How has this season gone so fast? Sort of spoilers for Still? Sort of? Maybe. Well, yes anyway. The idea stuck.

Disclaimer: I have three days, two hours and twenty minutes left of being 21.

He's been here before. He's done this before. Three years ago, standing outside an apartment building watching smoke drift upwards, almost lazily, flames flicking at the windows. Except this isn't an apartment building. It's the 12th Precinct. A place that is usually safe and welcoming and familiar is dark and foreboding and threatening. There's sirens blazing around him, screaming and yelling and shouting. All he did was go out for coffee. Coffee and pastries for all four of them. The cardboard tray is heavy in his hand, the bag of pastries dropping to the ground. They're up there somewhere, his precinct family, dead or alive he doesn't know, and he needs to know. He needs to get up and see if anybody is still alive.

There's a searing pain in her shoulder, dust in her eyes and the unmistakable feel of blood trickling down her forehead. She can't see – or can't see past the dust and debris and bits of paper that's still floating down through the air – and her ears are still ringing. Her chair has fallen on her and she pushes it off with her good arm. But her eyes – once they adjust – they realise that she's nowhere near her desk. She's been thrown across the room. Somebody else's desk is behind her back. Beyond the ringing in her eyes, the place is un-unnervingly quiet. A usually busy and bustling place, people calling across the bullpen to everybody else, the sound of Castle and his crazy theories… but now it's… wrong. All wrong.

"Excuse me, Detective Beckett?"

Beckett turns her head away from the computer screen, looks up at the man standing next to Castle's chair. He's pale and shaky and his hands are buried deep in his black trench coat, she can see them clenched into fists through the material of his pockets. "Can I help you?"

"My name is David Blunt. And I have a bomb on my chest."

"You have… a-"

"Bomb, on my chest. You killed my brother. You shot my brother, and now I have to get revenge." Beckett stares at him, her brain taking a while to make sense of this. "My brother was innocent. He was innocent, and you killed him."

"Your brother was holding a gun against three Detectives." Beckett replied calmly, trying to turn her head to see if she can catch someone's eye. Ryan looks up, glances from her to David repeatedly, his brain working over drive. "He was a danger to people's lives."

"I'm a danger to your life. Right now. Are you going to shoot me?"

"I don't want to shoot you. And I'm not going to shoot you unless I need to."

"I have a bomb on my chest."

"And I don't think pointing a gun at you will help. But you need to understand, Richard killed someone. He took a pillow and he smothered her. Took away her life. I couldn't let him get away with that. It was his choice to pull out a gun. It was his choice to threaten to kill me and my partners. And it's your choice. You have a choice – right now – to walk away from this, or kill everyone here. You can go, right now, take off the bomb, leave the building."

Ryan is pushing his chair away from his desk, so very slowly, trying to not draw attention to himself but it's futile. Blunt turns towards him, one hand flying out of his pocket to point at him. "Don't move. Move and I will blow this whole place up."

Ryan stills, eyes frozen on him. Blunt's eyes are wide, and full of anger, and Beckett can see him shaking. The man is on a knife edge, and anything could send him over the edge.

Castle pushes through the forming crowds, tries to get towards the front and the make shift barrier that has been hastily assembled. He tries to push through but some guy, a guy with short grey hair and eyes that are not at all impressed with anything. The man looks like he's never had any fun. "Sir, you can't come past here."

"No, I have to – my partner-"

"You're a cop?"

"Not technically, but my partner she works here. She was here and I need to – I need to know if she's okay. Please, you have to let me through."

"Sir, I can't. The building is unsafe. We're doing our best, but we can't go in yet." He lays a calming hand on Castle's arm, and he just wants to shake it off and push him away and go and find him herself. "I'm sorry, I am. But you have to wait."

"Beckett!" The noise drifts through the fog of her brain, pulls her out of the pain induced haze. How long has she been out? "Ryan, I've found her!"

