AN: au where Castle takes the book deal back in season 2.

I guess tonight is one for remembering.
I'm not one for past tense.
You're still happening to me,
wherever you are.

- Ramna Safeer

The shards of glass piercing her fragile flesh barely register as the alcohol splashes against the marble of her kitchen counter. The sight of his name illuminated by her phone jabs at her fractured heart. The shrill noise accompanied by the blaring lights force her to reach forward, press accept, even as every cell in her body exclaims in protest.

It's the first thing she's felt in days. Most of the time she's numb, colorless.

She's beginning to feel like she has morphed into something cold, drifting, aimless. Destined to splinter and crumble on the ground. Like a snowflake.

"Hello?"

Her lips fall open as she stares at the grey bricks of her apartment. No words escape.

"Kate?"

Just the sound of his voice is enough to have the latent anger bubbling up. How dare he call her that? Kate. As if he never up and left almost a year ago. To write a certain British spy. As if he never gave her already wounded heart yet another scar.

What right does he have to call her Kate when he never even bothered to reach out?

Until now.

Because Montgomery is dead.

"Kate, I am so sorry." His hoarse voice punctures the slate of silence, which has shrouded her apartment since the day she collapsed into it after returning from the cacophonous hangar.

The hangar. Her eyes slam shut against the onslaught of images, trying in vain to shield her from the pain that she has lived through every night since then.

The desperation in her fingers as they scratch against her betrayer's chest feels like granting him the forgiveness he seeks.

The granite beneath her feet as she's dragged out by Esposito. His broken eyes imploring hers to keep silent as he supports her weight when her knees give out against the cool metal of the car.

The crimson pool around her fallen mentor, so jagged, so profane, against the white of the tile.

"Please, say something." A sniffle, a sigh. "Beckett, you're scaring me."

"Castle."

His name resonates through the walls, so foreign now. A year. She finds herself remembering that sometimes. He left a year ago.

Nikki wasn't extraordinary enough. She wasn't extraordinary enough.

"Castle, he's gone. Mont-"

She doesn't break.

She shatters.

Her chest caves in and she has trouble staying upright against the oppressing weight pushing her down to the floor. Pushing until her knees split on the broken glass. Her nails leave scorching trails down her neck as she tries to free herself from this phantom noose. She can't breathe. The lights are fading, the bricks are blurring.

He is dead. He is gone.

She's dying.

"Beckett, can you hear me? Are you okay?"

His voice is a distant siren, distorted by the insidious commotion in her mind.

"Kate, breathe for me, okay? Please. We'll do it together. One breath in, like this. Let it out now, slowly. You can do this, Kate, I know you can. "

Her body is suspended amidst the currents. His muffled voice is all she hears and she orients herself to it. He'll save her. He's here.

Except he's not.

"It's going to be okay, Beckett. I'm here."

"No…" she whispers. "No, you're not. And you haven't been in a long time, Castle."

She hears him release a sigh as she rights herself against her kitchen counter. Her knees are bloodied, and now the knobs from the cabinets are prodding at her spine, the ice of the metal seeping through the thin layer of cotton covering her frail body. She shudders.

"Kate."

"He bled out, Castle," she rasps. "For me. I told him I forgave him, had forgiven him, but he wouldn't listen. I tried, Castle. I –I tried to stop him. He just wouldn't budge. I swear he-"

"I know you did, Kate, shh. I know. It's okay. He knew. He knows now, wherever he is. It's not your fault. You hear me? It's not."

She wonders how she's managed so long without his voice, his words. They are a cooling balm against the raw, gaping wounds in her chest that have been weighing her down, infecting her mind, leaving her a withering mess on her bed at nights.

"I caught him, Castle." Maybe there is a cosmic answer as to why she keeps confessing her sins to this man, even when two continents and an ocean lay barrier between them.

"The man who killed my mom." She hears a gasp on the other side of the phone, imagines his eyes going comically wide as he stutters to find his next words.

"Did you, uh-did you find out why he did it?" The restrained hunger in his voice slices through her receiver, and her body curls in on itself. Another person let down.

"Somebody paid him to do it. But I had to shoot him before I could find out who. He would've killed Ryan if I hadn't."

"I…" his voice peters out, and they are left with silence, broken only by their occasional heaving breaths.

She hears him sigh, frustrated with himself. "I don't know what to say."

"I dreamt about you that night," her head hits the cabinets as confessions float without her consent. "I dreamt that I was the one who was on the ground, dying. And that you came up to me and told me, 'stand up'. Because there was still work to be done. When I woke up that morning I just wanted to call you, but we hadn't talked in so long."

She shrugs to an empty apartment. She feels like a fool. She had spent half of the previous year convincing herself that she'd built things up between them in her mind. There was no real connection between them, no spark. She was just a source of inspiration. What they had was ordinary. A slightly, mutually-beneficial partnership, at best.

