A/N: For Moana. Have a happy Christmas and Sylvester. I hope you enjoy.

Kate's thoughts during the Caskett fight scene in 'Always'. Inspired by 'No Light, No Light' by Florence and the Machine. I didn't intend for it to be so long but I got carried away.

Disclaimer: I wish it was mine, but everything you recognise belongs to their respective owners. I just play in the sandbox.

She knew something was wrong in the way that he kept calling her Kate. His voice didn't waver, but that didn't reassure her in the slightest. She picked up on his non-verbal cues. On the darkened shade of his eyes, and the downturned set of his mouth. Something was wrong. Or he was going to tell her something bad. She didn't like either of those options.

Every word that came out of his mouth made her heart sink further towards the ground. It was down by her boots when he paused, and she was speechless with emotion. Tears sprung to her eyes, a physical representation of the sheer overwhelming nature of her feelings. She couldn't believe this. He'd gone and stopped her from finding her mother's killer, from seeking out the person who murdered the dearest woman in her life, and he'd done it behind her back. He'd made deals and kept secrets and stopped her from working on the one thing in her life that mattered. The only thing in her life that kept her going. The man who'd gotten her through the toughest time in her life with his words was now stopping her from setting right those wrongs. Thoughts swirled in her head, and it was tough to try and grab hold of one to verbalise. Disappointment, betrayal, and pure, undiluted hurt seared through her veins, and she could feel her hands shaking from the unstable cocktail of emotion. This was not the Castle she knew. This was not the man who had made her smile even in her darkest times, who had made paperwork, god forbid, fun. And this was certainly not the man who had confessed his love for her when she was lying, sprawled on the ever-so-green grass, with her life force seeping from her chest. This could not be the same man. Because surely that man, if he had her best interests at heart, would know that ceasing work on this case would kill her. The unfinished business, the not knowing. The killer out there, at large, and untouched. That man would not become a part of the organisation that had destroyed her life. That had killed her, but left her breathing. She had trusted that man.

"I was just trying to keep you safe."

There was nothing but sheer honesty in his voice, and in his godforsaken midnight blue eyes, that her heart seized in her chest. She struggled to breathe, because he'd really tried to do the right thing, as usual, but he'd gone about it the wrong way. He'd gone behind her back and he'd lied and he'd kept her from the most important thing in her life. The one thing that mattered the most to her. He treated her like a child, like she was incapable of keeping herself safe.

Her feet took her away from him without her conscious instruction. Somehow, they knew, even if she didn't, that she needed to be away from her mother's memory when she confronted him. When she let loose with the rapidly darkening, rapidly growing ball of fury and agony in her chest. That she needed to put some distance between them if she was ever going to do this. If she was going to speak out loud without bursting into tears or throwing herself at him, fists flying. Emotions still jumbled, she couldn't help but spin and face him. She knew that her voice would shake, and it would be thick with tears, but screw it.

"By lying to me about the most important thing in my life?"

Betrayal was the foremost emotion, now. It caused her throat to seize and her words to take on a garbled quality that they usually had right before she broke down, but she was not going to do that. She was not going to cry. Because this man in front of her, this man who supposedly loved her, had kept her from the single biggest thing that she had ever faced. And kept her from the biggest lead she'd had in an excruciatingly long time. He was just trying to protect her. She knew that. But she was strong, and she was capable, and she was the only one out of the two of them that was an actual cop, and yet he still thought she needed protection. Thought that protecting her from the big bad wolf lurking in the dark shadows of her life would be better than giving her a fresh lead on the case that had haunted her for years. The case she still woke up from nightmares about, screaming and tangled in blankets, a sweaty, crying mess. The case that had tortured her every waking and sleeping moment for years. If he'd known her at all, he would have known that she would have preferred to find her mother's killer over saving herself from a bit of harm.

Anger became the most prominent emotion; tasting bitter at the back of her tongue.

"You sat on it for a year."

His eyes were hurt now, like a puppy that she had beaten, and was now wondering why he'd been so hurt in the first place. She could see the flicker of confusion behind his dark orbs, and the resolve that followed hot on its heels. He had been protecting her. It was a tough decision, but he was standing by that. Some small part of her mind wanted to give him props for sticking by what he'd chosen, but a larger, more demanding part of her wanted to shout in his face just how hurt she felt at the fact that he could have been helping for an entire year, helping like he said he wanted to, but he'd instead left her to spin her wheels and kick up dust and find absolutely nothing under every single rock she turned over, no matter how shiny or promising.

Her brain switched gears with a bit of a cough and splutter, but she quickly kicked into cop mode. She needed to find this person. She had to make up for the time that she'd lost thanks to Castle's misguided Knight-In-Shining-Armour-esque intentions. She had to work this case harder than ever before and, hopefully, whatever she'd missed in the year would still be there for her to find when she went digging.

