Prompt: An emotional take on the events of 3x24 if Castle had managed to catch that bullet that day. I've hinted at this in a few other stories, and I did look for a story that followed the general plot that I wanted to have played out so I wouldn't feel as compelled to write this story, but I couldn't find any. *If you know of any, please send them to me. I don't want to be wrong.*

Warning: It's going to get bumpy!

"Captain Montgomery once said to me that for us there is no victory." She looks down at her paper, keeping the folds flattened with her tightly gloved hands, most of her energy focused on keeping her voice steady. "There are only battles." She looks back over the crowd blankly.

It's hot. It's too humid for any of them to be in the attire that they're all in. But to most of them if feels fitting; the heat of the early summer making the dull ache of their grief seem all the more real.

She looks back down to the paper, her hands pressing the paper down into the podium against a soft breeze wafting through the air of the cemetery. "And in the end, the best that you can hope for," she hears his voice telling her these words, but she's walled off, not feeling allowed to emote anything, the need to be a rock against this tide too great, "is to find a place to make your stand."

Castle's heart feels heavy. So heavy that all his emotions, all his grief, his heartache are stuck in the center of his chest like an anchor, weighing him down. He's usually been hopeful about the future, but now… he can't even see it. His eyes flit away from her for a moment as she pauses in her speech. He wishes that they were in a place that she felt it her right to seek comfort in him, and his right to give it. But it's not.

"And if you're very lucky," She continues with her heart starting to tug itself in another direction, "you find someone… willing to stand with you." She speaks, looking over the deafly silent crowd, and when her words finally hit her own ears, the meaning, she turns her head to look at him. To draw strength from his presence, to silently tell him that she wants to be talking about him, to say with her eyes that she's sorry that everything that's happened has happened at all, she doesn't know.

He just wants them to be okay, he wants her to be okay even if it means that he's not. He just wants this to end so he can begin to repair… whatever it is that's been broken by all this. And he begins to find hope that making amends and repairs is what she wants by the way she turned to him, that certain arch in her brow that tells him she's thinking of him.

"Our captain would want us to carry on the fight." She continues, the moment between them still lingering in her mind as she trudges ahead with her speech. But he has to stop listening, his eternal optimist and his Devil's advocate having a war inside of his head. He just takes a hard breath and looks up.

That glint… that couldn't be made by some random piece of broken glass or a reflective wrapper. His panic starts to vibrate his nerves. As he sees it glint again, he can't afford to be wrong. His legs are pushing before he can even think of debating it, rushing to get to her as his blood pounds in his ears, his heart thumping.

He jumps at the distant crack of the gunshot.

Her whole body jerks at the distinct pop, and just an instant later, she feels his breadth weight slam against her, her back hitting the grass, sending the air out of her. There's a second where her body freezes, fear and shock stunning her, her consciousness still trying to catch up with what just happened.

What just happened?

Her ears still ring from the faint gunshot, hearing terrified but muffled screams. It's then that her mind finally gets back to her, and she realizes that she needs to act. She heard gunfire, but didn't feel the shot. Something is going on… oh no.

"Castle?" She strains and begins to push him off her, his back laying across hers. When she feels his shoulders tremble under her gloves, her heart shudders in her throat. "No." She whispers, her eyes finding the torn fabric on his shirt. "No no no no no!" She clenches her teeth as she presses her hands against it with all her weight.

His eyes look terrified as his hands shake like leafs above him. Her eyes quickly find his and she clumsily crawls over him, his blood soaking into her gloves on her trembling hands.

"Castle?!" His eyes move about randomly until they find hers after just a moment. "Castle, stay with me! Stay with me, Castle!"

His chest jumps as his breath catches. "I…"

"Hey, you're gonna be fine… okay?" She pathetically soothes him, widely nodding her head as she looks into his terrified eyes. Her vision of him is blurred a second later by her tears. She's losing him. His eyes just started to fade. "No, no, look at me, Castle!" She pleads, reaching up and clasping the sides of his head. "Castle, look at me! Don't you leave me, Castle, don't you leave me!" She screams.

"I-I… lo…"

His head goes limp in her hands and his eyes slide shut. "No no no no." She cries, pressing her stained hands below his rib cage again as hard as she can. "Castle!" She screams again. "Castle, come back to me." She whispers to him. "Come back to me, come on." She whimpers.

"Kate." A voice says behind her shoulder. "Kate, let me see." Lanie says, pulling roughly on her friends shoulder.

