Go Out Fighting 3: Never

A/N:It is completely necessary to have read Go Out Fighting 2: Serendipity to understand this story. It is not, however, necessary to read Go Out Fighting.

And all of the beautiful things
That make you weep,
but don't have to make you weak-

'Cause I have never never never
never never never never
loved somebody
The way that I
love you.

-Never, Rilo Kiley

The braces and wires came off Monday after five weeks of having his jaw wired shut. He'd lost thirty pounds, he hadn't talked to his daughter face to face in all that time, and he still had a painful numbness in his left side. Sometimes, he'd wake from a sound sleep to the feeling of a pencil being shoved inside his ear, painful and sharp, but the doctors said it was his nerve healing; it would go away with time.

(A year, they said. It would take about a year. He wasn't sure he could manage that.)

His teeth ached.

But Kate was here.

"Want french fries, Castle?" She offered them up, dancing them in front of his face with a little smirk.

He grunted at her, narrowing his eyes. He could talk, but it hurt. He could say something, shoot his mouth off, but he liked making her work for it.

"Come on. I know you do," she teased, curling forward to put her elbows on the table. He could see the tightness of pain in her face. They both knew the signs now, could tell when the other one had pushed too far.

"Hurts," he said simply, barely pulling back his lips to speak. He still couldn't open his jaw all the way, only just a little, and the exercises his physical therapist gave him made his whole face throb, made the muscles down into his neck tighten, even to his collarbone.

"You need to eat," she sighed, dropping the fries. She hunched in the seat and pressed the heel of her hand to her eyebrow. "Castle."

"Will." He reached over and picked up the plate of fries. The best thing about recovering in a drug and alcohol treatment center was the amenities. Nice jacuzzis ensuite, sinfully large beds, a semi-private pool, gardens, five-star meals. "Eatin'. Kate."

She lifted her head slowly and watched him push fries past his teeth. Her face was drenched in worry. "Milkshake?"

"You?"

She gave a flickering smile. "Yes. I will." She took a slow, shallow breath and moved to stand.

He watched her like a hawk, grateful for her. As they each recovered from their bullet wounds, they complimented each other. She kept trying to make him eat, put some weight back on, and in order to facilitate that, she had to get up and move, use those once-damaged muscles.

It worked. Kind of.

Her physical therapist had left her trembling and worn out after this morning; when she walked towards the dessert bar in the cafeteria, her hands were in fists at her sides. But she came back with two chocolate mocha shakes, her eyes bright. The cafeteria put protein powder, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, and calcium in them; he never tasted the additions, just the chocolate.

"Here," she murmured, putting his down in front of him. He had left off eating the fries until she got back. No point going through that much pain unless she was here to see it, and approve, and perhaps reward him for it.

He hummed at the smell of chocolate and mocha and frozen goodness, then used a spoon to scoop out a little bit, slid it between his lips. He hissed at the contact with his teeth, the cold shooting straight to his raw nerve, his fragile bone, but he didn't care. It tasted good, and he was always starving - it usually took just too much energy to eat. So far tonight, he'd only managed mashed potatoes and a couple cubes of jello.

Kate sat back down slowly in her chair and brushed her hand over her napkin, then curled her fingers into a fist. He watched her gather herself, pulling strength and calm from some inviolate center within, her eyes closed. When she seemed to have put a lid on the pain, she brought the milkshake to her lips. She drank it watching him, their silence more alive and riddled with meaning than a thousand conversations.

She'd always been a taciturn kind of woman, reserved; she played it close to the vest. But she'd adopted his one-syllable answers lately, had taken on his own speech patterns. As if she would give out only as much as he would. He had a feeling it was only partly due to him; he thought maybe she needed the silence to buoy her, since she was allowed very little solitude here. Since he allowed her very little.

Sometimes, all he wanted was to hear her talk, her voice across whatever distance was between them, the tone and tenor and pitch of her like a soothing heat to his broken bones.

"Kate," he grit out, pressed his lips together as he looked at her.

She watched him, waiting. She was going to make him speak, wasn't she? He could say all he wanted to say in a look, but she wasn't going to acknowledge it.

"Game. Tonight?" He felt proud to force that much through, found that the words didn't hurt as much as he expected. "Beat you."

