Chapter 23: Victory parade

"You asked why," Castle begins. "Why put up with you, why forgive you, why you." None of it is a question. "I could ask you the same questions: why put up with me, why forgive me, why me." He stops, and swallows. Kate is horribly tense against him. "But I don't think that's really the question here." She looks up at him questioningly, face half-hidden in the shadows and her hair. "The real question here is why you thought you didn't deserve to be happy?" He leaves it hanging there, and holds on to her hard. No running, no evasion.

"What do I give you? You give, all the time. Solving crimes, following me, having my back, being there." Her voice rises on the last words. "You give everything. It's what you do. You give. I don't give you anything."

"Well, maybe not – if we discount the inspiration for a series that sells by the million and made me a fortune – not one cent of which you would accept when it was offered." She doesn't know how much of it he's donated to the Johanna Beckett Foundation. She never will. "Or discount giving me the chance to do something useful and meaningful – and fun. Or discount giving me useful advice about my daughter?" Kate looks entirely unconvinced. He doesn't get the chance to carry on to the most important thing, as she runs over him.

"Or the chance to get killed. Or the chance to sit around and wait and try to solve my shooting while I don't call, don't write, don't send you flowers – and can't solve it." Her tone is acid. "Or the chance to listen to me lie to you. What do I give you except an endless number of ways to get hurt?" She won't look at him, her tones hard granite, not admitting disagreement. "I don't give anyone anything. Never have. Likely never will."

"Total bullshit. You give people everything you are. Everything, Kate. Answers and justice and closure. You'd have killed yourself pretending that work partners was enough just so that you could keep pouring yourself out into solving other people's misery. You never stop giving." He forces her head round to look at him, to see the truth of what he sees. "You came back early because you couldn't bear not to be doing your job. You spend your whole life in the precinct and you barely leave it." Blinding realisation hits him. "It's not that you don't think you deserve to be happy. It's that you put everyone else's happiness ahead of yours." She's shaking her head. "You do. First in, last out: your team gets their downtime but you never take yours; every case is an insult until it's solved. Giving everyone else the answers you don't have." She forcibly shuts off his words with a hand across his mouth, barely short of a blow.

"That's what you think. Always seeing the best in people, always the good. You want the truth? I came back early so I could find my killer." He flinches at her venom. "Not to help anyone else. Every minute I spend on someone else's case is a minute I'm not spending on my own. And you know what? I hate it. I have to find everyone else's killers but I'm not even allowed to look for my own. Everyone else gets closure and I don't." Her voice drops, and she tugs away to stand and stare out over the city, her rigid back to him.

Ah. Much more becomes clear. Guilt not only about her inability to live up to her own standards when dealing with him, but guilt that – just for once – she wants to put herself first: deal with her own life and concerns.

"Have you?"

"Have I what?"

"Have you actually taken one single minute away from dealing with other cases to look at your own? Because from where I'm standing – right next to you – you haven't done one single thing differently this side of the summer" – he can't say dying – "than from before it. You tried to go into the precinct on Wednesday, dammit, when you couldn't even use your arm. If you're looking at your own case then you're not doing it on the wholly excessive time you spend in the precinct, you're doing it instead of sleeping." There's a very slight movement. "Are you?"

"I was stuck. But now we know something. You knew something I didn't. You've got a lead and I want to follow it." She turns round, blazing with her agony. "Why can't I have closure? Don't I deserve it?"

Castle sees the corrosive effects of a long-cold case all laid out before him like the city had been earlier, and just as regular. Time for shock tactics. He's never seen Kate this wound up before.

"Yes. But you won't find it if you're dead. Again."

There's complete silence as he lets that sink in.

"I said I'd help you find him. I will. But not yet. We will figure this out. We will find them and we will make them pay. Just not today. Not today, Kate." He stands up to join her at the window. "You haven't changed. You're no less than you were four months ago. You haven't given one single jot less of your blood and bone and heart to the others. Whatever you want to do, you're still giving everything to those other families." He stops speaking, holds her close, still feeling the resistance to his words in her iron-framed control.

