"So how are we going to practice, Alexis?" asked Lanie. "It's not like I'm going to let you hurt yourself, and there's no way in the world we're going to a hospital."

"Actually," replied Alexis, "we're not going to test the whole healing thing yet. You're right about it being too risky to do anything deliberate. In fact, the plan is to practice by you *not* being in a position where you have to work on something specific."

Ryan knew where this was going. "You want to replicate this morning."

Alexis nodded. "Lanie, you didn't have anything specific you were looking for when you started to examine Kate. That's why you froze. From what I could get from the legend, knowledge is power for you. That's why you were able to heal the cuts on my dad's hand so easily-they were obvious. So the first goal is going to be getting you to the point where you can touch someone without getting sucked into the trance."

"And I'll be right here to snap you out of it if things go too far," assured Ryan.

"To be honest, I'm scared," Lanie finally admitted. "I felt like I was drowning this morning. And there's a part of me that would rather keep these gloves on than go through that again."

Ryan decided to 'turn on the charm', as he was starting to think of it, hoping to give Lanie some measure of comfort. "Lanie, none of us had any idea what was going on this morning. Hell, it was only through what happened with *you* that I started to find out what was happening to *me*. I can completely understand being scared. But, you can't keep the gloves on forever..."

"Wanna bet?" Lanie commented nervously. Her face finally relaxing into a small smile, she told Ryan, "I wish you could bottle that, Kevin. It would save me hundreds in spa trips." She drew in a deep breath, summoning every ounce of courage that she had and some of the extra that Ryan was trying to give her. Turning to Alexis, Lanie tentatively pulled the gloves off her hands. "So who am I going to practice on?"

"Me." Alexis put her hand on the table within Lanie's easy reach, but Lanie rejected that idea immediately. She put her hands up in the air and started to back away from the table, shaking her head. "Your father will wish me into the heart of a volcano if anything happened to you, Alexis. No way. Not gonna happen."

"Practice on me, then." The group turned to see that Castle drying his hands after having cleaned the kitchen. "If you don't want to practice on Alexis, Lanie, then I volunteer."

Switching test subjects did nothing to ease Lanie's nerves. If anything, she became even *more* nervous. "I don't know, Castle. After what happened with Kate-"

"What happened with Kate is exactly the reason you need to get control over this, Lanie." The deadly serious tone in Castle's voice was all that everyone needed to understand that Castle was no longer talking about the events of the morning. "You completely healed my hand after I broke that water glass, Lanie. I don't even have any scars, when by rights my hand should be covered with them. Every time I look at my hand, now, I keep thinking about the one scar I wish to God had never happened."

Ryan gasped as Castle's memory hit him full force. Tears welled up in his eyes as he struggled to describe what he was seeing to the group. "Beckett's shooting...I'm *feeling* Castle's memory of it. God, Castle..."

Castle's focus never left Lanie. "I'm going to live with that memory every day of my life, Lanie. I know you do, too. But can you imagine how different that memory would have been under our current circumstances?"

Tears in her own eyes, Lanie nodded. No hospital. No scars. No months of isolation, or rehab, or whatever the hell that was when she shut me out. Aw hell, with what this bunch has done today she probably could have caught Maddox and dodged that damn bullet altogether. Or caught it in her teeth.

"Now, as far as I know, we can't travel back to that day and stop it from happening. Still, I don't think it's escaped anybody's notice that there are still people out there who would be very happy to see Kate, or any of you, dead. Which means there might come a time where you have to be the one to step in and save one of our lives. And if I can help you to be ready to do that, then I'll do whatever it takes."

Lanie saw the determination in Castle's eyes, and she knew there would be no talking the man out of any of it. "Okay," she relented. "Just tell me what I need to do."

Alexis relaxed. It was starting to feel like the hardest part was over. Turning to her father, Alexis instructed him, "Well, first, dad, you need to clear your mind and relax. If Detective Ryan has to worry about you *and* Lanie then this is going to be a whole lot harder." When she was able to watch the dark cloud lift from Ryan's face, Alexis turned to the other two people at the table. "Lanie, I seriously doubt that the trance problem is that one second you're there and the next you're gone. There's got to be a process here, even if we don't know what it is yet. Detective Ryan, that's where you come in. If you can stay in Lanie's head while she's under and figure out what's going on when she gets lost, then she should be able to learn how to head it off at the pass-or at least, that's the theory."

