Take Up Your Cross

With too much space between them, Kate nailed to the floor by the song floating through the air, Rick Castle reaches out and snags her by the hips, reels her into him.

She crashes against his chest inelegantly, her nose bumping his throat, her elbow getting his hipbone. He feels her hands come to his shirt and fist tightly, and he realizes that she's shaking.

He's never seen her scared like this before. Her fear has always been laid over with determination, but this time there's no room for anything but the starkest response.

"Take it out," she croaks. "Take it out and - get it out. Out of your laptop, Castle."

"Yeah," he says, swallowing. "You're right." But when he shifts to move back to his office, she's still gripping him. There's a moment of awkward, fumbling exchange and he has to wrap his hands around hers, push his thumbs into her fists to get her to release him.

Even then she tilts after him, a half step before her heel comes down too hard on the floor, echoing sharp. He hustles then, yanks the flash drive out of his computer without even safely ejecting it, and of course his laptop freezes, the song cutting strangely, the player program crashing.

He turns to Kate still standing just past the doorway and she's staring at it, the memory stick in his hand, so he gets rid of it hastily.

"I should call CSU," she says, now staring past him. Castle steps into her quickly, anxious to erase the distance and the remnants of that song serpenting through his brain, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders to pull her in.

He doesn't know what to say. The music is gone but it haunts the space, echoes of record scratch in the air they breathe.

Castle grips her shoulder, tries to find something to say but nothing comes. It takes another long heartbeat before she finally scrapes something out instead. "I need to call. I'll get in trouble for letting you take that pen."

His breath falters. "I just - put it in my pocket. Wasn't thinking. I'm - sorry. Sorry, I'll-"

"It's nothing. It's not - it's good or we'd never have known." She blows out a breath and steps away, apparently determined to take it. "I need to call. There's procedure. I have to-" Her head bows and her hair falls into her face, shielding her, shoulders hunched. "I have to think. Past this. I can't-"

Castle shifts into her space again, can't help himself, his hand wrapping around her upper arm just to have that connection. "It's okay," he finds himself saying. "We've got this." But they don't. They have nothing. This is his fault, and they have nothing.

She leans back against his grip. "Last time he - he just - Castle, I was completely helpless to stop it."

He shivers as her words call up that meeting in the jail cell, the insidious slide of vowels and syllables spelling out his fate. And she has to watch.

She had to watch as he was arrested, all the evidence neatly stacked against him. The plot to take him away from her and make her suffer for having her hands tied, for being sidelined, for working tirelessly only to have him snatched from her when everything had just started. Their life, this thing they're doing together - it would have been gone.

"This time I'll have you for an alibi when I take a weekend writing bender," he jokes weakly.

"That's not funny," she husks, her head tilting into his chest.

He grips her shoulders now and holds on. "Coping mechanism, Beckett, remember?"

"That wasn't to say stop, that was try harder."

He sucks in a breath, her comment already doing the work of easing them both. "I got nothing. Oh, except - at least I've already gotten your ring? No jewelry stores in my future."

"Not much better." But now her head comes up and her eyes meet his for a moment, a flicker of something in there before her gaze drifts over his shoulder to his office. "You should - hire someone. Hire a professional to wipe your laptop. Trojan horse or virus or some kind of code..."

"Oh, no," he croaks, spinning around to stare at his open laptop. He just shoved that flash drive into the port and didn't even think.

She goes on. "It could do - he has the skills to alter video and mess with your online bank statements and so access to your laptop could mean... anything."

"Like remote control the camera," he chokes.

Because Tyson watched them.

He watched them right here in Castle's loft, came in here and planted cameras and that bag of evidence against him; he stood here, in their space, Castle's space, their territory. His skin crawls and he jerks away from her, covers the reflex by turning swiftly for his laptop and shutting it down, doesn't even wait before he slams the lid.

His hands are shaking. He tastes metal in the back of his mouth. His throat doesn't seem to be working because air is trapped somewhere and not doing him any good.

"Castle."

He turns when her hand fists in his shirt - all this need to hold on, to hang on to him, to keep him right there - and her face is bloodless but the determination is back.

"Now we have - a place to start," she says forcefully. "The files might be gone but we have somewhere to start on this."

"We can recreate it," he replies, nodding, needing that to hang on to as much as she's still gripping his shirt. "I - uh - I made copies of some of those cases."

"I'm going to overlook it," she says, a crooked twist to the corner of her mouth. He thinks it's meant to be a smile. "In the interests of reopening this case. But Castle - you shouldn't have."