"You deserve the same closure as you give to everyone else. But you can't do it alone. We'll do it together, in time. But Kate, that time is not now." He stops again. "You said you need me to tell you when you ought to stop. I'm telling you now. If you go after this now, alone, you will be dead. Again. Even if you're not shot, you'll kill yourself with overwork. Because whatever you say you want to do, you'll never allow yourself to give one drop less effort to anyone else's case. You can't do justice to your own case yet. We don't have the information, and right now there's no way of getting it." He looks down at the top of her head. "If I thought we could, I'd tell you how. I got nothing. You got nothing. We have to wait." And finally she sags slightly.

"When does it end, Castle?" she whispers, desolately. It's concession to his point, acceptance. "When does it end?"

"I don't know." He can't tell her comforting lies. That won't help. "But it doesn't make you less. You should know better than to think that. The families of the victims for whom you stand aren't less, are they?" She doesn't answer. "Are they? Do you think they're less? Do you secretly despise them for having a relative murdered? Is that why you think you'll give them anything less than you ever have before? How often do you think it's their fault?" His words and tone whip-crack through the air.

Finally he's pierced the armour.

"Are you mad? Of course I don't. I wouldn't. It's not their fault! It's the killer's fault."

"And your mother's murder wasn't your fault. And you being shot wasn't your fault. It's down to the killer. How often do you tell other people that? Why don't you believe it for yourself? You didn't pay the sniper to shoot you, or Coonan to kill your mother, so how is any of this your fault?"

He can hear her quick shallow gasping breaths in the silence, slowly beginning to slow and smooth out as he waits, allows quiet for a space until that's sunk in, the edge of anger eroded.

"None of this is your fault. None of this means you don't deserve to have a life. None of this means that we can't get you justice. So stop feeling guilty about things you aren't even guilty of doing. You're not letting anyone down, you're not giving anyone less than your best, you're still standing for the dead."

He draws her back to the couch, encourages her to sit down next to him again, wraps a warm arm around her. She's crashing down the same emotional cliff that she's been on since she came back. This time, though, he'll not arrive just too late to catch her. This time, he's holding the net.

She doesn't say anything. There's nothing, really, to say. She simply needs to absorb reality. He's dead certain – not an accidental phrase – that none of this skewed thinking had ever occurred to her before the summer. He's dead certain that she'd never have been so wrong about how she's behaving if she hadn't lost almost all her usual confidence in her ability to do the job. (and her confidence that he'd still be around)

Or, in fact, isn't it the other way round? She got shot. That makes it personal. She fell down the rabbit hole when it was her mother, came out it – more or less – until a series of shocks that brought it front and centre: his findings, Coonan, Lockwood. Third time's the charm. This charm, though, was poisonously malevolent. The third shock, Lockwood, then Montgomery dead as part of the same chain, and then the bright flash and the bullet. She's lost her confidence in doing her job because she wants so badly to go after her own case. She doesn't feel that she can do both – because she can see herself aiming for a different burrow leading into the same rabbit hole that she nearly lost herself down all those years ago. She lost her confidence in him because first she ignored him asking her to stop and then ran away because she couldn't deal with the implications.

I see you, Kate. I see you. Can you see yourself? Time to stop talking, and let her consider; here in the comforting dimness. All he needs to be, right now, here and now, is her voice of reason. All he needs to do is to hope that she listens. She said she needed him to tell her when to stop, she said that he was – is – someone she'll listen to. She's given him the right to ask her to stop. But in the end, it's up to her whether she does stop – or not. Foot out the door relationships, partners and friends. That wasn't enough to stop me. He's not likely to forget those words any time soon. He hopes desperately that a real relationship, where she knows how he feels, is enough.

Beckett is thinking, shaken to the core by the strength of Castle's statements. She's spent so much time looping round the fact of her shooting, the need to find something, anything, that would make all the wasted time and pain and near-death worthwhile; so much time miserable over the fact that she couldn't initially draw a gun, that she was slowly spooking more and more with every passing day, that she was drowning in her own lies; that she's lost sight of the fact that she hasn't dropped a single investigative ball. She'd seen it herself, last night, that she was diving straight back in. She'd also seen that she needs someone – Castle – to tell her the truth. So listen to the truth he's telling you. This was not your fault. They don't have any more information. They don't have the file. She's not fully fit – mentally or physically – to go after it, and they have no idea where to start.

