Fair warning: I'm a happily-ever-after kind of writer. Ye be warned, and please turn back now if it's not what you were looking for.
cold is the night. 5/5
take my hand and set me free,
take my burdens and bury them deep,
By the time the morning light breaks, Kate has been staring at Castle's looming back for at least several hours. When they'd retired to bed, he had shoved an old t-shirt of his into her hands, ratty and cold from disuse. Whatever the shirt was, it was old enough that she didn't recognize it right away, and it looked like it'd be a little too tight in the arms, but not so small that she had already usurped it as one of her own sleepshirts.
Not exactly a warm welcome, anyway.
She'd gone to the bathroom to change, and had returned to find him already in bed, with his back to the bathroom door. Which is where he's been. Unmoving. For the last eight hours.
Yeah, he's not sleeping, either.
Usually they only fall asleep like this, with Castle's back an insurmountable mountain, when they have little spats, and even then, all it takes is for one of them to crack and they're back tangled in each other. Kate's not totally certain what to do with this; she reaches out a hand to rest on his back but only makes it partway, her hand falling to the bed next to him. She stretches one finger out to play with the edge of his shirt, just lightly, tries to come up with something to say.
He surprises her, turning over and flopping onto his back before she can open her mouth, his eyes trained on the ceiling instead of her. He feels, somehow, further away than he did with his back to her. "I keep thinking," Castle starts before she can ask, "About my disappearance."
"I know," she murmurs, and the look he shoots her is very carefully not surprised, like he knows that her detective skills have no bounds. Even if Alexis is the one who spilled the beans. He rolls his head back up to face the ceiling.
"I meant about me leaving." He takes a deep, deep breath in.
"You don't remember it," Kate says, defensive without even really thinking about it. He's been holding the guilt of it around his neck like a vice for a year now, and she's not sure why it's coming up now but she still jumps at the opportunity to correct him, to smooth the lines on his forehead.
"No, I know. I was kidnapped," he sighs. "But then I chose to stay."
"To save the world."
"To save the world, to save you and Alexis and Mother." He clearly has a point, and he's struggling to hit it, so she waits. "I chose to stay away."
Oh.
Kate's thought about that before, of course, around and around in her mind. He didn't have a choice to go, but he did have a choice to stay. He could've called, could've dropped her a note to say hey, I'm not dead, but instead he stayed away for two months. Six weeks of which, even now, are still missing. She wishes that he would look at her, that there wasn't this divide and she could put a palm to his cheek and say it doesn't matter anymore.
"I chose to keep you guys in the dark, and I don't know why, but I have a pretty good guess." He chuckles mirthlessly. "If I'd called you, you would have stopped me. Or you would have showed up, and been in danger. The same reason I didn't call you when Alexis was kidnapped."
Finally, finally, he turns his head to look at her, lips quirking up at the corners. "Sound familiar?"
Oh. He's just hitting her with bombs, tonight, isn't he? Her obsessiveness, he knows so well, and he holds it himself, too, his search for the story. But in this, too, in this fierce protective nature of theirs, in their instinctive reaction to both seek the truth and to protect others while they do it. But. It's different, this is different, of course it is. He was dragged into it, and Kate started this, the second she put in the search for Bracken to see what popped. Not to mention: "We weren't married then, though."
"No. But I still disappeared on our wedding day."
"Not our wedding day," she snaps, leaning up on one elbow to glare fiercely at him, tired of laying next to him but not seeing his face. Their wedding day holds such a special place in her heart, at dusk with just their family, just them. They're married, and he very definitively did not take off on their wedding day.
He wriggles his eyebrows a little, eyes just glancing at her before flickering back to the ceiling. "Aborted wedding day, then."
Finally, finally, he rolls his head towards her again, his face so serious. "What I'm trying to tell you is that I understand."
Kate wants to move closer at that, to press her mouth to his and to roll him over onto his back, to smooth her gratefulness into his skin, but she's struck with the sense that I understand is not the same as I forgive you.
He just laid there and gutted himself for her, explained all that he's been thinking about since they went to bed, so she owes him the same. It's been the one trail of thought running through her mind since she murmured I can't stop looking into it. "I think that, after my mother's murderer – Bracken – was thrown in jail, I thought I could just move on, that I could flick the switch and go live a normal life. And then all of this happened, and five people are dead–"
"Not your fault," he says immediately.
Well. True, but, "Maybe not my fault. But because of something I did. And I can't push this... This obsession, this–"
He jumps in, supplies the word smoothly, his face impassive. "Addiction. This addiction."
"Yeah," she breathes.
"'You don't give up. You don't back down.'" One of his hands comes out to stretch along her waist, still so much tentativeness in the move. "Funny how the thing that makes you fall for a person is the thing that ends up driving you crazy."
She arches an eyebrow, feeling lighter, somehow, for having him vocalize the word addiction. "Wow, bold. A best-selling author falling back onto clichés."
