The ice and snow is denied purchase some yards from the restless shore. Tufts of grass and rocks are laid bare along the delimitation between winter's pallor and the purview of Mother Ocean. Standing where those two forces clash—forces nearly as old as time—is strangely unsettling amidst present circumstances. This is not an everyday sight to her. It feels like they've stumbled upon an impression of God's footprint.

Or maybe not God, all things considered.

"Low tide," Kate observes aloud. She immediately wishes she hadn't. The inane statement only emphasizes what she doesn't know to say—how unfamiliar this territory is. The detective is the one with an oversized anchor, and the writer is her indefatigable buoy. She's prepared to rotate positions on his behalf, but in these initial minutes the prospect looms as large as the sun-spangled sea. Words tumble from her brain to her guts where they twist apprehensively: How do I do this?

"You belong here," Castle says. Turning at the waist reveals him studying her profile through his iPhone some yards distant. A press of his thumb mutely announces the capture of a stolen moment. His smile is subdued, but alive. "Right there," he elaborates, "with the wind in your hair and the waves coming in at your feet, prostrating themselves before an untamed goddess."

A lopsided smile claims her unexpectedly. Sometimes his words are a tickling poke in the ribs, on occasion a supportive hand at her back. Still others it's more like he's fucking her with them, which is obscene. And she is obscenely receptive. "Be glad I'm not," Kate submits wryly. "You'd be one drenched sap."

Castle didn't laugh, but his smile tightened at the corners of his mouth. "Galene then." He pronounces it: guy-leen, an exotic word of unknown origin. "That's probably a more appropriate comparison."

"What's that?"

"She's one of the Nereid from Greek mythology."

Sea nymphs. In stories they aided sailors imperiled by violent storms. Kate's smile wavers, because the parallel is discomfortingly appropriate—to him more than her. It designates her as a savior, but she's thirty-five years too late. She is too small a vessel to contain how much she wishes that were not the case.

The departure of her amusement is like a thrown switch. Rick's smile leaves too and seems to take the light from his eyes along with it. "His name was Llewellyn." Just speaking it seems to banish some of the color from his face. "I knew it was him when I followed the music around the bend in the road. It was coming from his car: a 1969 Mustang Boss 429. He was the only one in town who owned one at the time, you see."

"You own one of those," she blurts in surprise. It's in the garage at his beach house. With a small twinge of embarrassment she realizes that some part of her suspected it was a more recent purchase, something he'd obtained with her in mind after becoming aware of her interest in muscle cars.

His next words crush that theory into dust: "Not just any one of those."

Beckett stares at him for a small eternity, stricken by the implications. She wants to scream at him. Her throat aches with the effort of holding it in. Why? Why the fuck would you do that to yourself? Instead she sucks down a breath and pushes it out slowly, shakily. "Can you…explain that for me?"

"No," he replies hoarsely. It doesn't make sense even to you, does it? As if he'd heard the question, Rick meets her eyes and asks, "Can you?" There was such hunger to know etched into those rugged features. The woman ached to provide what he sought.

Except…oh damn. Maybe she could.

"I know," she began hesitantly, wanting so badly for the words to be right, "that when the pain of Mom's murder was fresh, I was drowning in it. I'd have grabbed onto anything to keep myself afloat." She touched at the place between her breasts where the chain which bore her mother's ring habitually rests. "Dad gave me this. Obviously. It's not something I could have ever taken. It's strange," she continued softly. "Until now I never thought about whether he'd known what he was really giving me at the time."

"A lifeline."

"Yeah." She sighed, frowned. "Of course he knew." A hesitant amusement unexpectedly awoke. "Before it all, he often fell back on her in times of need. Whenever my emotions were running high about a boy or some kind of drama he'd get this antsy look about him and say, 'Let's go see what your Mom thinks about that, Katie.'"

A rumbling chuckle eased out of her companion. "Would that I could've done the same."

Beckett's lips curved, but quickly straightened to realize she'd strayed into talking about herself again. Yet her partner seemed to have profited from the comparison. The haunted gape of his eyes had returned to normal width. The author seems to rally himself even as she watches, pulling together all the jagged pieces. That kind of strength is not something she would have imagined beyond her fiancé's capabilities.

Seeing it happen though…

If Kate let herself go to him now she'd stop him. Sure as hell. And after witnessing the cost thus far she doubted another day would dawn in which she could ask him to pick up the story again. The woman remained very still, crossed her arms beneath her breasts. Her gloves clench into tight fists.

