A Strange Visitor

by PossumSoul

Castle is paid a visit by a strange, mysterious visitor who shows him what their lives would look like if he'd never met Kate Beckett. (ONE-SHOT/ COMPLETE)

A/N: So, I got this idea for this one-shot in my head yesterday, and it's been a thorn in my side ever since. I tried to look up other stories that follow this premise so I could get it out of my system, but to no avail. I needed to get it out. And I know, I just know I'm going to get so much crap for this if it gets any attention. But, as always, I'll let you be the judge.

It's a long one-shot story that takes place between the time Castle finds about Beckett's job in DC and the time he proposes. Additionally, it follows the plot to an episode of That 70's Show, that kind of goes along the same idea. A while ago, I had an idea of writing a story about Castle being stuck in the world he got sent to in S7, but it fizzled out pretty quickly. But this one, to me, would have made a lot more sense and would have fit into the feel of the show a lot more (I guess).

Prompt: Castle is paid a visit by a strange, mysterious visitor who says he can show him what their lives would be like if he never met Kate Beckett. (Set during Watershed)

Also, if you've been following my other stories and have been waiting for an update, this is why I haven't updated those. It's been stuck in my head and I need to get it out. :)

---

They've had their share of problems before, it's probably been more than their fair share, but he always thought that they could get passed them.

They've gotten passed everything else, so... why is he having such a hard time with this one? He's always been able to hedge an educated guess as to how a story ends. But he can't see the ending to theirs. He was ready to be surprised but wasn't ready to be unpleasantly surprised. And all this is a lot more than unpleasant. It's heartbreaking. It's making him ache. It's making him angry and frustrated.

She took an interview for a new job, out of the city, away from their home and away from him... and she didn't even talk to him. She didn't even consider him in her decision. The thought of him didn't even cross her mind as she knowingly and all too willingly boarded that plane and flew to DC. Or what's more angering, she did and that was the whole point. She told him about her walls and he accepted it at the time because it seemed like she was telling him about them because she wanted to work at tearing them down. And when she finally dove into it with him like they both wanted that night a year ago, he thought that those walls were torn down.

But he was wrong. Dead wrong, obviously.

Those walls are still there and he's been banging his head against them for too long. She obviously wasn't in the same relationship he was. Or she was and wanted out of it, got scared and ran just like she always does.

And now, sitting at his desk in the dark with his head down on his arms with his eyes closed, he just wants it all to stop.

Sometimes...

Sometimes he wishes he'd just never met her.

"Mmm-mmm-mmm."

The voice hums off to his side. He shoots up off his desk with hazy, tired eyes and blinks. Seeing someone he doesn't recognize sitting sideways in one of the leather chairs, one of his legs hanging off the arm and his arm draped over the back. He's a portly man, dressed in an all-white suit, the glass of scotch he left sitting on the table in his hand, having just taken a sip.

The man looks over to him, raises his brow with impressiveness and lifts his glass. "This scotch is excellent."

Castle is stumbling out of his chair in a flash, panic quickly flooding his system as he takes in the stranger. He regains his footing when he's falling toward the other side of his desk and stands back up. "Who are you? H-how'd you get in here?"

The short, portly man presses his glass up his nose with his thumb and sets the glass back down onto the table behind him before taking the lid off the candy bowl and grabbing a handful of jellybeans. "I'm here to help ya, kid." He says and waves his fistful of jellybeans in the air.

Castle blinks again and looks over to the door to his office, seeing it still closed shut, then looks back over to the unrecognizable man. "Do I know you?"

The man loudly pops a few jelly beans into his mouth, "Well, no but... oh, man!" He grimaces, spinning himself around in the chair and leaning forward. "Where'd you get these, a petting zoo?"

"I'm friends with the police, so if you don't tell me who you are-"

"Would you relax, already?" He says and stands up with a groan dusting his hands off on each other. "I'm not here to hurt you, kid."

Castle shifts his weight and narrows his eyes as the man smiles. "Then what's your name?"

"Ah, my real name isn't pronounceable to you humans, but you can call me..." He says, rolling his eyes theatrically, "Gabe."

