A/N: Trigger warning : character death.
The next chapter is being posted immediately for those that do not wish to read. This chapter will be the only one with a character who didn't die within the confines of the show. Thanks to Indrani for the medical information.
I have always loathed the quote that inspired this chapter, now I hate it a little more.
"If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die."
The low hum of florescent lights follows her down the long corridor. Weary footsteps and heavy heels click clack over the tile, barely keeping time with the continuous curling and uncurling of her fingers. She's nervous. She shouldn't be. Nothing will change, she knows that, knows the prognosis and the outcomes and all the medical buzzwords they drown her in at each meeting. None of it makes a difference. None.
She slows when the doctor approaches. He sees her long before she acknowledges his presence her head up and her mind as far elsewhere as she can allow it until forced back into reality.
"How is he?"
The man startles, obviously expecting some preamble, some small talk she refuses to make. He opens his mouth unsure what to say, just as she has been a hundred times before. Until now she's always filled the awkward silence with questions they find easier to answer.
"No sign of progress?" She guesses but his nod of affirmation still weighs heavy. "Did he ask after me?" This one never ceases to hurt, no matter she knows the answer, no matter how many times she asks it.
The doctor shakes his head again and her world would crumble, if there were much left of it to break.
"After anyone?" She doesn't waits for a response this time. "After her?"
The sad smile gives away his answer before he speaks, "He always asks after her."
They take a walk down another long corridor. Different hospital, same electronic buzz and static hum absent of sound at this ridiculous hour. Somehow this day, this night, always makes it worse. Perhaps she should put it down to the odds he mumbles of constantly. If she were a superstitious person maybe she'd give credence to the veil being thinner tonight.
She's not, so she doesn't.
The night shift doctor still acts like he has something to prove. It's partly why she said okay to him coming on board. That drive that most of the others had lost. He's heard the case, seen reports on the news and in the papers, probably watched that t.v special Martha had taken part in. When they first met he told her he felt drawn to it, taken it on as a challenge, determined to do some good. He'll learn, give up, the same as the others, but that splinter of hope he offered was too addictive to pass up.
He mumbles statistics, information she can't process anymore. Ten years in and the numbers run wild in her mind. Like ink strewn papers caught in a rainstorm, nothing makes sense. Just a crushed and jumbled mess.
No one understands the brain, that's what they keep telling her. Every consultation, every Neurologist stumped as MRI's and CT's came back showing the same thing. Blood work normal and all other organs functioning perfectly fine.
The best explanation she was given had made her breath catch, a non diagnosed diagnosis fitting of the man himself. As the words echo in her mind, she can almost feel the warm hand of the doctor on her arm. Strangely comforting, all these years later.
"Memories are the neurology equivalent of the universe. Vast and unexplainable. Untapped knowledge and untapped potential. Why some remain and some are destroyed, some never moved beyond, we will never know. We can guess a lot, but even we don't know what we don't know."
They stop at a door with an isolation window, bigger than the others. More light as she requested, the idea of him here bad enough.
She catches herself in a half forming smile. He'd find a way to make this better, concoct some story and have them both less on edge within minutes. But he's not here, not really.
"You can go in if you'd like." The doctor offers and she pauses, her fingers slide over the glass window, even after all this time she forces herself to take a second and brace for the pain. When she does lift her eyes she finds the room much as she did last month and the month before.
In the dim light Castle sits at a makeshift desk frantically writing. It took a lot of donations to allow him that privilege, but having experienced one of his meltdowns when they took his equipment away, the staff had all eventually agreed it was for the best. He's much calmer this way.
She hasn't done this for a while, breached the threshold. Maybe it's the all hallows call, maybe it's a way to punish herself before she leaves again, but for whatever reason tonight she finds herself drawn into the room.
He doesn't stop when she enters, doesn't flinch at the sound of the door opening or even turn when it closes behind her. It's as though she doesn't exist. It's been that way for years.
