I am NOT happy with the way the show is going right now. But rather than joining in on the numerous and constant (understandably) outpourings of anger, disgust, and frustration I decided to write this, instead.

Warning-although I do bring the Caskett shippers back in this, it's not a happy story. It is an abstract way to deal with my anger over what the writers are doing to our beloved Caskett.

I will say this, though. I read that the writers were hoping that we would be mad at them, not the characters. I think that was an epic failure, at least where Kate is concerned. I, and it sounds like many of you agree with this, am at least as mad at Kate as I am at the writers, probably more.

Disclaimer: If I owned Castle, I would have honored Marlowe's promise to NEVER break them up to increase drama. Too bad the current writers couldn't say the same.

She couldn't be blamed for almost tripping over it, Kate decided after she had gotten over her brief shock at the dead body lying across the doorway of her new office. The prone figure was facedown, its arms stretched out, fingers curled into loose fists. There were no bullet holes or other distinguishing marks to explain the cause of death. Kate wasn't surprised by that. What DID surprise her is that no one had noticed that someone had been in her office.

Automatically trying to piece things together, Kate mentally catalogued what she already knew as she watched Ryan reach for his phone to call Lanie. No shots were fired, so the killer may have used a silencer. No distinguishing marks on the neck, so strangulation was unlikely. It could have been-

A sudden grip on her wrist, the fingers cold and clammy, forced her to look away from the body.

"Fix it! You've got to fix it!" the person, a woman in her late 20s Kate would guess, demanded.

The words made little sense, considering the obvious stab wound in the center of the woman's chest. Kate may have enough training to pose as a paramedic, which she had done when Castle and his mother had been held hostage at a bank robbery years ago, but only a surgeon could fix a wound like that.

A horrified scream made her wonder if there was going soon be a third victim. The room was filled with homicide detectives, none of which would scream over a dead body.

Well, Castle might…

But not like that. He only let out short, high-pitched screams when he was startled by a body falling right in front of him.

No. She couldn't think about Castle right now. She couldn't afford the distraction.

Another scream rang out.

Then another.

And another.

And another.

They seemed to be coming from everywhere.

Except doing a quick and thorough search of the bullpen didn't reveal even one person that was screaming. A lot of panicked looking detectives, their wide eyes and white knuckles giving away their emotional state, and a couple suspects with frozen expressions of terror on their faces, but none of them were making a sound.

As suddenly as the screaming started, it stopped. It was quiet enough for Kate to hear herself breathing.

Until a shout rang out. "No, no, no, NO! What are you DOING?!"

"That's it! I am DONE!" another voice shouted.

"No, SHE'S done!" shouted another.

What-?

When the shaking started, feeling like a 10.0 earth quake but with no books toppling from the shelves in her office, no papers falling from desks, nothing falling anywhere, Kate had a feeling she knew.

The shippers.

The Caskett shippers.

They were back.

And they were pissed.

Kate had known they wouldn't be happy about her actions, although she had hoped they would understand. They loved Castle as much as she did, even if their love was different from hers.

They hadn't shown up when she had taken her job in DC. But that could have been because she had said yes to Castle's proposal before she left.

Kate had wondered if they would show up on her wedding day. First to celebrate with her, then to help her find her husband.

She had wondered if they knew what had happened those two months Castle had been gone.

They knew that Castle had whispered his love to Kate when she was lying, bleeding on the ground from the sniper's bullet. So it wasn't totally unreasonable for her to think they may have known more about her husband's disappearance than she did.

Kate had even begged them to turn up when she had been alone in her apartment to get a change of clothes after spending the first fifty-seven hours after Castle's disappearance searching for any clue she could find. She wasn't one to ask for help under normal circumstances, but she would do anything for Castle.

Including leave him, if that's what it took to keep him safe.

Why couldn't they understand that?

A wrenching noise was the only warning she got before the ground began crumbling under her feet. A quick jump kept her from falling through, but then that started crumbling, too. She jumped again, but the ground where she landed wasn't solid, either. It continued like that, making Kate feel like she was a character in some weird video game.

It finally stopped when she sat in Castle's chair.

It wasn't Castle they were mad at, so she'd figured she would be safe there.

