837. Chapter 837

After Pandora

Episode 4.15

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: if I opened Pandora's box, I would find no Castle. Rating: K Time: See above.

The gun was in his hand and he groped for the seat belt buckle with his other hand. Two odd thoughts ran through his mind. I hope to hell I don't accidentally shoot Beckett. And I'd better not grab her boobs.

He jammed the gun under the buckle and fired twice. Dammit! It's still around her. He was about to shoot again when he suddenly felt Beckett start to slide upwards. He grabbed her and pulled her into the back seat, then shot out the back window. He grabbed her around the waist and started to swim in the dark waters, towards the surface, he hoped.

He saw a light above him and kicked as hard as he could and their heads broke the surface. He gasped in as much air as he could. "Beckett! Breathe. Come on, Beckett." He tried to push against her chest, but her sodden coat made it difficult. Suddenly, water shot from her mouth and she took in a breath and then another and another, over and over, gasping for air.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Liar." He said. "Can you make it to the pier? There's a ladder over there. See it?"

She nodded, but he had to hold her up and swim the few feet to the ladder, pulling her with him. "Can you climb it?"

"Sure." She reached for the first rung of the ladder, but fell back. "I can do it." She tried again, almost got her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and fell back again. The next time, Castle pushed her butt upwards and she got on foot on the lower rung. "Castle! Do not grab my ass." Then she fell back in the water. As her head went under water, she swallowed more of the Hudson River. When she came up, she vomited on Castle.

"A simple "don't" would do." He said.

"I'm sorry." She vomited again, this time away from him. "Okay, grab my ass and push me up."

Castle put one hand on her ass and one hand on the ladder. On the count of three, he pushed her up. She got both feet on the lower rung of the ladder and stopped. "Why aren't you going first and haul me up?"

"Mountaineering." He replied.

"What?"

"In mountaineering, the strongest climber is on the bottom on the way up and he's on the top on the way down. That way if someone falls, the strongest climber is in a position to catch her. Research." He pulled himself up so he was right behind her. "Can you go up now? One step at a time, okay?"

It took a couple of minutes, but they were finally on the pier, their teeth chattering from the cold.

"I wish I could light a fire or get you into a hot bath or something."

She laughed. "You got to grab my butt tonight, Castle. I think getting me into a tub is not in the cards."

They stood there breathing, just happy to be alive. "As I was about to say before we were so rudely interrupted…"

"You were going to ask Blakely something?" She asked.

"No. Before that. You asked how close Sophia and I were."

"You don't need to say anything."

"Yes I do. I said I'd answer any questions and you asked one. To begin with, yes we did sleep together. As to how close we were, the answer is, not very close."

"That surprises me. You were with her for a whole year. Intimately together, it seems."

Castle sensed a bit of jealousy in Beckett, but fought down the urge to smile. "Part of it was…What was the term they used? Oh, yes. Operational necessity. I was a writer and she was an active CIA agent. There were whole parts of her life that were off limits. I mean, if I had been a CIA agent and her partner, there would have been things that were off limits. And it got frustrating. She'd start to tell me about some great little restaurant in Rome, or Paris or wherever and she'd suddenly stop because something had happened at the restaurant that I couldn't be told about."

Castle thought back to those days. "It got to the point that I started second guessing myself. I'd think about buying her a beer and I'd wonder if she had some deep dark CIA secret that somehow related to beer and I'd keep my mouth closed. She sensed that I was holding back from her and that made things worse. We had a couple of arguments that I lost, of course. I kept imagining that if I pushed too hard, two CIA goons would grab me and I'd end up in a cell in some god forsaken third world prison for good. That kind of thinking does not make for a good relationship."

Kate thought about the secret she was keeping from Castle. No, keeping secrets is very hard on a relationship. How did I get into this mess with Castle? I wish my walls would come down and….Yeah, wish away, Beckett. Wish that one day your walls would come crashing down and Castle will still be there for you. Maybe.

"And our relationship is vastly differently on a professional level from the relationship that Sophia and I had."

"In what way?" She asked.

"I was never her partner. Not in the slightest way. I never went on an active case with her. Never really did anything that a CIA agent does. If I had tried, I think the CIA would have collectively freaked out and sent me on my merry way. In that way, we're a lot closer than Sophia and I ever were."

In other ways, too. Kate thought. And I do have hopes for the future.

Castle looked out across the river. "There was one other thing. I think Sophia had walls of her own. Maybe it's a part of being in the CIA. You get so used to never letting anyone get close to you, never letting anyone see the real you, because it could be fatal, and it gets to you. Pretty soon the walls are perfectly normal. They don't keep you in, they keep bad things out. I do think Sophia is better at disguising the fact that she has walls better than…." Castle stopped, realizing he was edging into dangerous territory.

"Better than I do?"

"Beckett, we don't have to go into this now. We can just let it drop."

She thought about that. That was their default position. When things got too close to being personal, they backed off. They let it drop. She took a deep breath and moved past the default position. "Unlike Sophia, then, I admit I have walls. I want the walls to come down and I want to stop being a prisoner inside of those walls. I want to be more."

"I want to see you be more."

She smiled at him and as she did, she heard the wail of a siren. "It's Ryan."

"Of course it is." He muttered.