Author's Note:- I'v borrowed a line from Grey's Anatomy here haha, but the rest is mine.

"Kevin killed himself, Kate." Castle's voice had lost all its venom, he sounded every one of his forty plus years and oh so tired. "He killed himself, and you didn't even come back for his funeral."

"I was in the back." Kate corrected softly, a little hurt at the accusation even as she understood its origins. "I was there for Jenny's too, I just couldn't face anyone."

"We needed you, Kate." Castle shook his head. "I needed you."

"I know." She murmured. "I did what I always did, I ran when things got tough, and I can't apologise more. I, I wanted to come home so many times." She shrugged, remembering just how many nights she had sat up with a bottle of whiskey, her thumb hovering over his contact for hours. She had smashed so many phones that first year.

She wasn't allowed to call him. She couldn't do that to them.

"Then why didn't you? Kate, I wanted to marry you! I wanted to spend my life with you."

"I damaged you!" Kate cried, her eyes red, and cheeks wet, screaming at the floor because she still couldn't look up. "I caused permanent damage to your hand! To your career! I've followed the fan sites, Rick, spoken to Alexis, you haven't written a book since. You're holed up in that damn beach house, and not writing, and I did that to you. How did you expect me to share your bed every night, when I know I'm the reason you might never write again?" She shrugged, suddenly losing all her fire as she slumped. "I had literally packed my bag, called my dad to say I'd be coming back, and that we should meet for coffee. And then Espo emailed me to say that Ryan had killed himself, and the funeral was in a few days." Kate murmured, wiping a rogue tear from her cheek. She shrugged, tucking her hands back in her pockets. "I came back for the funeral, of course, but I felt so out of place. Everything felt so foreign, and I felt so empty, the moment I stepped back into New York. I couldn't handle that feeling, and I knew that you would move on, that Alexis had your back, and you would be okay, but I just couldn't stay here. It didn't feel like home any more. It was awful."

Rick sighed deeply before getting to the crux of the issue. "You didn't do this Kate."

She nodded, looking slightly like the stubborn toddler he'd always hoped they'd have. "I dropped that desk on your hand. I crushed it. Whether you blame me or not, I am the reason." She insisted, voice wobbling hard.

"Kate," Rick sighed, slowly, letting her back away if she wanted, bringing his hands up to cup her cheeks, gently lifting her face to look at him. She flinched when she felt his rough, battered right hand, but let his palms cup her cheeks gently, closing her streaming eyes, she'd never make it through this night if she looked at him now. "I never blamed you. It wasn't your fault. That lunatic that set a bomb in homicide did this, not you sweetheart." He murmured softly, pulling her into his chest when her face crumpled with tears, choked sobs tearing from her mouth, open against his collar bone. "I've never once blamed you, Kate."

Kate hadn't even gone to California before Jenny's funeral. By the time Ryan's happened, she had settled in a little, had started to make friends and connections. Had started to make it home.

Going back, watching her brother, her friend, be buried beside his wife and unborn child, had gutted her. She couldn't stay in that city any longer, it had just brought too much devastation to her life now. She couldn't face it.

She buried herself in setting up her home, in spending time with people she had become friends with in her brief time at Stanford and in her adult life, in trying to start a life now that she wasn't going to be a detective anymore.

She had tried, honest to goodness tried, to go back. She'd made it as far as the mandatory psyche evaluation, determined at the beginning to pass so she could go back as soon as her breaks had healed. But by the end of the hour she had spent hyperventilating at the idea of stepping back into a precinct, she had accepted that she didn't want to do this anymore. She didn't want to spend her life running towards danger anymore.

It had killed her mother, gotten her shot, put her mentor and her team mate in the ground, and had given her PTSD to the point she couldn't even think of her ex lover's face without crying.

She was happy running away from the danger from now on.

Castle ran his hand up and down her back, cradling the back of her skull with the other, holding her close and breathing her in. He could feel her ribs, hated how tiny she had become, and the trembling broke his heart. He gently squeezed her, before pulling back slowly, his breath catching when she immediately pulled herself upright.

"Sorry." She murmured, dragging her hands roughly over her cheeks, clearing her throat to try and rid herself of the evidence of her minor breakdown.

