A friend
Who, when I fear your closeness, feels me push away
And stubbornly will stay to share what's left on such a day,
Who, when no one knows my name or calls me on the phone,
When there's no concern for me – what I have or haven't done –
And those I've helped and counted on have oh, so deftly, run,
Who, when there's nothing left but me, stripped of charm and subtlety,
Will nonetheless remain.

- James Kavanaugh -

"The guy who shot me is gone; Dick Coonan, gone;" her voices rises and leaves claw marks in her mouth on the way out, "Hal Lockwood, gone; Montgomery, gone; my mom, everybody is gone, Castle."

The awful truth is out, that she's nothing, no one, without this case. Her entire life distills down to a few old files, a trail of dead bodies, and a common denominator: her. She's left a trail of destruction in her wake, and she never should have allowed him – pulled him, a step away from kicking and screaming – back into her world where he's bound to be a casualty.

"I'm not."

Her blood runs cold and her mind blanks, and every close call they've ever had rushes back to her, relived in vivid detail. Shots, knives, ice water, freezers, bombs, snipers, madmen. Everybody leaves, dies, gives up. Everything ends. There's a dryness in her mouth and a fuzzy static filling her ears that muffles everything except the dull push and pull of blood in her ears, blood pumping too fast in and out of every vein from the heart that shouldn't still be beating.

He's still here.

"No..."

"Kate-" the syllable is like a feather falling across a precarious fault line, triggering an irreversible slip of her control, a release of energy stored up over months of lonely frightful nights and days hell-bent on the single goal of making her outward recovery look good enough to get back to work. The trembling of her chin erupts into a quake across her whole body and she can hardly stand for the weakness in her legs and the suffocating fear tightening like strangler vines up her vertebrae.

"I'm not," he rumbles, stubborn and sure, and it passes through her, and she doesn't remember him rising from her desk or his arms wrapping around her shoulders. She doesn't even remember when she started crying, but she's wholly unable to stop now she's started. Salty droplets squeeze through her tightly closed eyes and soak the soft jersey of his shirt. Castle makes her a promise that's not his to keep: "we'll find them, Kate. Some day..."

Her body is failing her and her fingers twitch, aching to touch him, to feel some proof that he's still here and that he always will be, that he can't be extinguished with the rest of her hope, that he exists just far enough outside the void created by this web of conspiracy that draws light in and doesn't let it back out. They'll take him, she knows they will, if it means keeping her from the truth. They'll take him away and that's making her cry harder. She never wanted to get this close, make him such a vital part of her that the threat of his removal is just as bad – no, worse – than being shot again. The four months she was able to cope (if one could call it such) without him was fuelled by denial and equal parts selfish self-preservation and the knowledge that whoever ordered her shot certainly had those closest to her in the crosshairs, fingers ready on the trigger if they needed to use them. Thus, it was better for them to lose her rather than lose their lives on account of associating with her.

"You're alright, Kate. Breathe."

She is weak. She just couldn't stay away. Not even to spare him. Who's going to explain it to Alexis when he ends up the latest casualty of the case that should be her burden alone? He asked her once to look after Alexis if he d- if something were to happen, back before he knew just how real the danger was, but how's she supposed to look out for her when she'd be solely responsible for whatever happened? She shouldn't have brought him back. He'd have recovered eventually if she'd just left well enough alone and let him have his own life back. He's not a detective. It's not his job to be her security blanket or to solve her problems.

Distantly she thinks he's talking, sounding as if he's trying to talk under water – what's wrong, what's wrong, Kate? - but she can't breathe long enough to answer. Her feet move not entirely with her control or consent, toward her kitchen she thinks, though her vision fizzes and jolts and distorts her orderly apartment into a ruin. Suddenly his warmth is gone. Where's he gone? Kate reaches for him blindly, connecting with a solid bicep and pulling him back, or at least trying to.

"Don't!" she manages, her voice high pitched and strangulated. His hand slips over hers, squeezing, and at least he's still here.

"Hey, easy," Castle soothes, drawing her to his side and giving her his steady form to lean into again. "You're having a panic attack," he explains kindly, "I'm getting you some water, alright?" Kate manages to nod and he wraps a clumsy arm around her as he rummages around in her fridge, finally producing a sports bottle, handing it to her and keeping his fingers overtop hers, as if he's not sure she can hold it by herself. And she hates the way she clings to him when she's managed the last four months without him, when she's gotten her own water and been able to calm herself, even if it took hours running her shower until the neighbors worried she'd died in there, or more likely worried about water damage.

Guiding her hands, he encourages her to drink and when she opens her raw and stinging eyes at last, she finds him watching her intently, cosseting her against his chest with pain and sympathy and fear and – love, love, love, written in every line of his face. The ice water seems to open her throat a bit, or at least it stops her from crying long enough to gain a modicum of control.

"'m sorry," she murmurs when she lets the bite valve drop from her lips, "sorry, sorry," and burrows into his embrace, not giving a single solitary fuck about her wall or all the reasons she has, for her sake and his, to keep him at arms' length now. Castle shushes her, petting her back and snaking his arms underneath hers, threading his fingers through her hair at the base of her skull where the cold sweat of fear prickles and cools.

