A/N: If there were just twenty eight hours in a day I'd have gotten this out sooner – alas . . .

Chapter Four: I would change everything.

She wasn't expecting him to give her a warm reception, but neither was she expecting this. And as her husband continues to have a complete breakdown by the front door, Kate's mind whirls and she cannot think of anything to do.

He looks so helpless, so diminished, and if she wasn't already almost overwhelmed by the end result of her actions – she is now.

Shakily she forces herself to just move from her position near the top of the stairs, and with wobbly knees she makes her way slowly down them, still desperately trying to find her voice so that she can say something. Anything - even if it's only a plethora of apologies for coming here.

What was she thinking? She should have called or something, reached out another way instead of surprising him.

God, she didn't mean to do this to him; she didn't mean any of it. The stark reality that she's almost entirely responsible for reducing the incredible, strong, funny, endlessly compassionate man she married to this . . . this.

Her feet hit the hardwood floor at the base of the stairs finally, and Kate sways in place. The loft feels so huge, and so empty, and as tight a ball as he's curled himself into, her husband seems so small.

So lost.

So vastly different from the broad, comforting presence she holds in her mind, and all she wants in this moment is some magic way to fix him. All she wants to see is the Castle who inhabits her heart.

"Rick?"

The fact that she's finally found her voice seems to rouse him, and as quickly as he curled in on himself he suddenly straightens himself out, and just as quickly her husband pushes to his feet. When his eyes meet hers there's a desolation in them that makes her gasp, but then he blinks almost deliberately and it's gone, replaced by a cold fury instead.

"What are you doing here?"

She wants to reply with, "I live here', but she hasn't set foot in the loft since a month after Jack's passing, lost in her devastation she couldn't bear to be home.

"I . . ." One word is all the explanation he permits her.

"Get out." The words are low and menacing.

"Castle-"

"GET OUT," he repeats. "Kate, please. Please just go away."

He turns then. Turns his back on her and walks towards their bedroom and his request hits her hard because she remembers every single one of his overtures the last year. Every time he called her, every message that he left. Every hand-written note, every text message, every email that he's sent begging her to just 'talk' to him, even every time he turned up at the precinct and she did what he's doing now and she resolutely walked away.

And it's like a knife. Pain so sharp and deep and it cuts so badly and she's sorry, she's so very sorry she wasn't ready to see before now how awful she's been. How very much she's contributed to the hell he's obviously been living in.

It's just that, Jack was such a miniature of his father. The shape of his head, the color of his hair, the blue of his eyes, the lopsided smile - even the innocent way he would laugh. Every time she looked at Castle, or heard his voice – she saw her baby lying there – motionless. Every time. It's taken almost a year for that to change, for her to see Castle again instead of Jackson. For her to see a reason to fight, instead of a mountain made of pain.

If she could just explain that – if she could just be allowed to try. Maybe he could see a way to understand and forgive her, even if he's never willing to risk loving her again.

Oh that hurts. God, that hurts – the thought that he's walled himself off from her, just as she did from him. And what right does she have to even be hurt by any behavior of his at this point?

None.

But it doesn't matter – she hurts anyway.

So the second her husband disappears from view, Kate swallows heavily and forces her feet to follow him. She finds him sitting with his back to her on their (his) bed. He senses immediately that she's there.

"I thought I asked you to leave?" The sheer volume of heartache in his low voice is staggering – it's enough to rock Kate back on her heels.

"I can't," she whispers.

His shoulders lift as a harsh bark of laughter escapes him, the bitterness in the sound echoes all around them.

"Yeah, well I can't either. I can't do this, Kate. I can't talk to you when I've finally reached the point where there are no more words left to say." Castle drops his head into his hands and she aches with it then, fingers itching, heart racing as she swallows the desire to close the distance between them and hold him.

It takes her by complete surprise actually, how immediate and instinctual the urge.

She hasn't been able to stand being touched the last year, some form of self-inflicted punishment Dr. Burke patiently explained to her. But suddenly it's different; suddenly she's craving the contact – if only from him.

"If you can't talk, Rick, then just listen," she pleads.

Her husband shakes his head.

"To what? What can you possible have to say to me now? Now, after a year of basically ignoring my existence," he says, his voice rising with anger as he pushes himself up off of the bed and finally turns to confront her. "You left me, Kate. You left me alone when I needed you the most and you don't need to tell me it's because you couldn't cope with what had happened. I know that – I know that better than anyone because I couldn't cope with it either. It doesn't make what you did okay – nothing is ever going to make what you did to this family okay. Nothing."