"He's a voice on a phone," Castle began, and she could hear how resigned he sounded. His eyes were downcast, and she couldn't see into their murky depths anymore. It sent a chill of worry through her, shooting down her spine like a droplet of ice water.

Like freaking Charlie's Angels, she thought wryly, in the half-beat between his phrases.

"He's a shadow in a parking garage."

Her heart stopped. She actually thought she might keel over from the fact that she was no longer pumping blood around her body. Was it possible for your heart to spontaneously stop beating? For you to die from shock?

A shadow meant that Castle had seen this man. That he had met with him. So it was no longer just about exchanging impersonal messages or conversing through secondary sources. It was no longer about Castle half-heartedly keeping her from investigating her mother's murder, it was more. It was avid work, planning meetings and actually attending them. Talking to the person who might be able to help her with solving the biggest case of her life. He had not only sat on a lead for a year, but he had buried it. Dug a hole and put the lead six feet under, covered it over with dirt, smoothed out the top and carved a nice, misleading gravestone. Laid flowers at its grave. Anger froze her in place, her tears drying up almost instantly, and her voice went hard and cold, like marble slicing the air between them. Cold, fierce fury ripped at her insides and made her feel like she was being consumed from the inside out. This man Castle was talking to could be no one. Another pawn in this godforsaken game. But he could be the puppet-master. He could be the one in charge, and Castle had not only conversed with the man, but met him. Betrayal stung deep in her heart, burying itself into her tender, raw wound and spreading out with burning fingers to encase her whole body.

"How the hell could you do this?" she spat with as much venom as she could muster, considering she could still taste tears as they hung back, waiting for their turn to rise to the front. It was taking all of her strength to hold herself in one piece right now, to not physically boot Castle out of the apartment and dissolve into tears once the door was closed. But kicking Castle out meant that she would never see him again and, despite the fact that she didn't even want to look at him right now, he currently held a lead that she had yet to explore and that was all she was keeping him around for.

She figured if she said it firm enough to herself, she would believe it.

Castle still wasn't looking her in the eye, still casting his eyes towards the floorboards, and she could see nothing of his emotions through his lids. It was infuriating, not to be able to read him; after so long, she had ignored the words that were coming out of his mouth and focused on the emotion in his eyes instead. Right now, she couldn't get a read on him and, coupled with the intensity of every emotion she felt right now, that was not making for a good mix.

"Because I love you."

Said so plainly, so simply. An explanation and a fact all rolled into one handy little phrase. She felt her heart stop for the second time, and a new emotion joined her tumultuous insides. She had no words; her jumbled mind made sure that she could not verbalise one thought that she was having. She hated him at that moment, god, she hated him so damn much. But when he said those words, a jolt of heat rippled along her spine, as it had the day when she had been shot. Her feelings towards Castle were a lot like how her brain was in that moment, all jumbled and uncategorised and just waiting for the right one to be called to the surface, with every emotion present, all the time. She found it so damn hard to hate him when she could see the honest, raw, painful truth in his eyes. When she could see the hurt she'd inflicted mingled in with it as well.

Her lack of words put them both into a freefall, like when you first leap out of an aeroplane and hope to God that the parachute on your back will hold you up when you finally trust in it. Until then, you're weightless and you're untethered and you have no stability whatsoever. Kate's heart leapt into her throat, and her stomach made itself at home somewhere around her ankles. She needed a parachute like she had never needed anything before, and she trusted that the man opposite her, whoever he was now, would give her one, or something that would stop her from slamming into the ground and an unthinkable speed, and sending pieces of herself flying in every direction, unable to be put together ever again.

"But you already know that, don't you?"

That was not the parachute she'd been expecting. That was like pulling the cord of your parachute and finding that someone had filled it with feathers that gave you no support or assistance, and all it did was make you more and more terrified as you hurtled towards the ground. Guilt managed to work its way into her stomach, slicing through the other emotions like a hot knife, and it took all she had not to double over and cry out. Every wall she had was threatening to either collapse on her, or redouble its intensity and it terrified her that she had no idea what they were going to do. Yes, she knew Castle loved her. Even before he'd told her. It was in his smile, it was in the fact that he always looked at her before suggesting a theory, as if to gauge her reaction, and no one else's. It was in the way she caught him staring off into space sometimes. It was in the way he wrote Nikki. But, most of all, and perhaps most obviously of all, it was in his eyes. It was in the sparkle he got only when he was riling her up. In the deep gleam when she just knew he was thinking about taking her to bed. In the longing looks that he thought he was hiding but was doing an awful job of concealing, when she couldn't even think. The way he made her feel like every time he looked at her, he was seeing her for the first time. The way she felt like a goddess, or a sculpture; never something to be owned, but something to be worshipped. The way he'd looked at her had always conveyed his emotions, long before he'd spilled them in his babble of words when he was holding her in his arms and she was dying. That was just the icing on the cake. The verbalisation of something they'd both tried to pretend didn't exist for so long. And she had wanted to tell him how she felt, even if she didn't know what that was the majority of the time. But her walls had been holding her back, and she'd wanted him to understand. Her walls were so strong, and standing in front of them and holding the hammer had made her more terrified than she'd ever been in her life. She didn't know who she was without those walls, and that paralysed her. So she couldn't break them down. Couldn't break those last barriers between her and the love of her life. So she stood there, knowing Castle was on the other side of those walls, with his love-filled eyes, bearing his soul, and she just couldn't bring herself to lose that part of her to get to him.