"Javi?" There's something pressing against her head, soft and warm and she realises it is Esposito's jacket, trying to stem the bleeding from the side of her head. "Javi, what…"

"It's okay. It's not that bad. Superficial head wound."

"They bleed a lot. But my shoulder. I think it's dislocated."

There's a huffed laugh next to her and she opens her eyes to see Ryan, his arm crossed his chest. "You and me both."

"Alright, on three-"

"No, don't tell me when you're going to do it. Hurts less." She turns her head away, rolls her eyes as Ryan holds out a sleeve for her to bite on. And then, before she knows it, Esposito is pulling and pushing on her shoulder until it pops back into place with a painful click. He's already guiding it across her chest, her palm on her shoulder.

"How the hell did you survive, Kate?" Ryan asks incredulously. "You were right next to him. You should be…"

"I should be a mangled mess of blood and bones. Yeah. I don't know. Lucky with explosions, I guess. I dived behind the desk." She holds out her hand to Esposito, who pulls her up easily.

The floor is a mess. She doesn't want to think about how many people are injured or worse. By all accounts she should be dead. Her desk is though. Her desk is reduced to ashes and embers and unless she's imagining it there's definitely blood. Whose blood she's not sure, and she doesn't think she wants to know. It makes her want to throw up. "Where's everybody else?" she croaks, turning around slowly.

"Karpowski's going to be okay, I think. I hope. I've done all I can for her, and she's alive. But I don't know. Any one of us could have internal injuries. LT's managed to get by with a scratch on his cheek. He's letting me know about everyone else. But it's not us that we should worry about. We got off lucky."

"What do you mean? Espo, he just blew the place up!"

Ryan winced. "The floor collapsed underneath him. Vice got the worse of it. We don't know… We can't get close enough to the hole to see down. It's a mess down there."

She finds that the ceiling is a lot more interesting than sitting and watching Blunt pace up and down. He's got them all at desks, hands on heads, guarding them. She doesn't think he's going to go through with his threat. If he wanted them dead he could have pressed the button and done it already. The man is grieving for his dead brother, and she can understand that. People react to death differently, so many paths that they could take and any of them could lead them into a black pit of death and despair. When you think you know someone, someone you've known for years of your life, when you grew up with them, and then something happens which throws you into a tailspin? That would make anybody do something reckless. Like marching into a police precinct and threatening to blow them up. That's pretty reckless.

Of course, there are better ways. Easier ways. Ways that wouldn't end up with you bleeding out on the floor with a bullet in your head. Possible outcome. Blunt isn't trained in this; he keeps crossing to the windows and looking out. A rookie mistake. Kate doesn't know if anybody is even aware of what's unfolding, doesn't know if anyone has actually managed to get a message out, but if they have then Kate is more than certain that there will be SWAT and police and fire engines swarming the building in minutes, the opposite buildings. Waiting on rooftops. Snipers, waiting for the perfect shot.

"You! You, what are you doing!"

Kate jerks her head forward, watches as Blunt marches over to Esposito's desk. The Detective looks calm and collected as always, and she takes comfort in that. "How can I do anything? You won't let us move."

"Your foot. You were tapping on the floor. What were you doing?"

"I wasn't doing anything, I promise." Esposito replies, looking directly into Blunt's eyes, firm and commanding and if Kate didn't know that he was trying to send an SOS to the floor below, then she'd be more than convinced that he was entirely innocent.

Blunt stares him down for a few more seconds, the room waiting with baited breath. Kate can see his hand clenched around the detonator in his pocket, any minute and his finger could press that button and they would all die. They would all die, and Castle is going to come back to a burning building and dead bodies. Castle. He's going to come up in that lift and Blunt is going to freak. And then boom.

