A/N: This, many of you have been anticipating with eagerness. I hope it won't disappoint. Enjoy and don't forget, this is still not the end of this extremely angsty story! ;)

CASTLE AND BECKETT

He opens his door and there she is and his world starts wildly spinning, then abruptly stops and crashes.

"Hey Castle," she says as if she's only seen him yesterday. Two cups of coffee in her slightly shaking hands, she makes an uncertain, timid impression. She looks just the same, looks like the morning he so casually kissed her goodbye to never see her again. Yet here she is, looking all natural and beautiful, and as alive as ever. She could simply be dropping by for dinner, or one of their late evening wrap-up sessions after a case, she could really be just visiting for any good reason, weren't she only supposed to be dead.

Her posture crumbles a little at the sight of him and her bottom lip starts trembling as he simply keeps on staring at her. She continues to speak though, despite being painfully aware of his state of shock. "I meant to call you first, but then I thought to hear my voice over the phone might come as an even greater shock than seeing me in person. So, here I am…" she stands there, unmoving, only shuffling from one leg to the other, completely insecure. And suddenly, Castle realizes, she doesn't look like Beckett at all, not the Kate he knew. Surely this can't be her, this unsure, scared little thing. He tries to wrap his head about it, tries to come up with a plausible, if wild, theory that would explain this strange event where Kate Beckett suddenly stands at his doorstep eight months after he stood with her father over her grave, but fails miserably. There is no other way to explain this, only that with the case being all over the news, bringing back all the memories with it, he's apparently reached his breaking point. So what if he is going a little insane? Isn't everybody in this city to some capacity a little nutty?

When he doesn't move, talk or acknowledge her in any way, her state of distress grows even further. Her eyes glass over, voice trembling to a point where it nearly breaks. "I know what it must look like to you…I mean, God…I've been gone for eight months …but it's really me, Castle. I am here, and I'm not dead."

He stands in the doorway, thunderstruck, his mouth slightly agape; then stumbles back into his apartment, his feet tripping over each other.

It's Kate; it's really her.

He still hasn't ruled out hallucinations, but as far as he is concerned, he will take what he can get. She slowly crosses the threshold, her feet carrying her further into the apartment uneasily, closes the door behind her silently before she turns to him again.

She steps closer and closer to him, this beautiful mirage, but he keeps backtracking until they are suddenly standing in the middle of his living room. She is only a couple feet away now and he yearns to touch her, but he knows the bubble will burst once he attempts to.

She is the one to make the first resolute move towards him, extending one of her arms holding the coffee.

"Here," she offers with a gentle smile and his fingers slowly, ever so slowly, come to hold the paper cup in a painfully familiar gesture. It's warm, so surprisingly warm, as are her fingers when he brushes them with his own once taking the cup from her.

And just like that, the spell is broken.

She doesn't disappear, oh no. She is there, solid and warm and very much alive, and it suddenly comes all crushing down on Castle.

She is alive, Kate is alive. He doesn't know how, or why, only knows that those past few months, that horrible everlasting nightmare, it's all been just a lie.

His body crashes down onto the dark leather couch, his posture crumbling. The coffee gets discarded somewhere onto the coffee table in front of him; he isn't sure, doesn't care. He tries to comprehend, tries to keep up. He is good at that, right? His mind, his brain… it's his job, isn't it? Make up elaborate schemes, unexpected twists, shocking the audience into silence.

Yet this is too much even for him, Richard Castle, Master of the Macabre.

He buries his head in his hands, shoulders hunching, forces himself to take a couple of deep breaths, for he's suddenly sick. He certainly feels the bile rise in his throat.

This simply can't be true. How? Why? God, why?

She appears to wait him out, comes to stand at his side patiently. Through the cracks in his fingers he can see her shoes. Sneakers, he notices, soaked with melted snow. Her whole attire seems far too light for the weather outside, his observant mind supplies.

He can still smell the alluring aroma of coffee, which is their thing, he remembers.