For the moment, anyway.

And then Caskett shippers started shooting up through the holes.

Dozens of them filled the bullpen in seconds. Every single one stood glaring at her, some gnashing their teeth.

More shot through the holes, wailing as though at a 1st century funeral procession.

Expecting far more, Kate was surprised when there were only three in the next group. They had shot up in holes adjacent to each other. The blonde on the left looked to be in shock. "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm here!" she cried. Someone who hadn't become a shipper until after she and Castle got together, then.
The dark haired girl on the right gave Kate a look of disgust. "It's too bad you weren't here last time, Eva," she said to the blonde. "I doubt it's going to be so easy this time. If she's still dumb enough to leave Castle even without the wall and her mother's case already put to rest, I can't imagine what it's going to take. It's certainly going to take more than just telling her that Castle loves her. I don't even know if that matters to her anymore."

Kate couldn't believe what she was hearing. How could anyone, let alone a shipper, think that she didn't care how her actions were affecting her husband? Knowing that he was hurting as much as she was made it almost impossible to put one foot in front of the other and do what needed to be done.

The third girl was shaking with rage, gripping the plastic handles of the large black sack she had slung over her shoulder so tightly her fingers had turned completely white.

Kate didn't think she was some pseudo-Santa bringing presents three months ahead of time.

"Nat, I don't know how much longer I can take it," that girl said. "I've never wanted to throw something at someone so bad in my life."

"Well, Liz, here's your chance," Natalie said.

Liz reached into her sack and took out an object. Kate got a brief look before the girl hurled it towards her. Was that a stuffed animal? A platypus, from the looks of it.

Kate caught it before it could hit her.

Yep, a platypus.

Kate couldn't help it. She laughed. Roared with laughter, actually. How could she not? She knew the girl was furious with her, but really? A stuffed animal? What kind of harm did she think that would do?

A growl of frustration preceded the next attack. A white seal, quickly followed by a pale green canary.

A canary?

Seriously?

Unfortunately for Kate, others quickly came forward, each grabbing a stuffed animal out of the bag that seemed to have an endless supply of faux furry ammunition. These shippers obviously had more athletic prowess, because most of them hit their target. Her knees, her shin, her shoulder.

"Yes!" Kate saw the girl called Liz do a fist pump a moment after one of the stuffed animals struck the side of her head. It wouldn't have happened if Kate hadn't been distracted by the hundreds of other stuffed animals being hurled at her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kate noticed the elevator doors opening.

More shippers spilled out.

Except these weren't like the others.

Their eyes glowed red, for one thing.

And each one held a Nebula Nine Thorian blaster.

For the first time, Kate was truly worried. She had heard rumors of the 'rouge' shippers, discernable by their glowing red eyes. Some even called them 'the evil shippers.' Because their one goal was to keep Kate and Castle together through any means necessary. And, failing that, they wanted nothing more than to succeed where Cole Maddox, the man who had both shot her with a sniper's bullet and tried to throw her off a roof, had failed.

Kate hadn't really believed they existed. It made no sense that someone who had once been a shipper would turn on her so completely.

She couldn't deny their existence now.

"You have got to be kidding," one of the rogue shippers said. "Stuffed animals? What harm do you think they're going to do?"

"We don't actually want to hurt her," Eva said.

"We don't?" the other rogue shippers asked, speaking as one.

"Castle would be furious," Eva pointed out.

"We don't care," said the same rouge shipper. "Castle deserves better than her," the disgust the girl felt for Kate was obvious, "and we're here to see he gets it."

"NO!"

Kate felt a body slam into hers as she heard the familiar sound of a shot from a Thorian blaster.

She half expected it to be Castle, but the horrified cry of "Natalie!" from Liz told her otherwise.

"Owwww," Natalie moaned. "Did it have to be that shoulder?"

Liz rushed forward to her friend, looking over her shoulder at her other friend and said, "I'd better get Nat to the doctor. It's all up to you now, Eva."

Kate was surprised at the sympathy in Eva's eyes. Maybe she could be reasoned with.

"You'd better call Castle," Eva said.

