A/N: Another installment in my series of story prompts that have been beaten to death, I present a take on post-Watershed. I never did like the way the writers handled this, so I'm going to give you guys a different take on it. Hope you guys enjoy, let me know what you think. :)

She's being pulled out of sleep… again. This is the third time tonight, and she's getting irritated with everything but herself; at the pillow beneath her head for being too lumpy, at the blanket for being too tangled up in her legs, at the sheets for being too loose around the mattress, at the mattress for being too hard.

She unclenches the pillow viced in her arms and lifts her head to check the time, seeing it's still well before she would be woken up by her alarm, set for 6:45. Annoyed, she groans and lets her head fall back to the pillow, pulling her third pillow to her chest again. She closes her eyes again, knowing it won't do any good, but is being persistent nonetheless.

It's no use. She's awake. She scoffs in the darkness, kicks off the comforter and stands up. She's still tired, but she just can't sleep. Padding her way into her bathroom, she lethargically pulls open the medicine cabinet and grabs the small, orange prescription bottle in the middle, hesitating for a moment before she pulls it off the shelf. These haven't been working.

But she can't think of anything else, because she's tried everything else.

She gives in and pulls it forward, her tenseness relaxing into more annoyance as she feels the bottle's emptiness. She slaps the bottle down to the counter beside the sink and hangs her head. These haven't even been working, all they've done is make her tired. Which, if you think about it, is what they're supposed to do, but she doesn't need to be tired.

She needs to sleep.

She flicks the vanity closed on her way out of the bathroom, leaving the prescription bottle on the counter of her kitchen on her way in to remind herself to get it refilled. It's still dark out, and cold. She has the heat turned up though, hoping that it would help her sleep, to no avail. Staving off the cold is secondary to having the heat above 80 degrees. She clicks on just one light in her dark apartment, just enough to go about starting the coffee pot.

She hasn't used the alarm setting on her coffee maker since she moved here. She always manages to wake up before it starts. She doesn't even bother setting it anymore. She just waits in the darkness, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, staring off into space as she leans against the counter, not thinking. She finds herself doing that a lot, more and more as the days go on. She'll probably end up going in early again today, she still has some work left over from yesterday.

Even though she went in early yesterday also… and stayed late. She was one of the last ones out last night. She shakes her head with a roll of her eyes and pulls open her fridge, seeing a depressing sight. Every time she opens her fridge, she's just reminded how much time she has to actually cook her meals.

None.

Just a few cartons of Chinese food that are sure to be too old to stand to swallow, a pizza box with just a few slices left, a few assorted pieces of fruit and vegetables in the crisper, bought only to reassure herself that she was still a healthy eater. She's only looking in here because she knows she needs the calories.

After pulling out a Granny Smith apple from one of the drawers and a knife, she's just in time to hear the coffee finish. She makes her way over to the cupboard, pulling out her navy blue mug and filling it up, adding in her regular amount of cream and sugar. She cautiously takes a sip, grimacing heavily as it goes down. If she had the nerve… or the heart, she'd just call him and ask him how he makes it. She can't even enjoy a cup of coffee anymore.

She takes it as it comes, as with everything lately, and eats her apple slowly, unappealingly sipping her coffee in a recliner in the corner of her apartment, legs tucked up into herself. After another silent ten minutes, she finishes and stands up, depositing her mug by the coffee pot before making her way down the hall and into her bedroom again, pulling off her flannel pajamas on her way and tossing them on top of her hamper.

After putting on a pair of leggings, a long sleeved shirt and hoodie, she ties her hair back and slips into her running shoes. Running is the one thing she still does that keeps her at a reasonable level of normal. But sitting on her bed, she waits, staring at the carpet in the dim light of her bedside lamp. She lets out a deep breath through her nose and looks over to her pillows, grabbing the one laying adjacent to the others.

The deep burgundy one.

She scrunches the fabric in her hands before putting it against her chest, putting her arms around it and hugging it to her like a life preserver… which isn't too far off as it is. Her eyes drift shut as she takes a long whiff of the pillow, burying her nose deeper into it the more air she takes in. At this point, it's more sentimental. His scent is long gone from it anyway. But... it's still his.