His smile is soft, still so much forgiveness in it and she feels unworthy, tainted with her obsession as she is. He moves to sit up and she follows, crossing her legs to face him head-on in the bed. When he sits like this, the light from the window breaks in over his mussed hair, dawn making him look younger, even as his face contorts comically when he jostles his ankle. "Here's the deal, Kate. I understand why you took off, why you wanted me safe. But. Marriage is..."
"Partnership," she supplies smoothly, and he gives her a grudging smile for that.
"Partnership," he agrees. "Your problems are our problems," he reiterates, looking so earnest and eager and, just below the surface, overwhelmingly hesitant. "Or..." He inhales deeply, sharply, already miserable with it. "Or no deal."
"Castle," she sighs, frustrated with herself, with this thing, with the fact that she can't give it up but she's can't get him killed. "I don't know if I can! I don't want you die." The very thought sends tears pushing at the back of her eyes again, and she's tired, tired of crying, tired of being miserable with it all, "But I don't know if I can stop looking into this. I don't know if I can let this thing go, god, I don't want to live only in the periods between solving one case and getting a new one, but I don't know how to leave it, I thought I had, I thought–"
"Okay, okay," Castle soothes, but he still holds himself away, soothing with just his words. "Okay. So we figure that part out. We figure out how to help you let things go."
She feels guilty even saying it, but: "Do you really think I should just let this go? Leave it for someone else?"
"I think that, if anyone could get this guy, it's you." He's honest. It's kind, and still, still, it hurts, his tone careful and sad and determined. "So we figure out a way to approach it healthily, so that you're not killed, and I'm not killed, and it doesn't take up our whole life. And we don't put our life on hold. Kate, I just don't want you to leave me while you do it."
Okay. Okay. She can breathe through that one. Figure out a way to still solve the big cases, to still get justice, but without being all-consuming about it. Without letting it become an obsession. That's the point she kept missing, with Burke; she wanted to kick the obsession, but she didn't want to stop getting justice for the victims. And the two felt like they were mutually exclusive.
But Castle gets what the obsession means, what that voice inside that connects the dots and craves the truth feels like.
How to approach it as a case, not an obsession.
A case, not an addiction.
"Okay," she breathes, overwhelmed with it all, with the fact that, restless and wandering, she ended up at the loft seeking some kind of relief, some arbitrary unknown, and her husband figured it out, handed it to her within only... eight hours of thinking about it. "Castle," she starts, because it feels like maybe it needs to be said this way, "I find that I'm having this problem, and rumour has it that my problems are your problems." And then, more seriously: "I need your help. I need you. Can you help me figure this out?" Just saying the words lifts the weight off her chest.
His smile is shy, still hesitant around the edges but warmer that it had been as they went to bed. "You won't leave me again?" he says, sounding like a little boy. He closes his eyes in some sort of façade of shielding them from the morning sun but she knows, knows it's to shield his heart.
I didn't leave you is right on the tip of her tongue again, but Kate really looks at him, takes it all in, and thinks carefully. She didn't leave him; she wanted to protect him, but she left the door open, prepared her return. Didn't think about the whole thing enough, clearly, hadn't come up with a strict end point. But she left to keep his heart beating. And to him – she'd talked this over with Burke, to Castle – she had given him no explanation, no tangible details, just ignored his pleas to tell him that Bracken was wrong and had walked out the door. The third, at least, to do it to him, his poor, battered heart taking a beating and coming out bigger, more open, every time.
She's been keeping his heart beating, protecting him, but she hasn't been protecting it.
And she's certain in this, certain in his help, in letting him help, in finding a healthy way to get justice, determined to find a way that doesn't get him killed: "No," she sighs, and then, because Castle's eyes open, wide and forgiving and hurt around the edges, and she never wants to cause him hurt again, wants to regain his trust and earn it, she adds: "Castle? I'm sorry for how badly I screwed this up. I'm sorry I hurt you." A hand comes to either side of his face, and he doesn't back away, just stares at her, happy, already, to have her back, so she moves in, brushes her lips against his. "You're enough," she whispers.
"You're enough, you're enough, you're enough." Until he believes it.
bury it before it buries me.
To all that anons whose reviews I deleted (and the one signed-in whose review I can't delete and whom I can't contact directly): I'm sorry you feel that way. Kinda wish you'd picked a different venue to vent about Kate's sluttiness (really?) and the fact that she's unworthy of love (really?), but alas.
And to everyone else: thank you, thank you, thank you. A lot of you are pretty pissed at Kate, and maybe didn't want the happy ending, but thanks for taking the journey with me anyway. :) This is actually my first completed multichapter, which was a pleasant surprise, and definitely the most I've written in years, and I appreciated every modicum of support. The goal is to have the next one be less of an angst-fest, because I'm bumming myself out.