578. Chapter 578

After Reckoning

Episode 7.15

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I reckon I don't own Castle: Rating: K Time: See above.

"It was different."

Castle had been relaxing and looking forward to the best sleep he'd had in days. Now he lifted his head off of the pillow and looked down at Kate, resting her head on his chest. "Different? How? What?"

"Nothing." She said.

"Nothing?"

She said nothing.

"Did you want to talk about nothing?"

"No." Then a pause." Yes." Followed quickly by, "No."

"If you do or you don't, either way, it's okay by me."

There was another long pause. "I know."

"So it's okay?"

She turned so she could look at the ceiling and not at him. "I do this. I say something is nothing and it really is. I don't do this well with you and I need to."

"As far as I'm concerned, you don't have to do anything. Not after what you went through."

She smiled. "And what you went through, and what we went through."

"Just so you know."

"It was different, Castle. Different."

Castle didn't say a word, he just hugged her and let her continue, or not, at her own pace.

"I remember shooting Dick Coonan. He was basically dead when the bullet hit him. I did CPR and kept some oxygen flowing to his brain, but he was dead. I've seen other people as they die. People who get shot or stabbed or hit by something, even a suicide once. Something happened to them and the light went out. They were dead. Dead."

She stopped speaking and Castle still said nothing.

"Neiman was different."

He waited for her to continue. When she didn't he asked. "How was she different?"

"I was strapped to the exam table, but I had managed to get one hand loose just as she came at me with a scalpel. I grabbed her hand and pulled her over me, then bent back her hand and stabbed her in the stomach with the scalpel still in her hand. She grunted, not screamed, and jumped back. A scalpel isn't very long, so that if you stab with it, the stab wound isn't very deep. She relaxed her grip on the scalpel and I grabbed it. I slashed her with it, across her boobs. It was funny. Funny as in odd, not funny laughing. She said," Look what you did." She staggered back a few steps and looked down at herself. I think she was trying to hold the slashed flesh together with her hands for a few seconds. She should have reached for another scalpel, but she didn't." Kate stopped.

Again, Castle waited.

Finally, she spoke. "I used the few seconds when she was just standing there to cut the straps from my other hand and then from my feet. My feet had just hit the floor when she came at me. Whatever her skills were in martial arts, she forgot it all when she got into real world street fight. I stepped into her and slashed her across the stomach. I know the scalpel went as deeply into her as it could because I could feel my hand rubbing against her sweater as I cut from one side of her stomach to the other. I guess she had enough medical knowledge to realize that I had cut her severely enough to kill her if she didn't get treatment at once."

Again Kate stopped and again Castle waited.

"I don't know if I told her to surrender. I should have. I had the scalpel and she was badly wounded. I know I yelled something. Maybe it was just a scream, maybe it was words. I don't think I yelled at her to surrender. She came at me, her hands were covered in her own blood and her blood was pumping out of her. But the look of absolutely insane rage on her face…." Kate shook her head. "She knew it was over. She'd never kill again. She didn't have the strength left to kill me, but she came right at me. I stabbed her again and again and that insane look didn't leave her face until just before the end. She tried to say something, her lips moved anyway. Then she fell over and that was it. I saw that the blood wasn't pumping out of her anymore, meaning her heart had stopped. I checked her pulse. Nothing. I just stood there until you came." Suddenly a thought came to Kate. "How long did it take you to get there?"

"Not long. Ten minutes tops."

She shook her head. "It seemed longer. And shorter. It was both like I had been standing there looking down at her forever, and like you were there at once."

"The mind can do strange things when you get stressed, Kate."

They both were quiet for a while.

"Tell me about Tyson."

He shrugged slightly, not wanting to move her away from him. "Not much to tell. Espo did the shooting."

"But you were there. I don't want you to think I'm getting creepy or macabre, but I want to know about Tyson. It's important."

"Okay, but you heard most of the story. Ryan and Espo followed me upstate to the house. They could hear me from the mic in my ear. Tyson was….pure Jerry Tyson. He sat me down and proceeded to tell me how brilliant he was. He couldn't stop telling me how brilliant he was. How he was so in control. I just sat there hoping I was as smart as I thought I was. I'm just glad Tyson didn't set up in a room with no windows."

"And if he had?"

"Plan B."

"You always have a plan B?"

"Sure. Doesn't everyone?" He stopped for a second to gather his thoughts. "I told Tyson that I had lured him there and that I had come to watch him die. I imagine he just thought at first that I was just playing for time or maybe it was just bravado. Then the thought that he wasn't as in control as he thought must have started to seep into his mind. I asked if it was clear. He thought I was talking to him and not to Espo. Tyson wanted to know if what was clear. When I told Espo to take the shot, he turned and looked at the window. He was shot and then turned around to me. He wanted to kill me, but couldn't. The last look on his face was utter disbelief. He wasn't as smart as he thought he was."

Kate shuddered slightly. "I don't know how long it'll take for me to get over this."

"You will. We will."

She kissed his cheek lightly. "We will."