Mammoth

co-authored by seilleanmor and chezchuckles

A/N: Takes place after 3x14 'Lucky Stiff' (with 3x13 'Knockdown's relationship-shifting). No Josh.

xxx

He broke it.

Richard Castle has quite possibly never been so grateful to have a ball thrown at his face.

Wait. Scratch that. He has definitely never been so grateful.

Because this - this changes everything.

xxx

Growing up without a father, Rick never did Sundays in the park tossing a baseball back and forth with his old man. And then his daughter was such a prissy little thing, such a girlie girl, that he never got to enjoy that all-American tradition with Alexis either. (Honestly, she takes after her father, and he's not complaining).

The guys at the 12th toss a baseball around to help them think.

Rick Castle has always been more comfortable wielding his words than a bat, and he's not athletic by anyone's standards. Usually, he might dodge any sort of projectile thrown at him, or mess up his catch on purpose to earn himself a laugh from the other players.

But if they give him a chance, not this time.

Somehow, it matters today when it's never mattered before. Things have been weird lately. Good weird and bad weird both. Scant weeks ago he was kissing Kate in an alleyway to rescue their brothers-in-arms, punching out an assassin to save her life. And then the case with the murdered millionaire and the club and that dress. He feels completely off-kilter, unsure footing as he doggedly shadows Kate Beckett.

He's in his chair, ostracised by the trio of detectives as they toss the ball between them in front of the murder board, talking out loud, picking through the details of their case in search of something to salvage, something that might actually make itself useful to the investigation.

They don't include him, even when he comes up with good ideas. Kate gives him a frown - it's not a CIA conspiracy, Castle - and the ball sails past him to Esposito, who's only talking out loud about what they already have, not even coming up with anything good.

They haven't talked about their kiss, he and Kate. About any of it really, so although he's been at the precinct like normal he can't help but feel that maybe he doesn't belong anymore. Maybe it would be easier if he gave her space. Kate has been her usual self, but Rick can't seem to battle back the awkwardness.

He doesn't want to walk away, he doesn't want to give her space.

This past year, he has felt so much a part of Beckett's team. The precinct family seem to have finally forgiven him for whatever misdemeanour had them treating him with varying degrees of hostility when he came back after last summer. For the first time, he's actually felt like an asset to the team, rather than just a nuisance they've learned to live with.

But the uncertainty of the past few cases. The way Kate looks at him sometimes when she doesn't think he sees. Even Alexis has been condescending with him lately, comparing him to a puppy that cringes but stays heeled, faithfully following Beckett into all sorts of danger without regard for his own safety. It's true, he does know that, but he doesn't know how to explain to his daughter that there isn't really another option. Not anymore. It's not a cringe; it's bravery, it's Beckett's own brand of determination rubbing off on him, insisting he stays right at her side, that she needs someone who will back her up.

It's purpose, as much as it threatens his safe, coddled world.

Beckett is his choice, each and every time.

So while Rick does his best not to look too mournful as he watches the detectives in their game of catch, it becomes obvious that he has completely failed. Because in the next moment Beckett is half-turning to face him, baseball gripped in two forked fingers and a thumb.

She's including him - she is including him - and the long, graceful stretch of her arm extends towards him.

Her fingers uncurl from the hard skin of the ball and he watches it sail towards him as if in slow motion, each rotation distinct. Everything slows down; there's so much space between his heartbeats that he might even rival Hal Lockwood for a steady aim right now.

The ball comes flying at him; the red stitches offer a spinning warning of its impending arrival.

But he's entirely too late to do anything about it.

He doesn't make the catch.

Horrifyingly, he fumbles the ball, fingers getting in the way. Just as they do every time, so that not even he can tell whether he's doing it on purpose, that instinctive physical comedy or just naturally clumsy.

And because he's sitting in his chair beside Beckett's desk, the ball caroms right off the heel of his hand and bounces once, twice, across her desktop before plunging over the edge - and bringing with it the parade of ceramic elephants that have always guarded Kate's workspace.