He's freaking out. No, he's not freaking out. He's calm and he's collected and – no, he's definitely freaking out. The bomb exploded on the top floor. He knows that at least. Homicide. Kate and Kevin and Javier, Karpowski and LT and Gates, Hastings too. So many people and he has no idea if any of them are alive. The people they've got out of the lower floors have no idea what happened either. Dazed and confused, but otherwise injury free, they've been taken off to hospitals for standard checkups. Except one floor, one floor is completely wrecked. He knows it's Vice, knows that it's the one floor who got the worst of it. The explosion and the ceiling collapse. It's all on Vice. But that explosion had to start somewhere.

"The lifts aren't working." LT offers, and Kate has to stop herself from rolling her eyes at him. She could have told him the lifts wouldn't be on with her eyes closed, and she's not stupid enough to get on a lift anyway. "The stairs are smoky, but I think they're safe."

"Are we just going to leave everyone?" Ryan asks, looking between the three of them. "There's people up here who can't walk, can barely stand up, and I don't want to carry them in case something else goes wrong."

"I'll stay." Kate says, stepping backwards. "You guys go, I'll stay."

"Beckett, no offence, but you need to get your head seen to. And you can't do CPR with one arm. You go, I'll stay."

"Javi-"

"Kate, Castle is probably down there. And he's probably freaking out and driving everyone crazy, and I'd be surprised if he's not trying to get up here himself."

"Right, and what about Lanie? You don't think she's freaking out?"

"Don't fight me on this, Beckett. I will have LT frog march you down those stairs if I have to."

Kate turns to look at LT who is determined to not look in her eyes, but Ryan and Esposito are both looking at her with fire in their eyes and she realises it's a lost cause. Esposito has already turned away, marching through the mess of desks and chairs to Karpowski. Fine. She can tell Lanie that he's okay. No more explosions.

"I'm going to die." Blunt mutters, over and over again. "I'm going to die, I'm going to die."

Beckett wants to shake him and tell him that he wouldn't have to die if he just stopped threatening to blow things up. She could phone down to the front desk, get the bomb disposal squad and this would be over in minutes. Except she doesn't, because she's no good at hostage situations. Especially when she's the hostage. Ryan and Esposito keep throwing her concerned looks, almost as if they know what it is she's thinking, trying to warn her away from doing anything stupid. But there are lives in danger. These people who are her family, who have stood by her and helped her, and she's not going to see them die. Not on her watch.

"Mr. Blunt."

He whirls around, too fast for her liking. Any uncertain motion could set that bomb off. "Shut up."

"Do you want to die?"

He stutters, his mouth opening and closing as he looks at her. "What?"

"Do you want to die? Is this really what you want to do? Your brother is dead, and I'm sorry. I am. But this isn't the way to do this."

"Beckett…" Espo growls in warning, but she lifts her arm towards him, telling him to shut up.

"There are innocent people here. They have homes and families, people who they love, people who love them, waiting for them. Expecting them home for dinner. If you detonate that bomb they're going to get phone calls telling them that they're never coming home. So many people grieving. Just like you."

"Shut up."

"No, no I'm not going to shut up. These people are my friends. They're my family. My partner is on his way back here, with coffee and he's going to come up here completely oblivious to the fact that the moment he steps off that lift he's going to die. And I'm not going to let you do that. Just, let me phone the bomb disposal squad. Let me phone them, and they can de-activate the bomb and we can all walk out here alive."

"You'll throw me in prison." Blunt replies, and he's so close to hysteria. "I will die in prison. I'm not going to die in prison."

"I will speak to the DA and I will get you a plea bargain. I promise, I will try my best to make sure you do not go to prison." She reaches for the phone on her desk slowly, her eyes constantly on him. She can feel everyone looking at her with baited breath, nobody daring to breath. "It'll be okay. It's going to be okay-"

There's all of three seconds of looking in his eyes before she realises the change, notices the narrowing of his eyes, the slight flex of his arm. She can't do anything except dive behind her desk.

