With thanks to the wonderful Em for her amazing beta skills, without her I doubt this would exist!

For my fandom girls; especially Em and B who I was lucky enough to spend an entire weekend with.

Disclaimer: Nope, not mine. Not even a little. I'm just here waiting and waiting for Watershed.

Dead Hour

It's late. Or it's early. Depending on how you look at the time. It's the hour that her mom used to call the dead hour. That small speck of time when New York is just a note quieter. There's no silence of course, because New York is the city that never sleeps and lately she's become the same way.

Castle is asleep next to her; she can feel his warm breath on her bare shoulders. He's snoring quietly and he's stopped mumbling to himself. Before she would swear that she heard him talking out Nikki Heat scenes. Something about Nikki and Rook running together. She smiles to herself, she still doesn't know what happens next to her doppelgänger; even after a year of dating she isn't allowed spoilers. She wouldn't want them anyway; she's always loved the release date.

She turns her head to stare at a new part of the ceiling, trying to find something to focus onto in the blackness, but nothing catches her eye. Unlike the streets below her there's no sense of quiet in her mind. No matter how much she tries to stop them, the thoughts fly constantly.

Tonight it's about where she wants to be in five years and the worst part is she has no clue. She's tried thinking about five years before now and if she had a plan then for where she wanted to be today. But five years ago seems so different to now, she seems so different. Does she even recognise the person that she was five years ago?

Five years ago Richard Castle was someone she'd met once, he was a face on a book cover, a man who she never thought she'd actually know in person. Today he's her boyfriend, her best friend, the one person who cared enough to get in and behind those carefully constructed walls.

Five years ago, she believed that her mother had been killed because of gang violence. Today she knew so much more; her mother had tried to uncover a cover up. A cover up that went so high it involved a man who is now a senator and, even worse, her mentor. The one man she'd trusted above all in her profession.

She can't help but wonder if Harrison Tisdale hadn't copied Castle's books whether she'd know that much information. Or if she'd still be drowning under hopeless leads. Never knowing the truth. Never being able to have some closure, even if it wasn't perfect.

She became a cop to solve her mother's murder. Without her mother's death she would be a completely different person. She knows that to be true. And now she has the answers. Not all of them but enough to feel she's done her mother proud. So who is she now? Does she really want to be a homicide detective in five years? Can she keep doing the same job?

People like Eric Vaughn and Jared Stark keep telling her she's the best. Maybe she's meant for more. Maybe there are bigger fish to fry. Cases that change history. She can lie to the rest of the world but not to herself, she's tempted by that idea. To be at the forefront. To have jurisdiction over matters she never believed possible. Her mother told her she was bound for great things. A platitude that all mothers tell their children she's sure, but at this moment Kate is standing on the precipice; she can almost feel it.

She wants it. She wants to be more than what she is. Five-years-ago Kate is unrecognisable today. Who does she want to be next? Where does she want to be?

Castle stirs behind her and she turns slowly to look at him in the dim light. She closes her eyes and imagines five years from now. She sees his face. Slightly older but still the same man she loves. She wants to be with him in five years. Marriage, babies. They all figure in that part of the five year plan. More than they ever have in the past. Before Castle, family was the scariest part of her life, because they were the people you could lose. The people who could be torn away from you in an instant. They were her insides.

But what about her work? Where does that fit in the five year plan? She's well aware of the fact that she could marry Castle and never work another day in her life. But that isn't her. Work has to factor. Can she keep being Detective Kate Beckett, homicide. Will that be enough in five years? Will she look back at herself and not know who she was again?

She leans closer to Castle and kisses his forehead. He doesn't stir and she slips closer to him, ducking her head beneath his chin. Without Castle she has no idea where she'd be now and she doesn't remember who she is without being a cop. She wants to be both. But knows that can't be. Washington calls out to her brain, her rational side, the side that she usually lets dominate. But her heart screams for her to stay here. Her heart is in New York City, in the hands of the man whose heart she can feel beating against her ear. She never lets her heart decide. Her feelings become useless against the rationality. All except for once. A raining night. Where nothing else mattered but getting to this loft. To him. Is her heart strong enough to fight rationality again?

She can't pick a side, even though she's the one with the choice to make. She closes her eyes and hopes for sleep, a moments respite from the warring sides of her personality. Five years. Five years. Who does she want to be then? Where does she want to be? Both sides have excellent arguments. One choice that will change everything. Stay. Regrets later. Leave. The man she loves gets left behind.

Her eyes closed, an image flashes before her mind, herself in a box, challenging a suspect. Her hand slamming the table in front of her, she wants answers, needs answers to prove her case. She's alone with the suspect, she has no direct partner. There's no-one to bounce ideas off, it's her mind alone searching for the evidence, no-one there to provide the story.

In her mind she's five years older, and she's alone. She goes to work as the great and powerful Kate Beckett but she comes home to nothing. The job comes before her heart and she pays the ultimate price, Royce warned her of the problems of wondering 'if only' and recommended the path belonging to the heart. But if only works both ways here, if only she takes the job, but loses Castle in the process. If only she stays in New York, but she never has the same job opportunity again.

Head versus heart. Job versus love.

Who does she want to be in five years? Where does she want to be? Castle stirs and his warm arm falls over her stomach, pulling her closer as he sleeps. Her eyes open once again, she's given up on sleep tonight. For the moment she's content to lay here, her mind considering all of the possibilities.

In those seconds before she thought her life was over again, it was Castle that she saw, as clear as day it was him who she wanted to be thinking of. But there were also all of those men who'd been responsible for taking her mother away. She cannot deny that finding her mother's killer has motivated her, has driven her to become who she is. And lately she struggles to merge the two sides of her personality together.

Yes, she wants Castle. The decision she made a year ago to be with him is still one of the best she's made in her life. But men like Bracken and the unyielding power they have in the world still stick in her gut. She knows there is a battle raging within herself and soon enough she is going to have to make a decision. She's going to have to choose an answer, a path and then live with the consequences.

Castle grunts in his sleep and she wishes that he truly could write her life, that he could just write her ending for her. In fact, she wonders if he could, what would he write? What would their story include? She can't help but think that he'd write the two of them together. Just as he did Nikki and Rook long before she and Castle ever even looked as if they'd be a couple. Nikki and Rook are two people who stick together no matter what; they have become so much a part of one another that imagining them separate doesn't make sense.

Are she and Castle like that? Could their relationship survive being separated? She doesn't know. She knows that she and Castle love one another. But is love enough in this world? Her father loved her mother more than anything and she knows that the feelings were mutual. But that still wasn't enough to stop her being torn away from the man she loved.

The time has ticked by, New York is waking up, people are on the move, the dead hour has passed. Decision time approaches with each tick of the clock.

Five years, five years.

Head versus heart. Job versus love.

She will have to make a decision and live with it, but not this second. She listens to the sounds of the people all crossing roads and ordering coffees; people making decisions, people choosing paths in their lives. She can only hope that soon enough she is one of them. But for this second, she will enjoy the feeling of Castle's arms around her, the noises of the city beneath them fading. She needs to hold onto this because she's not sure how long it will last.

It's late and it's early.

It's late in her career path and it's early in her relationship, she has to choose one. One to follow and one to sacrifice, the dead hour has passed. It's decision hour.