He thought it would be better; to have more amid the four walls, the ceiling, the floor, than to cry out for her and hear the hollow, clanging sound of his cracked voice echoed back to him in terrible waves.

He'd ached for the margins of his own space, chiselled out and filled up with pieces of him but the ache didn't go, it's only different here and somehow that's worse. Everything is familiar and alien at once. He's home and not home and it's worse.

Some days the familiarity is malicious, cruel in the ways it reminds him of his brokenness. The stairs rising up into an impenetrable boundary between him and them. Things set too high, too low. A bath lip he cannot yet lift himself over.

Alexis helps, she lifts up on tip toes, she brings things down to him and lays everything out. She's kind and patient and that hurts too. He's sorry. Most of the time, he's just sorry.

Sometimes it's better, mainly in the light, mainly with Alexis, but mostly it's worse. Night comes fast and too often. Her name still rings out. He barely sleeps.

He doesn't know if the fear of insomnia or the fear of what woke him is stronger. He's even less certain that it matters, but he gets trapped in the thought. Trapped in the fear and the thought of the fear.

It's been weeks, mountains of days falling into days and it's her. Still her. In some form or another. Some worse than others. In every second that he closes his eyes, it's her and he's instantly unlearning how to unlove.

He keeps his eyes open and tries to move, but nights are more painful than days. His spatial memory is sharp, instinctive, but it belongs to another man. An unbroken man who's unused to the lag of this shattered body that burns and burns and moves too slowly. It sends him turning too early in the dark. He catches his toe on sharp corners, his shoulder or elbow or his sharpened hip bone. He snags and bristles and the pain is demanding.

Most nights he's here. Eyes open. Cradling a mug of whiskey, because pulling down a tumbler is just another small thing that needs a bigger man. Curled awkwardly in his desk chair and grieving for all the things he's not, for some fictitious future that optimism wrote in Braille. Pessimism floods through him now, addictive and toxic like clarity and at least that's better. The melancholy is softer than the brutality of hope.

[x]

It's been weeks and she's verging on manic. They worry but they don't ask. She's hyper-vigilant and strictly insistent on protocols she's never herself adhered to before. She's always first through the door and pushing them back. She snaps and scolds and tucks them in close.

She's overprotective and it's both misguided and dangerous. She's dangerous.

She barks orders and hovers for days before Esposito cracks. He turns and grabs her by the shoulders in a bleak corridor of some seedy hotel that she wouldn't let them go through alone. He shakes hard. "Stop, Beckett. It wasn't your fault!"

The life goes out of her beneath his hands. She goes soft and her eyes drop away. "He shouldn't have been there. I shouldn't have let him be there, Javi." It's not much more than a breath.

He breathes in return. He drops his hands and she straightens up, because there's nothing else to do. He was hers. Not just her partner but, hers, and she let him be. There's nothing to say.

They take turns - Ryan and Esposito. They roster their mornings and leave a coffee on her desk. They never talk about it, because it's only temporary. They tell themselves that.

It's a sweet gesture. A we love you too and he'll be back, Beckett, don't worry. She doesn't tell them he won't. She can't, she just nods and puts everything she can muster into her "Thank you."

They all ask. Homicide and every other floor, all the people she doesn't know but he does. "How's Castle?"

"Fine," she says, "Good, he's doing well. Thanks." She tries to smile. Because what is there to say? Only that she doesn't know. He hasn't called. They both wish it had been her.

She hears his name everywhere. Tumbling out from little knots of people in the hallways, from Ryan and Esposito, though the words halt when she's near. She knows through murmurs not meant for her that he's home. He's already home.

She hardly sleeps because he is dreams, but the sounds, the words, have disappeared and the ache to hear him is too much to stomach.

Most nights she's here. Shutters open wide and chasing down dragons she can't yet see, chasing away the verdict that came with he's home. The verdict that it's over, truly over. He's done with her.

Most nights she's just here, staring at words that don't read because she doesn't know how to be now. Separately.

[x]

More and more days collapse and the nights seem longer. Longer and longer all the time. The days seem longer too, because fear never goes anymore, it stays, lurking around the corner.

It's no longer recognisable - the fear. Whether it's the insomnia or what woke him, it's all the same and he's just afraid. All the time now, he's afraid.

Tonight is bad. Terrible. The absolute worst. He slept too long and she died, over and over again in an infinite loop of madness. Scene after scene of horror. Things that make sense and things that don't. Thing's he cannot fathom.

The bed was left behind hours ago; crumpled, sweaty sheets tossed aside and left victim to his terror.

He's knotted up in his chair, alcohol and adrenaline swirling into a volatile numbing agent but the pain is real. Everything still hurts and he's terrified. He's burning.

He's halfway drowned in whiskey and his body is heavy. Too heavy. His eyes slip closed and it's an awful mistake.

Everything is out of sequence. Fleeting images that make no sense before they settle. Then he's there, marching in some line and pivoting on his mark. He feels the sharp edges of a placard he's holding out in front of him. He sees the bleary shapes of the others, lined up on his right and left, holding up placards of their own. They look like him, fatter, thinner, taller or shorter versions of him.

She's on the other side of the mirrored glass.

He sees her see him, though that makes no sense. Then he is her. It's through her eyes and he's seeing himself. The lights come on and he recognises the scene. A line up. He sees the numbered men, all variations of him. 1, 2, 3 and then there's him. There's no number 4 on his board, only two words.

I'm sorry.

She raises a gun, or he does, as her. He raises a gun and aims at himself. He pulls the trigger and suddenly the bullet is going through him. Going through her as him or him as her. Ricocheting off the glass and piercing her chest, knocking her back.

The mirror turns suddenly and he's back in his own body, looking in from the outside, watching the life drain from her in vibrant red. Again.

He looks down and there's blood splattered over his board. The mirror is gone, the words have changed. Please stay.

She's trying to say something but he can't hear. He sees the shape of his name forming on her lips and he tries to reach her but they're holding him back. Short, tall, fat, skinny versions of him all pull him away. He fights, kicks and fits and cries out for her.

"Kate!"

His ragged voice screams out in his office and his echo strikes him in the back of the head. It knocks him forward as his eyes open wide on a startled gasp. The ceramic slips from his fingers.

There's a transient moment of stillness, of calm. The smallest instant before the mug crashes to the floor and shatters.

He drops hard, panic licking hot up his spine. His knees connect first and then his chin presses to the floorboards, body scrambling desperately under his desk.

The stairs thunder and he moves fast. His hands come out, palms landing on splintered pieces of his fallen mug and pulling him out of the suffocating space. He scampers across the floor and presses his back against the wall.

Blood. It registers, but, his blood or her blood? Kate.

He's dizzy, sweating, too cold. He's choking and his chest is getting tighter and tighter. There's movement, it's light and dark again and he's trapped. He's suspended in some hellish third space, some in-between dreams and reality and his looping madness is flashing in-front of him.

Kate. Kate. Kate.

It feels like there's something in the room. Something dark closing in on him with teeth but he can't look. He can't move.

Awake but not awake. The fear is debilitating.

His whole body is trembling against the wall. He's gasping as he sobs. "Kate. Kate. Kate…"