A/N: This is just a quick, fun detour to put me back in the Castle mindset so I can finish Slow Burn. I've spent the last five months reworking my novel which has made it hard to switch horses, so to speak. I struggle to cope when two sets of characters are muttering inside my head.

Jumping off from the end of the heart-clenching season 2 finale, this story is a two-shot.

Elevator Pitch

Chapter 1

When Castle turned to leave with his arm casually draped around Gina's waist, Kate felt as if a sinkhole had opened up around her leaving her marooned on an island for one. She watched as her partner walked away. Her world, when she thought back to that moment, seemed stained with pink. Whether from the tint of Gina's Burberry mac and the candyfloss glint of her expensive hair, or the color of her own humiliation, this tainted wash stayed with her.

A haze.

An afterimage.

Pathological illusory palinopsia.

Her heart drowned in that pink froth until she finally turned her back on this pitiful, romantic scene and closed her eyes, fighting the tightness in her throat.

"I thought you two didn't get along?" What had possessed her to say that? As if they'd suddenly wake up at this reminder to be at one another's throats and the path would magically clear for Kate and Castle to go…where?

Why had she considered following him anywhere?

"He's such a little boy sometimes," Gina had said, and Castle had performed right on cue like a trained puppy for mommy with the simpering smile and the cuteness overload.

Ugh!

Her ears were ringing, her whole body itching, tortured by a strangling discomfort that made her want to crawl out of her own skin and slip through the nearest crack in the floor. She never made herself vulnerable, not at work and certainly not for any man.

What was she thinking?

She pursed her lips and swallowed roughly. Her throat bobbed, her ears popped, she dug her nails into her hipbones until it hurt worse than this car crash of a rejection. Anything to distract herself from this awful moment.

Maybe this thing between them had been an illusion all along. Maybe her first reaction to being invited to Castle's Hamptons house had been the right one. Her gut had said laugh it off. This is just a poorly dressed up excuse to see you in a bikini. But then she had allowed him to wear her down with his apparent sincerity, with his talk of Alexis and their family traditions, by that photo of his stunning home. She thought he had turned into a grownup. Turned out he was a grown-up until Gina called, and then he magically turned back into the man-child he was when they first met.

"See you in the fall?"

This stupid, needy, hopeful question raced around inside her head making her want to vomit. Vomit or punch a wall. Maybe both.

When she turned to see the bank of pitying faces peering at her through the break-room window, the pink tint came flooding back. Then it deepened to red. She couldn't handle the sympathetic noises they were bound to make if she went back in there and tried to drown herself in Budweiser. So she gave them an embarrassed little wave, forced a self-effacing smile, and headed to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face before returning to her desk to carry on working. Since work was the one thing she evidently could do well. Maybe the only thing, but still, she'd take it over pity and her empty apartment any day.

Montgomery and the guys left quickly after that, chasing home to their Memorial Day weekend plans. After a hug from Lanie and a shoulder squeeze from Ryan, the bullpen emptied out on a quiet murmur of kind words and open invitations that everyone knew Kate Beckett would never take up. Only Esposito lingered, a strange angry energy about him until Kate forced a smile and waved him away, too.

Alone in the silence, she sat back and closed her eyes. She'd had plans. She had a smørgåsbord of plans until she blew her life up, and now she had nothing ahead but days of solitude to ponder her mistakes. How to lose two guys in one day. Her life was now a B-list rom-com. She shook her head in disbelief and let out a low growl. She would use the weekend to put herself back together, to patch the little hole in her heart that had opened up the second she spotted the shift in Castle's relationship with his second ex-wife…and publisher.

She switched off her computer, packed her bag, and tucked her chair away. Three days to get her head together. Three days to wipe Richard Castle out of her life once and for all. She paused to stare at his ratty old chair and she shook her head, again.

"See you in the fall, my ass," she muttered, giving the leg of the old chair a kick as she walked past.

Trust your gut next time, Kate, she told herself as she walked to the elevator with her back straight and her shoulders forced back. "Trust your magical gut," she said aloud to the empty bullpen as she slapped the call button with the flat of her hand.

When the elevator doors slid open, she stepped aboard without looking up. She jabbed the button for the parking level and collapsed against the inside of the car, letting the wall hold her up.

