promises in pencil

I love you all. I really do.

"No, Paula." Castle grits out.

"Oh c'mon, Ricky. Think of the sales, the publicity-"

"I've already had enough publicity when it comes to Kate. Enough to last a lifetime." Castle says morosely, mind flitting back to the paparazzi that had hounded him during the trial. Had said such horrible things about Kate. Things he won't forget.

The paparazzi still linger. Sometimes. They always will do, due to his fame. But even now, almost two years later, the occasional reporter will approach him. For an exclusive interview. Or a statement. Something to clear what really happened. Tell the world all. And all he wants to do is remove that from his life, and the only way of doing so is with this book. Heat Wave. Well, a series. He already sees the veins of the life she was supposed to have stretching before him, unraveling him and the only way he will survive is by using his words, their blood, to pump life through what was forgotten. What had never happened. But should have.

"Honestly, after the stunt you've pulled, you can't be surprised they're trying to do this to you." Paula, his publicist, says as she places her purse on the kitchen counter. "You're lucky they're going to publish that book, anyway."

He laughs at that one. "Yeah, right. Paula, they've practically bent over backwards to make sure they could get this. The money…" He shakes his head with a sigh.

Paula pouts. "Okay, okay, so you've still got a thing for the chick. But, Ricky, it's a brilliant idea. With the release party on the same day, you could get it all out of your system, there's always a blonde willing-"

"No!" He cries, spinning to look at her with wide eyes. "Dammit Paula, I said no!"

He refuses to be stuck in a room. Dressed up. With people he doesn't know. Stuffy businessmen and glamorous businesswomen. On the second anniversary of Kate's sentence. Surrounded by blonde women who only want him to sign their chests, who flutter their eyelashes, trying to make him fall in bed with them like he would've done before Kate. But it would be betraying her.

As the release date for Naked Heat approaches, he finds his thoughts steadfastly focused on her. Especially after they'd forced him to place a heated scene into the book, claiming it would be perfect for the characters, it would be the Richard Castle they used to know before all of this happened. And he couldn't stop thinking about her skin. So soft and lovely and interrupted with scars. The way it tasted against his tongue. The smooth, warm curves of her, how there was still more of her to map. Every map starts out empty, after all.

And then these thoughts bring him to her smile. A little cracked around the edges. Her eyes. Just a little too haunted. How in that one night with her he could feel. Everything.

And it had all been taken away from him.

"Sorry. I'm sorry, Paula, I shouldn't have yelled." He says, breaking himself from his stupor. Paula's still eyeing him warily. "Did Gina send you?"

Paula shrugs. "You weren't answering her calls. It's not like I enjoy doing her work for her."

He pinches the bridge of his nose. Breathes in and out and then in again. One for luck. "Okay. Okay, I'll call her and sort things out. But it's not being released that day. You hear me?"

Paula grabs her purse, rolling her eyes. "Fine."

She stops before she reaches the door. Turns to him. "She says she needs the dedication by tomorrow morning at the latest."

He nods. "Got it."

She hesitates again. Genuine concern fills her eyes. "Are you okay, Rick?"

His heart constricts for a moment. Knowing all these people that he's known for such a very long time care about him. And all he ever does is wallow. Never living. Just existing through the words on the printed page.

"Yeah." He says. "Yeah, I'm fine."

It may just be the biggest lie he's ever told.

He comes up with the dedication at 3am the next day. Looking at a photo of a fresh-faced Kate Beckett, recently graduated from the academy, that her father had given him. He can't stop thinking about how wonderful she could've been. Her eyes. Haunted but not with the ghosts that seep blood onto her hands now. Recovering. Not falling.

Extraordinary.

To the extraordinary KB.

All the beautiful prose. Poetry. All if it on this planet. None of it could ever explain that tight feeling in his chest when she smiled at him. Like maybe. Just maybe. Everything could be alright. Until it wasn't.

It's not her fault.

It's not her fault that she was placed in solitary.

"Kate?"

She doesn't look up at Doctor Burke. Continues to stare at that dark stain on the carpet, wondering how it got there. Was it another patient? Did they knock something over? Was it an accident? Was it on purpose? How violent was it? Was there blood?

How can she stop herself from seeing blood, all the time?

"I don't want to talk about it." Kate mutters disdainfully.