As the little troop falls through the air, he thinks it might be alright. They'll just bounce; it won't break. He'll get a serious scolding from Beckett, a ribbing from the boys about how terrible his catching skills are, but everything will be fine. (It's desperation talking, and he knows that, he does, but he can't really have been the one to break her elephants).

The smash is far louder than it really ought to be. The entire precinct goes silent. He can hear every crack of those elephants splintering apart.

Even from his chair, he hears Kate's sharp intake. Every head in the bullpen swivels to her and Castle braces himself for her scorn, her fury, one of his hands raising in premature defence, an attempt to block whatever vulnerable body part she might go for.

It's far worse than that.

Kate takes the few hesitant steps to the scene of the crime and drops to the floor, her knees crashing against the wood hard enough to have him wincing. She doesn't look at him, doesn't look at anyone; her fingers smooth over the back of the second largest elephant, the legs in a separate piece a few inches away.

"Kate." He chokes out, sliding out of his seat to join her on the floor.

Beckett's hair spills forward to hide her face from him and his heart trips, berating him for being such a colossal moron.

"Kate, I'm sorry. I can get them fixed." Stupid, really. They seem. . .beyond salvation. "I know a guy." Surely he does, surely one of the many people he knows can fix this.

She looks at him, finally, but her eyes are blurred and her bottom lip is caught between her teeth, and he feels his own face go slack.

It's worse than he thought.

"They were my mother's." Kate says, and then she stands and flees from him.

xxx

Kate composes herself.

Or tries to.

She's escaped to the break room with the excuse of getting a cup of coffee, but of course she can't make the machine work for her. She never quite can. But at least it's something to focus on, to set her mind towards, and her hands begin to still as she attempts to configure the grind.

Her elephants.

There's grit on her fingers from the finer pieces, the white dust of ceramic. She tries not to think about it. About leaving it in a mess, about the look on Castle's face, about how justified that look is - she's as broken as that parade of elephants.

Really stupid. It's so stupid. Unrecoverable, but it's just a stupid kitschy knicknack. A dustable, as her mother called them, because they had to be dusted so often and were barely worth the trouble.

But her mother also called them her little family. Named them. She was the baby elephant, Katie, and she felt like that little one sometimes, her fingers wrapped around her mother's tail as she followed her into work, burying her face into her mom's coat when Johanna nudged her forward, this is my daughter; she's sick today so she's coming in with me.

Kate's hands are shaking again.

She breathes in the scent of a well-ground coffee shot, begins the extraction - it has to be quick, twenty seconds. She watched how-to videos online to keep from having to ask for Castle's help, back when asking Castle for help was tantamount to weakness. Twenty seconds for the pour, and then she can stretch the milk steaming-

"Beckett?"

She startles so hard that she ruins the whole thing, her dismay a sharp sound in her throat. But it's just Castle, to apologize as only he can, and even though she doesn't mean to be so bitterly disappointed, she is.

"Kate."

Her first name, firm and demanding in a way he never is, snaps her head around, staring at him.

"You need to see this," he says. His eyes are apologetic but not with humility. No, not Richard Castle, right?

But she has seen him apologize; she's seen it in his whole being, his countenance weighed down. He can actually apologize well, but that's not what this is.

This is something else.

"See what?" she says, clearing her throat to get rid of the gravel.

"Kate, you're not going to believe it. You might even be thank - no, forget I said that. Just come see."

She slowly sets down the steamer jug, the espresso machine still in the middle of it, but she's being pulled inexorably towards the door, towards him and that look on his face.

Eureka, it says. Gold, it says.

Buried treasure.

"I am sorry, by the way," he tells her sotto voce. "I can tell it's priceless. But I think - I think this trumps everything."

"Did you get a break in the case?"

"No, not that." he murmurs. "They - the elephants - were your mother's?"

"Yes, Castle, but what-"

She stops a foot from her own desk, sees the pieces still on the floor, two big chunks and five or so smaller ones, the fine white dust, her broken elephants. He hasn't even cleaned it up, removed the offense. She's not sure she can do this, confront what she's lost.

She moves to turn back for the break room, but Castle catches her by the shoulders, holding her in place, entirely too intimate an act for the public bullpen. For them. His chest is at her back, awareness trickling down her spine, and he dips his head to her ear, his lips close.