Or not. She sounded as crazy as the rest. The rest of the regular shippers, anyway. Because any shipper that thought she would allow Castle to get in the middle of this had to be crazy.
"I can't stop them," Eva said. "And neither can you. There are too many. The only one they'll listen to is Castle."

One of the rogue shippers rolled her eyes. "She's right, you know. We stopped listening to you months ago. Some of us even years ago. Do you want to die?"

"Sheesh, she probably does," a regular shipper said. "Then she can get away from the guilt that has to be eating away at her for putting EVERYTHING before Castle."

"That's not fair!" another regular shipper protested. "You KNOW she's an addict. She's got to be. It's the only thing that makes sense."

"I think she's just gone insane," said another. "That's what makes sense."

Kate was started to get a bit angry, herself. Who did they think they were? Dr. Burke?

He never called her insane.

The fact that she hadn't spoken to the man in over a year was beside the point.

"Kate!"

No. What was he doing here? He knew she didn't want him anywhere near the precinct right now.

Castle barely gave the dead body lying in her office doorway a glance. He frowned at the body slumped against the wall next to Kate, blood still dripping from its chest wound.

"Her first victims," the shipper standing the closest to him told him.

Kate glared. She hadn't used a knife, gun or stuffed animal against anyone. She was not to blame for-

Or what if she was? She knew what it meant to be a shipper: emotional investment in the relationship of another. Could her actions have wounded those two so deeply they were unable to survive it?

Kate shuddered at the thought.

Castle gently helped Kate rise from the floor where Natalie had knocked her down to save her from the shot of the Thorian blaster, positioning himself protectively in front of her.

It was sweet but unnecessary. She was the cop.

"Castle-"

Castle ignored her, choosing to address the shippers that were threatening his wife. His words showed that he knew he was addressing Caskett shippers.

"I don't know why Kate left. But I am not giving up on her. You and I both know her feelings haven't changed. But she has her reasons. And I choose to trust her. She said she will be back. She will be, whether it takes weeks, months, or even a year. 'Always' is not only for when things are easy. It's never been more important than it is right now. I won't let anyone, or anything, hurt her if I am able to stop it. But if I don't get there in time, if you descend on her when she's at her most vulnerable, if you do succeed in ending her life, you'll be no better than Bracken."

The rogue shippers hissed at the insult.

"And you don't want to find out what I would do. You all remember the man who tried to keep me from finding Alexis, don't you?"

That was no idle threat. As much as Kate knew Castle loved Alexis, when she had let him in the room to try to 'convince' that man to give him the information he needed to find his daughter, Kate had been stunned at how far Castle had gone. He truly would do anything for those he loved.

The rogue shippers quickly got together in a huddle. After a couple minutes, they turned as one to face him. "You make a good argument," the one who had done most of the speaking acknowledged. "So we'll give you a reprieve. Fix this mess before Thanksgiving, and she can live. Otherwise, we'll be back. And not even you willbe able to save her then."

"Why Thanksgiving?" Kate wanted to know.

"Because the holidays are supposed to be happy. HAPPY Thanksgiving. MERRY Christmas. HAPPY New Year. We may have given up on you, but most of the rest of the shippers haven't. And they don't deserve to suffer through the holidays because of you."

"Them?" Kate couldn't believe it. Did they really think she wasn't suffering? And did they really think she wanted to ruin the holidays for Castle? She didn't have a choice. She had to stay away to keep him safe. Risking her own life was one thing; she'd never risk his.

"They'll be suffering every bit as much as Castle. You, on the other hand, deserve any pain you get. Consider it a small measure of vindication for what you've put Castle and all of the shippers through. I'd think things through very carefully if I were you. Because if you drag this on much longer, you'll start to lose sympathy from even your staunchest supporters. You, Captain Beckett, are becoming dangerously close to no longer being relevant. To anyone."

I know what some of you are probably thinking. "What, that's IT? Where's the resolution? Where's the happy ending you say you always give your story?"

Well, honestly I thought about it. But with the way the show is going right now, I'm just not in the right head-space for it. So you can think of this as an insert between 8x02 & 8x03, and the resolution will be whatever the show-writers give it. Which I am HOPING will happen by the fall finale, on November 23rd.