This picks up a few weeks after Disciple (6x09).

Prologue

She awoke with a start. The bed beside her was cold; the room still dark save for the soft glow of the street light filtering in through the window as it reflected off the steadily falling snow. She pushed her arm out to smooth over the empty expanse of sheets trying to recall the warmth and strength of the body that used to lie there.

Even after a year, she still reaches for him, rolls toward where he should be. In that time between sleep and wakefulness she forgets, and when her mind fully enters consciousness her heart breaks all over again.

She remembers everything like it was yesterday.

He had been executing his plan to take down that worthless author, spending almost every waking moment planning and calculating every move he would make. He'd sat for hours hunched over their desk researching locations and techniques, studying surveillance photos with a concentration she'd never seen in him before.

She'd loved it when he got like that. In the midst of plotting and planning, taking and destroying, everything between them was heightened, so much more powerful. Even bordering on violent. He'd often needed a stress relief and that had translated to late night romps between the sheets of this very bed. Or rough encounters against the shower walls. Anything to help him release the tension.

Their future had been set out perfectly in front of them, all Jerry had to do was eliminate Richard Castle and then they could move on to a new chapter of their lives.

And that's when it all fell apart.

He had left her that night. Said he was taking care of one last detail, the final piece of the puzzle that would put this all behind them. They'd planned that, once it was complete, he would come back here, and they would finish packing, be gone before sunrise. But her phone had rung at half past two in the morning, and she'd instantly known something had gone awry.

It had been him on the other end, telling her things had gone wrong, but he was still optimistic that they could get away. Ultimately, though, his plan had failed.

After one last attempt to salvage his plan he'd been shot and then fallen 100 feet into the Hudson River. Now he was waiting for her behind a local convenience store.

She'd been out the door in minutes, racing across the city to get to him. Her heart had pounded faster with every mile traveled and blood had rushed in her ears, downing out the traffic noise. By the time she'd arrived he was already unconscious, suffering from what looked to be severe blood loss and hypothermia.

He'd torn a ragged strip from his soaked shirt and had tied it around his arm in an attempt to stem the flow of blood, but the cold had affected him more than she'd expected. More than she'd hoped. She had taken a moment to suppress the push of hot tears, and then had dragged his limp body across the black sea of pavement and into the backseat of her car.

They'd made it back to the apartment in record time thanks to the empty, early morning city streets. He'd still been unconscious in the backseat, so she'd sat there for just a moment watching his chest rise and fall in rough, short cycles trying to decide what to do. There was no way she would be able to get him upstairs on her own so she'd run in to grab some blankets, a first aid kit, and warm, dry clothes.

Back in the car she'd turned the heat up to full blast and had stripped his shirt off to locate the gun shot wound. Fortunately, it had turned out to only be a deep graze that she'd been able to clean easily and stitch up.

She'd removed the rest of his clothes and her own before she'd laid her body over his and then had pulled a wool blanket up over them both. The feel of his icy skin against hers had made her shiver but she'd stayed put in an effort to share her body heat.

For two hours she'd kept her fingers against his neck feeling for a pulse. It was weak and irregular but still there.

And then he'd finally stirred. She hadn't known it yet but too much internal damage had already been done for her to save him. The next two days had consisted of her force-feeding him soup, monitoring his irregular heartbeat, and pumping him full of broad-stream antibiotics.

In spite of her efforts, he'd still developed pneumonia and an infection at the wound site from the filthy river water. She'd discovered later that the section of river he had fallen into was notorious for an overabundance of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

When he'd entered the water, the tear in his flesh had exposed his blood supply to an onslaught of germs. One complication had developed after another and, despite all her efforts, his body had slowly and painfully given up on him.

A little over a week later she fell asleep next to his barely breathing body and woke up next to his lifeless form.

Even now, lying in their bed alone, 390 long days later, she could clearly picture him moving through the bedroom, grinning at her from the desk as he'd told her about his visions for their future, holding her at the window as they'd watched the world go by. The pain of his loss never stopped, never let her go, and she was slowly drowning in it.

She sighed, rolled from the bed, and winced as her bare toes hit the cold floor. Then she moved toward the window like a moth to flame and watched as the snow gently fell from the sky, taunting her with its simplicity and predictability.

"First snow of the season," she whispered to herself, as she wrapped her arms around her middle. "It's late this year."

She allowed herself just a moment to stand there dreaming about what could have been, what should have been before she pushed those thoughts away and turned her back on the outside world.

As they always did, the images tacked to the wall above her desk called to her.

Her heart filled with the familiar anger and hatred, feelings she had come to welcome over the last year, as she glanced at Richard's smiling face. He was walking arm-in-arm with his partner through Central Park, sitting across from her at Remy's, making goo-goo eyes at another crime scene. In each photo he was happy. He was in love.

It was disgusting. Like a knife straight through her heart, and every time she took a new picture, that knife twisted just a little bit more. She shifted her focus to the writer's companion and felt some of the tension ease off her shoulders.

Kate was so beautiful, so fascinating. Commanding the attention of everyone she passed; it was no wonder he followed her around like a lost puppy. What she couldn't understand was why Kate kept him around?

No matter. She would be setting Kate free soon enough.

The plan was easy. Coming together little by little. She reached for the after surgery photos of Samuel Cory and knew she'd done the job well. He was now the spitting image of Richard Castle and he was already putty in her hands, ready to do her bidding however and whenever she wanted. Today he was having lunch with Rebecca Franklin, a beautiful blonde that he was going to wine and dine over the next week, and it would give her the jump start needed to put her plan into action.

Months of planning were finally over. She was going to show Kate Beckett how much of her life and potential she was wasting on that writer, that waste of space.

She picked up the pen sitting next to her computer and traced over the letters printed on the side with her fingertip. Dr. Kelly Nieman. Before long she'd be shedding that identity, but first she had to free Kate from her self-imposed prison and destroy Richard Castle once and for all. It was time to avenge Jerry's death and make Rick pay for what he had taken from her.

Special thanks to Kylie for holding my hand and squeezing all these words out of me. It's her fault my first fic is seeing the light of day. xo