A/N: Completely and utterly AU. I'm not sure how or why this episode evoked this kind of idea, and originally, it was supposed to be far more similar to a storyline in 8x16, but somewhere throughout the writing process, this story took on a life of its own. I owe you all a far more relevant post-ep/insert for this episode in the future.

"I was ready to abandon everything because I couldn't picture a life without you."

Castle shifts awake to the buzz of his phone, his neck aching with stiffness as he lifts his head from the chair, the dim glow of the open laptop searing his eyes for the second it takes him to adjust to his surroundings. Fell asleep in his office again, the blank word document glaring back at him, not an uncommon occurrence, but something had woken him-

The vibration atop his desk starts up again and Rick grabs for the dancing device, swipes his thumb across the screen and brings it to his ear without glancing at the string of numbers glaring back at him.

"Hello?" he croaks out, clearing his throat and leaning forward to prop his elbows on the surface of his desk, using one hand to scrub the grit of sleep from his eyes.

"Hi, yes, Mr. Castle?" a male voice greets him, sounding far too awake for… well, it's only seven p.m. on a Saturday night, but far too awake for Castle's preference nonetheless.

"That's me," Castle mutters, scraping his hand through his hair, blinking past the last of slumber and popping his spine, wincing at the loud creak of his chair at the action.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I'm calling because you're listed as an emergency contact for Katherine Beckett?"

The man voices it as a question, expecting an immediate answer, but Rick has gone stiff in his chair, nearly losing his grip on the phone in his hand.

"Kate? I don't – is this some kind of joke?"

"Uh, no, sir. I apologize, I should have introduced myself first. My name is Josh Davidson, I was her surgeon today and-"

"Surgeon?" Castle sputters, beginning to stand, but his legs are shaking. "How - Kate is dead."

"Well, almost, but no," the man – the surgeon, Doctor Davidson, reveals on a sigh. "The bullet hit her chest, close to her heart, and nicked an artery, but she's going to make it."

"Bullet?" he breathes, clutching the edge of his desk to refrain from collapsing. "She – she was shot? She's alive?"

A moment of silence on the other line leaves him hanging on the edge of horror, enough time for Castle to question if this is all some sick type of dream. It wouldn't be the first time she had overtaken his mind while he slept, while awake too, but then the surgeon clears his throat.

"Mr. Castle, why don't you come down to the hospital? I think it's better we have this conversation in person."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right," Rick agrees, standing from his office chair on unsteady legs and striding into his bedroom, rifling through his closet for a jacket, stepping into a pair of shoes. "What's the address?"

Rick spills out of the cab, into the entrance of the hospital, takes the elevator to the third floor, just like Doctor Davidson had told him. His heart is pounding painfully in his chest, unwilling to believe that she could actually be alive, that this could be more than some sadistic trick to torture him further, but he can't help hoping for it. Regardless of the years of therapy, of forcing himself to accept that she was gone, he hoped with everything he had that by some miracle, this was his Kate Beckett, somehow raised from the dead.

He reaches the front desk and sputters out his name, her name too, even though it sounds strangled coming from his mouth after three years. A tall, well-muscled man in scrubs comes through before the nurse can finish searching for the information Castle seeks, his mask down around his neck, a faint smear of blood along the side of his shirt that has Rick feeling dizzy.

"Mr. Castle?" the man, same one with the voice he heard on the phone, addresses him, and Castle manages a nod, accepts the hand Josh Davidson holds out to him once he comes around the front desk. "Thank you for coming, sir."

"Thank you for calling," Castle answers automatically. "How - how is she? Can I see her? Can I-"

"She's stable. We finished the surgery about a half hour ago, minutes before I called you. We had attempted to call beforehand, but-"

"No, my fault. Wasn't paying attention to my phone," Castle explains, raking his fingers through his hair for the hundredth times, afraid to see what the oily strands must look like by now. Kate used to tease him for the bad habit, the way his hair stuck out in different directions when he combed his hand through it too much, playfully complaining about how she'd have to smooth the unruly strands, brush them back into place with her slim fingers.

"Visiting hours are over, but I can take you to see her, if you'd-"

"Please," Castle gets out, willing to beg if he has to. He just needs to see her, just needs to know if it's really her.

