A/N: I'm sorry. For real don't hate me.
She enters the loft, with the keys she's always had. Slowly closes the door behind her and it clicks shut almost silently. She doesn't go in search of anything or anyone but goes straight to the windows that fill the loft with the late afternoon sun. She folds her arms and leans against the windowpane with her right side. Thinks about how it's taken her this long to get back here. More time has passed than she originally thought it would take. But who was she really kidding? Rita and all her training, with the backing of the CIA couldn't get the job done, what difference could she have possibly made?
Years, it took years.
He waited for her, just like he said he would.
Kate kept waiting for him to give up, walk away. She deserved that...deserved it for never telling him the reasons why...why she tore them to pieces without an explanation.
"I wanted to keep you safe, that was all I ever wanted to do," she says now, when she thinks she feels him near. Her voice thick with emotion, eyes glistening with unshed tears.
He would come by the precinct, even after their first anniversary passed; there was no celebration that night. No fancy restaurants, dresses and heels, no tie she would have used to pull him closer by, bringing his mouth to hers. There was no making love until the wee hours, when they were both so exhausted, but 'oh, please again, because I just need you'. She spent it lying on her couch, wrapped in a throw in a shit-hole studio she managed to lease at a last minute notice.
She never asked what he did or where he went that day, he didn't come in the day after, that's the day she feared he was done.
She was wrong.
The holidays came, first Thanksgiving and even though he told her she should come home for family dinner she smiled and said, "Maybe," they both knew it was a lie. Christmas was lonely; she worked of course, in the field like so many Christmases of the past. It wasn't how she had planned, how either of them, had planned to spend any of it.
"I couldn't risk losing you, Castle," the sobs she's been holding back finally breaking free.
He had gotten her a gift that first Christmas they were apart...she's still never been to the Maldives.
Spring passed and she and Vikram were getting nowhere.
Summer had come and with it so did a visit from Rita. Kate could see the disappointment in the other woman's eyes. She had tried to warn her how this life was going to play out, but Kate wasn't a person that could just walk away without fighting for what she thought was right. Rita had given them what she could, but not before taking what little information they had as well.
Everything still added up to nothing.
After the first anniversary of the day she walked out of the loft they shared for so brief a time, Espo transferred out of the twelfth, she'd always thought Ryan would be the first. But that day Esposito came to her with the news, she realized how quickly time was passing. People were moving on, she was standing still; she was making Castle stay behind with her...but without her.
They were supposed to have had a baby by then. Her heart would break every time Ryan would mention his baby boy. Her eyes would catch Castle's and she couldn't keep from wondering if their little boy would have had his father's eyes. She likes to think so.
He came to the precinct, tried to hone in on whatever murder they were called to. His loyalty to her, to what they were or once were, never did waver.
She would always love him, she had told him, but 'Rick, maybe moving on would be better than this.' She added.
He shook his head and handed her another coffee.
"I hated myself a little more every time I looked at you, for the lies I was telling and the secrets I was keeping. But I was selfish, I still needed you," she's shattering inside trying to justify her actions. Knowing they really don't matter.
His P.I. Business generated enough publicity and business that after Alexis had graduated and entered into law school, on the other side of the United States, he signed three more investigators. He kept busy, with his own company...With the twelfth and the Detective who replaced Ryan after the bullet went through his vest from behind, it took him a while to get used to the chair.
She doesn't know when Rita was killed, just that she was.
Kate never found any evidence the woman had even existed much less any of the evidence she had against LockStat.
"After everything, after all the years, it didn't matter, there was never anything to find," she almost whispers.
Martha passed, he let her be there for him, help plan the funeral, be there by his side while they lowered her into the ground.
She was invited to Alexis' wedding; Kate hoped the gift she sent in her place made up for her absence. The pictures Castle had brought to show her were beautiful though...Alexis and her husband gave him a grand baby he bragged about for months and by the time he calmed down about him another was already on its way. That was when she thought he would go for sure. Pack up and move the thousands of miles that Alexis had those years ago.
But no, he showed up most days, travel mug in hand, even though it was a rare occasion when she worked in the field. Paper work wasn't so boring once everything starts to hurt and he closed his P.I. business.
"I chased things I would never catch up to, Castle. I let myself be blinded by how much I loved you to not see what was there the whole time," she says, almost finished with her speech.
She should have known who was behind it all along. She hates herself now, for the years she wasted, the life she didn't live. The life she will always mourn, more so than the life of her mother. God, she hates herself. Kate never questioned it, how the evidence always had her spinning in circles, never thought twice. Just let herself be led by the hand by the one person who was helping her.
Vikram.
He held all the cards from the very beginning. He wasn't LockStat, he was close enough. He died quick, a heart attack in his sleep. That's what she was told. She had discovered his true motive for helping her buried in a computer file not long after his death. To gain her trust, send her down avenues that would never lead to the one she desperately needed. But in keeping the information from her, giving her false leads he kept her alive.
She could have lived the life they had planned. She never told him that after he teased her about having three kids with him, she never imagined them having any less. Now they will never be anything more than yearnings of a dream she can only barely remember.
There will never be the first positive sign on a pregnancy test, or Christmas mornings that erase every sadness she had before him or them. No birthdays where he pampers her for just being born, no birthdays where they watch their babies cover themselves in icing. They will never know a busy Saturday where there are two soccer games and a ballet recital keeping them from their 'nap'. They'll never see their son follow in his dad's footsteps with his first book becoming a best seller. Or have one of their daughters come to them in the middle of the night telling them she's met the love of her life and her name is Lilly. While their youngest little girl moves to college with her baby blanket that's no bigger than a handkerchief after all the years of wear tucked into her pillow case. He'll never hold her while she cries their first night alone when their children have gone, making it the first night they'd be alone in the house they bought after the second baby. They'll never spend the whole summer after she retires out in the Hamptons, the kids and grandchildren visiting on the weekends.
"Because I couldn't walk away from one thing, I walked away from everything. And what for? To protect the one person I couldn't live without. I could never have known that it was for nothing," her throat is closing up, thick with emotion.
"Because you died anyway," she says to the quite world around her.
He's been gone barely six months now, He was buried with her ring on his finger, just like she will be in the end. She's never removed it since the day he placed it on her hand. He lies in a spot, a place for her beside him. They'll be in death what they couldn't be, because of her, in life. Together.
The first time she had spoken to Alexis in years was at the funeral. There was no hate in the woman's eyes when she looked at her, not even when Alexis had told her that he had left the loft and everything in it to Kate. Castle also made sure that whatever the age Kate retires she would never need to worry about money.
Kate looks at the room around her. Things had changed in the years since she'd walked out the door, but somethings remained. Her painting that once hung in her old apartment still had its place over the stairs.
This wasn't her home now, hadn't been in years.
She makes her way across the room and openes the door just as quietly as she had shut it. Takes one last look back and for a moment she sees him as he was so long ago, sitting on the couch, wine glass in hand asking her if she wanted him to pour her a glass after a long day on the streets. She smiles and blinks away the image she can't tell was a memory or a vision. Turns and closes the door on the life she never lived.
The loft isn't her home.
He was.