"Look."

She goes still.

"Kate, look inside."

Confusion that has nothing to do with those elephants and entirely to do with the man standing too close makes her pause. But Castle is nudging his knee into the back of hers so that she drops quite automatically, and it forces her to catch herself on the edge of the desk as she sinks down.

She can see it now. The black edge, the crinkle of plastic around something lodged inside of those elephants.

She remembers now, as a child, how she used to hide things all over the apartment. Inside a hole in her teddy bear went beads from a broken necklace; under the thin clearance of the bookcase's bottom shelf she tucked her favorite crayon colors. And of course, those elephants were appealing with their little hole in the bottom. She would poke things up into the parade because there was a black rubber cap that went into the bottom - no idea why, only that it was hollow inside - and Kate would use a paperclip to push treasure inside: little notes to herself, pink hair bands, a Barbie shoe.

Until one day her mother caught her at it. The parade of elephants was her mother's special thing, the symbol of their family, and Kate was rebuked for trashing it.

And for a moment, she thinks that's all it is. Something of hers she left behind, hidden long ago, but it's not.

It's not hers at all.

It's a cassette tape, a mini recorder tape, and it's wrapped in plastic and has been secreted inside these elephants for who knows how long. Clearly it happened after Kate was told never to bury her own treasure inside it, but also - before her mother's murder. Her mother did this.

"Kate," Castle says. He has squatted down beside her now, his bulk blocking everyone's view. Castle balances against the side of her desk with a hand. "I didn't touch it. I thought - I didn't think I should touch it."

She has no such hesitation.

Beckett reaches out and tugs the cassette tape out from the hollow space, feels the weight of it in her fingers. A voice from the grave, she fully expects, a voice of truth. If her mother did this...

"I need a cassette player," she croaks. "I need one of those note-"

"I'll find one. I promise. I can get you one."

xxx

If she thinks-

Not a chance in hell, Kate Beckett.

Richard Castle has elephant pieces crumbling at his fingertips and dust staining the knees of his slacks and knuckles still raw with love, and if Beckett thinks he's leaving her alone to view this tape? He will not.

He will be at her side for this. Whatever secrets have spilled forth from the belly of the wise old beasts that once roamed her desk, he wants to buffer the blow. Absorb it into himself the way he did sitting across the table from John Raglan in a diner. The responsibility of being a person Kate trusts.

"Are you-?"

"Yes." She spits out, jaw practically wired closed. Beckett stares unflinching at the anachronistic tape player on the table between them, and while she's deaf-blind to everything else he takes the opportunity to watch her.

Anything to do with Kate's mother calcifies her, turns her into this stone-faced Medusa of a woman, and the ice of her beauty does things to him he'd really rather not examine too closely. "Are you gonna. . .press play?"

"Castle." Voice snapping at his heels, Kate cracks her way out of her shell and turns over her shoulder to glare at him. "Obviously."

He'll let that go because it's her mother, and because he did just break her elephants.

The tape bursts to life with a crackle of white noise and the unmistakable sound of footsteps and a chair scraping out from underneath a table. Rick glances over at Kate but she's unmoving again, curling up tight inside of herself.

A voice he doesn't recognise gruffs out, and shivers race down his spine. He was almost hoping for this to be a precious memory, maybe to get to hear a young Katie Beckett speaking with her mother. This man is not that, not even close, and there's no recognition on Beckett's face either.

"Raglan, shut the door. You've got a lot of balls coming here."

"Raglan." Kate breathes, glancing over at him.

His face feels stiff and unresponsive, unable to configure himself into something that might reassure his partner, but he thinks maybe his mouth quirks up at the corner just a little. Stupid, perhaps, to smile at her, but the ghost of the man they watched bleed out a couple weeks back is on the tape that came from inside those elephants and he assumes she needs a friendly face.

"Look, we just want to make sure we're all on the same page."

Oh. Fuck.

That's Montgomery's voice.

Kate is suddenly straining forward, as if against a great weight, but she doesn't touch the tape player; she just bows her head and listens, concentrating.