She touches at photos that are pinned to the wall, smiles at his creation, a murder board all his own. It's different, of course, to what she remembers from the precinct, this mock-up lined with scraps of paper, snippets of handwritten notes. Photos of them together, not enough, not as they should be. A coffee cup lid, a scrap of cardboard with a name scrawled upon it.
Everything pinned, everything treasured.
She circles the room, surveys everything unable to bring herself to his side just yet. It hurts a little less each time, but being here, seeing him like this, it kills her.
He's not shaven for a while, his clothes are unclean, hair longer than he would like. This isn't part of their agreement. "When did he last shower."
"It's not in the chart." She hears from the doorway, turns eyes dark.
"It's not good enough."
The man nods, pity bleeding from him. He scribbles a note and she trusts him all over again, this hopeful man, to abide by her wishes.
Castle sighs and she turns following the tilt of his head to what he stares at. On the flimsy table top is a cup, old with no coffee in it, just a memory. Every now and then when he pauses, mid sentence and words falling away, he reaches for it, fingertips brushing the cold ceramic. It's the closest he comes to reality, while calm. Like an empty pen dipped into an inkwell, he draws something from this forgotten cup, spurred on to write again.
She finally comes to a rest at his side, bends to press her lips to his forehead, she takes a deep breath before forcing herself to speak, to break her heart again. "Hey dad."
"Mmm." He smiles.
Sometimes he laughs, she has no idea what he finds funny, what Kate has told him that makes him smile, what silly thing he has done to make her happy. It kills her to hear the trace of what would have been a happy life falter so far from his grasp on reality.
"Dad?"
His cheeks lift and more words fall on the blank page. Hardly any of it makes sense anymore, experts up and down the country have pulled his ramblings apart looking for a hidden meaning that will crack the code and bring him back. Some psychological breakthrough laced in the story.
It's no use, she's told them again and again, the snippets of the life they dreamt of living have more hold on him than anything the real world could ever offer.
Frustration bubbles under her skin, that feeling of being cheated gripping her chest so hard her ribs ache with the force of every breath. Alexis shouts, "DAD!"
"Oh," he startles, it doesn't happen often but somehow today she's caught his attention. His eyes lift, dark smudges from no sleep making him look far older than his years, "Hey pumpkin, I didn't see you there." He reaches for her hand, squeezes hard, "How's school?"
"Great," Alexis counters, as instructed, always supplying the truth, "I graduated five years ago."
"You did? Did I miss it?"
"Yeah, dad, you did."
His eyes drop, shame faced and confused again, "I'm sorry, Alexis, I don't remember - He looks over her shoulder and his eyes narrow, "Where's Kate?"
She sighs, "I don't know dad, where is she?"
His stare darts around the room, panic starting in the quickening of his limbs, "She was just - just here a minute ago. She must have left."
"She died, dad."
"No, she just left -" his hands shake and she's seen the devastation that comes when he's pushed too hard beyond this point, his damaged memory unable to bear the pain.
"She was here - where - where is she. Alexis, she was just here." He stands and the doctor at her back flinches. She waves a hand for him to back off, not wanting him sedated.
His fists clench, he vibrates with it. Pushed too far he loses control and she loses him all over again. Days lost to sedation and the slow coaxing that gets him back to the desk. She can't handle it. Not again.
She gives in.
"She's coming back, dad." Alexis smiles, heart thumping hard as it threatens to break, "She's coming right back."
"Where is she?"
Alexis strokes his shoulder, pushes him toward the desk and the piles of scribbled upon paper, "I can hear her in the hall, dad. I'll go and tell her you're waiting." He smiles, body relaxing he sits back down, "You write 'til she gets here, okay?"
"Okay, pumpkin, have a good day at school tomorrow."
"I will."
"Love you kiddo."
"Love you, daddy."
The door closes behind her and she sinks hard against it, spine dissolving under what feels like never ending grief.
"He's still the same."
"That prognosis is unlikely to change Miss. Castle." He falters, "Sorry, I mean Mrs-
"It's fine -" she waves a hand, gold band flashing. "Sometimes it's nice to hear."
