They are walking down 57th street, perhaps a little closer than most 'partners' would choose to walk - hips bumping, elbows nudging, shoulders brushing - but he doesn't seem to mind the closeness at all, and neither does she.

It's comfortable, actually, easy to be physically close to him. She knows that the rest of the emotional closeness will ebb back to them in time, once she rids herself completely of her walls and his. He has walls around his heart too, now, and she recognises that it's partially her fault.

Maybe they should get on to healing those wounds they've given each other sooner rather than later, she muses. It would be so easy for them to fix their jagged edges together like jigsaw puzzles; let two broken halves make a whole together.

Beckett's not ready for that. Not yet. One day. Not today.

He buys them pastries at a dusty little cafe tucked around a corner; she has a custard danish, he has a chocolate croissant and they are eating in contented harmony as they continue walking towards nowhere in particular.

Castle says something, she can't remember exactly what when she looks back on the cluster of moments before, but she guesses it was probably a bad pun.

She laughs, throwing her head back, hair cascading over her denim-clad shoulders as they skirt around a small cluster of people.

And then the world explodes.

Everything is fragmented.

They are flying.

After the inital rush of roaring sound that sweeps her off her feet and throws her away, she can't hear anything at all except for a muted pulse in her ears.

Somebody set the sky on fire.

Her eyes are seeing swirls of light at the corners of their vision, but she can't focus.

Dirty lense on a camera. That's what it's like.

Castle.

She doesn't know who she is or where she is but he's here too

Castle Castle Castle

The words are meant to be spilling from her mouth, but her lungs aren't working, full of dust, constricting, so she just thinks it over and over.

Maybe if she thinks it loud enough he'll hear.

The flames around them are gnawing at the edges of her consciousness, climbing down her throat and burning in her lungs.

Castle. Castle?

Is she crawling or is someone moving her? She can't tell. She's disjointed.

A puppet. Marionette. Strings are pulling.

None of the air she is blindly sucking in is reaching her lungs. Stupid air.

Castle. Castle. Castle!

The flames inside her chest are consuming her, licking at her ribcage, her heart, it burns it burns it burns-

Castle-Castle-I-Love-You-I-Love-You-Rick-I'm-Sorry-Castle-Castle-

Her galloping heartbeat thuds the words, and then with one more rush of pain, all she can see is black.

Castle.

The flames around her have stopped but they're still in her lungs heart head everywhere.

Beckett, now vaguely aware that she's Beckett, tries to open her eyes.

Shit. Hurts.

Her vision is faded around the edges, everything swimming, but then it hurts too much and she squeezes her eyes shut again.

There is a mask clamped over her mouth, sweet chemical air, but she still can't breath right. Hurts. A lot.

What happened?

And then the question that matters infinitely more.

Where's Castle?

There is a bit of indignation left in her, enough for her to be pissed off at the fact that they have actually almost died together again. Again. Oh god. The sudden realisation hits her, bowls her over, that maybe they haven't almost died together.

Maybe one of them has.

(Maybe she will, too, because fresh waves of pain are crashing over her head.)

Shit, no, no, no, this wasn't meant to happen. They were meant to have time. So much time that they could stretch out and bask in it, enjoy each others company, let everything come slowly, gradually, naturally. She was meant to tell him when he already knew because she'd made it so clear and he could see it shining in her eyes.

Does he know? (She's not using past tense, not now, not yet.)

He had to have seen it. Once, twice, caught her feeling in the way she looked at him, in the way that her whole body softened when he brushed against her.

He had to know.

Right?

Someone's hands are touching her, plastic gloves are prodding the fire in her chest through the plastic wrap of her skin.

She curls in on herself.

It burns.

Castle.

They - who are they? she can't open her eyes or she will combust, engulfed in flames - are moving her, every movement makes her suck in a sharp gasp of air that never really seems to reach her, and every breath feels like a match being lit against her insides.

Beckett focuses on the things she knows. Castle. She plays images like a slideshow on the insides of her eyelids.

The way he looked, walking next to her, his mouth full of a stolen bite of her pastry. He'd had a dab of custard on the corner of his bottom lip that she'd wanted to lick away with the point of her tongue. She wishes she had now. She wishes.

Castle.

This will become a multi-chapter if anyone shows interest in it.