"You've known for about a year."

That goddamn shooting again. She'd known for more than that, and the fact that she'd officially known at that point was irrelevant. The fact that he was bringing it up now, of all times, infuriated her. It was not a conversation to have while she was busy trying to be furious at him for withholding a lead on her mother's killer. He'd betrayed her so massively, and then he went and brought up the fact that he still loved her. It was too much conflicting information and her brain was beginning to short-circuit. He did not get to betray her so completely and turn around and try and smooth it over with a discussion about how they really felt. Did he not know that betrayal and love do not go hand-in-hand?

"Kate, listen to me-"

No. She would not, under any circumstances listen to him. Not when every word out of his mouth made her insides do backflips for a million different reasons. Not when she was now questioning everything he'd told her this past year, and everything he'd ever confided in her. She'd trusted him more than she'd trusted anyone in this world, and he'd blown it. How could she trust someone when she was now constantly second-guessing every word that passed his lips? He did not get to come into her apartment, tell her so honestly about his betrayal, tell her he loved her and then make her shut up and listen. No, that was not how Kate Beckett did things. Kate Beckett was no longer ready to play nice. She was backed into a corner, alone and afraid and heart-wrenchingly furious, and she did not want to even look at his face any more.

"How am I even supposed to trust anything that you say?"

But his eyes. Those eyes. The eyes that had always, without fail, lit up when they caught sight of her. Those eyes that would sparkle with love, even before she could name what the emotion was in their swirling depths. Right now, they were darkening and she was losing that light that she had come to cherish. It was breaking her heart, and she didn't know what to say or what to do to get it back.

She watched him stammer and sputter and she thought that she might have actually hit a weak spot. A chink in his armour, and he was finally hurting as much as she was right now.

"Because of everything we've been through together!" his voice was rough with tears unshed and she could tell because hers was of the same quality. His words brought back memories that his betrayal had hidden away from her conscious mind. In the freezer, with their arms around each other. For "warmth". When he'd saved her when her apartment had been reduced to rubble, and braved the hellish flames to make sure she was okay. The less life-threatening situations; like when he'd had her dad's watch restored. Their story was not a smooth one, but it was theirs and she knew that. But he'd gone and painted their pages with black ink, tainting everything now.

"Four years, I've been right here. Four years just waiting for you to open your eyes and see that I'm right here."

Four years was a long time. A lot could happen in four years. Thinking about their four years made her brain hurt. Had it really been that long? All the torment, all the turmoil, all the long looks and lonely nights, had been over four whole years. They'd been partners for four long years and she didn't know how that much time could pass by without her noticing.

"And I'm more than a partner."

Her heart began to tattoo a staccato rhythm against her ribcage, and she found herself so choked up by the sheer weight of her emotions that she could not gather the strength to speak. He was most certainly not a partner. He was most certainly not just a friend. He was so much more. He was a confidant, and a steady rock in the storm that was her life, and her reason to smile every day, and the reason she felt safe. He was a protector, as much as she hated it, and a guider, and the person she trusted the most. He was not just a partner. He had been more than that for so long now, she could hardly remember a time beforehand.

"Every morning I bring you a cup of coffee just so I can see a smile on your face, because I think you are the most remarkable, maddening, challenging, frustrating person I've ever met."

She could only blink as she processed the statement. She'd noticed his coffee habits, but hadn't thought of them as anything remarkable. He knew her coffee order off by heart (grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar-free vanilla, thank you very much), and when she was having an extra bad day, he would forego the latte altogether and choose a hot chocolate with two marshmallows. She hadn't realised the coffee had meant that much to him. That it had meant as much as it had for her. She couldn't drink coffee without thinking of how the ones he bought would always taste just that bit better, even if someone else had bought the coffee from the same place as Castle. She stopped buying coffee on her way to work, knowing without a doubt that Castle would have a nice steaming hot cup just waiting at her desk when she arrived or, if she got to work before him, that he would present her with her cup the moment he walked in. She had depended on him for the coffee as much as she had depended on his constant presence in her life. The coffee was a physical representation of how he knew her so well, of how he constantly made her smile, every single day for four years, and how much she had come to depend on him. To trust in him. She trusted him to bring the coffee and, the vast majority of the time, he delivered. Right now, however, she wasn't even sure he would remember her coffee order.