She pulls her collar over her nose and mouth, tries to not breathe in as much smoke as she can. She can feel the pain in her head now, feels the dizziness and nausea from the lack of blood. Ryan has a hand on the small of her back, waiting for it to pass. It does eventually, and she focuses on putting one foot in front of the other as they make their way towards the stairs. It's hard work, and it's hot, and It really doesn't help the dizziness. She finds she has to stop every few meters, lean against the wall until her head has stopped spinning and her arm has stopped throbbing quite so viciously. The floor below is worse, the smoke is thick and no matter what they put in front of their mouth there's nothing they can do except breath in the thick acrid smoke.

"Kate, just take it easy."

"Can't take it easy, Ryan. Castle, he'll be outside. And he'll be freaking out."

"But you don't want to get outside and collapse in his arms-"

"Ryan. Just, leave it. Please?"

He stares at her a moment, but he's never really one to pick a fight. Not with her, at any rate. He knows she's too stubborn, especially at a time like this to listen to anyone. He nods, slowly. "But I'm going first."

"Fine."

"This is ridiculous!" he fumes, marching to and fro, hands on his hips. "Absolutely ridiculous."

George Newman regards him with an amused expression, but he's not budging. Refuses to. Regardless of fame, or partners or however much money he's promised, he's not going to move from this spot. Not until someone tells him otherwise.

"There are people in there, and they are probably dying!" He continues. "And you're all just stood here watching! You're not even doing anything!"

"We have to make the building secure." George reiterates. "A few people at a time, that's the protocol. Once we know more, then we can start getting more people out."

"It's been an hour!"

"Mr. Castle, I know you are worried but we are doing the best that we can. We have no idea if the explosion has done any structural damage beyond the ceiling collapse. Be patient."

"How can I be patient when I don't know if my partner is okay? Do you want to know how many times I have watched her die? Or almost die? Too many times. There have been other explosions, gun fights, locked in a freezer, and then she was shot in the chest right in front of me. And then there's the car in the river, a gun pressed to her head. Nearly falling off a rooftop. No, wait, she actually did fall off the roof. And I cannot stand waiting here and waiting, constantly waiting for someone to tell me what's happened. I just – I need to get in there and I need to go and find her, I am begging you."

George is staring at him again, and he's sure that he's just going to stand there and not move and be a stubborn ass of a whatever the heck he is, but then he's closing his eyes with a sigh. "Fine. But if it's too dangerous for you, and I am trusting you with knowing what is dangerous and what isn't, you turn around and you come back. Okay?" he steps aside, let's Castle slip through the gap. "And if you die, there is no way in hell you are suing me." He adds as a last thought.

He almost kisses him.

"Kate – Kate you need to stop."

She takes one look at Ryan (or thinks she does, there appears to be two of them), and feels the ground give underneath her feet as she sinks against the wall. "Somebody needs to go and get Castle."

"Kate-"

"Ryan, go and get Castle."

"I'm not leaving you. Not like this." Kate turns her gaze to LT, immediately wishes she didn't because the pain is almost unbearable.

"I'll go." She hears LT say, tries to open her mouth to say thank you, but she can't bring herself to open her mouth. "You stay here; I'll go and get him." She doesn't think Ryan even gets a chance to argue, can hear his footsteps down the stairs.

"Ryan?"

She feels him sit next to her, hissing as the pain in his own shoulder elevates slightly. "Yeah?"

"I'm not gonna die, right?"

"No, you're fine. Your shoulder hurts, and your head hurts, and with the smoke inhalation, not to mention the bruises. It's just a lot at once. Once we get outside they will have a look at your head, they will sort your arm out and they will give you oxygen. And then I expect Castle will take you home and insist you not get out of bed for at least two days."

Kate hummed. "I don't think he'll find it as fun as the last time we did that."