The doctor nods, "While I understand the ins and outs of your father's prognosis, the story itself - "he smiles apologetic, " Maybe you could explain?"
She takes a breath, three doctors in and this never gets any easier. Her fingers rub at her eyes, scratchy with lost sleep, but she nods before she speaks. It sounds clinical now, the story rehashed and torn apart over the years falls from her lips in the bare minimum of words.
"They were shot, Kate died, my father was in a coma for almost a year."
"Brain damage?"
"Selective and short term memory loss." She shrugs. The words fall so easily now, she's almost deaf to them, blind to the pain they once held. "It started with Nikki."
"Nikki Heat?" The doctor asks making notes, "The character based on-"
"Yeah, he wrote three books in three months." She laughs, bitter to her own ears, "Just churned them out, page after page. All he would do was write and sleep, eat when I made him." She leans against the wall of the corridor, back aching, neck cracking when she rolls her shoulders. "He'd ask where she was over and over again."
"That was when he went into the first facility."
"It was too much. I couldn't -"
The doctor nods at her tone, guilt unhidden.
"You have no idea how hard it was to see - to live through that and then -" Her eyes burn with tears that have been falling for too many years. She refuses to shed anymore. Alexis stares the doctor down, lets him make whatever assumptions he needs. "Eventually Nikki wasn't enough and when he couldn't write her anymore, he started writing Kate."
"Some of the things I've read - the tiger?"
She smiles, "That was real."
"The children?"
"No." The doctor makes notes again. "That never happened."
"So it's -"
"Everything he wished for, hoped for." She smiles at the life her father has created, the snippets she's read of the world he lives. It's happier there. They would all have been happy there. "He brought their love to the page, kept her alive with his words until -"
"Until?"
She shakes her head, it doesn't matter to anyone but her. "To him, she never left." Her eyes fall back on the closed door, mind on the promise she made but can never fulfill, "To him she's always just stepped out and he's waiting for her to come back."
"He talks to her." The man questions, and she knows he's seen it, probably tonight, before her arrival.
"Sometimes he hears her voice in his head and it just stays between the two of them." She smiles, "They have entire conversations and you can see it all play out behind his eyes."
"But tonight." The doctor tips closer, eager for detail. "Halloween. He sees her? Talks to her like she's in the room?"
"Tonight's the closest he comes to lucid." She eyes the man with suspicion now, "The closest they come to each other."
"I think perhaps it's time to let that stop. There are drugs I have in mind," the doctor smiles, "and with therapy we can help him move on and get over -"
"There is no getting over," Alexis barks.
"Miss. Castle -"
"You don't get it. He has no light to guide him home," she heaves a heavy breath. "He lost his north star..." She says sadly, remembering a speech from long ago, a time far more hopeful than now. Alexis looks the man in the eye, "He lost his partner."
In the little room angry voices try to penetrate the scene, but cold hands on his shoulder hold him in the moment. Behind Castle, the ghostly spectre of his wife strokes lightly over his arms. Her fingers are a sigh through the shaggy strands of his hair, the caress barely there, but enough.
"Alexis." He says, turning to look up at her.
"She's all grown up," Kate whispers, voice as loud as it will ever be, this one night a year.
He nods, "I don't know when that happened." He looks confused as he faces her, his cheeks red with confusion, fear. "Is it Halloween again already."
"Yeah, Castle." Kate smiles, sadly.
"You'll be gone soon."
They've tried to make the break and it never works, never lasts longer than a few months. Something pulling her back to him, something of him frozen in the time they were together.
Neither of them able to let go.
"Kate?"
She nods, "But not yet, and not for a while." Her hand curls at his shoulder, encouraging him to turn back to the paper, "Until then, will you tell me a story?"
"Of course."
"One about the children."
"The twins and bathtime?" He starts to type as her cold breath dances down his spine.
She sighs wistfully, "Sounds perfect."