A/N: Okay, so I know I said this was finished, but I owe you guys this little epilogue. Migalouch made a really great point, I rushed it and in doings so, I left out some of the major issues I had been building up throughout the story. I'm really sorry I did that. I hope this little epilogue makes up for it. Thank you Migalouch for keeping me honest, as always, your opinion holds a lot of sway. So yes, for those of you who may not know this already, if you want something from me in my stories and for what ever reason don't feel you can or are getting through to me, go through Migalouch.

Epilogue:

Rick entered the elevator to the 12th Precinct with a new skip in his step. He wasn't just back; he was here for the first time as a completed man. Yes, the world looked good. Colours were brighter, the smells around him were drugs that lifted his spirits to new heights and ever sound was a sweet bell chiming. To say that he was on cloud nine would be an understatement. Had he not already pinched himself several times that morning, and had to face breaking up with his ex-wife first thing that day, he would have been convinced that it was all a dream.

The doors were about to close behind him when he heard a familiar voice call from a round the corner. "Hold the elevator!" His hand shot out to stop the doors without so much as a thought. Kate rounded the corner and came to a complete stop as she saw the grin that seemed to make up the face of her favourite novelist. "Rick…! Umm, Castle…" She tried to cover her slip with a curt nod of her head before she entered the elevator car and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. When she was sure it was all clear she turned to him, the doors closing again as she did so. "So…"

His grin grew and she had to wonder if she would ever see it reach its maximum brilliance, she couldn't count the number of times she had thought it had already stretched beyond human capacity only to see it grow further. How ever large it could get, it was contagious and she was matching his smile watt for watt. "So, what, Kate?"

"You know perfectly well, what… How did it go with Gina?" She had stepped closer to him and was well aware that he swallowed hard when she was pressed up against him. The thought of what she could do to him with that simple action gave her a few ideas of how to convince him to finally stay in the car without the ineffective use of handcuffs. She still wanted to know where he got that key.

"Oh, that…" He stepped back and tried to dampen his smirk. "She didn't want to let me go… I hope you don't mind sharing." She glared at him and that was all it took for him to cave. He pulled her back to him. "Alright, it was okay… we talked a bit and I explained how I felt, she took it pretty well…" The raising of her eyebrow told him that she wasn't buying it. "So all she threw at me was 'Naked Heat', it wasn't that big a deal…" He felt her go rigid against him, remembered that she was a cop and realised that he just mentioned a domestic violence situation. Trying to relax the tension he joked about the day they had first discussed a divorce. "Hey, at least this time it wasn't a desk size dictionary that covered every grammatical law know to the English language." Okay, that wasn't as funny to a cop as he thought it was, in hind sight he probably should have realised that. "It's nothing… All she wants from me is to finish the book I'm on in about a month, which isn't too bad considering it's basically finished, and the fourth by it's dead line."

"I thought you weren't doing a fourth." She pulled out of his arms just enough to look him in the eyes.

"I wasn't, but when you arrested me she convinced me that Black pawn would keep it under control if I did a fourth… I was really quite lucky, actually, she could have gotten six more out of me at that point and there is no doubt in my mind that she knew it." He smiled again as he realised what he had missed at the time. "She didn't want me doing more Nikki Heat books." Kate gave him a questioning look so he continued to explain. "She was the one that convinced them to let me off the contract for the fourth and they weren't happy once they realised what a big seller it would be after they saw the chapters I had already submitted for the third. To get herself back on solid ground she needed to get another book out of me, so she used the opportunity to get it, but she didn't press for more because she didn't want me writing about Nikki Heat and by extension about you…"

"That reminds me, what-" Kate was cut off as the elevator announced its arrival at their floor. The couple flew apart and put as much distance between them as they could. "Come with me." The doors opened at that moment and she led him to an unoccupied observation room. When she closed the door behind them she turned back to him. "What did you mean when you told Lanie that you wished you had kept Rook around a little longer?"

'And thus begins the conversation best avoided.' He thought to himself. He exhaled deeply. "She told you about that, huh?" Suddenly Rick was fascinated by a particular crack in the wall meaning that Kate was in his periphery as he spoke. "I take it you haven't read 'Naked Heat' yet." She shook her head and he wished she had spoken. He nodded to show he had taken her hint to continue while he gathered his thoughts. "This would be so much easier if you had read the story first… I may have… removed Rook from the picture…"

"You 'may have'…? What is that supposed to mean?" Her voice was beginning to rise and she had to look away from him and breathe for a moment before returning to the conversation. "How?"

"I may have written a home invasion gone south in his apartment…" He looked at her with a look that screamed 'Please don't kill me.'

"You killed him off?" That had been the last thing Kate expected to hear. At the most she thought he had Rook move out of town and marry a beautiful heiress, but this was just beyond belief.

