FADE INTO LIGHT

2

The days passed quickly, uneventfully. Well, mostly. Every day, Castle roamed his home, making a mess of things, and every evening when Kate came home after work, she'd just straighten it all and go about her normal routine. Every night he'd rattle windows and flush the toilet and make the doors creak, and she wasn't phased in the slightest.

It made him so angry, that she just didn't react at all, and then, almost subtly, he wasn't so angry anymore. He didn't notice it for a while until one evening when she opened the door, and his heart leapt, excited for her to be home. That night he didn't rattle the windows, or made doors creak or flushed the toilet. He just let her rest. And yes, okay, he may have watched her sleeping just a little bit. She wore pajamas so it was only invading her privacy a little bit, he reasoned. As angry as he'd been, he'd always stayed away from the bathroom, and had shrank back through the wall when she was about to change.

He couldn't exactly say what it was about her, but she intrigued him. Maybe her determination, with him, and with all of her life. She was a detective, he'd found out, worked for the NYPD. If he were still a writer he thought he'd write about her. She was... extraordinary.

And he hadn't realize how lonely he'd become until her relentless presence in his home. He'd roam the loft, bored all day, listlessly flipping over picture frames or mess up the order in her kitchen cupboards, until Kate came home and he could watch her, pretend he could talk with her. He watched TV with her when she settled on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a movie popped in the DVD player, and read over her shoulder when she immersed herself into a book, noticing the way she'd bite her nails during suspenseful parts, or the startled breath falling from her lips at a surprising twist.

Kate sank down next to the victim, took in the rose petals covering the woman's body, the sunflowers on her eyes.

'Flowers for your Grave,' she thought wistfully.

And then she got to work.

For obvious reasons, Richard Castle was neither a suspect, nor could he be called in for questioning or clues in the case. Kate dismissed the thought that crept into her head - that maybe she could talk to him, maybe he was there after all? No. She was being ridiculous. He was dead. And they had other avenues, 'real' police work to do.

His publisher provided boxes of fan-mail they had been keeping, and after her team had separated the mourning letters after his death from all others, they set to work, slogging through pages and pages until they had found a link - to Kyle Cabot.

At home that night, Kate settled into bed, but her mind kept racing, the questions never shutting off. Something just didn't add up, kept nagging at her. Kyle had been arrested and it'd been easy and clean - too easy, too clean.

"Castle?" She spoke the word into her empty bedroom, felt silly even while she did it. It had only been a dream, and everything else that had been happening - it was the draft that probably knocked over the picture frames, or old pipes, and who knows why books fell from shelves; maybe there'd been a small earthquake? Plus, it had pretty much stopped happening anyway. It had all been just a figment of her imagination. Right?

"I'm here, Kate." The voice answered, a chilly draft caressing her arms and she shivered, tugged her blanket over herself. Her heart leapt, it didn't know any better. Had she known he would answer; had she always known that he was truly there, just this presence, always with her?

"Someone-" She started, stopped, gathered her thoughts and wondered what she was even doing. "Someone has been murdering people, staging them like in some of your books."

He gasped. The curtains rustled and whispered.

Kate took a deep breath. "I could need your help."

"We got him!" She announced as she marched into their home, the door falling closed behind her. Her cheeks were flushed, the energy radiating off her body was almost palpable and he was drawn to her like a magnet.

"Yessss!" Rick fist-bumped, feeling satisfied for the first time in a long while. "Tell me everything."

Kate sat on the couch, and he sat down next to her while she recounted how they had nailed down Tisdale.

It became routine, after that. Kate would tell him about her cases, and he'd give her input, find theories or asked questions. Many were completely outlandish and ridiculous, and she wasn't shy about telling him so, and he'd scoff, and they'd argue and bicker and tease.

And sometimes his insights turned out to be invaluable. Her solve rate went up, and she found herself looking forward to coming home and sharing her day, to just- talk to him. He made her laugh, made it fun. She felt- lighter, somehow.

He was- a friend. A really great friend, and she didn't much think about the fact that he wasn't 'real', that he wasn't actually, physically there. He felt real to her. She'd wondered, on occasion, whether she was going crazy, yet she'd never felt more balanced. He made her job, her life a little more fun.

One morning she woke up and the scent of fresh coffee had filled her loft, was tickling her nose. She rose, knuckled the grit of sleep from her eyes, and draped a robe over herself before she shuffled into the kitchen.

"Good morning." His voice whispered near her. "Made you some coffee."

A coffee mug was sitting on the kitchen counter, steam still rising from its surface. She reached for it, lifted the mug to her nose, and inhaled deeply, her eyes closing at the warm, invigorating scent. She took a sip, tasted the hint of vanilla infused into the dark liquid.

"Mmm. Just how I like it," she hummed, drank another sip.

"Of course. I know how you like your coffee, Kate."

"So how often are you watching me?" She teased, raised a questioning eyebrow at him.

"As often as I can get away with. Which is a lot, since you can't see me..."

"No fair. I don't get to watch you!"

"Would you like to? You find me hot, don't you. I mean, I really am ruggedly handsome."

She scoffed. "You really are full of yourself, is what you are. I just better never catch you in my bathroom!"

"Of course not!" He sounded affronted. "I won't invade your privacy like that. I respect you, Kate."

She startled, could hear he meant it in his voice. "I know," she nodded, took another sip of her coffee. "I know."

Her coffee was waiting for her every morning, after that.

She told him, one day. About her mother. After a particularly harrowing case that left her drained, a deep sadness radiating off her.

He wanted to touch her, hug her so badly that it hurt.

"Have you seen her, maybe, wherever you are? Is she okay?" She wondered, sniffling into a handkerchief. He felt broken.

"No," he said, shaking his head even though she couldn't see it. "I'm just- always here. I can't seem to leave, can't seem to be anywhere else but here, in this loft."

"Why?" She turned watery eyes at him, as if she knew where he was, and he felt cleaved, her pain and his pain intertwining, making him one with her.

"I don't know. Maybe it's because it was the last place where I was happy?" She nodded, seemed to accept that answer. Though he was no longer sure it was the truth.

He was pretty certain he was there because of her. For her. Kate.

"Tell me about that," she pleaded, and so he told her - about Alexis, his amazing daughter, so smart and vivacious, and his mother, fun-loving and exuberant, who had just moved in with them when he had his accident. He didn't know what had happened to them; it'd been as if he'd risen from deep within a white fog, no sense of timing or space, to find his loft devoid of the people he loved the most, and he couldn't seem to leave these four walls to find out. He'd hoped that if only he kicked out everyone who tried to invade his space, then one day they would come back, but they never had.

"It was probably too painful for them, to be back here," Kate said, and he nodded, the sorrow choking the breath from his lungs.

"Yeah."

That night, Kate curled onto her side in bed, wrapped her comforter tightly around her body, her limbs tucked in and her face half-buried in the pillows. She felt cleaved, filled with sorrow, both hers and his, and she felt lonely in ways she hadn't since he'd invaded her home.

"I wish I could see you," she whispered into the darkness, knowing he was close. He was always close, she knew it as certainly as she knew the sky was blue. "Feel you."

"Kate." He sounded so forlorn that her heart felt like it was breaking.

"I could use a hug."

"Maybe... maybe we can," he murmured, and then she felt the shift of her comforter along her skin even though she didn't touch it - like ghost hands moving it and she'd giggle if it didn't feel so real, 'ghost hands' - and then, instead of the constant chill, she felt a warmth all around her. A layer of heat surrounding her - like skin pressed against skin and the heavy warmth of another body.

"I can feel you," she sniffed, crying and laughing at the same time, the joy of it welling through her. "I feel you."