DISCLAIMER: "Castle" and all its wonderful characters are the property of ABC and Andrew Marlowe. Much as we enjoy playing with them, we unfortunately do not own them. Please don't sue us.
Chapter One
The first few days after he's gone are the worst.
Her heart, the silly, stupid muscle, still expects to find him every time she turns around. And, of course, she doesn't.
Of course she doesn't.
She won't.
Can't.
He's gone.
Like everyone else who was important to her in her life, he'd left her.
And he isn't coming back.
And she knows that, but it doesn't stop it from hurting, each and every time she doesn't find him there to smile at her.
Because she still feels him. Everywhere. She feels the whisper of his arm brushing against hers, the echo of his fingertips on her elbow, the solid strength of him at her back.
Each time she walks into a room she hears the joke that he doesn't tell. When she walks into a crime scene, when she crosses the yellow tape, she can hear every crazy theory and ridiculous one liner, clear as if he were there, like a memory she never had playing in her head.
Often, those first few days she catches the empty reflection one step behind hers as she walks past a wall of glass windows, like his absence is a blank space her mind is trying to fill, a hole it's trying to putty over, but it's wrong. Out of synch. Out of phase. Not right. Because he's not there.
Several times Kate spins and finds she has to bite back the words on the tip of her tongue. There are stories she wants to tell him, ideas she wants to share, and they turn to ash in her mouth, swelling in her throat like a thick knot of tears, suffocating her from the inside out.
The first few days are the worst because she still sees him on every street corner, in every stranger's face, and it squeezes at the ridiculous, wasted muscle in her chest.
The first few days prove that walls can crumble from the inside too.
...
The paperwork had piled up in her absence. That's what paperwork did at the 12th. It grew and grew until it couldn't be ignored anymore. And Kate had become very adept at ignoring. Ignoring the stack of papers on her desk. Ignoring the curious looks she got around the precinct. Ignoring the empty seat beside her desk.
But it finally reached that point, when ignoring isn't an option because deadlines have to be met. So she buckles down and throws herself into her work, burying herself in the mound of files and forms until the lines of text bleed into each other.
She rubs her eyes, then presses her fingers against her temple willing the headache that drills dully in her skull to subside. Slowly she blinks and slowly the letters come back into focus.
That's when she sees it. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches a glimpse of a familiar form in the chair beside her desk. Her head shoots up. Her heartbeat quickens. Her eyes flick to the left, searching. Always searching for him
But the chair sits empty. He isn't there. And that stupid little muscle squeezes up again. He isn't coming back.
Kate sets her pen down and closes the file. She can't be here anymore. Can't look around this room and see only what is missing. What she lost.
She grabs her coat, heads for the elevator but as she taps the button impatiently she can't escape the melancholy that shrouds this space. Because when the elevator car arrives and she steps in, when the doors slide closed on the empty bullpen, she's standing where he stood, seeing what he saw the last time he said goodbye.
...
Esposito and Ryan pick up a lot of the slack, but eventually Kate has to take up her duties as lead detective again.
Kate brushes off Ryans gentle, "Are you okay?" with a tight lipped smile because no, she's not, but this is her job. It's the part she's always been the best at. The part where her ability to emphasise with the bereaved's grief has been useful. She understands their loss, and that? Well, that certainly hasn't changed.
She leads the victim's fiancee into the conference room with a pit at the bottom of her stomach. Notifications were always tough, they never got any easier, but with practice they did become more bearable. Only now she can't shake the nerves, the dread, as she prepares to deliver the news that will ruin the woman's life.
They're barely inside when the woman blurts out, "It's about Nick, isn't it?"
Her grip on the notepad tightens and she has to force herself to meet the woman's eyes as she relays the sad truth. "Yes."
The woman collapses hard into one of the chairs and Kate sits across from her, silent, waiting her out.
"He didn't come home last night and I just - I knew something was wrong, you know? Is he okay?"
"I'm sorry, Sarah. Nick's body was found early this morning."
Kate watches as Sarah's face cracks and twists with grief, the woman's pain openly bleeding into her features, even as Kate struggles to school her own.
After a moment of silence the woman asks quietly, "What happened?"
Kate has to swallow her own grief as she tells her, "He was attacked in an alley."
"The guy who-"
"We have him." They caught the assailant, the victim's blood still staining his hands. Open and shut. But that doesn't help the woman in front of her. It doesn't console her.
"How?"
"He was stabbed."
In an alley. Alone. Left to bleed out.
And those details are enough to crush her, like a boot pressing cruelly against her throat, closing off all the air. Hearing those words in her own life had been devastating, delivering them was a trauma all its own.
She lays out the facts before the woman who stares at her in disbelief, the tidal wave of anguish surging to its peak above both of their heads, suspended for a moment, just waiting to crash down with unimaginable weight. Kate knows it well, had been dragged into the undertow by it more times than she cares to remember. It was in those moments that she'd learned to be a buoy for the bereaved. Something for them to cling to, to keep them afloat. But this time she's drifting as well. She needs a buoy herself. She has nothing left to cling to.
Not for the first time, she wishes he was there. She wishes his calming presence was there beside her, lending her his particular strength. The strength that he always said he saw in her. To be the thing that keeps her head above water.
When the woman loses it, Kate's certain she'll lose it as well.
And then Kate has to excuse herself, leave the woman to her grief, because she wants it so badly - needs it so badly - that she can feel it. The echo of his fingers closing around hers where they rest on the table. The warmth of his hand bleeding into her chilled skin.
She can't do it. Can't face this woman's heartbreak with her own still in pieces.
A/N - I (Penguin) had an idea. Dave hijacked said idea. This is the result.