The doors closed, but before the descent could begin she heard the sound of throat-clearing behind her and she froze. To her absolute horror when she spun around, there, lounging in the back corner, was none other than Richard Castle.

The elevator began to sink in time with her heart.

Her voice betrayed every ounce of shock she felt at finding herself face-to-face with him at all, let alone so freaking soon and in such a confined space. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, following that little number with, "And where's your ex-wife-slash-publisher-slash…girlfriend?"

Small though the space was she looked around to make sure that dinky, perfectly-put-together Gina wasn't tucked delicately in a corner. Or still under Castle's wing for that matter.

"Well, it's good to see you, too, detective."

Castle smirked at her, his eyes dancing with the easy humor of a man with no real-world problems to trouble him. His tone was on the smug side of the sliding scale Kate was familiar with. A scale that ran from "charming and sincere" at one end to "what the hell was I thinking?" on the other.

She stammered, "Wh…what are you doing back here? Everyone is gone." This last word hit the discordant note of disappointment that Kate had been fighting. It came out sounding tremulous, broken, off-key. At that moment, she hated herself even more than she hated him.

Castle tilted his head slowly and smiled. Kate felt shame-borne fury building in her chest. "You're still here," he said pleasantly, as though that made everything clear.

Before she could open her mouth to ask him what the fuck, the elevator jerked to a violent stop and the lights went out.

"Oh, for the love of all things holy," Kate muttered under her breath, quickly groping in the dark for something to hold onto.

When she found something, it felt soft and warm beneath her fingers. Once her brain confirmed that the floor was still the floor and the elevator was no longer moving, she gently squeezed the something soft and warm and reluctantly let go.

Castle made a gasping sound that did not help and yet did not disappoint, either. For the first time in the last half hour, Kate found herself smiling. Her skin flushed, her face and neck grew suddenly hot and pink. This, she was glad her partner could not see.

Like a blind woman, she reached her hands out in front of her, quickly locating the control panel in the wall with the red emergency button. But when she pushed it, nothing happened.

"Why is nothing happening?" Castle said.

Kate bit the inside of her cheek. Instead of firing off a sarcastic response, she fished her cell phone out of her bag and illuminated the screen. Her stomach dropped like the elevator. "I…I'm out of service. Can you⏤"

"Already on it," Castle said.

The glow of her partner's phone lit his face from below sending up eerie shadows that accentuated his features to monstrous proportions.

"Anything?" Kate said.

Castle shook his head. "Cell service must be down."

Kate pressed a hand to her chest. "Oh, God. Which means…"

"Blackout," they said simultaneously.

Castle's phone screen timed out and they were plunged back into darkness. Kate dumped her bag at her feet and slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor with her legs tented in front of her. After the bottled beer she'd drunk at Castle's little going-away party, she was glad she'd gone to the bathroom. God only knew how long they'd be trapped in here.

Castle flicked his phone light back on to check where Kate was sitting before he slid down the wall, settling a foot or so away from her.

"I thought these buildings had emergency power," Castle said. "Some kind of backup."

Kate laughed faintly. "This place? Nah. Gotta be over a hundred years old. I don't think the department made it a priority to install a back-up generator or new elevator comms. Heating's shot. Building's practically held together with duct tape. You saw the state of our coffee machine."

"Great," Castle muttered.

When he sighed loudly, this got Kate's back up for all of its implications: trapped with her and delayed from getting jiggy with his second ex-wife-slash-publisher-slash-whatever on his million thread count sheets with a private ocean view.

"Are we keeping you from something important?" she said archly.

"No." Castle's monosyllabic response was a flat denial. Well, it was certainly flat.

Kate's detective brain began to ping with curiosity. "So…you still haven't said why you came back. Did you forget something?"

Now that they had been trapped for a few minutes, her eyes were growing accustomed to the dark, and Kate could make out the faint outline of light around the doors. "I think we're stuck between floors," she said almost to herself. "Hopefully, someone figures it out and calls the Fire Department."

"Ever the strategizer," Castle said.

Kate whipped her head around despite not being able to see his face. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," he said sullenly.

Kate turned her knees so that she could face him, again despite not actually being able to see his face. "No. No. You do not get to do that."

"I can do whatever I like. We don't work together anymore. You're not the boss of me."

