It was a game they played. A sick, morbid game maybe, but they were never serious, always turning it into a joke so as to eliminate the sad graveness.
It was always worded a little differently. The time frame varied from a year to six months to so low as a day. But in general, it was the same question.
What would be your dying wish?
She would usually laugh and say she wanted to beat up that kid in grade school who called her ugly, or arrest the boy in middle school that called her stupid. She wanted to go to a high school or college reunion looking gorgeous with an equally gorgeous man on her arm and show them how good her life had turned out.
Of course, if she was being serious, she would have told them that she wanted to catch her mother's killer and bring him to justice.
But right now, with Castle—Rick—looking down at her with those pleading eyes, the past seems less vital. It's the future that matters right now, the one she can't have because she's dying. There's no use denying. She knows she's going to die. She knows she can't have it. But still, she wants to know if it could have been possible.
"I love you."
She smiled as much as she could with her life's blood flowing out of her. She wasn't dying happily, exactly. But she was satisfied. Knowing that he loved her—and that she loved him, of course—meant they could have had happily ever after.
He can figure it out later. Someone will tell him: that is, if he doesn't already know.