"I hold on to worry so tight

It's safe in here right next to my heart

Who now shouts at the top of her voice

Let me go, let me out, this is not my choice"

-Let The Rain Sara Bareilles

How did she get here?

Her brain feels muddled, like mint in a glass.

The water only makes it worse. The steam and heat curling around her like a robe, she feels the disconnect like the severing of an artery.

Kate realizes she's been standing in the shower for far too long, looks at her hand, wrinkled and red like new skin.

She turns off the water, gets out, forgoes the towel.

It's always like this now, this struggle to engage, this fight to be fully present in her life. Everything in her is slightly off, a leaning tower of ennui that she can't right, that makes her abstract.

In some ways she welcomes this like a new friend, grateful, so very grateful that it allows for the absence of feeling like a darkness, the inexistence of all visible color. This makes it easier for her, gives her time to sort her feelings methodically, like an archivist, cataloguing and evaluating.

Detached.

Removed like a stone from water.

Other times it makes her want to cry out, scream so loud that someone will come with a bucket full of feelings like Halloween candy and give them to her, fill her back up.

She looks at herself in the mirror.

Takes in the sharp angles of her arms, the beauty marks on her shoulder like punctuation, dark against the paleness of her skin.

She looks at her scar, like a signature on her body, raised and bumpy from the imprint of stitches and the dip of ribs.

She hates this scar and loves it at the same time.

She traces it with her finger, tries to remember what she looked like without it.

She can't. Not anymore.

She leans closer, feels her hips press against the counter, the honed edge of them like a chip of rock. She sees now how thin she's become but she's been careful to cover it up with billowy shirts and expensive jeans.

She won't let this become one more thing that someone has to worry about.

Her hair curls with water, not like the soft bouncy ones she manually does herself. Her natural curl is wavy, tighter, a little more unkempt. Usually she blows it out, adds volume with barrel curls, a trick she learned from a roommate freshman year. But now she can't be bothered. It seems so much, too much, and she now just pulls it into a bun, tries to keep it from falling apart.

Kate sighs, begins her ritual of getting ready. The rut of her day already beginning to wear her out.

She used to thrive on routine. She loved the control of it, it gave her what she needed to go out into the world and stop crime, that burden of justice made easier because of her ordered grasp of life.

But now, after all that has happened.

Now she wants more.

Anything.

More.

Just.

More.

And she doesn't know how to ask for it.

She finishes putting on clothes, uninspired in her jeans and blazer, and heads back into the bathroom to put on makeup.

She only bothers now with eyeliner, black and linear to tint her eyes dark, brown like cherry wood. She used to love how her eyes would shift green. But lately all she wants is the comfort of one color.

Strange.

She finishes with mascara. Doesn't look in the mirror again.

She used to like the walk to work. She would never take the subway if she could help it, she liked to breathe in the life of the city, draw from it some strange energy that she stored up within her, stockpiling for the winter.

Walking to work today is just one more thing.

So incredibly tedious.

She feels like she is watching a movie of her life, a movie that she has seen so many times she could recite the dialogue from memory. She wants to change the channel, find something new, not watch a Kate Beckett she doesn't recognize anymore walk the same way she has for years.

This is boring, she thinks, as the man selling newspapers calls to her in broken English.

How did she end up here?

The thought strikes her again, knocking against her ribs like a fist.

It's not like she wishes for her old life back, pre-shooting but she is missing something, a thing misplaced when her world was turned inside out like a shirt in the wash.

Because….and suddenly she knows, she knows exactly what she is missing, knows instantly that she wants what she was becoming, someone who laughed, who had fun, who saw life without the black veil that coated her vision for so long. Before the shooting, before Montgomery, before it all, Kate was beginning to live again.

That was it.

Life was returning, like spring to a barren world. Beautiful things were starting to grow; happiness had planted its seeds, a hopeful garden cut deep across the crumbled plane of her soul.

But then darkness had returned, angry and desperate to regain purchase in her, unwilling to lose one more inch to light.

And so she fell once more, helpless against the pull of it, like fish caught on a line, a hook too deep into flesh to wiggle off.

This is where she is now. Brain and heart wildly off rhythm, two completely separate beats that refuse to synch until someone comes along to realign them.

If they can ever be brought back together again.

Her heart is deep in rebellion, staging such a violent strike that she must ruthlessly crush it again and again and again. The cost alone makes her want to cry but she can't do anything about that, can't let her heart gain any more ground than it already has.

Because if it did...Kate can't think about that right now. She won't nestle with the completely wonderful and beautiful picture her heart is desperate to show her, thrusting it at her like merchant on the street. She won't let herself be sold on such glossy wonderment only to be disappointed by the object inside.

She forces all these thoughts aside, nudging at her like a kitten wanting to be fed, tries to bring herself fully to the present, to the open doors of the precinct like arms waiting for a hug. She takes a deep breath and goes in.

Castle is there already, coffee in hand, a smile on his face like it was made for her. Her chest constricts and her heart speeds up.
She hates her body's reaction to seeing him. Except she doesn't. She hasn't for a long time now.

"Thanks." She takes the coffee, inhaling the comfort, the warmth, like it might sooth her. A balm against the raw places in her. This. Always.

"Welcome. You look tired. Did you sleep?" His concern is too much, pinning her down like an artifact to a corkboard. On display.

