Title: No Joy but Lacks Salt

Epilogue: To Earthward

Author: Elliott Silver

Summary: She knows it's not the fall that hurts but the sudden stop at the end. For her, the descent is no less terrible than the crash. But at the bottom, at the end, she realizes there is no place to go but up. So she rises.

Rating Note: M

The hurt is not enough: / I long for weight and strength / To feel the earth as rough / To all my length.

/-/-/-/-/

The last week has been a blur, and looking back on it, Kate thinks some things are better that way.

She has stayed in New York. Castle asked her to Natalie's funeral, and she went because he did, dressed in a black suit to mourn for this beautiful, talented woman who would have been his wife, whom he has also loved. They stand together under the shade of elms after the service, under a bright and flaring sky. He grieves, and his pain is real.

She waits for him, and afterwards she drives them back to the city. He talks and she lets him. He tells her about the past, about being gone. He tells her about the future, about moving forward. He tells her about Gina, about the publisher, about moving back to New York. He tells her that Alexis is coming too, that she is getting married in the fall at the Hamptons, and he asks Kate to join them.

But as they drive in, as the traffic slows, he says something else entirely.

"I heard Chenault offered you her job," he says.

"Yes," Kate answers, because she did.

"It's a good offer," Castle tells her. "It's everything you wanted."

But at the same time, she knows it's not, that it's not anymore, and that Castle doesn't really know her as well as he thinks, because if he did, he would have known that back then all she wanted was him.

She knows what he's really asking. But she also knows that there will always be roads not taken, that there has to be, because there is no going back, only simply going on, because that is life and we live with the choices we make and they are as beautiful as much as they hurt.

She smiles, and then he does, but they both know. She was a good cop, but she's a better agent.

/-/-/-/-/

It's only May but it's already muggy as hell outside. It's supposed to storm all day and the room is black as the skies outside.

But when he walks in, he makes all the darkness fade, makes the blurry edges sharp again. He is distinct against the darkness, and he makes her that way too. He's the only one she knows who can do that, and she loves him for it. He enters darkness with her.

His white shirt glows, and he carries a single mug of tea. He holds it in his hand awkwardly, as if he doesn't know how to carry it without another, and she imagines the heat of it, the way it diffuses through the lines of his palm, this way he has always held fragile things.

On the outside there seems to be very little different about this man she saw last only a week ago, and she expects no differently, no less. He stands on his own, tall and straight, because he too has learned how to do what he taught her so well. His shirt falls in crisply starched planes around him, his suit pants taper over his long legs, and his dark tie is knotted only slightly looser than always at his throat, because even tangled things have a beauty of their own.

But he looks older than forty-four today, and she realizes that's because there's something missing, something intrinsic, as necessary to him as breath. It's her, it's everything she's missing too, and here, now, she knows that this is her stand, this is her choice, this is her road. There is no other, and she feels the deep and residing peace of that, to know so fully that this is what she wants, to stay with this man as he's asked her, permanently.

There's so much about him that she doesn't know yet, but she wants to spend the rest of her life learning, learning from him, learning with him. She wants to do this, to confront the evil of this earth with him by her side, she wants to make the world a better place for it and with him she knows she can.

She wants to see his frown, those downward lines of consternation, of concentration, as they tackle this world together, the tragedy and horror of it, because someone has to and they choose to. She wants to see his easy smile in the mornings when he makes tea, and hear his laughter, rough and sustaining as the earth, when they sit on the roof under the stars. She wants to feel his grey eyes on her, the weight of them, the strength. She wants to feel his hand on her back, his shadow on her skin. She wants phone calls in the night, Sunday brunches disturbed, the jostle and jar of upset schedules, the solitude and strain of away, everything that isn't easy, because she wants them all with this man. She wants to see him get the medal of valor, the highest honor of the FBI, and she wants to see his unrestrained pride when she becomes deputy director. She wants to see him as a father. She wants to see what is in that blue box, small enough to hold cartridges, on his dresser where he keeps his cufflinks.

Kate breathes, and feels a butterfly beat its wings against her heart.

She comes out of the darkness to meet him, and he stops when he sees her. He halts as if it's taken his breath away. She realizes it has, the same way he does for her. But it's rather that he breathes again, that she does too. The darkness on his face, in his eyes, drains away, the weariness fades from his body. It isn't surprise or relief exactly but all things at once, a joy so pure and unrefined that she knows this is exactly why she's come here, why she's come home.

He moves, swift and certain as always, and comes over. He hands her the mug of tea, handle first, and she takes it. She has missed it, the earth and lift of it, this bright tang of light and life and leaf. For a long moment, they lean against the table in silence. They stand, together.

"What do you see?" she asks him, at last.

The words feel beautiful as she says them, as he's said to her so many times, and she watches the corners of his mouth turn up. Over his shoulder, the summer sun rises, shedding and slaying darkness as it crests in the sky. It fills the room, banishing night in ways forecasters can never predict.

The moonstone glitters against her throat and she sees its light reflected in his grey eyes.

Later – much later – she knows they will go home together. They will set down their guns, they will take off their badges. She will turn and he will be there, this way he always has been, vivid and unwavering. She will kiss him and he will open his mouth to hers, they will tangle and let their skins, marred and rippled with scars, slide against one another. He will kiss around the silver edges of this necklace, this beautiful thing that saved her life no less than the man who gave it to her. Then he will kiss the frayed skin around her wrists, so tenderly that his touch will make her cry. He will kiss away those tears and she will taste this beautiful salt, this infinite joy, between them, this way his heart beats not against hers but with it. Then he will move lower and she will move with him, as he slides against her, into her, this way, radiant and unremitting, they also come together.

But for now, there is work. This is their job, their center. This is what brought them together and this is how they work, too. Together, they do it better than anyone else.

The murder board glows before them. There is no case, no notes, no timeline. There is nothing there, nothing written anyway, but there will be. They have so much to do yet. She knows it, she feels it, and she waits only to start.

"What do you see?" she asks again.

Niall Chaloner turns to her the way he always has, and she breathes. She stops waiting.

The rest of her life begins with his answer.

/-/-/-/-/

"Everything."

/-/-/-/-/

.