Hey everybody. Time for another chapter in my (neverending?) series. This one is set in Season 3. I'm sure you will recognize the episode :D

Enjoy :)

Disclaimer: Nope, still not mine.

"Know in your heart that he lived his life in full, with no regrets. Let us commend him to the mercy of God and to the bliss of heaven. We therefore commit his body to the ground. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in the sure and certain hope of his resurrection into eternal life."

Kate could barely hear the priests words. Her mind was too wracked with grief as the priest spoke the prayer to the dead and the coffin was lowered into the ground. Despite her pride of being emotionally strong, thick tears of sorrow ran in rivers down her face and her sobs echoed through the graveyard, drowning out even those of the other mourners.

She felt Lanie give her a squeeze on her back in silent consolation, not that it helped much. She watched the eulogies but couldn't get herself to give her own. She was sure that she was unable to form a single word and standing at the podium sobbing would achieve nothing. And so she cried next to the grave as the volunteers, Esposito and Ryan among them, took shovels and filled it up with earth.

After more than thirty minutes of them doing it, all the while Kate kept crying, the grave was finally filled and the priest spoke his last few words of comfort to the family. The procession went towards the exit, Lanie keeping her hand in Kate's to lead her out. She still couldn't believe that he was dead. It simply wasn't fair. She couldn't imagine going to work and not seeing him there.

Her touchstone.

He promised her to be there for her at all times.

But he had died, saving her life.

He promised her always.

But now, Richard Castle was dead.

She didn't take part in the funeral service his mother held at the restaurant. As if she could eat anything. Dimly remembering saying a tearful goodbye to her friends and Rick's family, she wandered through the rain. Josh had tried to keep her there but was called away to work. Not even in her time of grief could he take time off from work.

Her walk took her around several blocks until she was back at the cemetery again. Her legs automatically took her to his grave and as she saw the headstone and yesterdays date on it, she collapsed once more into the dirt, her tears mixing with the rainwater running down her face. She knelt on the ground for almost an hour, sobbing her grief out into the world.

She picked herself up and went to her mother's gravestone, kneeling in front of it and ripping out some weeds that have grown next to it.

"Mom, I hope wherever you are, he's there with you. Tell him, I miss him. I miss him so much."

She got up again and walked through the rain again, her legs taking her to her apartment. She dimly remembered showering before she went to bed, pulling the covers over her in an attempt to drown out the world around her.

How could this have happened?

How could he be dead and not her?

Two days earlier

Damn, it was cold in here. But what could she expect when being shoved into a freezer. They needed to get out of here and fast or their case and probably their life would end in a very cold fashion.

"Got anything?" she asked, looking around.

"No, no. No thermostat, no control box. Must be on the outside." he replied.

"Got any bars on your phone?" she asked again, hopeful.

"Uh... No. Wait, wait, wait. No. You?"

"No."

"How cold do you think it is in here?" he asked her, as if she could now an exact number.

"Um, judging by the way that it feels, I'd say it's well below freezing." she replied, holding her arms tight around her.

"How long do you think we're going to last dressed like this?"

"A couple of hours at the most."

"That's what I thought, too." he said and Kate, not knowing what else to do, rammed her shoulder against the steel doors of the container but it didn't move an inch.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. That door's made of steel. I don't think that's gonna do anything." Castle told her.

"Castle, nobody knows that we're in here. Nobody even knows to look for us. We're gonna freeze to death if we don't get out of here." she said

"Well maybe there's another way out." he suggested and looked around the freezer but soon again at her with a defeated look on his face. He came over to her side and looked at her. "Right. On three?"

After counting down, both rammed the door at the same time but again it didn't budge. They repeated this process several dozen times, every time getting the same result. The labor was hard enough to make her sweat which in this freezing temperatures formed as ice on her brow. They shoved their shoulders into the steel door one more time and finally, Kate wipes her brow, breaking off the ice that has formed there. Rick looked even worse.

"Castle, that's not good." she said.