She let a smile grace her eyes, curl her mouth. "Sure you will, Castle. I'm ready to take you down."

"Any. Day."

She smiled wider, her lips around the straw, her eyes looking up at him through her lashes. He wanted to kiss her, and he would, soon as it didn't hurt to move his jaw.

She had kissed him, though, still kissed him, despite his frustratingly limited participation. He wanted her to kiss him now. He would never ask it of her.

"Want me to call Alexis tonight?"

He nodded, the first real smile coming to his mouth in a while. "Please."

"You chat with her today yet?"

He nodded. Over his phone, the laptop - they communicated all the time in words. Just not that often spoken.

"Hey, Castle?"

He looked up from his shake and saw she was smiling, a gentle thing that had some steel behind it.

"If you don't start talking in complete sentences, I'm not going to talk back." She lifted an eyebrow at him in challenge.

He sighed and rubbed the tips of his fingers over the left side of his face. His skin was sensitive up to a point and then all feeling disappeared. Just a strange plasticity. But she was right; he needed to start using the muscles if his jaw was going to heal. "Okay."

She kept her mouth shut.

He dropped his hand and geared himself up for it.

"Will. You play. A game with me?"

She grinned and leaned forward, brushed her fingers across his knee under the small table. "It's a date."

She won the first game, but not the second.

When they first started playing six weeks ago, on a board perched on his bed between them, he'd been terrible. He had claimed she cheated, but she was only laying words on top of words, layering them for extra points, claiming the double word scores, the triple letters.

After a week of playing, he'd figured out how to take advantage of those same squares. And a week after that, he'd learned not to accidentally set her up to claim those squares. He'd learned the words that got rid of the hardest letters to place: qat, xi, zax.

Since they were off the grid, they couldn't play on their phones, not that they ever had before. But she could imagine all-day games with him, watching him sit in his chair at her desk, his brow furrowed like it was now, the stupid grin of triumph when he played a word worth more than 30 points. At least then they wouldn't fight over which words were actually words, despite the Scrabble dictionary that Ryan had brought them a few weeks back.

Only a few plays into the third game, Castle was getting antsy; his foot struck the board and it rattled, the tiles jittered to the side. She took pity on him and slid the burner cell phone out of the drawer at his bedside, checked the time.

His face relaxed and he leaned back against the headboard. He smiled at her. It was time, or close enough.

As usual, she shifted the board to the foot of the bed and crawled up next to him, their shoulders touching. It was easier on her abs when she curled her knees up, and when she did, his arm draped over her legs, pulled her closer.

She called the phone that Esposito had given to Alexis and Martha, the only phone they called. Alexis turned it on at exactly seven o'clock, and she answered on the first ring.

"Daddy?"

Kate already had it on speakerphone and Castle grinned a little wider, no matter how much it probably hurt him to do it.

"Hey, pumpkin."

"Kate there too?"

"I'm here."

"Good. How are you, Dad? How's your jaw?"

He hummed something that was probably supposed to be an answer but Kate shot him a look. "Alexis, I told your Dad that he has to speak in complete sentences."

Alexis laughed over the line; it sounded good to hear. She hadn't spent much time laughing, Kate didn't think, at least not when they were on the phone together.

Castle sighed. "It's getting there."

"Good. That's good. I can even understand you," Alexis said in a rush.

Kate shared a look with the girl's father, nodded to him. "He's doing good. How's California?"

"Oh my gosh, Kate, my mother is driving me crazy."

They both laughed, and Kate leaned her head against Castle's shoulder with a sigh. "Why's that, Alexis?"

"With the bodyguards hanging around, every time she goes on an audition, she has this air of mystery about her, and they snap her right up. She's landing every role. Her ego is getting out of hand."

"Worse than your father's?"

That earned a laugh from Alexis, a second laugh, and a grunt from Castle.

Kate grinned - she'd made Alexis laugh twice tonight - and felt Castle rumbling beside her. "But you're having a good time?" she asked, brushing a finger over the top of his thigh. His arm around her legs squeezed, his hand wrapped around her ankle.

"Yeah, I miss you guys. Dad, when do you get out of there?"

"I don't know." He shifted beside her, discomfort because of his jaw or the question, Kate didn't know. "Still healing."