"A little bit…" He winced as he imagined how she would react to that admission.

"A little bit… How do you kill off one of the main characters 'a little bit'?" She didn't even try to hide the fact that they were on dangerous ground with this line of conversation. 'And it was going so well.' He told himself.

"In all fairness it was me or him…" He hadn't even finished the thought before her arms were wrapped tightly around him, holding his to her with such force that he was amazed his lungs were still getting air.

"Tell me you didn't even consider it." There was a depth of desperation to her plea that reminded him of how much his absence for three months had hurt her, and the thought of the possible devastation his suicide would have caused her made him wrap his arms around her equally as tightly.

"No, never… Kate, look at me…" He tilted her chin up to look force her to look him in the eyes and he wanted to cry when he saw the tears she was fighting to hold back. "I needed the kind of closure that I could only get by removing Rook from the story, and my publishers would have made me bring him back latter if there was anyway to do so, so he had to die. But even when I thought it wouldn't affect you I had Alexis and mother to worry about. I would never put Alexis through that, not until someone takes that choice away from me… Besides, I can live without you, Kate." The look that crossed her face made him chuckle. "Let me finish. I can live without you, but it would be a shallow, hollow and unfulfilling life. I would be, and have been, miserable without you." He kissed her deeply to reinforce what he had said. He broke away slowly. "Now, is there anything else you wanted to ask me before I voice my concerns?"

"One, but I want to hear what you have to say before I ask." She nodded for him to start, so he did.

"When you arrested me, why did you give away my case and why didn't you check in on me…? I know that you were angry with me, but… why would you leave me to face that alone?" He swallowed back the pain. Rick knew it would be a difficult conversation without having to fight himself but he still didn't know if he could open back up to her like he once had.

"I was scared…" Kate looked at the button that did up to make the V of his shirt collar. She briefly considered looking up but her eyes betrayed her so she settled for learning every detail of that button and the creases of material around it. "I didn't know what to believe, on one hand we found you standing over a dead body, with the gun in your hand, on the other, it was you… I just couldn't reconcile those facts in my heart and I knew that I could never be impartial to the investigation, if I was the one to send you to prison and you were innocent it would have destroyed me, just sending you to jail would have been enough to sour my love of what I do, even if you had been guilty… I would have spent the rest of my life wondering if my personal feelings had sent an innocent person to jail and let the guilty walk free…And…" Rick wiped away a tear that had begun to run down her cheek. She looked up into his eyes, somehow drawn to them by his gentle touch. "And I couldn't face the possibility that you wouldn't want to see me." Kate let her head collapse onto his chest. "What if you had sent me away? I had just arrested you for murder and that looked like the most likely outcome, not to mention how I had treated you at the scene. By trying to distance myself from the pain I also took away the hope I had built up over the break and fought to hold onto in the days leading up to your arrest. I couldn't handle knowing that I had, yet again, pushed you away… I had to arrest you, but I didn't have to try to prove your guilt." Rick could feel a wet patch form where her tears soaked into his shirt. He tightened his hold on her, trying to convey the conviction that he wasn't going to let her go. "I'm so sorry, Rick." Her words came out in a sob and he kissed the top of her head, unable to find words that could comfort her.

They stood like that for a while until her tears stopped flowing and her breathing had returned to normal while he pressed kisses to her head. When he felt they were ready to continue he broke the silence. "There is one more thing…" She looked up at him and nodded for him to continue. "Why did you lie…? I get that you thought it would make things awkward, but if you knew how I felt, which is the only reason I can think of as to why it would have been awkward, why were you with him? Why did you lie?"

Kate heard something in his voice that told her that this was the real issue for him, not the arrest and everything that went along with it. That was when she remembered the underlined text on his board. "No Trust." It suddenly made sense. He thought he couldn't trust her anymore and that she didn't trust him.

"What?" That was when she realised that she had spoken the words out loud.

"No Trust… That's what you meant, isn't it…? You couldn't trust me and you thought I didn't trust you." He nodded. "Rick, this must sound over used by now, but I swear it's the truth, I was scared…. I know, that's what I said last time, and I must sound like such a coward, right now, but hear me out..." She made sure that he was looking her in the eye. "I knew that I felt something for you, something that I didn't think you felt for me… I was afraid of what would happen if I let myself love you. Like I said, although in an indirect way, I was certain you'd break my heart. Yes, the heart wants what it wants but there's a reason we have our heads and mine was telling me that what your heart wanted wasn't the same as what mine did or that you didn't even know that I wasn't just talking about the case… I had already trusted you with so much of myself that I knew that you could hurt me more than anyone else could. I was protecting myself, so I tried to convince myself and everyone else that I didn't care about you, then when you asked me to the Hamptons with you I couldn't seem to get myself to tell you that I was replacing you as much as possible with Tom, and it just came out… I liked where we were and how you treated me, I knew that once you knew that I was with someone else you would lose interest, probably leave and definitely stop flirting with me. I just wanted things to stay the way they were forever. In the end it was my attempt to prevent losing what I had with you that cost me that and so much more." She kissed him gently, needing to reassure herself that he was, in fact, standing there, holding her. "I do trust you, Rick, it's myself I don't trust… and I promise, no more lying, not to you." He smiled and pulled her hear to his shoulder as he inhaled the cherry scent of her shampoo.