Castle's heart goes into his throat. "Humans?" His mind whirls dizzily as he takes a look around him, looking for cameras or onlookers. But... really? "Wait..." The man calling himself 'Gabe' leans back, his large gut sticking out beneath his white suit, raising a brow. "Are you a Nordic?"

"Ha!" Gabe belts and begins to crack up. "Nordics are tall, skinny, and blonde, kid. I'm short, pudgy, and... 'thinning'." He says with air quotes. "Nah, I'm here to grant you your wish."

"So, you're a genie then." He concludes with his mind still whirling.

"Genies grant you three wishes." He says, holding up three fingers. "I'm only here to grant you one." He takes away two fingers and only holds up one.

Castle's brow pinches as his muscles feel numb. "And... what wish is that?"

"See, kid..." Gabe starts and wags his finger at Castle, moving to pace across his office. "What you might not know is that the night you two met, Beckett had a date."

His blood sends a cold shot of adrenaline through his veins, he knows about Beckett?

"But when she realized she'd been stood up, she picked up a shift at the precinct, which put her on call the night Allison Tisdale's body was discovered, allowing her to meet you." Gabe stops a few feet away from Castle, whose mind is long gone from rational thought. "I'm gonna show you what your lives would be like if she never got stood up for her date that night."

Castle shakes his head vigorously, in a last-ditch effort to shake himself out of his dream, but when he opens his eyes... the white-suited man is still standing in front of him, a smile going across his face. "What?"

"You wished you'd never met Kate Beckett? Well, I'm gonna grant you your wish, kid. And show you what it looks like."

A cold sense of prideful anger goes into his heart, just deciding to go along with whatever this... whatever this man is... and just prove it to him. They'd be much better off if they'd just never met each other. They're just not meant to be. And feeling this heartbroken over her just isn't worth it if she's going to go off and run away again. "Fine."

"Follow me, kid." Gabe nods his head over his shoulder and turns toward the door. Castle walks on numb legs over to the door to his living room and stops when Gabe looks over to him with a raised brow and a smile. "You ready?"

"Can we just get on with this delirium?" He groans.

Gabe sighs a small sigh and turns the knob, pushing open the door. But when Castle looks through the entryway, the place he sees isn't the loft. He takes a few weak steps through the door and sees it's her old apartment. He'd only spent the one night here, but he remembers it. The open space of the living room with the kitchen behind the couch and a hall off to the right, where her bedroom is. It's dark, looks mostly the same from what he vaguely remembers and Beckett is nowhere to be found.

Castle's jaw clicks as he looks over to his right and sees Gabe rolls himself back on his heels, looking over the space. "I thought you were going to take me to another life, like... in the future or something, this is Beckett's old apartment."

"Correction," Gabe replies with a finger in Castle's face, quickly stepping forward and moving through her living room. "This is Beckett's regular apartment. See, kid..." He says and moves toward her fridge, "since you two never met, you never invented Nikki Heat. And in turn, Scott Dunn could never become obsessed with her." Gabe says and pops open the fridge door.

And Castle then begins to understand, nodding his head slowly as his eyes go over the space. "And since Scott Dunn never became fixated on Beckett, he never blew her old apartment up." He says, slowly pacing through the space toward the kitchen.

"Bingo." He says and holds up a styrofoam container, grabbing the sandwich inside. "This..." Gabe starts and steps up next to Castle, "is November of the year 2024." He says and takes a large bite of the sandwich. "You would have been- oh, geez..." He says with a mouthful of food and spits the sandwich out in the sink.

Ignoring his boorish behavior, he presses him for answers. "Would have been what?"

Gabe tosses the container back into the fridge and waves his hand. "I'm not allowed to say. Point is... this is Kate Beckett's life if she'd never met you."

Castle looks around, not really noticing anything different from how she would live now. "Doesn't look any different."

"Well, let's see then." Gabe says and walks down the hall, to where the door to her bedroom is. "Oh, and don't worry, no one can see or hear us."

"Right." He says, uninterested and accepting this is just some weird dream he doesn't have any control of.