"It's okay." Rick murmured softly. "Are you, in the city long?" He asked, shy and unsure.

Kate shrugged. "I have a hotel room for the night, I didn't want to be time constrained by a plane ticket."

"Did you," he paused, reconsidering for a moment but realising that after everything he still wanted this, "do you still drink coffee?"

Kate's mouth popped open in surprise. "Um, sure? Why?" She asked, a little shy, a lot unsure.

"Wanna come drink it with me?" He offered, careful and hopeful.

She looked up, surprised, and felt her heartrate double when she finally looked into his warm kind eyes, the eyes that still held so much for her, even after everything.

"Um," she stated, ineloquent and unsure.

Rick shrugged. "You don't have to, just thought it would be good to, y'know, catch up?" He offered.

Kate nodded. "Uh, sure." She nodded again. "Sure." She threw her thumb over her shoulder, looking apologetic. "Let me just say goodbye to Espo properly?"

Castle smiled at her softly. "I'll be here."

Kate sat opposite her doctor, curled into herself, good hand hidden inside her soft grey Henley, her shoes slipped off and her toes curling in her cosy socks.

"Kate, we have sat here in silence for two sessions now." Carter Burke reminded her, his deep soothing voice a familiar balm for Kate's frayed nerves. "Now I get paid whether you talk or not," he granted her a smile, a much larger and less shy version of the one she gave him, "but I do not think it is helpful for you to sit in this office in absolute silence." He told her gently.

Kate shrugged.

"Kate, it's been three weeks since the attack on the precinct." He continued. "While I'm very glad to see you bruise free, to be moving a lot easier, I can't help but wonder why you are here, and not working out of another precinct like Detective Esposito."

Kate had filled him in on everything, in tiny stilted sentence fragments in the first session she had booked with him. While everything else had changed, her teammate had returned to work, working out of another precinct like many of the 12th while it was being rebuilt.

"I don't think I want to be a cop anymore." Kate murmured, shrugging, staring out of the window as a solitary tear tumbled down her cheek. This was the first time she had admitted that out loud and even though she knew it was true, even though she knew she didn't want it anymore, the admission still cost her greatly.

"Why don't you tell me about that Kate?" Dr Burke asked patiently, not letting his surprise show on his face or be heard in his voice. She would get no judgement from him.

"Javi?" Kate called, jogging back to where they had been stood, her ex-colleague now talking to someone Kate didn't recognise. She smiled when both men looked up. "Sorry, can I borrow you for two seconds?"

"Sure." He nodded, turning back to the man beside him. "Give me a minute?"

"Sure." The other man nodded, not so subtly looking Kate up and down before stepping away.

Kate shook her head, still not used to or liking the attention she received from her former brothers in arms now she was no longer a cop. It was like it had given them the green light to leer.

"Everything okay?" Javi asked, nodding to where the writer was on his phone, gesticulating wildly.

"Yeah, we, we're gonna go for coffee." Kate answered shyly.

Esposito sighed. "Be careful Kate." He murmured, big brother protectiveness creeping in.

"I was the one who hurt him, remember? It'll be okay. It'll, it'll be nice." She shrugged, trying not to let herself get too excited by this new development that she had never seen coming. "You and I need to see more of each other." She told him, deciding to be brave tonight, what did she have to lose anyway?

Espo smiled a little. "I'd like that." He nodded.

"You know where I am Javi. I'll make a bigger effort but you gotta help me." Kate gripped his hand between both of hers. "It's just us now. There were four of us, and now it's just you and me. And it can't be just me. It can't be. I will go down swinging for you, Javi. You know I will. But that means you have to help me. We can't lose our friendship, we've both lost too much already."

Javi gripped her shoulder and pulled her into a hug, holding her close for a moment. "I've missed you Kate." He whispered emotionally for her ears only.

"So, let's both work harder." Kate murmured, pulling back to press a lingering kiss to his cheek. "I'll see you soon, yeah?"

Esposito nodded. "We'll make sure of it."

Kate smiled beautifully for him before jogging back to Castle's side.

The ex-soldier watched her go, hoping for the first time in nearly five years that it would work out for them.

They both deserved a little happiness.