"No, it's not." he agreed.

"Alright. Stand back." she ordered and pulled out her gun. Ignoring his question as to her intentions, as if she had to explain them, she aimed at the door and pulled the trigger. His objections proved to be valid however as the bullet bounced off the steel and ricocheted around them, narrowly missing both of them until it lost enough energy to fall to the ground.

"Whoa, whoa! Are you trying to kill us sooner?" he yelled in a high pitched voice.

"Do you have a better idea?" she asked exasperated.

"Maybe just save a few rounds for in case they come back."

"Castle, I could use a silver lining right about now, okay?" she told him. He was good at that, seeing something positive in almost every situation.

"Yeah. Um... I wish I had one." he replied deflated and her heart sank.

Castle went to a spot close to the door and sat down on the floor, beckoning her over. Not knowing what else to do, she pulled the hood of her sweater over her head and joined him. Sharing body warmth might buy them a few hours, increasing their chance of rescue and survival.

As the day outside turned into night and into morning again, she had lost all hope of rescue. True to her word, nobody knew where they were or what they were doing. She thought of all her friends who would die in the explosion of the dirty bomb they had discovered and where unable to get away from the bad guys.

Lanie, Javi, Kevin, Captain Montgomery, her dad, Alexis, Martha. As an afterthought, she realized that Josh would probably survive, since he most likely was already sitting in an airplane on his way to Haiti. During the last few hours, it had become very quiet in the freezer. She had lost all feeling in her extremities and felt very tired.

"Castle? Are you there?" she asked with a weak voice.

"Yeah, I'm right- I'm right-I'm right here." came his stuttered reply.

"I can't feel anything. I always thought, being a cop, I'd take a bullet. Never thought I'd freeze to death."

"Hey. W-we're not dead yet." he reassured her.

"I just wish this was one of your books and you could re-write the ending." she said melancholic.

"I'm s- I'm sorry." she heard him say.

"For what?" she asked.

"F- for being me. Going rogue. Getting you into- into this. If we hadn't gone- gone rogue..." he tried to explain.

"Oh, shh. Castle, no. Okay? Shhh. You were right. We found the bomb. We were just too late, okay? Castle. Thank you...for being there." she said.

"Always." came his reassurance and suddenly she felt very warm.

"I just want you to know how much I..." 'love you' she tried to finish her sentence but the darkness of unconsciousness claimed her before she could voice her feelings.

A few hours alter, she jerked awake, hooked to an IV with the face of her boyfriend in front of her.

"Josh?"

"Hey. So, you're recovering from a moderate case of hypothermia and you're going to be a little bit sluggish for a while. But, with some warmth and some fluids, you should be alright." came his reply to a question she didn't ask.

"What are you doing her? Shouldn't you be in Haiti?"

"Didn't go. Okay, this will probably hurt." he replied and pulled out the IV line. It stung a bit but nothing she couldn't handle.

"Where's Castle?" she asked, not seeing her partner anywhere.

"He was transported to a nearby hospital. He was... worse off than you."

"What do you mean, worse?"

"We couldn't get him awake and his pulse as I heard was very weak. They brought him to the closest nearby hospital. Your friend Lanie rode with him." he said and Kate had heard enough. She struggled out of the stretcher she was in, stumbling a bit as her weak legs hit the floor of the ambulance. "Whoa, easy there babe."

"How long was I out?" she asked him.

"Oh, about an hour." he replied as she jumped out of the ambulance and was greeted by the faces of Ryan and Esposito.

"What about the bomb?" she asked her two colleagues.

"Searched the entire warehouse. It's gone." the Latino answered.

"How did you find us?" she inquired.

"Oh, Alexis called. Said Castle didn't come home."

"Alexis? I thought she's supposed to be out of town."

"I guess she came back. We figured you were with Castle, and then Josh called."

"We thought you must be out there doing something incredibly stupid against orders. So, we sent patrol units everywhere we figured you'd be moronic enough to go. Found your car, searched the area till we found the light from the storage container." Ryan said.

