It was seconds.

It was the flash of light in the distance, glaring white amidst rows of toothy white, and green, and the sunlight flare off a sniper scope.

The thick sound of metal cleaving body tissue, the chunk of bone, even as he was diving in, diving in with her under him.

And his heart stopped with hers.

He was babbling; she said nothing, made no movement of her lips. Her hand came up, as if in a dream, the white of her glove stained red, like a play, like a silly, low-budget production. This can't be real. Her dark uniform darker, the buttons dipped in blood now too, and his hands were useless, cradling, touching, feeling blood but with no ability to stop it.

"Stay with me. Don't leave me." He said it all; he said things he didn't know, words to keep her alive; he wrote things into being, he created, he would have her here.

I love you.

Her eyes rolled back. Closed.

Her father was in the grass, gasping Katie Katie Katie in holy trinity, holding on to her, the two of them like wounded beasts fighting over scraps. Lanie, hurtling curses at someone as she fought, surged between them, her voice trembling but crisp, her hands able and willing, pushing them aside. Lanie.

Castle heard, in some tunnel, the boys shouting commands, their weapons drawn, the screams of all their family huddled near the ground. Alexis. Alexis at his elbow, buried into his side, weeping; Kate was further from him now; he had let go.

Just spots of blood in the center of his palms, like stigmata, trickling down his wrists as he held his hands up, away, as if contaminated, as if in supplication, as if his hands could do anything at all.

His mother's hand at his back, Alexis's arms wrapped around him. Lanie grabbed his fingers, yanked him down on his elbows beside her body, fumbled to put them there, the warm gush of exposed things under his palm. Awkward reach, holding her in, holding Kate together. Lanie was doing chest compressions, her father breathing for her, in and in, and one two three four five six out-

Flecks of blood on her lips, mottled freckles.

Too far, sirens closing. Red flashes dimmed in the sunlight. The too bright day. The curious wet under his fingers that was some part of this woman he couldn't bear to stand without.

"Castle, don't you dare let go of that."

Lanie pounding down on Kate's chest again, close to where his fingers plugged a hole, a little boy at a dam, the weight of unshed water behind the wall, threatening to dislodge his world. God, God please-

At one side his daughter, at the other his life. Him stretched between the two, spanning a gap of grass and sunlight, his words dead in his mouth.