"All rise!"

The bailiff's voice breaks up the jumbled chorus of voices debating in her mind. She almost forgets to rise from the bench in the back until she sees the news reporter next to her stand up. And once she's on her feet, feeling unsteady and unbalanced in her heels, she tries her best to remain as stoic and strong as possible. Her eyes are forcing themselves not to look in the direction of the man standing up from the front of the courtroom, clad in a prison jumpsuit. She's having to force herself not to do more things than she is having to force herself to do things, having to break herself of old habits that only seem normal when he's around.

It's been like that for almost two weeks now. Since last she heard from him.

The judge, standing no taller than five foot seven, an elderly black woman, sits down in the podium and carries with her an air of impatience and malcontents toward proper courtroom civility. "Be seated." She sighs loudly as she's hanging her square-rimmed reading glasses from her nose.

Beckett doesn't want to sit down now. Being seated would give her muscles the opportunity to relax. All that would do is make them jumpy, jittery, and nervous. But she complies, putting herself in harmony with the cub reporter next to her who's all too eager to take notes. Hopefully, she can dodge him before he asks who she is or before he catches sight of her badge, clipped to the waistband of her slacks.

She has too much to worry about without this happening. He's been trying to get the case retried for years now. And this time, he brought his wife, along with their nine-year-old son; a ploy for sympathy plotted by their new lawyer. She can just hear him now, telling the judge how 'an innocent man has only known his son through plate glass'. She would roll her eyes if she had the emotional energy to muster up being sarcastic. It's still too cluttered with dread, anxiousness, and a hint of shame thinking she was wrong.

"Mr. Williams," The judge sighs again heavily and looks at the prisoner over the rim off her glasses, "this is the third time you've appealed for a retrial. Am I to believe that new evidence has come to light that I don't know about?"

"Your Honor," The lawyer quickly stands, buttoning the middle button of his suit jacket. And when he stands, quick and confident like it's an accusation that everything she's done since she closed this case and made this arrest has been a mistake, like he's questioning every action she's taken up to this point as a cop with the simple acts of standing up. "My client was convicted on no other grounds other than he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Beckett clenches her jaw and glares at the back of the lawyer's head as he paces through the courtroom toward the judge.

"The investigation was mishandled on nearly every level! The-"

"Evidence!" The judge shouts, "Mr. Vernon."

The lawyer stops in his tracks, lifts his finger to the judge and spins around. His glaring eyes fall directly upon her, shooting her a familiar warning from the front of the courtroom to the back, where she sits, hiding behind the very few people that decided to show up. No one that's on her side. She never told anybody. She kept it to herself, all this time, until it's built to this, coming up against the odds alone. Not even her partner here at her side.

The lawyer picks up a file from the table and marches up to the podium, handing them to the judge before continuing. "My client's only crime was fitting the vague profile of a violent kidnapper and murderer, put together by a hot-headed rookie detective with a chip on her shoulder, your honor."

If she felt like a stronger person, she'd be angry. If she had someone by her side, if she hadn't let it get to this, she would get angry and have the confidence to say he's wrong. But she's alone... and all she feels is the need to cry. Because for all she knows, he could be right.

"The investigation was rushed and thrown together," she knows she's getting thrown into the spotlight by the way the lawyer turns and throws his hand in her direction, "by Detective Kate Beckett, who set her sights on an innocent man and put him away for crimes he didn't commit and because of that, because of the NYPD's negligence, letting a rookie detective who'd never even handled a case before in her career..."

When the lawyer turns back around she feels her blood clench against the walls of her veins and a cold sweat rush against her skin.

"Another couple has been murdered."

The courtroom erupts in a violent uproar with camera shutters clicking, eyes whipping in her direction, the reporter next to her already buzzing in her ear, and voices loudly muttering in disbelief and shock.

"Order! Order!" The judge bangs her gavel five times until the court settles. And once the silence falls over them, Beckett's bones let out a violent shiver. If he were here, she'd be grabbing his hand and giving it a hard squeeze. If they were alone, she'd be hugging his chest as tight as she could and hiding herself in the cove of his arms and the warmth of his skin.

It's all her fault. She can't even begin to wrap her already muddled mind around how much of this she'll have to go up against. Alone.

"As you can see, your honor," the lawyer begins again, "a couple was found three days ago in upstate New York, having been tortured and killed, matching the exact MO my client was falsely accused of using ten years ago."

