AN: Hope the first chapter, though short was intriguing. As usual I don't owe anything and this is done purely for fun. Enjoy! Please review if you have a free moment.

Chapter 2

Kate Beckett exhaled a loud shaky breath. She was alone, as she always thought she would be. It had been a calculated, painful maneuver she had just completed.

The moment he had shown up at her door, she knew why he was there. Gone was the jovial, carefree writer, replaced instead by a somber, serious man. This was the Rick Castle she feared most. She could deal with the goofy manchild, but not the emotional caring man she knew he was deep down. She knew that she would break if he showed even the smallest amount of emotion or caring. So she had steeled herself for the task ahead. Summoning all of her anger and hatred for what had happened to her mother. She couldn't let anything stand in the way of her quest for the truth, not even Castle.

As he had made his case, she knew deep down that everything he said was true. In all likelihood she would end up dead, another victim of the greater conspiracy. She had done everything she could to block out the faces and feelings of those that were closest to her. Knowing what they would go through would just feed her fear, allowing it to grow until it consumed her and she could no longer continue. And here was Castle, standing in her home, giving a voice and face to that fear.

So she did the only thing she knew how to do. She used all her strength to push him away using ridicule and anger and hatred. She had known that she was hurting him, hurting the others she loved, but she couldn't care about that. It would be better in the long run for them. She was trying to make it easier if or when the inevitable happened. Pushing them away was the only way she knew to accomplish that.

It had been harder than she had anticipated. Now she was realizing that she cared for Rick more than she had ever cared to admit to herself. She had always punched down those feelings for the writer that had resided stubbornly around her heart. She couldn't allow herself the luxury of falling to hard for someone. It might distract her from her mission. Now, she was both emotionally and physically spent from their encounter. It had been so difficult to hurl those words at him.

She finally realized that she was still standing staring at the door, the last place she had seen him, the last time she might ever see him. With great effort she moved her body across the floor to her couch where it collapsed in a heap. Not having the energy to cushion herself from the impact, her head smashed into the pillows and she lie there unmoving. Before she knew what was happening, he tears began to fall. With great gut wrenching sobs she wept for what she had lost today.

Had she been another person in another set of circumstances, she could have easily thrown herself into him. For all his goofy charm, there was a caring man beneath. She had watched him grow these last few years into a wonderful, caring man who would put friends and family above everything else. Gone was the party boy she had so often accused him of being.

The more she thought, the harder the tears fell. This was to be her life, and she had chosen it. She had never been one for close friends, so she would just be reverting back to her original being. She had survived then, she would survive again.

A fitful sleep finally claimed her, allowing the tears to dry into salty patches on her cheeks, and the whirlwind of thought to find peace, at least for the moment, in her mind.