"Shhh," he mutters, his lips moving against her frizzy hairline on her forehead, and he's probably not even cognizant of the way they feel against her, the tingling the first good thing she's felt all night. She knows he doesn't mean it as a kiss. More that her forehead is in the way of his lips. But it feels just the same, and oh, how she wishes she could have them elsewhere. "You're alright." She does not feel alright. Castle inhales deeply and exhales slowly, over and over, and she finds herself breathing with him, vital oxygen bringing her down a fraction.

The red of embarrassment heats up her face and she feels worse than naked under his gaze, like she's just exposed her fleshy underside to him and he knows just where her weak spots are, and he could choose to hurt her or leave her or do anything. She'd have no defense left. Because he's seen her now completely broken by a lifetime of defeat and he's got no reason to think anything else is in her future.

She breaks from him, suddenly needing to be away, feeling far too exposed, though she can still feel his eyes sliding over her, worried and beneath the worry... She shakes her head. Focuses, as she always has, on the facts. Everyone is gone. Everyone except him. He's still here. She hasn't seen him for four months, treated him horribly, put him in danger countless times. He's still here. She squirms uncomfortably, hot and nervous as she fumbles with the sports bottle in the sink, uselessly dumping it out and washing it again. Castle stands some feet away, hovering from a distance, periodically moving his hands as if they're new appendages he doesn't quite know what to do with. She tries to ignore him, ignore how he's just here existing and waiting for her to determine something, behaving as if he's merely part of the furniture in her apartment until she decides on a use for him.

"Kate," she almost doesn't recognize it, her first name so full of reverence and laden with more than she could allow herself to examine.

"Why did you come back?" asks Kate, refusing to turn and look at him. She's not sure if she wants to hear him say it again, if she'll dissolve from disappointment if he doesn't, if she can't stand to hear it and would collapse if he does.

Castle's behind her in a flash, not fully touching, but his warmth radiates into her and their arms brush when he reaches beneath her again, shutting the water off and taking the bottle from her.

"You know why." He leaves that to her to fill in with whatever reality is acceptable, whatever version she can live with. She could call it a confession, a denial, an accusation, anything she likes, any lie she wants, he's giving her the option. She clings to the whispered truth and the vision of his face in front of that impossibly blue sky, while wishing she'd passed by the bookstore and never looked back.

Sharing his body heat with her a while longer and letting her breathing slow to almost normal levels, he keeps them standing that way, facing the sandy bricks of her wall and balanced over the bone-white porcelain of her sink, hardly touching but maintaining steady contact the way they've not done since he held her in the freezer and they waited to die.

"Do you want me to go?" he asks, and she hears the cringe in his voice as if he dreads the answer.

Yes. No. She doesn't know. Except she kind of does. She keeps her eyes set infinitely forward and her breath comes as shallow, silent heaving that itches the seam on her side where they put her back together. It's wrong. She can't keep him with her and take him down too, she can't leave another young girl with a dead parent and a start to life based on loss. She needs him to go.

But she doesn't want him to go. And she is weak. She just… wants.

"Stay," she whispers, and turns between the pillars of his arms either side of her, finding herself eye level with his lips, soft and so wet she knows he must have licked them in some kind of subconscious anticipation just moments before. "Stay."

The world tilts sideways for a moment and everything's changed now that she's said it aloud, but Castle is unperturbed, so it must have just been her. He's not saying anything. Not moving. Not backing away or pulling closer. Just standing inert and blending back into her surroundings again. Waiting.

"Shower," the non-sequitir falls from her, because it's the only thing she can think of. Where moments earlier she felt like she was on fire with shame and fear, now she only knows the damp of sweat cooling on her body and chilling her. She still hasn't managed to stop her traitorous body from shaking with adrenaline that's got nowhere to go, nowhere to run to, no enemy to fight right now except for her own broken mind. The need to find warmth overwhelms her but she thinks she'd be presuming if she asked him to give her his. "I need a shower."

Nodding and swallowing, Castle moves at last, straightening and letting her up.

"I'll just… be on your couch," he tries to excuse himself but she's quicker, her hand not able to fully close around his wrist, but it gets his attention just the same.

"Come with me?" she requests and hopes it doesn't sound like begging, "I don't… I don't want to be alone."

"Of course."

She leads him to her small bathroom and they stand awkwardly. He's not pushing for anything, not working an angle or looking for a way to get to her. She can't find the courage to ask him to do just that. So eventually, by their shared brain thing (as titled by Lanie) working at half capacity, it's decided that he'll sit on her counter and close his eyes.

Her bra and shirt are on the floor and she's pulling her socks off. "Can you talk to me?" she asks, needing something to cut through the thickness in the air that's got nothing to do with the shower running as hot as it can go, and more to do with the traitorous slickness pooling between her thighs.

"Oh… okay..." he says slowly. "What about?"

"Beginnings," Kate decides, pulling down her panties with her slacks, rolling the bundle of clothing up, and placing it out of the way. "Tell me the beginnings of all your stories."