The judge flips over one of the papers in the file, then looks back up to the lawyer, and Beckett knows she's genuinely curious. "And the grounds of the retrial are?" She asks in a much softer, less angry tone.

"On the grounds that there were details used in this killing that match exactly the details in the original case. And those details were never made public, your honor. On those grounds, I would like to move for a retrial."

The judge sighs and when her hand moves to grab the gavel, Beckett knows. A sealing of her fate as it lands hard against the podium. She's bursting her legs with energy as the judge is still giving orders for the retrial. She's pushing open the doors to the courtroom before the reporter can ask her any questions and before she is put up against more than she can handle. She can hear the chatter in the courtroom as she rushes on very unsure footing down the marble hall and down out into the humid late-spring air of the city.

She chokes back her burning eyes until she's safely behind the wheel of her car, parked in a back corner of the parking structure of the building. Even here, she makes them small, silent pairs of screaming pain. As she reaches for her phone, she consciously thinks that the only thing she wants right now, what she'd kill for, is just to be able to break down, just for once. She wants to be able to be in someone's arms and just sob, for as long as it takes to put herself back together and not be judged any lesser for it.

He'd know.

He'd know that she just needed to let it out so she could be strong again. He'd tell her that she's just as strong as she always was, even as she wipes her tears on one of his silk button-up dress shirts. He'd know that it was just the pain that she bottles up venting out, that it was nothing he did or didn't do, and that all he needed to do was put his arms around her and hold her so she doesn't hit the floor.

But she's not allowed any of that. She's not allowed to break down, not allowed to waver or flinch. She's not even allowed to admit she makes mistakes. It's hard for anyone, but she's just not allowed to admit that she makes mistakes, that she's still human. She has to be something stronger than human to stay as stoic as she has been. And it's only in the darkest of times in her life, like now, when she has no choice but to admit it's nothing more than bravado, and that the only way to make any sort of progress in anything is to admit that she made a mistake.

And staring at his caller ID photo, his soft smirk and gleaming, bright blue eyes, his soft and stylish hair and his lips, lips that she's been dwelling on kissing again a lot lately... she has to admit it. She made a terrible mistake. One that she's been dreading having to face down. But now, she doesn't have a choice.

It wasn't all that hard to figure out what drove him away. And when she pieced it together, she took the easy way out and waited for the situation to fix itself. But in the back of her mind, she knew when she took that road that it wouldn't. The still warm cup of coffee sitting on the very edge of her desk with her partner nowhere in sight. The subtle anger and tension in his voice as they pushed the truth out of Leann West and the eventual realization that he was talking about someone else when he lectured her about 'sinning by silence'.

They were so close to getting there. Close enough to where she could just feel the softness of his lips on her again.

It was a mistake she was hoping would take itself back as they grew closer. But now... she hasn't even spoken or heard from him in two weeks.

Her thumb hesitantly hovers over the call icon on her phone, knowing he won't answer, knowing he'd see her calling and tighten his brow, scoff and shove his phone away in anger that she's even making the attempt. She can't text him, it'd be pointless. He'd see her name on the screen and not even bother to read it. What would she say to him anyway? The only thing she can think to say is that she needs help.

Her car's engine is firing up and echoing off the concrete walls before the better of her senses comes back and asks her what it is she's doing. And after suffering through an hour's worth of traffic as she struggles to get through to SoHo, she parks outside his loft and looks up to his windows. She can just imagine what he's doing, if he's writing Nikki Heat with his feet propped up on the edge of his desk, using her voice and mannerisms to create a character. There's even been times this year when she'd indulge herself and imagine herself lazily slumping out of his bedroom in nothing but the shirt she tore off him the previous night, finding him leaned back in his office chair and coming up behind him, putting her arms around his neck and feathering kisses along his ear.

Her heart can still put her up there even now. And if she's still daydreaming about them, what they could be like, it's an indication that if she's going to get passed this mistake, she's going to have to start admitting that she made one.

And as she makes her way to the second floor and knocks on the door at the end of the hall, it's the first time that she's worried about this door being slammed in her face. But she can't do this on her own, she needs someone who believes in her the way he does. And the only way she knows she can get through this is with him... with Castle.

A/N: Seeing where this prompt takes me. Been in my head a while. Let me know what you think. :)