A/N - Spoilers up to Rise and Heat Rises. No character death.

Detective Beckett searches wildly through the darkness of the warehouse, eyes wide as she tries to locate anything, anything that will help her. She remains still, tries to control her breathing, to remain silent. The bales of garbage rise above her, arranged in aisles that make up an endless maze through which her pursuers have chased her. She feels like a lab rat, only instead of searching for cheese at the end the scientists have let loose vicious cats behind her.

The warehouse ceiling is so far above that she can't see it in the gloom, and the walls are even farther away. But the lights of the city are reflected off the water some fifty yards to her left, and she uses this small light to orient herself. If only it weren't so late at night, workers might be loading barges with piles of trash to be taken to landfills. If only she'd thought quicker, she'd have known coming inside would leave her trapped instead of sheltered. If only…

A movement closer to the water than she is grabs her attention, pulls her focus to a pinpoint. She knows where he is now. She reaches to her belt for her gun, but it isn't there. Where is her gun? Where is her badge? Where is her phone, her ID, her mother's necklace? None of them are on her person, but she is clutching a set of keys. Her only weapon.

She fists her hand around them, arranges them to protect her knuckles and disable her enemies. Not exactly Wolverine, she thinks, and it echoes with familiarity in the back of her mind. No time for that now.

The shadow is moving closer now, looking for all its size like a cat stalking prey, with its shoulders hunched and head down. If the man had a tail she was sure it would be twitching with anticipation.

Closer and closer he comes, while she waits out of sight, crouched around the corner amidst the city's refuse. He reaches the corner and she pounces, turning the metaphorical table on him. She moves upward, hits him under the jaw with her key-clawed fist, and it's obvious he wasn't expecting an attack from that direction. But she can see his face now, and she is not surprised when he quickly recovers, because he is a trained killer.

He is Dick Coonan, and he holds a knife in one hand and a gun in the other.

But a puncture in the neck is enough to slow even the best, and Beckett takes advantage. In the tussle, his weapons are knocked to the ground and she loses her keys, but she is back on top and reaching for the gun.

Before she can close her fist around it, he kicks it away, out of both their reaches. She scrambles after it, desperate to get their first, but he has recovered his knife. She dodges a stab and a swipe, searching wildly again. She sees the workbench at the end of this aisle, an oasis of human tools in the middle of a desert of waste.

There is an ax. A fire ax, and she must have it. She sprints down the narrow aisle, past the intersection where it widens to accommodate the bench at the end. She knows she has passed over the gun, but she knows where the ax is; she can see it. She can spend her time searching for the gun, at the mercy of Coonan, or she can break for the tool, and hope for the best.

She makes it to the bench without feeling any burning sensation from his knife in her back, but she can hear him close behind, and as soon as she has the ax in hand she whirls around. Coonan has his gun back, and it is aimed at her, until the ax comes down and suddenly his hand is no longer attached to his body. It's a lot less funny than it was on Doctor Who.

Coonan drops the knife in order to clutch at his bleeding limb, and falls to the floor moaning. Beckett looks around for something to tie it with. Evil or no, she is sworn to protect people, and leaving someone—even the one who killed her mother—to bleed out is not an option.

A second shadow, somewhere off to her left, now, catches her eye, and she instinctively reaches for her own gun again, before remembering that it's not there. She relaxes for a second, though, when she realizes shadow number two is only Castle. But in the same instant she recognizes the panic on his face, he is on top of her, forcing her to the ground, and she hears the echo of a gunshot reverberate around the warehouse, bouncing off the bales and posts and ceiling.

Shadow number three is quickly approaching, and his face is eerily illuminated by the rippling water. Raglan. His smoking gun is still aimed at her head as he walks ever closer, the sneer on his face making him look demonic in the pale light. She claps a hand to the ground beside her, pulls the gun from the grasp of the limp hand, and brings it up. Two bullets; one to the forehead and then one to the heart. She can feel her own scar burn as blood pours from the identical location in Raglan.

She doesn't watch as he falls to the ground.

"I don't know how you found me, Castle, but your timing does not suck." She wraps her arms around him, still on top of her as he is, in a show of gratitude that she wouldn't normally condone.

He doesn't respond.

"Castle?"

She pushes at his chest, frantic now, desperate to hear his voice. Still he says nothing, and she rolls them over, kneels beside him in the dewy grass. She pulls her hands away and her pristine white gloves are stained with red.

He's opened his eyes, now, but his lips are tinged blue with frost. The glaring sun overhead is no longer cheerful—it's overbearing, and she wishes it would go away. She wishes she wasn't surrounded by trees and tombstones, wishes Castle wasn't lying bleeding in her arms.

"Stay with me, Castle," she begs. And then, when his eyes close with a finality that stops her heart, she leans in and whispers, "Castle, I love you. I love you, Castle."

But this is all wrong. Those are not her words, and it is not her voice saying them. She's never said those words.

She follows him into the ambulance, watches helplessly as he crashes. Lanie is on his chest, now, performing CPR, making his heart pump for him, trying to keep him alive long enough to make it to the hospital. She sits emotionlessly in the hallway where they left her, saying she could no longer follow him. She doesn't react when Alexis shoves her, blames it on her, or when Esposito holds the young woman back. She doesn't react because Alexis is right.

A doctor—a surgeon—Josh—appears through the swinging doors. All eyes snap to him, but he says in a small voice, "Family of Richard Castle?" And he has that look—that look they get when they're not there to deliver good news.

Beckett steps back from him, the look of apology in his eyes cutting through her and stealing her breath. "No," she whispers faintly. "No," again, with more conviction. More denial.

"No," and it's a moan this time. She jerks violently in the bed, sits up and throws the covers off. She claws at her clothes, checking to see if they are her dress blues or the jacket she'd worn to the warehouse, or maybe even her hoodie from the freezer. To see if they are covered in blood.

She is wearing one of her oversized sleep shirts, and leggings, and they are free of blood.

But the image that is seared into her eyes is still Castle, lying immobile and bloody. That wasn't what happened, she tells herself. She is the one who was shot, he is the one who said he loved her, and she is the one who lied and said she didn't remember.

She looks at her bedside table where Heat Rises lay, bookmark resting on top because she'd finished it last night. Damn Castle and the books he'd written. But she doesn't mean that.

She thinks of what he wrote in the acknowledgments, the way he repeated his words from the cemetery for the whole world to read, but in a language only she would understand. Not to mention how to make sense of songs.

How do you know when you're in love?

If anything happened to him…

Breathe, she tells herself. He is fine. He's safely in his loft, and she's in her apartment only a few blocks away. She doesn't need to see him to know that he's okay. That he's still breathing and his heart's still beating. She doesn't.

She lies back down, settles into the depression in the worn mattress, and pulls the blankets over herself once more. She turns her back to the nightstand, refusing to look at the book with his picture on the cover. More importantly, she ignores her phone. If she doesn't look at it, maybe she won't be so tempted to call. Just to make sure.

No. He's fine.

But maybe she will find the time to go to his book signing tomorrow, and maybe she will find a way to beg for his forgiveness. And if he is a stronger person than she is, maybe he will find it in himself to forgive her. Because if this is what she felt in a dream, she can't imagine what he felt in reality.

A/N - Thanks for reading!

I was reading the Nikki Heat books, and I kind of love the psychology (read: my head canon) that went into Rises. Belvedere as Heat's salvation, Rook taking the bullet for her, etc. (not to mention Montrose's heroism). I love what they show about Castle, and I wanted to see Beckett's thoughts on the matter.

Constructive reviews are greatly appreciated!