Disclaimer: Mine? Really? In what dimension?

Part 2 of 2

Spoilers: 3x16, 3x17

Ice Cold Revelations

CHAPTER TWO

She is the first to wake. She opens her eyes to see a blurry face before her, she sees the mouth widen into a smile, the edges of the eyes crinkle. It's Josh. She frowns, confused. Josh is not here. Josh is on an airplane, he is heading to an assignment for Doctors without Borders, he's made his choice and it doesn't include her. Her brain is still fuzzy from the cold and she can't seem to connect his being here with what she thought she knew.

"I'm so glad that my presence here brings you such joy." He says laughingly.

"I… but you're…how did…Castle?"

"Shhhh. Rest. You're disorientated and I want to finish this drip before you run off again, Kate."

"Castle." She demands again.

"He's right here."

She turns her head and sees him within touching distance. They are wedged into an ambulance on gurneys, swathed in blankets with black woollen hats on their head. She can still see the blue tinge around his lips.

"He's okay?"

"He'll be fine. His core temperature was a lower than yours, so he'll take a little longer to come around."

They are hooked up to IV drips and she can feel the warm fluid infusing itself into her veins and warming her chilled blood. Her fingers are starting to burn with the return of feeling and it's uncomfortable so when Josh opens up a muesli bar, she accepts the distraction when he holds a piece to her lips.

"I can feed myself, you know." She says after the first bite but he shakes his head feeds her another piece. She chews slowly, looking at him.

"You came back…"

"Yeah. I came back."

She smiles. She feels elated. Josh's features soften and he seems relieved, like he's made the right choice by being here. When she's finished eating he screws the wrapper up and shoves it into his pocket. He pulls up her blanket and extracts the IV from her arm.

"You'll be dizzy and tired. You should really get sleep…. But I guess it would be pointless to tell you not to get back to work for a few days."

"Josh – there's a … this case – it's time sensitive and if we don't catch them, the consequences could be catastrophic."

"I overheard. It's about a bomb, right?"

"Yeah. A bomb."

"And I guess that's got something to do with where you and Castle ended up?"

"These guys aren't messing around."

He looks at her and she can see that he's genuinely afraid for her.

"We'll be careful."

He's got no choice but to accept that although he's struggling with it. He moves over to open the ambulance doors and for the first time it occurs to Kate that they are still on site. Siren lights are flashing and she can see half a dozen cars littered in her line of sight. It's still night but she can see the edges of the sky starting to lighten with the beginning of dawn.

The moment Josh is out the doors Ryan and Esposito are there, their faces creased with worry and she feels a surge of affection for her boys. Montgomery is not far behind and she sits up, slipping her hat off. She tells them what happened. They in turn tell her that little headway has been made but that they're scrounging the area for further clues.

The burning in her extremities is getting more uncomfortable, so she tentatively gets up and with Josh's help starts walking around the ambulance to help get her body functioning again but before she does that she leans over Castle and pulls off his black woollen hat. His hair has been flattened so she runs her fingers through his short brown hair, making sure to part it just the way he likes it. She runs her hand down his stubbled cheek. He looks so peaceful.

xxx

Kate is leaning against a car recalling how only the day before she had sat across from Castle, telling him how she wants a committed relationship. It feels so long ago now.

She'd fought with Josh that morning when he had come by to say good-bye. They'd been talking about it for a week, about his continuous absences for his job and he'd slowly teased it out of her – that she didn't want him to go again. She hadn't explicitly said that she wanted more commitment or that she wanted to take the relationship to its next level but they had both known what she had meant and he'd left anyway. She'd needed to say it out loud to someone.

As she's thinking these thoughts, she hears Caslte calling her name as he wakes. Moments later he's sidling up to her and she's feeling self-conscious because they'd shared something, in that frozen container. They'd been in each other's arms at the moment they thought was to be their deaths. They'd shared their mortality, binding them together in a deep unfathomable way.

