Phew. Okay. Warning, this chapter is going to b l. Or more emotional. Last chapter, and then an epilogue to come. Yay! I'll stop ruining your lives with angst! I think Jim speaks more in this chapter than he has in the entire time he's actually featured on the show.

Disclaimer: pls Marlowe more Jim Beckett I beg of you.

Castle waits until the skies are clear, the blue sky one long uninterrupted stretch into the distance. No rain, the ground is dry, and it's warm. Warm enough, anyway. He doesn't bother with his coat, it feels too heavy and cumbersome and he doesn't want today to be a day where he feels dragged down. It's going to be hard enough as it is. He promised Diane he'd do this, and he's been putting it off and putting it off until his next appointment had come around. She hadn't told him off, exactly. Just reiterated the pro's of doing what he needed to. And he knows what he needs to do, he just can't deal with the way Kate looks at him. It's when he gets home, finds her foetal on the couch, dried tear tracks on her cheeks and her eyes out of focus that he starts to think that maybe, this would be best for the both of them. His imagination she may be, but it's causing her pain. He can see that. And if he convinces himself that Jim was right, then she'll go, and he'll hurt, but he'll heal. And this… this vision of Kate won't hurt either. And that's what does it for him, not that he's in pain, because he's been in pain before, and he can deal with it, but when Kate is in any kind of pain it tears him apart inside. So he goes and he visits her.

It's just as he remembers from the funeral, only this time there's a lot less people and he's absolutely terrified. His hands are fists at his sides, continuously clenched because he doesn't want people to see how shaken he is. He's surprised at how kind the paparazzi have been, they've left him alone, and maybe they're not quite as bad as he makes them out to be. They know when they really, really do have to leave him alone. But the graveyard around him is empty, save for the dead. He's not sure about the etiquette of sitting at graves, and he feels awkward just standing, so he sits, carefully. Legs crossed, hands folded in lap, his phone digging into his hip. And then he looks at the grave. There's fresh flowers – from Jim, or Lanie, or one of the boys, could be a handful of people – and he kicks himself because he should have bought some himself. Then again, it's a miracle that he even got himself here, Kate would forgive him. The real Kate. Not the Kate who occupies his loft now, but the Kate who was his wife, who's lying in the ground – this ground – dead, and pale and not breathing and not alive – and he has to move then, has to move because he can feel the bile rising up in his throat, the panic setting in his chest and he can't breathe can't think past the fact his wife is dead and in a hole in the ground and after all he's done, after everything he swore he'd do to keep her safe, he couldn't.

He doesn't want to desecrate any of the surrounding graves, stumbles blindly towards a lone tree and throws up behind it, his stomach heaving, his eyes watering and his lungs empty. There's a hand on his shoulder and he jerks away, throwing his arm out to push the intruder aside, and it's a few moments before he recognises the man in front of him.

"Jim." He coughs, weakly, putting a hand out to steady himself on the tree.

"First time?" he doesn't let him reply, just takes his arm and leads him over to a bench. He can still feel the burning in his stomach and back of his throat, tries to swallow it down. He looks down to find Jim pressing a bottle of water into his hand, and he takes it with a smile of thanks, emptying half of the bottle down his throat before Jim can even get his bag closed again. "It's hard, visiting for the first time since the funeral. You almost want to pretend it was a dream, that it never happened." He squeezed Castle's thigh, reassuringly, so like the father Castle never had. "I'm proud of you. It took me a lot longer to visit Johanna. Kate would be proud of you."

"You're proud of me?" Castle croaks, incredulous.

"You're my son in law, Rick. You helped my daughter, you loved her, even though she could be stubborn and infuriating, you just kept on waiting because you believed in her, that one day she'd see. You helped her see that her life was not about her mother's murder, that she had her own life to make."

"But… at the hospital, I – I said…"

"You were angry at me, but I was never angry at you. You reacted the same way anyone would have done. You'd lost your wife. I'd signed her away. You had every right to hate me. So I didn't try to push, I knew you needed time. And it's fine, you know, if you're still angry and you can never forgive me, that's okay. I completely understand."

"How did you know?"

"Know what? That Katie had gone?" Jim shrugged, tilted his head in the direction of his daughter's grave. "Honestly, I don't know. Father's intuition, maybe. Or maybe it was her sheer stubbornness. If Kate was in there, she'd be fighting tooth and nail to get out. And I wish that I still had hope, your hope, that something was still in there and she'd wake up, and maybe things would be different, but she'd still be our Kate. My daughter, your wife. I've rarely been an optimist, Rick. I don't see the point in expecting that everything is going to turn out fine, even more since Johanna died. And maybe I gave up hope too soon, but it had been six months. People don't stay in comas for six months if they're going to come out of it."

Castle turned the bottle over and over in his hands, trying to think of just what to say. Funny. He's the writer, he's the one that has the ability to take words and paint them into pictures, yet right now, he's stumped. And he stays that way for a good five minutes, the only sound between them being that of the water moving in the bottle. "I… I keep seeing her. Kate."

"You do?"

Castle nods. "It's not her. I know it's not. I've been seeing a therapist about it, and she thinks it's that part of my brain that still believes that she was still alive. I need to convince myself that even if she was, she's not here anymore. That's why I'm here."

"I saw Johanna too." Jim admits, hands clasped between his knees, staring out at the middle distance.

Castle sits up in surprise, turning his head to look at the older man. "You did?"

"I never told Katie. I didn't know how to. So, I turned to drink. And it worked, for a while. But as time went on, I had to drink more, and more, until it was a constant blur of nothingness. And it wasn't until I saw how Johanna looked at me sometimes, a mix of pity and disappointment, did I realise just how much I was screwing my own life up."

"Did Kate know?"

"I don't know. I didn't tell her, not outright. But maybe she worked out bits and pieces. We didn't talk about it, not that much. Too painful for both of us."

"How did you cope? When you stopped drinking, did you still see her?"

"All the time. And it was hard to not go back to the alcohol, but I did it. And eventually, she just disappeared. I can't help you with this, Rick. You have to work it out for yourself. But you have to know, if you need me, anything at all, I'm always at the other end of the phone."