"You took us for a lot of money, Bracken. We want assurances."

Gooseflesh roars up the column of Rick's spine, cold gushing through his guts. Next to him, Kate is as still as the grave aside from the blanched white clutch of her knuckles at the arms of her chair. He feels incapable of comprehending this. "Did he say Bracken? As in the Senator?"

"Just. Listen." She growls at him and he nods, turning to face the table.

"Hey, be happy I haven't busted the three of you for your little mafia extortion ring."

Their what? Rick wants to turn the damn thing off already, fist trembling with the restraint it takes not to slam down on top of the tape player and make the stream of toxic words stop. Not for himself, either.

His white knight syndrome makes him want to protect her from this, foolish as that is. Beckett will see this through to the end, even if it kills her, and he knows there's nothing at all he could say to pull her back from the edge.

"Whoa, relax." Montgomery's voice again, and Rick glances over his shoulder into the bullpen. The boys conveniently disappeared the moment Kate's elephants hit the floor, and the captain has been at 1 Police Plaza all morning. Castle has no back-up here.

"No, no. You want assurances? Here you go. I assure you that as easily as I pinned Bob Armen's murder on Pulgatti, I can just as easily pin it on the cops that actually did the deed."

Bracken - a fucking senator - and the cops who murdered Pulgatti.

Montgomery's voice comes out again, sounding foreign and ugly without the lift of humour he so often has. "Pulgatti knows he's been framed. What if someone gets onto this?"

"Then I'll handle them."

"You? How?"

"I know people, Roy. Dangerous people. Anyone gets too close, like that bitch lawyer Johanna Beckett that's been poking around, I'll have them killed. I've had people killed before."

A cracked growl breaks free from Kate, and Castle grabs for her hand without thinking, gathering her fingers all together and capturing them in the cove of his palm. For the space of breath, she doesn't react. The tape spools on in staticky silence, and then nothing more. It plays to the end - agonizing minutes of nothing - before the player stutters and clicks off.

Castle opens his mouth, tongue leaden, but before he can manage to string words together, Beckett stands up, fingers jerking out of his hand, and she spins on her heel. Somehow translucent and steel all at once, she slams her way out of the conference room and disappears around the corner. Not towards the Captain's office, where he expected her to go. Opposite direction.

It takes him a moment, but then he gets it. Bathroom. To cry?

He's up and after her, barely hesitates outside the door, nudging it open with his hip and heading for the last stall, the only occupied one. The sound of Beckett's retching makes his stomach roll over, but he pulls open the door to the cubicle and hunches down close beside her.

With one palm splayed between her shoulder blades, he gathers the spill of her hair in his fist and holds it at the nape of her neck, her skin flushed where it meets his knuckles.

"Castle, go away." She groans, cheek pressed to the back of her hand which clings to the porcelain seat of the toilet. But she makes no move to brush him off.

He gives her a minute, waiting with her, silent as everything drowns in her eyes. When she doesn't bring anything else up, he releases her hair, shuffling back, and gives her the space to get to her feet. "Better?"

"Not at all." She huffs, but she looks less like reed grass when she gets to her feet and moves for the sink. No color, but no longer ready to wilt. "What are you doing in the women's restroom?"

Castle shrugs, letting a grimace unravel over his face. "Being your partner."

She meets his eyes in the bathroom mirror. "Thanks." She says it quietly as she cups her palms under the faucet, and then immediately buries her face in the cold water, splashing it over her eyes. Castle hands her a couple of paper towels from the dispenser at his elbow, propping a hip against the countertop to wait her out.

Once she's done, she turns to look at him and her face crumples with grief, her mouth an ugly slash determined not to waver. "Castle. What I am supposed to do? What - the third cop - it was a conspiracy."

Montgomery, she doesn't say, but he can hear it anyway. Montgomery and a senator.

But he tries another smile, gesturing towards the door. "Let's get out of here before Karpowski sees me, okay? We'll figure it out. We'll go back to your desk and just look at it logically."

He gets a nod from Beckett, grim-faced determination settling her features, and she strides ahead of him out of the bathroom. He doesn't want to guide her, push her; he knows she has to put herself back together again.

