I skipped Undead again.. and went straight for Always. This takes place anywhere you see fit. Either before or after the swing.
..obviously.. spoilers if you have not seen it.. but really.. who wouldn't have seen it?

Let it Wash Away

We are not born into the roles we think we must play, we are misguided.

The rain beats outside the large windows of Dr. Burke's office. Lightning flashes into the well lit room, casting the faintest of sharp blue light upon the windowsill.

Is this the storm she's been waiting for? Because from where she's standing, drenched in the doorway. She feels more like its the beginning rather than the inevitable end.

Looking out at the rain, hearing the thunder rack through her entire body, the lightning lighting up her life, Kate realizes this is not the epicenter of tragedy.

It's a cleanse.

She's had an epiphany...and for once in her life, she will embrace it wholeheartedly.

The feeling is altogether different from the last time she set foot in here.

Driven by the need to escape the things they never talked about, and were now laid out. And when she could not face them...he said they were over... he couldn't do it anymore.

Is she a bad person for being selfish, for healing?

Kate just wanted to hide from the pain of his betrayal... Is she not allowed to block it out? Can she not hide away from it. Create a shell for which she's lived and breathed in for so long even if it's frowned upon by everyone else?

But that is what had brought her here before.

The way she once choose to act around her fears, her weaknesses,. Perhaps...had made her more ignorant...blind because of what these things made her who she thought she was.

But that's not Kate anymore.

And she couldn't let herself slip back into that...

Barging into Dr. Burke office after Castle said she was done.. sent her back there. She had slipped up.. but in her mind, she had been ready for this for 13 years and he sat on her leads. Kept them for a whole year. She was trying not to drown in it...trying to stay level headed.. and then he...at the time.. his words.. his beautiful words...no matter how much they gripped at her heart.. Kate could not let them steer her away from what she had worked so hard for.

So what if she has walls?

If he can hide behind the child within, why can't she barricade herself in?

Is the very act of burying our true emotions away from those that count, the worst act of selfishness?

It shouldn't be about what we don't share. It shouldn't make us pigheaded or stubborn. It shouldn't label us any of these things at all.

So what if she was damaged goods.

So what if they had gotten lost. They could find their way back.

She's been trying to find her way back...and standing here now...

She regrets it.

Letting herself be manipulated by her past. Using the lesson that her mother taught her about truth, to guide her in the wrong direction.

Truth conquers all things.

Black and white, wrong and right.

But where is everything else? How do we weed out what's true to us, and what is only engraved into our minds as the right path?

It wasn't the truth of her mother's murder that she needed to find, but the workings of her own heart.

And she's been hiding from it.

Kate hung literally at the edge of a precipice. And it wasn't the act of finding the closure for her mother, her point of living isn't about that anymore. But the revelation that took over her every being, has helped Kate Beckett finally, and completely opened her eyes.

Castle

What she regrets more...was not hearing him..not seeing him. And she couldn't lose her grip on that ledge, or everything would have been for nothing. If that happened, if she fell.. then she couldn't fix the time wasted.

Hanging by her fingers on that rooftop...She could finally hear him. He was all she could think about... for the only place she wanted to fall, was in his arms. To quench the yearning and the pain they both had caused one another.

She fought so hard. Not for her mother's sake...but her own. For him.

The longing was too great to give up.

She could fix it. She was ready...Maybe she's always been ready. But she had been too blind to see it. She had let her past drive her heart in the wrong direction.

His voice, his touch...everything him. He was there. In her head, her heart, her veins. He was guiding her back, keeping her fighting. She held on with the knowledge that it didn't matter what he did, because he hadn't betrayed her.

We are all souls searching in this vast world. We seek that in which we do not understand. And in that world: there are ideas that are thrust upon us as if it's the only thing there is. And because of it, we force ourselves to believe what becomes the norm.

But, where do we draw the line?

Or is everything we stand for, an illusion?

Kate shakes her head at herself, leaning there in the doorway...She only has herself to blame for the things she couldn't see.

And because of it, she had betrayed herself.

Damn it all if she wasn't going to live long enough to make it up to herself, and the one person who's always been there for her.

In that moment before she lost her grip, but not her will... It wasn't Ryan's hand that pulled her up. He wasn't the one who saved her. It was Castle.

"I'm done." Kate says, holding her mother's ring in her hand, the noose free from her neck.

And for the first time in her life, as Dr. Burke nods to her, a smile a lot like pride on his usually stoic face, Kate Beckett feels free.

Turning away, Kate feels a weight being lifted. She no longer feels misguided, only that she is finally heading in the right direction. And as she once again steps out into the pouring rain, she lets everything that had ever held her back in the past, wash away.

Everything you know, from this point on.. and won't need further explanation...I could never do this show justice..especially after "always." But I do hope you enjoyed my rendition of what what went on in her head this season. Thank you to those who stuck with this all the way through... Have a great summer!