A/N: One of my best friends on this site, alwayscastle2, asked about this chapter. I hope you guys like it! Apologies for the delay in posting - I've had this ready to go for a few days, but our internet has gone kaput and Virgin won't send anyone round to fix it - yay for the university library and internet though!

There was something odd about the way Javi looked at her as she left Martha and Alexis to have their privacy with Rick. His eyes held an unspoken apology, a reluctance that she didn't understand.

"What?"

At her voice, he shifted and tipped his head to the side, before walking that direction and leaving her to follow until she was stood in an empty corridor of the old precinct with both of her detective partners for company.

Ryan held a folder in his hands, rolling on the balls of his feet nervously as he said, "Tech just finished with Castle's computer. Parts of it had been wiped." His tone was emotionless, his face impassive. But Espo was the opposite, looking at her with grim acceptance. "Just like Tessa's."

Still reeling from the earlier reveal of Castle's apparent involvement, she asked, "Were they able to recover anything?"

Hurt and confused by Castle's betrayal, by his affair with the girl all the evidence said he murdered, Kate left the precinct with tears in her eyes. She had felt Esposito's eyes on her back as she hurried away, not even bothering to shut down her computer. Gates would probably chew her out over not asking for some time; the boys were probably at a loss for what to do – whether they should continue pushing the Castle angle or look for something else while she went AWOL, but there and then, she couldn't find the energy or a reason to care.

It was Castle behind those bars in lockup. Castle, who had tried to jump in front of a bullet for her. Castle, who had waited four years just to be with her. Castle, who had been so patient yet was now done with her and seeing someone else.

It just didn't make any sense.

The evidence, her faithful friend in so many murder investigations, was piled up against him and it was damning.

The drive home was a teary blur. For all she knew, her new Dodge could be parked in the middle of two spaces, the tail sticking out at an angle or some equally annoying mistake that really shouldn't happen with all of the extra driving skills she got while at the academy and on the job.

The real tears came thick and fast once the door of her apartment was sealed, and there was no-one there to see her breakdown and fall to her knees in front of her closet, already pulling down his white shirt to run her hands along the material.

Soon enough, she was sitting in a pile of them, almost every single one of them being items he'd accidentally forgotten about on the odd occasion she threw his clothes into the laundry. Some of them, she knew she'd stolen, appropriating them for the nights when she insisted on returning to her apartment alone, though why she still seemed to need the space and time, she didn't know.

Her hands caressed the starched collars, the smooth, pressed cotton, and remembered the feel of the material sliding on her skin when his hands pushed the folded and stitched hem up her legs. She felt like she had a lifetime of those memories, each of them moments that felt anything but insincere.

The doubts running through her mind, the worry that perhaps the evidence wasn't lying, made her wonder if perhaps Tessa had those same memories. It made her feel sick.

Had he been lying all along? Or had she been right back at the beginning – had he only wanted a quick fling with her? Why hadn't she been enough for him?

Almost three months and Richard Castle had already broken her heart. She could feel the pain as sharply as the bullet that has burrowed into chest over a year ago.

Lanie called as soon as she heard, the trill of her cell phone breaking her silence.

"Girl, Javier just told me. I'll be right over."

Kate didn't even have time to say a word before the call was over.

She knew her eyes were red and blotchy, that her mascara had probably made dark trails down her cheeks, that she should probably get up and go to the bathroom to splash her face and clean up but she couldn't. She was still sat numbly among Castle's clothes when Lanie knocked, her knuckles rapping again a few moments later when Kate made no move to open the door for her. The noise was distant, muffled in her ears like the bang of her gun as Castle fought to free her from her seatbelt in her sinking car. She could almost feel the water on her skin, but as the touch squeezed, she blinked and saw Lanie kneeling in front of her, beyond her the front door still hanging open.

"Kate?"

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

"Come on," Lanie said, dragging her upright and into the living room before forcing her onto her own couch.

Her best friend bustled around her apartment, having no trouble finding a glass to fill with water. After handing it to her and passing her a tissue, Lanie waited it out, watching as first Kate abandoned the drink and then sank to the floor.

Joining her, Lanie had to ask.

"You think it's true?"

Wordlessly, Kate reached, grabbing her work bag to retrieve the folder of evidence Ryan had hesitantly handed over. She slid out two sheets of paper, sucking a deep breath as she avoided looking at them again and instead passed them straight over to Lanie.

"They started up about eight weeks ago, according to those emails," she began. "He met her after one of his book signings and he asked her out for coffee." Perhaps that was what hurt about it most of all – coffee was theirs. "And that was- that was just a few weeks after we started seeing each other."

"Oh sweetie."

"He told her that he needed to keep it secret because he was with someone else. And then when he tried to break it off about a week ago, she threatened to go and tell his girlfriend." Listing it like that, giving the bare minimum is the only way she can stop herself from crying again. "He offered to go over to her apartment to talk things through, and that was the night of the murder."

"He had motive. What did Castle say when you talked to him?"

"He said that the emails were faked. He said that he never wrote that story and that he was being framed." She paused, remembering him in that tiny cell in the dank depths of the precinct. "You should have seen him, Lanie. He looked like a little boy, so scared."

In her head, she saw them again, him and her and how good they were together. How real and easy things were between them.

"I know him, Lanie."

She remembered the way his face had lit up that morning when he realised she'd stayed, that their first night together hadn't been a dream. She could feel the ghost of him against her as he hugged her body to his chest, his hands pressing against her abdomen, at his Hamptons house while they waited for Chief Brady to leave them alone. She could taste every single coffee he'd ever made her, his secret love messages. Her fingers tingled in remembrance of his thicker digits interlocking among them.

"He is an immature, egotistical, self-centred jackass sometimes, but he's not this."

She couldn't bear the pitying sympathy in Lanie's eyes as she asked, "Are you sure?"

Running the tap, Kate stared at her reflection for a moment, before cupping her hands and throwing the accumulating water over her face, fingers scrubbing at the tight skin around her eyes.

She blew a shaky breath as she turned off the tap and dried her face before turning back towards her bedroom and the pile of Castle's clothes. Until that moment, she hadn't really realised how many of his things she'd managed to accrue, how much their two separate lives were intermingling.

Her hands shook as she picked up the first shirt, the green, white and red checked plaid one that lay on the top of the pile and straightened it, checking each of the buttons as she pushed the hanger back through the open collar and placed the item back in her wardrobe. By the time she was done, there were two pairs of jeans and three pairs of smart slacks hanging beside her own, four geeky, superhero t-shirts and a rainbow of buttoned-up shirts.

Looking at it, she knew her answer to Lanie had been right. Castle hadn't cheated on her, hadn't lied to her. The contents of her closet were a kind of evidence themselves and they told a completely different story.

A/N: I know quite a few of you guys want to see a continuation of chapter 12, with Aunt Theresa. I will do this, but I'm struggling to come up with a defined idea for it, so I'm postponing it and it'll be a couple of chapters later than I originally planned. Also, please keep your prompts coming. I've made my way through the majority of them now, and a lot of my own ideas, so it would be great to get some more new ones coming in. We're such a creative fandom, I'm sure there must be some awesome ideas for chapters out there!