A/N: So unless you're just getting into it now, you probably thought I'd forgotten all about this story. I haven't, I swear. Well, clearly, since this, ladies and gentlemen, is what some might call an update. Bet you didn't know that. I've been busy, and distracted with other stories, and... procrastinating. Okay, mostly procrastinating. I wasn't exactly sure where I wanted this chapter to go. But it finally went. :) So, without further ado...

The last thing he wanted to do was open his eyes. As long as they were closed, last night would drag on, and he could pretend that everything was okay. That he and Kate had just come here for a little vacation. But as soon as he opened them, it would be Monday. One week before the hearing that could forever alter the course of her future. And his.

He wondered if he couldn't put off talking to her about it just one more day. One final day of bliss in the sand and sun. But somewhere inside of him, he knew that would be a mistake. He had promised himself that it would be today, and he had no idea how it was going to go. He just knew that right now she was far from ready for the hearing, both mentally and emotionally. If she needed a whole week to get there, he was going to make sure she got it.

His conception that it could still be the previous night sufficiently ruined by all of these thoughts, he broke down and cracked his eyes open. Kate was still in her bed, but she was awake, and she was looking at him.

He met her eyes and smiled. "Good morning," he murmured without moving.

"Morning," she replied groggily. She must not have woken up long before he did.

"Sleep well?" he asked.

She nodded. "Really well."

He felt his stomach twist a little. She'd made so much progress since they'd arrived here. He wondered if talking about all that had happened would take her back to the nightmares and the distantness that had characterized Beckett just a week ago. He hoped against hope that this wouldn't be the case. "Good," he said. "I'm glad."

"Did you?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yeah. Really well," he echoed.

"It was a good night for both of us, then." She smiled.

Briefly, he wondered if she was referring to the sleep or everything that had come before. Either way he agreed, so he nodded. "Coffee?" he asked rhetorically.

"Mm." She nodded. "Please."

She followed him to the kitchen and he got the coffee pot going. He prepared two cups and then she took hers and led the way to the usual chairs on the deck.

For awhile they sat in comfortable silence, listening to the surf and the seagulls and sipping their coffee. Castle watched a seagull soar toward the beach and hover for a second, contemplating landing, before flying off in a different direction entirely. The hovering was a transitional phase, when some circumstance, be it food or wind, led the bird away from the path it was flying and told it that it should choose a different one. While it hovered, the gull could look around and decide which direction would be best to try and fly, but if it hovered for too long without flapping its wings it would fall from the sky and plummet to the sand. But just the slightest movement of its wings could hold it there for another second, prolong the time it had to make its decision.

"Can you believe we've been here for a whole week now?" he asked, hinting at his real point as gently as possible.

She swallowed, and he knew she guessed it. "Yeah," she sighed, "I can. It's gone fast, though."

"Yeah." He nodded. "It has. This week will probably go fast too."

"I'm sure it will."

His mouth tightened and he sighed. She knew what he was getting at, he was sure of it. But she wasn't breaching the subject, and he didn't really want to be the first to do so. So he continued to sip his coffee, allowing silence to set in once again. But this wasn't the comfortable silence of a moment ago. This was a loaded silence. An awkward tension that they both knew one of them was going to have to break.

After a long moment, Kate shifted, and then sighed. "I'm happy now, Rick," she breathed. "Can't we just leave well enough alone for a couple more days?"

He couldn't express how badly he wanted to say yes. How much he wanted to believe that there wouldn't be any harm in just going ahead like it was a vacation for one more day. Maybe two. But he couldn't, because at the end of two days, nothing would have changed. She wouldn't be any closer to being ready for her hearing, and she'd still want to put off thinking about it for one more day. Or maybe two. He'd decided that today was going to be the day, and he wasn't going back on that. "No," he said softly. "We can't."

"Why not?"

"Because. The hearing is in a week, and it's important. You need to be ready."

"What if I don't go?" she asked, in so low a voice that it was almost inaudible.

He couldn't process this. "What?"

"I said, what if I just don't go?" Her voice was a little louder now, gaining confidence.

"Kate, you have to go."

"Why? Why do I have to go?"

"Because if you don't go, you forfeit your badge."

"I know."

"Well—" He was at a loss for words. What was she saying? "That's what we're trying to avoid, isn't it?"

"I—I don't know."

"Okay, you've gotta fill me in on what you're thinking here."

She bit her lip, deep in thought. "Do you know what happened last night, Castle?"