"Get off me!" She violently shakes her off, her hands going back to his face. "You can't leave me like this, Rick!" She pleads again.

"Kate!" Lanie yells again, grabbing Kate's wrists and throws her off. Her weak body gets tossed off to the side, but her eyes can't leave him, even as Lanie's red eyes look down to her partner.

"Dad!" A voice shrieks from a distance.

The wail of the ambulance comes cutting through the air, crying over the indistinct yells and screams. She can't lose him, not him too. She just can't lose him too. Not like this, not now. "Castle, can you hear me?" Lanie shouts at him, her peripheral vision catching sight of the paramedics sprinting toward them.

She throws herself forward as best she can, her body feeling clumsy and fumbling in the dark as she crawls back over to him, her hand reaching over to his face. She just wants to… wants to…

All she can do is caress his cheek with her thumb before she's pushed aside by the two paramedics coming to his side. They start rattling off orders but she pays them no mind, everything still fixated on him. They're lifting him up on the stretcher a few seconds later and rushing him away from her. Her head quickly whips around to find Lanie kneeling beside her with the back of her hand pressed to her forehead, then over her, seeing Ryan holding a violently thrashing girl to the ground.

She shakes her head clear of everything else and is stumbling to her feet and is on the paramedics heels in seconds. They don't stop her until they're pushing the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, and she's ready to send her fist toward them when they don't let her on right away. "Excuse me miss, who are you?" One of them hurriedly asks.

She shoves him aside as hard as she can, "He's my partner, I'm going with him."

"Look at me, Castle. Come on, bro." Espo orders him, the barrage of nurses pushing the stretcher as fast as they can down the hall.

"Sir, you need to let us handle this." One of them tells Esposito, who's straddling Castle's torso with his hands pressed into the layers of soaked bandages.

"We don't leave a man behind, you understand?"

"Sir, you need to let us take care of him." Another one of the bigger nurses says and grabs Esposito's arm.

It's just a few seconds later Esposito is jumping down onto the linoleum and standing with the other's, watching him being rushed through the swinging doors, just as a few more pairs of footsteps come stamping toward them. Kate is next to him, feeling completely outside of herself as Esposito tears his dress gloves off and throws them against the wall in anger with a grunt.

This just can't be happening. Not now. Not when they're… like this. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Just… any other way than this. "Where is Richard?" Martha's voice trembles as it calls for the four of them already standing in the hallway of the hospital. Kate's eyes can't turn away from the doors her partner just got wheeled through.

She can hear Esposito let out a strained sigh as he moves forward. "They just took him into surgery."

"Well, have they said anything? Is my son even alive?" Martha angrily begs. These people are police detectives, they should know more than nothing, which is what they're telling her.

But all Kate can do is try to even out her uneven breathing and stop the coldness that's taking over, the shiver, the tight knot in her gut that's constricting everything else in her system. The voices turn to muffles after that, but they're getting louder as Martha angrily pleads with Esposito, Ryan, and Lanie behind her.

"You!" A voice behind her roars loudly.

She spins around, seeing Ryan catch Alexis in his arms as she kicks and pushes her way toward Kate, her eyes flooded with tears as she violently thrashes against Ryan's tight grasp, and it sends a terrified stab into the center of Kate's heart.

"You did this to him! He's in there because of you!"

"Alexis!" Martha shouts behind her a distance.

Alexis just keeps thrashing against Ryan's arms as she feels Esposito put a hand on her shoulder. "This is your fault! I swear to god, if he dies…" Alexis's voice shakes until she can't speak clearly and just starts sobbing. She can't look away until she sees Martha step in front of her, Alexis's arms weakly going around her and clutching desperately the fabric of Martha's black funeral attire as his daughter's legs give out and slides to the floor, Martha just starting to bring the girl in and rock her from side to side as she sobs.

Kate's breath is fast and heavy, her lungs squeezing, every breath she sucks in wanting to let loose the storm of emotions when she forces it out. When a few sets of eyes find her, and Esposito gives her shoulder a squeeze, she looks back up and forces her trembling and unreliable legs to move in the first direction they will carry her. As she quickly stumbles her way down the hall, holding onto the wall for support, she feels her eyes burn, tears already washing over her eyes, her body pulling itself back from sob after sob.