"Well, I'm glad Castle's stupidity is predictable. You pulled us out of there?" she inquired and Ryan nodded.

"They examined both of you. The paramedics were concerned about Castle's condition and drove him to a nearby hospital. Lanie said something about it being critical but nothing else before she jumped into the ambulance that had taken him. You were better off as I understood it."

"Where was he delivered to?" she asked concerned.

"I don't know the name of the hospital. Get to a uniform, he'll take you." Ryan said.

"Kate, you need rest. Let me take you home." Josh suggested.

"Officer!" Kate shouted to a nearby uniform, completely ignoring Josh. "What's the nearest hospital and bring me there immediately."

The officer complied with her order and she was being brought to the Lower Manhattan Hospital. She ran as best as she could through the entrance and into the correct ward after asking the receptionist where to go. As she closed in on her goal, she saw Lanie sitting on one of the chairs, her head in her hands and body shaking.

"Lanie?" Kate asked her best friend who looked up with tear-filled eyes, making Kate stop with worry.

"Kate." came the reply and the usually cheerful medical examiner threw herself at Kate, enveloping her in a big hug.

"Lanie, what is it?" Kate asked concerned after she had managed to extricate herself from her friend's grip. "Where is Castle? Is he okay?"

"Kate, they couldn't do anything for him. He was too far gone already. He gave his body heat to save your life. But it proved too much for him. He didn't make it. Kate, Castle died a few minutes ago."

As Lanie burst into a fresh batch of tears, a deep hole opened under Kate and she fell in. She didn't hear her friend shouting her name as darkness enveloped her.

For the next few days, Kate barely left her bed. She laid on her back, her side, her stomach. It didn't matter but she never left the security of her covers, only when natures call was too strong to resist. She managed to eat at least something. Lanie and the boys came to visit her a few times and brought her stuff to drink and eat, placing it next to her bed.

At some point, Josh came over, trying to coax some reaction out of her. Not that it worked, her grief way too strong for anything he might be wanting.

"Kate, you need to get out some. You can't just lay here all the time." he tried but she didn't answer, didn't even look at him. "I'm going to Haiti Kate. Just tell me, and I will stay. Say something please."

But she didn't. Didn't even acknowledge the kiss he tried to give her on the cheek. Didn't acknowledge him as he said his probably final goodbye and left her lying there, wallowing in her misery. There had been a man who would have been able to rouse her. But he had died. And with that thought, fresh tears ran down her face as she cried herself to a troubled sleep.

Her phone rang around 4 a.m and she tiredly put it against her ear.

"Beckett." she spoke into it, the officer on the other end informing her of a murder and giving her the address.

She walked up to the crime scene and to Lanie, who was hunched over the body. It was still dark and the only lights came from the lamps that CSU had placed around the scene.

"Hey Lanie, what have you got."

"Hispanic male, early forties, GSW to the chest, directly through the heart. Liver temp puts death at between one and three a.m. Wallet's there but money's gone, might be a mugging gone wrong. Will know more when I have him in the morgue." the medical examiner explained.

The whole thing felt strange to her. She had taken sick days, why was she on call? Why was she here? How had she even got here? The last thing she remembered was getting the call and out of bed and then walking to the crime scene with no recollection as to how she got here. Did she drive? Did she take a cab?

"No witnesses, no cameras around here. Might be hard to get a drop on the perp." Esposito said from beside her.

"What's the victim's name?" Kate asked, trying to get over her uneasiness.

"Um, it's Ricardo Castlan." Esposito replied and Kate looked at him with wide eyes. With three steps she went to the body of the victim and saw the victim's shockingly familiar face, looking into the dead, steel blue eyes of Richard Castle. Suddenly the darkness around the crime scene closed in as the dead man in front of her turned his head towards her and his mouth opened.

"Kate, you need to wake up." the voice of Rick Castle came out of the victim's mouth.

