Kate Beckett isn't prone to tears, and they don't spill from her now. It wouldn't shame her if they did. There is, however, a steady sheen hovering on the verge of precipitation. It blurs the details of the world. Anger and a deep whirling of regret elicit that. My god. She should have pressed him more, pushed for answers. How could she have known? There was never any indication…

The author was a chameleon; a collage of substance hiding in plain sight via playboy persona. And for too long she'd bought into it just like everyone else. Christ. What kind of cop was she? What kind of fiancée? Am I that fucking blind—or are you just that good? Either way she's leveled by the revelation.

Castle's voice intrudes; a strangely soothing sound among her inner turmoil. "Beckett?"

Kate's hand flees his, rises to her brow like a bird startled to a loftier perch. "My god, Rick," she murmurs, numb with disbelief. "I thought I knew you. You...you let me think I did." Her expression grows taut, both mystified and hurt. An unfamiliar brand of uncertainty steals into her voice like a flavor upon her tongue that was alien until now. "Who are you?" she whispers.

"You know," he replies grimly, and he looks so damned certain.

"Do I?" Beckett lifts the appendage at her forehead to present it in a forestalling gesture. "Wait. God. I'm so sorry. This isn't about me. I'm not trying to make it be. I'm just... Don't stop talking."

"It damn well does concern you. Of course it does. Look, I understand it's a shock."

"Castle!" Kate feels herself teetering on the razor edge of a mild hysteria. She should have asked. She could have at any time, and it's not like it never occurred to her to try. But good heavens, he could have offered too. As private as her grief has always been the detective can't imagine hiding such a defining aspect of her life, most especially from someone she loves. The war within her between sympathy and accusation is powerful, too much so to even attempt addressing now. "Please," she beseeches tightly. "Don't stop."

The dip of the sun into the early afternoon pours its light into the blue eyes regarding her. They are so clear, beautiful, but the secrets behind them cast a chilling shade of the unknown. "The killer was a local senior—as in high-school. He came from a family with money. So did the victims though. No one tried to use their influence to sweep it under the rug," he adds soberly. "But it was kept within the local community as much as possible. It was a different time."

Kate's blistering tone should have melted the snow. "I didn't ask you for a fucking summary."

Castle doesn't flinch. On the contrary, his expression is blank. That might work with someone who hasn't spent the past several years learning the emotional attachments guiding this gesture or that tone of voice. A sudden lack is just as revealing. The very distance he strives to create between himself and that summer night is one more detail that makes it clear the opposite is true. "What else do you want to know?"

"What do I want to know? What happened to you!" she all but shrieks.

The silence that falls in the wake is deep.

When his jaw shifts in its set and his head lowers some the glare Castle levels on her is so fierce that Beckett falls back a pace involuntarily. It's easy to forget that he's a big man, and though somewhat softened by luxury, still a decisive force to be reckoned with. She's been scared for him, and with him, but very rarely of him. Yet in his unbridled anger her partner exudes a frightening aura of menace. "Save your pity for the victims," he hisses with pure venom. "There were two more that night because I couldn't stop him here. Two more dead girls. Four total. He buried them on the beach, naked, face-down."

Beckett is speechless.

It is horribly fascinating to watch him spool up all of that anger and dark intensity and drag it back behind his walls. Soon it's gone even to her intimate perception of him. The voice she hears bewilders her; it's strong, cold, and authoritative. "You'll forgive me if I don't dwell on myself."

So much of their past is rolling through Kate's mind now. Rick's shifting from one school to the next—had his past caught up to him somehow? The adoption of his superfluous demeanor—a personality that shines brightly enough can be blinding to people who might otherwise attempt to look too closely. His relationships with women—who would dare get so close to someone again? Even Jerry Tyson—oh God. The violent animosity her partner bore towards that serial killer shone so much clearer now.

Beckett hears herself stammer. "I—I…"

"You don't have to say anything," Castle issues quietly. Her knees almost buckle when his hand nestles between the folds of her coat and into place against her left side. The feel of his thumb fanning smoothly out over her hip is so electrifying that it draws her jaw down into a useless, wordless gape.