Doctor Davidson nods and holds open a door for Castle to pass through, leads him down a hallway, talking all the while about Kate's surgery, the GSW to the chest she's now recovering from, and he knows he should be listening, but it's the first time in three years someone has spoken about Kate in a present tense and he's having a hard time wrapping his head around much else.

"She's right through here," Davidson informs him once they reach one of many white doors lining the hallway. "I should inform you that she's going to look a lot worse than she actually is, but I can assure you, your fiancé is okay, Mr. Castle."

Your fiancé.

His heart is on the verge of breaking wide open, but he doesn't have time to mend the ripped pieces, plug the gaping holes, before Doctor Davidson is easing open the door, allowing Rick to step inside on his own.

The room is dark, streaks of light from the city streaming in to bathe the space in the shade of moonlight, and the woman in the hospital bed appears absolutely tiny, overwhelmed by the web of wires stretching out from her arms, the tube down her throat, but Castle ventures closer, manages to gain a better look from the edge of her hospital bed.

He nearly collapses to his knees.

"Kate," he breathes, his eyes already swimming with tears that burn, the slam of his heart against his ribs drowning out the beat of her own heart beeping on the monitor.

She's been shot in the chest, but she lives. She had never died to begin with.

The first time he had met Kate Beckett had been at a book signing he still couldn't remember no matter how hard he tried, no matter how he willed the memory to exist for him too, but their second meeting, he could still recall all too clearly.

It had only been a few short years later, according to Kate, while she had been working a case that he had inadvertently become wrapped up in. She'd thought him an asshole when she first spoke with him in an interrogation room, her temper flaring when he seemed more interested than concerned that a person was dead, murdered in a way that matched deaths portrayed in his novels, but despite the way he caused her irritation to flare, he was proven innocent.

And helpful.

He had shamelessly weaseled his way into accompanying her on one of her first major cases of her career, determined to see it through, to learn who had taken his years of hard work as a cover for their killings. She had tolerated him, forced him to keep his distance until the very last second, when he ended up with a gun to his skull and Alison Tisdale's murderer holding him hostage in an alley for a few minutes.

But once it was all over, once Kate had cuffed the guy and they were left standing face to face on the sidewalk, he hadn't wanted to say goodbye. He had been at the pinnacle of his success with Storm, everything in his life going well, his ten year old daughter happy and thriving, but there was still an emptiness that crept up on him at the end of the day, left him feeling hollow and worn every night.

"Well, I guess this is it," she had surmised, her eyes shimmering in the afternoon light, a hypnotic shade of hazel with traces of brown and green, tiny flecks of gold, that had captivated him from the second she had crashed his book party days earlier.

He lacked no inspiration when it came to Storm, had enough for at least five more best-sellers, but the woman that had stood in front of him that day had inspired him in other ways, made him want things he had let go of after he'd walked in on Meredith and her director years back while his daughter had been sleeping upstairs.

He'd locked his heart into a cage after that, threw away the key to keep it safe, but it slipped through the iron bars of his ribs, swam up to sit on his sleeve for Kate Beckett.

"It doesn't have to be." Her brow had arched with subtle intrigue, her bottom lip succumbing to the bite of her teeth. "We could go out for a celebratory dinner."

"Why, Castle? So I can be another one of your conquests?" she had mused, teasing him, and he'd thrown her a charming smile, but deflated at the lessening probability of a chance with her.

It shouldn't have bothered him. He rarely experienced rejection when it came to women, but he rarely sought much more than a one night stand, a casual fling, and at the time, he had been unaware of what it was about Kate Beckett that caused him to crave more than that. If it had been the challenge pursuing her would present, or the building need to know the story she hid behind her kaleidoscopic eyes, or simply because she was different from anyone else he had ever met.

All he had known in that moment was that he didn't want to try and charm her with the tired lines that he already knew wouldn't work, didn't want to put on the playboy mask he had worn those first couple of days with her; he didn't want to give up.

"You read the papers then," he'd concluded, somewhat grimly as she had tilted her head in curiosity.

"I don't read them," she had corrected. "I see headlines, photographs. Evidence."

"Thought you were smart, Detective," he had quipped, surprise and the threat of indignation igniting in her eyes. "Not everything you read on Page Six is real."

A touch of color had kissed her cheeks, gentle streaks of red caressing her throat, but Kate hadn't averted her eyes, hadn't allowed her momentary embarrassment to show, and he gave it one more try.

"So, dinner?"

She had huffed in surrender.