Kate jerked awake, the vestiges of her dream hanging in her head. The image of Rick's dead face brought fresh tears to her eyes, the dampness of her pillow telling her enough about the number of tears she had shed into it during the last few days. A knock on her door brought her attention to the present. She slowly got up, determined to get rid of the interloper. She really wasn't in the mood to see anyone.

"Hello Katie." Jim Beckett said after she had opened the door.

Instead of telling him to go away, she completely broke down and rushed into her fathers embrace, wetting his clothes with her tears.

"He is gone, dad. Truly gone. He died without never knowing how I feel about him."

"I'm sure he knew."

"How could he? The last thing he knew was that I had another man."

"Katie, you're a strong person. You always were and always will be. When your mother died, you were strong not only for yourself but also for me. You helped me through my grief and your friends will help you through yours." Jim soothingly said, holding her tight.

"Dad, I don't know what to do." she sobbed.

"Yes you do. You just need to face reality and wake up."

"What?" she asked and looked at her father, just as the darkness around her closed in and turned the world black.

Kate woke up, lying in her bed, her sheets tangled between her legs. She untangled them and got up to go to the bathroom. She did her ablutions and finally gave in and took a shower, the smell of her unwashed body too much to handle even for her. She brushed her teeth and spit and after closing the mirror cabinet, she saw someone standing behind her in the mirror who she never expected.

"Hello Kate." Rick said and smiled.

Kate rapidly turned around to face an empty bathroom. Her heart hammered in her chest as she went into the kitchen to make herself some tea. The thought of Rick brought more tears into her eyes. Now she even began hallucinating about him.

Deciding that she couldn't stay cooped up in the apartment anymore, she got dressed in some casual clothes and stepped out into the open air. The weather, which had been sunny a minute before turned gray and a slight drizzle started to fall, as if nature mirrored her emotional turmoil. She made her way to the cemetery and approached the marble headstone that marked the final resting place of her best friend. She knelt in front of the gravestone and let the tears fall down.

"I'm sorry Rick. I'm so sorry. It should have been me."

Kate sat on the ground for ten more minutes, her grief making her unable to move just yet. After she had picked herself up, she made her way to pay her respects to her mother's grave. After she had left the cemetery, she called cab and went to Rick's apartment. She had two people to face she didn't know what to say to.

A young redhead with red-rimmed eyes opened the door and instead of saying something, Kate took her into her arms and held her tight. She cried once again, unashamedly letting her tears roll down her face.

"I'm so sorry Alexis. It should have been me." she choked out and the redhead just hugged her tighter.

"Don't be ridiculous Kate." Martha's voice cut into her reverie. "Richard knew full well what he was getting himself into when he started working with you. We both knew that this could happen someday."

"But Martha, I couldn't protect him. And he died because of that."

"Nonsense. He died because he was doing what he has come to love to do. Working with you. Now come on, have some coffee."

Martha led Kate to the kitchen counter and handed her a cup. Kate looked into the black liquid and felt the weight of the world once more settling down on her shoulders, as if the blackness of the coffee mirrored her emotional status.

"There is one more thing my dad would want you to do, Kate." she heard Alexis say.

"And what is that?"

"Wake up."

"What?" she asked and realized that she way lying in her bed, the darkness of her room all around her. She wailed in frustration and let the tears fall that came unbidden to her.

She got out of bed and went into the bathroom, scooping cold water into her hands and pressing it into her face. When she lifted her head, she once more saw Rick standing behind her. Turning around in shock, she again was faced with an empty bathroom. She really was losing her mind.

She went out and found herself kneeling in front of his gravestone once again. How often had she been here? Every day? How many days had passed? She woke up every morning without knowing if she had dreamed the day before or not. Everything kept blurring together to form an unclear string of events that she didn't know had happened or not.

After telling him again how sorry she was, she made her way to the office of the medical examiner to visit the one person she was sure could help her. She needed to talk to someone, and fast.

"Hey Lanie." Kate said with a sad undertone.

"Hey Kate. How have you been?"

