Step Out Into the Light

"This is a promise with a catch

Only if you're looking will it find you

'Cause true love is searching too

But how can it recognize you

Unless you step out into the light?"

-True Love Will Find You in the End

words by Daniel Johnston, perf. by Headless Heroes

for Julie

my sister with all the illuminating words

It found her in the end.

She put her hand to her side and came away with blood.

It was dark in the shadow of the wall, and cold. Her blood dripping out. The shadow of the wall stretched over her, long and lethal. Too long living here, too long stuck here.

She had to force her feet to shuffle forward, slide through the grass, away from the cemetery's wall, away from the shadow stealing her blood.

She fell to her knees in the green grass.

He found her in the end.

It was the same as it had been before. A bright blue sky, cloudless and unending. A horizon capped with the white teeth of memorial stones. The scent of funeral flowers on the sharp breeze.

He'd been looking for her. He found her only when she moved, brilliant sun touching every blade, gilding her hair, illuminating the tableau before him. Her legs shook, then twisted under her as she fell. Half in shadow, her head and shoulders painted by light. A portrait of struggle.

A portrait of death.

He ran to her side, fell to his knees in the green grass.

"Kate."

Castle asks her to stop, to slow down, and the memory of his words, like a fading echo, lap at her insides. She agrees - to keep the anxiety from his face - but she can't stop now.

She can't. It's not enough.

In her apartment, she closes the shutters, dims the lights to make herself less of a target. She sits with her back against the couch and re-orders the timeline, searching for the odd sock, the thing she's missed. She talks aloud to herself, as if he were there, her mind supplying her with the words he might say.

At night, late into the darkness, she stays up. Searching. She interviews Pulgatti again, teases information from him strand by strand. The threads are tangling the more she tries to unravel them, knotting up faster than she can straighten them.

She looks at her mother again. Goes back over her mother's life, separate from herself. She establishes her mother's pattern. She cross-checks Dick Coonan with her mother, with Montgomery, with Lockwood. She has little, so little. She puts the word out among the regular informants, the homeless who listen, the men with addictions who need money. She asks them to pass information to her; she knows there must be someone, somewhere.

When Castle drops by unannounced, it is a simple thing to hide it all away. She closes up the notebooks, flips over the files, opens the long drawer in the console table, and shoves it all inside. She opens the apartment door and watches him smile at her, listens to the note in his voice he doesn't mean to let out.

He brings dinner this time, last time it was just a quick stop to ask for her opinion on a theory for his book. Pasta and chicken tonight, vegetables even, a glass of white wine, and the way her looks at her, hungry. She sits on her couch with her feet up, still in her oversized pajama shirt and leggings, while Castle sits in the arm chair, balancing a plate on his knees as if he needs it to keep him from some untoward action.

The night swallows the hours whole; she doesn't know where it goes or how. What she knows is only the way his throat works as he swallows, the careful way he avoids mentioning pain, and there's a lot of pain there. She knows the line of his eyebrow in an arch over his eye, the thick jut of his cheekbone as he smiles, the angled precision of his nose. She knows he's aware of the way she watches.

She knows her fingers slide against his jaw as she passes him, puts her plate in the sink. She knows he's behind her immediately, putting his dishes down on top of hers, his body framing hers at the counter, arms braced on either side of her.

She knows his breath skirting her neck, the scratch of stubble on his chin as he nudges her hair aside. She knows then the touch of his lips against her jaw, the hovering mouth, the plea in his fingers suddenly at her hips.

She stands there in the darkness of her kitchen, letting him.

And then not letting him.

He stays up late in his study, the murder board glowing before him. He knows if he stares at it long enough, the image will burn into his retinas and show him phantom images when he does finally go to bed. He hopes for this. Because it means he will probably dream connections, dream the answers he's looking for.

He's asked her to stop, take a break, slow down, and she's agreed to it. He's not sure how long he can reign her in, not sure how long this unsteady truce will last before she's back at it. But for now, he's got her protected; she's safe.

That's all that matters.

He's got nothing on the mystery caller who now holds all the cards. Castle's started digging through Montgomery's service record, a file he stole from the precinct back when Ryan and Esposito were helping him steal files and ferret them out of the 12th under Gates's nose.

Now that he's officially reinstated to their team, he can't do something so reckless as stealing files. That's fine. He's got what he needs for now. It's enough.

He's got lists going: the men Montgomery graduated the Academy with, men Coonan served with, men Raglan and McCallister collared and booked, and men they arrested but never booked. There's also her mother's side of things: lists of her active cases, lists of failed appeals, lists of mob members she defended, lists of the police officers she encountered while an attorney.

Lists and lists swimming before his eyes. Kate is good at the timeline, Castle is good at the profile. He will profile his way to an answer, find the story here. Because there is a story.

He needs to take a break. But he can't. Kate wouldn't.

In the morning, true love awakens him at his desk in the form of a cup of coffee borne by his daughter. Alexis shakes her head at him but says nothing. Rick turns the board off, closes up the files, stacks them neatly. He sips the coffee as the morning sun makes itself known, remembering the night he kissed her at her sink, the scent on her skin.