"Fine, but just dinner. No debriefing afterwards," she had informed him with a narrowed gaze, evoking a startled laugh from his chest that had a nearby uniform shooting him an odd glance.

"Only if you're the one to initiate it," he'd tossed back with a shrug, earned a roll of her eyes in response.

"I have to head back to the station for now, handle the paperwork, call you when I'm done?"

His heart had begun to tremble with excitement and Castle had nodded, watched her turn on her heel and walk away from him with a purposeful swing in her hips, strength and confidence radiating through her every step, and all he could do for a handful of seconds was stand there motionless and stare.

The beginning of the end for them both.

"I pick the place," she had informed him later that evening when he had shown up on the steps of the Twelfth, and Castle hadn't argued, all too keen to follow wherever she chose to go.

He had offered to call the town car for them, allow them some privacy, but Kate had opted for a walk, claiming the diner she assured him he would love was only a few blocks away, so he had popped a pair of sunglasses on his face, a hat on his head, and strolled through the streets beside her.

"Oh, no way, Remy's?" he had exclaimed before she could lead them inside, and Kate had glanced over her shoulder with a spark of pleasant surprise in her gaze.

"You've been here?"

"Of course," he had scoffed, reaching past her to hold the door open and allow her to walk in first. "I live for their burgers. And don't get me started on the shakes."

The smile that had claimed her lips had been small, subdued, but breathtaking. He had immediately wanted to see it again, to coax it into blooming wider.

They had ended up in a booth near the back that was apparently Kate's regular spot, talked late into the evening, long past the disposals of their meals, the consumption of their shakes, and the two cups of coffee that had followed. He never determined why exactly he had found it so easy to be himself around her so quickly, but there had been no appearance of his usual persona that night at the diner, and while he knew even then that he had been far from breaking past Kate Beckett's walls, that night had been the beginning of the brick by brick demolition.

"Walk you home?" Castle had asked once the bill had finally been paid, his card slipped to the waitress before Beckett could withdraw her purse.

"Your daughter?" she had answered with a tender curl to the corner of her mouth, because of course he had managed to spend at least half of their dinner gushing over Alexis, watching Kate soften with every word about his little girl.

"My mother has her tonight."

"Okay then, Castle," she had murmured, standing from the booth and waiting for him to join her before they had started for the door, his hand grazing the small of her back on the way out. "Walk me home."

Home, for Kate, was an apartment in Tribeca, a lengthier journey from the diner than his loft in SoHo would have been, but Castle had relished in the half hour stroll, intent on the chance to listen to her talk about the case, about her job, almost as passionately as he spoke about his child.

"This is me," she had sighed once they had come to a stop in front of her place, but for the first time that night, Kate had looked reluctant, glancing to security door and back to him. The streetlamps, the ever-glowing light of the city, had cast shadows across her face, snagging on her jaw, her cheekbones, but the burn of gold in her eyes had shone bright. "Do you want to come up?"

"For coffee?" he had supplied, offering her an out. He had known what she was asking, the current of electricity that had existed between them from the moment they'd met crackling, on the verge of combustion, but he wanted more than fireworks for a night.

Kate had gnawed on her bottom lip and drifted closer to him, their fingers brushing in the darkness. "We already had coffee."

"Thought you said no debriefing tonight."

"Thought you said only if I was the one initiating it," she had challenged, her eyes sparkling in the night, and it had been laughable really, that he thought he'd had any hope of resisting her.

"Not a conquest," he had warned her, his fingers seeking hers out, their digits loosely twined between them. She hadn't told him about her mother that night, wouldn't tell him for a few more weeks, but he had been able to sense the loss that he learned would define her, had been able to assess that something more than a night together was not what she was looking for. But he would persuade her, or at least, he would try.

Kate had hummed, tugged on his hand until he followed her inside, into the elevator. "What then?"

The heat of her body had been scalding even through the layers of clothing still between them in the small space of the elevator when she leaned in, the skim of her nose to his cheek, her lips at his jaw, eliciting trails of fire along his skin.

"A chance?" he had bargained, claiming her hips with his hands while the lift climbed to her floor.

"For?"

"To see where this goes," he had decided, because really, that was all he wanted. Not a promise, not love, not yet. Just something real.

Kate had hesitated, drawn him out of the elevator when the doors slid open, paused once her door was unlocked and they were standing inside a dark apartment, the heat of her breath searing his lips.

