A/N: Set immediately after Castle emerges from the struggle in the barn.

Castle staggers backwards when she practically leaps into his arms, coiling her own around his neck with a force that rocks them both and gasping in relief as he crushes her closer. Her heart is exploding in her chest, beating against her heaving ribcage with bruising intensity, pumping adrenaline through her veins. So hard and fast, she almost doesn't notice the blood.

Beckett untangles her arms from their constricting hold around his neck, her fingers fluttering like frantic wings at his ear, hovering above the laceration lining his skin.

"Castle," she chokes, but he's already circling her wrist in his hand, soothing her fears with the slow stroke of his thumb to her wrist bone. But his hands are shaking.

"I'm okay," he repeats, promises, his breath still coming in shallow pants. "Just a small flesh wound, just-"

His face begins to crumble, his adam's apple bobbing with a rough swallow, and she surges forward again, cradling instead of clutching this time, and allows him to bury his face in her neck, to stain her skin with the hot, unsteady exhales staggering from his lips.

"You're okay," she echoes, stroking her fingers through his hair, brushing the lingering dust and gravel from the locks and the sweaty skin of his nape. Over his shoulder, she can see the dead body of Dr. Holtzman, the pool of blood seeping from his abdomen to mix with the dirt. "You're okay."

She had heard six rounds fire off, the endless stream of gunshots still echoing through her skull, and she doesn't fault him for it, not for a second, but for his first kill it was a brutal one. Combined with the fact that it was this man, this monster, who had haunted him for so many years… she knew this wouldn't be something he was able to shrug off with his natural defenses of humor or sarcasm.

But if the tremble of his body against hers, the iron grip his fingers have claimed in the fabric of her blazer, is any indication, he doesn't even plan to try and hide it from her.

"Castle," she murmurs, grazing her lips along his temple and easing back just slightly, just enough to see his face.

Beckett skims her knuckles along the paled skin of his cheek, strokes her thumb over the smudge of purple beneath his eye, the signs of how much this case has worn him, and flicks her gaze back to the weeping slit of skin where his artery lies. Holtzman almost slit her husband's throat.

"Kate?" he rasps, one of his hands unfurling at her back, and she sucks in a breath, hopes he can't sense the irrational grief that's filling her lungs.

She curls her hands at his forearms and starts walking backwards while his arms are still coiled around her. "There's a first-aid kit in the car."

Rick nods, begins to follow, but turns his head to steal a glance at the dead man in the barn after only a few steps. She catches his chin before he can and holds his darkened eyes with her gaze.

"It's over," she whispers, slipping from his arms to claim one of his hands, linking their fingers and continuing to guide him back towards the car. She had shot a quick text to Esposito before she had raced for the barn and backup would be on the scene at any minute, and she wants the time to tend to the cut along the delicate skin of his throat before the chaos can begin. "You don't need to look back anymore."

The hues of his eyes are still a fierce shade of indigo, but a flicker of clarity ripples through them at her words, a flare of resolution, and he nods again, determined this time. Kate tightens the fingers twined with his, offers him a gentle smile that she knows doesn't quite count, but the sounds of his struggle, of her name raw and panicked from his mouth as he fought of a killer still ring through her ears, the helplessness of being trapped on the other side of the door still like a vice around her heart.

Castle collapses into the passenger seat while she digs around in the trunk of his Buick for the first aid kit he always keeps on hand. The cut is small, nothing to worry about, but she has to purse her lips as she dabs at the drying blood with an antiseptic wipe. She has to apply pressure when the wound starts to bleed again and she takes the opportunity to step between his bent knees, to comb her fingers through his hair with her free hand and let him drop his head to rest against her stomach.

"I'm proud of you," Kate rasps, retracting the cloth from the gash and leaning forward to retrieve two butterfly bandages as Castle lifts his head in question. "I heard him, what he said about facing your demons. Not only did you conquer yours, but you brought justice to all those women and their families."

"Then why don't I feel like this is a victory?" he mumbles, tracing the pads of his fingers along the outer seam of her jeans while hers smooth over the bandages stretched tight over his split skin. "Kate, why - why don't I feel justified in killing him?"

She sighs softly, cups the firm line of his jaw in her hands when he looks up at her, scared and confused like the haunted little boy he once was.

"It doesn't feel like one right now. For a while, you're going to replay that moment in the barn in your head, go over every possible way that scenario could have gone. Killing another person… it's not something you move on from, no matter who the person is," she reasons, lowering to sit beside him in the car's seat when he scoots to make room for her. She splays her hand over the rounded bone of his knee, flips her palm up when his fingers move to cover hers. "But you did the right thing, Castle. And eventually, that feeling of justification will come."

He still doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't refute her either, training his eyes on their laced hands. She wants him to know, though, the depths of how proud she really is, to make him believe it.

"I hope he's like you."

Castle blinks at the words, his brow furrowing. "Who?"

She can hear sirens in the distance, notices the flash of red and blue in her peripheral, but she has no plan of moving, not yet.

Kate pins her bottom lip between her teeth, a touch of shyness lacing up her shoulder blades and causing her cheeks to go warm. "Our son," she finally admits, diverting her gaze to the ground, to the toes of their shoes side by side. "Or daughter," she adds with a shrug, gnawing on the inside of her cheek at the silence she receives. "But for some reason I just - I picture a boy first. A little boy with your eyes and your heart. Your bravery. Maybe a little less reckless-"

"Kate," he scrapes out, his untethered hand rising to slide into her hair, cradling the base of her skull in his large palm. Her eyes drift up to meet his, awestruck and shimmering, all traces of anguish and turmoil evaporating under the wave of wonder. "You - how long have you been thinking about this?"

A breath of laughter escapes her lips and her shoulders shrug. Images of an impish little boy with his father's eyes, his smile and his exuding joy, have been dancing through her mind for months now, making early appearances not long after their engagement that turned frequent sometime after they were finally married. By now, the picture has become so clear, she sometimes awakes from dreams expecting to find the boy curled up on his father's chest. "Awhile? I don't know I just… I never thought being a mom was something I could have, but with you… with you I want it all."

Squad cars have filled the gravel driveway, the squawk of police radios and demands being thrown back and forth traveling through the air, but Castle doesn't even seem to notice, using the hand tangled in her hair to draw her in close, his forehead finding rest against hers. She can hear Ryan's voice nearby and she knows they need to move, join her team and go over what happened with all the other uniforms on scene, but she allows them a moment, just a moment to forget about childhood traumas and all the changes upon them. She allows them a moment to savor this beautiful thing they've built between them over the last seven years, stronger than any wall or case that ever kept them apart.

In moments like these, with her husband at her side, she feels invincible.

"I don't want him to have my heart," he murmurs, smearing a kiss to her cheekbone and easing back to grace her with his first real smile in days. "I want him to have yours."