She doesn't want to hear the ends. Not the neat and tidy ones; not the sad ones; not the realistic ones or the surprising ones or the happy ones. All she knows is ends. Beginnings could lead to anything. She yelps at the temperature of the water as she submerges herself and shields her face, then adjusts it, before peering through the glass door at him, his eyes closed and not even trying to peek, his face peaceful and impassive. He reminds her of a Tibetan monk, sat crosslegged and utterly still with no fears or wants or anger or exhilaration, simply present and yielding to the moment.

"Once upon a time," he begins evenly, his voice rich and elevated just enough to be heard over the spray of the shower, "I wandered off into the woods."

Tempted instantly to ask what happened, she stays quiet and suppresses her curiosity. She didn't ask for the middle or the end. Inhaling the humid air and healing her parched, dry throat and nose and lungs, she feels calmer, more grounded in this surreal version of reality.

"Once, I fell in love in an English class." Kyra? It must be. He's never loved anyone else like that. Has he? Maybe he has. For all she knows, he falls in and out of love faster than Martha changes outfits. But… "Once, I cheated in school."

There's a lull, an expectation. She sputters the water out of her face.

"Once," she tries the word on her tongue, "I went to Coney Island in the snow." Her partner keeps silent and waits. She offers again. "Once, I filled in for a sick colleague on a bright Tuesday morning."

A ghost of a smile is all she can make out from the foggy shower stall. It's a strange sensation, being naked and able to see him, fully clothed and not seeing her.

"Once, I wrote myself a superhero father," Castle returns, their volley of memories punctuated by long silences and attempts to gather courage.

"Once, I got up at four in the morning and made cinnamon rolls on Christmas."

"Once, I played Space Cowboy with Alexis."

"Once, I went for a walk in Central Park with my mom."

"Once, I met an extraordinary woman with a broken heart."

She bites her lip and smooths a blob of cleanser across her closed eyes and still-red cheeks, rinsing it thoroughly under the spray. "Once, I stood in line for hours at a book signing."

The door's fully fogged over with steam and she somehow feels rather than sees him jerk his head up. "Whe-"

"Shh," she admonishes, the spell broken. It's just as well. Only so much truth can come out at once, anyway. "I'm done. Close your eyes."

When she emerges, warmer slightly than she went in, she finds him doing just that. Waiting. Eyes closed, honest, and still infinitely peaceful. She wonders how she's allowing this. She's not herself, not at all. She's not what she once was and she fears she never will be again, and all she's been thinking of is the end, but maybe she should be focusing on the beginnings. She's come down from her panic, left with simultaneous drained exhaustion - the kind she knows all too well follows every one of these episodes - and the new high-strung humming tension that's singing through her.

Kate wraps herself in a towel and scurries to the bedroom, to her dresser, pulling out the first top and bottom she finds at the top of her messy pajama and lingerie drawer. Hesitating over a bra and proper underwear, she reasons that she's just spent half an hour three feet away from Castle, naked, in the shower, and that redundant garments would not make her feel any less nude, just less comfortable. Yanking the sweatpants on and the tank top over her head with little mind to her healing muscles, she returns to the bathroom, where she finds Castle still perched on her counter, finishing off a text.

"Alexis," he states.

"Ah."

Time stretches thinly over them, strung tightly as a violin string ready to be plucked. She sees herself in the mirror behind him, bare-faced and dripping wet with towel-ruffled hair and a shirt that hides nothing, and reflected in his eyes that he sees just what she does and his expression hasn't changed one bit. He's opened her up, crawled inside the dark and empty spaces, seen her alive and dead and halfway between, and how can he still look at her that way knowing all he does?

Offering her hand, she helps him off the damp counter, hears a click in his knee and tries to shut out all the things hammering in her skull that she doesn't want to think of. He's still here. He knows her, all of her, and he's still here when no one else ever would or could be.

His face is inches from hers. How easy it'd be…

Inevitability. Castle tastes of inevitability and hearthfire smoke muffled by rain. It only takes once; she's addicted, clings to it as tangible proof of life and hopes he finds the same in her. She'd had no chance to truly appreciate him months ago, the last and only time, but this time desire kindles through her in a bright blaze, funneling all the excess adrenaline in her body into picking up details. His smell, the slight stiffness with which he holds her hand, the way he's slower to respond, tentative and stunned, not sure where the line is and hell, neither is she. For all that he's made clear that he wants her (before, after, and still), he doesn't seem to know what to do with her now and she's not any better. Her tongue meets closed teeth before he rests his hands on her shoulders and breaks from her.

"Kate?" he questions, pain and a prayer for strength of will pulling the edges of his voice ragged.

At first she manages only a whimper of shock and desolation, and her second attempt isn't much better. It's not supposed to be like this. She's supposed to be whole and have her life back together and not be going to pieces when she hits a dead end with her case. She's supposed to be strong enough to keep him where he can't get caught in her undertow. But she's not. She doesn't want it to happen this way.

Except, she does.

In two parts. Once again what should have been a short, smutty Pornado fic has run away with me. What a terrible burden to have ;)

Comments, questions, concerns, complaints, and constructive criticisms always appreciated!