His eyes were darkening again, losing that light she'd loved so much, and it pained her physically to see that. To see him so desperate for her to believe him, to love him, to trust him. He was more than everything to her and, though he had just shattered her heart, she didn't think she was strong enough to lose him too.

"And I love you, Kate."

Those words again. It made her want to cry just hearing them.

"And if that means anything to you, if you care about me at all, just don't do this."

He was playing the guilt card, and that made her anger flare up again. She cared about him. They both knew that, clear as day. As clear as Castle's feeling for her were. But he was asking her to do something that she could not do in a million years. To give up something that had been her driving force since the night her world had fallen apart. To stop working to find out who had brutally slaughtered her poor mother, as though the woman was just another unsolved murder statistic that would go unnoticed in the grand scheme of things. Asking her to stop this was like asking her to stop breathing. It was impossible. But it was also impossible to lose him, which she knew would happen if she pursued this. She was flailing, though she knew he couldn't see her internal struggles. If there was something she could do to return that light to his eyes, to keep both him and the case, it would be perfect.

But him asking her to do that? If she cared about him? What about the fact that he had gone behind her back and arranged to protect her like she was an invalid? Treated her life like it was a precious gem and she was not trusted with the safekeeping of it. He'd made decisions on her behalf that were not his business to make, and it had not affected him, only her. Her life. Her case. Her feelings. He was not allowed to bully his way into not only her heart, but her entire life, and take over everything she thought she had control over. Like children in the sandbox, there is always one that comes stomping in, insisting everything is his and he is the grandmaster. He is the only one who can make decisions, and no one else gets a say in their own life.

"They're gonna come for you, Kate."

There he went, saying her name again. As if he didn't know what it made her insides do. As if he wanted her to truly listen. But she was done listening. She was done reasoning. She was the boss of her own life, not him. She decided what she knew. She didn't care if they came for her, because she already knew they were the enemy. She had already strengthened herself against them, and prepared for attack. Castle, however, she had not prepared for. She had not expected it, and so it had cut. Deep. It had hurt like the worst pain imaginable, and somehow she still remained standing. She figured if she could survive that, anything that organisation could throw at her would be mere child's play. They would come, and she would be ready. She was still standing, even after Coonan, and Lockwood, and everything they had tried to throw at her. She was standing after their attacks, and she knew she could continue.

Castle's eyes were pleading now, and it broke her heart to try and stay true to her resolve. To stand her ground against those eyes that still twinkled with hope and desperation. She would take a war to them, if that's what they wanted. She could do that. She was stronger than anyone had ever anticipated, with or without Castle by her side.

"There's nothing I can say, is there?"

Finally, there was Castle's resignation. His defeated tone and, when Kate looked closely, his lightless eyes. Some part of her reared its ugly head up in victory, and she was disgusted with herself. To see Castle so broken hurt her, but she was stronger than that. He had betrayed her so enormously that she couldn't even fathom a way to begin to forgive him. She was ready to take her stand, like Montgomery said, even if Castle would not stand with her. She looked again into his dull eyes and wanted to say something. But the sting of betrayal reminded her to keep her trap shut.

"You're right, Kate. It's your life. You can throw it away if you want, but I'm not gonna stick around and watch you, so this is over."

Her heart plummeted even further and she had to remind herself to breathe. She knew her face was a statue, giving away none of her inner emotions, but under the surface she was rolling like a sea in the middle of a storm. He was really leaving. He was really letting her make her stand alone, to face the dark, impeding force that was threatening to take her life. To leave behind four years of more-than-partnership. She felt numb, a cold blankness spreading from her chest out to her fingertips, until she couldn't even feel herself breathing any more. Until she could see nothing but a blur of colour in front of her, and could think nothing but, he's gone.

"I'm done."

Staring at the place where he'd just been standing, she didn't watch as he left. Her eyes didn't track his movements, as much as they wanted to, and as much as they were used to. She couldn't bring herself to watch him leave. It was bad enough hearing it. Hearing the soft, agonising thuds of his feet on the floor boards as he left her behind. The shutting of the door with a crack that split the quiet, and her heart. The dead silence that followed in the wake of his departure.

All she could see, whether her eyes were open or closed, was his face, so tormented, so anguished, so exhausted. His eyes, so lifeless and hopeless.

There was no light, no light.