A/N: I know everyone's done this. I know that. But to be honest, this is entirely chezchuckles' and Cora Clavia's fault, for writing such terrible, heartbreaking stories, and making me feel like I had to make everything better. And I'm not even sure I've succeeded. Sigh. (Also, I totally ignored the previews for next week. Yup.)

Fix You

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love somebody but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

"Fix You" - Coldplay

It takes her so long to finally put it together.

It takes him not showing up to work, once, twice. (And when he does show up, his face is this careful, impassible mask that is absolutely unlike the man she knows, so unlike him that she would think it's funny, in fact, if her heart didn't crumple in her chest every time she looks at him.)

It takes him focusing solely on the cases, not on her; it takes the sudden, striking absence of those little looks, the touches, the playful comebacks.

For all she knows, Richard Castle is gone.

If she's honest, she knows something is wrong. She knew that very moment when he showed up at the bullpen, no trace of the usual smile in his eyes; she knew when she asked what he wanted to talk about, her heart tender and hopeful, so very ready, and he brushed her off.

But she didn't want to look at it too closely.

Because it could mean only one thing.

And she didn't want to face it.

Didn't want to face the fact that he might have heard her talking to that suspect, might have found out in the worst possible way - by accident - that she had been holding back on him. That she knew.

That she remembered.

But he would have come to her, right? He would have confronted her. So she refused to believe it.

She firmly, desperately, pushed away that possibility.

Until that day when she has to go down to the archives. Their case is strangely similar to a murder that happened eight years ago, and she needs to peer over the file, compare the details; but when she steps out of the elevator, their victim immediately vanishes from her mind.

Her body stills. Sobbing. There's someone sobbing down here.

And she knows the voice.

He said he was taking a break, going out for food; she had no reason to doubt that. Although his eyes were a little too dark, his mouth a little too tense-

It's not regular crying either. It's the choked, halted breathing of a drowning man; it's the raw keening of a dying animal. And Kate presses her palm to her mouth, bites hard into her own skin to keep herself from responding.

The world is blurry and she can't breathe, but she deserves it. She deserves it.

She did this to him.

Oh, oh-

She gasps silently, tries to catch her breath, fails, and she does what she's always done. Because it's unbearable, because she can't take it, can't face the fact that she's broken, broken him.

Kate Beckett runs away.

She doesn't go far.

Back in the elevator, she has to push the stop button with a trembling hand, because she can't let Ryan or Esposito or anyone see her like this. She's breathing too fast, her fingertips still pressed to the line of her mouth, as if she might need help pushing back the tears; she's hot and cold at once, and her stomach clenches periodically. She's going to be sick.

Oh god, oh god, what has she done?

She can't let herself cry.

If she starts now, she'll never stop.

Kate squats down, the back of her thighs touching her heels, and buries her face in her hands as she controls her respiration. Oxygen is painful, scratches her throat as it goes in; but after a while the whole process becomes smoother, slower, and she goes back to her feet.

The grief under lock and key in her chest.

The cops waiting by the elevator give her curious looks when she strides out, but she ignores them, focusing instead on getting back to her chair. Her legs are not as steady as she would like them.

Esposito, of course, needs only take a look at her face to know something's wrong.

"What's going on with you?" he asks, an eye on her, but the rest of his face still trained on their victim's finances.

Her mouth is dry; she touches her tongue to the corner of her lips, but it doesn't help.

She knows already, and yet she can't help asking.

"Espo, during that bomb case. When I was interviewing this suspect, the Hispanic guy?"

"Yeah. What about it?" He's looking at her now, really looking, and it doesn't help.

"Castle watched, didn't he?"

The words come out a little strangled, because just the thought of him behind the glass-

Esposito tilts his head at her, obviously trying to figure her out. "I think so, yeah. He asked where you were, and I told him. You know him - when he can't be a part of it, he at least has to watch."

It's true. So very true.

She wonders how her shredded heart is still beating.