LT almost sends him flying when he rounds the corner of the staircase at a run, and it's only with a severe lack of dignity that he stops himself from falling. "Kate – where's-" he's choking on smoke and can't get the words out properly, but LT has got the message easily enough, and he's pulling him back up the stairs. There's no severe urgency to his movements, and there's no panic in his eyes, but Castle knows that LT is not one to freak out. Highly dependable, that guy. "She's okay." He croaks. "Ryan and Espo too. Espo is still up there, making sure everyone's okay. Kate's got a head injury. I don't think it's that bad, but there's a lot of blood and she's dizzy. We had to stop. Ryan made her stop."

Castle nods in appreciation, but he needs to see for himself. And as much as calm, dependable LT is handy in a crisis, he doesn't really want calm and dependable. He needs to get there as soon as possible. Running is a stupid idea, he knows that. The smoke is making it hard to breath as it is (and probably comes under the term dangerous, but what George Newman doesn't know won't hurt him), and running is only going to make it worse. And to his credit, LT does try to stop him, but in the end he knows it's not a battle he's going to win.

It's one flight of stairs. One flight of stairs and he see's Ryan, collapses at his feet and crawls over his legs. The amount of blood is making his stomach roll and he has to stop himself from hurling over the railing. It's in Kate's hair, it's matted and congealed, and her face is dirty and grimy and he hasn't seen this much blood – this much of her blood – since she was lying on that grassy slope, her blood seeping out onto his hands no matter how much he tried to stop it. He's not stupid, he knows head wounds look worse than they are, but this… surely this is too much.

"Kate?"

She opens her eyes slowly, lifts one hand to swipe away the blood that's obscuring her vision. "Castle. Oh, god, Castle. There was a guy – David Blake –"

"No talking. Tell me later. We need to get you out of here." She's talking to him. Talking to him and making complete sentences and she seems okay. Apart from the way she's awkwardly holding her arm across her chest and the blood and the fact her voice is croaky and dry, she seems okay. "Can you get up?"

"Yeah – just, give me a minute."

"We don't have a minute."

Kate groans, and holds out her good arm. "Pull me up."

"Kate-"

"Ryan, if you want me to move right now then you are going to have to pull me up. I can't get up on my own. Not right now."

Castle wraps his hand around hers, warm and tight and familiar, and she takes a breath, steals herself for the jerk. It's not so bad as she thought it would be (or maybe she's getting numb and she just can't feel it), but the sudden change in height just sends everything spinning and she stumbles against Castle, her fingers tight in his shirt. "You ready?"

She nods against his shoulder. "You're covered in blood."

"I'll bill you for the dry cleaning," he laughs, and if she had the energy she'd hit him.

"I don't need to go to hospital." She mopes, glaring past the paramedic at Castle.

He's refusing to budge, refuses to go anywhere until she goes to the hospital. She's okay. She is. Her arm is in a sling, her head has been cleaned and stitched up. She's fine. All she wants is a bath, and her bed. Or his bed. She doesn't much care at the minute.

"It would be best if you went," the paramedic agrees, and Castle smirks. "Just a check up."

"I'm fine." She insists again. "Please just let me go home."

"I would feel a lot better, and I'm sure your partner would too, if you went to the hospital and got your head properly looked at. Stitching it up is all well and good, but you could have bumped it in the blast. Internal bleeding is still a possibility; you're just not feeling it because of the shock."

"Fine, " she relents, leaning backwards against the side of the ambulance, pressing the oxygen mask against her mouth and breathing in, "but I want to wait until I know Esposito is safe."

The paramedic nods. "Deal." He turns to look at Castle. "I'm counting on you to make sure she actually goes."

Castle chuckles, shakes the man's hand. "I will make sure she goes. Thank you."

"It's what I'm here for, Mr. Castle. You can go and sit with her, if you want. I don't think she should be moving any time soon."

He steps out of the ambulance and heads over to a crowd of more people, leaves them to their own. Kate leans against him as soon as he sits next to her, and if he wasn't so furiously glad that she's alive he'd tell her off for being too proud to even show how much she's suffering. Stubborn woman.

And Esposito is fine, if anybody is wondering.