Burke's quiet for a moment, and finally she lifts her gaze, over to the window. Stares at the others in the garden. She loved having that privilege. She had been able to wear her own clothes. Only had hourly checks. Her medication had been reduced, she'd been less fuzzy in her mind, less nauseous. And she could roam the gardens and feel the sun on her face and pretend that Castle was there. With her. All it took was to close her eyes. Imagine his phantom hand in hers. Like two normal individuals, stuck still while the Earth keeps spinning.

Now that she's been in solitary, those privileges have been revoked. Half-hour checks, her medication being considered changed, having to walk around the gardens in a group with a nurse. She's not been moved back to maximum security, but deep down in her heart, she is absolutely terrified that they'll move her back there.

"Kate, I think it would be in your best interest to talk about the incident."

"In almost two years there have only ever been two incidents. One on my second day of being here. And this recent one wasn't caused by me-"

"Then who was it caused by, Kate?"

Damn. He has her there. She chuckles, simultaneously outraged but completely tired of it. This place. Burke. Missing Castle. Every day.

"Carly Reed. She started it."

Her lips quirk. She sounds like a kid in middle school.

How her heart aches to be there again. She would make so many different choices. Stupid, meaningless ones. Like not letting that boy feel under her top just because her friends told her she should. Revising for that calculus test instead of cramming that morning, resulting in a C-. But the bigger things too. Telling her Mom she loved her more often than she ever did, instead of brushing her off and acting the teenager façade. Preventing herself from getting too involved in her Mom's case, from allowing it to be so destructive that she loses her job and becomes- this.

And Castle.

Well, she'd never have ruined him at all.

"How did she cause the incident, Kate?"

Kate huffs, finally turning to Burke. "It was over medication. She found that I was being given sleeping pills and she had been rejected them when she'd asked for them. That was it."

Burke nods slowly. Silence.

She rolls her eyes. "We were at the nurse's station, collecting our medication. So that's when she noticed and she tried to grab for them. I made her back off."

Burke checks one of the pieces of paper he has jumbled between various forms. Her record. Huh. As though her record could be any more tainted than it has been by the fraud, the murders. This is nothing. This is not a relapse. She will not go back to that. She must get better. At least, that's what she thought she had to do. Now she's not so sure. She doesn't know the outside world, and most of her doesn't want to get to know it.

Here… It's not the best. Her windows have to be opened by a nurse and they open so minutely that only her fingers wedged between the frame and the windowpane can feel any breeze. And the food makes her stomach feel empty, no matter how much she eats. And most nights the only thing preventing herself from ripping apart the bedsheets and making herself a noose is the thought of being caught and being placed on suicide watch. All privileges revoked. And she spends most of her time tucked up in her room with a journal so that she can avoid the others, the ones that yell, the ones that throw fits and can't control their minds.

But. She always has a bed. And routine. And the nurses may be cold- she misses Nurse Connelly, had been sad to say goodbye when she'd left maximum security- but they care for her, they give her the medication she needs and make sure she's occupied and some try to make small talk with her. And Doctor Burke listens to any thing she says. Pries her emotions open gently, until they're all flooding out and it's like being relieved of the weight of the world, like Atlas.

It's the closest to home she's had since she was 19.

"According to my records, Kate, Carly wound up with a hairline fracture and a broken arm. That's a big leap from making her, as you said, back off. The nurses that tried to stop you also received a bloody nose and the other fractured ribs."

She swallows nervously. Closes her eyes. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Kate, I thought that you'd learned that repressing your emotions only worsen your situation."

She pries one eye open nervously. Stares into his honest eyes. "Will you move me back to maximum security? Put me back in isolation?"

He doesn't ever answer questions, Burke, so she's not surprised by his response. "Do you feel I ought to recommend you're placed back there?"

She shudders. Feels the cold, the dread, seep down her spine slowly until her spine is encased with ice. Never. Never does she want to go back there.

"I stopped myself, and that's what matters. Isn't it?"

"Stopped yourself from what, Kate?"

"From- From my old habits. God, it was just… I never enjoyed it. I didn't. Killing. Not like… Not how Sociopaths are supposed to. Not like that category they've put me in. But after a while, it didn't matter that much. After a while, it was just a job, and I convinced myself that they deserved it. And for a moment, my mind, with Carly- I was convinced she deserved it. But once that nurse started bleeding… I stopped."

