cold is the night. 4/5
i've seen the things that i must do.
but lord, this road is meant for two,
"Kate," he breathes, "What makes you think you're going to get me killed?" Even as the words come out of his mouth, she watches him puts the final piece of the puzzle together, the smile sliding right off his face. When she looks down nervously, Kate catches a glimpse of the bandaged foot he has leaning against the doorframe, and it sends this whole endeavour into sharp focus.
The tears stop; she pulls herself together, puts on her game face. "Can we head inside?"
"Are you staying?" he grumbles a little petulantly, but he moves out of the doorway as she opens her mouth to reply. She doesn't have any sort of answer, so it's probably for the best.
"You need to sit down," she says instead.
He lets her in, closing the door firmly behind her with a wary look shot in her direction. After a pause, he stumbles his way forward and to the couch, and, oh god, it hurts just as much to see it as it did when she imagined in, Castle – her husband – hobbling on the one foot. Instinctively, she moves to help him, but he shoots her a glare so fierce it could only have been learned from her, their first year together.
When he's settled at one end, she perches herself delicately on the other, bracing herself for whatever's about to come.
This all would have been much, much better if she'd thought it through, if she had a plan. But.
She doesn't want to straddle the line. And last time Kate sat around and thought up a plan, the only thing she could come up with is the situation they're in now.
"You're investigating LOCKSAT," Castle supplies for her when she doesn't immediately rush to fill the silence. She nods, scared to open her mouth. "You're investigating LOCKSAT, and you're scared it's going to get me killed."
"Yes."
"So you left me."
The distinction is still so clear in Kate's mind, the difference between walking out on their marriage and walking out to save their marriage, but her talks with Burke have served mainly to shed light on the fact that perhaps the distinction isn't so clear to everyone else. Maybe walking out is just walking out, no matter where you're heart's at. "I didn't–" She reverses track. "Yes. I left. To keep you safe." That's the most important part.
"Because leaving me, but still being married to me and still seeing me every day kept me safe?" he barks out, raising on his elbows for a moment before he remembers that he's injured and can't pace. He falls back to the couch, his gaze fierce on hers.
"No!" she barks back, takes a deep breath to calm herself. "Because I need to pursue this case, and if I'm living with you, if I'm with you, then you'll pursue it, too. And if you pursue it, then it could get you killed." Correction: "I could get you killed."
"So you left me," he repeats, voice biting. Even so, he deflates before her eyes, and the forlorn that comes out is even worse than the fury. "I don't– Are you just going to run, every time a new case comes up? Every time you think I'm going to get hurt? Run and not tell me about it?"
The fight just flows right out of her, pools at her feet, and she jerks her gaze away from his and stares down at her hands nervously, ashamedly. "I don't know," she mumbles, and it's honest, it's honest, but it doesn't make it any easier to say. "I don't know how to let things go." She lifts one shoulder up in a semblance of a shrug, miserable with how badly she wants him, how badly she wants to solve the case.
"Then why are you here," he says, and it's not a question, just a monotone of weariness, of months spent pretending that everything's okay while nothing's okay at all.
"I don't want you to die," she murmurs, "But I miss you. I don't want to straddle the line anymore."
"You think I want you to die? You think I want to have to come to terms with the fact that maybe, if I'd pushed harder, I wouldn't have had to bury you, huh?"
"Castle–"
"You left!"
"I didn't know what else to do!" she cries, and it's too much, too much; her husband looks like he's about to cry, and they're running around and around the same argument, and maybe that's the whole point? Maybe they're supposed to battle it out together?
"I don't trust you," he adds, sounding and looking for all the world like a little boy, like he can't orient himself if he doesn't trust her, like she's sent them all in a tailspin, and she has, hasn't she?
"I'd do anything to keep you safe," she murmurs, scooting in closer to him on the couch, "And I don't trust myself with this. I can't stop looking into it, I can't stop thinking about it and going over it in my head, and nothing I've tried so far has helped." She takes a deep breath in, prepares herself for the real motivator she had to get here tonight, the whole reason she showed up at his door: "I think I need your help."
He opens his mouth, gaping at her like some sort of cartoon fish, and she'd laugh in any other circumstance but it's just sad that she's surprised him with that. "It's late," he finally says, his voice low in the darkness of the dimly-lit loft. "You're going to go to bed, because you look like you're about to keel over." As he says it, the feeling hits her, the overwhelming urge to crawl into bed and curl up next to him and sleep until she can let this go, until everything is reset again. Castle's her husband, and he knows her so well, the years of history stretched out between them, and this could work.
This could work.
Until: "And I'm going to sleep on the couch," he adds, reaching behind himself to grab a throw pillow leaning against the back of the couch.
Whoa, no. Shooting a pointed look at his foot, she stops him with a hand on his wrist before he can move to escort her into their bedroom, feeling disoriented in the comfort of their home, in all that she's kept herself separate from. Disoriented, and filled up with it, too, filled up with this reminder that her husband, and his knowledge of obsession, knowledge of her, can reorient her. Filled up with the thought that maybe all the pieces can come together. "I'm going to earn back your trust." she says fiercely, "I did all of this because I love you, because I want to save our marriage... and because I'm scared." His eyes soften at that, a hand reaching out to rest on her forearm. "I don't know what to do."
She takes the pillow from him, curls her arms around it in some semblance of the hug she actually she wants. "But if one of us is sleeping on the couch, it's me." She's stubborn, determined, determined to make this right.
He gives her a long, assessing look, eyes bright even in the darkness but hesitance etched into every edge of his body. "C'mon," he says, finally, moving to stand. "The bed's big enough for two." And then, sounding like he only half-means it, he adds, "And it's harder for you to leave if you're sleeping on the other side of the bed."
"I'm not the one who bought a bouncy house for a mattress," she shoots before she can think better of it, a hand instinctively coming out to steady him as he hobbles into the bedroom.
The look he shoots her gives way to a curled mouth, though, a half-smile.
It's worth it. However uncertain she is, however up in the air everything else feels, it's worth it for that begrudging half-smile.
She can fight for that.
so i am waiting here for you.