Lanie nodded, understanding the concept immediately. "I know this is going to sound crazy," she confessed, "but it makes me feel better knowing I'm not going into any of this alone...even though it's all going to be going on in my head...if that makes any sense."

"Oddly enough, it kinda does," admitted Ryan.

"Then shall we get started?" asked Alexis. Lanie and Ryan nodded.

Castle, Lanie and Ryan took almost simultaneous deep breaths, trying to clear their minds to focus on the task at hand. Ryan acted first, and Lanie twitched briefly as Ryan entered her mind. Once she recovered from that unusual sensation, Lanie closed her eyes and covered Castle's hand with her own.

Lanie's body twitched rapidly as her grip on Castle's hand grew stronger. Ryan grabbed the table until his knuckles grew white, overwhelmed by the assault of images on his mind. But almost as quickly as it started, the spasms subsided, and the trio relaxed, opening their eyes and disconnecting from each other to each return to their own bodies.

"Wow," said Lanie, breathless. "That was...that was intense."

"Agreed," chimed in Castle. "I almost feel like I need a cigarette." Lanie smacked him on the back of the head for the comment, which everybody else was smart enough to ignore.

Alexis was far more intent on understanding what she had just seen. "Lanie, from what I can tell, you never stopped breathing?" Alexis looked to Ryan to confirm her observations, and received that confirmation with a nod. She then asked Ryan, "Detective? Did she ever get close to getting lost again?"

Ryan shook his head even as he was catching his breath, the realization hitting him even as he said it aloud. "No. She was fascinated, excited, maybe a little awe-struck. But it felt like after the initial jump, you knew exactly where you were going, Lanie."

"Actually, I did," agreed Lanie. "It was just like you said, Alexis - knowledge is power. I don't remember much about what happened with Kate, but what I do remember was this crazy feeling of overload before my brain shut down. I can understand why the legend warned that the healer could get lost. If you didn't understand what you were seeing, that overload could happen *really* easily."

"So what made the difference?" asked Alexis.

Lanie replied, "Honestly, it might be the fact that I'm an ME. I see the inside of the human body a lot more than even most doctors. And *that's* what I was seeing. Granted, what I saw was a lot more alive than what I normally see on the job, but it was definitely body parts. It might take me a couple of rounds to see what I can do with the information, but I can definitely say I don't need to live my life in these gloves."

"Thank God!" Alexis exclaimed with relief.

Beckett's panicked scream interrupted the group's conversation. Lanie jumped up and led the group outside at a run only to stumble upon one of her worst nightmares: Javier Esposito laying on the ground, unconscious.

By the time Ryan had made it outside, he could tell by the rapid twitching of Lanie's eyes that she had already entered her trance. But unlike her previous efforts, Lanie's hands were moving with deliberate purpose over his partner's neck and spine. Still concerned that Lanie might get lost in an emotional panic, Ryan tried to enter Lanie's mind for support, only to stagger back under the force of a surprisingly strong mental shove.

Lanie collapsed backwards on the ground as Esposito regained consciousness with a loud groan. Sitting up again slowly, Lanie then proceeded to beat up the man she had just worked so hard to heal. "Javier Esposito...don't ever...make me...do...that...again!"

Holding up his hands to fend off Lanie's punches, Esposito yelled out, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

Once she got the panic, worry and anger out of her system, Lanie gave Esposito one last hard punch in the arm. "You scared me half to death!"

Catching his breath, Esposito finally got a chance to speak once Lanie stopped trying to kill him. "I'm sorry," he repeated, the sincerity evident in his voice.

"What happened?" asked Castle.

Esposito started to rub the spot on his arm where he could feel a bruise slowly forming. Nodding his head to Beckett, he declared to the group, slightly irritated, "Your girlfriend beat the crap out of me!" Turning to Ryan, he added, "You know what the difference is between the warrior and the hunter?"

"What?" asked Ryan.