"Are we going to be able to come home when the summer's over?"

Castle's anxiety communicated itself to her; whatever low-frequency vibration his emotions emitted, it transmitted on a channel she picked up.

"Alexis, we don't know yet. The boys are working on cleaning it all up. As soon as we can be sure that the Judge doesn't have any other contacts-"

"I know," Alexis sighed over the phone. "I know. I just miss you."

Kate's chest squeezed tight, but surely the girl didn't mean her. She was talking to her father.

"Dad?"

"Here."

There was a long moment where Kate wondered if Alexis was trying not to cry, and all she could do was spread her fingers out over his thigh and squeeze, hoping to comfort him, because she could see that his eyes were filling as well.

"I love you, Daddy."

"Love you too."

She stayed in the bed with him after his daughter's call. He didn't want her to leave. They had the last bungalow on the west side of the property, the most secluded, and her bedroom was only next door; no one would know if she didn't go back to her own room.

She had yet to fall asleep and stay, but she did often fall asleep. But when Castle woke again in the morning, aching and bruised and always - somehow - having slept on his jaw, Kate was gone. It was the worst part of having her - this not having her.

Complete sentences though. She was good at rewarding him for the little victories: the press of her lips to his cheek, her fingers at his throat, the warmth of her against him. When he stopped leaning on the crutch of those index cards, the phrases and words spelled out and easier to use than his own voice, she had wrapped her arms around him and hung on. For a long time.

Sometimes he wondered if this reward system was doing more for her than it did for him.

She'd thrown out his index cards so he couldn't fall back on them, but she'd saved two, the twin I love yous, and he had seen one propped up against the lamp on her bedside table. As if she wanted to see it every morning when she woke.

He wanted to see her every morning.

"Kate," he said, felt the gravel in his throat mangle her name. But she lifted her head from his shoulder, sat up.

He reached out and feathered his fingers along her abdomen. Her skin rippled at the contact, but she didn't look to be in any more pain than usual. He knew the home health nurse he'd hired came in to wash her hair every morning; she couldn't reach above her head. And even though they walked as much as she could force herself, her body was still weak, her body kept breaking down.

All he had to do was look at her, and she knew. Maybe she wanted it too.

"Lie down then, Castle."

His chest eased, his smile opened up for her, teeth aching, jaw like cracking ice. She curled up at the head of the bed so that he could yank the covers down, get his legs under the sheets, and then she slid down next to him.

He didn't know how long she'd stay, but she was here now.

The quiet night was their time to talk. Or hers, really. She talked to the darkness and felt him under her cheek, the rumble and hum of his voice dwelling in his chest, his sounds approximating conversation. It was enough to know he heard.

She talked, more than she ever had to anyone, and he touched; his hands were his words.

"Everyone's gone, Castle," she murmured, the hitch in her breathing making the sentence stick. He stroked his palm up and down her back as if in denial, pressed her closer.

She slid her arm around his ribs. "Everyone from my mother's case. And they tried to kill me too. Nearly got you."

His fingers wrapped around her shoulder and squeezed.

"I know," she whispered. "I'm here. You're here. But it was a near thing. You saved my life."

His fingers trailed up to her neck, slid into her hair as his chest vibrated on a hum.

And then she said the thing which haunted her, kept her awake at night. "What if Markway gets off?"

He grunted under her, his breath rattling out of his throat.

"I don't want to sacrifice the Captain's reputation, his legacy for nothing, Castle. I don't want to put it all out there, all the evidence he collected, shame his family, drag his name in the mud, only for Markway to beat the charges."

His hand at her neck tensed, squeezed, his thumb brushing her jaw. She kissed the pad of his thumb when it passed near, closed her eyes, but the memory was like a nightmare, pressed close and too vivid. The hangar, the cemetery, the hospital.

He must feel it, or else he knew her now in a way that was entirely sensation and whatever echo of grief that rippled from her and into him. He must, because he brought his other arm up around her and pressed his cheek to the top of her head, cradling her.

"I'm okay," she whispered back. "I'm okay."

The strangled noise in his throat meant that he knew she was not.

"I'll be okay. I will. I promise."

He sighed, and his mouth on her skin was a comfort she couldn't help falling into.