"Not good. I fear that I'm losing my mind. I keep dreaming things only to wake up in my bed. And I don't know if something happened the day before of not. And I keep seeing Rick in my mirror as if my mind is mocking me." Kate explained and felt tears running down her face again.

"Oh honey, it's normal to see the people we lost and cared about."

"But how do you explain this dream situation? Is this talk we're having real? Or will I wake up in a few minutes in my dark bedroom again, my head on my damp pillow? What if I keep losing days and just wake up as soon as someone tells me to. What if..."

"Kate, stop!" Lanie shouted. "There is an easy way to fix all this."

"What is it? Please, I'm desperate." Kate sobbed.

"You need to face your fear and stop hiding in a relationship with someone your heart doesn't want. Face reality and most importantly, you have to wake up!"

"NO LANIE!" Kate shouted before she opened her eyes to find herself inside her bedroom again, the twilight of the morning shining through the windows. Frustrated, she pushed her head against the pillow and cried out her sorrow. She was going insane. There was no other explanation. Her mind had snapped the day Lanie had told her that Rick Castle, her Rick, the man she knew she could always depend on, was dead.

Always. That was the word he used when he wanted to tell her something else. And she had said it back with the same meaning as his but was never ready to face it. She didn't know if getting up was an option, she would probably wake up again as soon as someone said it. She was still contemplating when her phone rang.

"Detective Beckett?" came the voice of Roy Montgomery.

"Yes, Sir?"

"Can you come into the precinct today? I need to talk to you in person."

"I will be there in an hour." Kate said and hung up.

She went into her bathroom to take a shower and kept wondering what Captain Montgomery could want. He had put her on administrative leave after Rick's death. Wait, had he? Did she apply? She rarely had any recollection about what happened after the funeral. Only that she walked into the rain and got home somehow before lying in her bed for days, wallowing in misery.

After brushing her teeth and putting the toothbrush away, she closed her mirror cabinet and once again saw Rick's image standing behind her. This time she resisted the urge to turn around, knowing he would be gone once she did.

"Hello Kate." his voice greeted her.

She just smiled at him, not knowing what to say. She tried to imprint the image of him into her mind, every contour of his face. She feared that if she didn't then one day only a faceless person would stand behind her in the mirror. His steel blue eyes. His smile. The scar on his forehead. Every line on his face that was smooth during sleep.

Rick closed in on her and she closed her eyes. She felt his strong arms around her and fell into his embrace, enjoying the warmth it exuded. She never wanted to let go. She turned around to bury her head in his chest and to smell his scent but realized that she was holding her arms into thin air. She opened her eyes to once again see her empty bathroom and fell to her knees, sobbing.

For twenty minutes, her tears wouldn't stop. This was the closest she had been to him since he died and yet again he had disappeared. She wanted to curse at the world, at everyone in it because of the injustice. He died and she didn't. Why wasn't it the other way around? Then she wouldn't have to live with the fact that the man she had come to rely on wasn't around anymore.

As she picked herself up to get to the precinct, she hoped that one day she could overcome this grief that was paralyzing her. Otherwise she couldn't see a way to continue with this life.

A short cab ride later, she reached the precinct and got to her floor. Numerous faces greeted her and offered her condolences as if anyone could ever understand what she had lost. She nodded a curt hello at Ryan and Esposito and knocked on her Captain's door to be let in immediately.

"Detective, how have you been?" Montgomery asked her without preamble. He could see that she wasn't well.

"As good as expected after something like this." she replied.

"Just so you know, I have put you on administrative leave until you decide when to return."

"Thank you, Sir."

"Detective, I have some idea what you're going through." he said and that made her look up. "Back then, after my academy days, me and twelve others were starting at the precinct. To accommodate all of us, they split up the veteran teams to put one vet with one rookie. Those guys hated us for it. And during my first day with my new partner, we came into a situation where a gunman had a draw on my partner."

"What happened?"

