"No!"

It's the cracking of his own voice that wakes him this time. Heart pounding, soaked in sweat. Black darkness, so deep it grows eyes and mouths. He lets out an involuntary sob, presses both hands to his face, tries to shake it free.

The darkness is no help, but he can't find a way to make his legs work.

The way her blood dripped from the gurney as they rolled her through the hospital corridors and into emergency surgery, the tracks the wheels made in her blood, dark lines.

The lines running back to him, the stickiness under his shoes. He still has those shoes, hasn't cleaned them. Can't bring himself to touch them.

As always, Lanie's breaking voice in his head: Katie, don't die on me. Do *not* die. But there was no authority, only desperation.

And all the things Castle wanted to say and couldn't, they jam in his throat, stuck. His mouth clogged with the sight of her blood just running out, like an overflowing cup, spilling out along the floor. One arm flopped carelessly to the side, her own finger providing the channel for the river of her blood to waterfall over the gurney and onto the floor-

Oh God.

He's calling her before he can stop himself.

He sits up, knows he's waking her, but not able to stop, the phone pressed too tightly against his ear, his breathing still ragged.

"H'lo?"

"I'm coming over." He doesn't recognize his own voice.

"Mm, bring your key."

"Yeah." He hangs up, slides his feet to the floor, pushes out of bed. He licks his lips to get rid of the dry taste in his mouth, rubs a hand over his face again.

He shouldn't. He really should call her back and tell her never mind.

He can't. He can't. God, he can't.

He sneaks out of his loft, locks the door behind him. He thumbs Kate's key in his palm, tries to let the cool metal soothe him with promise. It heats slowly under his grip, becomes sweaty.

He drives. Not a cab. He needs to concentrate on something other than the way he saw the lights go out in her eyes, the hunched figure of Lanie pounding at Kate's chest so hard he was sure she was breaking ribs, the cracking, terrible voice as she begged Kate, begged Kate the way he couldn't beg her-

Oh God, he can't. He can't.

He leans forward in the driver's seat, trying to breathe, swallowing it down, his hands gripping the wheel, knuckles blanched.

Doesn't even know what time it is. Dashboard clocks says 1:13. Takes him a second to figure out what that means. Morning. Early then. Early yet. He's come crawling into her bed at all hours, of course, but not so soon after falling asleep.

He's had very little sleep though.

He meant to write for as long as his eyes would focus, but Alexis had sidetracked him, and then he'd been in that dazed land between the end of a long day and the beginning of a second wind. Only that second wind never materialized, and Castle had slumped into his own bed.

It's just, there are things you can't un-know. Can't un-see. Can't un-happen. Like the trail of blood, like his shoe sliding in it as he jogged after the gurney with Kate's too-white body on it. Like responsibility for opening her up to this all over again, being a nosy bastard who couldn't leave well enough alone.

He's got so much. And then Kate-

The rattle in his chest isn't a sob. It isn't. It's just allergies. And sleeplessness. And a nightmare at one in the morning that he's had so many times it's become a choose your own adventure story.

Tonight's ending was page 52: You realize this woman is the best thing that's ever happened to you, but you've lost her through your own carelessness and insensitivity. You hollow out, stop caring; life becomes meaningless.

That too bright day in the cemetery was too close to the page 52 ending. To the page 13 ending. To the page 39 ending. Not so close to the ending on page 107, in which Kate rises from the dead to eat his brains, but he's also grateful for that nightmare ending too. Because at least when he sees her sloughing towards him, eyes lifeless and hungry, he knows this is a dream.

The ones he can pick out as nightmares are easier to take. It's the ones like tonight, when it stays so on track with the truth, when it just recycles old video, gives him B-roll of blood and an audio track of Lanie's crumbling voice, when just the daytime events themselves make up the stuff of his dreams-

It's hard to remember, in these dark hours, which is the dream. So much of real life was a nightmare, that having Kate alive feels like the unreal event, the thing not to be hoped for.

Oh God. Can't he get there faster?

He parks two blocks away, walks, jogs down to her apartment building. He's got the outside key between his knuckles, jams it home and twists the knob. He shivers, even though it's humid outside, rubs a hand through his hair as he goes through her lobby.

He takes the stairs because her elevator is ancient and requires a daytime patience he doesn't have tonight. He sprints them, breathless, has to will his hands to steady at her front door before he can get the key in the lock.

He breathes in her scent in the foyer, closes his eyes. The place is mostly in darkness; he lets his eyes adjust, makes himself wait. He locks the door behind him.

"Castle?" she calls out, and pads barefoot from the hallway, covering a yawn.

"Go back to bed, Kate," he whispers, but heads straight towards her.

"You need me," she says instead, and opens her arms to him, wraps around him tightly.

Still. This is a dream. Has to be a dream. Kate offering a hug? "This real?"

"Real enough."

He shudders again and he knows that was a sigh of relief - it was not another sob - and that he's got Kate back, he's got her, long and lean in his arms; he's got her. Alive. Blood on the inside where it's supposed to be, nourishing her heart, spreading all along her beautiful limbs.

"Bed?" she murmurs.