At length Castle continued. "When I came around the bend the mustang was parked right at the end of the road, facing the ocean. It was beautiful," he adds, so quietly that she strains to hear clearly. "It looked like a big cat crouched in the dark, its taillights glowing red. The passenger door was open."

"He saw you?" Beckett asked, hoping to ease him along in the telling a little.

"Not right away. He was down on the beach. Digging. I couldn't see him from where I was. For the life of me I can't recall now what I was thinking at the time. But I wasn't afraid. Llewellyn was that guy, the one the rest of us wanted to be. He was popular, smart, athletic, but also good humored. With his attributes he could've been a jerk or a trouble-maker and probably gotten away it. But he didn't. He was friendly to jocks and geeks alike." Castle's eyebrows lifted and fell; he shook his head once. "It's a cliche we've heard so many times, but it's true: everyone liked him."

Sounds familiar.

Beckett watched her partner unblinkingly, waiting for a sidelong glance or half-hearted smile. Something. Anything. But if the author was aware of the parallels between himself and the description he'd just given there was no indication. Words tumbled in her mind again, too many possibilities. She chose, "What changed?"

"Nothing," Rick answered. His expression hardens. "The veil was pulled away from the monster's face—nothing more."

"What do you mean?"

"Llewellyn may not have been the one to physically initiate trouble, but it was never far behind him. Montauk was a small community even then, but with a disproportionate amount of strife among its residents. No one made the connection because…he was the way he was. But in the aftermath, with the illusions dispelled, people talked. They began to realize that a lot of the disparagement between people, families, and even some businesses had begun or were enflamed by a comment Llewellyn had made or something he claimed to have seen. A long series of small lies," Castle murmured tonelessly, "that slowly metastasized and turned neighbor against neighbor. He was always killing us. But by inches—millimeters even—so we never understood it was happening."

"Something must have changed," Beckett insisted gently, "for him to reveal himself that night."

"Oh. Yes, in that respect there was a change. Graduation—or at least that's my theory. There was never any proof concerning that detail one way or the other. I'm not sure anyone was even interested in his motive at the time. Not that I blame them considering his crimes."

Kate frowned in bemusement, but almost immediately stiffened with realization. "Oh shit."

Castle studied her intently from across the sand. "You see it too."

"People would have been expecting him to leave Montauk."

"For college or whatever," Rick inserted.

The sick logic of it made Beckett shiver even as her blood hummed with the dark thrill of achieving some form of conclusion. "A self-driven young man like that; it'd be weird if he didn't. But if he left—

"He would've had to give up his sandbox and all his favorite toys."

"Christ," the detective hissed softly. Then growled, "The pathetic little bastard."

"It is pathetic," Castle agreed. "In more ways than one." Something about the way he said it drew her gaze. "I'm not sympathizing," he growled deeply. The writer went rigid while saying so, bolstering the legitimacy of the claim. "But I can see how the rest of us exacerbated the problem. We helped build Llewellyn up into something he wasn't, put him on a pedestal to which he had no rightful claim. If we had been really looking at him instead of gazing admiringly, maybe those girls would still be alive."

"Rick, that's not fair."

"No," he seethed in reply. "No, it isn't." Anger coils in his broad shoulders and the tautness of the fists at his sides. Kate doesn't take a step back this time. No more distance between us. Not even an inch.

The dark-haired woman stopped herself from driving the heel of a palm into her forehead. She cursed herself mentally for nearly missing it. Maybe part of Castle did hold the town at large accountable. But his anger wasn't directed at the other citizens of Montauk. It was pointed inward at himself. He said we. But he meant I.

Before she could chastise him the author sighed and strode to the shore at her left side, facing the ocean. "I know how that sounds," he assured tiredly. "It's not really something I carry, Beckett. It's just…"

"It's just frustrating to look back and know you could've done something," she concluded. "If only you'd known."

"Yeah," he mused with a small, humorless smile. "If only."

Kate steeled herself and reached to grasp lightly around his right forearm. The familiar solidity of him, the scents of him detectable upon the air; it's all a strange juxtaposition to this daunting newness. The fine hairs upon the nape of her neck arch to attention from the sheer rightness of their contact. "Tell me the rest," she murmured, stroking down to his hand and grasping it. "My poor toes can't take anymore getting sidetracked."

Her fiancé's broad shoulders stirred with a glimmer of mirth that didn't reach his solemn expression. "I laid my bike down and went to the car. It was empty. The dome light was on from the passenger door being ajar." His chest pressed lightly into her arm with the expansion of a deep breath. "I remember the smell of the black leather interior. Bucket seats. Gleaming panels. Annie's Song coming through the speakers." John Denver would probably never strike her the same way again. "The car looked so mysterious and…adult. I mean: something I knew even then was beyond my ability to wield or fully appreciate."