"Okay," she had conceded right before she kissed him.

She's drowning, a sea of black all around, pressing down on her chest. Too much pressure, not enough air, and no hope of survival. She breathes, fire down her throat, spreading through her lungs, her chest – her chest burns. Something anchors her, though, a warm weight that clings to her left hand, forces her to inhale, exhale, even though each breath aches fiercely, spreads wildfire through her veins.

Him. Somehow, she knows it must be Castle. Her last thought before the bullet had pierced her chest, her blood seeping out onto the cold concrete beneath her. The regret had washed over her before the pain, the realization that she would never see Castle again, that he would never know the truth, that she never wanted to leave him. Not then and not now.

It hadn't been her choice, not three years ago. Now, she accepts that there was always a choice, that she could have chosen a different way to protect him, to protect his family and her own, a way that didn't force her to abandon him for so long. But Montgomery had insisted it was the only way, promised her that it wouldn't be long, that the Dragon would leave her alone if she fell off the grid, played dead until the beast was slain.

And she had believed him, believed her captain until he had been killed, no closer to catching Bracken than they were three years ago.

It hadn't been worth it. Leaving the man she loved, the girl who had grown up before her eyes, who she had loved just as much she would her own child, the family she had died to protect. All for nothing in the end.

She's alive, this state of limbo she floats through too painful to be death, but what does it matter if she's alone? She doesn't want to do it alone anymore.

Tears continue to leak from her closed eyes and although the nurses have assured him it's nothing to worry about, Castle catches them with his thumb, wipes the moisture from her skin with his fingertip.

It's been twelve hours since he had arrived the night before, but he hadn't moved, flirting with the nurses and signing books to keep his place at Kate's bedside. He texted Alexis a half hour ago, knowing she won't wake for another hour or two, told her to call when she had a chance.

He doesn't know how his daughter will react to Kate being alive, if her anger will win out or her relief, her gratitude, will outshine the betrayal, or if she will feel every possible emotion all at once, like he does.

He's intimately familiar with the seven stages of grief, and he's cycled through them once again here with her in this hospital room, gone from sobbing in relief to pacing the room with anger, silently demanding how she could do this to him, how she could disappear, make him, his daughter, believe she was dead all this time?

He had received his answer around four a.m., when Michael Smith had shown up.

Before Kate's staged death in the explosion of her apartment, before he'd been told that there was nothing left of the woman he loved other than charred remains and the wedding ring he wore on a chain around his neck, they had worked on her mother's case together. He'd known all along that it could be dangerous, that there could be consequences, but he had never fathomed this.

"The senator wanted her dead, Mr. Castle. Needed that loose end tied," the eerily calm man known as Smith had explained just inside the doorway of her hospital room. "So Montgomery and I worked together to ensure Bracken believed that Kate Beckett died in her apartment that night before he could ensure it himself."

"I could have known," Castle had protested, his voice a harsh whisper, rage quiet and alive in his chest, but Smith had shaken his head.

"No one could know. Detective Beckett was not the only one the Dragon had eyes on." He had tossed a file into Castle's lap and Rick's blood had run cold, ice water drenching his insides once the folder was open on his lap.

Photos, a thick stack of them. Pictures of Kate in his home, Kate with him, his daughter, even his mother, dates stamped on the bottom. "She received those the day before her death. She went to Montgomery for help and this was our only solution at the time, the quickest one."

Castle had closed the file, handed it back to the man before he could become sick.

"I would've taken her away," Castle rasped, lifting his eyes to the ceiling to control the build of tears along the rims of his eyes. "I would have taken her someplace safe."

"To Detective Beckett's credit," Smith had stated. "She was unwilling to go through with the plan, only stuck with it as long as she did because she had genuine belief that Bracken and the threat he posed to those she loved would be subdued within a short time."

"He's not, though," Castle had answered, his jaw hard, but his hand reaching out to cover Kate's frigid fingers.

They weren't taking her again.

"No, but he will be. Very soon. And we have Detective Beckett to thank for that."

"Wait," Castle had called when Smith turned to leave, his hand pausing above the door handle. "Is she safe now? Is she – can she come home?"

"She will be safe, but in the meantime, Mr. Castle, I would advise taking that trip you mentioned until she is back to full health. Well enough to testify in court. The longer Detective Beckett lives as a ghost, the better."

