Disclaimer: If the real writers took this long to write, they'd probably be fired.
The day had been hard for a few reasons.
First was the fact that someone was dead. Someone that should have been alive to go home to their family and friends, to have a glass of wine over dinner, and go to sleep with someone they loved. They should have been alive to go back to work and finish their job. Alive to reach retirement age, edge beyond that because they loved their job, but still decide when it was time to quit and move to the Caribbean and open a surf shop or go backpacking through Europe like they had wanted to since college or just find a nice house and see the grandkids every week.
But they couldn't. Someone else decided when their life would come to an end and it wasn't fair. It never was.
Second was that she hadn't slept, really slept, in almost three days. She couldn't let herself have those hours of peace when a family was suffering. So she made another pot of coffee and ate too many M&Ms in an attempt to up her alertness. It had worked for the first day and a half but then her body had become used to the increased level of caffeine and sugar in her bloodstream that the two had become useless.
When Castle had scolded her for running herself ragged, Kate had stalked off to the break room to take an hour-long nap on the couch there. After exactly sixty minutes, she had emerged and started in again. She had ignored his worried glances as she found the financials of the victim on the mess of her desk and started scanning the lines again.
By the end of day two, she was fighting to keep her head from falling onto her desk. No leads. Nothing to even give a tug and hope something came from it. Zip.
The frustration of trying to convince the captain to let her keep the case open was exhausting. But Kate needed to do this for the father and daughter left without a wife and mother. Not just because it was her job to find that justice for them, but because Kate saw herself in the twenty-two year old girl that had left the precinct crying against her father's chest. And she hated that someone else might become what she was.
So when she had finally given in to her co-workers' concerned comments about sleep, Kate had no energy to fight off the nightmares she knew waited at the edge of her consciousness. She kicked off her shoes in the entrance way of her apartment, let her purse fall onto the ground next to them. She barely managed to change out of her clothes and into the ratty pajamas she kept around for comfort before she fell into bed.
Kate could have sworn that she felt the sun pounding on her shoulders and head, the heat just making the starched jacket of her dress blues more uncomfortable. She stretched her fingers out, even the normally soft white gloves annoying her today. No complaining this time around. He deserved more than whining about the weather or the way her uniform, dug out from the back of her closet, was restricting her movement.
She knew what was coming but she couldn't make her body move when she heard Castle's frightened shout of her name.
But she did feel the burn of the bullet. Felt Castle's weight as it hit her in his attempt to save her. Heard his voice, a whisper as, even in her dream, she fought through the haze of pain. "I love you, Kate."
Just as her vision blackened, the dream started over again with a flash. She was back standing behind the podium, again knowing that the same thing was going to happen and nothing she could do would change it.
It replayed. Over and over. Each time, she had to see the pain in his eyes as he desperately muttered the four words she had longed to hear but with no way to respond. And she wanted to speak so badly, just in case it was her last moments. To let him know that she returned the feelings and had for the longest time. Her mouth wouldn't work, opening and closing as she tried to force words through the pain spreading through her chest.
Kate jerked awake after the fourth re-experiencing of those few minutes. Her head spun, the room dancing wildly around her until she let it fall into her lap. The darkness created around her face from the pile of blankets helped settle her. The nightmares didn't come often, but Kate had a suspicion that her exhaustion from working herself into the ground had weakened the already thin barrier she had managed to erect around her mind to keep that particular memory away.
Still shaking, Kate stumbled to the bathroom. It was past three in the morning, but she turned on the shower and stripped off her sweaty pajamas. They were left in a pile near the sink as she started to scrub away the nightmare, just as she always did when this beast returned. It usually helped for a few days until she ran herself down again and it made its way back into her subconscious to disturb her again.
A/N: Comfort is coming to an end with the next chapter. I've exhausted my well of knowledge on PTSD symptoms and frankly, it hurts me to see Kate go through these situations. The last chapter will be a positive note. I promise.