"I was so nervous that I forgot to release the safety. I pressed the trigger and nothing more than a click came out. In that second it took me to put the safety off, the perp shot my partner in the back and paralyzed him. Because of me, that man lost his career, after thirty years on the force. I was the most hated rookie in the entire precinct. That's why they put me on a team next, as a third man. But I wanted to wallow in misery. I was the reason that man was paralyzed. I ruined his life. I thought of quitting."

"What kept you?"

"I did the one thing you must do now. I decided to fight and wa..."

"No, don't say it!" Kate shouted and covered her ears before she ran out of her Captain's office. She ran right into Esposito, who held her upright so she wouldn't fall down.

"Hey Beckett." the Latino started. "Did the Captain tell you to wa..."

"NO!" she screamed and kept running, her hands pressed to her ears. She took the stairs, not wanting to stand in front of the elevator. She evaded Ryan, who tried to grab her arm, and her other colleagues who tried the same and as she reached the ground floor, she saw that it had started to pour. The heavens had opened up and mirrored her emotional turmoil again.

She ran outside, the rain soaking her in seconds and tried to drown out the voices that kept talking to her. She did her best to ignore them and kept running, every raindrop around her showing the mirror image of Rick Castle and his infuriating smile. Was it her imagination or had it become darker? Out of every side street, darkness poured, swallowing everything in front and behind her as she ran along the sidewalk, using her arms to get more speed.

"Kate, you need to wake up!" the voices all around her shouted at her, Rick's the loudest as it came from every raindrop.

"NO!" she screamed back at them, her voice being drowned out like a whistle during a hurricane. "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

Kate kept running and didn't look back as the darkness closed in once more and suffocated her.

Kate woke up with a scream, the darkness in her room all-encompassing. In panicked movements, she threw the blanket off of her and ran into the bathroom, tears running down her face. She couldn't go on like this. She didn't know what was real anymore. Was she dreaming a dream inside a dream, inside a dream, inside a dream, enveloped in a dream? And in every instance, she got a wake-up call that her body followed, making her wake in her bed.

What day was it? Did it matter? All that mattered was that her partner had died saving her life. Her partner that had promised her to always be there for her. He had broken that promise the day he died. The day he gave his life to save hers. And how had she thanked his loyalty? Parading some doctor in front of him, instead of forgiving him the day he broke up with his ex-wife and running into his arms.

"I can't do this anymore!" she cried into her sink. She opened her mirror cabinet and took out a full bottle of strong sleeping pills, turning it in her hand.

"Yes, you can." Rick's voice told her. She looked up after closing the cabinet and looked into the steel blue eyes of his image in the mirror. She again refrained from turning around, knowing full well that he wouldn't be there if she did.

"How could I, Rick? I'm losing my mind. All I want is to touch you, to hold you, to feel you, to smell you, to be held by you. I can't do that with just the fleeting image of your form visiting me when I'm most down."

"Kate, you can do all of that. There is a way."

"How Rick, how? Tell me and I do it." she said and lowered her head once more.

"You have to face reality. You need to voice your biggest regret."

"My biggest regret? I have so many, how could I know what's my biggest?"

"You know what it is. Deep inside you is the Kate who wants out. The Kate, who isn't afraid of facing any danger because that's the way she is. And once you listen to her and set her free, you will be free as well."

"I don't understand. Tell me what do to? What is my biggest regret?"

"You know what it is Kate. You do know. But if you keep it inside, it will eat you up."

'My biggest regret. How could I...? Of course.' she thought and looked up into his eyes. Rick's face was stoic, anticipating. Could it be that easy? She had tried to tell him inside the freezer before she fell unconscious.

"Rick." she started, fresh tears running down her face. "Rick, I love you. I have for a long time. And I always will love you."

Saying those three magic words was harder than she had thought, especially since the target of her affection was only a ghostly image in her mirror. She saw his face break out in a knowing smile. That smile. All she wanted was to kiss him now.

She turned around and to as expected, he wasn't there. She sighed and made her way to her living room but something was different. It felt as if a weight had lifted from her shoulders and the world seemed brighter than before. The shadows at the edge of her perceptions seemed to be receding, replaced by a warm glow.