"Beckett."

She drags her eyes back up to Esposito's, exhausted, wanting nothing more than to be left in peace.

"You gonna tell me what this is about? Why he keeps showing up looking like someone shot his dog?"

"No." Her reply is immediate, curt and defensive, and he obviously doesn't like it; but the moment he opens his mouth - probably to scold her - she's already speaking.

"Esposito. I'm not looking for advice, okay? This is my screw up. My fault. I'll-" she swallows, tries to slip the words past the lump in her throat, "I'll fix it. I'll make it better."

Somehow.

Somehow she will.

Her fellow detective gives her a long look and throws his hands up in surrender. "You're the boss," he mutters before going back to his job.

She spends the next hour establishing a strategy.

She cannot put this off; she's already spent too much time in denial.

The moment he comes back, the moment she sees him hovering at the edge of her desk, she's going to get up, take his hand, and lead him somewhere quiet where they can talk. Maybe into the very interrogation room where he heard her say that she remembered - she knows the writer he is would find that fitting.

She's going to look at him and apologize - please, please, let it not be too late - she's going to explain, tell him the truth - and he has to listen. How badly she needed it, the solace of his words, the light of a memory that wasn't blood, screaming and death; how she needed that beauty intact. Untouched.

If she'd gone anywhere near it - if she'd addressed it, had discussed it with him - she would have ruined things.

She knows this with absolute certainty.

Not just because she wasn't ready, not just because she was so fragile and already falling apart, but because it's what she does. She ruins things.

He's the one with the words, the right words, always.

She just-

She doesn't know how to do this.

But she tried to tell him, that day at the swings. She did tell him. I'm not gonna be able to have the kind of relationship that I want-

With you.

Ah. She didn't say this. But he understood, didn't he? The "with you" was very much implied, and come on, Castle, what else could she have meant?

Ok, no. This is not the way to go about it. She can't let herself be angry. Kate rests her forehead against her hand, hears the muffled sobs from the archives again, and all the irritation seeps out of her.

She hurt him.

That's all she needs to know.

She hurt him with her silence, hurt him with her lies, and she needs to make it up to him. He deserves the truth from her.

The moment he shows up-

Except, he doesn't. She keeps glancing at the elevator, at the stairs, and it takes her a long, long time to accept it.

Castle isn't coming back.

He texts her with a lame excuse, something about Alexis needing him, and all she can see is the broken man from earlier.

She can't even be annoyed at his lie.

He must have stopped by the bathroom, looked at his face in the mirror, decided that there was no way he could come back to the bullpen without her noticing.

Her carefully established plan crumbles in front of her, pieces on the floor; she spends the rest of the day dragging its weight around.

She solves the case with Ryan and Esposito, but it doesn't feel good, doesn't feel right. There isn't the slightest flavor of triumph to it, not when she cuffs the murderer, not even when she turns back to the guys to call it a day.

Only ashes. Ashes in her mouth.

After she's done cleaning the murder board, she looks down at her father's watch. It's a little past eight. Still early enough. She's vaguely surprised, probably because the afternoon seemed to go on forever, a long, painful stretch of misery.

And yet, there's still time.

Kate closes her eyes and sways, catching herself on the edge of her desk.

Is that what she should do? Go to him?

The loft. Where his mother and daughter live. Kate cannot imagine what they must think of her now.

A wry smile twists her lips at the thought. Maybe there's been no major change. For all she knows, neither Alexis nor Martha have been great supporters of hers lately.

And with good reason.

Her mind flashes back to the sobs in the archives, the cracks in her heart ever-widening, and she starts to wonder. Maybe she shouldn't go at all. Maybe she shouldn't try to fix this.

He's probably better off without her.

Sure, he will hurt for a while - oh, and she will, too - but in the long run...he'd be safer. Happier. If she wasn't clogging up his world with her ghosts and her darkness and her murders.