Kate fell silent. For the second time today she felt as if someone had punched her in the gut. Again, that person was Castle. "You never had any intention of coming back in the fall." She said the words aloud even as they dawned on her, leaving them to vibrate between them like an unexploded hand grenade.

Castle cleared his throat.

"Admit it. You were never coming back." Her voice had a high whine to it, notes of accusation and distress that flooded her cheeks with color when she played the statement back to herself. Quickly, she added, "Forget it. Forget I said anything. We'll get out of here, you can go find Gina, have a lovely summer, and we don't ever have to see one another again."

She scrambled to her feet and wedged herself into the corner as far away from Castle as she could get. "Come on. Come on. Dammit!" she chanted, prepared to offer up anything she had just to get out of this too-small metal box and away from the man she was beginning to realize had a grip on her heart.

"Lucky neither of us gets claustrophobic," Castle said. "Though there's a first time for everything."

"Look, there's enough space in here for both of us. If we just stick to our own corners…"

"Oh, come on, Beckett. That was never going to work." He laughed half-heartedly.

"What are you talking about?"

"Even with Tom and Gina in the picture, we manage to end up here."

"Stuck in an elevator during a blackout? Castle, if you credit the universe, I swear to God I will scream right now."

"Be my guest. Maybe someone will hear us. Get us out of this nightmare." There was a beat of silence before he added, "But deep down you know I'm right."

The elevator car had begun to get warm. With the power out, there was no air conditioning, no communication with the outside world, and no clue as to how long they would be stuck inside.

"Is it hot in here? It's hot in here, right?" she said, fanning her face with her hand.

Laconically, Castle replied, "No, it's just you. You're hot." The sharp intake of breath that followed confirmed that he hadn't meant to make this statement out loud.

"I'm ignoring that just so you know. Putting it down to the stress of the situation," Kate said.

"Much appreciated," Castle said, leaving Kate unexpectedly disappointed that he wasn't willing to argue the point with her.

She closed her eyes and started to count her breathing. Her shirt was sticking to her back, the white cotton no longer crisp as it had been just an hour ago. She wished she were home in her shower.

Alone.

A lie.

She wished she were braver when it came to her personal life.

She wished⏤

"Gina dumped me."

Great, now she was hearing things that weren't even there. Add auditory hallucination to illusory palinopsia. A shrink would have a field day. No more beer for Beckett.

"Did you hear what I just said? My ex-wife dumped me. Aren't you going to ask why?"

Kate froze.

The light on Castle's phone suddenly came back on. He shone it in her direction. She flinched and covered her eyes. "Can you get that thing out of my face?"

"Just checking you're still with us, Beckett."

"Why would I leave?" she muttered. "We're having so much fun."

Despite the light illuminating her face, Castle appeared to miss the sarcasm in her voice. "You said that already. Working with me this last year…you had a really good time. No take backs now, Beckett."

This was not fun. His tone had an edge that was making her nervous. "Goddammit with the light already," she snapped, batting it away. "You'll be breaking out the sodium pentothal next."

"Ah. Worried I'm going to get to the truth? Now there's an unpopular concept around here."

Kate froze for a second time. A bead of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades. "What are you babbling on about?" she said, blustering to fill the silence. "Do you think maybe we're running out of air?" She tugged at the collar of her shirt for effect since it was already unbuttoned.

Castle laughed. "Oh, Beckett. Now you're stealing my lines. Drama is my coping mechanism, remember? I think yours is probably…I don't know…sarcasm?"

She crossed her arms over her chest. "I wasn't being dramatic. The air conditioner is out, the ventilation is…not working well…ergo the air in here is getting stale. Less oxygen. More CO2. Maybe we're getting delirious."

"This entire conversation is making me delirious. Feels like a role reversal if ever I heard one. You're not known for your science lessons, and let's face it, your drama quotient is usually on the undetectable level no matter what mortal peril we find ourselves in."

Kate didn't respond. She waited, holding her breath, hoping he'd change the subject.

No such luck; Castle was no fool. "Low oxygen or not, I still know when I'm being snowed."

He turned the flashlight on and shone it her way.

"Why didn't you tell me you broke up with Demming?"

TBC...

A/N: Illusory palinopsia: the persistence or recurrence of a visual image after the stimulus has been removed. An afterimage.

Love to hear your thoughts. Chapter 2 is written and should be up in a couple of days. Thank you for reading. Hope everyone is having a good weekend. Liv