"There's only one more thing you need to do Kate." Rick's voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once.

"And what is that?" she shouted into the air.

"You just need to wake up."

"NOOOOO!" she shouted as the darkness rushed back in and enveloped her.

Kate's eyes opened wide, light pouring into them, making them hurt. The room was different than before. Her pictures on the wall were gone, replaced by white. Her books weren't there, replaced by white. She wasn't in her own bed. Her clothes had turned into a hospital gown. And instead of seeing nothing, Richard Castle sat next to her, chin stubbled and eyes that had way too little sleep, holding her hand.

"Just wake up Kate, you just need to wake up." she heard him whisper.

"Rick." she croaked out in a voice that she barely recognized as her own.

"Kate?" he looked at her with a lot of surprise. Their eyes locked and fresh tears appeared in hers which mirrored his own. "Kate, you're awake."

"Throat dry." she managed to get out and Rick held a bottle with a straw to her mouth. She slowly drank some of the cool liquid and immediately felt better. "Thank you." she said with a much stronger voice.

"You woke up. You really woke up." Rick said again, holding her hand tight as if almost not believing that she was there, talking to him.

"How could I not with people always telling me to." she tried to make a joke but her low strength not letting it come out that way. But she realized that her voice was getting stronger with every word, as if just his presence fed her energy.

"Hey, if you had listened to me on the first day, I wouldn't have had to repeat myself so much. And neither would our friends."

Kate was amazed at how easy it was for them to fall back into their easy banter as if nothing had changed. Correction, something had changed. What was she doing here anyway?

"Rick, what happened?" she asked as a nurse and a doctor rushed into her room and started poking her.

"You fell unconscious in the freezer. About an hour later, Ryan and Esposito found us. But you had fallen into a coma and have been for a week."

"And this young man hasn't left your side for a minute." the elderly doctor, whose name tag said Williams, said. "If he hadn't been raised so well, I'm sure he wouldn't even have left the room for his bodily ablutions. He didn't even use the shower in your bathroom until the nurse threatened to give him a sponge bath using steel wool."

Despite her weak status, she laughed heartily at the thought of him being scrubbed clean with steel wool. She let the doctor and nurse do their tests and watched Rick rapidly messaging on his phone.

"Rick, what about the bomb?" she asked once the doctor had left after giving her instructions to stay in bed and get a lot of rest.

"Ryan and Esposito found it and managed to disarm it before it could blow up. As I understand it, they only had a few seconds left."

"Where's Josh?"

"Gone to Haiti. He left two days after you got admitted." Rick said and for some reason, Kate was more relieved than angry that her so-called boyfriend left, while she was comatose.

Kate sank back into her pillow and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. Everything seemed to be alright now. Nobody told her to wake up to make her open her eyes to her empty and dark apartment. Almost everything. She remembered what she had said to Rick's ghost inside her comatose dream. She looked at his face, into his steel blue eyes that were watching her.

She knew what she had to do. And strangely enough, she didn't feel any trepidation, just contentment. She lifted herself into a sitting position and mentioned him closer. As he leaned in, she slung her arms around his neck and pressed her lips on his.

"I love you Rick." she said after breaking the kiss. "I love you so much. Please be there for me forever." she continued and saw his face rapidly going from surprise to happiness.

"I love you too Kate. Always." he replied and kissed her once more.

She broke the kiss way too soon for her liking to draw some air. Her right arm was still around his neck and the big smile hadn't left her face as the door burst open and her friends and family burst in. They were all there, hugging her. Javi, Kevin, Lanie, Alexis, Martha, her dad. These were the people she wanted around her. And as her friends bustled around her, occasionally cheering, she once more looked into the smiling eyes of Richard Castle, the man who had stolen her heart years ago and who she had finally let in to begin a new phase of their lives.

Okay, done with this one. I hope you weren't too confused ^^

Review please :)