She hunches over her desk, palm pressed tightly to her chest, the scar pulsing angrily through the thin fabric of her shirt. It's all she can do to keep the tears at bay; thank god, there's no one left to see her.

Oh. Castle.

She can't, she can't-

She can't give him up.

It hurts too much, just the thought of it. She needs him. She needs him.

Castle.

Slowly, she starts to reconsider. He's a crime novelist, after all. He was fascinated with death long before he met her, right? Murders would be a part of his life even if she wasn't.

True.

As for her mother's case-

Oh, enough. She's just making excuses for herself. This isn't her choice to make.

Regardless of whether or not she's good for him, she owes him the truth. He loves her; he deserves to know that she loves him back. And if he can't forgive her for lying, if he can't forgive her silence, then...

Then be it.

But she owes him to try.

He stares alternatively at his glass of Scotch and at the remote control of his storyboard. Murder board. Whatever.

The liquid has this rich, beautiful honey color that he finds fascinating in the dim light of his study; he finally curls an unsteady hand on the glass, brings it to his lips, knocks it back.

It burns, burns, burns.

The ring of fire.

He makes a pathetic sound, too close to tears to be called laughter, and closes his eyes. The alcohol numbs the pain a little, makes it more diffuse, a hazy curtain rather than a stone sinking his heart; he'll take it.

Maybe it can help him make a decision.

He stares some more at the remote.

He has mixed feelings about this. Parts of him want to erase the whole thing, the tentative connections, the new leads that don't go anywhere. Kate Beckett wiped out of his life.

He could. He could throw the information away, never tell her. Sinning by silence. Only seems fair.

Except he can't, of course.

But by now, he's seriously doubting his ability to keep working by her side. He told his mother Watch me in a moment of bravado, a stupid manifestation of a battered pride, but the reality is much grimmer than that.

It's holding his breath when she stands too close, and keeping his face neutral when she attempts a joke; it's deliberately moving away, putting distance between them even though all he wants is the opposite.

Never gonna happen, Castle. Forget it.

The reality is his heart trampled, every second of every day, by the merciless knowledge that she doesn't feel the same way. Will never feel the same way.

He can't do it.

He sighs, trembling, exhausted, and runs a hand down his face.

He's spent hours - hours - dredging every memory that he has of the last months, her smiles, her words, her touches, dissecting them, trying to understand how he can have deluded himself so. Trying to find a thread of hope, something, anything, that he can hold on to.

But the thing is - it's all subjective. Like that stuff she said, about the things you don't want to put off anymore. It all relies so heavily on interpretation. Yes, he thought that she meant him, that she meant them. He thought it was hope shining in her eyes.

But he can't know for sure. He can't. Maybe she meant something completely different. Maybe she meant that she ought to visit her very sick grandmother (she might have one, for all he knows), maybe she was thinking of her mother's case, maybe...

And the hope? Maybe he was so eager to see it there that he made it up. Invented it.

Same goes with everything else.

Her comment about third time being the charm? Could just be a friend cheering him up.

Next time, without the tiger - their usual banter. No deeper meaning to it.

Her joy at finding alive in the bank. Ah, this one holds up a little longer, is harder to dismiss. But they're friends, right? Good friends. Close friends.

She would probably have been just as concerned if it had been Lanie inside the bank.

His mouth tastes acid, tastes like salt. Like tears.

There's a sharp knock on the loft's door. He hears it through his pained stupor, vaguely thinks about ignoring it. Tries to remember if his mother or Alexis are there to act as hostesses.

His mother-

Uh. She said something about going out. Earlier?

He thinks.

Alexis. Alexis should be here.

He drags himself out of his chair anyway, because he doesn't want to spend any more time staring at the remote control. The symbol of everything he's lost.

Everything he never had.

He hears voices at the door as he stumbles out of his office, catches himself on the wall. He's not even that drunk. Not on alcohol, anyway. But agony? Maybe. Maybe he's drunk on agony.