He felt his eyes widen without his consent. "Um, well, I wasn't drunk, so nothing I didn't know about, unless—"

She interrupted him with a slight chuckle. "No, please, stop there. That's not what I meant."

He nodded. "Okay… good."

"In the last week, the whole time I've been here… for the first time in years, I've felt like a person."

He frowned. "A person?"

"Yeah. I mean, not a cop, and not… a victim, or the daughter of a victim, but a person. Just a regular person. And I'm starting to realize how much I've missed that feeling. And then last night… last night, I started thinking… what if I didn't have to go back? What if I just let them keep my badge and became… a normal person? Would that be the worst thing in the world?"

"No. It wouldn't. If that's what you want."

"I mean, you're right. My mother's case, it's over. And we won. We did our part. We caught everyone involved. And that's why I became a cop in the first place."

"I know that."

"So why not just… I don't know, move on? I would love to just… never have to think about any of this again. Not at the hearing, not now… not ever."

"But you know you would," he said softly.

"Maybe."

"Definitely. This case has been such a big part of who you are. You won't just let it go."

She shrugged. "I let it go for almost ten years before you came along."

"But you went back to it."

"Because it was unfinished. Now it's finished."

He sighed. "Okay. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you can just never think about it again." He didn't believe this, not for a second, but it wasn't the argument he wanted to be having. "And if you really, truly, don't want to be a cop anymore, then, maybe, letting it go is a valid option. And if that is what you decide, then I will support you. But only if it's really what you want. If you've thought about it, and decided rationally that you want to give up your badge. It can't be because you're too afraid of reliving what happened in that alley."

"I'm not afraid," she snapped.

"Oh, you're not?"

"N—no. I'm just… I'm ready for that chapter of my life to be over."

"You don't sound so sure."

"Well, I am."

"I'm gonna give you an hour," he said. "I'll leave you alone, and you can think about it. After one hour, if you're absolutely positive that you don't want to be a cop anymore, we can start talking about what you might want to do instead. But if there's even a sliver of doubt in your mind, then we will sit down, and we will figure out how to get you comfortable talking about that night. Because, so help me god, if you give up your badge it will be your decision. Not because you were too afraid to fight for it. The Kate Beckett that I know is never afraid to fight for what she knows is right."

He took his empty coffee cup and went inside, leaving her behind him. He looked through the window when he got to the kitchen and found that she hadn't moved, was still staring out at the water, expressionless.

Almost exactly an hour later, after getting dressed and washing some neglected dishes, he went back out to the deck to confront Kate. He hoped that she'd come to the right conclusion. Whatever she said, he knew that if she just gave up her badge, she'd regret it later. But he knew that she needed to come up with that herself. Arguing about it would only push her away.

But when he got there, he found that she wasn't where he'd left her. He frowned, wondering where she'd gone. "Hey, Kate," he called, hoping for a response. Maybe she was still close enough to hear. "It's been an hour."

Getting nothing, he went down the stairs toward the campfire pit. "Kate?" he tried again. No response.

His heart started beating faster as his mind jumped to the worst case-scenario. She'd left. He'd pushed her too far, and she'd gone away. Maybe back to New York, or maybe off somewhere where no one would find her, where she really could start her life over without the specter of her mother's case hovering over her. Where she really could never think about it again.

But he dismissed this thought almost as quickly as it had occurred to him. She didn't have a car here, and she hadn't taken his. He would've heard the garage door open, and anyway, he knew she wouldn't steal his car. That was ridiculous. She couldn't have gone too far, and she wouldn't have anyway. She was here somewhere.

He walked past the pool and along the beach and found no trace of her. "Kate?" he called again, fruitlessly. He sighed and started back toward the house, hoping that maybe she'd gone inside while he was out here looking for her. On a random whim, like one might open the refrigerator while searching for keys, not really expecting to find anything but running out of places to look, he opened the gate to the pool and peeked inside. And to his surprise, she was there. Her back was to him, her bare feet dangling in the water. He knew she'd heard him open the gate, but she didn't turn around.

"What, you're hiding from me now?" he asked, frustrated. "You had to have heard me calling."

She didn't respond or even move. He sighed, kicked off his flip-flops, and sat down beside her. Part of him expected her to be crying. Why else would she be avoiding him so completely? But when he sat down she didn't turn away from him, and her face was still completely void of any expression. It was like she'd been hypnotized.

"Silent treatment?" he guessed. "Really? What did I do?"

"I know it's been an hour," she said, almost in a whisper. "But I don't have any answers for you."