Kate didn't prod him along again, didn't even think to. She was as good as lost with him in the memory.

"I heard something else too though: a strange and rhythmic rasping sound I couldn't place."

"A shovel," she voiced, hardly aware of doing so, "hissing against the sand as he digs."

"He was half in the headlights, half in the dark on the shore. The first grave was already a few hours old. I arrived just as he was completing the second—Laura's."

"He killed and buried them one at a time?" she asked, but even doing so, remained entrenched within the mental image he had painted with his words.

"Judging by the extensive trauma on the first victim, police assume it was unplanned; a complete loss of all self-control and moral inhibition. But once he'd taken that plunge, they theorized, he couldn't stop himself. So he did it again. And again. And again." Beckett pursed her lips into a firm line. "I think they're close to the truth, if not wholly correct. I saw him. On the beach." She unconsciously clasped his arm again with her free hand. "I saw him and he saw me at the exact same time."

"Did I notice something different about him?" Castle asked aloud. Soft gasps announced his breathing, sharp little tugs of oxygen. The detective fell into a similar pattern, felt her heartbeat quickening. "I don't know how. It was dark. The bodies were buried. How could I just know? But he saw me," her companion continued, speaking more quickly as well now, "and out of the sand he came—like some crazed jack in the box sprung from his cube. He didn't say anything. Me neither. We just looked and then we acted. And I ran," he gasped softly, blue eyes glazed and sightless upon the ocean. "Forgot about my bike, or the car, or anything. I wish I'd said something," he growled, clenching his hands into fists. Kate wasn't even aware enough to wince from the pressure of his grip. "I didn't even ask about Laura. Gone into her sandy tomb. I didn't—" he jerked, shoulders heaving with a spasm of perfectly soundless grief. A funneled version of his baritone escaped, tight and laced with emotion. "I didn't even think about her, Katie." Hearing that version of her name at such a time ripped into her heart like a goddamn meat hook. She flinched hard, felt droplets of wetness graze her cheeks on the way to the sand. The writer's eyes were glossed with a similar sheen, but no tears fell, as if they weren't enough to do the job. "I didn't even call out for her.

"I don't…remember," her partner continued hesitantly, more rasped. "It's a blur. Suddenly we were back near the lighthouse, running around the base of it." Castle's brow furrowed. "What was I doing there? I wish I'd… But that's where we were, and I remember running, and thinking that I would never see home again. Never see Mom again. I was trapped in some bizarre loop where Llewellyn and I were going to be stuck forever. Just…circling that red and white tower too winded to call for help, or Mom, or Laura. I don't—I don't know why I thought that."

Kate sniffed wetly, quietly, dabbed at her nose with her sleeve.

Castle's attention shifted from the ocean to her. A small, humorless smile graced the contours of his mouth. The author reached into his inner coat pocket with his free hand and withdrew a white handkerchief. Of course you would have one. He pressed lightly at her cheeks with one silken corner, ascended a bit to graze the skin under her eyes. Then he proffered it mutely for her acceptance.

Kate didn't have the words, just grasped it and leaned in until her head bumped lightly into his chest. The firmness of his arms rising to surround her was so…good. But she did it for him, wanting something firm and fixed to anchor him while being tossed along the harrowing current of recollection.

"He caught me. I'm honestly not sure how long it took—maybe just a couple laps. 'Don't be afraid, Richie.' That's what he said. 'Don't be afraid. Laura's waiting for you. We're all born in blood, Richie—our mama's blood. Why wouldn't we leave this world just as drenched in it?'" He shivered against her and she quaked too in pure sympathy. "I saw him, Kate. But not the young man I'd assumed to know. He was gone as if he'd never been." Silence stretched itself out between them. Part of her didn't want it to end. "There wasn't time to say anything even if I could have thought of the words. He threw me over the edge of the hill. It's was a steeper slope back then, and he was strong. I landed on the rocks all the way at the bottom. I hit my head and..."

Kate eased back fractionally while remaining in the corral of his arms, eye-to-eye but for the height discrepancy. She reached up with one hand to trace the scar over his left eyebrow. "Here."

Castle blinked, staring blankly before finally asking, "How did you know?"

"I asked Lanie about it once." There was no reason to blush about her interest on the matter now. "She said it looked like the result of impact trauma."