Raglan would have told them, that day in the diner; he's certain of it. But Raglan died. And now who else can possibly corroborate this tape but their own Captain? He can't fathom how they're supposed to do this either. Her mentor. His mentor, if truth be told.

Head bowed as he walks behind her, he doesn't realise what's happening until he hears the strangled sob of her voice.

"What have you done?"

"Beckett!" He calls after her, jerking forward in his haste to get to her before she can - destroy something.

He turns the corner and Kate has Montgomery up against the wall, her forearm braced against his chest as she yells at him. "My mother is dead because of you." Beckett slams the Captain back, leaning hard, Montgomery just letting her, and already a gaggle of uniforms and detectives are gathering to watch.

This can't be how it goes down. Not like this. Rick grabs for Beckett before he really knows what he's doing, curling an arm at her waist and dragging her off of Montgomery. He has to actually pick her up off her feet and deposit her a couple feet away.

The captain looks stricken, older than Castle has ever seen him but not, he realises with a jolt, at all surprised. Oh no. Roy has been expecting this for years. For years, he's known - for years - that one vital piece of information that would help Kate find the man who ordered the hit on her mother.

"Kate," Captain Montgomery implores.

Beckett thrashes against Castle's grip, her voice a hoarse horror, her words aching with grief - my mother - and Castle torques his neck to get his mouth against her ear. "Kate, stop. Stop. Not like this. Stand down."

"Castle, let me go." She moans, but her body goes slack in his grip, and he hauls her backward into the break room with him without any resistance from her at all.

He slams the door closed and lowers the blinds as well, shuts them off from the colleagues that crowd outside, rubber-necking like it's a car wreck.

No. This is worse than a car wreck.

xxx

She's trying not to sob, but the sobs are the only way she's breathing.

She can feel the hard jut of the door knob at the base of her spine, and the press of Castle's body against her chest and shoulders. His nonsense rattles in her ear. He's really the only thing holding her up.

She might collapse.

"Let me go," she moans. She wants to fall. Just let her hit the floor and make her bones rattle.

"Can't be like this, Kate. Can't do it like this."

"My mother-"

"You go after him like a lunatic and no one will believe you. Even with evidence. It will be tossed out of court so fast - and you know it."

She goes still. Fear slashes sharp and bright through her and she opens her eyes. "Castle," she gasps. "The tape. The tape. Where's-"

"I have it," he says grimly, pushing back from her and flashing it between his fingers. She stumbles and lunges for it, and he lets her have it.

Kate clutches it against her chest, closes her eyes. Montgomery. Her Captain. Her Captain.

"I don't know what to do," she groans. "What am I supposed to do? He's - he has - what can we do, Castle?"

"We'll figure it out. We can figure this out. It doesn't have to be - we can protect him-"

"I can't protect him," she snaps, jerking upright, shoving on him. "I don't get to choose. He's part of this, Castle. He's a part of this and he could have stopped them - my mother-"

She flings herself past him, the tape burning in her fist, strides in two steps to the far door and yanks it open.

Montgomery is right there. Right there, hang dog, eyes sunken in his jowls. Every terrible and dark moment since that day in January rises up in her.

"You did this," she hisses, stepping into him. "You-"

Before she can accuse him in front of the whole Homicide floor, Esposito and Ryan are coming up to stand in support.

But not with her.

They flank Montgomery. Ryan, hesitant but scowling, Espo, with his arms crossed over his chest and his face deeply disapproving.

Her accusation dies in her throat, a hard knot.

There's a tight and terrible silence through the bullpen. Castle hesitates just behind her, but Captain Montgomery reaches out and closes his hand around Beckett's fist.

"Kate," he says. So softly. A warning.

She rocks on her heels, swaying first towards her Captain and then back towards Castle, but it suddenly becomes so clear.

Montgomery will go on like this, hiding the truth of what he's done. He wants the cassette tape.

But then Castle is stepping between her and her Captain, blocking the older man's grip on Kate's fist, and she gasps. The broken connection feels like she's been socked in the gut with a sucker punch. Her forehead comes to Castle's shoulder blade, her hand fisted in his jacket because she doesn't think she can keep standing.