Gabe opens the door and steps aside. Castle peers his head inside the darkness, seeing a faint outline of a slumbering figure in the middle of the bed. Castle's heart leaps when he takes a few slow steps and her sleeping features come into view. Age has had little effect, maybe the lines have run a bit deeper into her face than they do now, but she's still the most beautiful woman in the world to him... much to his hearts displeasure at wanting her to be. "Notice anything?" Gabe asks.

Castle looks over to him after a moment of reflection. "Like what?"

Gabe lifts his hands and motions toward the room then over to the bed, where Beckett is still sleeping. "She's sleeping alone, kid."

Castle is slow to realize what Gabe is talking about, but when he does, he feels a strange tug of selfish relief, followed by selfless heartbreak. "She never met anyone?"

Gabe shrugs his shoulders. "No one ever tried hard enough. No one ever put up the effort to get her to look passed that wall she told you about." Gabe says in a softer, smoother, more caring voice. "She may have a date here and there, but... they never go anywhere. There's never any spark. She never found someone who she thought she could spend the rest of her life with because no one was ever willing to put in the time it would take. And now..." Gabe says, nodding back to the bed.

Castle looks back down, seeing her soft, sleeping face as her covers rise and fall with her steady breathing.

"She stopped looking."

"But that's what she wanted. It always has been. All she ever wanted was her job and her case. She never wanted what I did."

"Wrong on one little thing, kid." Gabe says and moves over to the nightstand, grabbing the remote and turning on the TV that sits on the dresser. Castle turns when the bluish light illuminates the room. But when he sees what's on the screen, his heart turns to stone.

Then ignite with anger. "Bracken is president of the United States?!"

"It's November eighth, kid. Election day. Bracken won narrowly when Florida went his way."

"How the hell could this happen? The man killed her mother in cold blood!" He exclaimed and waves his hand toward her.

"She doesn't know that." Gabe says and points to her with the remote. "As far as she knows, William Bracken is just another politician."

"So..." He says, a pull going into his heart, "she doesn't know about Bracken? She never investigated the case?"

"Nope." Gabe says, clicks off the TV and moves to stand in front of him. "Because you never pushed her to." He says, shoving two index fingers into Castle's chest. "Kate Beckett never picked her mother's case up after she dropped it the first time."

"Well..." He says, a cold relief going over him, "that's probably a good thing then." He shrugs, before another realization hits him. "But if-"

"Dick Coonan was never caught because you weren't there to call in the specialist you found. And John Raglan died peacefully in Queens Medical Center because he didn't think anyone was still investigating what happened to Johannah Beckett, so he never came forward with what he knew."

Castle nods, pushing out a hard sigh, his mind flitting through how much that case put them and their relationship through, until he thinks of everyone else the case affected. "And Montgomery?"

"He retired just like he promised Evelyn he would. He lives just outside Buffalo now."

"So-"

"Kate Beckett never went to his funeral and was never shot."

"So, she never had to be put through having to be put through taking a bullet to the chest. You wanna tell me more about how us meeting was for the better? I mean, she clearly still has her job, right?"

"She does." Gabe says with a nod and a soft smile. "You wanna see?"

Castle raises his hands, ready to be proven right again. Gabe steps back toward the door to her apartment and pushes it open. But when Castle steps through, he isn't in her old apartment anymore. He's back at the precinct. It's midday and he's just stepped through the door to the captain's office. When he takes in his surroundings, he quickly finds her sitting at the captain's desk. She's leaned forward with the phone to her ear, supporting her head with her finger and thumb, a deep furrow in her brow. She's wearing a blue blazer with a matching blouse underneath.

"So, she's captain?" He asks, more of a lift in his voice than he intended, his eyes unable to look away from her and over to Gabe, who's standing next to him. His longing for her is still betraying him, his want for them to at least be normal, like their old selves when they first got together and were always clawing at each other.

"After Montgomery retired and Gates took over, she and Beckett hit it off. They were both women who were dedicated to their jobs with nothing to stand in their way or outside distractions. So... instead of chasing after you, she started chasing after promotions. Right as Gates took over, she talked Beckett into taking the sergeant's exam. Two years later, she took the lieutenant's exam. She's been Captain now for six years."

"So, she's happy then." Castle concludes as he shrugs his shoulders, looking over to Gabe, whose looking at him with a soft, sincere smile.

"Just listen, kid." He says and looks over to Beckett.

