Richard Castle has become a regular presence at the facility. He has an armchair he inhabits in a corner of room 4-7, with a lamp nearby for times when he needs light and the other inhabitant doesn't.
The other inhabitant probably wouldn't notice, anyway. She hasn't noticed anything for five years, as far as anyone can tell. Her eyes remain closed, her hands lax on the sheet beside her, her chest rising and falling too shallowly for the casual observer to notice. Her skin is as pale as marble, and her hair lies dull on the pillow.
Her father used to come every day, then every few days, then at least once a week, spending time reading or talking to her, brushing her hair. Now it's every couple of weeks, mainly because she has another companion now, taking a share of the duties of watching over her.
Richard Castle sits in his armchair, as he has for nearly a year off and on, and works at his penance on her behalf. He writes, sometimes on his laptop, sometimes in a notebook. His phone vibrates from time to time, but he usually glances at it and declines the call, sending it to voicemail. When he does answer it, his tone is cheerful and light and reassuring.
"Okay, sweetheart, I'll see you tonight. I know, I'm cooking. Tell Gram. I love you, Alexis."
They have a routine now, as he has obligations to the living as well as the half-living. He worked it out with his therapist, his family, and the facility. Roy Montgomery and Bob Weldon have been briefed on his activities and approved them, though Roy is constantly telling Castle that he doesn't owe the NYPD anything.
"She knew exactly what she was getting into, taking the job," he tells Rick. "If it hadn't happened that day, it might have happened another time. We never know when that particular bolt of lightning is going to strike - and it's not as though you called it down on her."
Rick usually just shakes his head and smiles politely. Everyone expresses the same sentiment, even her father, who clings stoically to the hope that his daughter will return to full consciousness someday to add her voice to his.
She lies in the bed with her penitent writer in his chair nearby. He writes and writes - one book already published and soaring upward on the best seller lists, two more in the offing once the editors have got hold of them. Castle doesn't care whether they sell - he writes because he's driven to it.
He writes about a young, savvy New York City police detective, bold and beautiful, who takes flak from no one, especially from a cocky writer who horns his way into her investigation. He writes the story that no one believed at first, that turned out to be the truth, about a man who killed his sister and two strangers for the sake of the money, and for revenge on his father.
Castle writes about the standoff in the alley, five years ago, where he stupidly ran directly into the hands of the suspect, with his detective stalking closer, gun at the ready, waiting her chance to take out the man holding a gun to Castle's neck.
In Castle's book, it turns out that the idiot suspect has not taken the safety off his gun, the writer's elbow knocks the man out, and the detective rushes in to secure him. In Castle's book, the killer doesn't take a shot at the detective just as the writer elbows him. In the book, the detective gets to give him an admonitory shove, instead of catching a bullet from the flailing gun.
In the book, she's alive and well and launched into a reluctant partnership with the writer who dogs her heels, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. One that he once believed was real, one that he dreamed about for months, that he wakes weeping over. In that friendship, she wasn't shot - not in that incident - and they save each other's lives and share misunderstandings and joy and misery and solve cases and become more than partners.
He writes about that friendship, that partnership, and comes faithfully to sit by her bed, speak to her, read from the books he's written about her, though he knew her for so brief a time. Like her father, he hopes that someday she'll awaken, like Sleeping Beauty, and tell him where he got the story, her story, right.
Someday, he hopes she'll forgive him for getting in her way, for his arrogance in thinking he could be of any help to her at all, for the moment that his ill-aimed blow caused their suspect's aim to go astray and put her here.
Until then...he writes.
A/N: Probably the angstiest thing I've ever written, from a prompt on twitter: "Castle wakes up in 5x01 and it really was a dream because Beckett was shot by Tisdale in "Flowers For Your Grave". Castle blames himself because she got shot because he tried to play hero. Beckett is dead or in a coma - writer's choice. Timeline also writer's choice. Ample angst requested."