Ever since she died, disappeared – he corrects himself, he had a hard time getting used to the flavor without the bitter aftertaste. Ever since she disappeared, he has taken his coffee black, no sugar and no milk. He tried to switch to tea anyway, just to get rid of the painful stab he got anytime he took a gulp of the dark, delicious liquid…God, why is he even thinking these things? Why indeed, when she is here, Kate is here…right here, breathing and alive and as vibrant as ever.

"It's really you," he croaks into his hands with crushing finality, his voice broken, disbelief still lacing every syllable.

Her hands come to caress his head, fingers stroking his dark hair. "It's really me Castle," she whispers, continuing to run her fingers through his hair. Yet the gesture feels anything but soothing. It sends his already frayed nerves on edge. She's alive, has been alive for all this time and he never knew. Whatever her reasons, she leaded him on that she was dead.

"I am alive and I know it's a lot to take in," she continues in a soothing tone as if talking to a small, scared child. She continues her caresses but he suddenly flinches away, whether from her touch or words, he doesn't know. The only thing he knows is that a huge tight knot of anger, hatred and spite just unfurled – exploded – inside of him and he has no power to stop it. He slaps her hand away violently, jumps to his feet.

"A lot to take in?"He shouts, ignoring her own flinch, an involuntary physical reaction to his outburst no doubt. "A lot to take in," he repeats indignantly. "Are you kidding me, Kate?"

The force of his voice makes her take a step back, but he doesn't care. He is angry, and it's the first real emotion he's felt in months and it feels good! He's not letting that go.

"Listen to me, Castle," she starts gently, holding her hands up like she was under gunpoint, "I unders-"

"Listen to you? Why, Kate? You don't know anything! You come here, eight months after you supposedly died, eight months after I buried you, and you get the nerve to tell me you understand?" His voice is still loud, but it's starting to crack. He is still angry, but despair and helpless confusion are getting the better of him. His eyes are moist, because he is in pain, excruciating pain, all over again, because of her. And she is just standing there, her own eyes glistering, biting her lip in an oh so painfully familiar gesture, her hands twitching and twisting in front of her, as if she wanted to reach out to him all at once, like she's waiting for him, like there is anything he can do to make it disappear, all this pain and confusion and misunderstanding, like it's his decision to make.

It all comes crashing around him now, the memories, the funeral, the burned down apartment…the case that's been on the news for weeks. And suddenly, amongst all the confusion, chaos and mayhem of his mind, it all suddenly starts to make sickening sense.

"Your mom's case," he rasps out, "the secret witness…it's you. This whole time, it's been you!" he exclaims, accusingly. Her face twitches, but she gives a slight nod.

"I was snatched from my apartment the morning I left here," she starts slowly, as if what she has to say is as painful for her to say as it is for him to hear. Subconsciously, she makes another small step in his direction, bringing them closer again; her determined gaze, that familiar green and hazel of her eyes all shiny and vibrant only inches away from him. He doesn't close the gap, is merely regarding her now, mouth slightly agape, posture defeated. He retreats then, sinking back to the couch as if weighted down by the crushing force of it all. She can't blame him. She stays standing, sensing his need for her to keep her distance for now. It hurts but she is willing to do anything he will need of her; she owes him that much.

"It was the FBI," she continues, each syllable dragged out as if physically hurting her. "They told me Smith was dead." A flicker of recognition steals across Castle's face, but it's gone in a flash. "He apparently made a dead man's switch on the file, so it would be forwarded to the FBI in case something ever happened to him." She can see he's still not following, still looks at her with that painful mixture of shock and denial. It stings but she continues nonetheless.