"No... no, Mr. Mayor, I understand that we're going through a bit of a crunch right now, but..." Castle's heart leaps again at the sound of her voice, sounding like she's losing a desperate fight, "okay, a budget crisis, but... no, I'm aware of that, Mr. Mayor, but you can't ask me to do this. These people have families, this precinct is their livelihoods, you can't..." Beckett's eyes drift shut as her head sinks down into her hands. "I understand, Mr. Mayor. Yes, thank you."

With the sound of bitter defeat quaking in her voice, she hangs up and lets out a deep sigh, clasping her hands together in front of her. And Castle is quick to dismiss all this as crazy. "That would never happen." He says, looking over to Gabe with disbelief etched into his brow. "I know the mayor, he's always pushed for more funding for the Twelfth and the NYPD."

"Wrong again, kid." Gabe says with a smile, poking Castle in the arm. "You've always pushed for more funding for the Twelfth."

"Me?" He asks, pointing at himself. "So, what you're saying is that just because I'm not there to be friends with the mayor, they're getting their budget slashed?"

"Well, it might not have been that way if their case closure rate was a little better." Gabe says and crosses his arms, nodding his head off to the side.

"What do you mean?"

"Think about it, kid. How many cases have you and her worked that she's come to you for special insight to help solve it? How many little things has she let fly over her head that broke the case wide open?" Castle's prideful nature isn't letting him admit that Gabe is right in telling him that going through all that pain, grief, insults, and hurt had some deeper meaning. He doesn't want what he's saying to be true. And Gabe obviously knows what he's thinking and begins to elaborate. "Beckett became a cop because her mother's death was written off and packaged up when they couldn't solve it. And eventually..." Gabe shakes his head, looking over to Beckett whose hanging her head in her hands, "she started getting cases that forced her to do the same thing."

A deep pang hits him right in his gut at that. The thing that he's always admired about her is her endless strength, her ferocity, her unwavering, steadfast nature, the need to be a wall against the wind... a wall that she never let down for him.

"And eventually, she realized that she was doing the exact same thing they did to her mother... and tried to compensate by going after promotions, pouring everything she had into her job." Gabe's voice sounds jagged with sadness as he explains everything to Castle. Gabe continues to look over at Beckett, whose pushing her hair out of her face and looking out to the bullpen. "She realized some time ago that this wasn't the life she wanted, but felt the world needed. And now... she's questioning if she's even cut out for it."

He watches as Beckett's brow lowers, swallowing her emotions with a hard gaze. Castle knows that look all too well. It's a look he's received when what he wanted most was for her to just let all of it out and tell him everything so he could just have that one chance to prove to her that he could be her rock, be what she needed most when she needed it.

"You know what she's about to do?" Gabe's voice cuts in.

"What?"

Gabe is silent as he nods out toward the bullpen, where Castle sees Ryan sitting at his desk. Something about Ryan seems angrier. Not like the Ryan who's come to be a close friend to him over the years. "She's about to tell Ryan, along with a few other patrolmen that they're getting a pay cut."

Castle's heart feels heavy, "Ryan doesn't deserve that."

"Especially not after Jenny left him and took the kids."

Castle's head whips around, seeing Gabe look at him with an arched brow. "What?!"

"Well, kid, when him and Jenny started hitting rogue times in their marriage right after they had their second child, Ryan didn't know who to turn to for help. So, he went to his captain for help, and... she told him to do the only thing she knew how to do and focus on his job."

"That's insane, Beckett would never tell Ryan that."

"Your Beckett wouldn't, but she would."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Castle asks angrily, not wanting to believe more than just her happiness teetered on them meeting each other.

"This Kate Beckett never had real love, kid." He says and points to her with his finger. "She's never had anyone show her that it's worth it. Now, if a certain someone was around to show her, then her advice to Ryan might have been a little different. But this Kate Beckett hasn't experienced what it is Ryan and Jenny had. She told him to just focus on his job and everything will find its place. So now, Jenny lives with her sister with the kids in New Jersey. This Kate Beckett..."

Gabe grabs him by the shoulder and guides him out of her office door and through the door. Castle then finds himself walking down the hall of her old apartment with Gabe's arm around his shoulders. When they step into the entryway to the living room, Gabe stops him just as the door is opening and starts to speak.