This makes her feel conflicted because Josh is here, he came back for her and he's the one she should be feeling bound to, shouldn't she? But she has no further opportunity to think on these things because there is a dirty bomb in New York City and they are running out of time.

xxx

They have less than five minutes before the bomb goes off. They are racing down Broadway in pursuit of the black van and its deadly cargo. They are arguing because Castle wants to take a short cut. He shouldn't be arguing, he shouldn't even be here. How is it that it had been so clear, sitting in that frozen container that she must protect him and yet, here they both are, together, racing towards ground zero. How has she let him stay?

Then they are before the bomb and they don't know how to diffuse it.

They are going to die, they are going to die, they are going to die. Them and thousands of New Yorkers. Radiation will spill down the streets, poisoning those that survive and it will be Hiroshima, it will 9/11, it will be the end of the world as they know it.

Seconds tick away, Castle takes her hand and penetrates her with his eyes, they seem to be saying to her 'yes the world is ending but it ends with us together' and then he grabs the wires and yanks, hard. Notting happens. The bomb lies there in the truck, big, sprawling and stupid. Today will not be the end of the world.

Kate feels joy. She leaps into Castles arms and never has she been happier to feel arms around her; perhaps the world isn't quite as harsh as she thought. Everything seems crisper, the colours brighter, she has never been so glad to draw breath. And Castle, this beautiful man, he did it, he saved them.

She is still smiling an hour later, as she sits at the 12th Presinct, drinking a celebratory beer with her team. She's been surreptitiously glancing at Castle every few minutes to reassure herself that they have both somehow survived this last 48 hours. And when they stand outside Montgomery's office alone and Castle turns to her, a softness in his gaze that he reserves only for her, her heart starts to flutter because she's pretty certain that he's about to cross their unspoken line and it frightens her because she wants him to. But before he can finish, his eyes have shifted, he's bitten back, made his escape and she knows why when she feels Josh's arms slip around her waist. She allows him to hold her but her eyes are following Castle over her shoulder. It is with a mixture of regret but mostly relief that she sees the elevator doors close on him.

xxx

That night, as Josh moves inside her, as she clings to him and buries her head in his neck, for the first time it's not Josh that she is thinking about. In the last two days she's discovered that she wants to do more than just survive to find her mother's murderer, she wants to live. She wants to love. She wants to feel the wild exhilaration of unfettered joy.

It's a revelation.

Bowled over, undone, she can no longer hold the unbidden image of Castle – he who is inexplicably entwined with this discovery - out of her mind. Her senses are flooded by thoughts of him, of his smell, his touch, the taste of his lips and when she comes, it's long and hard. Of all the things that have happened in the last two days, this is the most significant, and it scares her. This, more than anything tells her just how deep it goes.

"You're trembling, Kate." Josh says. His eyes are kind and he strokes her back.

Kate smiles weakly and then turns so that he doesn't see the tear pooling in her eyes. He cradles her.

"I love you, Kate."

Perhaps he though that orgasm was for him. Maybe he misread the vulnerability in her eyes. The words make her heart squeeze uncomfortably. She takes the hand resting on her stomach and kisses it but says nothing – she can lie about many things, but not this. She knows she doesn't love Josh, but she wants to, so badly. He falls asleep while her eyes stay wide.

She had said to Castle that Josh's return meant that they had a chance but now – she's not sure. It feels like everything she wants, everything she thinks she wants is built on quicksand, it's all crumbling and in the wake of her crumbling foundations, she can't deny it any longer. She and Castle – they are circling ever closer and soon the pull will overwhelm them and they will collide, she feels the inevitability of it as she lies there. They have both fought it, tooth and nail, they have resisted with indomitable will, they have denied themselves but this thing they have, it will not be fought, it will not be resisted and it will not be denied.

The only thought that calms her beating heart is that as inevitable as it is, it will not happen tonight nor tomorrow, the foundations of her world can stay intact for a little longer and she needs that, desperately. Tomorrow, Castle will swagger in, two coffees in hand, one for him and one for her. He will flash her his smile, a twinkle in the eye and sit in his green faux-leather chair and proceed to congratulate himself in flowery, high-flying language on his heroic save of the city. She will put him in his place and it will feel like nothing has changed, even though it has.

Finally, she falls asleep.

Reviews are golden…