And one night of release for all the pent up heat smoldering between them, ending with her shoving him out the door at three a.m.

All of her efforts are unraveling in their vast, all-encompassing glory now.

"You should've called."

"I almost did. I must've picked up the phone a thousand times," she admits, fingerings outlining the bloodied glass jutting out of her knees. "But I couldn't do it. Why didn't you call, Castle? It's Europe. Not Antarctica. You could've called, texted, e-mailed. Even a pigeon scroll would've been nice. Was our rel- partnership nothing to you?"

"Of course not, Beckett, you know that's not what it was. I heard about Josh. Ryan told me-"

"Oh, so you kept in touch with Ryan? I was the only one who you froze out, wasn't I?"

She brings the phone to her front when no reply comes her way, squints as the numbers indicating the call duration rush by.

"You said we were over, Kate. You pushed me out, said it was the right way to say goodbye. I... that night… I still think about it, you know? Never forgot."

Her breath catches in her throat, serpentine as it chokes her. She can't do this. She can't let herself think about that night when she has to bury her dead captain come morning.

She refuses to give herself the luxury of remembering the warmth that had radiated through his body moving against hers, cocooning them in her sheets, blissfully ignorant of the harsh morning that lay ahead. How his hands felt in her hair, twining till he had the assurance that she wouldn't disappear. How his thick digits had interlaced themselves with the dips between her ribs as he licked a fiery path up her sternum, setting her aflame-

"Beckett, I messed up."

The gravel of his timber erupts gooseflesh on her skin in its wake. She is powerless against the affect he has on her, always has been. Now, as memories of the passion that had bloomed between them play out in technicolor behind her shut eyes, it's takes every bit of resolve in her not to yell it's okay, I forgive you. Come back. I want you...

"Kate, you told me to go and I did. I was hurt and I let my ego take over, I'm such an idiot. I shouldn't have left. I-"

She sighs in relief at his words, has waited for them for longer than she cares to admit. They were stupid, rash, lashing out against the hurt they'd inflicted since that night at the party.

Not enough character.

A better writer.

But she still isn't equipped to handle this turmoil tonight.

"I, uh, I don't have time for this. I can't do this right now. I have a funeral to be at tomorrow. I –I'll talk to you later."

She rushes out and cuts the call before his protests are even out of his mouth, slams the phone against the floor as if it burns.

There are tiny trickles of blood dripping down her knees where the glass is embedded in her flesh and she tends to it. Anything to get her mind off what tonight was, or what lies ahead in the morning.

She's greeted with a text when she opens her eyes to the sunlight saturating her room, and an involuntary smile flickers across her lips.

Even though their conversation was just short of a disaster, it had ignited something inside of her. Hope. a feral, treacherous thing, but there nonetheless. They had something worth fighting for.

My flight leaves at noon, I'll be there by tomorrow. I'm coming home, Kate. Just wait for me, okay? If you give me another chance, I won't let you go.
Roy is proud of you. Never doubt that. You'll be amazing today, as usual. You can do this.

He's managed to make the day she's been dreading a fraction more bearable without even being here.

The daze enveloping her doesn't disintegrate until she's at the podium reiterating the words the Captain had bestowed upon her.

"And in the end, the best you could hope for is to find a place to make your stand. And if you're very lucky, you find someone willing to stand with you."

For an instant, her thoughts circle back to him.He's coming back. Home, he'd said.

I'm not letting you go.

The faint whispers of her heart says they might still have a chance to dive in, be there for each other, make a stand.

A zip of electricity straight to her core brings her to her surroundings and she stumbles back. Her nerves are instantly fraying; there is so much incomprehension and chaos, so she finds solace in gravity. The blue of the skies carpets her vision; she finds it comforting. It reminds her of the eyes she had poured her soul into when he'd risen above her, kissing the flush tinting her cheeks, her neck, her heart, as his body moved with hers.

Castle.

Familiar faces crowd around, distraught evident in their weeping eyes. And all she can think about as the lights fade is that they are eclipsing the blue. She can't see him anymore. She needs to see him.

"Cas… I –Cassle."

The syllables are entangled on her tongue; liquid fire flowing in her veins as the black engulfs her and his name becomes nothing but a silent scream echoing through her bones.

prompt: In 3x24, he didn't come back from their fight so he wasn't there at the funeral (or some other plausible reason for his absence) and didn't know she was shot until he gets a call from ryan half stuttering, half crying from the hospital saying that she passed out gasping castle's name.

AN: I hope you guys liked this. Feedback is always appreciated. :)

Ericka, i can't thank you enough. This story would be nothing without you. You're the best beta/sugar mama a girl could ask for.

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