"... Comes home every night," He starts, his words following her actions as Beckett steps through her door with an expressionless, blank stare, "slips out of her heels... goes to the kitchen... pours herself a glass of wine, then debates with herself on whether or not to take the bottle with her... which she always does... and comes around to the couch... sits down... and stops to listen to just how quiet it is."

Castle watches as Beckett sits in the corner of her couch, her legs curled up beside her with a glass of wine in her hand, staring off into space.

"She's thinking that the silence just seems to get louder and louder every day. And now..." Gabe starts as Castle's eyes are still fixated on the Kate Beckett that doesn't even know he exists, that they even exist, "she's thinking that she would give anything to have someone to hold her... just to make her feel safe. She's thinking that she wants to know what it's like to have someone's arms around her that made her feel safe... and loved."

There's a war going on in his head and his heart. "Beckett never found that in me, so..."

"Still not getting it, huh, kid?" Castle looks over to him sadly as Gabe is pulling him back down the hallway by the arm. "I better not get in trouble for this." He murmurs to himself as he opens the door at the end of the hall again. And when they step through, he notices something that confuses him even more.

"I thought you said that Beckett never moved out of her old apartment. What are we do-"

He stops when he sees Beckett on the couch with intense tears streaming down her face, a crumpled tissue in her hands with Lanie sitting across from her. "Just listen, kid." Gabe tells him.

"You should have seen him, Lanie, he looked like a little boy. He was so scared."

Castle's heart goes into his throat.

"I know him, Lanie. He is... an immature, egotistical... self-centered jackass sometimes." He quickly feels a knot tighten in his stomach. "But he's not this."

Castle chances a glance over to Lanie before his heart breaks at the sight of Kate, whose eyes are flooded and red with tears. "Are you sure?"

When he sees Kate shake her head, his voice finds itself with a shake. "When was this?"

"The night Beckett came to you about those emails Jerry Tyson wrote." Gabe says behind him. Castle whips around to look at Gabe, whose looking at him crestfallen. "And, by the by, back in la-la-land, they don't know who Jerry Tyson is."

"What?"

"Since you two never met, you weren't there to figure out that Jerry Tyson was the real triple killer and his plan went off without a hitch. At the time I took you to, he's killed over sixty people, changing his MO from place to place. And since you never stopped his plan and figured out who he really is, he holds no ill-will toward you and this little incident never happened."

When Gabe wags his finger around in a circle, Castle turns around just as Kate is starting to speak.

"Lanie... when he touches my face to pull me in for a kiss... I don't feel the hands of a killer. When he... when he wraps his arms around me, I feel... I feel safe... safer than I do with anyone else. More loved than I have with anyone else... and that wouldn't happen if I thought he was capable of this. I know the kind of man he is, Lanie, and it's not this."

He watches as Kate scrubs her face and Lanie rubs her arm. He feels himself let out a long, deep sigh. "It would have been so easy for her to believe those emails considering the person I was before I met her."

"She believed in you when everyone else was telling her not to."

Castle lets out a breath and turns as he forces his gaze to the floor. "Look, I don't know why you're showing me this, but... if she still felt that way, then she wouldn't be so eager to just up and leave like she is with this job, okay? Back then was different."

"Alright..." Gabe sighs as he waddles back toward the closed door to her bedroom. "I really didn't want to have to show you this, but... I'm running out of options." He says with a shrug as he throws open the door again.

This time, Castle is hesitant to step through.

And when he does, his blood grows cold.

His eyes immediately fall to the girl with frail, light red hair, huddled in the corner of a wrecked, abismile room with nothing but a cot and a papered up window. She's wearing a worn hoodie with ripped jeans, a pair of heavy, worn boots on her feet with the laces untied. "Tha..." He starts as he starts to break, "That's not my daughter."

"Afraid it is, kid." Gabe says in a low voice.

"Alexis!" He calls as he falls to his knees in front of her, his heart breaking. She doesn't even flinch as he calls out to her, his eyes burning as he looks into her hazy, pale, tired, ragged features. "Wha..." He struggles, "What happened?" He asks in a soiled voice, looking over his shoulder.