"They told me Maddox was at my apartment, waiting." She doesn't elaborate why; she can see he gets the picture when his eyes go wide. "I was given a choice, either leave their car and take my chances with the line of assassins the Drag…" she catches herself. She has a name now, might as well use it, "…Collins would surely send my way, or disappear and cooperate with them in taking him down." She looks into his eyes then, hers beseeching him to understand. Her voice takes up on a desperate, pleading urgency he isn't used to. "I took the deal Castle, and I knew it was a horrible choice to make, not for me, but for the people I would be leaving behind," she says, a tear sliding down her cheek and she angrily wipes at it, willing her voice not to break. "But what choice did I really have? I had to Castle, I had to take the deal." She urges on, pleads her case, voice rising in despair as she tries to get her point across.

"You could have chosen me," he replies suddenly, unexpectedly. His voice is full of quiet fury. Despite the quietness of his tone, the words boom in the silent room. "You should have chosen me, Kate. I would have protected you," he says, spite filling the air around them. "But you chose your mother's case over us, again." When he sees her shake her head violently, ready the interrupt him, he won't let her.

The vicious anger blooms inside of him, powerful and merciless and he is powerless against it. He rises to his feet, closing the short distance between them in two quick strides until he's standing right in front of her, his finger accusingly pointed at her.

"My God, Kate, you did have a choice! And you chose the hell for us, for me, your father, Ryan, Esposito, Lanie, my family…and anyone who ever cared about you! How could you do that? How could you, especially after what you yourself had to go through after your mother's death, how could you have done that to us?" His voice is breaking, an angry hissing whisper, eyes moist again. But this time, he doesn't know whether it's from sadness or spite. "I mourned you, Kate! For eight long months, I've been living with this huge hole of loneliness and pain and guilt in my heart and now you tell me it's all been for nothing, that it's all been a lie?" He takes a step back. "Just another lie," he breathes a desolate, devastating gasp, and her face crumbles, her posture slacking, hands falling to her sides helplessly. "I'm so sorry Castle," she whispers nearly inaudibly.

He continues as if he hasn't heard her. "You've been feeding me lies for so long now, how can I even begin to dissect the truth in them?" He asks her, demanding an answer she doesn't have. She raises her hands towards him, makes a step in his direction, but he takes a step back. He cannot let her touch him, he absolutely can't.

"Eight months I've been learning, like a man drowning at the wide open sea, of how to live without you, how to let you go, how to move on, and now you tell me it's been all for nothing," he utters, and he looks so helpless, so lost, and in so much pain, it tears at her heart. "Do you have any idea what you are asking of me? Of all of us? To let you in again just like that," he flicks his fingers in frustration, "As if it didn't happen? As if we didn't go through a trauma that despite being faked had us all hurting? My God, Kate," he repeats for the umpteenth time that night, breathes out her name, looking at her like her sees her in real light for the very first time in his life. It's not a nice look and she cannot help but avert her eyes in shame. "What the hell were you thinking?"

A tear slips down her face, but he doesn't want her tears, he wants answers. "How could you do this? How could you…if not to anybody else, than do that to your father, of all people!"

Guilt flickers through her face, but there's something off in her features. Still, that doesn't stop him as a nauseating realization strikes him. He starts babbling, speaking his thoughts out loud, "Jim, my God, does he know? Does he know already? We need to tell him, right now," he regards her with huge, panicked eyes.

When she doesn't move, only looks at him with that guilty, despairing look, silent tears slipping down her cheeks and sliding past her pursed lips, it all comes to him with sickening sense. He rewinds all those months and weeks ago, remembers how odd he found Jim's behavior, how surprisingly not devastated the older man was. The taste of betrayal burns on his tongue, in his chest, like liquid acid.

"Oh my God, he knew," he bursts out disgustedly, his eyes mercilessly accusing, "Your dad was in on it from the start!"

She is still standing there, mutely crying, waiting him out, slimmer and paler than he's ever seen her, with dark circles running underneath her eyes, but still fierce and painfully beautiful. She gives a small nod and he has to look away, his need to punch something, hard, never greater.

"I am so sorry Castle," she starts anew, urgent and intense, "he was the only one allowed to know. I asked…no, I begged them, to let you know too, but they wouldn't allow it." She's pleading openly with him now, steps into his space again to catch his eyes, willing him to listen and try to understand her reasoning. This was not done to him purposely.