She has to step back from the edge.

And then she realises that in all this thinking, whenever it's come to the case, she's thought they. Which tells her very firmly where she should be standing: not alone on the edge looking down into the abyss, but with Castle. She reaches out and takes his hand, curling her fingers round it.

"You're right. It's not my fault." She inhales, exhales, inhales slowly again. "I need to solve this." His heart drops. But she's still clinging to his hand, still sitting close in the curve of his arm, still not standing or fighting or protesting or running. "But it can wait. It can wait until we're ready."

"We?" Castle asks quietly.

"We. Both of us. Together. We will make them pay."

His own words, right back at him. He's done it. Talked her down off the ledge, bought them time to make this work. Through honesty, too, kept her safe – with her consent. And most importantly – she's agreed that they will do it together, when the time comes. His hand flexes where it's locked with hers: swift hard acknowledgement.

It's late, now. They haven't dealt with the whole, but they've scaled the main face. Kate's quiet; almost tranquil by his side, eased. Peaceful. He hasn't seen that in some time: months, in fact, now he thinks about it, not since they took Lockwood down the first time. It's enough for tonight, if that's what she needs. Should he stay or should he go, he wonders; for the first time this evening indecisive, unsure.

Uncertainty is banished when Kate yawns widely and stretches out from under his arm. "I need sleep," she says. Castle stands up, starting to look for his coat. "Where are you going?"

"Home?" he says. Kate looks ridiculously disappointed. Hmm. Maybe he's got that guess as to what she wants wrong. Play it out a little.

"Oh. Okay. Guess I'll see you t" – she stops on the consonant, regroups – how can she still not ask for what she really wants? – "on Wednesday at the precinct." Castle crinkles his eyes up in a smile. Despite how tired she is, he'll play this out a little further yet. She's cute when she's tired and not thinking too fast.

"Or tomorrow? I wanna go to the Natural History Museum. I love the dinosaurs and the dioramas." Kate looks marginally happier, though not much. This is fun. Possibly fatal, but fun. If she wasn't so tired she'd realise he was winding her up.

"Okay." She heaves herself up from the couch, eyelids drooping. All the smile has run out of her with another jaw-breaking yawn. Castle catches her as she stumbles vaguely in the direction of her bedroom.

"Or I could stay." She looks up at him.

"Stay?"

"Yep." He sees light dawn. "Took you a while," he grins.

"You… you…"

"You should ask for what you want," he says very smugly. "How'm I supposed to know what you want if you don't tell me?" She tries for a glare, and nearly achieves it before she's interrupted by another yawn.

" 'M going to bed. Come too." She tries to take a step and finds that she's stuck. "Castle, let go."

"Nope," he says amiably. "I like doing this."

"Doing what?" Kate says suspiciously – and sleepily. If she were less sleepy she would certainly be more suspicious.

"This," he replies happily – and swings her up into his arms before she can protest to carry her back through to her bed and drop her in the middle of it. She isn't staying there, though. "Where are you going?"

"Teeth. Wash. Then bed." Oh. Okay.

"You got a spare toothbrush?"

"In the cabinet." She tries for another glare. "My turn first." He doesn't argue. By the time he's done, she'll be out cold. No point in making her life difficult.

And so it proves. By the time he's washed up and found the toothbrush – sparkly lilac? Really? How… girly. Very un-Beckett. He bets it's the last one from a multi-coloured multipack, bought on the run from a twenty-four hour store in the interstices between cases – she is indeed out cold. She's also wearing his t-shirt. Again. He slips in beside her in boxers and spoons in.

Castle wakes first in the morning. This is a considerable surprise. It's somewhat less of a surprise, given what he'd deduced about why she had stolen two of his t-shirts, (is it only two? He'd better check) that Kate's nose is pressed into the meeting point of his shoulder and neck. He carefully detaches himself, leaves her to sleep, goes to investigate the possibilities for breakfast – and remembers that Kate's fridge is merely a decorative accoutrement playing no active role in her life or kitchen. Oh well, coffee will suffice for now. It'll have to.

Coffee finished, Kate still out for the count, Castle indulges (or something: it's still far too small) in a shower, borrows a rather feminine razor rather than looking like a panhandler, (sexy stubble is one thing, unkempt is simply notacceptable) dresses, and recovers yesterday's scrawled output from his jacket to continue where he left off.