She confesses it all in a whisper. Because if she says these words, that makes them true.

"You're right. You did stop. And that does matter." Burke sets a pen down on his paper. "But do you believe you'd still be capable of that level of violence, Kate? Murder?"

The tears scratch away at her eyes until she has no choice but to let them fall. Damn it. Damn it all, this stupid life, this hospital, Burke. Herself. She wants any life but this one. To be anyone but herself.

"I never thought I could do it in the first place. Until I did. And then it stopped mattering. And then it was nothing."

She thinks. Maybe.

It still is.

He and Jim sit in his car like they always do when Jim visits Kate. Only, this time, Jim Beckett is holding a book. Heat Wave.

It's been two and a half years since she had been taken away from him and every day Castle feels his heart numb just a little bit more. Dull in colour, through his blood, spreading it through his veins until he is grey on the inside. Hope lacking.

"Please, Rick." Jim says into the silence of the car. "It would benefit her. So much. She talks about you every time I visit her."

He looks over at the man, greying, hands still shaking because of the alcohol. Castle understands why Kate was always so tired of the man's alcoholism now. It hurts to watch. To watch him destroy himself and make empty promises that he'll get better.

It must be a Beckett thing.

"She'll know I've been meeting up with you regularly. And, while I promised her I'd watch out for you… I think that would kill her."

"She would be grateful-"

"She'd figure it out. That I bring you here each time. Being so close to her, just outside the damn hospital, kills me as it is. It would destroy her, sir."

Jim is silent, staring at the book he holds in his hands.

"So why am I giving her this book? How will that make anything better for her? There's nothing personal about this. Your names aren't even the same in here."

"It has… Everything."

Jim sighs. "Just sign the damn book. Please. If you ever loved her."

No. No. He will not play up to that.

"I'm doing this because I love her. Because those words in that book… They're all I have for her. I was never enough. And I have nothing left to say."

Jim breathes quietly in the silence, but it fills up all the room. "I thought that you would wait forever for my daughter, Rick."

"It's a finite world we live in, Jim." He says. Stares straight ahead at the plain, unassuming building. "Nothing lasts forever."

But. Always.

Always exists.

She cannot believe her eyes when her father passes her the book.

"This is an advanced copy. It's being released next week."

She holds it in her hands, feels the weight of it, the glossy cover of the hardback. But it doesn't feel real. When does she wake up from this dream?

"Castle gave this to you?" His name cracks into two on her tongue.

Her father nods hesitantly. "Yes. Yes, he gave it to me."

She blinks back the tears rapidly, feeling her heart burst inside her chest. Into stars. Constellations. Infinite.

"He lookin' out for you, Dad?"

"Well, I… I'd say he's looking out for the both of us."

"Yeah." She agrees, cradling the book to her chest. Precious. Hope. Light. "Yeah, that's Castle."

Her father smiles. "Check the dedication, Katie."

Her numb, shaking fingers pry the book open slowly, as she holds her breath. Her father hovers over her, waiting for the worst. A terrible reaction. Disappointment, maybe. Guilt. Maybe all of those things she feels every day. Hanging over her like an oppressive weight. But not now. Now she's free. This. It's more. Than she could ever explain. It's fractured her. Rendered her. Speechless. Nervous. Like a teenager on her first date.

The words appear and they will never leave her.

To the extraordinary KB.

A sob escapes her, but when her father attempts to hold her in his arms, she steps away from his embrace. Constellations dusting across her insides, setting everything from dark to light. Like a switch that she had never figured out how to switch on.

She smiles so brightly it's a wonder her face doesn't split in two.

"If you see him again. Castle. Tell him… Tell him I said thank you."

Jim watches her carefully. "Just thank you?"

Her teardrops land on the words. "For everything. Always."

His heart is pounding when Jim appears from the doors, clambering back into the car. He doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Doesn't even dare breathe.

"She said thank you. For everything. Always."

What he wouldn't do to hear those words in person. To feel them wrap around his heart with the lilt of her voice, probably tight with tears she'd pretend don't exist. To see her smile. Those eyes as she looks at him. Just one more time.

Oh, what he wouldn't do.

TBC

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