"I'm so sorry," she says, the words stumbling over each other. "I'm so, so sorry, Castle."

"I don't care," he replies.

Kate shakes her head at the words, hands balling into fists at her side she wants to punch the words right out of the air, because she deserves them.

"I can't care anymore, Kate." The truth of it is written starkly in the sapphire blue of his eyes, he's shutting off his feelings for her in a desperate act of self-preservation, one she can barely stand to see.

"You don't mean that," she says shakily.

Castle runs a tired hand through his hair, mussing it completely.

"Oh, but I do." The resignation in his tone is chilling, it reminds her immediately of what she told Lanie – how she justified trying to save the mess she's made of her marriage at all, Castle's given up.

Hollow, the silence stretches between them as they stare each other down; Kate searches her husband's face for any sign of compassion, and any hint that the cold fury he's showing her is just a thin front she can breach.

But his tired, angry, heart-breakingly handsome face is like rock now– immoveable.

"I don't need to hear you say you're sorry," he explains at length. "So if that's why you came here today – save it, Kate. Just sign the divorce papers and leave me be. You decided for us that we were over when our son died, so leave it at that. I've got no more fight left in me, okay. But I need to reclaim what's left of me."

"Castle, no."

The writer arches his eyebrow with disdain.

'No? Kate, I'm giving you everything you could hope to get freely . . ."

"No," she says again, stepping closer only to find Castle backing up. "I don't want to sign the papers – Castle, I can't. I can't let you go; I don't want to let you go. Rick, I still love you."

Angry, frustrated tears fill his eyes at her declaration, and he seems surprised when he wipes his palm across them to discover the moisture there – and that scares her.

He shakes his head.

"You don't love me, Kate. Maybe you think you do, but I don't think you ever really did. To be brutally honest I don't think you even know how. And before you tell me that's too harsh and don't I remember everything we meant to each other, all we did for each other – everything we had to go through to get to where I thought we were – just stop and remember that you were the one who walled up her heart and was able to walk away. So whatever you felt for me, Kate – please don't call it love because I'd rather believe you never loved me than be loved that way again."

He can't mean that! He can't think she doesn't love him with everything in her – he can't, he just can't. "Castle-"

"No, I mean it, Kate. With two exceptions everyone I've ever loved has only offered me love that went so far. Love that didn't put me first and I'm not built like that. I never was. So if Alexis and my mother are destined to be the only sources of love in my life – that's okay." Castle takes a shuddering breath, "After you, Kate – after you there will never be another chance for love anyway."

He states it so plainly, so flatly and with so little emotion that it tears her in two.

"Rick, please-"

"It doesn't matter," he says, dismissively now, once more turning his back on her and wandering over towards the window. The light from the bedside lamp casts shadows lovingly across the angles of his face and though he looks broken he's so beautiful to her that she steps closer without realizing it, like a moth drawn to a flame.

Castle tenses.

"Don't," he says the warning heavy in his tone as he holds his hand up like he's warding her away. "Kate – just go," he pleads softly, his tormented eyes falling closed.

But she can't do it, even as indecision shreds up her insides. Every action in her head leads her in a circular route nowhere and she aches now - with this ever growing need to bury herself in his strong embrace, even as she sees so clearly that Lanie was right to warn her as she did. This is so much worse than anything Kate had dared to anticipate – maybe because when she's hurt him in their past he's always been so quick to forgive her.

The cop realizes with a startling clarity that she was counting heavily on that – for all her big talk otherwise. Despite maintaining to both Dr. Burke and to her best friend that she was well aware that things had gone wrong for too long this time – was she? Was she really?

Eyeing the man she loves as he stands so alone, so rigid and unyielding – so very different from the man she married two years ago, whose open heart and bottomless love for her was the greatest gift of her life, it hits Kate sharply, that this really is - unfixable.

It hits so sharply that she can't even breathe. Her lungs seize up and refuse to draw breath, her heart pounds so loudly and so fast that it feels like it's going to just explode out of her chest. There's pressure in her head, a knife in her gut and it's every bit as terrifying as the morning their son died. It's just as daunting and impossible.

It's the purest form of agony she's known yet.

And this is where he's been living - oh she finally, finally understands as she experiences it for herself. This is what she made him live with while she was hoarding her grief, and barricading her heart away. She made him live with losing their love – all those beautiful, breathtaking, endless feelings that existed between them.

The tears are rapid and blinding, and Kate fumbles for the bed, her legs folding beneath her when she finds it. Awareness of the room, of her husband still standing unbending and apart from her fades away, and all Kate sees is the reality that she's left with – nothing.