Until her hand finds a door, pushing it open and stumbling forward into an empty stairwell. She grabs onto the railing to try and ease herself up, but all it does is slow the decent down to the cold floor. And once she feels her weight supported by the cold cement beneath her, her body crawls into itself as she becomes undone. Her whole body wracks with intense sobs, every muscle she has needing to flex just to suck in enough air to loudly cry as she breathes it back out, tears flowing uncontrollably out of her closed eyes.

She rolls herself off to the side until she feels her shoulder hit the corner of the wall, and she draws her legs in, shaking her head back and forth against the wall. Not like this. They can't end like this. He's her partner. She can't lose him too, not Castle. Take anybody else, but not Castle. He doesn't deserve any of this. He… he took a bullet for her.

Oh god, he just jumped in front of a bullet for her.

She has to close her throat, her eyes, and shake her head at that. This is her fault. That bullet was meant for her, and he… god what was he thinking! He has a family! Who does she have? He has a daughter to think about!

It's a long while before she feels herself cried out, her body simply unable to produce anymore, or even able to handle anymore, feeling sore from her back wrenching with so much emotion. She reaches up and goes to wipe away her face of moisture, but stops when she spots her gloves… still stained that deep crimson red with his blood. Her hands start to shake and it's all she can do to tear the Velcro off and rip the gloves off her hands and toss them under the stairs.

She reaches up and grabs onto the railing, her arms acting as if she's drunk, and hoists herself up. She can't face the people out there, but… she has to. For him. He expects her to be the strongest person he knows, but she feels so weak right now. He's always admired her strength and reliance, that look in his eye… she squeezes her eyes closed and takes a few deep breathes, steadying herself as she grips the steel doorknob tightly.

She whips the door open and turns out to the hall way, the first thing she sees is Martha and Alexis sitting in a pair of chairs against the wall, Alexis doubled over with her face buried in her hands, and Martha running her hands up and down her back. She fortifies her resolve as best she can as she starts down the hall, feeling… nothing but deep annoyance at having to deal with him right now. "Josh?"

He turns around, standing in front of Esposito and Ryan, and he quickly makes his way over to her, and the only thing she can catch is how Esposito's eyes seem to bore into him. "Hey you."

She raises her hand and stops him, gently easing him away from her as she meanders forward. "Not now, Josh. Okay?"

He doesn't seem to clue in, and tries again with his hand on her arm. "When I heard what happened, I came right down."

She looks over to him with a deep crease in her forehead. "What are you talking about?"

"Kate, someone just tried to kill you. Are you okay?" He tries yet again, stepping in front of her and putting his hands on her arms.

But she just can't stand to have him touch her right now. Her arms cringe and she quickly weaves her way out of his cold grasp. "Don't touch me, okay?" She says as she turns and paces away from him. She really doesn't care how he takes her right now. She doesn't care about anything other than her partner right now, that's what her heart is centered on.

But she can feel Josh's anger well up behind her. "Don't touch you?" He repeats back and quickly moves around her and stands in front of her. "Kate, someone just tried to kill you, I think I'm allowed to be worried about you. I am your boyfriend."

That sets her off, a low flame of anger quickly catching fire. "Josh, my partner just jumped in front of a bullet for me, okay?!" She shouts, her voice echoing off the stark white walls of the ER waiting room.

"And you're acting like I'm not allowed to be here for you!" He spits back.

But all it does it push her further. "I can't believe you're being this self-centered! Castle is lying on an operating table right now, fighting for his life! And if he dies, I will never forgive myself!"

"Kate, it's because of him that someone tried to kill you in the first place. He's the one that pushed you to-"

"Don't you even go there!" She screams. "How dare you try and put this on him when he's sitting in there with a bullet in his chest! It was my decision to go after my mother's case, so don't you even try to put this on him." She can't even stand to look at him anymore. She quickly turns away from him, "God, I can't even look at you right now!" She spits and quickly goes down the hall and pushes her way into another hall of the hospital.

Esposito and Ryan both follow Josh with their eyes as he storms away down an adjacent hall way, slamming open a door. Esposito just huffs and shakes his head. "Never did like that guy." Ryan chimes in next to him.

"At least we can give Castle some good news when he wakes up."

Ryan's breath shakes, having gone through too much the past few days. First his captain, his mentor, now Castle? "You think he's gonna make it?"

Esposito just turns to his partner with a stoned, but sad expression. "I don't know."

A/N: Should clarify, I'm going to be switching perspectives a lot. Whereas my other stories I stuck with one character's perspective, limited, it's going to be omniscient in this story to get a fuller view of the range of emotions felt by everyone. Let me know what you think, I'd greatly appreciate it. :)