Mmm. That's good. He should use it for Nikki Heat, next time she pushes Rook away. Because she will. Of course she will.

The voices get louder, pierce through the fog in his mind. Leaning against the wall, he listens, grown quiet and still at once.

Alexis. And Beckett.

Kate.

The door opens, and although Kate did envision this scenario, she was really hoping to avoid that. A confrontation with Alexis.

The red-haired girl pushes her braid back, looks at the detective. She's not smiling, not welcoming either, but at least she's not openly hostile.

"Detective Beckett."

"Alexis," Kate says with a nod. A beat of awkward silence. "Is your dad here?"

Castle's daughter presses her lips together, studies Beckett for a moment. "What do you want with him?"

Everything.

The thought has sprung, unbidden, and leaves Kate a little breathless. "I just. I want to talk to him."

Alexis hesitates, throws a look over her shoulder. "He's not...he's not in his best shape right now."

I know, Kate almost says, her mind flashing back, once again, to the crumpled man in the archives. "Please," she murmurs instead, allowing a little of the urgency she feels into her voice.

She has to do this now. Now. Before the gap between them can grow even wider, before it becomes a gulf that cannot be bridged.

Please, please, before it's too late.

The young woman twists her mouth, shakes her head as she makes a decision. "No. Look. Tonight's really not a good time - maybe if you could just wait for tomorrow-"

No. No.

"Alexis, I have to see him." Uh-oh. That sounded too much like Detective Beckett; she can see the girl closing up in front of her, can see that she's losing whatever small credit she might have had.

Nicely done, Beckett.

"Oh, have to?" Alexis snaps. "So what, you think you can show up at our door at any hour of the night, and just walk in to see if you could possibly damage my dad a little more?"

"It's not-" it's only eight thirty, Kate wants to say, but that's not the right thing - that's not the main issue here. "I'm not looking to damage him," she breathes softly, regret and sorrow laced with her words. Oh, Castle. "I want." The words are so reluctant to come out. "I want to fix him," she finishes, feeling ridiculous for the way it sounds sounds. "I want to try."

Castle's daughter seems somewhat taken aback by this new development.

Before she can come up with a new attack, or a new reason to deny Beckett, a voice comes from the living room, surprising them both.

"Let her in, Alexis."

The red-haired girl opens the door wider, reluctantly stepping aside; Kate takes a deep breath and steps in.

"Thanks," she says, not sure which Castle she's addressing. Alexis gives her a brief nod and a look heavy with things unsaid, a sort of cross between I don't trust you and Please don't hurt him, before she disappears upstairs.

Kate hopes she manages to make her eyes say, I'll do my best.

He stands in the middle of his living room, doesn't move, doesn't offer to take her coat like he always does.

She closes the door, hopes he sees the message in that. She's not going to run.

His face is serious, solemn, his eyes full of that muted reproach that has been weighing her down for the last week, and she presses her lips together.

He's not going to make this easy.

Right.

"You had something to tell me?" he asks matter-of-factly. All business now.

She opens her mouth to answer but her empty stomach chooses that moment to make itself heard. Between the case and the time she spent worrying over Castle, she kinda forgot to eat. Of course.

Kate presses a hand to her abdomen, somewhat embarrassed - as if it could quell the growl - and when she looks up again, Castle's face has lost its cool neutrality. There's such conflict in his eyes; it's painful. The man she knows seems to win, though, because his mouth softens imperceptibly and he asks, "Do you want to eat something?"

She shakes her head - she couldn't eat if she wanted to, what with the knots twisting in her stomach - but apparently, that's the wrong thing to do. His eyes grow dark again, and she realizes how it must look to him, how refusing his food equals rejecting him. Not very smart, Kate.

Too late, anyway. He's already turning away, his jaw set.

"Castle," she calls, and he must hear the apology in her tight voice, because he looks back at her over his shoulder. Looks hard. Gauging her.

"Let's go to my office," he says.

