A/N: Sorry for the delay folks. The premiere trumped all for a few days, as it should.

Disclaimer: As always, I do not own Castle. Nor, after Monday, would I ever want to. I prefer the surprise.

"The universe doesn't give you what you ask for with your thoughts - it gives you what you demand with your actions."

― Steve Maraboli

"That took longer than I expected," he says as he answers his door. He's changed out of the zombie costume, finally, and given his face another scrub. He looks younger than normal, in a very faded 'Murder She Wrote' t-shirt and his hair all spikey from the washing. He obviously has been waiting up for me, despite his quitting.

I push past him without invitation, and he makes no move to stop me. "Lanie is going to report that it was the tumor that killed Ram."

"You came here at 4am to tell me that?"

"I'm reminding you that we were on a case," I say, and I can hear my voice rising. This isn't how I expected to dive into this, and yet, here it is. I guess, in my desire to screw my courage to the sticking place and all that, I managed to build a healthy head of steam.

Castle grabs my arm, directs me into his bedroom.

"What are you doing?" I ask as he walks me through the door. He ignores me for a second, closes the various doors to the room.

"My mother and daughter are both asleep upstairs, Kate, and if you're going to yell at me, I'd prefer you do it somewhere where you won't wake them."

"It wasn't ... I didn't come here to yell."

He doesn't say anything, but he's pining me with the glare he learned from me, in the interrogation room. I try to look away, but his bedroom is now back to what I suppose is its original form. I don't want to look at it, lest I be overwhelmed by a desire to mark the space, to force the universe to acknowledge that this is where I belong.

I turn back to him. "I came to find out why you quit."

"Of course you did. Because you can get away with vague proclamations that I have to guess at, but when it's my choice, I have to explain myself fully."

"That's not...I don't get away with vague proclamations."

"No, it's fine, should be used to it by now. I quit because I want more than you can give me and I don't have the energy to pretend otherwise." He huffs, walks away from me. "And I don't have the strength to get over it while still working with you day after day."

How can he think that we don't want the same thing, after what we've seen today? Unless he still thinks everything was a hallucination, that he dreamed up the conversations we had there.

"What happened was real, Rick. It happened. There's no reason to go backwards from that."

"I know it was real," he says sharply.

I want to ask him how, since he'd already left before I found Koziol, but that's not the important question. "Then why?"

"Today's been interesting. Nothing quite like seeing someone else's edits to show you where your story isn't working."

"What the hell does that mean?" I ask, but the glimmers of the answer are licking at the sides of my thinking. I know in general what he's saying, thinking through how today has tossed everything I thought I knew into the air. But what I learned may not be what he learned. What he learned is still a mystery.

"I've been coasting along, so afraid that you'd kick me out permanently that I let you take the lead entirely. Somewhere along the line, I stopped going after what I wanted. I used to do that, you know? Sure, a lot of what I wanted was stupid, but at least I tried."

"And now, to be more assertive, you're quitting?"

"I'm going off script."

"That doesn't make any more sense than the first thing you said."

"Do you know why I stopped writing Derrick Storm?"

What does that have to do with anything? I leave the question unasked, because at least I have him talking. Because when he stops, I have the horrible feeling that this all might be over.

"You got tired of the character," I say.

"No, I got tired of the life. One day, I woke up, and I realized that I'd turned myself into Derrick Storm. I'd stopped just writing him and I started being him - picking up a new woman every week, trying to act like I didn't care about anything. Hunting for some stupid adventure around every corner. There wasn't any hope there... I had to quit. So I killed him and started over."

It's a convenient story, but it doesn't explain anything. And I can't really see what it has to do with what happened to us. Most of all, it's just annoying.

"Except you didn't, or am I supposed to believe I just dreamed the stewardesses and the Ferrari and the rest?"

"I back slid, okay? You've done it too. I didn't want to feel anything anymore and so I fell back on old habits, even if I couldn't follow through."

I snort before I can even stop myself. This is the thing that always worries me about Rick, how he can wrap his actions up in some narrative that makes sense even if it's all just justification.

"Snort all you want, but I didn't sleep with Jacinda. I wanted to, and you don't have the right to get angry with me if I had. But I didn't, because it wasn't going to do any good. And you know what? I'm not going to ask any forgiveness for it either, since I don't remember us having any sort of understanding."

"But, on the swings..."

"Yeah, I've been thinking about that," he interrupts, a wild exhausted energy seemingly fueling him now. "Because what do you really think happened there, Kate? 'Cause when I replay that day in my head, I can see you demanding information about your mother's case, and I can see you telling me about your wall, but I can't remember you apologizing for hurting me or doing anything more than insinuating that we might be together, someday, if I help you with the case."

"That's not what I did. Of course it was you I was talking about."

"Yeah, well, it worked out for you, because I heard what I wanted to hear, because I couldn't face any other possibility. But that doesn't give you the out. You still should have said it."

But I did, didn't I? I went to him for more than just my mother's case. I went because I needed him back.

"I said it."

"Sometimes I think there is a version of me, in your head, and you carry on your conversations with him and think it's me."

