toward the voices. His only instinct was to protect her. Whether he actually could didn't cross his mind.

But the scene he met in the living room didn't even begin to resemble anything his half-dreaming imagination had conjured. It was just Kate, sitting on the couch just as he'd left her so many hours earlier, still watching TV. That was where the voices had come from.

"Hey Castle," she said with a tired smirk when he appeared in the room's entry, out of breath. Her voice was much too awake for the time of night.

He heaved a heavy sigh and dropped down onto the couch beside her. "What are you still doing up?" he asked groggily.

"Watching TV," she answered matter-of-factly, without looking at him.

"Why are you watching TV?"

"Didn't feel like going to bed."

"Kate." He closed his eyes for considerably longer than a blink, unsure whether he was more tired or exasperated. When he opened them again he took the remote from the coffee table and turned the TV off.

"I was watching that!" she protested.

"You shouldn't be watching anything," he said, turning to face her directly. "You should be sleeping. You can't tell me you're not tired, I can see that you are. Go to bed."

"I don't want to!" She met his eyes for the first time since he'd sat down, and hers, though tired, were full of steely resolve.

But he didn't understand. "Why not?"

"Because when I sleep, I dream, and I'm tired of dreaming. It's like you said, I need to focus on the present, now, and I can't do that when I'm asleep. I can't control what I see, or what I think about, or what happens…" Her eyes began to fill with tears that he had a feeling she also couldn't control.

Of that whole speech, he found himself focusing on one particular line. It's like you said. This was his fault. It was his fault that she was sitting here in his living room at three-thirty in the morning, afraid to sleep. Because whether she came out and said it or not, that was the truth of the matter: she was afraid to fall asleep. It was his fault, and now it was up to him to fix it. "Look… I know what I said, but that's not how I meant it. You don't have to control everything all the time, you can't control everything all the time. If your dreams take you to the past or to the future, then that's where they take you. But you have to sleep." His expression turned pleading.

But she was still being stubborn. "I don't want to."

"Okay, there are some things in life that aren't optional. Sleeping is one of them. Eating. Breathing. These are all things you can't just stop doing because you're not in the mood. It's called life. Accept it."

"Castle, I know what I'm going to see the second I close my eyes. That man, that arrogant son of a bitch that ordered the hit on my mother. My mom telling me I let her down for not killing him when I had the chance. Montgomery telling me I let him down by not backing off, by going against orders. That asshole getting back out on the streets. Some judge suspending my badge indefinitely." Tears clung to her eyelashes now, but she refused to let them fall. "I don't want to see that."

He felt himself soften. He hated seeing her this upset, hated it with every fiber of his being. "So don't think about that stuff when you're falling asleep. Think about… puppies. Sunshine. Rainbows. The beach." Normally he'd have come up with better, but he was tired.

She shook her head. "It's not that easy. I can push it off during the day, but all of that stuff is always in the back of my mind… I can't get rid of it. No matter what I do."

An idea occurred to him then. He didn't know if it would help or not, but it was all that he could come up with. And he knew instinctively that it would be more likely to be successful if he didn't actually pitch it to her. "Okay," he said, standing up. "Come on."

She hesitated, but followed him. "Where are we going?"

"We're relocating." He led her toward the hallway where the bedrooms were.

"What does that mean?"

He opened the door to one of the two extra bedrooms, specifically the one that contained two double beds. "We're going to sleep in here tonight." He picked a bed arbitrarily and sat down on it. "You take the other one."

"What in the world makes you think I would ever do that?"

He sighed. "Come on. They're two different beds, it's just the same room. It's completely innocent. You need sleep. I need sleep. And I'm not going to get any sleep until I know you're sleeping."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Look, I don't care if that makes any sense or not. It's four in the morning, I'm tired. I know you are too. This way if you find that you've woken up from some kind of horrible dream and you need to talk, all you have to do is wake me up and I'll be right here. And if you're tossing and turning or talking in your sleep, I'll wake you up." He yawned. "Deal?"

She hesitated.

"For me?" he coaxed.

She sighed and pulled back the comforter on the other bed. "Just so you'll be quiet and go back to sleep," she assured him.

He nodded. "Fine with me." It was much too late an hour for him to be concerned with her reasons. All he cared about was that she agreed. He got up to turn out the lights after she slid under the blankets and then did the same himself. "Sweet dreams," he murmured as he positioned his head comfortably on the pillow.

She sighed. "Night, Castle."

