A/N: So I should probably be working on my other fic Untouchable, but I was wired after the finale and had to tap something out. Not certain how long this will be, but my guest-imation right now is that this is 1 of 4 We'll see. Obviously, we all know he's not dead. He's my take of what happens next.

Occam's Razor: (A principle giving precedence to simplicity) In two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred.

In the end it takes three police officers to hold Kate back from running down to the car. She doesn't care. She's ready to brave the flames to get to Castle.

She shouts and struggles the entire time. "That's my fiance! We're getting married! We're getting married." The words are simple, hysterical and borderline childish, but they come over and over until they seem to lose all meaning. Her entreaties do nothing to sway the officers to release her, so she changes tactics. "He's my partner," she pleads then. "I have to get to him! He's my partner!" But after a few minutes it's clear that there's nothing to do, nothing that can be done, and she ends up collapsing on the side of the road, almost pulling down one of the officers with her.

It is nearly three days before she truly takes in her surroundings again. She's in her living room, sitting on the sofa of her newly water damaged apartment, and staring at the cabinet in the kitchen that she left open the day she went to find Rogan O'Leary. It's amazing that the simple thing that manages to pull her back to reality is an open cabinet door. That one little thing out of place grounds her when her entire world has been dislocated. She stands up, crosses the room, and closes it. Laying both her hands on the counter-top she breathes in deep for the first time that she can remember since she saw Castle's car up in flames.

The past few days are a blur. She doesn't remember coming home, and looking down she finds herself in clothes she doesn't remember putting on, a pair of jeans and the over-sized hoodie that she had worn while on the run from Bracken. It's the sweatshirt she stole from Castle one night at the loft. It still smells like him, and as much as her heart clenches in her chest, it's enough to motivate her to collect herself properly.

This was supposed to be the start of a new chapter of her life. The pain and the guilt over her mother had finally been put to bed. Finally, she had justice. Finally, she had peace. Kate was never a particularly religious person, but she believed in the balance of life. The universe had taken her mother, but then it had given her Castle. Yet there was simply nothing good enough in existence that could balance out a life without him. This was just a little too much, a little too over the top, even for a life that had been particularly cruel to her so far. If he was there she knows he would denounce the whole scenario as contrived. She can practically hear him scolding her and scoffing dramatically, "How could you possibly think that was me? A car wreck on the best day of my life? What are we in Downton Abbey?! Come on Beckett."

The version of him she's conjured is so certain, in that unwavering way that only Castle ever is, that the only conclusion her heart can come to is that he is still alive. He's alive and she needs to find him. To fight for him.

It had taken fifteen full years to properly move on after what happened to her mother, but she knows that she would never get over Castle being gone. She might be able to keep living, but she would never be able to be a cop again without him. There would also be no loving anyone else. It had taken every ounce of her courage and strength to let him in. She gave it all to him, all the space of her heart. There wasn't anything left for anyone else.

Even though the prospect of losing him rips her apart, even though it had turned her into a shell over the past few days, now that she's thinking about it, really truly processing it, an ember of hope burns inside her chest. It is the hope that this is something she can fix. She's seen crazier and more complicated things than abduction and faked deaths. She knows it's irrational, utterly insane even. Still, Castle never believed Occam's Razor, and if their places were reversed he certainly wouldn't start now. She was the woman of fact. Castle was the man of instinct. Right now she would have to be both. It wasn't the first time she was kicking logic to the curb for his sake.

She looks about the apartment trying to find her phone, finally spotting it charging on the counter next to a jacket she doesn't remember taking off. As she punches the number on her speed dial the tiny ember inside of her starts to flame until a full on inferno is lit, and suddenly she's sure, absolutely positive, that the man in the car was not her fiance.

Lanie answers on the second ring.

"Kate are you okay? What am I saying? That's a stupid question. Of course are not okay. You need me to come over? I can be there in fifteen minutes." Lanie's voice is cracking and she's talking quickly.

"Lanie," Kate cuts off her friend's rambling, and it stings her throat. Her voice is raspy and she realizes suddenly that she hasn't spoken since that morning on the road. It unnerves her momentarily to think her mind is that fragile. She presses on into the conversation. "Has anyone run DNA on the body found in the car?" She refuses to call it Castle's body.

"Oh sweetie," there's something incredibly sad in Lanie's voice, and a shot of anger burns through Kate. She doesn't need sympathy.

She takes a breath to steady herself. "Lanie we need to be sure. I've just – he and I have seen too much, been through too much for me not to be one-hundred percent certain. I want you to run the DNA."

She hears Lanie sigh on the other end and knows that her friend thinks that she's fallen into the first stage of grief: denial. Maybe she has, but dammit she needs to be convinced. He would never give up on her that easily, not when they had promised each other always.

"Kate," Lanie says gently, as if trying to explain something very simple to a child, "you know the dental records were a match."

"Castle hasn't had a dental x-ray over two years," she argues. "Anyone could have slipped a new file in there. It's not like dental offices are Fort Knox."

"Don't. Can't you see what you are doing to yourself? There isn't a conspiracy here."

"That's what they told me about my mother."

There is a long pause on the other end.

"I'll make a couple of calls to the office. Martha has him set to be cremated this afternoon. I'll make sure we pull a sample before that happens."

"I want you to run it Lanie. I don't trust anyone else. Not with this."

"Alright. Alright I will. You have a comparison sample I can run?"

"Yes. I'll meet you at the lab."

"Honey, I'm doing this so you'll stop." Kate hears Lanie sniff deeply, and for a moment it's hard for Kate to hold back her own tears. But no, she was not going to cry. Castle didn't need her tears. "You can't fall down the rabbit hole again. It was just an accident."

"He's not gone," Kate says without hesitation.

"I know that's what it feels like," the ME pauses and Kate jumps on the silence.

"Lanie, I don't know how to lose him," her tone is firm, making it clear that she's not tacitly admitting that he's dead. "I don't know how. So I'm not going to."

There is silence on the other end of the line again, and Kate knows what her best friend wants to say. Stubbornness can't bring a man back from the dead. Kate does not say goodbye as she taps the screen to end the call.

After a moment of rummaging, she pulls out a yellow legal pad, a sharpie, and a roll of tape from the kitchen drawer. She scribbles large capital letters on the paper and goes to the now empty shutters of her living room, where she and Castle had ceremoniously taken down her mother's case files the week before.

Ripping off the top sheet of the pad she tapes it to the wall and takes a step back. Her new personal case stares back at her.

WHERE IS RICHARD CASTLE?

Thanks for reading you lovely people. I'm a comment-aholic. Enable me. Also, as always, I apologize for what I'm sure is abysmal comma usage.