"Yes you do," he said gently. "You love your job. I know you don't want to lose it. Maybe you became a cop because of what happened to your mom, but I know that's not the only reason you do it."

"Why, then?" she asked, finally turning to look at him. There was no fire in her eyes. She wasn't angry with him. Just the low flicker of uncertainty. Frankly, fire would've comforted him more. "If you know me so well, then why do I do it?"

"To help people," he said, trying to sound reassuring. "The victims. Their families. For justice. So no one else has to go through what you did."

"It doesn't change anything," she said.

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I thought that when this was all over I'd feel some sense of… I don't know, closure."

"And you don't?"

"Not enough. I mean, she's still gone, and it all just seems… kind of pointless, you know? Nothing is going to bring her back."

"But you knew that."

"Yeah, of course I did. But… I don't know. I thought I'd feel better about it."

"And you don't."

She shook her head.

"But you did all that you could do."

"But it wasn't enough." She swallowed, and although there was no evidence of it, he had the sense that she was holding back tears.

"Could anything be enough?"

She shook her head.

Without anything else to say, he let his hand rest on top of hers. She let her lips curl, forming the tiniest trace of a smile.

"Look," he finally said, making little ripples on the surface of the water with his foot. "You don't have to decide right now. We'll go through the hearing, you will get your badge back, and then if you decide that you don't want to be a cop anymore, you can quit. But it'll be your decision."

She sighed. "Maybe I can't."

He frowned. "Can't what?"

"Go through the hearing."

"Of course you can."

"I'm not as sure as you are. You remember what it was like when we first got here."

He nodded. "I remember. But you've made so much progress since then."

She shrugged. "No I haven't. Not really."

"Sure you have. You said it yourself. You've been happy. If that's not progress, I don't know what is."

"I've been happy because I haven't been thinking about it. At all. I've managed to keep it out of my mind. If I start thinking about it again, I'm afraid I'll be right back to square one."

He sighed. "Believe me, I don't want that any more than you do." He remembered all too well what it had been like. The complete distantness during the day, and the nightmares and the way she'd wake up sobbing during the night. The feeling of complete helplessness, that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make her feel better. "But we'll just have to work through it. And that's why we have to start now. The judge isn't going to take 'I don't want to talk about it' or 'I can't think about it' for an answer. You have to be ready. You have to know what you're going to say, or at least be able to talk about it without breaking down. I get that you want to be strong and not let anyone see that you're hurting, and I respect that. But I was there. I know what happened. And you know what else? I know you. I saw you in that alley, I saw you in my apartment the next day, and I've seen you every day since. I know you're not okay. So here's your choice. Would you rather fall apart in front of me, or in front of a bunch of strangers who get to decide whether you keep your job?"

He'd meant it, if not exactly a rhetorical question, at least as a question that wasn't supposed to be difficult. But still, she didn't answer right away. She stared at the still water, deep in thought, for a long moment. Then finally, she sighed. "I guess, you."

He let his lips curve into a half-smile. "You don't sound so sure."

She shrugged.

"Look, I promise to take you seriously, if that's what you're worried about."

"No, Castle," she made a sound that almost came close to a laugh. "I know you will. It's not that."

"What, then?"

"Nothing. It's not important."

"Then tell me."

She flipped her foot around the surface of the water absently, making tiny little splashes. "I just don't like it when you see me upset."

He frowned. "Well, I don't like it either, but if I don't see you then I can't help you."

"I don't want to need your help."

"Kate, everyone needs help sometimes."

She kept up the splashing, staring at the water like it was the most interesting thing in the world. "Nikki Heat wouldn't."

"She might. But anyway, you're not Nikki Heat."

"No," she said, starting to trace patterns on the surface of the water with her toe. "I'm not."

He looked straight at her, willing her to meet his eyes. "You're better than Nikki Heat."

She rolled her eyes and kept tracing.

"Look at me."

Somewhat reluctantly, she did.

"You are twice as strong, twice as unpredictable, twice as good a cop, and three times as sexy as Nikki Heat could ever hope to be."

She blushed. "Castle…"

"No," he interrupted. "No 'Castle'. I'm serious. Nikki Heat is a mere shadow of you. That's all. You are the genuine article. And no imitation, not even mine, can ever come close to the original. Nikki Heat is just my character. You're my partner."

"I just… don't want you to think less of me."

"Impossible."

She sighed. "We really have to do this today?"

"Yeah. We really do."

She nodded and began to get up. "Then I'm gonna need more coffee."

A/N: Reviews please? :)