A/N: Many thanks for your support and encouragement.

Chapter 5: The Whole Truth

Previously...

"Do you even love me anymore?"

The air in the loft appears to stop moving, particles seeming to freeze in place, their energy loss to the ether going against all understood laws of physics.

Kate's eyelids feel weighted when she tries to raise them in order to risk a look at Castle's face. She feels sluggish and exhausted despite the regent jag of caffeine, which seems to be doing absolutely nothing for her system.

Castle stands, and Kate watches with a sinking heart when he turns and walks away. His expression is set hard as stone. Her mind is a whirring, panicked mess. Her heart is pounding and her lungs feel emptied of oxygen, depriving her of the wherewithal to even follow up her last revealing question with anything supplementary, anything softening or mitigating. She's in it up to her neck now.

She drops her head into her hands, her brow corrugated by a frown. She feels as if she's drowning.

"You heard me."

Castle finally finds his voice, though what comes out is little better than a strangled whisper of an accusation. He sounds tortured, maybe even disgusted, her betrayal an unpleasant, bitter poison on his tongue.

Kate stiffens when she hears his statement. That this is what he has chosen to take from her question, and from all of her attempts to share her feelings with him tonight, shouldn't surprise her. He has a tendency to lash out when he's wounded. She already knows this. But surprise her it does.

Slowly, she raises her head to look at him. He's standing a few feet away, staring at her, waiting for an answer. She barely nods her head, moving it just a fraction to acknowledge her own treachery. His face looks terrible, his eyes hard, laced with hurt, his lips set in a thin, determined line.

"And you remember? Obviously," Castle persists, needing more, some kind of proper, irrefutable confirmation from Kate.

"Yes," she sighs, running a hand through her hair in discomfort, scratching at her scalp when it prickles with unease.

"At Roy's funeral, after you were shot, you—"

"Yes, Castle. I heard you tell me that you loved me. Yes," she grits out, exasperated with herself as much as she is with him for his determined pushing.

The sound of her voice dies away and they're left alone again in the loft with nothing. There is no one to mediate, no one to distract or interrupt them tonight. They must wade through this quagmire of issues on their own or not at all.

Kate flicks another glance in Castle's direction. She finds a washed-out, defeated look on his face that more or less says it all. He still hasn't answered her. Her question was clear. His silence, she assumes, equally clear. So she prepares to leave of her own free will, to get up and go home before he decides to escort her to the front door with nothing but a hurt silence between them.

With a last glance at the folder lying on the counter, she stands, tugging the hem of her t-shirt back down, taking a second or two to make sure she feels steady on her feet before she risks trying to move.

"Why?"

His bewildered question makes her halt on the spot. She swallows greedily, pressing her hand to her scar. If he still wants to know, maybe there's still hope. Of course there's every chance he might just want to pick at the scab, amass every gory detail of her betrayal: all the better to torture himself with. But maybe, just maybe, there's still a chance.

She turns back slowly, until she's facing him, before she answers. "Same reason I left. Self-preservation."

"I'll need more than that, I'm afraid," he pushes coldly, crossing his arms over his chest in a show of defiance that Kate's pretty sure he only half means.

She breathes out slowly through her nose, attempting to quell the irrational urge to tell Castle to mind his own business. Of course he wants to know, and of course he deserves a proper answer. She's just not used to having to explain herself to anyone.

"Like I said, I had no idea how getting shot would make me feel…about myself, about my life... I questioned everything. Knowing someone wants you dead...? Castle, that's some pretty difficult stuff to get your head around. I could never have predicted how it would affect me."

"You mean that it would make you harder? Turn you into a liar?"

She knows how hurt he is. She can see it in the strain in his eyes, the tightness in every muscle in his face. So she lets these angry, stinging accusations slide off her like snow off a Dutch roof. If he really wants to know, she'll tell him, spare no detail this time. She owes him an explanation at the very least.

"I woke up with a tube down my throat, more scared than I've ever been. That's the truth. I felt flayed raw. Stripped of…everything."

Castle looks about as horrified as she's ever seen him, outside of the look in his eyes that day at the cemetery, when he loomed over her in utter panic, begging her not to die.

She barely pauses for breath, just keeps pouring out the only story that will give him any closure.

"I wasn't a cop when my mother was murdered. I was a college kid, Castle. Still a teenager, and I had no intention of ever becoming a cop. It took me years to build up a hard enough shell to be able to survive out on the street. I had to toughen up to even measure against my peers. Do you have any idea what I went through to protect myself? To protect my ride-along partner? Just so we'd come back off every tour alive?"

Castle has sunk back down onto a stool to listen to her, as if his own muscle strength has deserted him. Kate doesn't let up.

"When you met me I was…I was this complete person already. A fully formed adult. A homicide detective, no less. Years of arresting scumbags, working brutal shifts, having drunks vomit over me, patting down drug addicts and just waiting for that one needle stick that might irreparably change my life, fending off sexist advances in every department and on every street corner I worked…"

She pauses for breath and then keep going. "Every one of those experiences, and things you can't even begin to imagine, hardened me."

