DEFINITE SPOILERS FOR 7x06, TIME OF OUR LIVES. But if you haven't seen it yet, then gosh, what are you doing reading fic? Priorities, man.

As I write this the time is 6.02am, and I've just finished this oneshot. As far as my sleep deprived brain can tell, it's vaguely coherent.

I was struck by the idea that Castle left AU Beckett alone, in a world where she clearly felt something for him, even such a short amount of time. He had an effect on her, at least - and that's how this came about. Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Castle. And special props to Terri Edda Miller for this masterpiece of an episode.

The trace of his name flees from her lips, the whispered exhalation chased by a panicked breath. "No, please don't go, stay with me…stay with me - Castle! Castle?"

Even as she says it, she wonders why. Where is he gonna go, exactly? Back to his imaginary world where they love each other, where she's happy? Maybe, just maybe she'd started falling for his delusion a little. And perhaps she doesn't want to lose him to it, not when this her, the real one could have that which he's so sure of. Don't go, she'd begged. Stay with me. She's surprised by how much she wants that.

A phantom of a word takes shape in his mouth, then disappears without ever taking any substantial form - and just like that, he's gone. She can tell by the sudden slackness of his jaw, the lights in his eyes - God, those eyes - shut off. Maybe he's only unconscious for now, but even as she desperately attempts to staunch the bleeding, switching from wound to wound, she realises there's no stemming the flow.

When the paramedic's arrive, they cover his body with a plastic sheet. She fights back peals of sickening, hysterical laughter when one of them offers his condolences. Because really, what right does she have to mourn this man when she only met him the day previously? Though, she manages to hide it, just solemnly nods as that tightness in her chest that constricts her breathing every time she shuts something out winds ever more unyieldingly around her ribcage.

There's something that makes her want to cry though, weep for this stranger like she's known him years. In ways, she has - through his books and his words and that one time she queued all day to meet him. Yet, in all the ways that count? They're nothing to each other. Having to berate him a few times for getting in the way of official police business. A couple of shared drinks on what she'd thought was a date and he viewed as a stakeout.

She never did get an answer as to why he killed off Derek Storm.

Back in her office, she scoops the book against her chest, cradles it like a precious thing. Shuts her eyes as she recalls the final words in Castle's final decent book -

No one will see my tears.

And that's how she's been for the last god-forsaken decade. A shell, refusing to feel anything deeply except the pain of her mother's murder. She realises, now, that she's sick of it. Wants to be more.

Wants to match up to the vision of her she saw in his eyes whenever their gazes met, the one she heard in his words when he ranted his frustration over her acceptance of politics, her easy compromise.

Some stupid, romantic, little-girl part of her wishes she could have him by her side as she grew to be the savvy, self-assured, figure of justice that he had on a pedestal at a height just out of her reach.

Sure, she's smart and confident that she's good at her job - but there's no joy in that, rarely the satisfaction of a case file closed impervious to forces of wealth and power; every time she insists her detectives wait until there's real, hard evidence against a rich public figure or a business tycoon or a politician to bring them in for questioning, only for the trail to go cold, her grasp on morality hazes at the edges.

Where once was black and white, is just a blurred mass of greys that slightly vary in shade - and the best she can do is pick the lesser of the two evils. She's not sure she manages that most of the time, either.

She hates the politics of her position, feels like she's drowning in a shark infested pool. Any sign of weakness and they'll whip into a frenzy and eat her alive… so she holds her scars tightly closed, lest anything slip through, even if that means sacrificing someone else's justice.

"The Kate Beckett in my world would never call this a win. The Kate Beckett where I come from would be unrelenting in the face of anything that's thrown in her path. She would find the truth - and she would never compromise."

She'd snapped then, the disappointment etched into his features scalding her like she'd been splashed by boiling water and his speech on the woman she isn't tossing her over the precipice.

He thought he knew her, but he didn't. He thought he knew her… and maybe he had? He thought her knew her and-

-she wishes she did.

It's hopelessly unlike her, this - imagining her life with someone so soon after they've met, and not the usual first date 'would you fit in with my life? no, probably not - my work is more important and you'd want too much from me' either.

Truthfully, he's the only person that's asked anything of her that she's truly wanted to give in a long time. She wants to be more.

She schedules an appointment with Dr Burke, the therapist she'd seen briefly after Captain Montgomery was shot dead in a home robbery, never solved. If she's going to better herself, she'll need help.

When the boys find her at desk, hours later, she startles. Untangles slender fingers from the end of the chain that feels like a noose of her neck as she turns slightly in her office chair to face them.

"You okay, Captain?" Ryan asks. "Rough day, huh?"

"Yeah, not so great." She grimaces at the understatement, swallows hard against the lump in her throat.

"At least that annoying writer won't be bothering you anymore," Esposito jokes, and her heart stops, cold and dead in her chest.

"Is that supposed to be funny?" She seethes, but the tone of her voice comes out far too broken and the hispanic detective steps back, arms raised in surrender.

"Yo, just gallows humour, Captain. You know I don't mean it." Does she?

Sometimes she wonders how this happened to them - how time turned the three of them so cold. Her, letting the rich and powerful off of murder charges because of pressure from 1PP. Ryan, lonely and detached, now - she remembers how happy he'd been with Jenny. The tipsy talk of how he was gonna buy her a ring and marry her one day, give her forever, and how it all turned sour at the pull of the trigger and her subsequent promotion. He'd never say it but she's sure there's some latent resentment towards her somewhere, in the hard edges of his once soft gaze. And as for Espo - often she thinks her and Ryan had kept him grounded with their bleeding hearts and, without the steady flow of empathy surrounding their team these days, he was set adrift. Left floating so far that the victims are just faceless blips in his day.

She hates it.

"Hey, boss?" Ryan ventures, tentative in stealing her from her moment, wary of the haunted look ghosted over her features. "Has anyone informed Richard Castle's family?"

Oh, God. Oh God, oh God oh God. "I haven't sent anyone, no-"

"You want us to go?"

"No - no, I'll do it myself. You guys get home."

"We were gonna go grab a drink, actually," Esposito comments, adding a belated invitation seconds too late for it to be anything other than an afterthought. "You wanna join us?"

"No - it's.. it's been a long day. To Castle's and then home, for me."

"Get some sleep, boss." He agrees, both men tossing 'bye's over their shoulders as they leave.

A quick flash of her badge and her grim expression is all it takes for the doorman at Castle's building to allow her in. Now she paces the corridor bearing his door, wondering just how she's going to break this to a girl not much older than she'd been on that terrible day when she too had been met with the worst of news.

In a strange way she relishes the aching burn in her chest, and the thick nausea that crawls up her throat - it's heartbreakingly familiar, bringing her back to her days as a homicide detective. She was good at this, she realises. Was great at most aspects of her job, even if her mother's murder was her insurmountable demon.

She steels herself, raps against the solid oak of his door - the door that was his, rather - and waits.

When it opens, she has to look up to meet the tired blue gaze that finds her.

"Castle?!" It's a strangled thing, the edges of a gasp cracking the corners.

"Sorry," he mumbles, running a hand through rumpled brown hair as if he's staving off the heavy remains of sleep. "Have we met?"