Ryan frowns and steps forward, but Captain Montgomery twists on his heel and stalks back to his office.

Esposito narrows his eyes. "What's-"

"Castle, get me - get me out of here."

He obeys, turning just barely and gripping her by the elbow, propelling her forward, hustling her towards the elevator before she can break apart in front of them all. Inside the elevator car, Kate sags backward against the wall and closes her eyes, trembling so hard her bones rattle, her teeth clack. Her knees are giving way.

"Where do you want to go?" His voice comes from closer than she's expecting, right at her ear, and she sways into him until he grips her reflexively and holds her up.

"Home. I need - I have to look at it all. I have to - make sense."

She needs that murder board in her office, the one that covers the window and blocks out the light, leaves black squares of shadow through the shutters. Kate sucks a breath through her teeth, afraid that she's going to be sick again.

It slowly passes. She straightens her spine and looks at her partner, sees his face hard with concern and fear both. Castle carries an enormous amount of guilt for this, she knows. He thinks it's his fault for re-opening the investigation at the beginning, and really. . .it sort of is. But she doesn't blame him, not anymore.

Her tumble down the rabbit hole was inevitable; the only influence Castle really has is that she doesn't tumble alone.

The doors open on the basement level's parking garage, and Kate pulls her keys out of her pocket, hands still trembling. At least she has them with her; her coat and bag are still upstairs in Homicide, but she had the car keys in her blazer pocket. Her phone too, she realizes, rattling against the cassette tape.

"Castle. The rest of my stuff. It's upstairs."

"I know. I'll go back up and get it."

"No!" She blurts out immediately, fisting a hand in the sleeve of his jacket like a child. It's completely ridiculous, but if he leaves her alone here she will just-

No, not right now.

"Okay." He says it calmly, and then he wraps an arm around her shoulders and brings her in against his chest. "Okay. I'll text Ryan and ask him to bring down our things. I left my jacket."

He's already pulling out his phone as he explains, his bicep twitching next to her cheek as he types out the message. It hits her again, another wave, and she has to press her face tightly into his button down. She's dissociating, doesn't feel like this is really happening to her. She has to keep it together.

"Let's get in the car." Castle says into the crown of her head, shuffling her away from him so he can guide her towards her cruiser. But she opens the door of the passenger side and tosses him the keys. He blinks, staring at her, right at her heels, and she knows it's bad then. She knows she's not right, because he's looking at her like that, but she can't find it in her to care.

Kate gets inside the car and curls up in the seat, fastening the belt only when he frowns at her from right beside the open door.

Cheek pillowed against the headrest, she watches her partner move back towards the elevator and greet Ryan as he steps off. Castle takes both of their coats and her shoulder bag from the detective and Kevin is saying something, casting a glance at her car before he turns back to Castle.

Her partner nods, and the two men stride across the garage towards her. When they reach the car Ryan opens her door wider and crouches, his hand patting her knee in sympathy. "Beckett. As soon as my shift is done I'll come over to your apartment and you can tell me what's going on."

"I don't want to drag you guys-"

"We're already in it, boss." He cuts through her, offering her a sympathetic smile. "We're your partners. Esposito is all bark, you know."

She doesn't nod, but Ryan takes her silence for agreement and stands up. He squeezes Castle's arm on his way back towards the elevators. She feels like she's being coddled, handled, but she feels unequal to fighting it.

Beckett closes her door and her eyes both, hears the muffled echo of Castle's footsteps as he rounds the car and climbs into the driver's seat. He slides the key into the ignition but doesn't start the engine.

"I know you're not supposed to drive the precinct car," she mutters. "But just - go, Castle."

Instead of putting the car in gear, he turns and touches her drawn up knee. It makes her eyes open, and he reaches up to tuck the spill of her hair back behind her ear.

Her heart stops beating.

"It'll be alright, Beckett. We'll figure it out."

xxx

Kate stands before the windows with the shutters open so that it's all there. Everything.

Castle looks horrified.

She can't blame him. She went - a little crazy with it. She's obsessed; she can admit that. But-

"It's - over now," she scrapes out. "I know why." Her throat closes up. "And it's over."