Kate flinches away from him again, stunned by the intensity. A shaky finger points into the air between them. "Gimme a sec," the woman husks, and bends to rest her hands upon her knees, sucking in a deep draught of oxygen. "I'm not upset with you," she clarifies. "Just let me…process."

Crazy, but her body is reacting to the situation as if this were another near-miss. Brushes with death on their cases these days elicit an almost unquenchable ardor from both of them. There's so much more to lose now, and such a divine manner of celebrating their endurance when tested by finality.

"I can't believe you kept this from me," Kate finally manages. She's relieved to hear her tone match her feelings on the matter, lacking accusation. The words actually came out wrong. What she meant was: Of all people you could tell this too—wouldn't I have been the most predisposed to understand?

Thankfully, Castle interprets her meaning without the clarification. "Well, in all fairness, you tend to put my mind elsewhere. You always have." She looked up between tumbled locks of her dark hair in time to catch the flicker of a smile at one corner of his mouth. "Honestly, Kate, it's a relief. You're my oasis."

"So you do think about it."

"Sometimes," Castle replies slowly, as if reconsidering even while speaking. "But I'm referring more to…I don't know. The event itself doesn't haunt me so much. I can't explain that. There is a feeling that comes over me now and again though, a sense of, ah, impending disaster. Who was that state psychiatrist that helped us out with Morlock on that vampire case? Dr. Holloway. He'd probably tell you—what? That I have abandonment issues? A mild dissociative disorder? It does feel like it happened to someone else. And it's true that with the exception of my mother I've lost connection with anyone and everyone who knows what happened that night. People slowly disappeared. Not because they blamed me." His lips curl into a sneer. "Hell, they called me a hero, because without me as a witness the murders might've never been solved. Some hero," he concluded bitterly. "All I managed to do was to wash up on the shore later that morning a little more alive than dead."

Five years old. "Oh, babe—

"Don't," he snarls, slipping eerily closer towards looming again. His gaze slides right to regard her peripherally, cutting blades of blue. "I don't blame myself for what the killer did, Beckett, only for what I couldn't, and it's not your place to dissuade me. It's no one's place. None of you were there."

The detective echoes his small, sad smile from earlier. "Who do you think you're talking to?"

"I know," her fiancé concedes, and drops his gaze to the snowy ground. "I know you get it—as much as anyone else in my life could hope to. That's part of why I decided to bring you here. I'm just sorry it took this long."

"There's so much you're leaving out," she can't help to gently protest.

Rick doesn't flash another glimpse of that deep well of anger. Instead he sighs mutely with a plume of frosty vapor. "What does it matter now? I survived."

"It matters because I love you, Rick. I want to know every scar, inside and out."

"Is this where you point out how hypocritical of me it would be to say no? After how much of yourself you've shared with me over the years?"

Beckett drifts back to his side and reaches for both his hands. The writer doesn't shy away. "No, Rick, but that is my point. I told you all of that because I wanted you to know, and more importantly because you wanted to know. It's nice when someone really looks at us, when they care enough to try in spite of resistance."

"Maybe I was just morbidly curious."

Kate smiles and pointedly wiggles her left hand ring finger against his palm. "Maybe not."

"That's damning evidence," he agrees with the ghost of a smile. His grasp on her shifts to let his thumb stroke across the engagement band and the presence of the stone, hidden though it is between both their pairs of gloves. Even then, however, the lighter aspect of him shines from beneath a fearful furrowing of his brow.

"I'm not going anywhere," Beckett asserts. "You don't have to carry anything alone anymore. Thank God neither do I."

Castle shakes his head and sighed quietly again. His forehead lowers to rest lightly against hers and simply by the set of his eyes on hers she reads the message of capitulation. "Is there nothing I wouldn't give you?" he wonders aloud.

She kisses him. He moves against her lips, stroking hers with his, prolonging even that brief connection for another half a second. There is nothing unfamiliar about how that feels. Lowering to a natural stance, she claims a steadying breath and squeezes his hands, "Ready?"

Castle turns slightly. Beckett follows his stare to the bend in the road ahead, shortly after which awaits the termination of the tree line and an open, icy shore—where the bodies were buried. Waves break there, diminutive peals of thunder that give way to the sibilant hiss of sea foam dissipating on the sand. "No," her partner answers at length, "but there's no turning back for us now."