She can't summon the warm electricity that would crawl like a spider up her spine when he would touch her, anymore. After deciding that it was too painful the first few months, she forced herself not to. But now it's just a dull ache, but still, it hurts just as much. She thought it would stop hurting, maybe not this soon, but that it would stop eventually.

That day still hasn't come, and is getting more and more out of reach with every single one that passes by. Her apartment suddenly feels as if it's going to swallow her whole. She gently soothes over the wrinkles in the pillow and sets it back down against the others and quickly makes her way out the door, grabbing her phone on her way out. The cold air against her skin feels nice, brisk as she starts to stretch out her muscles before beginning her morning run.

She runs a little faster this morning than most, pushing herself harder against the winter air. She runs her way into the city, just a mile or two away from her apartment, making it to a shopping area just as the sky turns a shade of deep blue just before the sun starts to come up. She stops at a crossing, jogging in place as she checks traffic and running her way across the four lane street to loop back around to her apartment.

As she turns back down the street to take the next street to circle back around, she makes it to the end of the block before she looks up and feels her heart seize up. She stops dead, her legs feeling like weighted gelatin as she takes the last few steps toward the window display of the small book store she's visited on a few occasions.

Her throat squeezes shut as she reaches up, putting shaky fingers against the glass, wanting to touch his image, nothing more than a large cardboard cutout display. It's a newer one, the picture they used isn't the one she's used to. His hair is a bit longer, and his eyes… his eyes are the most heartbreaking thing. She knows his eyes. Up until six months ago, his eyes were like her lighthouse, guiding her through the thick fog that was her life. The twinkle that would shine when he smiled could make anyone smile, but the only person that ever mattered was her. But now… staring at this advertisement in the window of a small book store in DC, that light isn't there. His smile is much softer, almost like he's not smiling at all here.

And she knows the smile he uses to promote himself. This isn't it. It's almost like he's saying to everyone that looks at this that there's nothing to be proud of, nothing of any worth to be found. It all hits her in one tidal wave of emotions, epicentering from her chest, quaking through her veins in the worst few seconds since last she saw him.

Tears in his eyes just before his back turned to her and practically ran off, while she stood there, doing nothing more than letting him.

Her burning eyes find the date, and sees that he's due here at the end of the week for a book signing, with a reading beginning at noon. She lets out a heavy huff of air and closes her mouth, pressing her palm down to the glass and closing her eyes. After a long moment, she lets her hand fall down to her side and draws in a long breath to steady herself, refusing to take another look at his image. As she pushes forward, running a little slower, she angrily shoves it all down.

They were just too different. They tried to make it work, and it didn't. That's that.

She'll just have to make sure she's too busy to notice his presence in DC. She probably will be, with or without her consent anyway.

She quickly jogs back to her apartment, feeling no more at home than the day she moved in and goes to the fridge to open a bottle of water. She doesn't know why she does this to herself, indulge in memories of her past that she knows will only end up hurting her. She's moved on, and knowing him, so has he. He's clearly not at the Twelfth anymore. He hasn't done a book signing tour outside of Manhattan in years, not since he started following her.

He clearly moved on with his life, just as she did.

These thoughts seem to cement her commitment to her six month long decision, stamping out any doubt she had that she may have taken the wrong road… temporarily, at least.

No… if he can move on within six months, so can she. She has her work, anyway. It's not too early to go in and get a head start. She needs to start going over the notes from yesterday's Senate Intel Hearing anyway, and has a briefing at ten. Word is she's at the top of the list to head up the team set to investigate that tech that went missing off the coast of Japan.

At least that would mean not having a choice in not being able to see her ex again.

She lets out a long sigh as she moves about her apartment, getting dressed in her regulatory outfit; black slacks, blazer, and a white blouse. She puts on just a bit more make-up this morning to try and hide the fact she only got a few hours of sleep, and a fitful few hours at that. Turning off her lights, taking a sip of her coffee again before shaking away her gag reflex and pouring it out, she heads out the door.