She follows him silently, although she wouldn't mind Alexis overhearing them. Or Martha, for that matter. But if he wants privacy, she won't deny him.

He lets her inside and then closes the door, turns to her. Waiting.

But his whole posture is so defensive, his arms crossed, his eyes wary; Kate finds herself swallowing anxiously. He doesn't want to listen to her. He's afraid of whatever she's come to say.

Oh.

"Castle," she murmurs, uncertain, her heart going out to him. The rest of her body probably does, too, because the next moment he's recoiling, stepping back into the wall. Away from her.

Okay. Okay. No touching.

She tries to ignore the burn of rejection, settles back against his desk instead. The silence stretches between them, dark and hurtful, and she knows she has to fill it, knows she has to speak up. Now.

But oh, the words are so hard to find. "I'm sorry that you had to find out that way," she says at last, because it's the truth, and it's partly why the tears are burning in her chest.

He laughs.

He laughs, and there's no joy to it.

"You mean, you're sorry I had to find out at all."

She opens her mouth to protest, but he's pushing himself off the wall and coming closer, and he looks-

Furious.

So much hurt in his eyes. Her heart stutters.

"How long did you plan on keeping up the lie, Kate? How long did you think it was acceptable to keep me hanging - hoping? Or did you just think if you said nothing, it would all go away? That all my - undesirable - feelings would disappear over time?"

Undesirable - what?

She stares at him, confused, lost.

He deflates, retreats again. "That's it, then. You thought silence was the answer to your prayers." His voice is so venomous that she'd step back if she didn't have the desk blocking her. "Didn't even have the decency to acknowledge my feelings and tell me you didn't feel the same."

Didn't feel-?

Wait. Wait.

He-

He thinks that's the reason why she kept quiet? Oh god. Oh no. Castle.

Strangely enough, the main emotion springing inside her is anger. It's good, too, because anger is much more manageable than sorrow, has a lot more energy to it. Anger will sustain her. Will make her fight.

Before she can let it out, though - before she can strike back and point out his lack of faith in her - he's speaking again, his tones so tired, so dejected that a wave of guilt sweeps over her.

"Okay. Okay, Kate. I get it. You're - sorry. Fine. Now can you just, please leave? I'd like to cling to whatever shreds of dignity I have left, if you'll allow me."

The dark humor, the grimace that twists his mouth suck all the remaining rage out of her. Just like that.

Now all she wants to do is cry.

"Castle." It's so wrong, so wrong. Everything so wrong. "I - I love you."

His head jerks up, his whole body, as if he's taken a physical blow. His eyes bore into her, distrustful, disbelieving, and she cannot help thinking that from all the possible scenarios she'd admittedly imagined for this, this is by far the worst one.

Castle scrutinizing her for a sign that she's lying.

Part of her - most of her, really - wants to run, wants to hide somewhere and curl into a ball until the sting has lessened, until the pain has dulled. Those words... She hasn't spoken them in a long time, not to Josh, not to Tom, and Will - well, they obviously didn't make a lasting impression on him.

But Castle.

Castle deserves them. Deserves all she has to give. So she grits her teeth, and she waits.

He's always been good at reading her.

When he doesn't give her any kind of answer, she moves towards him, her hand opening for his, but he stops her with his words. "I don't - I don't want your pity, Kate."

He's not looking at her now; his eyes are riveted to the floor, but she can see how tense he is. His fists clench rhythmically, his breathing too fast, like he's trying to hold back-

Keep himself from hoping.

Shit, shit.

What has she done?

She exhales a shaky breath, presses her fingertips to her temple. There has to be a way. Has to be a way to fix it.

This time, when she drops her hand, the words come without summons.

"Do you know," she says slowly, "the first time when I realized I was in danger of falling in love with you?"

His eyes dart to hers, surprise overriding reluctance for an instant. It helps, gives her courage.

"It was during that...case, with the missing woman. You know, the one who was in a freezer. Melanie. With the two kids."