"Well... since you never met Beckett like you wanted, you threw yourself into that playboy lifestyle of yours that you left behind when you did meet her... and since she never inspired Nikki Heat, you never got passed your writer's block. So, when you wrote a book about an accountant chasing his dreams on the high seas... you were too obsessed with your career going up in flames to notice her grades were starting to slip."

Castle struggles to stand back up on shaky legs as his eyes still burn.

"So..." Gabe starts with a sad shake of his head, calmly clasping his hands together in front of him, "junior year, when some of her 'new' friends" he says with air quotes, "offered her a shot of heroin... she didn't know how to say no."

With hot, angry tears burning in his eyes, he feels his teeth grind. "Are you really saying that just because I never meet Kate Beckett, my own daughter becomes a heroin addict?!"

"She might have been able to get through it, but when you started spending money to distract yourself from the terrible reviews your books were getting, you basically checked out. And your mother..." He says with an eye roll, "Well, she spends her time going after widowers with too much time and money on their hands. But... since you never met Beckett, she wasn't around to help you become a better father. She wasn't around to teach you what it really meant to dedicate yourself to something, to really stick by someone."

"I was a good father before I met Beckett. Just because I never meet her doesn't mean I would ever let this happen to my own daughter." He says with grinding teeth.

"Think about it, kid." Gabe says with another shrug of his shoulders and a calm smirk. "How many times have you gone to her with questions about Alexis's teenage problems, her... 'wild child' phase?" Castle's mind quickly tries to think and remember those conversations he's had with her about his daughter, but all he can see is his beautiful little girl huddled in the corner, shaking like a leaf. "See, Kate Beckett was able to get through her's with her mother and father and was able to get into Stanford and get her life on track. But since you didn't have her to go to for help... Alexis quickly fell in with the wrong crowd. End of junior year she gets caught with drugs and expelled. When you try and be a father for the first time in a few years, she runs away from home."

Castle's heart is in pieces in his chest.

"And now... she drifts from different places like this looking for her next fix."

When Castle's legs buckle under his weight, he's falling before Gabe's arms are grabbing him and pulling him back up.

"It's alright, kid. It's alright." Gabe says as he stands him back up. After a long few moments of Castle recollecting himself with a few deep breathes, realizing that this is... a lot more than a dream... Gabe pats him on the arm. "How 'bout one last stop, kid?"

"What, you gonna show me how I end up now? I'm sure that's just great after all this."

"Well..." He replies, looking away and nodding his head. "Alright, have it your way, we'll skip to the end." He says and puts his arm around Castle's shoulders, pulling him toward the door.

"How do I end up?" He asks.

"Living in a small, secluded, one bedroom cabin in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire, drowning yourself in scotch. And not that expensive stuff you had earlier. But that's not important." Gabe says and waves his hand before pushing open the door in front of them. And when Castle looks through the door and sees the loft, he takes a moment before looking back toward Gabe, confused.

"What's this? I thought you said I wasn't living in the loft anymore."

"Nah, see, that is your real future." He says and takes a step behind him.

"Wait, but I thought that you weren't allowed to-"

Castle is silenced by the hard thud of his foot kicking him through the door. He staggers forward a few, stumbling steps before he regains himself just in time to see the door slam shut, with Gabe waving goodbye to him with an evil smirk. "Hey, I thought you left already." A familiar, angelic voice says behind him.

He quickly turns and his heart stops, seeing Kate standing at the island between two stools, her eyes looking directly at him. She can't see him, that's what Gabe said, so... he quickly turns around, looking behind him to see who she's talking to but, all he sees is the closed door to the loft. He turns back, still seeing her looking over at him with a raised, inquisitive brow. He then points his finger up to himself, miming the word 'me'?

He can hear Kate chuckle before rolling her eyes. "Yes, hun, you. Who else would I be talking to?"

Hun? "Uh..." He stutters as he watches her turn toward him with a smile. But when she takes a step out from between the stools under the counter, he sees her finger, then his eyes pop widely. His eyes find her, still looking over at him.

"What's going on? You're gonna be late."