"Perceptive as usual," he agreed succinctly.

"Jesus," she whispered. The detective curled a hand at the base of his skull and pulled him down, kissed the lasting stamp of old violence. He withdrew too soon for her liking to match stares again. She said, "But here you are. Did Llewellyn make a mistake, or not have the heart to finish it?"

Castle's jaw shifted, but he failed to reply.

"You don't remember?"

"I do. I remember it all very well from that point forward. I didn't black out from the fall. I just…floated out to sea. I could see him standing there at the top of the hill, watching me go."

Kate tilted her head and looked to the shore at her right. "The waves didn't—

"Smash me on the rocks? Maybe at first…I'm not sure. But it's deep water around this little notch of the island—the current pulls with more insistence. That's why you aren't seeing any driftwood or the like. Go a few hundred yards in either direction from here and it's another matter."

She frowned and looked back to him. "I don't understand. Wasn't that a lucky break for you?"

Castle moistened his lips in consideration, seeming hesitant before continuing. "It was, but it shouldn't have been. That's why he didn't come down to finish it. I should've been carried halfway around the island, long drowned by the time the current spilled me onto the shores along the southern beaches. He knew that."

"Why..." she stopped, couldn't finish it.

He did. "Why wasn't I? I don't know. None of the local guys could explain it either, and they live half their lives on the water."

The world kept moving, but the woman was very still in his arms. "And you were awake for it all?"

Richard nodded, his eyes straying hers. From an angled perspective she could see a resurfacing gleam in his gaze. It made her fingers curl into his coat at his back. "I can't…I don't want to talk about that part. I'm sorry. I just can't."

"Drifting was worse than…the stuff before?"

"Before I was driven by raw instinct. I drifted for hours. There was so much," he paused, leaving the sentence undone. Blue eyes shifted to similar, deeper hued ocean. "There's nothing out there, Kate. Nothing but time. I spent it thinking about Laura—what I should've done differently. About surviving Llewellyn only to die in the sea where no one would ever find me. No one would ever know what happened to her."

"Oh, Castle," she breathed. He'd been a boy, violently stripped of innocence. No one should become aware of mortality in such a fashion.

"Don't," he warned grimly, but without the same intensity as earlier. "For my part, this is why I've kept it to myself. People looked at me differently afterwards. I hate that look, Beckett. I didn't need their pity then, and I don't need yours now."

"Hush," she soothed. "It's not pity. Sympathy. Empathy. They're different, Rick. You know that better than most." Her partner just stared, frowning. Doubt was written into his tense upper half, but so was the longing to believe her. "You may not see it," the woman continued earnestly, "but building the life you have—atop something as horrible as that night? You're one of the least pitiable people I've ever met."

"I want to believe you."

"'Cause you're smarter than you look."

He lifted his eyebrows somewhat. "You're picking on me? Now? Maybe you could use a little pity."

"No," Kate replied quietly, but firmly. His tickle of humor couldn't dissuade the pervasive chill which threatened her core. "I can't think of you in that context—of pity. If I let that happen, I wouldn't know how to reconcile you with the man I agreed to marry. It's already…hard." There arose a glimmer of his original fear. "I'll deal with it," she assured him immediately, sternly. "And you'll give me time to do that."

"And now you're bossing me around?"

"Why would I stop?" she hummed with an uncertain smile. "You're less familiar now. Heavier than I thought. But you're not different. I was afraid you would turn out to be—that everything else was just an act to keep people from really looking at you."

"Not quite. Sorry. I'm just as likely to fixate on your ass when you're filling out the murder board."

"Good," she blurted, but paused, blinking uncertainly.

A brief chuckled hummed in his throat.

"Good," Beckett repeated with an arching eyebrow. "But don't advertise it for Christ's sake."

"I remain the very soul of discretion."

Kate rolled her hazel eyes, but smiled somewhat. She gladly pressed into him when his lips touched at her forehead in a kiss. Both hands lifted upon his back, tracing nonsensical patterns. At length she stated, "I love you, damn it." Her grip tightens into a squeeze. "Who you are right now."

Her partner sighed with a hint of the peppermint candy that had arrived with their check at the diner earlier.

Was that really only a couple hours ago?

Castle drew back somewhat, skimmed a few rebellious curls at her brow in order to slide them behind her ear. The emotional toil exacted by their conversation is evident in the subtle deepening of lines about his eyes and mouth. He's still pale—that's likely just as much from the cold by now. Blue eyes still seem a shade or three darker than normal—that's not. "Let me take you home, Kate. There's nothing more for us here."