Yes. He lifts, pulling her off of her feet for a moment, takes in a long, deep breath as he holds her off the ground. Bed. Yes. He just. . .he just can't move away. Can't.

After a second, she must give up on him, because she wraps her legs around his waist. Her hands frame his face, she strokes her thumbs along the ragged mess of his unshaven face. She presses a gentle kiss to his lips.

"It's okay, Castle."

It's like sleep-walking, and he never wakes up. He obeys her unspoken command though, takes her back towards her room, arms wrapped around her. He blindly lowers them to the edge of her bed, nearly falls because he just about missed it, then regains his balance and leans back even as she chuckles at him.

"Graceful."

"Don't mock me. I'm in pain." He gathers her up on top of him, arranging her just so against his chest.

"You are not in pain. It's all in your head," she shoots back, quoting her therapist no doubt. She drags her lips across his neck and he twitches.

"Of course it's all in my head. It's emotional pain. You've given me baggage."

"I'll make a note of it. Don't get shot in front of Castle. He can't handle it." Her fingers brush against his sides as she raises her arms, crosses them on top of his chest and props her head up so she can look at him.

"That's not funny. That's tempting fate." He wraps both arms around her again, tries to erase a nightmare's worth of damage.

"It's okay," she whispers, most of the teasing gone from her voice.

"It's not," he confesses, despair crackling in his chest cavity, so much he has to close his eyes.

"It will be," she rejoins, but now her hands are moving, her leg sliding between his. She lets her mouth settle at his breastbone, her breath fan across his skin. He gulps in the air around her, desperate for her, shakes a little until it passes.

"It will be," he finally agrees, then turns in the bed to have her lay beside him. He holds her closely still, knowing he needs to let go eventually, but not yet, not yet.

"So that 'will be' is still somewhere in the hazy future?" she whispers, nudging his chin with her nose.

He loosens his hold so she can scoot up a little, so they are face to face, but he just can't stand to not-

"Sorry," he huffs as he tightens his arms and brings her too close again, too close, he knows it is, he just can't stop.

"Which one?" she says finally, her mouth somewhere near the back of his neck. "Which dream was this?"

"The not-so-hazy past."

"Come back to the present then. It's not hazy at all."

"The future is though?" He can't help it. He knows better, in the daylight, than to ask for forever, but in the darkness, in the grip of nightmares that aren't his overactive imagination, that are, in fact, truth. . .

"Richard Castle," she sighs softly, her body still liquid in his arms. "You know better than that."

"I know."

"There's no doubt," she continues, just a soft little murmur at his neck, not even a real conversation, but he wishes-

"I don't doubt you, I just-"

"No, Castle," she says, and this time she pulls her head back, pushes on his chest, makes him give her the space she needs. "No. You're awake; I'm alive. Where do you think you are right now?"

He swallows hard. "In. . .in love with you."

She laughs, a startled laugh, not at all what he was expecting. "Well, okay, I was thinking geographically, but that works." She's giving him an indulgent smile.

That works?

"In your bed," he says slowly, a more likely answer.

"Yeah, you are, aren't you?" Kate, still blurred with her interrupted sleep, the lines of her face soft, leans in and lavishes a string of pearled kisses along his jaw. He forgets how to breathe.

She pulls back, further now, his arms looser. She watches him; he feels every movement of her body alongside his, awareness stabbing through him.

"You're in my bed, and did I kick you out?"

"No."

"You're in love with me and did I kick you out?"

He chokes on a breath; he hasn't heard the word out of her mouth. "No?"

"No."

This is an adventure he hasn't chosen. This is something new.

A kiss to his chin. "Do you know why, Castle?"

"No?"

Her eyes are nearly too much. He wants to bury his face in her neck and not look.

"Castle," she admonishes him. "Where am I?"

Okay, um, it's really too late at night for thinking like this. Where all the words mean something. He needs preparation, or a cheat sheet.

"In your bed?"

She gives him a good boy look and strokes her hand over his cheek.

A kiss to the corner of his mouth. "And where else am I?"

His mind blanks, because. . .because. . .

"In love with you," she offers, and her whole face is too much, too much for him- "That's where I am."

"You're in love with me," he repeats dumbly, the whole thing washing over him as he stares at her.

"I think, Castle, if we're both here now, then where we'll be in that hazy future is most likely-"

"Together," he finishes. He knows. Now. Even with the darkness. "We'll be together."

She smiles at him, brilliant and diamond hard, her eyes cutting right through what little emotional control he might have had tonight.

And then she puts her mouth on his skin, works her way to his ear. "Do I need to say it again?"

"Yes."

"I'm in love with you."

"I could hear it again."

She chuckles, the reverberations make his toes curl, his body arch into her. She bites down on a gasp; he can feel her teeth close to his skin.

"I'm in love with you."

He nods yes, realizes she's closer to him now than when he was dragging at her with his arms; all of her own free will, she's so much closer, her body giving over her secrets-

This, this is the ending he's been trying to choose, all this time. He wants to stay forever on this page.

She sighs. "That's where I am. Where I've been. Where I will be, Castle. Always."