His heart sends the first beat through his system that he's felt since this whole thing began and he quickly moves toward her, taking his steps in large strides as he launches himself after her. His hand is on her cheek and his lips are slamming against hers in a passionate, loving kiss, pouring as much longing as he can into it and deepens their contact as much as he can, pulling her in by the cheek and the waist. Her warm hand finds his jaw, softly caressing his scruff as she lets out a small moan. He releases her with a protesting pluck and pulls back.

She's blinking up at him, "Honey, I'd love to, but you have to pick up the kids, remember?"

His heart swells in his chest. "Kids?"

Beckett looks off to the side, her brow knitting. "Yeah... our kids... remember? You have to pick them up from Ryan and Jenny's. They're over there playing with Sarah Grace and Nicholas and they need picked up."

"Ryan and Jenny?" He asks, a smile pricking at the edges of his lips. "They're still together?"

Kate breathes out a chuckle and shakes her head, her brow lowering. "Of course, they're still together, Rick. What else would they be?"

"And... we... are?" He asks, his voice hesitating at the thought of all this ending.

Kate's features fall as she looks up at him with concern. "Rick, what's going on? Are you sick?" She asks and puts the back of her hand against his forehead. "You didn't catch that fever Lily had last month, did you?"

His heart soars again as he feels his spirit lifted. "Lily?"

"Yeah... Lily... our daughter, remember?"

His smile splits across his face in sheer, unabashed joy. "That's a perfect name."

"Okay, hun, really, I'd love to play 'guess who', but you really do have to pick up Lily and-"

"Ah!" He exclaims, putting his finger over her lips, silencing her. "Don't ruin the surprise." Kate just reacts by a silent quirk of her brow. "I don't want to know, okay? I'll find out when it happens okay? Just... I love you." He says before pressing his lips to hers again. "But, now I have to go."

"Yes, you do. Jake and-"

"Ah!" He exclaims again, turning around and moving back toward the door. "Not listening anymore, can't hear you, not another word." He says, plugging his ears after he opens the door and moves out into the hall. Once the door closes, with her still looking at him thoroughly confused, he unplugs his ears and turns, jumping at the sight of Gabe, smiling widely over at him. "Whoa!" He squeals.

Gabe shrugs his shoulders and raises his brow as he clasps his hands together in front of him. "Yeah, I broke the rules. I figured they'd let it slide this one time."

"So, that was real?" Castle points toward the door with his thumb, breathing hard at his elation.

"Only one way to find out, kid." Gabe smiles.

"And how's that?" Castle asks, bubbling with excitement.

Gabe just smirks wider, his eyes narrowing over to Castle. "Dad."

Castle briefly responds with a small shake of his head.

"Dad." He repeats. "Dad, wake up." He feels something then shaking his shoulder.

---

He stirs awake, being shaken by the shoulder.

"Dad?" Alexis's voice says above him.

Once his eyes clear and his vision is able to see her standing next to him at his desk with a slight furrow in her brow. "Alexis?"

"You were talking in your sleep again, Dad." She says with a smile.

Castle is out of his chair where he was sleeping at his desk and wraps his arms around his daughter as tight as he can, squeezing her as tight as he can. "Alexis, you're okay."

He feels Alexis softly hug him back after a moment. "Uh... yeah?"

After another hard squeeze, he leans back with his hands on her shoulders. "You aren't addicted to heroin, are you?" He asks with narrowed eyes.

"Uh... no." She says, looking confused.

"But you'd tell me if you were, right?"

"Yes, Dad, despite me knowing far too much about what that stuff does to you, I'd tell you. You're my dad."

He's smiling and pressing a kiss to her forehead. "That's just what I wanted to hear, sweetie." He says and quickly moves around her and out toward the living room.

So, what? They have a few problems they need to work on. Yes, she has walls. Yes, some of them still need torn down. But he can't just walk away like he had planned on... however long ago last time he was awake was. He tried to imagine what his life would be like without her... and he can't.

Or doesn't want to. It's a hell of a lot better with her in it, for the both of them. For all of them. He knows now.

He's quickly going to the closet and taking out a coat as Alexis is coming into the living room behind him. "Dad, what's going on?"

"Hey, where's the nearest jeweler? I have something I gotta do."