Time passed for others. But for him time seemed to stand still. He floated in longing and half realities.
And he still visited her grave.
Windy weekdays he would climb over the bluff at the graveyard, passing silent tombstones, nodding to their occupants, till he reached the fresh stone.
"Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore...
And he who battles on her side,
God, through he were ten times slain,
Crowns him victor glorified,
Victor over death and pain."
He would kneel in the fresh grass over her grave, letting the moisture seep through his pants. The flowers he brought would be placed under the headstone, ready to wilt near her.
Sometimes, he'd reach over and rub the stone, cleaning it, polishing it's light gray marble. Contentedly, he could sit there for hours, head bowed in front of her.
The grave keeper got used to it, seeing the kneeling man in the distance over the hills, a tiny pinpoint against the rising sun behind him. People visited, but not this often, and never for this long.
But he was only a watcher, he could not understand the pain of the man in the distance.
After a while, freezing cold, Richard Castle would reach into his back pocket, pull out his notepad. His icy white fingers would rub the blood stain, almost all faded for the amount of times he had touched it. Gingerly he would pull open the cover, flip past the plot ideas from months, days, hours past. When he got to the pages that were just a long list he would slow down. Take his time on each page, reading, rereading. Memories would play through his mind, like a film.
"She was the best shot."
He looked over at her, the woman he had just met, holding her issue gun. She put her eyebrows up, staring at him, then turning back to the red target. With a loud boom, a bullet hit the center of a heart in the paper dummy at the end of her lane. He chuckled and she sighed. She hated him, but he would change that.
And he couldn't help but notice that her eyes were green. They were green and they flashed with satisfaction every time she made that perfect shot. It was the first time she took his breath away.
And she didn't even care that he existed.
"She became a cop for her mother."
Her face was pallid in the soft afternoon light. She brushed back a strand of her short brown hair, barely meeting his eyes. He wanted to make a joke, like he would have for any other girl, but he couldn't. Instead he reached over and almost took her hand. But he caught himself before she saw.
"She was murdered Castle. But promise me you won't go looking."
"I promise." It was the first agreement of friendship he had ever shared with her. The woman who was so different, so new, so driven. She drove him wild. He wanted to find her mother's killer, ease her pain.
But he'd do anything for her and what she wanted was to be left alone, so he agreed.
Even though it hurt like hell.
"She pretended not to care."
He'd waited in the bathroom for hours. Waiting to hear the sharp click on the tile floor that would signal her entrance. Finally, after all that time, he'd heard the noise he'd been waiting for. A thud as she slammed the stall door next to him. With a start he had popped up, peering over the wall between them.
She jumped, pulling the book to her chest. His book. He'd caught her.
Caught her, looking scared, shocked, beautifully angry on the toilet seat. Her emotions raging, her yelling at him to get out, anger issuing from her every being, but he didn't mind.
He didn't mind because it proved his worst fears wrong, it proved that she really did care.
When he reached the last page, the reel done running, her face still fresh behind his closed eyes, he would rise. Slowly he'd walk back down the knoll, the wet spots on his knees, back to the waiting car.
His mother would look at him, grab his hand, squeeze it tight, tighter.
"I know it hurts."
He knew too, he'd known for a long time.