"Yeah," he rasps. The look on his face tells her he didn't expect the sound of his own voice any more than she did. "I - I remember," he says quickly.

She nods, finds herself almost smiling at the memory. "It was the first time I'd ever come here. And I found you - playing laser-tag with Alexis. Martha with a beauty mask on her face. Which was, well. Not what I expected."

He huffs, but she thinks maybe the corner of his mouth has come up a little. Maybe.

"And you told me to come in and showed me in here, and I thought, this is a man I could love. Not the playboy signing women's chests, not the arrogant writer telling me how to do my job, but the man who spends his nights playing laser-tag with his daughter. Who builds his plots on a board so similar to ours at the precinct."

"You told me your story after that case," he murmurs. "Told me about your mom."

She smiles in the dim light.

"And you didn't laugh at me. You weren't embarrassed; you weren't sorry. You said - just what I need to hear. You made me laugh."

"And then you left," he says, but his voice is not accusatory anymore. It's just...sad.

He's not talking about that night.

She sighs, takes a tentative step closer. When he doesn't move away, she takes another, and another, until she can lay a gentle hand on his biceps, curl her fingers there.

"I didn't know what to do with you, Castle," she admits quietly. "Didn't know what to do with your words."

There's a beat, two, and she's wondering whether to say more - if she should try and explain how her world revolved around that hole in her chest, how she had to ignore everything else in order to survive, how it was too late after that - when he speaks.

"And you do now?"

He still sounds guarded, a little doubtful, and she can't blame him. But there's less pain there. It's lost some of the raw, wounded quality that tore at her heart earlier, and for that she's grateful.

"I'm...getting there," she answers carefully, finding a smile for him. Just tell the truth, Kate. "Still working on it."

A long pause.

She can tell he's thinking, considering, and so she makes herself wait, even though it's agony, even though all she wants is thread her fingers through his hair and bring his mouth down to hers.

"When you said-"

He stops, seems to struggle with himself. Obviously this is something that has been nagging at him, torturing him, maybe, and he can't let go of it.

Holding her breath, she loosens her fingers, let them slide up, follow the curve of his shoulder until they're at his neck, caressing his jaw.

He closes his eyes, goes very still. It seems to help, though, because his breathing slows down, relaxes.

He starts again, whispering. "When you said, it makes you think of all those things in your life that you don't want to put off anymore-"

She sucks in a sharp breath, startled by the suddenness of the pain, the jolt of realization. She didn't understand until now - how deep it runs, how she's shaken him - there are cracks down to the very foundation of his belief in them.

"I meant you, Castle," she chokes, the words too eager, crowding her throat. "I meant us. God, I meant us."

She feels his chest swell with the relieved intake of air that he doesn't even try to hide, and he turns his eyes to her, so blue, pleading, imploring.

He's going to make her cry. He's going-

"You did?" he whispers back, and there's such hope, such earnestness in his voice, Castle- "You did?"

She steps into him, finally, her palms to the broad warmth of his chest, her body calling for his, and she looks at him with all the confidence, all the determination she can muster.

"I did, Rick. I promise."

He makes a small, animal noise at the back of his throat, and then his lips are pressed to hers, so fast that she doesn't even see it coming.

He tastes of Scotch and tears, of desperation, but she parts her mouth anyway, lets him in, her tongue working to soothe, heal the damage she's done, give her words a reality. He holds her close, tight, his fingers marking her skin, branding her; she nips at his bottom lip and presses hard against him, tries to tell him with her body. I'm not leaving. I love you.

And when the kiss slows, when he gentles against her and brings his hands to her cheeks, cradles her face like a precious thing, she feels something give inside her. As if the long fingers of guilt and regret that twisted her stomach and wrenched her heart have finally let go.

Kate breathes against him, into him, fills up with his scent, his taste, the heat of his palms against her cheeks.

And she thinks, maybe.

Maybe they'll be okay.

Maybe she can fix this.