"Kate—"

Castle tries to interrupt, looking as if he knows he's pushed her too far this time. But she ignores him and plows on.

"But you saw none of that. You saw this woman who you put on a pedestal, someone you publically called extraordinary. I think even I started to believe it after a while," she adds, with a wistful, self-depreciating smile and a scornful shake of her head.

She watches Castle swallow, the hurt look on his face paired with something less easy to define.

"I was being truthful. You are extraordinary."

Kate shrugs dismissively. "Yeah, well, when I woke up in that hospital bed after my surgery, all of that toughness was gone. Everything I'd worked for, all the things I thought I'd learned about myself were in doubt. I was just another invalid with an ugly hole in her chest, headed for months of rehab with a target on her back."

Kate can see how uncomfortable these revelations are making Castle. He doesn't like being the bad guy, not with her. She's seen him behave in the same way with his mother and Alexis: loathe to criticize, often at high cost to himself.

"I wanted to be there, Kate. I could have helped you."

"I had a boyfriend. I wasn't supposed to be leaning on you. Not like that."

"But…you broke up."

"Yes. And I was in no position to start something with you the very next day. I knew what you wanted, Castle. Those three little words…they changed everything. I had nothing to give you back. I was a mess. Just ask my dad."

"I didn't need anything from you, Kate. I just wanted the chance to be there. To support you."

"I know," she says, her voice becoming soft and regretful. "And ignoring you was wrong. Not telling you where I'd gone and why, those are possibly the biggest mistakes I've ever made. You deserve so much better."

They both fall silent, this part of the conversation obviously at an end. Kate is acutely aware that Castle still hasn't answered her question, and she's on the verge of giving up and going home for the night. She has Gates to face tomorrow. Doing that on no sleep doesn't seem like such a good idea.

She stands to leave and immediately Castle stands too.

"So…what happened today?" he asks, not ready to let her go just yet. "After you came to see me. What made you come back here tonight?"

Kate pauses for just a second before she answers him, and then she shrugs, as if it's all so simple.

"If I loved you, and I do, why was I making you wait a single day longer? Why was I making myself wait? Was I not sure? But of course I was sure or I wouldn't have come to find you at the book signing…stirred that murky pond."

Castle's eyebrows shoot up. "Murky pond? You flatter me."

"Come on, Castle. We've been far from clear with one another. I'm just being honest."

"I thought I was pretty clear."

Kate blushes and bites her lip, and then she nods, looking down at her shoes. "You…you were abundantly clear. I might have been a little preoccupied trying to breathe at the time," she admits, wryly.

"And now?"

"I'm here," she shrugs, holding her hands out from her sides, palms up, in a gesture of openness. "I'm here after asking you to wait."

"Not clear enough, Kate."

"It was today."

"Well, you just upped the stakes. You changed the rules when you showed up here tonight. All bets are off."

"Got anymore gambling metaphors up your sleeve?" she nips back, with a dry arch of her eyebrow.

"Why? Am I going to need them? A gamble – is that how you see me?"

"No. No, but it was how I used to see myself. A bad risk…as…as a part of an us that didn't even exist yet. An us I started to want but could already imagine being over before we even got started."

"Why?"

"Why? Because I was that screwed up. I was emotionally ruined by the loss of my mom, Castle. Then Royce and Montgomery, getting shot—? The whole dark mess of my adult life. Poor relationship choices, a workaholic with no private life… I haven't taken a proper vacation in years. I live for my work, and you…you don't. You have balance, Castle. Stability, normality, a family."

"Don't you want that too? Wouldn't you like to have that?" he asks, his blue eyes softer now, most earnest on her behalf.

"I'm here, aren't I?"

Kate shrugs, and then she brushes past Castle to make for the sofa. She collects her jacket and purse and she heads for the door.

"You don't have to go," he says weakly, though somehow they both understand that she's definitely leaving this time.

Kate tugs on her leather jacket, flicking her hair out from beneath the collar with practised ease. "Yeah, I do. I have work tomorrow, my requalification to take care of first thing. I need to get some sleep if I want my gun back anytime soon."

"Right," he nods, looking down at his feet as they stand by the front door. An awkward, tentative pairing.

"Good night," Kate whispers, stretching up on tiptoe to kiss Castle on the cheek. She lingers for a second with her hand on his arm and her lips by his ear, before she drops back to the floor, her scent filling his nostrils and making him woozy. "I'll call you when things get a little clearer."

Castle gives her a questioning look.

"With Gates," she clarifies, walking out the door.

"Right," he mumbles after her retreating back, so bitterly disappointed with himself.

He's scuffing at a mark on the hall floor with the toe of his shoe when she turns back to impart a feeble smile, her cheeks stiff from holding onto it, her muscles trembling.

"Text me when you get home?" he asks, giving her a hopeful look, since this is all he appears capable of offering her right now.

"Promise," she nods, raising her hand in a fleeting wave.

After Kate disappears through the open elevator doors, she manages to hold on just a second of two longer before crumpling back against the rear wall of the car, quickly having to press a hand over her mouth to stifle a despondent sob.

TBC...