He didn't know what time it was the next time he woke up, but he didn't feel as though he'd been asleep for long. And he had absolutely no idea why he'd woken up until he heard a strangled but distinct moan come from Kate's side of the room. "I can't," he heard her protest with the muffled inarticulacy of someone who was still fully asleep. "I can't!"

Before he knew what he was doing he was sitting on the bed beside her with his hand on her shoulder. "Hey," he murmured softly, trying not to jolt her from her dreams with too much violence. "Shh, Kate, it's okay."

"No!" Her eyes were still closed, but he wasn't sure if she was still asleep. "Get off me!" He pulled his hand back quickly, but it became apparent then that she was, in fact, still dreaming. "'m gonna get him! Lemme get him!"

"Shh." Somehow he ended up with one hand back on her shoulder and the other stoking her hair. "Wake up. It's okay. You're here, in the Hamptons, remember?"

Her yells deteriorated into moans and then became sobs, all in the space of about a minute.

"I'm here. Shh, it's okay. I'm right here."

Finally she opened her eyes, although she had to blink them closed again to wipe away the tears. She pulled herself into a sitting position and he backed off, suddenly embarrassed that he'd been touching her in such a familiar way. "Castle," she mumbled. She wiped away the tears that remained with the bed's sheet. "Sorry."

"Quite alright." He could feel the worry pulling at his face. "You okay?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I'm fine."

"You want to talk about anything?"

She shook her head.

"You sure?"

She nodded again.

"Okay. If you change your mind, you know where to find me." He delicately brushed a lock of her hair away from her face. She didn't push him away. "Sleep well."

She pushed the corner of her lip up in a way that could almost have been a very halfhearted attempt at a smile. "I'll try."

It took him a lot longer to fall asleep again after that. He couldn't turn off his mind, worrying about Kate, wondering what she was really feeling, how much lurked beneath the surface that she refused to share with him, trying to figure out how to really get her to open up, and whether that was even the best thing. Maybe she was right, maybe it would be best for her to simply try and forget. But finally he heard the slow, even breathing from her side of the room that told him she was asleep, and not long after that he fell asleep as well.

The next time he woke up he'd been asleep for much longer, at least a couple of hours. And this time he was woken a lot more intentionally.

This time he woke up to find her sitting on the edge of his bed, shaking him gently. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, made less complete by the light streaming in around the closed mini blinds, he saw that her face was once again tearstained, an image forever in his mind that he wished would stop being reinforced. "Hey," he said, pulling himself up so that he was sitting, facing her. "What's up?"

"I let her down," she whispered, her voice thick with tears.

She didn't need to explain who, he understood. What he didn't understand was what in the world she was talking about. "What? How? You caught her killer."

"Yeah, but… what if he gets off? What if he gets a really good lawyer and is found not guilty? Then what did I accomplish? I'll lose my badge without getting anything out of it."

"You did everything you could," he insisted. "You caught the killer, and found some good evidence. Whatever happens now is out of your hands. You just have to have a little faith in the legal system. I imagine your mom did, she was a lawyer."

"She had no faith in the legal system. She hated other lawyers. She said they were all driven by paychecks instead of the truth." She sighed. "I wish she was here to prosecute her killer."

"Wow… talk about a conflict of interest."

She took a pillow off his bed and threw it at him. "Shut up."

He smiled over the pillow. "Okay, you wake me up and then tell me to shut up. What gives?"

She looked down, suddenly fascinated by the patterns on the comforter. "Sorry. I shouldn't have."

"No, that's not what I meant. I don't mind. Really. I'm glad you did."

She rolled her eyes but met his. "So now neither one of us is sleeping."

He shook his head. "Come here."

She frowned. "I'm… here."

"No." He moved closer to her. "Come here." He wrapped one arm around her, and when she didn't resist he did the same with the other arm, pulling her into a complete hug. Eventually he felt her hands touch his back tentatively. "It's gonna be okay," he said. "I don't know what's gonna happen, but one way or another it will be okay." He pulled away and looked into her eyes. "I promise."

She looked back at him intently. "You can't promise that."

He nodded. "I just did. And it's a promise I intend to keep."

"I'm glad you're here," she whispered.

He smiled. "Well, it is my house."

"Then… I'm glad I'm here."

"I'm glad you're here too." He squeezed her shoulder gently. "Better go back to sleep now. No more dreams, okay?"

"No more dreams."

A/N: Wow. I was not expecting to have another update ready for you so soon, but I did! And I actually really like the way this one turned out. A little short, but I think there's a lot going on, so it seems to work. Hopefully you agree! Thanks for reading! :)