I grimace. "That's not true, Castle. I've said the things that need saying. I've shown you how I felt. God, after everything that happened today, you have to know that?"

"You mean what happened on the couch?"

I nod, feeling broken at how he asks, unable to say anything.

"Don't get me wrong, Kate, I think I should have the damned thing bronzed after what we did there, but I stopped believing sex solved things about two divorces ago."

I sit down on his bed, my body collapsing under me. I can't look at him as I am torn apart by simultaneously remembering the feel of his weight pressing down on me, and the pain in his voice when he recalls it. It's hard not to get angry, except that I feel so achy and empty that there is nothing for it to latch on to.

I turn away from where he is standing, look out the window. The sky is beginning its shift from old steel to robin's egg, presenting us with either the second straight or third straight dawn we've faced together. The radio kept saying that a storm was coming in, late this week, probably, but there was no sign of it yet. Depending on how you want to think about it, Castle and I have either been awake for a little more than twenty-eight hours, or thirty-nine. In either case, it's too much time to have been awake, and yet too little to have handled everything dealt to us.

Did I ever tell him that it was him I wanted, when my wall fell? I know I didn't apologize, have only figured out in the last twenty-four hours that I really needed to. But I had to have told him.

"Are you really quitting?"

He sits down on the bed next to me, all of the anger gone from him now. "I think I have to, at least for awhile. At least until I can find my footing in this world."

I lean against him, and am surprised that he doesn't pull away. But he doesn't move towards me either.

"Rick, what did you mean, going off script?"

"You know why I put Nikki and Rook together in the middle, and not that the end?"

"For the sex scenes," I say, going for the obvious joke, largely because my head is starting to swim with the way Castle keeps veering off on tangents away from my questions. My head feels packed, like I'm sick, like exhaustion has filled me up instead of emptied me out and I don't seem to be able to put anything together.

"Well, they were fun to write, but no. I did it because that's how it happens in real life. Sure, getting together at the end is all terribly romantic and dramatic, but it's not real."

I go to say something, to ask what he's getting at, but he continues, his words coming out in an urgent rush.

"Gina wanted to kill me. We had a huge fight about it. 'Elizabeth and Darcy don't get together until the end... Jane and Heathcliff' ... which doesn't help when your editor doesn't know literature," he says, stopping. He shakes his head. "... she even pulled out Han and Leia, which almost got me, but I kept pushing. Because I couldn't let it go. What happened if they got together in the middle? What happens if they actually, you know, act like normal real people who get together and that's not the end of the story, just a step in the right direction? I won, eventually. At least - I won that particular version of that particular fight."

"Rick, what does this have to do with anything?"

He looks at me for the longest time, his breathing conscious and deep. Eventually, he sighs. "Nothing. It doesn't mean a thing, I guess. Just rambling after a late night."

I want to push past him, crawl up on the bed, curl next to him, and sleep. Of all the things that have happened, this is the part that is just too much. I just want him to stay, or at least tell me why he's leaving, and he just keeps talking about Nikki Heat.

There is only one thing left to say. In the end, I thought it would be the hardest thing to reveal, and yet it's the easiest.

"I love you, Rick. Don't... you're right, we should have said it long ago. I love you."

He relaxes a little, against me, but not much. "I know."

I turn, look at his profile, but he keeps staring forward. He seems to see the question in my eyes anyway.

"For the longest time, I thought I knew," he says, "And then I thought I knew that you didn't. But then this happened, and I kept seeing the pictures, the notes and I knew. That Kate loved that Rick, and yet, their lives weren't really so different from ours, not in the details. They weren't different people, whoever they were. And I figured that there is no way that that Kate could look at him in a way that was so close to the way that you look at me, the way I look at you, for it not to be real, not to be true. Their story was too much like ours for it not to be true. And since I loved you in that world as surely as I love you in this one, I knew that had to mean you love me too."

"If you know, then why are you leaving?"

"The real question, Kate, is if you love me more than everything else - more than the things that are holding you back, more than the story you've told yourself. Because I can't be the only one in a relationship again, even with someone who loves me this time."

"I don't know, Rick. I don't know what's been holding me back..." I say, but I can't figure out how to continue. I'm not sure how to unlock that part of myself, nor am I sure what he's looking for. But I want to try, whatever it takes.

Is that enough?

A phrase pops into my head unbidden -

И казалось, что еще немного – и решение будет найдено, и тогда начнется новая, прекрасная жизнь; и обоим было ясно, что до конца еще далеко-далеко и что самое сложное и трудное только еще начинается. *(translation in author's note at bottom)

- I feel it, feel that pause of anticipation that Anna and Gurov felt, knowing that I too am on the cusp of a decision, and yes, maybe the rest won't be easy, but maybe it's the decision alone that is enough.

Why am I thinking about Chekhov at a time like this?

Oh.

Is that what he's been getting at? Am I doing what he claimed to do? To crawl up inside the story and hide?