Alexis leaves for school, her coursework overloaded this semester so she can graduated early. Stanford is southeast of San Francisco, California, a private research university with an exclusivity that is difficult to crack. He knows it's worthy of his daughter, but the thing that gets him is its location: on the entirely opposite coast.

That's good. That's very good. It makes him ache, but it's good; it's necessary.

California is safe. California isn't New York, with its dark streets and pitfalls. Sunny California holds promise, while here? Here there are only more blind alleys, more hired killers lurking in the shadows.

Stanford's motto is "The wind of freedom blows." Castle finds that appealing. He whines; he makes faces; he pouts. But he wants his daughter to go where the wind blows her, where there is freedom.

Where none of this will touch her.

At the precinct, he brings Beckett her coffee, Kate, I have kissed your neck and touched your skin, and he sits in his usual seat and they go through the same motions as yesterday. Maybe today solves the case, maybe the witness comes up with something useful, maybe the alibi falls apart. All the same things. Kate, all I want, all I want-

Castle uses every moment with her to reaffirm what he knows. He does what she asks and no more, but he does it with clear meaning in his eyes. She must know. Even if it's buried deep, down within. She must read it on his face.

He loves her. Kate. He loves her.

"What have you done?" he whispered, his mouth against hers.

She still wasn't breathing. He pushed against her chest, afraid he was breaking her ribs, then leaned back down to blow air down her throat, again and again. Her hair spilled out over the grass. The place he'd once kissed, just along her neck, glowed with the too-slow flicker of her pulse.

"What have you done?" he cried.

He laced his fingers together again and pushed, pushed, pushed on her sternum, pushed all of his will into her. He had blood under his nails again, blood making his hands slick.

There was no one here this time to help; there was just him, following her across the cemetery on a hunch.

"What have you done?"

He'd found her in the grass. Her fingers curled around the knife in her side; he didn't know if he should pull it out or leave it. The sunlight glittered on the metal of the handle, red with her blood.

The man, maybe posing as an informant, was long gone when Castle arrived. The meeting hidden against the far wall of the funeral home, in the shadows. It was only when Kate stumbled away from the wall, back into the brilliant light bathing the cemetery, that he finally saw her.

Too late.

"What have you done?"

But now, at least, there were sirens in the air.

Twice in under a year. This time, she was pretty certain she didn't have what it took to come back stronger.

Not alone anyway.

When Castle came through the door of ICU, he didn't hold flowers. Or a smile. His face fell when he saw her, but they'd been through this before. She took it personally, but couldn't fathom caring about how she looked.

She cleared her throat and tried to push her voice out. "Castle."

"We got him," he said suddenly, plastering on a tight smile as he came to sit beside her bed. This time he grabbed her hand and wouldn't let go.

No Josh this time, crowding her. No ragged edge of confusion. All was clear. The window over her shoulder was letting the morning light stream in. No shutters on her windows.

"Got who?"

"The guy with the knife. One of Coonan's buddies. We got him; he's being charged. He's not talking though. I don't know if we'll ever get him to say-"

"Castle."

"And there's stuff I need to tell you, Kate." His voice strangled on her name and she tried to raised her arm to touch him, but only her hand would lift. He took it anyway, sensing what she needed perhaps. Squeezed. "Kate, you can't make me leave this time. And when I say I'll call you tomorrow, I'm-"

"Castle."

"There are things I need to tell you. Your mom's case. I've been looking into it. I've made a few connections, but there's still nothing solid-"

She squeezed back, remembered how terrible she must look and yet, there was still that light in his eyes when he looked at her. Always had been there, always would be. There was no way not to see it.

"Castle, I'm in love with you."

She's not sure anymore which is past and which is present; the tenses shift and the timeline blurs. She's a big proponent of timeline, but in this instance, the timeline does nothing for her, doesn't help her make sense of any of this. The only thing that makes sense any more is him.

She wakes in the morning with the sun and his palm skimming her belly. She laces her fingers through his and tugs him closer. Always closer. He warms her skin with his mouth.

She gets home at night to him, wherever that place is, wherever he is. She goes home with him, wherever that is, from whatever case it is. He holds her hand and leads her to couch, dinner held in his other hand. They watch television but really each other; they eat driven to distraction by a touch, a glance.

His lips find hers.

He says it again and again, from his mouth and his eyes and the soft, delicate way his hands cradle her face when he kisses her in the morning. He says it in the darkness of the room, his face buried against her skin, at the hollow of her throat or the curve of her thigh. He says it in whispers, quiet, as if reminding himself of its trueness, tested out each day and brought to conclusion each night.

"What have you done to me?" she whispers back and feels every thrum of her heart like a gift from him.

She traces the line of his tendon down his back, the curve under her hand. She licks the edge of his ear and takes it between her teeth. She feels the heaviness of his body against hers, the growl in his throat vibrating between them. She hums and slides her leg against his thigh.

His lips find hers.

In the end, it's the only promise she needs any more. The promise of him, still here every morning.

So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light. . .

-Matthew 10:26