The Double-Edged Sword

"For the word. . .is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."

-Hebrews 4:12

It's not that Castle *let* her read them; he didn't.

She found them all on his laptop, which he himself had let her use while she was at his loft (just for a little while; until she could be off the pain pills long enough to stay awake for any length of time, or so she told herself). And they were all labeled with her own name, so what was she supposed to have done?

She opened the first document kate1 and read it without realizing what it was; she thought it was something for Nikki Heat, despite the name attached to it. She thought it would be a really intense scene, and it started off so crisp, so cutting, and she was sucked into it before she even knew she was snooping.

Not snooping. Detecting.

And then she realized it was her, not Nikki, lying in the grass. Bleeding.

.

"Stay with me. Don't leave me." He said it all; he said things he didn't know, words to keep her alive; he wrote things into being, he created, he would have her here.

I love you.

Her eyes rolled back. Closed.

Her father was in the grass, gasping Katie Katie Katie in holy trinity. . .

.

And her heart raced because here were the memories she missed, the gaps between being carried out of the hangar over Castle's shoulder and waking up for the fifth or sixth time (according to Castle, it wasn't the first time she'd come to consciousness; she'd had many moments of confused wakefulness). Here were the pieces she'd asked him for, but still hadn't received, the knowledge she couldn't get at in her own head.

Written down. The way only Castle could write, and yet, not his style at all. Much more immediate, more gut-wrenching. Less clever.

She swallowed down her sudden nausea and read all five hundred and twenty-six words of that scene, that missing memory.

And that was just kate1. She stared blankly at the screen, had to read it over again, felt something on her hand and realized it was wet, a drop, a tear. She brushed her cheeks, not surprised; the meds made her brain chemistry crazy and she found herself weeping for no reason.

This, at least, was a reason.

This was everything he'd never had the guts to say to her, but apparently did have, at one point, only when she was dying.

.

At one side his daughter, at the other his life. Him stretched between the two, spanning a gap of grass and sunlight, his words dead in his mouth.

.

Well, not entirely dead and gone, were they? Here were his words. Hundreds of them. Harsh and distinct. She had to lean her head back against the headboard in his guest room and remember how to breathe. His life?

There were four more documents. She wanted to know. Needed to know. She opened kate2 without even any conscious thought about the decision.

.

Castle reaches forward to touch her hair, the tangled mess that his fingers have already caused, needs that connection. The paramedics hoist her into the back, the bus is running, Lanie is crawling in, turning around to tug Castle up; four of them squeezed into the back of the ambulance; the doors slam and he tries to keep out of their way, tries to not be a stumbling block, but he has to-

he has to-

has to touch something of her. Has to have that. His fingers tangled in her hair, his palm cupped over her ear, thumb just at her cheekbone. He leans forward, presses his mouth to her ear so she can hear him, somewhere, he believes it, knows it, somewhere she can hear him. . .

.

In the ambulance. A scene of desperation, confusion, the need in his voice, his pen-

Kate swallowed hard and slid the laptop from her knees, tried to press the tears back into her eyes with her fingers against her lids. She couldn't un-know this. Not now. He'd had a fight with Josh, or rather, Josh had fought with him. Josh hadn't come back around since. Well, once, to sit at her bedside, but she had harped on him about picking a fight with Castle of all people-

Only Josh had said that Castle wasn't just people. And she had shut him out, iced over, ignored his entreaties for the rest of his thirty minute ICU visit. Well, okay, technically, she'd ignored him for just the next ten minutes, until the pain medicine had dragged her back down into sedated sleep.

And then in the step-down unit, Josh had never come around again. And it hadn't hurt like maybe it should have. It was just something she'd gotten used to. So now what?

.

For God's own sake, for the sake of all things holy and good and right in this world, let me have Kate. Let me just have Kate.

The ICU floor nurse comes back out; Rick stiffens. Jim, across the room, drops his pen. What is her name? Rick used to be good with names. . .Shrapnel, he thinks. Her own bones like shrapnel. Like a bomb.

Her heart is broken? But he can fix that.

He stands up. He's volunteering.

.

Kate groaned and closed the laptop. She couldn't. She just couldn't right now. Her body felt like it was filled with ground glass, her eyes were leaking tears-no, they were gushing tears-and she hadn't been able to go to the bathroom unaided since she'd been shot. This wasn't the time for true confessions, not even if it was on a document on his laptop, not even if it was just a scene he'd jotted down.

Somehow, some way, the laptop's lid was up and she was dazzled by the text still marring the screen: bold black against white.

.

The surgery is nine hours; he is awake for eight of them. The other hour is sprinkled in handfuls of minutes in which his body rebels and shuts down on him, so that he comes to in the too bright waiting room, his neck in a spasm or his back protesting, cramped in a plastic chair. He is appalled that his body can quit on him, that he can sleep at all, when he should be watching and waiting, alert for any sign.

.

She knew all too well that revolt, that betrayal of the body. Hers was on the point of rebellion every day, threatening a strike if she didn't give her body better wages, more scheduled breaks, a comprehensive health plan. Her body had formed a union against her and held almost hourly work stoppages. There was never a time when she was ever in complete control anymore.

.

Hour six he spends wishing, craving, the keys under his fingers so badly that his hands shake. He will not do that now, not while Kate is still in surgery. He is aware that the force of his concentration and his will does *not* in fact keep her alive. But it feels like it does. It feels like if he lets himself get distracted now, then he has abandoned her to the dark. He must keep watch.

.

Oh God. Oh God, she had to talk to him. She couldn't leave this alone now, couldn't leave it at this. Her head was jammed full now, visions of his wait in the hospital, his vigil over her. Why hadn't he said anything? In the past two weeks, when she'd been getting stronger, better, less out of it? He hadn't even teased her, hadn't flirted, and God, she missed it, she missed-

Even as she thought that, she felt her eyes getting heavier, weighing her down. She struggled against her body, blinked rapidly to energize herself, to fool herself into thinking soon soon you can rest soon, carefully rolled onto her side to prop her head up against a pillow and keep reading.

.

But here, alone in the stairwell of the hospital, he can let grief have its ugly way with him.

He doesn't want her to die. He can't. . .can't function if she dies. She won't die. He refuses it. He rejects it. He will fight everything, anything; he will not let her die.

But Kate isn't his; he has no special claim on her. It's not for him, not because he loves her, but because she's Kate. She's Kate, and he doesn't think the world can bear to lose her.

.

And Kate couldn't bear this, not this, any longer. She quit the document, refused to even open the other three, and shut the lid of his laptop.

She had invaded his privacy for this, and now she had the responsibility of it, the burden of it. It would require a reckoning. It would cost her.

Only first. . .first she was going to have to give up the fight, let her body with its staged sit-in drag her down into sleep for awhile, just a little bit, or else her body, in the near future, would use more violent methods to protest her abuse.