She is taken aback by the coldness she's met with. His jaw is tightly set, disgust at their scam rolling off him in powerful waves. She's never seen him so angry, so disappointed. Hurt and betrayed, in her, by her. And what's worse, she knows he has every right to feel that way but she also needs him to understand that she didn't willingly choose this impossible situation, that stupid god-forsaken case, over him, over them, that she had as little choice in the matter as he did.

"I am so sorry Castle, believe me, it's my biggest regret. But trust me when I tell you I didn't want it. I was simply not-given-any-choice," she punctuates each word.

He is still and unmoving, distant and cold, despite their proximity. It scares her a little, this emotional fierceness of his, more than any crook with a gun ever could.

"Was it a lie too?" he asks at last, voice still distant as he ponders over something in his mind, and she is momentarily confused. "Our night together, I mean," he supplies. "Was it a fluke? A release of steam for you? Were you merely drawing comfort, seeking a safe refuge after what happened to you that day?" He concludes with a cool tone of voice and feels a little vindictive upon seeing her face crumble into pieces in front of him. His features only harden at the sight and if she didn't know better, she'd say he looked vicious. "Did it even mean anything to you Kate, anything at all?"

Now he aims to hurt, probably wants to provoke her into a fight, she understands as much. But God is he successful, rousing a surge of fury inside of her at his accusations. Yet there is also this nearly indistinguishable trace of self-doubt hidden in his voice that tears her heart into two, making her unable to hold his words against him. She could never have guessed how deeply he'd be wounded by herleaving.

Despite his obvious discomfort, she lays her hands on him again, grips his shoulders to steady herself against him. Her eyes close as the memories from their night together assault her mind; tries to concentrate on the present instead. With the weight of her feelings for him rushing through her, she finally whispers, "It meant everything to me, Castle." Her warm breath hits his face in a sweet, delicate puff, but she's not finished. He deserves nothing less than to hear it all. "It was the only thing that kept me sane during those awfully long and lonely days and nights, being locked up and working that god-forsaken case. Not a night wentby Castle, not a single night," she puts an emphasis on the word, squeezing his shoulders in reassurance, "that I wouldn't think about you; where you were, how you were doing, what you were doing and with whom. I couldn't help it as I kept up at night, always wondering," her face is only inches away from his now and for some reason, he cannot find it in him to move, not if his life depended on it. "I kept wondering," she repeats in a whisper, her lips dancing dangerously close to his, "what we would have been doing if not for this, I wondered what we could be doing, together, if things went as planned that morning, if I'd returned for lunch that day as I promised."

Her arms have somehow sneaked their way from his shoulders to the sides of his face, cradling his scull, her fingers stroking through his hair and behind his ears in a maddening, all too familiar manner, not enough an yet too much. "I know what I did to you Castle," she breathes, the slight tremble in her voice nearly inaudible, "and I will never be able to take it back, to completely heal the pain my actions brought upon you, but I want to try. Please Castle, please let me at least try!" She brings her mouth to his then, cannot stop herself, a simple kiss she's been dreaming about for so long. Her lips barely manage to touch his when she's abruptly met with nothing but air, his face and whole body suddenly withdrawing. She opens her eyes in disappointment, her heart crushed beyond reason.

He slowly takes her hands from his face, lets them fall to her sides limply. His eyes are wet, moist with tears, part crazed, part confused, part completely devastated. "I don't know if I can do that, Kate," his voice is so quiet, so unsteady, yet still so soft. He sounds utterly lost, like a small boy, not the grown forty-something man he is.

"You don't know how to do what?" she utters quietly, urging him gently to share his fears with her. Yet already as she asks, she feels her chest clench with dread, with panic, with loss.

"I loved you Kate," he says through his tears and all air rushes from her lungs at his words. She can't breathe all of a sudden. "I loved you, with everything I had, but you forced me to let that go, to move on." He is talking gently now, like she's now the child, like a parent trying to calm down a baby, explain why the sun has to disappear behind the horizon at the end of the day. She is still way too struck by his previous words for the warning bells to start ringing in her head at his tone.