"I wanted it close. So I could go over it."

"At the risk of sounding hypocritical, please don't tell me you've built a murderboard for this."

"I... does digital count?"

"Castle," she murmurs, her eyes raking over him. "Castle, don't fall into this case."

"The first time, I let it get away from me. Let him completely fool me. And then the second time-"

"Stop."

"This is my responsibility." He holds up a hand between them, stilling her denial. "My burden. My cross to bear, Kate. God knows I've had a pretty easy life; I can take this - I ought to take it."

She shakes her head at him, lips twisting. Her hand scrapes through her hair and it looks like it's shaking. We feels about the same inside - shellshocked.

"Not just yours alone," she says then. "We do this together. Make our stand together."

The case. Everything. He nods, can't understand how it is that her simple statement makes it already better. "You know. He did now what he did last time. Wiping out the last links to him."

Kate releases his shirt now and smooths her hand over the wrinkled place, the heat of her palm in strange contrast to the chill of her fingers that he can feel even through the material.

"Actually," she starts, not looking at him, "this doesn't mean it's him. We're jumping to conclusions. It could just be her. Taunting us. Making us think... doing all this to punish us for killing her boyfriend."

He freezes as it all comes spiraling into perfect clarity. "That's what - that's what this is."

"Her."

"No," he mutters. "Him. The two of them. And... us."

"No," she insists, stepping back, away from him. "No, Castle. Don't do this."

"It makes sense."

"It's just your story - it's not the facts. Her pen, her office, her. He's in the river and she's orchestrating all of this to torment us."

"Or he is. Either way, Kate, the story here reads the same. If she's the one behind it or him. Doesn't matter because it will continue to go on like this. Erasing all evidence, all the traces of him. Like how this started for us - Linda Russo's murder. Whether it's him or it's his girlfriend, the play remains-"

Castle stutters to a halt, horror blooming in his mind.

"Castle?"

"His girlfriend. The one he tried to have Lucas Gates strangle. Donna."

Kate's face clears, that mask of professionalism falling swiftly into place. She yanks out her phone from her back pocket and is on it before he can even finish his thought. She identifies herself and rattles off her badge number, asking for a team to look up last-known and sit on her when they find her. If they find her.

His fault. This is his fault. Not just because Tyson said it was, but because this is three times now that he's been given the opportunity to stop it, and he's failed. He hasn't been smart enough, fast enough - he hasn't been a good enough writer to see the story as it unfolds.

Kate's eyes drift to his. "No, thank you. Yes. I'll call Captain Gates and get the authority."

She ends the call and immediately dials again, Gates probably, and they stand opposite each other, not even touching, and the distance is immeasurable.

This conversation is even faster, and terse, and Kate turns her back on him to apologize into the phone. Castle pivots slowly and glances at the closed laptop, the memory stick he left there, pen lying split in half, and it feels all too symbolic.

Split in half.

This is just the beginning. The nightmare is spilling out into their lives once more, inky stains leaking across the page.

"Gates is sending a team for the flash drive. She also said you should hire a private IT specialist for the laptop. And we don't have manpower to baby-sit Donna's house, but they're going to make periodic checks."

"Won't deter him. Won't stop him."

"Her."

"Kate," he sighs.

"Okay, okay," she gentles him. He glances at her again and there's still all this separation, two halves split. "Whoever. Working theory still, right? We need proof either way."

"Come here," he says but he's already moving towards her. They wind up meeting in the middle, the ghosts not thin enough to get between them. "We'll just have to pay attention. Keep our eyes open."

"Not much else we can do," she sighs.

He drops his chin to tuck his head next to hers, a deep breath of her workday smell - the one he knows the best, finds familiar and comforting, the heady sense of control and power.

Even if it's an illusion.

There's going to be a reckoning, a day when he has to pay for three times denying the truth of the story being played out in front of him, for ignoring it, for being too slow, for having ears but not listening, eyes but not seeing.

It's coming for him, that day, and he's afraid that Beckett is next. Ryan first, himself, Lanie, Esposito. Who else is left on Tyson's list but her?

He recalls Dr. Kelly Nieman - that moment in interrogation - the slow slide of her business card across the table and the promise of perfecting almost perfection. The fixation of a killer, locked in and assessing, right on Beckett.

"Stop, Castle." Her fingers come up to lightly run through his hair - like a kiss itself without the meeting of lips. "Don't let this haunt you," she whispers.

Too late.

Too late.

He bears it all.