Disclaimer: I don't own Castle.

Prompt #32: Pigtails - He couldn't help pulling at them. He had the irrational fear that if he didn't, he'd lose her.

Words: 475

Sometimes I worry about Kate.

It's not often that I do. I mean, I do, but not this type of worry.

I feel like she's pulling away from me again.

It's a case of a mother shot and killed in an alley. It has all the earmarks of a robbery, but Kate's determined to prove that it was a hit orchastrated by the same people who had her mother killed.

The similarities are blatantly obvious. Victim was a lawyer, prosecutor, and she left behind a teenage daughter. Files are missing from her home office. No suspects, no witnesses.

Kate's becoming engrossed in this case. I feel her slipping away, like sand through my fingers.

She's going back to that dark place again. I know it.

So I pester. I annoy. I pick and prod and joke and jest and tug at her pigtails.

I can't lose her.

So I hold out my hand and hope to God she comes back to me.

I know Castle's worried about me.

But he shouldn't be.

I know it's the same guys. It has to be. The M.O.'s are identical.

If I can find the connection between this case and my mother's...if I can find the killer...if I can find the mastermind...

If...If...If...If...

If I don't get a grip, I'm going to slide back to that place.

Castle knows it. That's probably why he's being extra-annoying lately. Pulling my pigtails, as it were.

He's trying to ground me.

So I take the hand he offers, and pull myself back into reality.

"This case was really bad," she admitted that night.

Looking up from his laptop, Castle watched as she moved from the doorway of his study to perch her butt on his desk. "Yeah," he agreed.

It had been a random incident. Not the men who'd killed her mother and very nearly killed her. The news would have devastated her, but Kate had returned to reality before that had happened. Castle had succeeded in bringing her back.

But not without angry words, harsh and stinging, flung from her lips in the heat of frustration and hate.

"I, um..." Kate glanced down, then looked at him again through lowered lashes. "I'm sorry."

He'd already forgiven her, but Castle said, "It's all right."

"And thanks."

"For what?"

"For being you." She smiled and reached to touch his cheek. "For keeping me grounded. For pulling my pigtails so I don't run off after bad men without thinking."

He smiled back, covering her hand with his own. "Always, Kate," he whispered. They stayed that way for a minute before he shut his computer's lid. "C'mon Detective, let's get some sleep."

"Okay."

Just a snippet I came up with.

Review please!