"Thank you… for telling me." He again kissed the top of her head. "Now, what was it you wanted to ask?"

The smile that filled her face suddenly had him a little on edge, she had something up her sleeve and it was clearly not something that made him look good. "While you were gone there was a lot of mention of parties with the famous author, Richard Castle… and in a lot of these stories there was tell that he never spent a night alone, or with the same woman twice… What really happened?"

Rick knew it wasn't good for him before she spoke but the moment she mentioned the papers all hope was shattered. 'Here we go again.' He thought as he opened his mouth. "Well, about that… There's something you should know about Richard Castle, the author… He's a bit of a moron." The glare she gave him told him that humour was not going to save him here. "Okay… I have my own layers and to protect those layers I have a mask, it's something that has always served me well. The play boy image didn't come out of nowhere… That was how I have always disguised my pain. When Kyra left me after my fist best seller I did something similar, granted not to the same extent, but I took to the first woman who caught my eye, which happened to be Meredith, she fell pregnant by accident and so I married her… When we got a divorce I took it hard, I started using my novels as an excuse to do some pretty stupid things, like hanging around gangsters, integrating myself in the mafia and taking up extreme sports. That's actually when I learnt to use a gun, a connection of mine taught me so that I would have a way of protecting myself if someone from another family decided to use me against their family…" Seeing the look on her face he was quick to reassure her. "I only had to use what he taught me to get out of one situation before I took up with your team, that was in self defence and no one was killed or even injured. I just shot the gun out of their hand, like I did with Dunn, and they ran off…" Something in her eyes told him he wasn't winning any points there so he hurried on. "Anyway, so that's when Gina tamed me a little and I married her because she was the only one who could talk sense into me when I tried to pull dangerous stunts. When we got divorced I wanted to get back at her, so… so I stole a police horse while I was naked…she was always so prim and proper and everything with her was about PR, so I gave her something to make her earn her alimony payments." A half smile emerged on his face at the memory of how livid she had been. "And that brings me to you… Since I met you I worked so hard to show you that I wasn't such a bad guy, I stopped going to parties when I could get out of them, I worked at being the upstanding citizen I thought you wanted me to be… then you replaced me." His smile faded to a snarl as he said the next few words. "With Demming…The point is, I was done trying to be a good guy, cause the good guy never gets the girl, he never gets anything…"

Rick was brought out of his thoughts about the poor good guy, who is always left behind with nothing good coming his way, by Kate drawing him into a searing kiss. She mumbled into his lips. "I'm sorry." He tried to reply but she only pulled him in deeper, refusing to let him go until she had brought him to the point of begging for more, but smiled as she stepped away. "I've got to get to work."

When they immerged from the observation room they encountered Detective Charles. "Oh, Rick, it's good to see you. I was actually just going to call you. We got a trace on the call that tipped Beckett, here, off on the murder; we had to follow it through a few different districts and a computer but we got it and it turned out that the phone belongs to Vanessa's ex-husband. So we spoke to him this morning and he said that he was at a party in the Hamptons when he saw the two of you leaving together… he has a history of violent psychotic breaks, that's actually the reason she wrote up for filing for divorce. It looks like you found the one girl at the party with a mentally unstable ex-husband who was there. Next time you might want to ask Beckett to do a back ground check for things like that, since you seem to know how to pick them so well."

Rick thanked her for the update on the case and turned to Kate as she walked towards her desk. "You know, I think she's right, I really should give that a try… What do you think of doing a background on yourself for me? I really should know if there are any ex-husbands or ex- lovers that might want to frame me for murder."

She only smiled the same smile she had used when she threatened to break his legs if he ever called her his muse again. "Oh, I don't know about framing you for murder… Sorensen would probably just kill you and be done with it." She looked thoughtful for a moment and nodded to herself as if she had just reached the conclusion that what she had said was correct before returning to her paper work.

"Oh, Ha-Ha, very funny…he wouldn't though, would he?" Kate didn't even bother to hide the smile he brought to her face. 'Oh, yeah, it was good to have him back.'

A/N: Okay, so what do you guys think?