"Enough," she hedges, refuses to give him any more reason to look at her like she might break, a delicate thing full of cracks, when Kate Beckett is anything but delicate.
He only nods, taking his cue and not pushing. Never pushing. Just waiting like he always does and Kate is so, so grateful for that. For his acceptance of the limbo she has placed him in because she's there too and selfishly she likes the company.

She starts on paperwork, works at it with a lethargic indifference.

She really is in a state today.

Castle sits beside her, writing something in his worn notebook, dogeared and coffee stained. She likes this notebook and its weathered leather. She wants to look at it, get a glimpse into his mind, run her hand along the inked words, take them into her.

She doesn't though, isn't brave enough to ask him for this. In fact, she isn't brave enough to ask him for anything. Ask him for the thing her heart begs for, the need that cuts at her like thousands of knives, sharp and aching and exquisite.

Instead she contents herself with a small glance his way, likes how his brow furrows as he thinks. She wants to trace the lines of his concentration, gather it all together in her hands like flowers in a field.

She really needs to figure herself out because now she is fully in the present. Her disconnect from the early morning is gone, replaced by the rally cry of her heart and the heady scent of her morning coffee.

She still feels tipsy, like she's spent too much time on the tilt-a-whirl at the carnival and getting off makes her balance faulty.

Her therapist would tell her to recognize this for what it is. He's told her before.

A half-life. Kate on a bridge between two worlds. One in darkness, the shadows calling to her, promising things to the demons within her, asking for only her soul in return. The other, swathed in light, brilliant and terrifying, asking for nothing, only wanting to wrap her up and keep her forever.

Kate honestly doesn't know which is more frightening.

That sends a shock of panic to her, like a volt of electricity. She wonders if she's glowing from the charge.

If anyone can see her terror.

Because that's all she sees when she looks in the mirror.

"Kate?" His voice breaks across her like a wave, gentle and scraping and she lifts her head to him, comes back from whatever place her mind has been. The journey is exhausting.

"Hmmm?"

"You want to get lunch?"

"Uh, what time is it?" She's been gone for so long.

"Late, 2.00."

"Oh. Really? Wow, yeah, lunch sounds alright." She gets up, stretches, soreness deep in her muscles like a bruise.

"What are you in the mood for?"

Kate pauses, coat in hand. Nothing, if she's honest. She doesn't want anything because she can figure nothing out. Not in this half-life limbo she's stuck in like a statue encased in glass.

But she can't tell that to Castle, she's barely articulated it to her therapist let alone herself.

So she says "Anything you want is fine."

He's eyes brighten, blue like juniper berries. "Comfort food truck? My phone says it's close."

She smiles, the tightness in her chest like a vice.

She feels like everything has suddenly sped up, the impact inevitable, the only choice left to her is which way to turn, how to take the crash. The bridge is going to crumble with her on it or not.

When did that happen?

And more importantly, why?

Her heart seems to be winning, this epic battle played out with her caught in the crosshairs. She thinks this is where she's always been though and it feels as though it might never stop.

But isn't she in control? Isn't that what she thrives on? That's what her therapist tells her, week after week, reminds her that only she can crawl out of this cave she's found herself in.

They get onto the elevator and she becomes reckless, wraps her fingers around his, her hands telegraphing promises that she's not sure she can make. He looks to her, surprise and glee on every inch of his face, lit up like a marquee. She doesn't say anything, just lifts her eyebrow, her heart staking its victory loudly, triumph like a song.

So there's that.

Her answer vibrating and humming in the air, like lightning against sand.

Apparently Kate has chosen a path, unconsciously but consciously all the same.

She doesn't know, only that she can't keep being here, stuck like a log in the current, wedged between opposing banks.

It's not working.

It never has.

Because she's been here before and she can't stand it anymore.

They get off the elevator, her hand still in his, warm like a glove. She straightens her spine, gives herself the extra inch she needs to be brave like she always should have been. Outside on the sidewalk he's checking his phone, looking for the truck and she sucks in a breath, silent but full of that energy she loves, has been without for so long.

She tugs on his hand, a small pull like she's found a thread on a jacket. Castle turns, his eyes still down and she waits for him to look up, give her his focus.

Her heart is in her throat, the moral victory too much, now it's looking to escape.

She swallows down past it, tries to ignore the way his eyes hold questions like his hand holds hers.

"Kate?"

She doesn't answer, just moves in and takes his mouth, soft, sure, completely unlike herself but absolutely like herself all at the same time.

He doesn't respond at first, the startle of her kiss too much to process but when he does, he lets her know everything, his lips spilling secrets like a man on death row.

Kate ends the kiss, pulls away from him but leaves their hands joined, feels all the truths he has yet to tell her in his fingers, in the whorls of his DNA.

"Lunch Castle?" She asks, pieces of mortar and stone crumble the longer she looks at his stunned face, the longer the link of their hands stays together.

"Yeah. Right. Food."

She nudges his hip with their joined hands, likes the solid jut of the bone, not sharp like hers but rounded, made smooth like sea glass. "Which way?"

He lifts their hands, squeezes just once, and uses them to point the direction. "This way."

Author's note: This just popped into my head and it wouldn't go away. Clearly Kate needed a happy ending because Kill Shot is going to be the death of us all.

Disclaimer: I don't own these character.