She's one of the first ones in the office that morning, coming up to her desk in the splay of identical desks lined up in a wide space with fluorescent lights buzzing above her. She drops her bag with a thud next to her chair and tiredly pulls out her chair, sitting down heavily. The memory of his cardboard cutout flashes in her mind for a brief second, which forces her to stop zoning out and pull out the file she had left off of the night before.

It's an hour and a half later that her assigned partner comes in, setting her things at her desk across from her. "Morning, Beckett." She says, her usual stern chipperness.

"Morning, McCord." Beckett says, the first words she says of the day, feeling scratchy as they leave her throat.

McCord sits down in her chair, pulling a stack of papers out of her bag and turning on her computer at the same time. "You look tired."

Beckett flashes a sad, heavy smile and twirls her zebra pen between her fingers. "I just didn't get much sleep last night is all. I got out of here kind of late." She isn't entirely lying. She did get out of here late last night, and she didn't get hardly any sleep last night… or the night before… and is still coming down from those useless sleeping pills she's been taking.

She really needs to stop taking those. They haven't been doing anything for her anyway.

The morning goes on slowly as Beckett focuses all her brain power on her work, as she usually does. It's another twenty minutes before the AG's office starts to fill up with its usual occupants, making it abuzz with noise. "Hey," Beckett calls over to McCord, who's staring intently at her computer screen, "have you heard anything about that overseas assignment to Japan?"

She's asking in hopes that she's at least on the team. A means to get away from the guilty pleasure that would be at least looking through the window of his book signing. "Nothing official yet, but the word is that they're handing it over to Japanese Intelligence."

Feeling let down, she slowly nods her head and clicks her pen, continuing to bury herself in her work again.

"Why?" McCord asks, stopping what she's doing looking across her desk to Beckett.

She lifts a dismissive hand and flashes a feigned smile. "It's nothing."

McCord knows nothing about her past, the personal parts anyway. She's never mentioned the name Richard Castle, and no one's ever asked. She's kept their past as far away from here as she can manage. That burgundy pillow sitting on her bed is about as much as she will allow herself. Some nights, it's all she deserves, others it's all she can get. But most nights, it's all she will allow.

They are called into the briefing room at ten, right on schedule, and everybody stands and starts to move. McCord stands up along with everybody else, and pulls the rest of her things from her bag, setting down a few more files and a notebook, and placing a book on top, whose cover shoots that same stinging feeling into her system.

She quickly forces it down as she gathers what she needs for the briefing. "That's a good book." She says simply, nodding toward McCord's copy of Heat Wave.

McCord looks up with a raised brow as she continues to dig through her bag. "You've read it?"

I'm the inspiration behind the whole damn series, she thinks bitterly. "Yeah, uh…" She stumbles and motions toward the hard back copy, "Richard Castle was a colleague of mine at the NYPD."

McCord's brow raises in stunned surprise. "Really?" She asks, picking up the book and turning it over. Beckett can see his portrait on the back, squeezing her heart as the smile she knows, the one she can recognize shines back at her. "He's cute."

That shakes her, but she shoves it down into the deepest pit of her stomach she can reach in as short amount of time as she can handle. She grits her teeth and picks up the papers she needs for the briefing, quickly pushing past a few slow moving people to get a seat in the front. She's lost focus enough times today already.

She may have just opened a Pandora's Box by telling her partner that the author of the book she's reading in her spare time was a "colleague". McCord's clearly not the type to be star struck, so maybe that will be the end of it. The last thing that Beckett needs right now is her resolve being whittled away by a barrage of invasive questions regarding the only man to ever love her enough to actually propose to her.

And the only man she's ever broken that badly.

"You know," Beckett says as McCord falls into step beside her, her want for the situation to unfold betraying her, "he's actually going to be in town on Friday for a book signing."

"Oh yeah?" McCord says as they move into the briefing room, "you should stop by and say hi." She tells her, a friendly smirk on her face.

Beckett does nothing more than push her lips up into a heavy smile and take a seat next to her, shaking her head to herself, staring steely eyed down to her work.

By the looks of things, it looks like it's going to be another late night.