It doesn't get better. Just much, much worse.

A/N: I HAVE THE FEELS, just like everyone else. It's not fair and it suuuuuuuuuuucks. To all the haters of the finale, meh. I sorta agree they handled things wrong, but there was plenty of Caskett-y goodness in that episode, and I was sated (up until the last three minutes of the episode, of course, then all my feels just exploded). So, here's my attempt to FIX IT.

Beckett forced open the door of the Rolls Royce before the car even came to a stop. There was no controlling the panic that had been steadily rising inside her since the phone call she received, confirming her fears that something had gone wrong. Twenty minutes didn't just miraculously turn into an hour. She had hoped the reason for his lateness was just a flat tire, a speeding ticket, something explainable, yet avoidable, that she wouldn't forgive him for straight away because not knowing where he was gave her feelings she shouldn't have to endure.

She swung her feet out from the car, and pulled at her mother's wedding dress, hiking it up enough that she wouldn't trip over the beautiful white fabric—not that she was caring about the white fabric in that moment. The only thing she could focus on was Castle, and the voice on the other end of the phone that had told her there had been an accident. His car was at the side of the road... which she now realized was grossly misleading.

Despite the flashing lights on the Hampton's P.D. cars, she hurried towards the edge of the road, and the drop where the smoke was steadily rising from, doing nothing to ease her own anxiety. No, no, no, no, she kept repeating over, and over again in her head with each step she took, taking her closer to where her fiance was. The guardrail had been destroyed, clearly the work of a car crashing through it. The click of her heels sounded as she moved until she stepped up onto the grass at the curb and saw his mercedes engulfed in the flames responsible for the smoke.

Her heart plummeted. She felt like she couldn't breathe as tears stung her eyes. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. It was like something out of one of her nightmares; one of those freak occurrences where it had occurred to her that Castle could be ripped from her arms in one single breath. Her mind was trying to comprehend... she couldn't understand... "No," she whimpered to herself, her lower lip trembling. She struggled to keep breathing.

Beckett was oblivious to the commotion around her as the fire department hauled the hoses off their trucks to battle the inferno. The Hamptons Chief of Police, whom she had met last year, had been watching her from a distance. It had his voice on the other end of the phone, broken up in his delivery of the bad news. Somehow, he thought it was better that Beckett found out through him, as opposed to the six o'clock news. He owed it to them, despite how heartbreaking it was to watch Katherine Beckett fall to pieces right there.

Suddenly, she whirled around, eyes zeroing in on him. "Is he in there?!" she demanded to know as she stormed up to him, frantic for the details, for the possibility that there was still hope. "IS HE IN THERE?!" she grabbed him by the blue collar of his uniform shirt.

"W-we d-don't know, detective!"

Useless. She let him go with a shove and moved back to the grass, drawn to the wreckage that she couldn't believe her fiance was tangled up in, burning. God, had he been alive when it erupted in flames? There was a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as she contemplated, and felt so completely that apart of herself was burning in the wreck, too.

Her knees went weak under her and she sank down to the grass in a wide poof of her dress. "Castle!" she cried out, unable to hold in her anguish. "CASTLE! Oh, God..."

A car pulled up behind the Rolls Royce, and Esposito and Ryan stepped out, rushing toward the woman in white. "Kate!" Esposito called, and dropped to his knees next to her. "Kate," he said again, pulling her into his arms.

"CASTLE!" Espositio let her scream in his ear as they watched the flames eat at the interior of the car. Ryan stepped aside as another man joined them and knelt down next to Beckett. Espositio delicately passed Beckett's embrace off to her father, and when his arms circled around her, the tears she had been trying to hold back came in powerful sobs. She raised a hand to her mouth and tried to keep them done, but her emotions wouldn't be suppressed. "Rick," she whimpered into her father's shoulder, her eyes never leaving the horrific scene in front of her.

Her father tried to shush her, and console her, even though he was in tears himself. He always thought Castle had been a good man—good for his Katie. He had been proud to welcome the writer into his family because of the joy he'd seen in his daughter's eyes every time he came up in their conversations. Though Beckett had professed that she couldn't stand the man, her eyes told another story.

The hoses were charged, beginning the process of dousing the flames while they watched. Jim tried to coax his daughter back, but Beckett was steadfast, refusing to move. She'd lost the will to move. Not until...

"Dad, please," shrugging out of Jim's embrace, but he only held her more tightly, knowing she was trying to rush down into the ditch. It didn't matter that she dealt with dead bodies every day on the job. Nothing could prepare her for the sight of her fiance, or what was left of him. She struggled against him, and wailed when Esposito and Ryan helped to restrain her and pull her back towards the Rolls Royce. "Please, Javi..." He'd listen. He'd let her go, but he didn't, wouldn't.

Smoke continued to rise upward, Beckett's sobbing grew louder, and left on the grass was a white high-heeled shoe.