"Loved me," she repeats in a haze, breathless. "Past tense?" it's a question she's scared to hear the answer to.

He stays silent for a moment. Then; "Well, what did you expect?" She can hear outrage and despair but also pleading in his voice, pleading for her to understand. And then there's also the slightest trace of pity. For her. For what she thought she still could have but isn't simply possible anymore.

Oh God, he's actually feeling sorry; for her. She needs to get out, she's gonna be sick. But Castle beats her to this, too.

"I think you should go," he utters quietly. And if she thought her heart couldn't break any further, she's painfully mistaken. He's throwing her out.

"I'm…I'm sorry," he says, "This is just too much. I just," he shrugs his shoulders in a helpless gesture, "it's simply too much. I'm sorry Kate, but it's too much. I…" he takes a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut in what appears to be a gesture of pain, "I need to think."

She nods her head, defeated. It's over then, she's nearly certain she missed her chance. He'd once loved her, but he'd already moved on. Because she made him.

Her worst fears of the past eight months just came true and it was a truth that would forever haunt her; Royce's letter never before making more sense.

"I'm sorry Castle," she offers feebly once more, "For how I hurt you, for how I couldn't be what you needed me to be for you; for all of that, I am sorry." She takes a step back and he doesn't stop her. Her chest feels like it's being crushed but she keeps on walking, backtracking, until her back hits his front door.

Her mind conjures up images from another time, when her back was pressed against this very same door, his hot breath speaking promises to the skin at her neck, his fingers gently pressing against the puckering flesh of her scar. And with that, she knows she cannot let him go, cannot let them go. This might be easier for the both of them, but it's not right. Because they are too good together and they've never even had a real chance.

She braces her back against the door, wills it to hold her upright as she speaks. "I am staying with my father for the time being and I'll be available whenever you want to talk. And I'll be waiting Castle, I don't care how long it takes. Whenever you'll feel ready, I'll be waiting for you. The same way you've always been waiting for me. I understand it now."

He finally unglues his eyes from the carpet in his sitting room, directs his gaze at her at last. His eyes are still wet, filled with unshed tears, unfocused and full of pain.

She aches for him, but she knows he needs time. She's hurt him so much, so badly, she might never get him back. For now however, he needs time and space and she needs to give exactly that to him. But not before she lets the final truth slip from her mouth.

"For the past eight months," she utters quietly and he has to strain his ears to hear her, "I've been having this nagging regret of not telling you something. And I promised myself that I would tell you the first chance I got once I came back." She takes a deep breath, looks at him, seeking out that maddening blue of his eyes even through the vast space currently separating them. Some of that fog seems to have elevated from his eyes, but a lot of it still remains. She hopes he'll be able to hear her, loud and clear, even through the mist.

"So for what it's worth, Castle," she continues, subconsciously holding her breath, her hands tightly pressed against the cool steel of his door, "I loved you too."

There is silence for a moment, then; "Past tense?" he asks, offers her words back to her. Despite the grim situation, she cracks a tiny smile.

"Present," she says, her voice suddenly strong and steady, overflowing with conviction.

"Always present."

With that, she presses the handle on his door and silently slips out of the loft, letting her fluttering heart raid inside her chest as she quietly flees his building into the darkness of the night. She's done it; she's finally told him how she feels about him. She might have felt proud about it, if she only weren't over eight months too late.

TBC

Don't kill me, this is not the end, okay? But hey, you seriously couldn't expect he would greet her with open arms, all lovey-dovey…Okay, so I guess you technically could expect that, but where would the drama be in that, right? Also, I don't think it would be realistic for the characters, considering what they've been through. Don't worry though, I know exactly where I am headed with this story. Just have a little faith in me, okay? And there is also a silver lining to this – means the story isn't ending yet. :)

So buckle up and leave a review!