Standard Disclaimer.

Just a little thought.

She can still hear the shot. The retort filtering through the speakers of the conference room. And the screaming. His daughter collapsing to the floor. The official start of open season.

It's been a long time since she's started awake screaming.

Veins run like torrents over her hands, resting just below the surface, almost foreign to her body how much they seem to want to distance themselves from her. Or maybe they're just waiting. Waiting to swallow her whole.

She throws a hand away from her to her nightstand, grateful her throat is rough enough that her hand leaves to search for water before it can fester in her sleep addled brain.

It's getting worse.

"Kate?"

His voice is sandy, cautious and she hates it. He only peeks his head around the doorframe and she shakes her head at him before he can ask.

"I'm fine. Just a dream."

She hasn't turned on a light so she knows he can't see the way she is trembling in the dark. She clears her throat, trying to make it sound like she was just clearing sleep from her system, but she uses the second to strengthen her voice, to lie to him.

"Go back to sleep, Castle," she tells him, proud she managed to transfer the writhing nausea from her mouth back down to her stomach. Proud and sad. She was hiding from him again. She stares him down, unable to see his face but seeing the tense line of him where his silhouette is back lit in the corridor. She quashes down the hope that he will stay.

"Okay," he assents quietly and then he's gone.

Her heartbeat joins her stomach on the merry go round and she chokes back the dizziness and the hate. Why did she keep doing this to them? Why do they have to become these shells of themselves, her too afraid to show him how broken she is, to let him help. Him too afraid to push.

Whoever said love conquers all was an asshole. Just like all the misogynistic jerks who went out to see and conquer.

What they just didn't see is that on the way there you lose so much. You hurt so damn much. The wars. Fallen comrades. The times when you just run out of fuel to burn and faith to fight off the despair. The times where you want what you just can't have.

She wants him so much. And knowing he wants her just makes it that much worse.

So he sleeps on the couch. Her ex-boyfriend. Her partner. The man who told her he would wait until they were both in a good place before he asked again.

Bracken had been taken and killed. Along with his daughter, his wife, Kate had been in the video conference room to see his last message, his last moments and to watch the open season start on her life.

He had said he was sorry. But before Bracken could give her the name it all ended. A flash and bang of gunpowder and red shooting fireworks. One less Senator in the world. Just another pawn being knocked over.

She looked at her bedside table, the numbers red in the night and found, despite her paranoia, she and Castle had lived to see another day.