Except he can't. Every time he tries to put himself into Nikki Four, currently in yet another tense situation, he thinks back to the extremely pleasant sensation of snuggling up to Kate and then waking up with her. He can cope with rather a lot of that. The rest of his life, in fact. Once that settles in, though, inspiration sinks fangs into him and he starts to scribble. It's just as well, really. If inspiration hadn't bitten, he might need to think about the next part of their unfinished conversation, which he would really rather not. Bluntly, he thinks, she might have said, in extremis, that she does want a real relationship, and her instinctive reactions are definitely all pointing in the right direction, but actually persuading her – well, both of them – to admit the truth might be quite difficult. Here in his head it's terribly, wonderfully easy. Out loud, vibrating in the air – that's a very different, difficult matter. He goes back to scribbling.

Beckett wakes up slowly, blearily wondering why there's a dent in the other side of her bed and why everything smells rather more aromatically of Castle than the t-shirt ought to after a few days, until she remembers that Castle stayed. At least – she thinks he'd said he would stay. In which case, where is he? She pads out to find him, and fails to notice that she's assumed he'll still be here.

"Castle?" Ah, there he is, writing. She takes a moment to admire his shoulders. "Castle?" she says again, a little louder.

He spins round and smiles delightedly. It punches right into her gut. He smiles like that so rarely: as does she, he normally produces his bright, practised social smile: sincere, but hardly revealing. She smiles back, openly.

"More coffee, Castle?"

"How'd you know I've already had coffee?"

"Detective, remember? That and the fact that you've left out the coffee and two mugs, and one of them is used."

"Yes, please." She swings off in the direction of coffee. Castle prowls after her, and when the kettle is on takes the opportunity to sneak his arms round her and steal a kiss. At least, the plan was to steal a kiss. That turns out to be a hopeless misconception. The misconception in question being that he could stop after one kiss. Or that Kate could. They only pull apart when the kettle clicks off and Kate realises that coffee is a possibility. Castle isn't offended by that. Well, not much. Besides which, they ought to finish their conversation, now Kate isn't yawning widely any more. Not till she's had her coffee, though. Sensible conversation will not happen till caffeine hits her system. He takes the opportunity to curl his arm round her shoulders, and ponders the best way to conclude their discussions – in a form which provides a permanent, real relationship – before she goes back to work tomorrow.

Beckett, under the influence of spreading caffeine, is waking up. She's remembered that she's allowed back to work tomorrow. And that means that she'll have to deal with her worries – oh. She won't. Because she's still not to overuse her arm for another few days, which means that Gates will have her on desk duty till next Monday at earliest. And Castle will insist that she eats at his, because he already has insisted, and he cooks far better than she does, and that means that, whether or not he comes to the precinct to annoy and amuse her while she's wrestling with the paperwork, at the end of the day there will be a safe harbour in which to anchor. But, she realises, she still has no idea why Castle, who gives her everything and has asked for nothing in return except the chance to stick with following her around, should behave so. Even if they have found a whole new level of relationship. In which case, now – or never, because she'll never gather the nerve to ask again. Or to answer, for that matter.

"You never answered me," she says, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Huh?" says Castle, articulately.

"Why do you do this? Keep on coming back. What do I give you?"

And there's the opening, gaping wide in front of him. Which will it be on the other side – Golgotha, or Elysium? Here goes.

"You said what do you give me? Turn it around, Kate – what do I give you?

"Love." Finally, she doesn't hesitate. Truth is, she's known it at some level for years.

"And that's what you give me. Love."

She kisses him with all the words she wants to use. There will be time for words, later. Much, much later. He lifts off her mouth and smiles brilliantly down at her, picks her up and takes her back to bed.

Some considerable while later, Castle cuddles Kate close and considers a thought which has just occurred to him. She stole his t-shirts because she didn't have him. Now she's got him. Or he's got her, which is much the same thing.

"There's just one thing more we need to sort out, Kate." She tenses, instantly.

"What?" She clearly thinks there's a major issue.

"Now can I have my t-shirts back?"

Finis.

Thank you to all readers. We are done.