"It's not over, Kate. Justice. It's not over until he's arrested and tried."

She nods, head bobbing, but in so many ways - important ways - it's already done. She will get justice, no doubt; there is no doubt in her mind that she will bring Bracken down. But.

The answer was given to her by her mother's own hand, waiting for her all these years in the one place her mother knew all treasures would lie.

"Kate?"

She holds up the micro-cassette tape, stares down at it and then back up at the shutters.

"Kate, you are going to arrest him."

"Of course."

Castle lets out a breath so loud that she turns to look at him. Relief?

"What are you asking me, Castle?"

"The way you said it was over. It's not over. You have a next step, a new piece of information - evidence - but it's not done." He nods to himself as if in confirmation, gives her a weak smile. "You sounded like this was the end of the road for us - for you."

She closes her fingers around the cassette tape and looks back to the window. Every notecard, every random thought she tacked up with question marks, every piece of information, every vital statistic. "It is the end of the road," she says softly.

"Kate? You don't mean - you're not looking to take matters into your own hands, right?"

She jerks her chin around to stare at him, undone by the hesitance on his face. He would follow her. Even there. It's all over him, it's sunk deep in his eyes like an anchor. Final, unmoving, resigned. He would do that for her; he would follow her to certain end.

"No," she chokes out. "God, no. I wouldn't - that's not justice. My mother deserves better than that. I'm better than that. He is going to jail."

Castle's head nods enthusiastically, his throat bobbing, as if he's been pulled back from the brink.

"Castle," she grunts. "How could you possibly think that?"

His lips compress, his eyes going flat. "You keep saying it's over and it's not at all over. It's a long road ahead to get all the pieces together even knowing the answer, even having the evidence, and Montgomery has to be - dealt with - and it just feels like the beginning. Of so much."

"If you're afraid of the work," she hisses, "then you can go. You're off the hook."

He takes a jerking step towards her, like he wants to grab her, but he clenches his fists and shakes his head. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm in this."

She takes his measure, and he sees it, but he doesn't back down.

"Fine. Then don't call my integrity into question."

"No, I wasn't suggesting that you would. I just don't understand how you can call this over."

"For me, it is," she cries out, stalking away from him. She smacks the cassette tape onto the window sill and throws her arms out to encompass the whole board. "Every single note on this timeline is a question mark. It was all darkness, and mystery, and no answers. And now I know."

"And it's dragged out a thousand new questions," he gruffs. "The road just got ten times as long as it was. We're not close to over, Kate Beckett."

We?

She drops her hands to her sides, turns around slowly to face him. He looks - scared. Scared this is over. Why has she never seen that until now? "You ever read the end of a mystery novel, Castle?"

He actually flinches. "No. No. Please tell me you don't either."

She shakes her head. "No." Kate turns and takes the cassette, holds it up before her so he can see it. "My mother just read me the end of the novel." She shrugs, finds her lips tugging crookedly, like a smile. "I know how it ends. It's over."

He stands gaping at her, but she can see he gets it. Gets her. And doesn't know what to do about it. Well, she does. She needs a partner in this - no, she wants a partner in this, and now that the answer is here, before her, she's finding an answer to questions she hasn't thought she's had the right to ask.

"I'll ask you again, Castle. Because I told you, after I shot Coonan, that I'd like you around until we saw the end of this thing. Well, here's the end. You made it. He had my mother killed for this tape, for sticking her nose in it. Now that you've made it to the end, now that you can - do you want to go?"

"No. Never, Kate. Till the wheels fall off."

She nods to herself, cassette tape in her fingers. "So what does that make you, Rick?"

"Your plucky sidekick?" Winning smile, all that natural, easy charm. But he looks desperate.

"Plucky sidekicks get killed."

"Partners then," he says fiercely, stepping into her space. Stepping up.

She watches him, decides for herself. "Partners," she affirms, taking the last step into him. She reaches up and cradles his jaw with two hands. "More than."

His eyes go blank before solidifying, hard and certain, and when she pushes up to kiss him, he's already meeting her mouth with his own.

xxx