"Night vision. As it got darker I had trouble seeing where I was going. Beckett, apparently, had no such trouble. That's what led to my header off the roof. Tomorrow, we start sparring at *ground* level."

One good thing about crashing at the house of a famous author is that there are a ton of books to read to unwind before bed. Especially Richard Castle novels. Lanie was just getting into "Death of a a Prom Queen" when there was a knock on the bedroom door. Not wanting to lose her spot, she called out "just a second!" while dog-earing the page and closing the book.

She looked up to see Esposito open the door and close it quietly behind him. "Javi?" she asked quietly, "I figured you'd be passed out already. You've had a hell of a night."

Esposito sat at the foot of the bed, having trouble finding what he wanted to say. "So did you...from what Castle was telling me, anyway..."

"You didn't...look?"

Esposito shook his head. "After what they told me happened, it's probably better if I don't."

The couple sat for what felt like an eternity, hating the silence but not knowing what to say to each other. Finally, after both of them made a couple of attempts to start speaking at the same time, Lanie was the first one to find the words she wanted to say. "I was so scared tonight, Javi. I thought I'd almost lost you."

"You probably would have...if..."

"If we hadn't entered the twilight zone sometime last night?"

Esposito nodded. Thinking it over, he added, "Of course, if last night hadn't happened, chances are pretty good Beckett and I wouldn't have been Matrix fighting on Castle's roof this evening, either."

That was logic that was hard to argue with and Lanie found she couldn't suppress her smile. "True." Silence descended on the room again, and Lanie started to realize that if she was ever going to clear the air between them, now was probably the time. Of course, she thought, it would help if my brain could actually come up with the words. "Javier, you know why...did I ever tell you why...why I..."

"Why you turned me down when I was on one knee with a ring in my hand? I think you gave me some cock-and-bull excuse about how your parents couldn't make it work so you were sure that meant that you couldn't..."

"That wasn't it," Lanie admitted. She drew in a deep breath to steady her heavily frayed nerves. "I deal with death every day. And I know the normal risks you take every day; they're part of the job. I swore up and down from the day I started with the coroner's office that I was not going to get involved with a cop. So when we first started seeing each other I promised myself that it was just sex, that it was just a fling-"

"And then it wasn't."

"And then it wasn't. Javi, falling for you scared me to death. I started having nightmares. I would go into work, scrub up, open the body bag on my table and find you in it. I couldn't deal."

"That's why you said no?" Lanie nodded. "Baby, why didn't you tell me this before? Why tell me this now?"

Lanie chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, wrangling up the courage to continue. "I've been thinking about talking to you since you and Beckett went after Maddox and almost got yourselves killed. I've seen how Beckett and Castle are around each other. How being together made them better on the job, makes their lives better..."

"Even with the risks."

"Yeah." Lanie pushed herself forward on the bed, making sure she was able to take his hands up with her own. She noticed the bruise she had left on his arm and gently caressed the spot, the black and blue skin disappearing under her touch. Lanie then allowed herself a small moment of amazement and satisfaction before looking her man in the eye to speak once again. "Javier, I'm starting to wonder if I made a mistake that night. I miss you. I miss *us*. Now, I'm not asking you to ask me again right this second..." Esposito smiled, knowing that that had *not* been in his plans for the evening, "but I'm asking you if you'd be willing to see if we can make this work. Can make *us* work."

As Esposito cupped Lanie's cheek with his hand, a vision took him somewhere else...somewhere he knew was in their future.

He was in the backyard of Castle's Hamptons place, surrounded by his friends and with the ocean behind him. His Lanie, his beautiful Dr. Parrish, was at his side, hair shorter than than it is now, but curled and decorated with white flowers running down the right side. Her dress was ankle-length, but still breathtaking, and the white silk made her face glow in the late afternoon sun. His heart soared as he watched the future version of himself obey, with enthusiasm, the command to kiss his bride...

Esposito let the future fade from his sight as his attention turned to the present and the nervous woman he held in his arms and his heart. Smiling, he placed a gentle kiss on her lips, then teased, "Of course, you had to do this on a night where you just saved my life, so how could I *possibly* say no..."

"Javi?"

"Yeah, babe?"

"Shut up."