Castle skims his thumbs to the paper-thin skin beneath her eye, gathering the last tear from the corner. She needs her rest, needs as much time within the drug induced sleep that she can manage, but he wants so badly for her to wake, to see her eyes again for the first time in too long.

"Kate," he murmurs, lowering back to his seat beside her bed, cradling her left hand in both of his. "Come back. Come home."

She isn't sure what's real, what's a dream, a nightmare, but when she wakes, Castle is the first thing she sees before her body begins to thrash and writhe with panic at the sensation of a tube down her throat.

"Shh, Kate, it's helping you breathe," he had whispered, his body leaning over her, his aftershave in the air and his warmth all around her, and she whimpered around the chest tube as a nurse and doctor rushed inside, her unrestrained hand reaching for him, her eyes clinging to the brilliant blue of his gaze.

Oh, she missed him. She had missed him so damn much.

"You're okay," Castle promised her while the doctor talked her through the removal of the tube, his hand rising to her hair, his thumb stroking at her temple, almost soothing enough to distract her from the scraping agony of her throat, how each breath felt like a hammer to her chest, a razor blade down her trachea. "Just breathe, sweetheart. Just breathe."

Sweetheart. Fuck, he still… did this mean – would he be calling her pet names if he were finished with her? Would he be here at all?

Kate coughs, blinks through the tears that he tries in vain to wipe away, and reaches up for his arm, her fingers tripping at his wrist before he can gently grab her hand, bring her knuckles to his lips.

"I'm right here, Kate," he promises her, and her eyes flutter shut, but it's all she needs to continue forcing the breath in and out of her broken chest.

"I'm sorry," is the first thing she says to him when she can speak, the words dragging past her chapped lips, and the sound of her voice is the trigger to his grief, the visceral outpour of it, and Castle chokes on another sob, turning his head away from her. "Cassle. C'mere. Please, please-"

He could barely touch her, too afraid to hurt her, but he couldn't ignore her either, couldn't help the way he migrated forward at her pitiful call, draping his body over her hospital bed to press his face to the unmarred skin of her neck.

"So sorry," she rasps, her lips brushing the edge of his cheekbone, her hand still tangled in his and her fingers squeezing. "I'm so sorry, Rick."

"You're alive," he chokes, raising a delicate hand to her jaw when her head gingerly turns, her nose at his eyebrow and her tears falling to his skin. "They said you were dead, they - you were gone for so long, Kate. You were dead-"

She keens, the sound breathless and pained, and he jerks up, afraid it's the bullet wound, but the torment claiming her face is of a different kind of agony, one she shares with him.

"I didn't want to be," she wheezes, her heart monitor picking up speed, and Castle strokes the loose strands of hair back from her forehead, attempts to calm her before her breathing can become unsteady, before the barely subdued ache in her chest can flare up and overtake. "I just wanted - wanted to keep you safe. Keep-" Her lips tremble with the inhale she struggles past. "Keep my family safe."

"I know," he whispers, tracing his thumb along the sharp angle of her jaw. "I - I met Smith, he told me everything, and I'm sorry too, Kate. Sorry you thought you had to do this alone."

"Couldn't lose you," she gets out, her breathing falling steady once more, slowing down. She was beginning to fade, but she fought to hold on, her eyes blinking furiously, her fingers clinging to his. "Think I did anyway."

He chokes on a laugh, better than crying, and shakes his head, eases back a little to retrieve the chain from beneath his shirt. Probably not the right time to do this, but she looks so afraid, sounds so certain that he's given up on her, so he maneuvers the chain over his head with one hand, undoes the clasp with his thumbnail and eases the ring free.

"Didn't lose me. Couldn't let you go," he admits, holding the ring up for her to see and her lips quirk even as she begins to cry again, more tears shed in these last few minutes than the five years they spent together before he lost her.

"Still mine?" she mumbles, and he can't decipher whether she's referring to the engagement ring or him. Either way-

"Yeah, Kate," he assures her, untangling their hands to slip the ring back onto her slim finger, sparing a second to admire the glimmer of the subtle diamonds in the morning light pouring into her room. "Still yours."

She's already fading, her eyes falling shut, but she flexes her fingers, angles her head towards him as he reclaims his seat next to her bed.

"Stay," she sighs out, softly and with a slight wince.

"I will if you will," he says, the words out of his mouth before he can consider them appropriate, but while her eyes don't open, Kate hums her assent.

"Deal."