And then I am once again buried in all those lonely nights, when Dad was falling off some West-End bar stool, when none of my classmates could understand, when Mom was just a cold memory on little scraps of celluloid - I'd crack open a book and comfort myself in knowing that there was a happy ending. Cross would always find the serial killer. Derrick would always disarm the bomb in time. Toru finds Midori. Jane goes back to Rochester. Beatrice forgives Benedict. Pierre marries Natasha.

But always at the end. Only at the end.

Have I been doing that too? Setting up my mother's case as my own odyssey, so that I would have a template to deal with my own grief? Odysseus' voyage redeemed him, gave him the right to be, once again, with Penelope. Have I held myself back from my own happiness as a hero's trial to assuage the guilt I felt for her dying in the first place?

Can a story become addictive?

Castle knows. He can see what I am doing, because Castle has done it too. But he stopped, and he's begging me to too.

It is an addiction, I can see pretty clearly now, a way to put order to something that was, for so long, seemingly chaotic.

I shake off my thoughts, determined finally to act.

I look around. Castle has left.

I stand up, head to the study, knowing he's there without knowing how I know. I'm just pulled to him, rushing along like a rollercoaster that has crested a hill, feeling giddy and drunk on revelation.

"Rick?"

He's leaning over his desk, writing longhand on a legal pad. The page is almost full; he started whatever he's writing before I came over, decided to finish it now. He finishes whatever he's writing - it looks more like a list than sentences - and looks up at me. Tears sting my face as I notice the wetness in his eyes. He puts down his pen, folds up his page, and puts it in an envelope.

"What is that?"

"When you went to visit your mom, I went to the precinct," he says. He shakes his head, pushes off some memory that he doesn't mention. "I confronted Roy with what we knew and what I've learned this past year. He gave me names, details - bank accounts and stuff - I've already looked online for some of it and it's real. That's how I knew, from earlier. Anyway, it's not enough to convict the guy, of course, but you can take this, use it to find the evidence you need to get him."

He hands me the envelope. It is such a simple thing, light, holding just the single sheet of paper. My first thought is that it is amazing that an entire life can be condensed into such a light package. But then I immediately wonder - whose life am I thinking about? My mother's? My own? She was more than this, and now I can be more than this too.

"You saw the Captain?"

"Mostly I fought with him. It took forever. I had to pretend I knew more than I did, to get him to give everything up."

I look at him, and once again, I have something to regret. Given the choice, I chose to hide in my mother's case, to go visit a gravestone, rather than go see a complicated, but still living, friend.

"He was a good man, Kate," Rick says, misinterpreting the look of regret on my face, "I believe that. He was a good man that once did bad things, and then spent a lifetime trying to make up for them. A man is capable of that, you know, of being better than he was before."

I know what he is really saying is goodbye.

I look up at Castle and I know that this is not the end and yet I am not afraid.

I take one more look at the envelope, which now feels weightless in my hands. I fold it in half and step closer to Rick. He's very still, standing in front of me, stiller than I have ever seen him, and I gently reach up, stick the folded envelope in his breast pocket.

"You keep this. We may need it someday."

"Kate, what are you...?"

"We may be protected now, but that could change, at some point. We'll need that for insurance."

"Kate, I don't think you understand..."

"I do," I say, interrupting. "I know what it means, Rick. And it's still something I want, to solve her case. But it's not something I need anymore."

I step closer, touch him for the first time in what feels like forever. His skin twitches under his shirt, and I can feel the heat radiating off his body. "So someday, we'll open that back up, and we'll do it right. We'll do it with the whole team, no heroics. No lone fighter against the world."

"Someday?" he asks, and I can hear the sadness in his voice. The hope too.

"We have other things to work on now, Rick."

My hand dips under the hem of his t-shirt, runs along the bare skin there. It crests over flare of his hip where it rides above the edge of his jeans, and I let my hand come to rest at the small of his back.

"I don't want to skip to the end. If what we saw is the life we get, then I to get a chance to live through it, not have it handed to me."

"Kate?"

"I love you. And tomorrow, we'll wake up, and I'll still love you, regardless of where we happen to be when it happens. And then we'll go find our own path. One that no one will ever see a reason to write about."

He smiles, that real supernova bright smile he has that starts somewhere in his toes.

"But one that will be fun to live," he says, and kisses me.

The world always looks different on the other side of a decision. There is something about the way the human brain works, an idea I learned in the psych classes they make detectives take, that causes us to reorder facts and opinions to be more in line with the decisions we have made. We all know about buyer's remorse, but in truth, the opposite is more likely. But I made this decision long ago, the decision to choose him. Or maybe I didn't - maybe it was fated from the moment I first arrested him, and the rest was just setting the scene. Because this, here with him, it isn't a beginning, and it isn't an end. It's just a morning. An early morning. But a good one.

A/N: I figure Kate, if she is thinking of a Russian phrase, will think of it in Russian. Here is the translation:

And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning. - Chekhov, Lady with the Dog

Thank you to the small but dedicated coterie of followers who have reviewed and tweeted and loved. I feel very rich today, having heard from all of you.

And they made little paper swans, all the days of their lives...